MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night
- Thread starter JD
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It accompanied TNG in the sense of being part of the same syndication package from Paramount. I think that means they were sold as a set, so if a station wanted TNG, they'd need to pick up WOTW too. I'm not sure, though. It actually premiered a year after TNG (starting in 1988, 35 years after the George Pal movie to which it was a sequel) and was syndicated alongside TNG's second and third seasons.
I had a generally positive recollection of season 1 of WOTW, but when I rewatched it a few years back, I discovered it was much, much worse than I remembered. It had terrible, cheap production values, and apparently it was largely written during the '88 writers' strike by non-Writers' Guild talent, so a lot of the scripts were a total mess. The main thing I'd remembered fondly was the rapport among the main cast, but most of them were weaker actors than I remembered. It was really a disillusioning experience and quite a slog to get through. Here are my reviews:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/tag/war-of-the-worlds/
Digressing from SUPERMAN for a minute . . . At 3 AM Friday morning, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour is airing "Ride The Nightmare," adapted by Richard Matheson from his early crime novel by the same name. (Full disclosure: I reprinted Ride the Nightmare in an omnibus volume titled Noir a few years back.)
I've never actually seen this rather obscure adaptation of an obscure Matheson novel before, but I'm told that Richard was pleased with the result.
Needless to say, my DVR is set.
I've never actually seen this rather obscure adaptation of an obscure Matheson novel before, but I'm told that Richard was pleased with the result.
Needless to say, my DVR is set.
Color comes to Superman! And it looks... pretty awful. Whatever process they used for achieving colors in those days looked kind of cheesy, and the image quality seems poorer than in the B&W episodes.
"Through the Time Barrier" is one of the most science-fictional plots they've done so far and a harbinger of things to come. Unfortunately it's pretty lame, with the trip into the past being limited to a few cheap cave sets and extras in "caveman" furs. It makes me wonder why anyone thought TV was a better way to do this kind of series than radio or comic books, either one of which would've been much freer in its storytelling capabilities. It was also a pretty drab story, with a villain who lacked much credibility since he gave up before the episode even started, and with everyone else just acting too blase about everything to convey any sense of peril. It's also weird to see Sterling Holloway as a different mad scientist so soon after his second turn as Uncle Oscar, especially since that episode and this one had the same writer, story editor, and producer. All in all, the only worthwhile things here were Noel Neill's legs.
"The Talking Clue" was better, with a decent attempt at drama for Inspector Henderson, but the actor playing his son was terrible, and the crime plot was confusingly structured. First we see James noticing the tape recorder over the safe and hear that his partner McGurk has been arrested, then we see this other guy telling James about the tape recorder idea as if he'd been the one to see it, and then we later learn that other guy is McGurk.
Also, it's funny that all the sample sounds Ray chose to play for Lois and Jimmy happened to be consecutive on the same reel of tape. And convenient for McGurk to be so stupid as to think the sound of Superman on the tape was real immediately after he made Ray play him sounds on the tape. And hard to see what the point was when the real Superman was on the way anyway.
"Through the Time Barrier" is one of the most science-fictional plots they've done so far and a harbinger of things to come. Unfortunately it's pretty lame, with the trip into the past being limited to a few cheap cave sets and extras in "caveman" furs. It makes me wonder why anyone thought TV was a better way to do this kind of series than radio or comic books, either one of which would've been much freer in its storytelling capabilities. It was also a pretty drab story, with a villain who lacked much credibility since he gave up before the episode even started, and with everyone else just acting too blase about everything to convey any sense of peril. It's also weird to see Sterling Holloway as a different mad scientist so soon after his second turn as Uncle Oscar, especially since that episode and this one had the same writer, story editor, and producer. All in all, the only worthwhile things here were Noel Neill's legs.
"The Talking Clue" was better, with a decent attempt at drama for Inspector Henderson, but the actor playing his son was terrible, and the crime plot was confusingly structured. First we see James noticing the tape recorder over the safe and hear that his partner McGurk has been arrested, then we see this other guy telling James about the tape recorder idea as if he'd been the one to see it, and then we later learn that other guy is McGurk.
Also, it's funny that all the sample sounds Ray chose to play for Lois and Jimmy happened to be consecutive on the same reel of tape. And convenient for McGurk to be so stupid as to think the sound of Superman on the tape was real immediately after he made Ray play him sounds on the tape. And hard to see what the point was when the real Superman was on the way anyway.
If anyone else were asking that question, I imagine you'd be the one providing the answer.
I missed how he had a gun when he'd been turning himself in...but everyone seemed to be caving (pardon the expression) to his demands far too easily.
Interesting that Superman seemed to think that he might be able to travel through time, even though he couldn't....
My impression is that McGurk's buddy told McGurk about the tape recorder before that scene.
Probably spliced together for their benefit.
Inspector Henderson's too hard on his son...he could be listening to R&B....
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrd14PxaUco[/yt]
(Closest thing on my 1950s playlist to the episode airdate without going past it...though "Rock Around the Clock"'s initial charting date is right around the corner.)
The only answer I can think of is that it was following the fad, assuming that the newest technology was automatically the best even when it didn't work as well as older methods -- like the way film studios today are only willing to make 3D-animated films anymore.
Plus there's the fact that humans are primarily a visual species, so a medium you can see is assumed to have an edge over one you can just hear. But watching the Superman TV show so soon after hearing the radio show, I really don't see the TV show as an improvement in any material way. Well, I like Jack Larson as Jimmy better than Jackie Kelk, though it's harder to buy him as a teenager. But otherwise, I think the radio show just generally worked better.
But...while we may think another medium could have done this story (or Superman in general) justice, that's not what the producers of the TV show were concerned with. TV was big business then, and their job was making a TV show. Far more people were going to watch the TV show than read the comics (which would indeed be doing much higher-concept stuff in the late 50s/early 60s).
^Yeah, but radio was huge in its time. Just because TV was more fashionable and popular, that doesn't mean it was better. Americans are too quick to abandon the old in favor of the new. In the UK, radio and theatre are still active and popular forms of entertainment alongside TV and movies, but Americans largely abandoned radio when TV came along, and as a consequence, we went from a broadcast Superman series that could do anything and go anywhere to a broadcast Superman series that was far more limited. Sure, you got to see the characters' faces and Superman's cape, but the gain did not offset all that was lost. And I'm sorry, but George Reeves was a terrible Superman/Clark compared to Bud Collyer. Collyer did a fantastic job differentiating Clark from Superman, but Reeves didn't even make a token effort. And even aside from that, I feel Collyer's acting was better.
Back to the show:
"The Lucky Cat" was fun -- the idea of an anti-superstition club is cool, and is just the sort of thing you might see a Silver Age Superman comics story about. Nice stylish opening scene too, with the landlord talking right to the camera before it pulls back to reveal Clark and Jimmy -- although I noticed that they were standing a lot farther apart in that shot than they were in the reverse angle.
"Superman Week" was, well, weak in comparison. It was pretty obvious what Superman's ploy was. And the performances seemed particularly lackadaisical. Everyone but Larson seems to be phoning it in this season. Also, does the Planet only have three employees other than Perry? Clark's really the only person who can help Lois when Jimmy's away?
Oh, but I did like the "lead-pipe cinch" line. That broke me up for some reason.
"The Lucky Cat" was fun -- the idea of an anti-superstition club is cool, and is just the sort of thing you might see a Silver Age Superman comics story about. Nice stylish opening scene too, with the landlord talking right to the camera before it pulls back to reveal Clark and Jimmy -- although I noticed that they were standing a lot farther apart in that shot than they were in the reverse angle.
"Superman Week" was, well, weak in comparison. It was pretty obvious what Superman's ploy was. And the performances seemed particularly lackadaisical. Everyone but Larson seems to be phoning it in this season. Also, does the Planet only have three employees other than Perry? Clark's really the only person who can help Lois when Jimmy's away?
Oh, but I did like the "lead-pipe cinch" line. That broke me up for some reason.
OK, if you're making a more general statement about what was lost when radio programming gave way to TV, that's a fair point. But the way it was presented earlier seemed to say that they should have opted to tell that particular story in a different format, which wasn't an option anymore as far as radio was concerned.
The fact that Reeves didn't do anything to differentiate Clark from Superman is definitely true...despite that, I think he has a lot of charisma as either, which at least partly makes up for that and helps to carry the generally weak story material.
That's what I was asking when I was nine! As I recall, it gets a bit worse as the series goes on. They stop making any effort to pretend that there are more than four people in that building.Jerry Seinfeld also used to do a bit that cracked me up about how Superman always fought the same two thugs, Lefty and The Boss.
I'm about to sit down to today's episode, but it looks like the second one's airdate was May 14, 1955--the same day that this first charted on Billboard (though it was originally released regionally a year earlier):
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgdufzXvjqw[/yt]
I just meant it was an example of why the TV series was so limited compared to radio or comics. Did Superman's fans really enjoy seeing a time-travel story with nothing but a couple of caves more than they would've enjoyed hearing a time-travel story where Superman fought dinosaurs, say? Was being able to see the adventures really that much of an asset when the adventures were so much less impressive in scope?
I think the story material is pretty solid when Jackson Gillis is writing. And I'd find Reeves more charismatic if he didn't seem so bored with the whole thing.
"The Lucky Cat"
It strikes me that people devoted to defying superstition are still obsessed with superstition.
Charlie King lit 300 cigarettes this week using 100 matches. Charlie King will die of lung cancer by 1962.
A previous episode guest-starred Keith Richards...this one guest-starred Charles Watts! And threw in John Phillips for good measure....
"Superman Week"
So this was our second kryptonite episode...sort of.
And Paul Burke from Naked City is back!
Did you notice that Jimmy got his real middle initial back?
So Lois uses Clark's office? Could it be that she doesn't have her own? There's your vintage sexism, Agent Carter fans.
Pretty odd that Clark got the TV studio to himself. Not very likely even if he were, say, a professional anchorman....
The bit with putting the crooks' heads in the bars reminded me of something that I meant to comment on from one of last night's episodes....They'd resorted for the second time that I'd noticed to the lame trick of having one of the hoods knock himself out by running into something while trying to get away from Superman. Apparently they decided somewhere along the way that Superman couldn't hit ordinary thugs, so if he didn't have two thugs' heads to knock together, the thug had to knock himself out!
It strikes me that people devoted to defying superstition are still obsessed with superstition.
Charlie King lit 300 cigarettes this week using 100 matches. Charlie King will die of lung cancer by 1962.
A previous episode guest-starred Keith Richards...this one guest-starred Charles Watts! And threw in John Phillips for good measure....
"Superman Week"
So this was our second kryptonite episode...sort of.
And Paul Burke from Naked City is back!
Did you notice that Jimmy got his real middle initial back?
So Lois uses Clark's office? Could it be that she doesn't have her own? There's your vintage sexism, Agent Carter fans.
Pretty odd that Clark got the TV studio to himself. Not very likely even if he were, say, a professional anchorman....
The bit with putting the crooks' heads in the bars reminded me of something that I meant to comment on from one of last night's episodes....They'd resorted for the second time that I'd noticed to the lame trick of having one of the hoods knock himself out by running into something while trying to get away from Superman. Apparently they decided somewhere along the way that Superman couldn't hit ordinary thugs, so if he didn't have two thugs' heads to knock together, the thug had to knock himself out!
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I saw it as trying to do a public service by debunking superstition. Although mainly it was just an excuse for a gentlemen's club.
Yeah, but he won't die of bad luck!
Anyway, I'd think that if you lit three cigarettes from one match, they'd have to be all lit at once, so I figured he shared them with two other people.
Funny -- I've heard the phrase "three on a match" (probably as a movie title or something), but I'm not actually familiar with that superstition. I don't think I've ever heard of it outside of this episode.
Sorry, I don't recognize what makes any of those names significant.
I was a little surprised by the continuity with the first kryptonite episode. After what happened with Sterling Holloway, I didn't think they bothered that much with continuity.
The weird part was that kryptonite was a silver ingot. I'm pretty sure the radio series described it as having a green glow, and surely the comics did too. (Green has long been the default color for radioactivity in fiction, based on the green glow of radium clock faces -- although that glow was actually caused by phosphorescent compounds being excited by the radiation emitted by the radium, rather than by the radium itself.)
Yes, I did. I actually wrote a letter to Comic Book Resources' Brian Cronin, who does a column answering comics questions as well as one on when various things were first introduced in comics. I asked him when Jimmy was first given the middle name Bartholomew. No answer yet, though.
She had her own office last season. It was probably cheaper to set all the office scenes on a single set, or something.
Yep, from this point on, the violence gets toned down for the kiddies. Or more likely for the benefit of concerned parents making a fuss about violence on TV.
Somebody needs to get Stoned....
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGyOaCXr8Lw[/yt]
(John Phillips was from The Mamas & the Papas...ex-husband and bandmate of Michelle Phillips, who played Picard's old flame in "We'll Always Have Paris.")
I hadn't noticed that last season, but they didn't even redress it to try to pretend it was hers. His name was on the door.
^Well, yes, I'm not saying they were passing it off as Lois's office -- just that, since the episode had scenes in Clark's office, they didn't want it to have scenes in Lois's office too, so they wrote it so that Lois was working in Clark's office for some reason. Maybe he had more phone jacks in his office, or maybe the records on Superman's exploits were kept in Clark's office (for some reason ).
).
You don't recognize the Rolling Stones?
And you've heard of Three On A Match on TCM. They've shown it a few times when they're doing one of their pre-code marathons. I think it's also on one of their DVD collections that they advertise.
It caught the last few seconds of Superman last night. The episode was in color, but, ironically, Superman was still in black and white, as it was a shot of him on a TV screen.
I've heard of the Rolling Stones, but only Mick Jagger and Keith Richards -- and since we're talking about '50s actors, I didn't associate the name "Keith Richards" with them when I read it in this thread.
"Great Caesar's Ghost" is a classic. What an inspired idea to build a whole episode around Perry White's trademark expression, and have Caesar's ghost actually show up to torment him. And "Caesar" has some fun dialogue, more of that Jackson Gillis flair.
Although the funniest part for me now is that Perry's butler is named Jarvis! Wow, I guess he went bad after he left Howard Stark's employ. As it happens, before Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred was named Pennyworth in 1969, he was occasionally referred to as Alfred Jarvis. I guess Jarvis is kind of a stereotypical butler name.
I was complaining the other day about how inadequate TV seemed for certain types of story compared to comics, but this one really felt like a Silver Age Superman comics story, with a weird and fanciful scenario and Superman using his powers to play tricks on people.
"Test of the Warrior" hasn't aged as well, with its stock "Indian" stereotypes, redface acting, and cultural condescension. But it's reminiscent of some of the radio show's storylines, with elements like Perry having a friend among the Indians, Jimmy being made an honorary tribe member (although I think his tribal name on radio was Little Squirrel), and Superman passing himself off as the tribe's mythical bird-man (though on radio it was "Bird who Walks Like Man" or something like that). And it has the same assimilationist attitude -- accepting and respectful toward Native Americans who've had "modern" educations, but portraying their traditionalist kinfolk as superstitious primitives who needed to be guided into the 20th century. (Well, mostly respectful. There was a radio story where Perry's assimilated friend was starting to buy into the supernatural illusions that someone was trying to pull on him, and Perry assured him that he was just giving in to his inherent racial nature to succumb to superstition.)
What surprised me was the ending. Superman committed breaking and entering and straight-up stole that dynamite! Not even a token line about how he'd pay for it later. That seems out of character. Also, how exactly is setting off dynamite in the clouds (I assume) supposed to make it rain?
Although the funniest part for me now is that Perry's butler is named Jarvis! Wow, I guess he went bad after he left Howard Stark's employ.
As it happens, before Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred was named Pennyworth in 1969, he was occasionally referred to as Alfred Jarvis. I guess Jarvis is kind of a stereotypical butler name.I was complaining the other day about how inadequate TV seemed for certain types of story compared to comics, but this one really felt like a Silver Age Superman comics story, with a weird and fanciful scenario and Superman using his powers to play tricks on people.
"Test of the Warrior" hasn't aged as well, with its stock "Indian" stereotypes, redface acting, and cultural condescension. But it's reminiscent of some of the radio show's storylines, with elements like Perry having a friend among the Indians, Jimmy being made an honorary tribe member (although I think his tribal name on radio was Little Squirrel), and Superman passing himself off as the tribe's mythical bird-man (though on radio it was "Bird who Walks Like Man" or something like that). And it has the same assimilationist attitude -- accepting and respectful toward Native Americans who've had "modern" educations, but portraying their traditionalist kinfolk as superstitious primitives who needed to be guided into the 20th century. (Well, mostly respectful. There was a radio story where Perry's assimilated friend was starting to buy into the supernatural illusions that someone was trying to pull on him, and Perry assured him that he was just giving in to his inherent racial nature to succumb to superstition.)
What surprised me was the ending. Superman committed breaking and entering and straight-up stole that dynamite! Not even a token line about how he'd pay for it later. That seems out of character. Also, how exactly is setting off dynamite in the clouds (I assume) supposed to make it rain?
"Great Caesar's Ghost"
A cute, clever idea for an episode and eye-rollingly hard to swallow at the same time.
There's a bomb in this paper bag! I guess I'll just sit here a foot in front of it wringing my hands....
If Clark was only supposed to be filling in for Perry for a day or two...why put his name on the door?
If Perry literally did say "Great Caeser's Ghost" one million times...allowing for two seconds per occurrence and him saying it nonstop without food, water, or rest...that would take over 23 days straight if my math is right. Taking the math the other way, on average he'd have to have said it (based on John Hamilton's actual age at the time) an average of roughly once every 36 minutes for his entire life. OK, I suppose it's possible....
So those gangsters knew Marley well enough to kill him...and putting on a hat and overcoat makes Superman a believable Marley to them? Maybe he really does fool people with his Clark Kent disguise (even when he doesn't have his glasses on) via pure force of his super-will....
A cute, clever idea for an episode and eye-rollingly hard to swallow at the same time.
There's a bomb in this paper bag! I guess I'll just sit here a foot in front of it wringing my hands....
If Clark was only supposed to be filling in for Perry for a day or two...why put his name on the door?
If Perry literally did say "Great Caeser's Ghost" one million times...allowing for two seconds per occurrence and him saying it nonstop without food, water, or rest...that would take over 23 days straight if my math is right. Taking the math the other way, on average he'd have to have said it (based on John Hamilton's actual age at the time) an average of roughly once every 36 minutes for his entire life. OK, I suppose it's possible....
So those gangsters knew Marley well enough to kill him...and putting on a hat and overcoat makes Superman a believable Marley to them? Maybe he really does fool people with his Clark Kent disguise (even when he doesn't have his glasses on) via pure force of his super-will....
Oh yeah, that's a glitch -- the dead guy's name was Morley, but in his first few lines as the ghost, Reeves pronounced it Marley (probably due to an excess of literacy).
Anyway, I wonder what Perry might've conjured up if he'd used one of his common exclamations on radio, "Great Godfrey!"
Ohh, they had so many clever euphemisms back then. The problem with today's unfettered cursing is that it's just a kneejerk recourse to the same few 4-letter words over and over. I don't think it's obscene or wrong, but it's boring. Euphemisms demand more creativity.
Anyway, I wonder what Perry might've conjured up if he'd used one of his common exclamations on radio, "Great Godfrey!"
Ohh, they had so many clever euphemisms back then. The problem with today's unfettered cursing is that it's just a kneejerk recourse to the same few 4-letter words over and over. I don't think it's obscene or wrong, but it's boring. Euphemisms demand more creativity.
