MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
I revisited Brisco on DVD a while back, and it was a lot of fun. Bruce Campbell was very good in the lead role, and the supporting cast was great too. It's a shame it didn't get renewed. (They were planning on a second season where Brisco would become the sheriff of a town that was populated by all the recurring characters who accumulated over the course of the first season -- probably as much to save money by using more standing sets as to increase the emphasis on the ensemble cast.)
Legend was something really special, though, and it's frustrating that it had such a short run. I mean, how could a show that was basically "Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla, steampunk crimefighters" have not been a huge hit? I think it's out on DVD now, though, and I hope I can afford the indulgence of buying it before much longer.
Legend is out on DVD? I've been wanting to watch it again for ages.
I didn't realize The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. only lasted one season, I thought it was one for a bunch of years.
EDIT: Damn, Legend isn't available from Netflix, but it is only $8 on Amazon, so I might just have to get it that way.
I didn't realize The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. only lasted one season, I thought it was one for a bunch of years.
EDIT: Damn, Legend isn't available from Netflix, but it is only $8 on Amazon, so I might just have to get it that way.
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The Time Tunnel
"End of the World"
Originally aired September 23, 1966
Paul Fix and Paul Carr sure are getting around this week in 1966...the night before they were on Trek, tonight they're on TTT.
I think that the average mob in 1910 knew a lot more about Halley's comet than the people making this episode did. I read that there was some concern in 1910, but it was because Earth was passing through the tail and some crackpot thought that the gases would destroy all life on Earth or somesuch. All those torches should make the comet a lot harder to see...fortunately, in the Tunnelverse it's a huge ball of fire in the sky.
The people in this episode were acting like the comet was...old black magic....
So, not only does falling back in the timestream automatically put Tony and Doug back in the same outfits, but it cleans them up to boot...which alleviates my main concern about them not being able to change their clothes.
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"End of the World"
Originally aired September 23, 1966
Paul Fix and Paul Carr sure are getting around this week in 1966...the night before they were on Trek, tonight they're on TTT.
I think that the average mob in 1910 knew a lot more about Halley's comet than the people making this episode did. I read that there was some concern in 1910, but it was because Earth was passing through the tail and some crackpot thought that the gases would destroy all life on Earth or somesuch. All those torches should make the comet a lot harder to see...fortunately, in the Tunnelverse it's a huge ball of fire in the sky.
The people in this episode were acting like the comet was...old black magic....
So, not only does falling back in the timestream automatically put Tony and Doug back in the same outfits, but it cleans them up to boot...which alleviates my main concern about them not being able to change their clothes.
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Well, no wonder they were worried.
Maybe we just don't see the scenes between jumps where All the Bartender lets them use his shower and washing machine.
Are you watching these somewhere othe than MeTV?
So do any of you guys ever watch The Land of The Lost? I've watched a few episodes here and there since MeTV started showing it, but last week I decided to start watching it regularly. I've been curious about it ever since I found out about all of the Trek and other sci-fi writers worked on the show. It's been pretty fun so far.
I used to love the 1991 show when I was a kid, but this is the first I've seen the original.
I'm thinking about watching the '91 one version, but since it's not on DVD or streaming officially I have to use other means to see it.
So do any of you guys ever watch The Land of The Lost? I've watched a few episodes here and there since MeTV started showing it, but last week I decided to start watching it regularly. I've been curious about it ever since I found out about all of the Trek and other sci-fi writers worked on the show. It's been pretty fun so far.
I used to love the 1991 show when I was a kid, but this is the first I've seen the original.
I'm thinking about watching the '91 one version, but since it's not on DVD or streaming officially I have to use other means to see it.
I don't get Me these days, but Decades showed episodes 2 through 5 of The Time Tunnel just before Me started airing the series. I've been watching The Green Hornet and TTT on Friday nights to coincide with my 50th anniversary rewatch of Star Trek on Thursdays. (TGH and TTT aired back-to-back the same TV season as TOS season 1.)
Yeah, this was a pretty fanciful take, and the science was pretty silly. The first act or so was kind of dull, with everyone just giving up and the people back at Tic-Toc being so melodramatic about their gibberish, but it had its moments. There was some nice drama with the sheriff and Paul Fix's character finally helping out, and I liked the exchange about how the project has learned more from failure than success, but a lot of it was a mess.
Also, it felt like it should've been a later episode. Kirk and Ray were talking about how they've risked their lives multiple times, but I think this is the first time we've ever seen the project crew put in danger by a Tunnel-related phenomenon, rather than by a spy. I suppose it's possible they had many dangerous mishaps over the years before they sent anyone back, but it's a weird exchange to hear in the third episode of a show. Conversely, the bit at the end with Tony appearing outside of Tic-Toc ten years early gave away its origin as a deleted scene from the pilot, when Tony said he'd been at the project every day for the past 7 years, something he wouldn't say if he'd been traveling through time for a while. (Although the scene with the younger Jiggs and his lack of mustache helps explain why the pilot made a point of introducing Jiggs in the first place, given that he didn't play a significant role in the episode as aired.) And the scene didn't really fit with what we'd just seen, since the equipment was all suddenly perfectly functional again, and the guy who'd just been escorted away after a heart attack was back at his station.
I guess we could assume they're somehow suspended in the state they were in when they first entered the time vortex -- that since the vortex is timeless, the way they were at the beginning is the way they are at all times, and so whenever they're drawn back into the timestream, they revert to their "timeless" state. Although that wouldn't explain how they retain memories of their experiences. But it would be handy for instant healing of any injuries they sustained.
I did find it to be a nifty touch how the problem back at Tic-Toc was essentially an example of "observer effect," and served to avert the fictitious comet catastrophe in 1910.
Actually that's what I was hoping for -- that the Time Tunnel itself would turn out to be what diverted the comet's course -- but it wasn't actually the case. Instead, they threw in that random non-reflective mass in space that Doug and the astronomer detected with the radiometer (though there's no way hooking a radiometer up to an optical telescope with a couple of wires could possibly work). I suppose you could read between the lines and assume that the invisible mass was actually the Tunnel's gravitational effect, but they never actually said so. Which is a disappointing missed opportunity.
That's exactly how I was interpreting it. I think we were meant to read between those lines, and it makes a lot more sense storytelling-wise than having some random, unexplained phenomenon involved. That it wasn't overtly spelled out is just a result of the storytelling restrictions in the show's premise...the Tic-Toc people and the travelers are working the same problem from different points in time, but can't directly communicate with one another.
Yeah, but we're talking an Irwin Allen show here, so one can't expect a very high level of sense. I doubt these writers were clever enough to think of the kind of timey-wimey retrocausality we expected. As a rule, if you read between the lines of an Irwin Allen show, you'll mostly find carelessness and cheapness.
Except that the Tic-Toc folks could easily have deduced it and discussed it among themselves without needing to communicate it to Tony or Doug, as they always do with countless other plot points. You're dreaming if you expect subtlety and nuance from Irwin Allen. If they'd intended that to be what happened, we would've been told that it was. I dunno, maybe it was in the first draft, but they wrote out the connection and threw in the random unseen object instead because they assumed their audience (mostly children) wouldn't have been able to understand the time paradox involved. We've seen enough time-travel stories dealing with such ideas over the past few decades that we've been primed to think in those terms, but the TV audience (and writers) back then didn't have the same experience, so they were likely to approach time travel on a much more basic level.
While your skepticism of Irwin Allen productions is well-earned, I don't think you're giving them enough credit in this case. It's not that dissimilar from the spy in two time eras last week...a thread that connects the Tic-Toc crew to whatever's going on in where/when Tony and Doug are.
Think of it then simply as sloppy writing, that they didn't make it more clear.
You should see them in the trojan war episode. Ulysses marvels at each of their answers as if Homer's Iliad was not only historically correct but precise down to the smallest detail.
Tonight's episode:
The Incredible Hulk
"No Escape"
Originally aired March 30, 1979
Events in the news over the two weeks since the last episode:
New on the U.S. charts in the two weeks since the previous episode:
"Feelin' Satisfied," Boston
"The Logical Song," Supertramp
"Goodnight Tonight," Wings
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The Incredible Hulk
"No Escape"
Originally aired March 30, 1979
Events in the news over the two weeks since the last episode:
New on the U.S. charts in the two weeks since the previous episode:
"Feelin' Satisfied," Boston
"The Logical Song," Supertramp
"Goodnight Tonight," Wings
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For one thing, that was different because there was no causal connection between the two plotlines. There was no indication that the older version of the spy had any memory of his visit to Project Tic-Toc a decade earlier. For another, it was different because the common element actually was made explicit. In this case, if they'd wanted the Tunnel to be the cause of the comet's diversion, then they would've come out and said so. These episodes were written for children. They weren't going for nuance and indirection.
And it would've made it a better, tighter story if the Tunnel had been the overt cause of the comet's course change. Then Doug could've just realized that the one factor he'd overlooked in his calculations was his and Tony's presence, and the fact that the Time Tunnel would be monitoring them. He understood the theory well enough that he could've figured out what was happening, and there would've been no need for that random digression about a "non-reflective mass." So if the writers had thought of that explanation at all, they would've used it in the story. They would've had no reason to be coy about it. Unless they were asked to write it out because the producers or the network didn't understand it and didn't expect the audience to understand it either.
Wow. The shuttle Columbia, the Egypt-Israel treaty, and Three Mile Island all within days of each other? That was a big week.
We'll have to agree to disagree...it's certainly open to interpretation...but thought he hasn't chimed in directly, the Like that I got would seem to indicate that @TREK_GOD_1 agrees with my interpretation.
