MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[Greg Cox]

Nobody's claiming that The Fugitive was without precedent. But it had a distinct formula that came to pop up again in other shows. I'm sure there have been more, too, but I'm drawing a blank as to what they were offhand.

There was also the short-lived PLANET OF THE APES tv series, which fit the Fugitive format pretty exactly. They were on the run from General Urko, they were (kinda) looking for way back home, AND they had advanced 20th-century knowledge that counts as a special skill that NOBODY expected mere human drifters to have.

 

[Christopher]

^You could say the same about the PotA movie, in a sense -- Taylor was on the run, was looking for a way home, and had skills other humans didn't (e.g. speech). So it translated pretty naturally.

The animated Return to the Planet of the Apes followed much the same format, complete with its own version of Urko (voiced by Fred Flintstone actor Henry Corden), although it had a bit more of an evolving story arc than the live-action series did.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Nobody's claiming that The Fugitive was without precedent. But it had a distinct formula that came to pop up again in other shows. I'm sure there have been more, too, but I'm drawing a blank as to what they were offhand.

There was also the short-lived PLANET OF THE APES tv series, which fit the Fugitive format pretty exactly. They were on the run from General Urko, they were (kinda) looking for way back home, AND they had advanced 20th-century knowledge that counts as a special skill that NOBODY expected mere human drifters to have.

Good catch. I never thought of that.

And that reminds me of The Night Stalker series, which premiered the same night as Planet of the Apes (I was 13-- that was a good night). Darren McGavin wanted the show to have the same format as The Fugitive, with Kolchak hunting down Janos Skorzeny; although I suppose that would have been kind of a reverse Fugitive.

 

[The Old Mixer]

That jogs a brain cell...has anyone mentioned the Logan's Run TV series yet? I only have the vaguest recollection of watching it as a child, so I can't attest to the protagonist qualifying as having special abilities, other than the fact that he was a refugee at all attesting to the fact that he was an "outside the box" type in a rigidly conformist society. No doubt a slightly belated allegory for the then-recent counterculture phenomenon.

 

[Christopher]

That jogs a brain cell...has anyone mentioned the Logan's Run TV series yet? I only have the vaguest recollection of watching it as a child, so I can't attest to the protagonist qualifying as having special abilities, other than the fact that he was a refugee at all attesting to the fact that he was an "outside the box" type in a rigidly conformist society. No doubt a slightly belated allegory for the then-recent counterculture phenomenon.

I'm not so sure. Logan and Jessica, in the novel, movie, and show, are rebelling against a society that demands the euthanasia of anyone above a certain age (30 in the movie/series, 21 in the books). The introduction to the novel makes it explicit that the ageist dystopia is a direct outgrowth of the youth counterculture winning, by sheer dint of numbers, and taking over the world. It's that glorification of the young and devaluing of age and experience that the book and film were protesting, I think. Although it was probably meant more as a dystopia resulting from overpopulation, with the mandatory execution of adults being the counterbalance to runaway birth rates. Overpopulation and Malthusian collapse were major concerns in the '70s -- see Soylent Green.

Also, the TV series added a twist that the dystopian city was ruled by a secret cabal of elders who were exempt from mandatory execution, with Logan's pursuer Francis promised the same exemption if he catches his former friend Logan. Apparently that was at CBS executives' insistence.

As for special abilities, Logan was a trained Sandman, one of the society's enforcers, as was Francis. So he had some advantages that other runners lacked. Plus he had an android sidekick with the superpower of Donald Moffat's prodigious eyebrows.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I'm not so sure. Logan and Jessica, in the novel, movie, and show, are rebelling against a society that demands the euthanasia of anyone above a certain age (30 in the movie/series, 21 in the books). The introduction to the novel makes it explicit that the ageist dystopia is a direct outgrowth of the youth counterculture winning, by sheer dint of numbers, and taking over the world. It's that glorification of the young and devaluing of age and experience that the book and film were protesting, I think. Although it was probably meant more as a dystopia resulting from overpopulation, with the mandatory execution of adults being the counterbalance to runaway birth rates. Overpopulation and Malthusian collapse were major concerns in the '70s -- see Soylent Green.

But an allegory is allowed to have a twist. As my ex-brother-in-law would say, anything taken to the extreme produces the opposite effect. In this case, the counterculture won and they became the sort of rigid authority that they'd rebelled against.

And all of this made me think of another "Fugitive premise" show...one that didn't immediately come to mind because the number of fugitives goes far beyond one or two protagonists...

Battlestar Galactica!

Relentlessly pursued? Check.
Searching for something? Check.
Possessing special characteristics that are incongruous with their status as drifters? Well, on this scope, I'd say that they meet that qualification by virtue of being the last survivors of a civilization that had been annihilated. (That, plus their Battlestar and Vipers seemed to make them pretty big shit when they showed up at those many inexplicable other human-populated worlds....)

 

[RJDiogenes]

That jogs a brain cell...has anyone mentioned the Logan's Run TV series yet? I only have the vaguest recollection of watching it as a child, so I can't attest to the protagonist qualifying as having special abilities, other than the fact that he was a refugee at all attesting to the fact that he was an "outside the box" type in a rigidly conformist society. No doubt a slightly belated allegory for the then-recent counterculture phenomenon.

Another good catch. We've probably missed a whole bunch of shows by focusing on single fugitive characters. Logan's Run definitely fits. Not a bad show, either, and available cheaply on DVD.

But an allegory is allowed to have a twist. As my ex-brother-in-law would say, anything taken to the extreme produces the opposite effect. In this case, the counterculture won and they became the sort of rigid authority that they'd rebelled against.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. It's a fairly common theme. Planet Earth, the sequel to Genesis II, springs to mind. Not to mention the world outside my window.

Battlestar Galactica!

There's another one.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

You know somebody in this thread probably isn't going to get that reference...so give me half an excuse....

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LinXv5qRXPI[/yt]

But yeah, LR could specifically be seen as an allegory about 60s youth growing up, in which case I was wrong...it wasn't belated, it was ahead of its time, as that would be a big subject of popular culture in the 80s.

 

[Christopher]

Batman: "An Egg Grows in Gotham"/"The Yegg Foes in Gotham": Oh, so much fun, but so problematical. When Hasbro's The Hub network (which is no longer called that) reran Batman, they refused to show this one, presumably because of the stereotyped "Indian chief" played by Edward Everett Horton. So it's been ages since I've seen this one, and I can see why they left it out. Even understanding that it was a different time, and even given that it was somewhat deconstructing the stereotype (I loved the "go back to your own country" line), it was still wince-inducing from time to time.

But the rest of it is enormously fun and clever. Egghead is a terrific villain -- he's an intellectual match for Batman, he has a nice visual and pun-laden gimmick that works well for the show, and also he is Vincent Price. His caper is on an epic scale, control of Gotham City itself (although it degenerates into the usual simple heist at the end), and he actually deduces Batman's secret identity, which always impressed me. (Though ruling that other guy out just because he has an accent is a bit naive -- he couldn't be putting it on?). And I like the gimmick that he has bald henchmen -- and it's particularly thrilling to see perennial Adventures of Superman henchman Ben Welden resume his henching ways one more time (one last time, in fact -- this was his final role before retirement, although he lived another 31 years). And for some reason I'm still laughing at his moll being named Miss Bacon.

Also neat that we get to see so much of Bruce and Dick this week. It's a nice change of pace. Plus we get two celebrity cameos that are pretty obscure to day: Bill Dana in the window as Jose Jimenez, a character he played on Make Room for Daddy and his own self-named spinoff, among others, and Ben Alexander, Dragnet's Frank Smith, as the plainclothes detective in the littering incident.

And man, the Gotham City cops are really obedient, aren't they? Letting mobsters and criminals run wild just because they got new orders from above? Sheesh, if these are the best cops in the world, as Robin alleges, the rest of the world must be horrible in this universe.


Wonder Woman: "The Queen and the Thief": Surprisingly, this one was actually pretty good, a rather charming and fun story with some good writing and a good guest cast including David Hedison and the always-splendid John Colicos. Plus Wonder Woman gets to do a nifty Ethan Hunt-style upside-down heist. This is probably the best episode of the season so far. They're still rather marginalizing Steve, though. (And they reused the same footage of Wonder Woman leaping across the embassy grounds twice, once at lower exposure to pass as night.)

I still find it ridiculous that so many people can meet Diana and Wonder Woman in quick succession and see them acting with the same agenda, and yet not realize there's a connection. "I met a maid just now who made the same claim about Agent Scott! And she was your height and had hair just like yours and was really good-looking just like you! What a coincidence!" You'd think that men like Robley in particular, those with a keen eye for female charms, would notice that Diana and Wonder Woman have the same smile and the same figure. I certainly do.

It occurs to me to wonder what the electronic sound effects accompanying Wonder Woman's superstrength feats are meant to represent. Of course they're mimicking the bionic sound effects on The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, but those can be interpreted as the sound of the bionic mechanisms operating (although in fact the "bionic sound" was initially used in 6M$M to represent any forceful sideways movement in slow motion, even for non-bionic characters swinging poles or the like, and didn't really get standardized until late in the second season). Not that it's actually supposed to be diegetically audible, but at least there's a recognizable meaning to it. But the sort of electronic burbling that accompanies WW's leaps and superstrength feats is just inexplicable.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The New Adventures of Wonder Woman--Now with double the Felix Leiter, and added ingredient, Baltar!

The sound effect that throws me is the lasso's bloopity electronic sound.

 

[Christopher]

The New Adventures of Wonder Woman--Now with double the Felix Leiter, and added ingredient, Baltar!

Oh, that's right, Hedison was Leiter once, and so was the boring IADC boss guy. I always connect Hedison with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea first and foremost.

The sound effect that throws me is the lasso's bloopity electronic sound.

Yeah, that one's weird too. Why were they going for "technology" sounds when it's magic?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Hedison was actually the only two-time Leiter before the Craig films...16 years (and one other Felix) after Live and Let Die, he reprised the role in License to Kill. But whatshisname who plays Joe and Hedison were consecutive Leiters in Diamonds Are Forever and LALD...and the two most recent when Wonder Woman was airing.

The leaping/strength sound effects don't bother me so much...they kind of have a boingy spring-like quality (the coil, not the season)...possibly suggesting the tension and release of super-powerful muscles...or something like that....

 

[Silvercrest]

It's the sound made by Amazon magic.

Edit to add:

I still find it ridiculous that so many people can meet Diana and Wonder Woman in quick succession and see them acting with the same agenda, and yet not realize there's a connection.

No, I've got it. It's the sound of the characters' brains turning off.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

You know somebody in this thread probably isn't going to get that reference...so give me half an excuse....

I never get tired of that.....

 

[The Old Mixer]

I just used that video as mindsoap following something that I'd watched before. I had a vague recollection from childhood of an episode of The Munsters with a British Invasion band, so I looked it up and checked it out on Netflix. Turns out the band in question was American band the Standells--over a year before their hit "Dirty Water"--but very obviously cashing in on the invasion, doing a (lame-sounding) cover of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and a new song that was evidently titled..."Do the Ringo"....

The Munsters is a cute show, though...hadn't seen it in ages.

 

[RJDiogenes]

A few shows used that gimmick back in the day, most notably Gilligan's Island.

I was at my Brother's house a few weeks ago, watching Palladia (I can't watch at home, since it's high-def only) and one of the new, contemporary, cutting-edge bands that was on was playing a song that heavily sampled the theme from Munsters. Cracked me up. Unfortunately, I can't remember the band or the song at this point.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Yeah, at least The Munsters got an authentic band and had them play lame cash-in music, rather than doing a parody that involved the band looking like cavemen.

C'mon and Ringo! (12:00+)

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpYBnrUE3YU[/yt]

I also caught a Honey West back when Me had it in their late-night Saturday lineup...she was in some agent's office where some bodybuilders in trunks were flexing their muscles...when she was leaving she made an offhand quip to the agent that he should give them guitars and they could be a rock band. At the end of the episode, Honey and her partner are eating at a restaurant and the act turns out to be the bodybuilders still in their trunks and (IIRC) wearing Beatle wigs, playing generic guitar music.

 

[JD]

Batman: "An Egg Grows in Gotham"/"The Yegg Foes in Gotham": Oh, so much fun, but so problematical. When Hasbro's The Hub network (which is no longer called that) reran Batman, they refused to show this one, presumably because of the stereotyped "Indian chief" played by Edward Everett Horton. So it's been ages since I've seen this one, and I can see why they left it out. Even understanding that it was a different time, and even given that it was somewhat deconstructing the stereotype (I loved the "go back to your own country" line), it was still wince-inducing from time to time.

But the rest of it is enormously fun and clever. Egghead is a terrific villain -- he's an intellectual match for Batman, he has a nice visual and pun-laden gimmick that works well for the show, and also he is Vincent Price. His caper is on an epic scale, control of Gotham City itself (although it degenerates into the usual simple heist at the end), and he actually deduces Batman's secret identity, which always impressed me. (Though ruling that other guy out just because he has an accent is a bit naive -- he couldn't be putting it on?). And I like the gimmick that he has bald henchmen -- and it's particularly thrilling to see perennial Adventures of Superman henchman Ben Welden resume his henching ways one more time (one last time, in fact -- this was his final role before retirement, although he lived another 31 years). And for some reason I'm still laughing at his moll being named Miss Bacon.

Also neat that we get to see so much of Bruce and Dick this week. It's a nice change of pace. Plus we get two celebrity cameos that are pretty obscure to day: Bill Dana in the window as Jose Jimenez, a character he played on Make Room for Daddy and his own self-named spinoff, among others, and Ben Alexander, Dragnet's Frank Smith, as the plainclothes detective in the littering incident.

And man, the Gotham City cops are really obedient, aren't they? Letting mobsters and criminals run wild just because they got new orders from above? Sheesh, if these are the best cops in the world, as Robin alleges, the rest of the world must be horrible in this universe.

I missed these episodes first time around for me. They would have been pretty fun if it weren't for the painfully racist Native American stuff. There was also a Get Smart I caught on Me a few months back that was even more painful, it seemed like most of the episode was one big racist Native American caricature. I understand what they thought they were doing at the time, but now it is just painful.

Wonder Woman: "The Queen and the Thief": Surprisingly, this one was actually pretty good, a rather charming and fun story with some good writing and a good guest cast including David Hedison and the always-splendid John Colicos. Plus Wonder Woman gets to do a nifty Ethan Hunt-style upside-down heist. This is probably the best episode of the season so far. They're still rather marginalizing Steve, though. (And they reused the same footage of Wonder Woman leaping across the embassy grounds twice, once at lower exposure to pass as night.)

I still find it ridiculous that so many people can meet Diana and Wonder Woman in quick succession and see them acting with the same agenda, and yet not realize there's a connection. "I met a maid just now who made the same claim about Agent Scott! And she was your height and had hair just like yours and was really good-looking just like you! What a coincidence!" You'd think that men like Robley in particular, those with a keen eye for female charms, would notice that Diana and Wonder Woman have the same smile and the same figure. I certainly do.

It occurs to me to wonder what the electronic sound effects accompanying Wonder Woman's superstrength feats are meant to represent. Of course they're mimicking the bionic sound effects on The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, but those can be interpreted as the sound of the bionic mechanisms operating (although in fact the "bionic sound" was initially used in 6M$M to represent any forceful sideways movement in slow motion, even for non-bionic characters swinging poles or the like, and didn't really get standardized until late in the second season). Not that it's actually supposed to be diegetically audible, but at least there's a recognizable meaning to it. But the sort of electronic burbling that accompanies WW's leaps and superstrength feats is just inexplicable.

I didn't bother with this one since I saw it last time around, but I am glad to know I'm not the only one bothered by the sound effects. It makes sense that they would want to have some kind of sound effect or something for when she was using her powers, but you'd think they could have found some that were more magical sounding than what they ended up with. Didn't they eventually change the lasso to something less computer like?

 

[Christopher]

Didn't they eventually change the lasso to something less computer like?

No idea. This is the first time I've seen these in decades.


By the way, I'm struck by how dark the Jose Jimenez window gag was. "Leave the rope"? Man, the Gotham criminal justice system will let the Joker and the Riddler and the Penguin out of jail after serving six-week sentences for kidnapping and attempted murder, but this jury is so bloodthirsty that it doesn't even want to wait to hang the defendant? Also, why is a jury deliberating inside police headquarters?

There was also that bit where the woman was complaining about getting a traffic safety lecture from a cop while "murderers and thieves" were roaming the streets freely. How many murders were committed while Batman and Robin were banished from town? Is '60s Gotham really that close to degenerating into No Man's Land levels of chaos and brutality every time the Dynamic Duo are gone for even a single day? What if Bruce and Dick went on vacation? There'd be nothing left when they got back!

 

[DWF]

I did say that they tried to copy the bionic duo, even down to promoting Steve Trevor to Oscar Goldman status.