I'm pretty sure that was a real-life elevator motor activation sound long before it was a phaser sound effect. A lot of TOS sound effects were sourced from real life (for instance, the door sound was the firing sound of an airgun played backward, and I think the phaser sound was a swarm of locusts chirping.) I think that was from the Archer episode in season 2. I've seen this one criticized for putting Number Six in too much control. A story where he turns the tables on his oppressors could have worked well if it had been difficult to gain the advantage, but here he seemed to be able to dominate almost effortlessly. Now, there's a trio of characters you don't often see likened to each other. But hey, it works for me. Mike was always the brains of the outfit.
A meaty amount of business... _______ 50 Years Ago This Week "2000 Light Years from Home," The Rolling Stones (B-side of "She's a Rainbow," which we'll be covering when it charts) Very Brief Bonus News Item Link A more detailed description of the incident... Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week: Leaving the chart: "Kentucky Woman," Neil Diamond "She Is Still a Mystery," The Lovin' Spoonful "Your Precious Love," Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell New on the chart: "I Am the Walrus," The Beatles (B-side of "Hello Goodbye"; #56 US) "Love Me Two Times," The Doors (#25 US) "It's Wonderful," The Young Rascals (#20 US) "Susan," The Buckinghams (#11 US) "Nobody But Me," The Human Beinz (#8 US) "Goin' Out of My Head / Can't Take My Eyes Off You," The Lettermen (#7 US; #2 AC) "Chain of Fools," Aretha Franklin (#2 US; #1 R&B; #37 UK; #249 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) And new on the boob tube: The Ed Sullivan Show, Season 20, episode 13, featuring Gordon McCrae & Carol Lawrence, The Mecners, and Frankie Fanelli Mission: Impossible, "The Astrologer" The Man from U.N.C.L.E., "The Man from THRUSH Affair" The Rat Patrol, "The Life for a Life Raid" Batman, "The Bloody Tower" Ironside, "The Past Is Prologue" That Girl, "It's a Mod, Mod World: Part I" Star Trek, "The Deadly Years" The Prisoner, "It's Your Funeral" Get Smart, "The Mild Ones" _______ Ah...in which case, Fun Facts! Ah yes, that jogs a brain cell. Indeed. Or the hitch in his plan could have been if he found himself going too far in executing his plan...e.g., putting other prisoners in danger--the same angle I wish they would have played in another of the weaker episodes, "Free for All." I thought that bit of cross-referencing might be an attention-grabber...but all authentically drawn from story points in their respective shows.
Panache over realism every time. Sometimes it really strikes me how recent WWII was when I was a kid. Cool. My second-favorite Laugh-In babe. Everybody knows that mind waves pass through the Earth like neutrinos and only interact with the brain cells of the people you want them to. Gas was cheap in those days. Gotta use what's available in the prop room. Always counterproductive. You don't win anybody's sympathy by inconveniencing them, let alone hurting them. I don't remember that one. It's not really great. Interesting. I don't remember the apology, but I do remember thinking that the skit was pretty sick even for SNL. Okay, they don't do psychedelic well. Nothing like getting maced while "making out" in the shower. No wonder he was such an angry young man. A classic, although I remember it being longer. I'm not much of a... er... well, this has a nice, nostalgic sound to it now. Not familiar with this one. They certainly did better. Ditto. Probably not a great song, but it really conjures up the 60s. The Letterman are decent. This was an interesting video, with a second clip of a very slow version of "Never My Love" on the same set. I wonder where they're from. An all-time classic, of course. We finally got back to Ed Sullivan after missing a couple of weeks (first my Brother's birthday, then my Mother had a tree-trimming at the retirement community). There was a really great performance of "Aquarius" by the 5th Dimension using super spacey special effects, and also stand up by Dick Cavett. He was pretty good. I don't think I knew that he started out in stand up. I used to watch his show fairly frequently back in the 70s, and I never thought he was a good talk show host but I always liked him-- he's like the Joe Cocker of talk shows. And, yes, I have been using the schedule tab for Decades to schedule recordings, thank you. Also I noticed something else that's very helpful. Somehow the DVR knows if you've previously recorded a show in the past and marks it as "Watched," so we can skip them.
Yeah, too bad they're shooting them into space. I picked that one because for me, it's the standout gem on an otherwise hard-to-listen-to album. I think that it captures the vast loneliness of deep space better than Trek usually does. That's all the Fabs saw fit to put on YouTube, we can be grateful that the song is represented at all. "I Am the Walrus" is a personal favorite of mine in the Beatles' rich song catalog. When I was first delving into them on vinyl, that was one that I listened to over and over again. One of us! One of us! An obscuro and definitely not their strongest work--especially coming on the heels of "How Can I Be Sure," which really grew on me with the anniversary playlist listening--but interesting for its attempt at a more psychedelic sound. As with other Buckinghams songs, good, pleasant, familiar oldies radio fare for me. Apparently they haven't gotten as much airplay in the Boston area. Their string of hits was a tightly packed one...their first Top-20 single charted in December 1966, and this will be their fifth and last. Whereas these guys are strictly one-hit wonder territory...they had one follow-up single that made it into the Hot 100, at #80. But again, classic oldies radio fare. The first dual cover that I included the video for is the only of this week's selections that I don't have. It's pleasant enough in its own lounge muzaky way, but it just makes me want to listen to the two better songs that it's covering. One of those came up as 50th anniversary business earlier this year. The other... "Goin' Out of My Head," Little Anthony & the Imperials (Charted Nov. 7, 1964; #6 US; #6 R&B) Of course. That part's not as helpful as you think, because it's based on the faulty cable info. That's why I was always having to check my scheduled recordings and manually set it to record episodes that the DVR thought I already had. Those bad descriptions seem to have often been repeated for different episodes. So if the DVR thinks you've already seen it, ignore that. The only reliable source of which episodes Decades is airing is the Decades site itself.
Thanks to the showrunners being out of touch, with their faux Brit/rough types that were more 19th century Bill Sikes types than any youth culture of 1967. Mods were already long out of the cultural eye by late '67. "Water-treading filler" That should be the subtitle of season three. It seems a bit inconvenient for Alfred to have to lug out Barbara's suitcase each time she wants to change to Batgirl. Couldn't she just stash it somewhere nearby? And it might be a bit less conspicuous to conceal if it didn't have a bat-logo on it.... No, it would've never happened because Batman was not a sitcom, no matter what corner of the '66 fanbase tries to make that unsubstantiated argument. Absolute classic.
So I just discovered some discrepancies with the cable info and the Decades numbering scheme for the first season of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In...it turns out that I've been sitting on the pilot special, which aired in September 1967, and just now realized it! I'll have to get that in soon.
Er... well... mind waves are smart. And can steer. And stuff. Early Trek did. Later Trek was too civilized, giving taxi rides to ambassadors and stuff. That could be. They're not a band I'm very familiar with. That staccato "no no no" is Pavlovian. Oh, yeah, that's wonderful. Well, crap. I'll have to keep my eye on that. I saw that one and it seems like it was a while ago. I don't remember it clearly, but I remember thinking that it definitely had a different vibe than the regular show does.
I was never able to wrap my head around what I've read of the mod/rocker British youth culture of the time, not having enough cultural context to go on, but one does see the term "mod" coming up a lot in this era, on TV and elsewhere. I generally agree with this. I remember a local oldies DJ saying that the Buckinghams sold more records in 1967 than any other act, including the Beatles...then broke up and disappeared. Not sure if there was a qualifier about the record sales (e.g., singles). Going by the single chart performance I've been seeing, it seems like "or the Monkees" could have been included in there, if the fact is true. I recall that being used in at least one commercial in relatively recent times. Think it was for Chili's. That Eastern drone-sounding opening note is also a nice Beatlesque touch. It had a different intro, I've seen that much. And used grainy, home movie-quality outdoor footage, which I don't recall seeing much of in what I've seen of the regular episodes.
Anyone see the Carol Burnett Show 50th anniversary special last night? It was fun to revisit that show and its sketches (aside from the "Family" sketches, which I always loathed). Carol Burnett has always been such a gifted comedic performer, and an equally skilled dramatic actress, singer -- heck, I'm not sure there's anything she isn't good at. Harvey Korman and Tim Conway were hilarious too, and their tendency to break each other up onstage -- and have that actually left in the show rather than relegated to blooper reels -- was a large part of the cast's charm. (I'd forgotten how much Conway's physical and verbal comedy was something I tried to emulate as a kid when goofing around for my friends, family, and occasionally classmates.) It made them relatable -- like Carol's introductory Q&A segments, it let the audience feel we were connecting to the real people behind the performances -- and it gave it a feel like live theater or radio comedy. There were some interesting guest stars in the special, though there were some I'd never heard of before or was barely aware of. And poor Lyle Waggoner got short shrift -- they brought him out to join the group of reminiscers and then he hardly said anything for the rest of the segment. In the musical segment, it was kind of amazing to see Bernadette Peters and Kristen Chenoweth side by side, but they never sang together except in the closing bit where everyone was singing, so that was a missed opportunity.
Can't say that I did, I was watching Ed Sullivan and Mission: Impossible. Are they still making new TV these days?
By late 1967, the Mod explosion (including violence in the streets, and influence by/on rock groups like the early Who & Yardbirds) was not "that scene" anymore in British culture. Some of it would last for a few years after this Bat-episode, but it certainly was not as much a thing as this episode would have audiences believe. Dozier and most of his TV-producing generation were out of touch, which explains why TV and movie versions of rock groups or youth culture post-1966 often had groups still in Beatles "She Loves You" phase (long gone by then), or presented them with exaggerated ideas on psychedelica, with everyone acting high, or spouting Timothy Leary-isms, as if culture was all dictated by Leary and like-minded followers. I don't know who that DJ was, but in '67, The Monkees outsold The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, according to favorite music source (said no one--ever) Rolling Stone.
Did a bit of fact-checking and found that I was probably misremembering the DJ bringing up this: Billboard named them "The Most Listened To Band in America" in 1967. This likely owed to the fact that they had five hit singles that year, which was more than other acts were typically releasing...and that likely owed to the fact that the singles were on two labels.
Lyle Waggoner was tall and good-looking, but he never struck me as particularly talented. I suppose at some point he must have realized he was on the wrong side of the camera.
I think he was okay as far as filling his own particular niche went. He made a reasonably good Steve Trevor on Wonder Woman, although the acting bar admittedly wasn't very high on that show.
Lyle Waggoner was almost unnaturally handsome. He competed for the part of Batman and lost to Adam West. It would have been cool if he could have guest starred as Superman in an episode-- he had that level of super good looks. Yes, it had much less polish, as I recall. A little bit. Some of it is worth watching. People can make statistics say anything they want.
_______ Kitchen Sink Review Business _______ Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for 55 years ago this week: Interesting thing going on here is that this is from before whatever point in the '60s that they split Holiday singles onto their own chart, so we have some then-recent Holiday hits reentering the charts for the season...and awkwardly, "Monster Mash" is still lingering around, as it's enjoying its original chart run. Post-Halloween, I've been tending to skip it when it comes up in the shuffle. Also of note: Dionne Warwick's chart debut. _______ 12 O'Clock High "R/X for a Sick Bird" Originally aired September 20, 1965 FYI, "R/X" is spoken as "Prescription" by the QM announcer. Guesting several familiar faces: Tige Andrews, Hans Gudegast (later Eric Braeden; Dietrich from The Rat Patrol), James Brolin...and I wasn't familiar with Gia Scala, but she was quite fetching. OK, when Han Gudegast is in an episode about Nazi saboteurs, playing an ostensibly Allied officer (didn't catch his character's nationality, but he wasn't hiding his accent; if he was supposed to be a Brit, then his accent was damn lousy), you know he's gonna be the Germans' guy on the inside...but to the show's credit, they didn't try to keep that a mystery to the audience. Here we catch part of why they may have added Komansky to the cast--In addition to giving us a regular on the enlisted side, in this story he was used as a POV character on a mission that Col. Gallagher wasn't flying. It's kind of cute that the sabotage attempt in Act IV was bringing the Picadilly Lilly an explosive coffee thermos, when Gallagher's bad coffee was a bit of a running background gag earlier in the episode...and mentioned again in the epilogue! I don't think it was a coincidence. I can only assume that the personal bomber of the group's commander is traditionally named the Picadilly Lilly, given that the one Savage was flying went down with him...not to mention that time not long before when Savage scattered her fuselage all over that English manor property. _______ Say, guys, do you remember that week that I didn't review...? Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In Pilot special Originally aired September 9, 1967 I like that they keep the NBC peacock intro in syndication. Contrary to the list above, Monte Landis is announced in the episode as one of the regular cast members, not a guest. This show's style of humor is very blink-and-miss-it, throw everything against the wall and something's bound to stick. If I zone out for a bit or look down to jot a note, I've missed five jokes. Not everything works for me, but not everything has to at that pace. One bit I particularly enjoyed was right in the opening monologue, when Dick is being coy about having attended a nudist camp, and everyone gets what he's talking about before it's stated outright. Signs o' the times department: The introductory explanation of "-ins" and flower people. News from 20 years in the future...September 9, 1987! (Were the song and dance numbers during the news meant to be a commentary on news becoming more like entertainment?) A troll doll--the fad started in the '60s. Arte Johnson doing a guru character in the cocktail party skit. Barbara Feldon's cocktail party persona uses the pronunciation VietNAMese...like "Vietnam" with "-ese" stuck on. Perhaps mocking the ignorance of the person she was pretending to be, but still a sign o' the times that people might be uninformed enough to pronounce it like that. Ruth Buzzi sings a "Ladybird" song...were all of these "Ladybird" songs of the time inspired by the first lady's nickname? From what I already know of the show or was able to look up easily, lots of regular features were established here: Introducing the ongoing cocktail party skit by walking into it from the opening monologue. Getting our first several "very interesting"s. Ruth Buzzi doing what appeared to be a proto-version of her Gladys Ormphby character. Henry Gibson doing poetry. The Mod, Mod World segment. Is Dick's "I'll drink to that" a running gag? "Say goodnight, Dick." Most noticeably absent: The Joke Wall. They seemed to be sending up variety shows like Sullivan with the cast introduction segment, which had the cast members doing comically bad songs, dance, and ventriloquism. Was the "Stamp out John Wayne" button setting up his appearances on the show? Overall, I'm looking forward to this replacing TMFU...I think I'll enjoy it a lot more. _______ The Ed Sullivan Show Season 20, episode 8 Originally aired October 29, 1967 When "The Rain, the Park & Other Things" made its chart debut, I held onto a live color clip from the Cowsills' appearance on Sullivan with the expectation that it might come up on The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show. It didn't, so here it is: _______ The Monkees "A Coffin Too Frequent" Originally aired November 20, 1967 Ruth Buzzi comes to us between the pilot episode and regular season of Laugh-In, while also playing a recurring role in the second season of That Girl as Pete Peterson. I didn't recognize him by name or face, but Mickey Morton is a TOS guest-to-be (Kloog, "The Gamesters of Triskelion"). An IMDb reviewer says that this is the last appearance of the wool hat. Songs include "Goin' Down" (an in-story sequence that I couldn't find on YouTube) and a reprise of the non-episode-specific "Daydream Believer" video. "Hitting the High Seas" Originally aired November 27, 1967 Chips Rafferty is recognizable as two-time Tarzan guest character Dutch Jensen, a landlocked sea captain. They did give Mike an in-story reason for disappearing this time, though it's easy to miss. Davy's name gets the boys out of a tight spot. And fortunately the captain's parrot sounds just like Micky doing a parrot. Micky's the Monkee Martin Landau! The climax gives us a rather incongruent use of "Daydream Believer" as the three Monkees present stop the hijacking with swordplay. Disconnected song sequence: "Star Collector" So Mike was going AWOL because he thought the story material was weak? If so, I'm finding myself in agreement with him. I've been trying to get into the show, but it's generally not really clicking for me. It's an easy enough watch that I'll stick with it, though. _______ That kinda sorta catches The Monkees up with 50th anniversary viewing. The problem is, this week's episode doesn't air until Sunday, at which point I'll have posted this week's other reviews...so it'll be another week before the show properly falls into 50th anniversary sync. _______
It does get old. I don't think I've ever seen it with a slash like that. I wonder if it's an archaic usage, or just a mistake. Probably more useful now than then. Weird. I could have sworn I saw this on one of the episodes I recorded. Very nice song, though. Not bad, not great. I like the peace signs in the video.
Which is how it should be pronounced, strictly speaking. It's one of several cases of an English word being abbreviated based on its Latin equivalent but still pronounced as the English word -- such as how "&" (stylized from Latin et) is pronounced "and," "lb." (short for libra) is pronounced "pound," and "viz." (short for videlicet, basically "look at this") is pronounced "namely." In this case, "Rx" (or, more properly, "℞") is short for "recipe," Latin for "take" as an instruction.
Watch for Mike and Micky's psychedelic drug reference to the pills the phony medium is trying to pass around. NBC/Standards and Practices missed that one. Of note is Micky and Peter performing a duet acoustic version of Tork's "Tear the Top Right Off of My Head"-- --recorded during the sessions of their fifth LP, The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968). Like the original version of "Valleri", this song sparked enough interest for fans to record the song from TV broadcasts, but would wait decades before the very different studio arrangement was released. In this case, the Tork song was part of the Rhino compilation, Missing Links Volume Three from 1996. ...a great song with a meaning that soared over the heads of some fans, and a few critics as well. I think you're probably responding to the handful of leftover S1 scripts, which the group were not fond of shooting.