MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[TREK_GOD_1]

In case you think I'm not exercising any discretion...this also entered the charts that week

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You know, the 1970s had a long list of great, disco music from every category....this is not on that list. By 1979, disco had lost all of its creativity (arguably last produced in 1976). "In the Navy" is B-A-D--just like the Bee Gees' "Tragedy" and "Love You Inside and Out." Bleh!

 

[publiusr]

I mean, 800 stories? That's something like 2.4 kilometers underground.

Super-Kamiokande is a kilometer underground.

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_Underground_Research_Facility
If completed as initially planned, Homestake would have been the deepest underground science facility in the world, 8,000 feet (2,400 m) below ground

The current record holder--also 2.4 kilomenters underground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Jinping_Underground_Laboratory

One can say a large cave was found at depth--and used.

It is kind of frustrating that all of David's weeks studying under Li Sung here were not only glossed over in favor of Michael's journey..tacked on to a backdoor pilot about the other guy.

That was Rick Springfield after all, who was getting pretty popular.

warehouses on the moon...in the futuristic year of 1978! Wasn't that about when we were letting Skylab fall out of orbit because we were out of Apollo rockets?

Don't get me started on the mistake that was STS.

The death of the policeman-father was one of the sadder deaths. My parents adopted me later in life so that's a soft spot for me.

 

[Saga]

Planet of the Apes: "The Gladiators": This is Art Wallace's second and last script for the series, and it does feel like a continuation of the pilot -- both plotwise, with Virdon still fixated on the magnetic disk, and thematically, with the use of the premise as a means of social commentary about human nature, war, and violence. That aspect works pretty well, and John Hoyt's Prefect Barlow is a nicely complex character, an intelligent and empathetic chimp who nonetheless organizes lethal combat between his human slaves because he believes it's the best way to control their intrinsic violence and keep them peaceful the rest of the time.

At the same time, it highlights what's going to be a limitation of the series going forward, the need to focus entirely on villages where humans are the majority population ruled over by a few apes, because they just can't afford to put too many actors in ape makeup. This episode did a fairly good job of using that setup to its advantage, since the human community was the target audience of the "games," but I doubt that will always be the case. Also, it's hard to get interested in the magnetic disk as a driving plot element, given that Virdon is the only one of the leads who believes it's even worth bothering with, and even he admits it's a tenuous hope. It's no wonder (spoiler alert) that the show soon drops the whole thing.

you are so right about the magnetic disk. it is really hard to care about it when only one of the humans does. also, constantly playing with it and dropping it on the ground can't be good for it either.

also, in the realm of guest stars we had a very young Marc Singer in this episode. of course this is well before he would become the Beastmaster or tangle with alien invaders on V.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

A couple of weeks ago,The Incredible Hulk's pop culture placement was explored with the covers of popular magazines. Now, we take a look at its use in a format many a celebrity has claimed meant you "made it" once they received this kind of treatment--

MAD #204 - January, 1979.
"The Incredible Bulk"
Art: Angelo Torres
Writer: Lou Silverstone

MAD satires could be a mixed bag when zeroing in on the feel (and exploitable failures) of TV or movie properties. Here, they do nail the main title sequence, and the way Banner finds himself in the middle of other people's problems. It's not all a swimming success, but its the runaway best satire of the series ever published.

They even managed to insert cameos from the Carter's Wonder Woman, Peanuts characters, Superman, the 1966 TV Batman, Robin & the Penguin, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Tarzan and a Charles Atlas "Sand in your face" ad well known to Golden and Silver age comic readers.

Coincidentally, the same issue covered Jaws 2--a film co-starring Donna Wilkes, the guest star of TIH's "Alice in Disco Land."

TIH also made its way on the pages of the competition--Cracked--very late in the game. Late as in issue #177 from May of 1981, almost the end of TIH's 4th season on CBS--

While the legendary John Severin's cover perfectly captured the Ferrigno Hulk pose, and took a somewhat clever stab at MAD/Alfred E.Neuman, the actual satire was terrible. Severin created a completely different character in place of Banner (looking more like Marvel's Donald Blake than David Banner), who transforms into everything from a rodent to shrinking version of himself, but no Hulk-like character at all.

In fact, the only time a Hulk character shows up in this issue in on the last page of their satire of the movie My Bodyguard (lower inset). Occasionally, Cracked begged for the kicks they endured over their published life.

Worst of all was Marvel's own third-rate MAD knock-off CRAZY. Anyone would have thought the in-house satire magazine would have taken greater care or had a better insight about TV series based on their star property, but that would have been the wrong thought. For this subject's sake, here are the TV Hulk covers of CRAZY #42 (September, 1978), #46 (January, 1979) & #57 (December, 1979).

So, TIH was covered by some of the then-best known satire magazines of the era. The takeaway is that the series was a pop culture fixture, but the results ranged from good (MAD) to horrible. Similar to the handling of Star Wars or Star Trek in the same magazines.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not saying it's impossible for an underground facility to be that deep, just that the combined statistics of depth and personnel size and the expansive mattes and miniatures make Tic-Toc seem like an implausibly gigantic undertaking for the government to invest in when the technology it's based on isn't even proven to be viable. I guess it could be justified in Cold War terms, "We have to get it before the Reds do," but still, they could've lopped a zero off of a couple of those numbers and it would've sounded more credible. I mean, 1200 people in each of several complexes 80 stories deep would be mighty impressive. But saying there are 12,000 people each in complexes 800 stories deep is near-comical overkill. It's hard to believe one single unproven top-secret project has a considerably larger staff than the entire Pentagon. And the tallest above-ground building in the world today (the Burj Khalifa) is 830 meters high, while the tallest at the time of this episode (the Empire State Building) was 381 meters, and a lot of that is just the spires to make them seem taller. So claiming that a group of buildings existing in 1968 was over 2 kilometers in height would've been absurd enough if they'd been aboveground -- it's even more ridiculous when they're underground. (What happened to the incredible amounts of dirt and rock they would've had to excavate? How could that have possibly been done in secret?)

 

[publiusr]

The way China built theirs was that it glommed onto hydropower projects,
The actual depth of the laboratory is 2,400 m (7,900 ft), yet there is horizontal access so equipment may be brought in by truck.

If you look at the time tunnel itself--one might even think it was some type of spillway. Very long.

These are the facilities we know of at least.

 

[The Old Mixer]

MAD #204 - January, 1979.
"The Incredible Bulk"
Art: Angelo Torres
Writer: Lou Silverstone

Thanks for sharing! I distinctly remember browsing through that Mad at the grocery store back in the day, and many of the gags. (The Bruce Jenner gag is the first thing I thought of when I heard he was getting a sex change.)

That was Rick Springfield after all, who was getting pretty popular.

Was he? This was two years before "Jessie's Girl" or his gig on General Hospital.

 

[The Old Mixer]

(What happened to the incredible amounts of dirt and rock they would've had to excavate? How could that have possibly been done in secret?)

After they built the machine, they went back in time and dug out the cavern for the facility!

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Super-Kamiokande is a kilometer underground.

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_Underground_Research_Facility
If completed as initially planned, Homestake would have been the deepest underground science facility in the world, 8,000 feet (2,400 m) below ground

The current record holder--also 2.4 kilomenters underground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Jinping_Underground_Laboratory

Fascinating information. Thanks for posting it. I guess Irwin Allen was not so far from reality in that case.

you are so right about the magnetic disk. it is really hard to care about it when only one of the humans does.

That was the point--Virdon had a family--a greater reason to find a way back to his time. Burke was designed to be the negative character who was more willing to accept their fate, especially after their ship was destroyed in the pilot (and an event in another episode yet to air). But one human caring does not reduce the audience investment in the disk being important to Virdon.

also, constantly playing with it and dropping it on the ground can't be good for it either.

I consider that a some unintentional carelessness on the part of the actor--not a fault of the series.

 

[Christopher]

Thanks for sharing! I distinctly remember browsing through that Mad at the grocery store back in the day, and many of the gags.

I think I actually read that one. I never got the magazine myself, but I remember reading it at a friend's house. I recall the gag about Bruce Jenner, although my memory associated it with a splash page set on a beach (maybe that was some other item in the same issue?).

 

[Saga]

But one human caring does not reduce the audience investment in the disk being important to Virdon.

i'm in the audience and i don't really care.

 

[RJDiogenes]

In case you think I'm not exercising any discretion...this also entered the charts that week

Aargh! Yes, that pretty much epitomizes the worst of the era. By the way, MeTV now has a streaming "radio station" of oldies on their site. Pretty good stuff, from what I heard. The first two songs I heard were "Sister Golden Hair" and "Lucky Man," a couple of my favorites, but they also included the occasional rarity, like Simon's "Duncan."

You know, the 1970s had a long list of great, disco music from every category....this is not on that list. By 1979, disco had lost all of its creativity (arguably last produced in 1976). "In the Navy" is B-A-D--just like the Bee Gees' "Tragedy" and "Love You Inside and Out." Bleh!

Indeed. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Disco. In the mid-70s, there was plenty of good Disco on the radio, as part of the general variety of popular music (back when there was variety in popular music). But by mid-to-late 1978, listening to Top 40 had become a painful experience.

Worst of all was Marvel's own third-rate MAD knock-off CRAZY. Anyone would have thought the in-house satire magazine would have taken greater care or had a better insight about TV series based on their star property, but that would have been the wrong thought.

For the first dozen issues or so, Crazy was fantastic. At least as good as MAD, and far better than Crazy or Sick or any other parody magazine of the era. They had access to, and used, all the Marvel Bullpen creators of the time. But then it just went over a cliff and became the worst of the lot. It's amazing that it survived as long as it did.

 

[Skipper]

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century at least paid lip service to the concept with things like their Stargates.

Right! Nice FX.

 

[Christopher]

I kinda feel that Buck Rogers's stargates were a better use of the (pre-existing) term than the ones in the more famous Stargate franchise, because they're actually in space. (Stargate Atlantis did introduce space-based Stargates, but it wasn't their prime function.) True, a device that allows interstellar travel just by walking through it does have some legitimate claim to the name "Stargate," but if it's ground-based at both ends, it just feels more like a "Planetgate." The name seems more appropriate if you can actually see stars behind it/through it when you use it.

Other early uses of the term include Andre Norton's 1958 novel Star Gate (referring to a device for crossing between alternate quantum realities, more like Stargate SG-1's Quantum Mirror), the Star Gate monolith in the novel version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and at least two other SF novels called Stargate, one by Stephen Robinett in 1976 and one by Pauline Gedge in 1982. It was also used in a book I remember reading, the 1980 Tour of the Universe by Malcolm Edwards and Robert Holdstock.

 

[Silvercrest]

The name seems more appropriate if you can actually see stars behind it/through it when you use it.

You apparently can while in transit — at least going by the VFX. Although how one can see anything while dematerialized ....

They even managed to insert cameos from the Carter's Wonder Woman, Peanuts characters, Superman, the 1966 TV Batman, Robin & the Penguin, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Tarzan and a Charles Atlas "Sand in your face" ad well known to Golden and Silver age comic readers.

Also characters from Doonesbury, Andy Capp, Hägar the Horrible, and the Blackhawks.

 

[Christopher]

You apparently can while in transit — at least going by the VFX. Although how one can see anything while dematerialized ....

I never took that as a literal character POV, just as something for the audience's benefit.

 

[Silvercrest]

Probably so. I'm just sayin'.

 

[Christopher]

Worth mentioning Rick Springfield's slightly more successful genre-series lead role, as Christopher Chance in the very short-lived 1992 version of DC's Human Target, developed by the 1990 The Flash's Danny Bilson & Paul DeMeo. He gave a much better performance there. It ran for only 7 episodes (which are on YouTube, it turns out), but that's 7 more than "The Disciple" got.

I've watched a few of the Human Target episodes on YouTube now, and it turns out I was wrong about Springfield's performance there being much better. I still think it's an interesting show, but he's definitely its weak link. He's supposed to be playing a master of disguise who can impersonate anyone, but he's not nearly enough of a character actor or chameleon to pull it off except by having other actors pretend to be him wearing a mask. Thaao Penghlis in the '88 Mission: Impossible revival was the same way (if not worse).

Springfield still has more charisma than Mark Valley, though...

 

[JD]

I don't think I'm up for any more of that. I couldn't get through 15 minutes of this one, thanks to all the ethnic stereotyping and brownface casting (without even bothering with the brownface makeup, except in Mr. Singh's case). If I'd realized Singh was played by Boris Karloff, I might've stuck around a bit longer, but there are surely better places to see Boris Karloff.

Meh, I'm willing to overlook that kind of stuff in shows from this era. If was a modern show I would have been more upset, but if I refused to watch any old show with racist stereotyping I'd never be able to watch anything from before the '80s or '90s.
Getting past that stuff I thought it was a pretty fun show, I didn't realize just how much of a Bond/Western mashup it really was. I'm looking forward to seeing an episode with more of the gadgets and interplay between West and Artemis since they spent most of this episode apart.

 

[Christopher]

Meh, I'm willing to overlook that kind of stuff in shows from this era. If was a modern show I would have been more upset, but if I refused to watch any old show with racist stereotyping I'd never be able to watch anything from before the '80s or '90s.

If I'd had enough other reasons to watch, I would've gritted my teeth and borne it. But I just don't seem to find the show as entertaining as I once did. It's not one I feel a strong need to revisit. There are only so many hours in the day, and I'm devoting enough of them to Hulk, Planet of the Apes, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants -- and I'm not even sure I'll stick with those last two.

Getting past that stuff I thought it was a pretty fun show, I didn't realize just how much of a Bond/Western mashup it really was.

Yeah, it really embraced the high-tech spy-fi stuff that was popular in the '60s, which combined with the Western angle to make it sort of a proto-steampunk show, anticipating other sci-fi Westerns like The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and Legend.