MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[Silvercrest]

That's also funny because Boss Hogg was the epitome of an old-style robber baron. He belonged more in the Reconstruction South than he did the 20th century. (I was going to say "Collie's time period", but I'm still not sure when that was. )

I need to loop this back to the MeTV discussion. Did Sorrell Booke have any connection to the Wonder Woman, Batman, or Superman shows? Or did Walker Edmiston, for that matter?

 

[Christopher]

I need to loop this back to the MeTV discussion. Did Sorrell Booke have any connection to the Wonder Woman, Batman, or Superman shows?

Not that I can find.

Or did Walker Edmiston, for that matter?

Edmiston is in Batman: "Black Widow Strikes Again" in the second season, as a bank teller.


"The Stolen Elephant": A pretty lame one. Superman can't find an elephant that was stolen less than an hour before? The radio Superman did things like that all the time -- figure out what he could about the type of vehicle he was looking for (in this case, obviously a fair-sized truck), then survey the main roads at super speed and x-ray every candidate. By all rights, he should've found the elephant in a matter of minutes. But this version just mopes around in his office until a clue falls into his lap.

It's also hard to watch the inadvertent animal cruelty -- the kid wanting to keep the elephant for his own, when elephants are highly social animals for whom solitary living is torture. I know people didn't know any better back then, but it's still squicky to watch.

This is the second appearance in this show of the Haley Circus, which is a near-namesake for Haly's Circus, for whom Dick Grayson's parents worked when they lost their lives. Which is interesting, since that establishment was introduced way back in Robin's debut appearance in 1940. So I wonder if this could be a deliberate DC Universe nod inserted by Ellsworth or Weisinger.

The "guided missile" ransom drop was weird, given how hard it'd be to guarantee the landing site, unless those things were more accurate back then than I'd expect. But hey, the control console makes the same sound as the Enterprise bridge computers! I knew that sound effect predated Star Trek, but I didn't realize it went back this far. I wonder where it originated?


"Mr. Zero": One of their more comic-booky episodes, with a friendly little Martian showing up -- but it still comes down to your standard story about a couple of hoodlums taking advantage of the gimmick of the week to commit petty crimes. Notably the ubiquitous, nasal-voiced Herb Vigran in his fifth of six appearances as a bad guy in the show. No wonder Lois found him so suspicious.

And that was Billy Curtis as Mr. Zero. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Curtis was a ubiquitous little-person actor in the era, having previously appeared in the series' pilot movie as one of the Mole Men, a role in which he didn't have to speak (making it an improvement on his performance here). More infamously, he played the lead role of "Bark Bent" in "The Adventures of Superpup," a pilot for a Superman parody featuring anthropomorphic dogs (i.e. small actors in fiberglass masks), a desperate attempt by Whitney Ellsworth to salvage something of the show after George Reeves's suicide.

And Mr. Zero doesn't know what women or money or gasoline or mirrors are, but he knows how to smoke a cigar? Oy... the fifties.


I was kind of distracted for much of this hour, because I misplaced my remote control and was looking around desperately for it, bewildered by its total disappearance. Then I finally happened to glance over at the bicycle that I keep between my couch and my balcony window, and there was the remote sitting on the bike seat. I'd absently placed it there while sitting at that end of the couch, and even more absently thought that I shouldn't leave it there in case I forgot it, because I'd never think to look for it there -- and then I promptly forgot it. I wish I'd thought to look there before I dumped out my wastebasket's contents all over the rug to search through them.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Another aspect of "The Prince Albert Coat" that I'd meant to note....I'll chalk it up to simpler times, but putting a story in the paper telling everybody that there's money hidden in the coat, and how much...?

 

[Christopher]

"Whatever Goes Up": Now Jimmy's suddenly an inventor, although at least in his case it was a fluke. I love how blase Superman was about finding a bottle just hovering around outside the building.

And wow, they've gone totally cartoony by this point. A bad guy can be holding a large bottle of an explosive substance when it blows up, and only his clothes will be damaged. I was rather shocked when Superman threw the bottle at the guy -- I thought he was outright murdering him for a moment.

And if that was really antigravity fluid in the half-empty bottle, shouldn't it all have been at the top of the bottle?


"The Last Knight" is the start of the last season, as evidenced by Lois's suddenly redder hair. And now we have crooks playing at being medieval knights. Well, at least it's not just the same old hoods again. And I laughed at Lois's line, "What girl wouldn't want to date three knights in a row?"

On the other hand: "This is the 20th century! There are no knights anymore!" So the Queen of England has just been handing out fake titles all these years?

Good grief... Clark Kent has clown pictures on his living room wall? I've lost all respect for him now.

But it was kind of clever that "Sir Arthur" apparently set up the whole cufflink thing to set a trap for the others -- unless he was just taking advantage of a lucky accident. And seeing Superman fly in full knight regalia was hilarious. But how could he fail to locate a secret passage, given his x-ray vision? Or was he deliberately trying to get captured?

And finally, we get a sword that breaks against Superman's chest rather than bending! Although the same can't be said for the spear.

Only 12 episodes left now, and looking over the episode list, most of them are going to be rather more fanciful than has been typical up to now. It's gonna be a lively week.

 

[Christopher]

"The Magic Secret": So Superman can send his x-ray vision through a radio? The EM spectrum doesn't quite work that way. But it was a pretty hardcore move. If those guys hadn't been quick enough, the fire might've burned their building down.

And as someone who knows how a magician's levitation trick is performed, seeing Perry demonstrate it on Lois without any preparation or equipment, and without the informed participation of Lois, is rather silly. And as soon as I saw that deep pit in the ground, I guessed that the episode would climax with Perry levitating someone out of it. Although the actual payoff was even more ludicrous than I expected. (Actually I sort of remember this one, but I didn't remember enough.)

And it's hilarious that the shadow of the rod holding Lois up when Superman "levitates" her is clearly visible.

So suddenly "everyone knows" about kryptonite's effect on Superman. I think that's a change from last time. But gathering kryptonite energy from space is a clever idea, sort of. And it's refreshing for once to have a scientist who's actually a bad guy instead of an innocent dupe.

And really, after all the times Lois and Jimmy have been taken hostage as Superman bait, they really couldn't figure out why they were captured this time?


"Divide and Conquer": I definitely remember the gimmick in this one. All along, I've been thinking, "When do we get to the episode where Superman splits himself in two?" And here we are.

I'm surprised Clark couldn't find a less awkward way to deal with that bomb. Nobody was looking at him, so he could've just slipped out with the briefcase and tossed it away. We saw his superspeed demonstrated a few episodes ago, so he could've ditched the bomb and gotten back before anyone knew he was gone. But I guess they had to contrive it so that Superman would be found with the president and arrested.

So... when reduced to half his strength, Superman can't even pull the bars off a prison window? That's really lowballing his total strength, isn't it? But then, it looks like Professor La Serne was wrong -- splitting in two weakened Superman much worse than expected. The idea was that the free Superman would be able to protect the president, but instead he basically just slept through the whole thing, since flying weakened him so much. I never really realized that about this story before -- the scheme to split Superman in two may have been memorable, but it was pretty much a total failure. Superman was useless until he reintegrated.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"The Stolen Elephant"

Sooo...elephant-napping? And not just elephant-napping, but elephant-napping with the expectation of having to tangle with Superman? What crooks come up with a scheme like this?

Superman can't find an elephant that was stolen less than an hour before? The radio Superman did things like that all the time -- figure out what he could about the type of vehicle he was looking for (in this case, obviously a fair-sized truck), then survey the main roads at super speed and x-ray every candidate. By all rights, he should've found the elephant in a matter of minutes. But this version just mopes around in his office until a clue falls into his lap.

I think the show has been pretty consistent in portraying this version of Superman as not being handy in "needle in haystack" situations, and they made the point that it could be 100 miles in any direction. Still, it did seem like he should have been out doing something rather than just sitting around his office. Perhaps if he'd turned on the radio, he might have been inspired:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN307ssGLuc[/yt]

The "guided missile" ransom drop was weird, given how hard it'd be to guarantee the landing site, unless those things were more accurate back then than I'd expect.

You'd expect an accurate depiction of missile technology on this show...?

But hey, the control console makes the same sound as the Enterprise bridge computers!

Ah, that made me all warm and fuzzy....

 

[Christopher]

I think the show has been pretty consistent in portraying this version of Superman as not being handy in "needle in haystack" situations, and they made the point that it could be 100 miles in any direction.

But radio Superman dealt with similar situations, as I said. It's not really any direction, since there's presumably a finite number of main roads; indeed, when we cut to the thieves, one of them said they should get off the highway, meaning they'd been on it all along. It really shouldn't have been that hard to find. And 100 miles was the maximum, since they didn't know exactly when the theft had happened. It could've been much closer. Indeed, given that the theft was within the hour and the truck probably wouldn't have been going at much more than 50 MPH, that 100-mile figure would be the diameter of the search area, not its radius. It was probably within 50 miles of the circus.

And radio Superman would've at least tried. This version didn't even bother. Granted, it's easier to depict such a flyover search on radio, where he would narrate his actions to the audience, than on TV, where it would just be stock flying shots with no speech. But it still made him seem pretty useless.

 

[Christopher]

"The Mysterious Cube": Okay, this one has kind of an interesting gimmick with the impenetrable cube. And it's the second episode in a row where Superman has the power to alter his molecular structure using sheer willpower, this time letting him swipe the Flash's ability to walk through walls. And it's clever how he outsmarted the bad guy by getting the Naval Observatory to speed up their time signal.

But I'm skeptical of the legal claims here. Even if it were true that someone could be declared legally dead if missing for seven years, I'm sure a court could overturn that declaration if the person turned up alive the next day, especially if it could be proven that it was the result of deliberate fraud to elude justice.

Also, their handwaves of how Paul could survive in a sealed box for seven years were rather unconvincing. They couldn't get Biosphere 2 to work as a completely closed system for even six months, and it was far more elaborate. They talked about how he breathed and ate, but naturally didn't address the question of, err, waste.

And the deathtrap for Jimmy and Lois was deeply unconvincing. They were just on the other side of the wall, and their fate depended on a guy pulling a string. Superman could've burned through the string with his x-ray vision, then smashed through the wall and carried Jimmy and Lois out before the poison gas could reach them. Indeed, he ultimately was able to spirit them away without the crooks even noticing. It would've worked better if they'd been imprisoned in some secret location.

They really do reuse the same hoods over and over. We get both Keith Richards and Ben Welden again.


"The Atomic Captive": Man, I think Superman is actively trying to get Lois and Jimmy in trouble so he can rescue them. Clark had no reason to tell them about the kidnapping attempt on the radioactive professor, and he must've known it would make them want to go out there and investigate.

But then, he couldn't have expected Lois and Jimmy to be this stupid. They knew in advance that the professor was lethally contaminated and dangerous to approach, and they somehow convinced themselves it was all a ruse and just barged right in. They've reached the point where they're so determined to get themselves killed that it's hardly worth Superman's time to save them anymore. Time to just sit back and let Darwin have his say.

Pretty unusual to deal with (implicitly) Soviet spies as the villains. Makes a nice change of pace. And I wonder if Miss Collins trained in the Red Room to learn about America? Superman vs. the Black Widow!

And again Superman gains a random new power -- three, in fact! Not only can he "tune in" to a specific frequency and hear it anywhere, not only can he somehow push a nuclear explosion back inside the bomb, but his latest bit of molecular-structure handwavery somehow lets him cancel out other people's radioactivity. (And how come the issue of his contamination by proximity to the professor didn't come up in the first act, when he seemed to take it seriously in the final act?)

 

[JD]

Yeah, it kind of cracks me how Superman is suddenly able to develop all of these random plot specific powers. But I guess the comics did this too. According to IGN there was even an issue where he was able to shoot a tiny Superman out of his hand.
I was kind of confused as to what Superman was supposed to do to reverse the nuclear explosion, he seemed to just kind of fly into the cloud and barely wave his arms aroudn.
For a while now I've been wondering how many people died because Superman was so busy constantly rescuing Jimmy and Lois. You'd think after a while he'd have a discussion about just rushing off into danger.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, it kind of cracks me how Superman is suddenly able to develop all of these random plot specific powers. But I guess the comics did this too. According to IGN there was even an issue where he was able to shoot a tiny Superman out of his hand.

Yup, that's the Silver Age for you. Although Superman was manifesting random powers much earlier. Check out this one from 1947:

http://goodcomics.comicbookresource...t-superman-was-a-telepath-and-a-shapeshifter/

I was kind of confused as to what Superman was supposed to do to reverse the nuclear explosion, he seemed to just kind of fly into the cloud and barely wave his arms aroudn.

Makes about as much sense as his "spin the world backward" trick in Superman: The Movie.

For a while now I've been wondering how many people died because Superman was so busy constantly rescuing Jimmy and Lois. You'd think after a while he'd have a discussion about just rushing off into danger.

Ahh, but you see, all the hoods are so busy going after Lois and Jimmy in order to get Superman out of the way that they don't bother to victimize anyone else.

Hey, maybe that's why Superman keeps them around -- as bad guy bait. It lets him lure all the villains in so he can deal with them.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"Mr. Zero"

There was an entertaining way to tell a story about a strange little visitor from Mars in Metropolis. This wasn't it.

But it did manage to give us a great quote: "This is bigger than socks!"

One of their more comic-booky episodes

I found myself wishing it had been more comic-booky. I was jonesing for some J'onn.

And Mr. Zero doesn't know what women or money or gasoline or mirrors are, but he knows how to smoke a cigar? Oy... the fifties.

And his mother taught him that it isn't polite to point. Makes you wonder what Martian mothers are like, if Zero didn't know anything about women.

*******

Clark: "The vibrations I get aren't good...not a bit good."

Nope, it's nearly a full decade too early for psychedelic-era Beach Boys. Would you settle for some Everly Brothers?

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFoIdxLBm_A[/yt]

 

[The Old Mixer]

Although Superman was manifesting random powers much earlier. Check out this one from 1947:

Supes was occasionally exhibiting a power to remold his facial features quite a bit earlier than that...in at least a couple of his earliest stories starting as early as '39. (The first story was in Superman #1, but I'm not sure offhand if it had been a reprint of an Action story as some of that issue's contents were.)

The mind control I might rationalize as Super-Hypnotism, which became a common power in his arsenal in the Silver/Bronze ages.

There's a difference, though, between instances like these and the powers in the TV episodes, which are presented as things that he could presumably do again if needed...and Silver/Bronze age gimmick stories that had him gain an unusual power under specific circumstances that only lasted for one story. I'm guessing that the ability to shoot a tiny Superman from his palm fell in that category.

 

[Christopher]

Well, the powers exhibited in "Divide and Conquer" and "The Mysterious Cube" are essentially different applications of the same ability, since they're both the result of Superman using "willpower" to modify his molecular structure and density.

Hmm, there's an interesting theory of Superman's powers implied by that. Maybe, within the context of this show's universe, we could posit that Superman's primary power is actually telekinesis, extending to the fine psychokinetic control of his own molecular structure. He's invincible because he subconsciously, automatically wills his molecules to be unmoved by any attack. His superstrength and flight could be the same telekinetic willpower directed outward. And maybe kryptonite robs him of his powers and invulnerability by interfering with his telekinesis so that he can no longer shore up his molecular structure or exert telekinetic force on other objects. I don't know if his sensory powers could be explained by telekinesis, though. Heat vision could, but on the show, his heat vision is an extension of his x-ray vision.

 

[Silvercrest]

Paging John Byrne!

 

[The Old Mixer]

With so few episodes left, I've allowed my viewing pace to slacken, so I'll have to weigh in on this issue when I've seen the episodes in question. But being able to manipulate his own molecular structure could just be psychosomatic manipulation of a physical attribute...it doesn't necessarily have to involve telekinesis.

(I'm planning to watch the broadcast episodes tonight, though...this not being the type of show that begs you to watch in order.)

 

[Christopher]

I didn't say it "had to" involve telekinesis, I'm just saying it could potentially be interpreted that way, that it might be an interesting way of looking at it.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"Whatever Goes Up": Now Jimmy's suddenly an inventor, although at least in his case it was a fluke.

And they sell it better by playing up that angle, and that Jimmy is an unlikely inventor. Plus it scans better that he might be nursing an amateur interest in science than with White, who was sporting multiple past careers in this version that had nothing to do with science. Also, Silver Age Jimmy tended to dabble in such things, though I don't know to what extent that would have been the case in 1957.

I love how blase Superman was about finding a bottle just hovering around outside the building.

Well, defying gravity comes naturally to him...and he seemed to casually know things about the formula's properties that the others were only figuring out.

And wow, they've gone totally cartoony by this point. A bad guy can be holding a large bottle of an explosive substance when it blows up, and only his clothes will be damaged. I was rather shocked when Superman threw the bottle at the guy -- I thought he was outright murdering him for a moment.

Yeah, even knowing that was coming from reading this post, it struck me as a very Golden Age Superman moment.

And if that was really antigravity fluid in the half-empty bottle, shouldn't it all have been at the top of the bottle?

Since the liquid behaved normally...pouring instead of floating, etc....we have to deduce that it did not itself defy gravity, but caused solid matter that in came into contact with to defy gravity. Thus the bottles were floating, but the liquid inside was still feeling the pull.

Speaking of defying gravity, an odd note from a couple of episodes back...the elephant episode, I think...did anyone else notice George's "heelicopter" pronunciation? Don't think I've ever heard the word spoken that way.

1950s Metropolis is so crawling with petty thugs that Jimmy can't throw something out his window without hitting one of them. Maybe one of them is even sporting a nickname like "The Killer"....

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWReDqMopt8[/yt]

 

[The Old Mixer]

"The Superman Silver Mine"

Charity camps figure into the plot yet again...as does another purely coincidental double.

Why does Lois always play her hand in circumstances that will obviously get her caught? In this case, once she spotted the false moustache she could have held her cards close to her vest and played along until she could get out of there. She must be counting on the fact that her getting captured leads Superman to the crooks.

"If I take him down to headquarters and X-ray his skull...." Because the MPD has an X-ray machine and on-site personnel to operate it....


*******

"The Big Forget"

"You two couldn't do a thing without his help...except maybe get yourselves killed!" You called it, Perry. Unfortunately, the episode doesn't prove him wrong. It'd be pretty novel at this point in the series if they actually did a story in which Lois and Jimmy got by without Superman's help...maybe he could keep an eye on things but not get directly involved...rather than just having nobody remember that he had to pull their asses out of the fire yet again.

It's been so long since I last saw these episodes that I'm never sure exactly how much I'm remembering when I anticipate a plot development...but I don't think you'd need to have seen the episode previously to guess that once the memory vapor is described, there's going to be a scene in which everyone finds out that Clark is Superman. Too bad they didn't play up the moment a bit more...have some character exchanges that would never happen under other circumstances, that sort of thing.

And apparently super-breath reverses time, putting bottles back together and such. Superman shouldn't need memory vapor...he could just blow on everyone and make the film run backwards until it gets to a point before he revealed his identity.

And we have a couple more frequently-repeated crook actors...and a couple of the ones that I've come to spot most quickly--Billy Nelson (as Knuckles Nelson) and Herb Vigran (whose recognizability was remarked upon a few episodes back). It might have been interesting if there'd been some character continuity in all of these recastings, instead of having them play new yet interchangeable thugs every time they show up.


*******

Also, another note regarding "Mr. Zero"...it was a prime opportunity to bring up Superman's own alien nature in-story, but it doesn't happen...leaving it vague as to whether this version of Superman knows where he's from.

 

[Christopher]

Speaking of defying gravity, an odd note from a couple of episodes back...the elephant episode, I think...did anyone else notice George's "heelicopter" pronunciation? Don't think I've ever heard the word spoken that way.

You mean "heelicopter?" I've heard that used before in the '40s and '50s. They were still fairly new back then, so I guess the pronunciation hadn't standardized.


"The Superman Silver Mine": This is, what, the third lookalike episode they've done? At least it's not a double of one of the main cast.

And once more, the only charity Superman bothers with is summer camp. What, was the show sponsored by a camp charity or something?

Man, for a superhero, Clark can be pretty slow to sense trouble. And that whole "magnet pulling the plate in the head" thing was pretty silly. Also, if the bad guys didn't know that was the silver mine, why did they take Mr. Pebble there?


"The Big Forget": Oh, no, it's Professor Pepperwinkle again. Look, kids! Senile dementia is funny!

If the spray only erased 15 minutes of memory, how come Jimmy didn't remember whose office he was in or why was in disguise? Surely it took him and Lois more than 15 minutes to contrive the plot and make preparations.

And since when was Perry the publisher of the paper instead of the editor? I know the radio show had another character as the publisher, and he showed up in the occasional story (including one where he was blackmailed into replacing Perry with a corrupt hatemonger as the editor), but I can't remember his name.

Sorry, Superman, but telephone wires don't carry sounds, they carry electrical signals. Although I wonder if maybe Superman's hearing could detect microscopic expansions in the wire under the impetus of the electric current, or something.

That climax was bizarre. Clark deliberately traps them all in the basement in order to force himself to expose his real identity, relying on the effectiveness of the memory spray? And then he plays around with having Jimmy try to break down the door, chuckling and delaying while his friends are breathing in poison gas every second? And then instead of sucking up the poison gas, he blows it back into the bottle somehow -- perhaps the same technique he used to un-explode the nuclear bomb, I guess.

And this is the second hood this season to use the poison-gas-and-acid routine. Was someone having a special on poison gas pellets at Hoods R Us?


"The Joker Goes to School"/"He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul": Linda Harrison as a cheerleader... Holy Nova! (She was the brunette who wasn't Suzie.) This was apparently her debut role, and the following year she'd go on to play Wonder Woman (sort of) in an unsold pilot from the Batman producers.

How does Gordon get from silver dollars in the vending machine to the Joker? Hmm, I guess he made the link with the jukebox/slot machine concession the Joker bought, as he mentioned in Act I. And calling him a "predator" when he's targeting schoolkids sounds a lot more awful to modern ears.

Lucky for Dick Grayson that the Joker didn't realize he talked exactly like Robin. Is this the first time we've seen the duo together with only one of them in costume? It's certainly the first solo Batpole slide. "Good luck, sir!"

Awfully convenient for Batman and Robin to be saved by a blackout. But why was that police car running its siren before they even noticed the abandoned truck?

I'm otherwise occupied this evening, so Wonder Woman will have to wait...

 

[RJDiogenes]

I actually got to watch some Saturday MeTV, thanks to snow and stuff.

The first Superman was pre-empted by Community Auditions, as usual, but I saw "The Big Forget." My favorite part was poor Inspector Henderson sitting there counting up to 750 while all the life-and-death drama was taking place. I guess things moved quickly, because that was only about twelve minutes.

I had a moment of disorientation there when Jimmy was undercover as a window washer and appeared to be using an iPod. And he blew his own cover pretty quickly-- apparently TV Jimmy is not the brightest bulb in the box. And TV Perry is kind of a wimp; how did he get to be editor of a great metropolitan newspaper with such a risk-averse attitude? And TV Superman is a bit cruel: He laughed at the dotty old professor, he laughed at Inspector Henderson, he made Jimmy throw himself against the door for no apparent reason. Wow.

I loved the WWII-era setting of the Wonder Woman episode (although some more liberated 70s attitudes managed to sneak into the beauty pageant plotline). I'm surprised at how much I enjoy the show now, since I had no interest at all when it was on the air. Part of the fun of watching these old shows are seeing some classic guest stars; in this one, we got Anne Francis and Dick van Patten.

I didn't watch Star Trek. They show the "remastered" episodes. Ugh.