Guess they'd be more common in Mexico and Brazil where the series was filmed.... _______ Tarzan "The Deadly Silence: Part I" Originally aired October 28, 1966 Even Cheeta's not in this one! They had me thinking that maybe he got dropped after the early episodes, too, but he pops back up in Part II. I almost missed it, but at one point Tarzan says, "Go back to the treehouse, Jai." So apparently Jai has gone from living in a settlement with a tutor and wearing normal clothes to living in a treehouse with Tarzan and wearing a loincloth. We haven't actually seen the treehouse yet, though. This two-parter gives Tarzan a worthy foe in the form of a villainous colonel played by returning former Tarzan Jock Mahoney. The Colonel has been extorting local villages, which eventually causes him to lock horns with the Lord of the Jungle. At one point, Tarzan shows the colonel what he's made of when the Colonel sends him down into a pit to kill a lion unarmed, and Tarzan instead calms the lion...then takes a series of whip lashes meant to enrage the beast. Like a good Bond villain, the Colonel has a chief henchman who can break handcuff chains in his bare hands...though the sergeant, a renegade member of the territorial police who's loyal to the Colonel because of their old combat experience together, proves to have more humanity than his boss in Part II. The episode ends with Tarzan injured and temporarily deafened after the Colonel and his men lob a series of grenades at the Apeman while he attempts to evade them underwater. This episode has the mother of all TOS guests on the show: Nichelle Nichols! Alas, she and her character's village disappear from the story in the second half, which focuses on the cat-and-mouse game between the handicapped Tarzan and the Colonel. _______ The Saint "The Helpful Pirate" Originally aired October 28, 1966 (UK) Yeah, I may start using my cable guide for some series' episode synopses...they're much more to the point than most of the ones that I find online. This episode has Simon recruited by British intelligence to investigate the disappearance of a scientist who's the world's greatest expert on lasers. It's a little odd that in this story, Simon is identified more than once as a British agent as if that's his day job. This may be an artifact of the source story by Leslie Charteris...I understand that the literary character went through phases in which he was a regular intelligence operative. Ultimately Simon uncovers a scam involving a clue to a pirate's treasure, which the scientist got lured into when the mastermind of the scam seized the opportunity to kidnap him with the intent of ransoming him to the highest-bidding government. The scam angle makes the episode feel smaller-scale than it needs to, but Simon is more in his wheelhouse here than staging a miracle coup as in the previous episode. Noteworthy Bond guest: Vladek Sheybal (Kronsteen, From Russia with Love).
"Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star": Man, what a clumsy title, or perhaps just a sensationalist one. At the very least, a title like that should've gone with an episode that was more dominated by the music business or rock culture. But instead it was mostly about the rock star's lover/killer, the ultra-famous defense attorney Hugh Creighton (Dabney Coleman) and his abuse of his high-level connections to ride herd on Columbo's investigation. There's not much to do with rock music except for the opening/closing song (which isn't very good), the business with the drummer who gets framed for the murder, and a very gratuitous Little Richard cameo. Coleman's character is kind of abrasive -- not unusual for him, but a bit much to follow as the central character here. There's also a subplot that doesn't really go anywhere involving Creighton's partner (Shera Danese, aka Mrs. Peter Falk) figuring out he's the killer and blackmailing him into giving her a promotion. There's also a plot hole. In the final minutes, the story focuses on Columbo's attempt to bust Creighton's photo-speeding-ticket alibi and determining that he had someone drive past the speed-trap camera wearing a mask of his face. But it's never established who he got to do that for him. I think maybe it was supposed to be Danese's character, who said she'd figured out that he'd "borrowed my car and sent me on that research assignment" to help him commit the murder. But "that research assignment" doesn't really sound like "wear a photo mask of your face and drive by a speed camera." It's hard to believe she would've done that without realizing right off that it was about giving him an alibi for something. And the connection isn't explicitly drawn, and there's more than an hour between the two scenes, so it's very unclear as presented. There are a few nice clues here -- the stars on the champagne corks, the berries on the street -- but as with the previous one, there are maybe one or two too many clever clues all coming together at once, which detracts from their impact. And overall, the story is badly padded and doesn't flow very well. This is a mediocre one overall. It's also kind of a self-indulgent one in terms of casting, or rather, spouse-indulgent. Not only does Falk's wife Shera Danese make her fourth of six Columbo appearances (her second in the revival series, and her first of two as an accomplice to the murder), but there's also a sizeable part played by Sondra Currie, the wife of the episode's director/supervising producer Alan J. Levi, as the police sergeant who helps Columbo on the case (oddly a uniformed sergeant rather than a plainclothes detective as usual).
This make me wonder how the fans of that show can be so hateful or disdainful (if they are like that) about Agents of SHIELD or any other current spy show.
Well, I got a Hippie vibe from that still. You'd think a power plant or something would make more of an impression than a bunch of nice pictures and stuff. They're not just bad guys, they're uncultured bad guys. Yeah, that was not the best episode ever.... Now there's a song of pure 60s happiness. Good old Blue Boy. He's pure muscle and eye candy. Apparently there was quite an uproar from the audience when they tried to drop him, or so I've heard. Oh, I wish I had seen that. Ah, an avant-garde type who is disdainful of traditional art-- that's worse than Blue Boy! I saw this when they had the weekend binge. I was disappointed that she didn't have a bigger part and a smaller costume.
Tarzan "The Deadly Silence: Part II" Originally aired November 4, 1966 This half begins the use of the "new" opening theme (which was already in use for the closing credits). The beginning of the episode, on either end of the first commercial, replays the last scenes from the previous, starting with the incident in which Tarzan loses his hearing. Tarzan also seems to be suffering from some vertigo that rules out taking to the trees for awhile. His sense of smell, OTOH, seems so keen that he smells his opponents getting near on a couple of occasions. Ah, Cheeta's back! Apparently Jai fetched him from the unseen treehouse, which the boy returned from just in time to put himself into danger. When he finds Tarzan, Jai sends Cheeta away to get help...I was assuming that wouldn't work out, but the next time we see the chimp, he is accompanied by some authorities.... Ultimately, the Sergeant finds himself at odds with the Colonel when the former tries to help the injured Jai...and this in spite of the fact that along the way, the Sergeant figures out that Tarzan is deaf and uses that to his advantage in helping the Colonel to find them. Tarzan shows mercy on the Sergeant in the end, saving him from a lion and allowing him to get away. Overall, not a bad two-parter...pretty straightforward action/suspense. The shift in focus between parts felt a little imbalanced...it seems like it could have used a coda back at the village that had been saved from the Colonel. _______ The Saint "The Convenient Monster" Originally aired November 4, 1966 (UK) Eh, he introduced himself again.... Couldn't really get into this one. We know the monster's not going to be real, so try to do something interesting with the premise, at least. What we get is a lot of half-baked local intrigue that could have been in any episode, culminating in the monster incidents (including one incidental murder along the way) predictably being a hoax, in this case being used as proactive cover-up for a pretty mundanely motivated murder attempt. In the end, the killer tries to escape on the Loch and meets an ambiguous fate that teases the actual existence of the monster. Saw that coming, pretty cliche.
8-track was also common by then, and they never used that format at all either, nor did they try to use VTR's connected to a TV set which would convey the information visually (as seen in the revival show and in the 1997 movie.) As I said to you a while ago, Mission: Impossible still being on was a unwise choice; the show should have ended in 1970 proper, or it could still go on, but the focus should have been shifted from East/West squabbles to more James Bondian/Man From UNCLE-type missions; coming up with an enemy similar to THRUSH/SPECTRE/HYDRA that the IMF would tangle with, and NOT the 'Syndicate' (Mafia), which was already being brought low by the FBI-minus the direction of Hoover-in the early 1970's, or any of the ordinary crooks they were tangling with (Christopher George in 'Nerves' being one example.) There's nothing wrong with ending on a high note/going out while on top, and Mission: Impossible could have done that well enough.
I think the problem with that approach would have been M:I's one-sided formula. If they'd invented a regular foe for the IMF to successfully pull their elaborate cons on, week after week, the fictional enemy organization would have just looked incompetent. _______ My sidelist is getting so close to catching up with Batman now that I may just delay those until it does. _______ Tarzan "The Figurehead" Originally aired November 11, 1966 I was all set not to like this episode. I'm cool with Jai, but throw in another child character...and a "spoiled child ruler" cliche at that...but it actually turned out to be a pretty good episode. The episode opens not with a teaser montage of various scenes, but with a brief teaser of one specific early scene in the episode. It starts at a settlement (though I didn't catch any evidence that it's supposed to be the same one as the regular setting of the early episodes), and Jai is fully dressed again...which is essential to the plot, as Jai will try to fool the prince's would-be abductors into thinking that he's the prince. The bad guys see through Jai's ruse right away, but he and the prince cooperate to stymie them by confusing the issue as to which one is the real prince. Eventually, when the real prince is safe, Jai fesses up and produces as evidence all the scars he's gotten from various animals...which on the one hand is pretty hardcore, but on the other...well, let's hope for Tarzan's sake that child welfare is as clueless to the location of the secret treehouse as we are.... I got another good laugh out a Jai scene punchline (after he's been referring to himself as "the throne" as part of his impersonation): Tarzan and Jai work as a well-oiled machine in this one, though the animal sounds that they use to communicate from a distance don't sound convincing as coming from Jai's small larynx. Cheeta got a scene that played up his mixed usefulness to maximum comic effect. Trapped in a cave with a crack in the sealed opening that only the chimp can get through, Tarzan sends him out not just to get help, but to fetch a specific elephant by name! Cheeta eventually produces Maru, but not before he frustrates the Lord of the Jungle by bringing him bananas and mangoes instead...! Footwear continuity alert: I'm generally willing to allow them the conceit when they have Ely wearing something flesh-colored that we're not supposed to notice...but in one scene with long shots of Tarzan scampering across some rocks, we briefly but clearly glimpse white shoes, possibly sneakers. The spoiled child ruler doesn't turn out to be all that obnoxious, but the story still lets him learn some lessons in friendship and whatnot from Tarzan and Jai. With a name like Sharif, he could have been much more disapproving.... TOS guests: Anthony Caruso (Bela Oxmyx, "A Piece of the Action"), as a character named Grundy, and showing his chest a bit in this role. _______ The Saint "The Angel's Eye" Originally aired November 11, 1966 (UK) This one is definitely more in Simon's wheelhouse--There's a valuable gem that people want to steal...and as the show has well established by now, nobody knows more about stealing gems than Simon Templar. Templar's reputation concerning such matters comes into play when the bad guys try to con him into "stealing back" the diamond from the cutter's safe with the intent of stealing it themselves first and framing him for the job. Of course, Simon is a step ahead of them in this. Simon also briefly employs a recurring alias, Sebastian Tombs. Well, I guess that depends on what show you're in....
Actually they used 8-track players in parked cars to deliver the self-destructing message multiple times in M:I's first four seasons. My blog lists 8-tracks being used in season 1's "Operation: Rogosh" (the third episode, making it actually the first kind of magnetic-tape format ever used in M:I), season 2's "Echo of Yesterday," season 3's "The Mercenaries," "The Freeze," and "The Bunker," and season 4's "The Double Circle" and "Terror." Although several of those were recyclings of the same stock footage. And I'm not really sure if the in-car player in "Rogosh" was an actual 8-track or some antecedent technology. They did occasionally use visual formats in the briefings, though. Season 1 had a briefing delivered in an antique nickelodeon (a hand-cranked film viewer) and one delivered as some kind of aptitude test involving a filmstrip and audio player. Season 3 featured another nickelodeon and a microfilm reel. I think there were a couple where the briefing was at a closed theater (one normal, one drive-in) with the pictures shown on the screen. What the revival used, more specifically, was a kind of custom-designed portable video player, which I described thusly in my blog reviews: "a thumbprint-encoded black box that opens to reveal a keypad requiring a 3-digit code sequence, whereupon it releases a miniature optical disc (a fake technology at the time, but close in size to the Sony MiniDisc introduced 4 years later) that Jim places in a slot to activate it. There’s also a video screen (replacing the envelope of photos that used to accompany the tape) with a row of green LEDs over the screen that show the progress of the playback, plus a set of three status lights on the side: A green “Run” light while the message plays, a yellow light with a rectangular symbol for the self-destruct warning, and a red “Destruct” light over the 5-second countdown. And one more change: “Good morning, Mr. Phelps” has evolved to “Good morning, Jim.” Which could make it hard for new viewers to figure out what Jim’s full name is." Yeah, it wouldn't have worked as a regular thing, but I did wish they'd occasionally gone up against rivals using methods comparable to their own. There were a couple of times they did -- the 2-parter "The Bunker" in season 3 pitted the team against an assassin who was as skilled a master of disguise as Rollin, and season 5's "My Friend, My Enemy" had Paris abducted and brainwashed by a team of villains who mirrored the IMF team and who were orchestrating their own scheme to kill Jim. I mean, really, most of the time, the team went up against enemies who had no idea what was going on and were totally out of their league, and so they rarely faced any real challenge in executing their plans. Having one or two recurring baddies who knew their tricks -- and their faces -- could've created more of a complication for them. And having them engage in the occasional chess match with a rival team using their own methods against them could've made for a more interesting dynamic too. Not every week, no, but enough to mix things up a little.
^ I was thinking about throwing something like that in there...depart from the formula by having the IMF use their expertise to bust other people's elaborate cons.
Yes, exactly. The first-season episode "Zubrovnik's Ghost" initially seemed like it was going to be about the team busting an enemy agent's supernatural con (the same kind of "exploit the mark's beliefs" gambit the IMF often employed), but it degenerated into an incoherent mess with a real haunting happening on top of the Scooby-Doo fakery. I can't recall any other instances where they did that kind of story, though.
They never expected HD. In a couple of years, we'll be able to read the "Keds" logo. Ah, the days when MTV played music videos....
^ I don't even have HD and I spotted them. They were pretty obvious. _______ Tarzan "Village of Fire" Originally aired November 18, 1966 The corrections are mine. Yes, a jaguar...I can't tell the difference myself, but they identify it as such at least a couple of times in the episode. The teaser scene seems to have become a new fixture of the show. In this case, it's a preview of a scene that falls much later in the episode than last time. The opening sequence of the episode proper seemed very familiar...Tarzan and Jai are accidentally sealed in a cave, with an opening just big enough for Cheeta to get out, so they send him (her?) to fetch a specific elephant--Navi this time, who's more Jai-sized. Given that this sequence had little to do with the story that followed, and also looked more distinctly studio-bound, I suspect that it was edited in later to fill time. So is Cheeta supposed to be female? This episode is the first time I've noticed female pronouns being used for the chimp. Anyway, it's all Cheeta's fault that Jai gets scratched by the leopard/jaguar/whatever. The bastard/bitch! There's a touching scene in which Tarzan's trying to keep the sick Jai awake by asking the boy to tell him a story. TOS guests: None. _______ 12 O'Clock High "To Seek and Destroy" Originally aired November 18, 1966 So now we pick up this series in the tenth episode of its shortened final season. I developed a mild fondness for this show from catching bits of it in the wee hours of Saturday mornings on Me...sometimes just hearing the theme while not fully awake...so now I'm actually giving it a shot. This series has a stronger Trek guest association than most because of series leads Robert Lansing (Season 1 only) and Frank Overton (full series). For Seasons 2 and 3, Paul Burke of Naked City has replaced Lansing, and Overton happened to be off for this episode...but we get the ubiquitous Richard Anderson playing a general who's a recurring character for a few of these last episodes. Fancy that--A show with act break cards that aren't the most entertaining thing in the episode! This particular episode seemed to have pretty low audiovisual quality, but I popped on the beginning of the next episode and it looked/sounded noticeably better. For this outing, the closed captioning was no help for better understanding the dialogue, as it was pretty shoddy and incomplete. Right away I get an example of the roles of the main cast being stretched to keep them central to the action. When a V-1 accidentally flies off-course and lands intact in Sweden, the bomber group wants to get ahold of its innards so they'll know where they're manufactured. But it isn't enough for our intrepid series regulars to hit the factories at the end of the episode (which we don't even see)...they have to be the ones to go on a cloak and dagger mission to get their rocket expert into Sweden and smuggle the vital components out. It involves flying a plane, so I guess that's in their wheelhouse.... I liked the use of America's wartime presence in Britain as a source of tension. And a few early scenes demonstrate that 60s gals are no better than 70s gals at passing themselves off as 40s gals. TOS guest specific to this episode: David Frankham (Larry Marvick, "Is There in Truth No Beauty?") _______ The Saint "The Man Who Liked Lions" Originally aired November 18, 1966 (UK) This installment guest-stars Peter Wyngarde, noteworthy in these parts for his roles in a couple of recently watched Avengers episodes. And the episode, which isn't based on a Charteris story, feels a teensy bit like an Avengers episode, in that it features a villain with a colorful idiosyncrasy...in this case, a killer-for-hire with a fixation for ancient Rome. He even engages in a little sign o' the time dig at the then-younger generation: Simon briefly holds a gun on his foe...a relative rarity from what I've seen of the show. Tarzan has spoiled me...when Magadino threatened to throw Simon into a pit with a lion, I wanted to see Roger Moore wrassle the damn lion! This will be the last episode of The Saint on my sidelist, catching me up on Season 5 to the 50th anniversary point. There'll be more episodes from later in the season to come in my anniversary viewing, as the British airdates produce an episode roughly every other week into June.
Even the SD of the 21st century is far better than the crappy tin-foil-and-rabbit-ears reception we had back in the day. Maybe both. Cheeta might be just their word for chimp and they get a new one every week. And they had to be there at 12oclock.... At least it was the bad guy doing it.
I'm thinking of getting into some old Hulk (Lou Ferrigno one) this summer. Or stuff with the old 80s sci fi aesthetic if it exists.
If you're into The Incredible Hulk, click here for your thread. We've been reviewing the episodes in sync with the MeTV airings since they picked the show up early last year.
The are a lot of 80s sci-fi tv shows. Here a partial list: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls000097680/ The problem is that the majority of them (with the obvious exception of TNG) are simply not very good. You have: Kid stuffs Crime procedural with a little sci-fi twist Good concept, horrible execution Tacky. Incredible tacky. Simply bad. In good conscience, the only good things that I can recommend are some episodes of the 80s version of The Twilight Zone. And perhaps Max Headroom. ETA: It's fun how people, in hindsight, say how bad was the first season of TNG. You don't know how incredibly bad was almost everything before that. ETA 2: Reading that list, there are series that I never heard in my life. Probe? Something Is Out There?
I remember enjoying Something Is Out There. It was sort of a Night Stalker-ish monster of the week show, with the lurking threat of an alien xenomorph in the background. I think it lasted half a season or so. I never saw Probe, but I vaguely remember it. I think they claimed to be created by Asimov, but that was probably exaggerated.