• ASTRONAUTS Pete Burke (James Naughton) and Alan Virdon (Ron Harper) …trapped in a world ruled by apes. The television series Planet of the Apes takes up where the popular Ape movies left off.   Two more astronauts take over from Charlron Heston, flying through the same time warp to arrive on earth 2000 years ahead in time.   There are references to the previous humans who have crashed through the time barrier, but it is still the simians who rule the planet.   So the scene is set for dramatic action as the astronauts fight to keep alive and to get back to their own time.   The astronauts are played by James Naughton, a medical student turned actor, and Ron Harper, a Princeton graduate who also turned his back on learning for the perilous game of acting.   Roddy McDowall is the star of the series, playing the same role as he did in the movies.   He appeared in all five movies as the friendly ape Galen, and carries on in the same fashion in the series.   For the countless fans of those Ape movies, the main characters in the simian fold will be familiar.   The same masks were used for the various ape characters and the actors beneath them had to go through the same arduous make-up procedures.   This meant a 5 am start for make-up and a gruelling three hour session in the chair before starting.   Another problem the actors faced was eating. Once those masks were on there was no taking them off again until the end of the day.   Which meant the only way to eat was by poking small pieces of food skewered on the end of a stick through the mask and into the mouth.   • ABOVE: Apes on horseback search the forest for the two fugitive astronauts. • ABOVE: Roddy McDowall as Galon (sic) the chimpanzee, tries to help the two astronauts. • BELOW: Booth Colman appears in the series as Zaius, the planet’s presiding otangutan. • BELOW: Mark Lenard as Urko, the military leader of the apes, bent on the destruction of the fugitive humans. BELOW: The feature as it originally appeared.