MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[JD]

That whole dream sequence really served no point to the overall story. I am kind of annoyed because TV Guide's description said it was a dream, so I already knew before the episode even started.
It is kind of a shame the final episode of the show had so little Superman and Clark in it.
After the donkey episode, I was thinking that they really liked their animal episodes this last season or two.In the last month or two we got an episode about a horse, an elephant, and a donkey.

 

[Christopher]

In the last month or two we got an episode about a horse, an elephant, and a donkey.

Well, at least they were bipartisan.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"Divide and Conquer"
...
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.

What was really odd was that he was arrested for saving the president's life anyway...or that he allowed himself to be...or that the president would be held responsible if he just flew away after saving the day, as he normally would. I know we're used to a Superman who's a paragon of justice, but the basic core concept of the character and super-heroes in general is that they can operate outside the law and do things that others can't. If they're bound by the whims of local law, they're ineffective.

It's also odd that once the VP takes over, he feels free to offer Superman's release...when the whole reason Superman felt obligated to sit in jail was because the president would be held responsible if he went free.

And it's odd that Superman summons some professor friend we've never heard of before for advice on being two places at once if, as it seems, he didn't have this trick in mind in the first place.

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.

And it was odd that Superman generally seemed weak as a kitten, but was perfectly capable of flying around wherever he needed to be. He stumbled a little on his landings, but seemed to be going as fast and sure as ever in his stock shots.

All that, plus there's a wasted opportunity to have Clark and Superman appear together. They acknowledge that Superman was known to be in his cell while Clark was lying around in bed, but they could have taken things that extra step and made it a more memorable episode.

 

[Christopher]

All that, plus there's a wasted opportunity to have Clark and Superman appear together. They acknowledge that Superman was known to be in his cell while Clark was lying around in bed, but they could have taken things that extra step and made it a more memorable episode.

Split-screen shots aren't cheap, though.

But yeah, they did squander that opportunity, just like they pretty much squandered the whole gimmick.

 

[Christopher]

Programming note: The "Superman's Wife" episode that got skipped over on Monday is scheduled to air tomorrow (Friday) at 4:30, preceded by "The Wedding of Superman." I guess they're doing a Valentine's Day theme, though I don't know why they're doing it the day before the holiday.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Thanks for the heads-up.

Split-screen shots aren't cheap, though.

Yeah, but they were showing Superman and Superman in the episode anyway--sometimes via body double, which would have been all the easier to pull off with Clark wearing a hat and glasses.

Another oddity in the episode...I may have missed something, but if the VP was assuming power, people must have known that the president was trapped in that cave-in. Why wasn't there any kind of non-Superman rescue operation?

 

[Christopher]

^Maybe the vice president claimed the prez was already dead.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Even so (as if he could know), it seems that it was too easily accepted and shrugged off by the populace. Maybe things were different in banana republics of the 1950s, but in a here and now context, I'd think that something like that would be getting a lot of attention--media, rescue/recovery workers, looky-loos--it wouldn't just be waved away. And stranger still, the populace cares enough about the fate of the president that all the while, there's a lynch mob outside Superman's jail based on allegations that he tried to kill the president.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I guess they're doing a Valentine's Day theme, though I don't know why they're doing it the day before the holiday.

It looks like they're doing a theme day across most of their shows (The Rifleman being the exception that I noticed), so I can only imagine that they wanted to do this with their weekday lineup rather than their Saturday one.

 

[Christopher]

"Superman's Wife": Man, what a whirlwind courtship. It's odd that Superman thought he had to get fake-married in order to get someone taken as a hostage to get at him, considering that's basically in Lois and Jimmy's job description by now. And how did he know Mr. X would obligingly reveal all his plans to Sgt. O'Hara, err, "Mrs. Superman," rather than just locking her away? And what would her plan have been if Mr. X hadn't turned out to have that handy transmitter right to Superman?

And speaking of Lois and Jimmy's job description, they and Perry are just obligingly walking into every obvious trap that gets thrown their way. You'd think that after the 50th or 60th time they got an anonymous tip saying they'd find an unspecified scoop inside some potentially dangerous location, they'd begin to get a little wary.

The idea of neutralizing Superman by trapping him in a diving bell with his friends, so that he can't break out without harming them, was used in the radio series as well. There, they kind of cheated the solution -- first they made it clear that he couldn't open the hatch without the pressure killing everyone, then they hedged it so that if he slipped out the hatch really fast, the pressure would only knock everyone out. Radio Clark was quite sanguine about letting his friends suffer concussions, hypoxia, and other potentially brain-damaging situations so that he could change into Superman unseen. Superman's solution here was kind of clever, except it wouldn't have worked as shown, since there was nothing to keep his feet against the floor. If anything, he would've had to pull himself up the rope with the roof of the bathysphere resting against his head and shoulders.

And once again, the hoods automatically knock themselves out once Superman comes toward them. It's like a preconditioned response by this point. They had a double-whammy this time: Hood #1 turns to flee, runs into a boulder, and falls down, then Hood #2 trips over Hood #1.

I wonder if Sgt. Helen O'Hara of the Metropolis Police has a cousin in Gotham City...

 

[The Old Mixer]

And once again, the hoods automatically knock themselves out once Superman comes toward them. It's like a preconditioned response by this point. They had a double-whammy this time: Hood #1 turns to flee, runs into a boulder, and falls down, then Hood #2 trips over Hood #1.

I'll have to watch for that when I get caught up...two last glorious dings....

 

[The Old Mixer]

"The Mysterious Cube"

The interesting thing about this one, other than Superman facing a challenge that defied his usual powers, causing him to pull out a new one, is that the professor's role works a lot better if this and the previous episode take place in reverse order. In this one, he says that it's been a long time since he's seen the professor...and it makes good sense that, faced with a challenge like the cube, he'd seek such advice on how to deal with it. And his longshot in calling upon the professor in "Divide and Conquer" would make more sense in that the professor would be fresh on his mind, and having just helped Superman deal with an unconventional situation, he might hope that the professor could help him out of another one.

Prof. La Serne strikes me as the sort of character who might have been put to good use if he'd come into the series sooner and appeared regularly. I can imagine that his past association with Superman may have been at an earlier phase of the latter's superheroic career when the Man of Steel may have been seeking professional expertise in figuring out the nature of his powers. One might even speculate that the professor played a role in helping Superman to learn that he was from Krypton, since how the world (never mind Clark) found this out was never dealt with directly on the show.

The odd thing about this episode is that apparently the police department has been going to all sorts of trouble to try to break into the cube for years. One has to wonder why Superman wasn't called in sooner, or why he didn't volunteer sooner (I don't get the impression they kept all of this activity a state secret for years). He certainly dealt with many more mundane problems over the course of those years.

And it's clever how he outsmarted the bad guy by getting the Naval Observatory to speed up their time signal.

Nice of Ike to step up and lend a hand.

 

[Christopher]

The interesting thing about this one, other than Superman facing a challenge that defied his usual powers, causing him to pull out a new one, is that the professor's role works a lot better if this and the previous episode take place in reverse order. In this one, he says that it's been a long time since he's seen the professor...and it makes good sense that, faced with a challenge like the cube, he'd seek such advice on how to deal with it. And his longshot in calling upon the professor in "Divide and Conquer" would make more sense in that the professor would be fresh on his mind, and having just helped Superman deal with an unconventional situation, he might hope that the professor could help him out of another one.

You know, I hadn't even realized it was the same professor in both episodes. They had so many interchangeable ones.

 

[Greg Cox]

Tonight on Svengoolie: "Captive Wild Woman," in which a mad scientist turns a woman into a gorilla, or a gorilla into a woman. Something like that.

I remember my dad talking about this movie, which scared him as a kid, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it.

So, does this qualify as a date flick?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Guess that depends on what sort of things you and your SO are into....

 

[The Old Mixer]

"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.

Well, I don't think that he can be held responsible for their pathological compulsion to try to steal Clark's stories, regardless of how it affects others (like spoiling a police investigation and nearly ruining Henderson's career in a previous episode); combined with...

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.

...this, plus the fact that they deliberately chose to drive right into the blast zone. If anything, Clark is guilty of underestimating their monumental stupidity.

Pretty unusual to deal with (implicitly) Soviet spies as the villains.

They were a bit of a waste, though, especially the female agent who didn't even spend any face time with the regulars.

Not only can he "tune in" to a specific frequency and hear it anywhere

This got me thinking of Jimmy's signal watch in the comics not for the first time. If Superman can "tune in" on a familiar sound like this regardless of where he may be, it makes you wonder why he doesn't have prearranged signals with Lois and Jimmy.

Then there's the bit where the scientist can finally muster a whistle after drinking from the canteen. I'd been wondering why he didn't take a drink when he was trying to whistle back at his lab.

not only can he somehow push a nuclear explosion back inside the bomb

In the comics, he could contain a nuclear blast by circling around it at super-speed to create a vortex. I think that's what they were trying to pull off here, though the limited nature of the flying shots leaves it vague.

Regardless, it was nice seeing Superman dealing with something more his level again, an atomic bomb...and it was very 1950s to boot.

 

[Christopher]

Batman: "True or False Face"/'Holy Rat Race": I really like the idea of this one -- a villain who's a master of disguise and deception, where nothing is what it seems and everything is a trick within a trick. But the weird, immobile mask False Face wears kind of undermines it. It works against letting Malachi Throne give a memorable performance, which may be why he was never brought back. Which is a shame, since False Face was a terrific villain in concept. Myrna Fahey's Blaze was a pretty impressive moll, too -- not surprising, since she had to carry so much of the episode with FF sticking to the shadows. She was less impressive after her "face turn," though.

I'm getting a little tired of the Fox backlot streets. It was pretty obvious here that the facade Blaze dove out of, supposedly at police HQ, was on that triangular building that the "Trick Truck" drove behind to elude the cops in the teaser. It didn't look anything like the police HQ exterior in any other episode.

But it's funny how the "oncoming subway train" in the cliffhanger is just a stage light. You can even see its "barn doors" (the metal leaves on the sides) folded in.

And how did Blaze have time to go to the radio station and leave that clue? The end of part 1 implied the train was moments away. Also, Blaze was in FF's custody at that point, so how did she get away to leave the clue?

Note the Gary Owens cameo as the TV newsman in part 2.

Hard to believe we're halfway through season 1 at this point and we still haven't met Catwoman. Fortunately, she shows up next week.


Wonder Woman begins its hilariously titled 2-parter "The Feminum Mystique," introducing Debra Winger as Drusilla, the TV version of Wonder Girl. And it features John Saxon and Paul Shenar as Nazi spies, a pretty good casting job. Meanwhile, Queen Hippolyta is now Morticia Addams rather than Frau Blucher. (Neighhhh!) I have to admit, I wasn't crazy about Cloris Leachman's performance as Hippolyta in the pilot. It was kind of weird and self-mocking, without a lot of queenly dignity. Carolyn Jones is a better fit.

Overall, though, this was kind of a boring one. It's weird enough to try to vary the format so early in the series, but Drusilla just wasn't all that interesting, and the story was kind of slow-paced and unfocused.

It's odd that the Nazis seem unaware of Wonder Woman here, given that they had her in their custody just weeks ago, and given that the US would probably be playing her up in propaganda films and broadcasts. And given that folks on Paradise Island are aware that she's become a legend. How is it that a secret island in the Bermuda Triangle gets better news updates than the government of Germany?

By the way, it's an anachronism to label it as the Bermuda Triangle, since that legend didn't get started until about 1950 and didn't really get codified until the '60s. But the hype about it was really active when this series came out. (Also, did people use "neat" in that sense in 1942? I think it would've been "swell" or "keen" at the time.)

I never realized it before, but at least in this episode, when Diana transforms to Wonder Woman, the flash of light is red as it grows, white when it fills the screen, and blue as it fades. That's really embracing the patriotic theme. And we get our first (implied) reverse spin when she changes in front of Drusilla.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"The Gentle Monster"

All I have to say about this one is...

Finally, I'll be able to confront my childhood trauma!

...so how'd it go?

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Heh. I was wondering if anyone would ask. It actually went by unnoticed as I was digging myself out from blizzard #3. However, once I knew the title I was able to find it on YouTube. Since I am currently being buried by blizzard #4, I'll probably have time to watch it today.

Tonight on Svengoolie: "Captive Wild Woman," in which a mad scientist turns a woman into a gorilla, or a gorilla into a woman. Something like that.

I remember my dad talking about this movie, which scared him as a kid, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it.

It's actually available on a nice DVD set called Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive with several other obscure-but-cool oldies. Its two sequels-- yes, it actually has two sequels-- are, sadly, not on the same set.

So, does this qualify as a date flick?

If you watch this with your girlfriend, you are guaranteed some hot monkey love.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"Three in One" was kind of interesting, with some rather clever villains employing a clever scheme.

Yeah, another one with a gimmick that was a little more comic book-worthy...this little "circus of crime" operation reminded me of a Simon & Kirby Sandman story that I read. And here they actually managed to implicate Superman without the need for a costumed impersonator.

Atlas was about as dumb as the Hulk, though. And it kind of undermined the premise when they'd made such a big deal about how unconventional it was for burglars to be operating on such high floors, only to have Atlas tag along with the human fly for the climbing on the last job.