Yeah, I thought I'd used that previously, but it was HOTW (Hood of the Week).
MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
"The Golden Vulture"
I almost didn't recognize Peter Whitney as the captain, and had to IMDB to be sure. Despite the beard, he generally looked a lot more "clean cut" here than in the Westerns I'm used to seeing him in. The episode also featured four-time Trek guest (including three voice roles) Vic Perrin.
Why the heck did Superman change to Clark to investigate the ship? This series suffers from a lot of bad plot logic to make Superman's escapades against common crooks last more than 10 minutes.
And Clark's finger feels more like a steel gun barrel than a finger? Seems like people would know he was Superman just by shaking his hand....
And most noteworthy...for the third time so far this season, Clark's supporting cast gets a good look at him without his glasses. One gets the impression that they were going out of their way to do it. Yeah, the glasses seem a lot more believable as a disguise when they don't even recognize him without them....
I almost didn't recognize Peter Whitney as the captain, and had to IMDB to be sure. Despite the beard, he generally looked a lot more "clean cut" here than in the Westerns I'm used to seeing him in. The episode also featured four-time Trek guest (including three voice roles) Vic Perrin.
Why the heck did Superman change to Clark to investigate the ship? This series suffers from a lot of bad plot logic to make Superman's escapades against common crooks last more than 10 minutes.
And Clark's finger feels more like a steel gun barrel than a finger? Seems like people would know he was Superman just by shaking his hand....
And most noteworthy...for the third time so far this season, Clark's supporting cast gets a good look at him without his glasses. One gets the impression that they were going out of their way to do it. Yeah, the glasses seem a lot more believable as a disguise when they don't even recognize him without them....
"The Golden Vulture": Here's one for the Star Trek guest stars thread -- Vic Perrin played the beleaguered steward "Scurvy."
Interesting racket going on there -- melting/breaking down stolen gold and jewels and converting them into fake salvaged treasure. Clever idea, but I'd think it would be hard to make the fakes convincing enough to fool the experts.
Once again, we see that Lois and Jimmy still can't recognize Clark as Superman when his glasses are off. And Superman was in a pretty mean mood here, letting Lois and Jimmy stew about Clark drowning for so long. Why not just do his usual "Oh, I already saved Clark" bit? For that matter, this is another of those cases where he just makes things harder on himself by changing back into Clark at all. Things would've been resolved more quickly if he'd stayed in Superman guise.
"Jimmy Olsen, Boy Editor": Once again, the "boys" in this show's universe all seem to be in their mid-20s. Weird that a show aimed at children has so few of them in its episodes.
This was a weird one. It all played out like it was real, but they seemed to be trying to make us wonder if it was all Perry's dream. I mean, we kinda saw Clark changing to Superman, or as much as we ever do, so that means it was probably real; but it was also unusually goofy, with the crooks making dumb decisions that didn't make a lot of sense. So I'm not sure. Was it real or just a dream? Is the top still spinning? I'm so confused!
Anyway, for what it's worth, I don't think the statute of limitations would've spared Legs even aside from the gun charge and the stolen money in his possession. The statute is nullified if the culprit actively attempts to elude justice. Now, technically Legs didn't attempt to flee the jurisdiction, but he did hold people at gunpoint with the intent of preventing his prosecution for the theft, so I think that would've nullified the statute for the theft.
Oh, and I note that the sign on the door said "James J. Olsen, Editor," when Jimmy's full name is usually given as James Bartholomew Olsen. Who printed that sign, Gary Mitchell?
Interesting racket going on there -- melting/breaking down stolen gold and jewels and converting them into fake salvaged treasure. Clever idea, but I'd think it would be hard to make the fakes convincing enough to fool the experts.
Once again, we see that Lois and Jimmy still can't recognize Clark as Superman when his glasses are off. And Superman was in a pretty mean mood here, letting Lois and Jimmy stew about Clark drowning for so long. Why not just do his usual "Oh, I already saved Clark" bit? For that matter, this is another of those cases where he just makes things harder on himself by changing back into Clark at all. Things would've been resolved more quickly if he'd stayed in Superman guise.
"Jimmy Olsen, Boy Editor": Once again, the "boys" in this show's universe all seem to be in their mid-20s. Weird that a show aimed at children has so few of them in its episodes.
This was a weird one. It all played out like it was real, but they seemed to be trying to make us wonder if it was all Perry's dream. I mean, we kinda saw Clark changing to Superman, or as much as we ever do, so that means it was probably real; but it was also unusually goofy, with the crooks making dumb decisions that didn't make a lot of sense. So I'm not sure. Was it real or just a dream? Is the top still spinning? I'm so confused!
Anyway, for what it's worth, I don't think the statute of limitations would've spared Legs even aside from the gun charge and the stolen money in his possession. The statute is nullified if the culprit actively attempts to elude justice. Now, technically Legs didn't attempt to flee the jurisdiction, but he did hold people at gunpoint with the intent of preventing his prosecution for the theft, so I think that would've nullified the statute for the theft.
Oh, and I note that the sign on the door said "James J. Olsen, Editor," when Jimmy's full name is usually given as James Bartholomew Olsen. Who printed that sign, Gary Mitchell?
Yeah, I was kind of surprised when he just kind of blew them off when they asked about Clark. He could have said Clark was already back on the ship, taken off, and then just come out from around the corner as Clark.
I also noticed they had Lois questioning the whole situation. From what my mom has said, it sounds like that gets to be a regular thing.
I also thought the whole thing with Jimmy pretending to sleep making the bad guys fall asleep thing was weird."Jimmy Olsen, Boy Editor": Once again, the "boys" in this show's universe all seem to be in their mid-20s. Weird that a show aimed at children has so few of them in its episodes.
This was a weird one. It all played out like it was real, but they seemed to be trying to make us wonder if it was all Perry's dream. I mean, we kinda saw Clark changing to Superman, or as much as we ever do, so that means it was probably real; but it was also unusually goofy, with the crooks making dumb decisions that didn't make a lot of sense. So I'm not sure. Was it real or just a dream? Is the top still spinning? I'm so confused!
Anyway, for what it's worth, I don't think the statute of limitations would've spared Legs even aside from the gun charge and the stolen money in his possession. The statute is nullified if the culprit actively attempts to elude justice. Now, technically Legs didn't attempt to flee the jurisdiction, but he did hold people at gunpoint with the intent of preventing his prosecution for the theft, so I think that would've nullified the statute for the theft.
Oh, and I note that the sign on the door said "James J. Olsen, Editor," when Jimmy's full name is usually given as James Bartholomew Olsen. Who printed that sign, Gary Mitchell?
Christopher pretty much covered most of my points about the second episode, but I have to emphasize how ludicrously stupid the thugs were to have put themselves in that situation at all. "Gun charge"? They were holding hostages! And had the identifiable money with them! And the police had the place surrounded! How the heck did they see themselves getting out of that situation regardless of the statute for the old crime?
And oddly, Clark didn't even need to be Superman to resolve the situation the way he did. All that time spent sitting in his office he could have gone and gotten the sleeping gas by conventional means...or had the police do it...if only hostage situations were really that easy....
I think that a better way to use the "boy's day" scenario would be for crooks to actively take advantage of the fact that all of the officials were replaced by substitutes. And it seems pretty silly that Perry wasn't aware of it going into the office that morning.
Hey, I was just watching the end credits, and one of this episode's guests was Keith Richards! I totally didn't spot him!
Mick was also doing TV in the 50s:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-IFg_BHeSA[/yt]
And oddly, Clark didn't even need to be Superman to resolve the situation the way he did. All that time spent sitting in his office he could have gone and gotten the sleeping gas by conventional means...or had the police do it...if only hostage situations were really that easy....
I think that a better way to use the "boy's day" scenario would be for crooks to actively take advantage of the fact that all of the officials were replaced by substitutes. And it seems pretty silly that Perry wasn't aware of it going into the office that morning.
Hey, I was just watching the end credits, and one of this episode's guests was Keith Richards! I totally didn't spot him!
Mick was also doing TV in the 50s:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-IFg_BHeSA[/yt]
It didn't. That stuff Superman put into the ventilation system was a tranquilizer gas of some sort. Jimmy's "explanation" about the power of suggestion was just bluster; he believed he'd beaten the bad guys himself because he didn't know Superman had done it.
Come to think of it, why didn't Superman think he could just barge in and take down the gunmen? He has superspeed. There have been plenty of other cases in the show where he barged in to rescue Lois and Jimmy from armed thugs, so what makes this case any different?
Hmmm... I wonder if the reason the writers hinted that this episode was a dream was because they realized it didn't make sense. Then again, there are plenty of other episodes that don't make sense.
Wanted to add that Lois's move to empty the gun was clever, though it didn't work as intended.
And...you know you're a really stupid thug when Jimmy Olsen is the one who points out how stupid your plan is....
And...you know you're a really stupid thug when Jimmy Olsen is the one who points out how stupid your plan is....
I just hope there was nobody in the offices upstairs. And in real life, expending a full machine gun clip (drum?) indoors would probably leave everyone in the room temporarily deaf. You know all those movie/TV scenes with soldiers using hand signals to give their subordinates instructions? That's not about stealth, it's because people in the midst of heavy gunfire generally can't hear very well.
An interesting name has started showing up in the end credits of Superman: Assistant director Robert H. Justman! I'd forgotten the show had a Star Trek connection.
"Lady in Black": A fun, surreal Jimmy Olsen focus episode by Jackson Gillis. Good comedy banter.
"The Whistling Bird": Sterling Holloway returns in a somewhat weaker episode. Last time, Uncle Oscar was a computer engineer, but now he's suddenly a chemist and former nuclear scientist. Ahh, television. And when Clark is at the epicenter of a huge explosion and is totally unharmed by it, nobody finds that the least bit noteworthy.
I get so tired of radio and TV stories where Superman fails to notice something because it's encased in lead. Lead walls wouldn't have made that room invisible to Superman; on the contrary, it would've created a void in his visual field that would've made it obvious that there was lead there, and that would've just attracted his attention.
Batman gives us the debut of Mr. Freeze -- based on a one-time comics character named Mr. Zero. ComicsAlliance's review series has pointed out that both this and the recent Joker 2-parter are based on a single issue of the comic (Batman #176) that had come out not long before and that reprinted a number of older stories, making it pretty likely that the producers drew on it as a source. Anyway, here is where the episodes catch up with the reviews, since CA has only covered part 1 of this one so far:
http://comicsalliance.com/the-batman-66-episode-guide-1x07-instant-freeze/
Yay, it's the Giant Lighted Lucite Map of Gotham City! And the Interdigital Batsorter Anti-Crime Computer!
This is an unusual story in that the Dynamic Duo are saved from the cliffhanger deathtrap by the authorities rather than their own ingenuity. (Every hospital should have a Super Hypotherm De-Iceifier Chamber.) It's also unusual in the villain's drive for revenge on Batman. And George Sanders is rather chilling, pardon the expression, in his more vengeful moments. He's not playing for laughs the way so many of the Bat-villains do -- he's deadly serious. It makes me wonder if maybe Paul Dini saw something in this episode that he decided to build on in his reinvention of Mr. Freeze. When Sanders's Freeze was talking about how he could never again experience a warm summer breeze, I could almost hear Michael Ansara's voice saying the same words.
The whole "hot path/cold path" special-effects thing never really worked for me. I think that even as a kid, I noticed the effects errors like the different configuration of the zones between shots and the way characters crossed the lines -- and I probably also wondered how the areas could be heated and chilled so instantaneously, and how the effect was generated in the first place.
And Batman and Robin were off their game here. They should've realized that Freeze's "Strike one/Strike two" theme in the skywriting taunts, combined with the diamond theme of his crimes, pointed toward Paul Diamante.
By the way, I love it how the Part 2 recap uses the wrong part of the skywriting FX footage so you can see how they superimposed the text onto a stock shot of a plane.
"Lady in Black": A fun, surreal Jimmy Olsen focus episode by Jackson Gillis. Good comedy banter.
"The Whistling Bird": Sterling Holloway returns in a somewhat weaker episode. Last time, Uncle Oscar was a computer engineer, but now he's suddenly a chemist and former nuclear scientist. Ahh, television. And when Clark is at the epicenter of a huge explosion and is totally unharmed by it, nobody finds that the least bit noteworthy.
I get so tired of radio and TV stories where Superman fails to notice something because it's encased in lead. Lead walls wouldn't have made that room invisible to Superman; on the contrary, it would've created a void in his visual field that would've made it obvious that there was lead there, and that would've just attracted his attention.
Batman gives us the debut of Mr. Freeze -- based on a one-time comics character named Mr. Zero. ComicsAlliance's review series has pointed out that both this and the recent Joker 2-parter are based on a single issue of the comic (Batman #176) that had come out not long before and that reprinted a number of older stories, making it pretty likely that the producers drew on it as a source. Anyway, here is where the episodes catch up with the reviews, since CA has only covered part 1 of this one so far:
http://comicsalliance.com/the-batman-66-episode-guide-1x07-instant-freeze/
Yay, it's the Giant Lighted Lucite Map of Gotham City! And the Interdigital Batsorter Anti-Crime Computer!
This is an unusual story in that the Dynamic Duo are saved from the cliffhanger deathtrap by the authorities rather than their own ingenuity. (Every hospital should have a Super Hypotherm De-Iceifier Chamber.) It's also unusual in the villain's drive for revenge on Batman. And George Sanders is rather chilling, pardon the expression, in his more vengeful moments. He's not playing for laughs the way so many of the Bat-villains do -- he's deadly serious. It makes me wonder if maybe Paul Dini saw something in this episode that he decided to build on in his reinvention of Mr. Freeze. When Sanders's Freeze was talking about how he could never again experience a warm summer breeze, I could almost hear Michael Ansara's voice saying the same words.
The whole "hot path/cold path" special-effects thing never really worked for me. I think that even as a kid, I noticed the effects errors like the different configuration of the zones between shots and the way characters crossed the lines -- and I probably also wondered how the areas could be heated and chilled so instantaneously, and how the effect was generated in the first place.
And Batman and Robin were off their game here. They should've realized that Freeze's "Strike one/Strike two" theme in the skywriting taunts, combined with the diamond theme of his crimes, pointed toward Paul Diamante.
By the way, I love it how the Part 2 recap uses the wrong part of the skywriting FX footage so you can see how they superimposed the text onto a stock shot of a plane.
Interestingly, they skipped an episode...the second one should have been "Star of Fate". I noticed this because my program guide had it listed as the second episode, and has "The Whistling Bird" scheduled for Monday.
ETA: OK, I'll give Wonder Woman a roller coaster episode...but a two-part roller coaster episode? Seriously? This show feels padded enough in one-hour installments.
BTW, Gul Dukat and Peter Preston both appear in this episode.
ETA: OK, I'll give Wonder Woman a roller coaster episode...but a two-part roller coaster episode? Seriously? This show feels padded enough in one-hour installments.
BTW, Gul Dukat and Peter Preston both appear in this episode.
Last edited:
Toronto/Southern Ontario (and presumably also Western New York) didn't really have a guy/gal like this, just Chuck The Security Guard (aka Chas Lawther, who'd show old TV shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits on The All-Night Show. This is a sampling of him:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yssq7STUbhE[/yt]
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFXO39JZO6g[/yt]
Here's a tribute to him: The All-Night Show
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBrBG9eeGFM[/yt]
I wish that I could get Me-TV over my antenna, but so far, I have not (and I have a TERK antenna, supposedly one of the best.) All that I can get is Bounce TV and that's it. Canada has nothing like this; everything is either 'Net streaming, satellite, or cable, with no OTA digital subchannels to be had.
Which goes to show how dated both shows about both heroes are, and why not everything on Me-TV is that great.
Varian, Dukat, Peter Preston, and Jason of Star Command-(Craig Littler), the dude in jeans from the first act, who was chased by biker WW.
WCVB is still running Community Auditions over the first half of Superman here.
Plus the fact that his X-ray Vision can't possibly have anything to do with x-rays. If it did, any thick, solid material would block them. Also, x-rays only show silhouettes of denser objects embedded within less-dense objects when they expose film after passing through the object from a secondary source. Whatever Superman does is sourced in his eyes and seems to make objects completely invisible from his perspective and his perspective only. So why would lead make any difference?
That reminds me: Back in the 80s, Channel 38 in Boston had a late-night show on Fridays hosted by Charles Laquidara, who was the top morning disc jockey at the time (WBCN), which showed genre movies, plus other tidbits like TV show episodes and genre-related music videos (e.g. Golden Earring's "Twilight Zone"). Laquidara was a nice guy. I called him a few times from work about the show and he chatted amiably while switching back and forth from being on-air. He quit radio and left Boston in the 90s when they switched him from BCN to ZLX, the sister nostalgia station.
George Sanders was the best filmed Freeze, IMO; his aristocratic nature easily mixed with his sinister villainy--a perfect personality for one so literally cold. Sanders was a far different Freeze than the more "comic booky" exaggeratins of Preminger, Wallach and Schwarzenegger.
Batman, while not free of a flaw or two, was hitting some great high marks in this early stage, when some series need nearly an entire season (if they survive it) to get into a successful groove.
MeTV (in NY at least) is channel 3.10 NOTE, that is NOT 3.1, but 3.10
I get it OTA
I get it OTA
I was kind of surprised to see that the Batman 2 parter did seem to take itself a bit more seriously.
Of the Superman episodes the only one I really watched the Lady in Black, but I enjoyed it. I actually did start to kind of feel sorry for poor Jimmy at one point.
I got a kick out of seeing Marc Alaimo on WW, this was the first time I've seen him in a non-Trek role.
They didn't show "Star of Fate" today either, slotting in a first-season rerun instead. I wonder why they skipped it.
"Around the World with Superman" is pretty good even with the sappy elements and the mildly annoying child actress, and the "Oh, you poor thing" attitude toward the blind. Jackson Gillis's scripts tend to have strong writing, and there was a fair amount of drama with the mother -- although I'm still not clear on just why she was running from her husband's lawyer. Maybe he intended to serve her with divorce papers, but they couldn't say "divorce" on a kids' show in 1954.
I think this has got to be the most use they've made of their rear-projection "flying" rig in one episode. They went through a lot of stock footage. It looks to me like it's the same principle as the Bat-climb scenes in Batman, with Reeve standing upright and the camera turned sideways. Sometimes when he was holding the girl in his arms, she too was angled sideways relative to the camera frame, as if down were toward his feet.
It's also the first episode without a crime or danger plot, just a pure drama. And it's the last black-and-white episode. Season 3 begins tomorrow in full color.
It was definitely a "simpler times" episode, between adults making multiple covert visits to a little girl when her mom wasn't home, Superman making medical diagnoses, the short shrift they gave to the simple miracle of the girl getting her sight back, and the ludicrous ease with which the parents got back together. But I like that they got away from the Thug of the Week formula, and that the episode didn't feel padded with nonsensical plot complications to keep Superman from getting things done in 10 minutes. If anything, it feels like this story could have used more room to breath and fully explore its premise.
Varian, Dukat, Peter Preston, and Jason of Star Command-(Craig Littler), the dude in jeans from the first act, who was chased by biker WW.
AND Jared MArtin as the titular Phantom. Martin starred as Dr. Harrison Blackwood in War of the Worlds, which accompanied TNG's 1st 2 seasons, at least here in Chicago. Great show that got terrible writing the 2nd season.
Will Marc Alaimo be in part 2? I totally missed him in part 1 (but definitely noticed Peter Preston)
As I understand it these episodes were the last of Wonder Woman...and had guest stars who would be a part of sci-fi's Renassaince in the 80's (and 90's)
