_______
50th Anniversary Viewing
_______
Mission: Impossible
"A Game of Chess"
Originally aired January 14, 1968
This scheme is a bit layered in that the IMF team isn't just going for the gold, but conning somebody else who's after it.
Rollin's rockin' a goatee here...he looks like Mirror Rollin. I thought I could see where the use of the computer and earpiece to help Rollin's game was going...but getting found out early was part of the plan; and using the computer to cheat at chess wasn't even the point, it was about using its side effect of making timepieces run fast to get into the time-locked vault.
IMDb tells me that Don Francks, who plays our evil chess champion Groat, did the voice of Boba Fett in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Every time Groat meets with the IMF team, who are supposed to be Rollin's character's accomplices, they gain members, and Groat doesn't bat an eyelash.
Jim's accents are so bad they're good...and he does two here, in different roles.
This week's bad guys come off a bit poorly for being taken so easily...it basically amounts to the IMFers betraying them once they have the vault open...like the bad guys wouldn't have accounted for such a contingency anyway--You don't have to be the IMF to pull something like that! And once that happens, the episode just stops, without even the customary "Mission: Accomplished" drive-off.
_______
The Monkees
"Monkees Watch Their Feet"
Originally aired January 15, 1968
The Monkees are supposed to be teenagers in-show? Granted, Davy and Micky are only 22 at this point, but c'mon...and Micky is described as a millionaire, which seems out of continuity with the show's usual premise of the Monkees being a struggling band.
Connected song sequence:
"Star Collector"
When Peter sings "got a date with a blender," it sounds like he's doing it to the tune of "Daydream" by the Lovin' Spoonful.
This is the last Season 2 episode that I had on the DVR. While I have the option of watching full-episode videos of both shows on YouTube, in the interest of lightening the load and not having so many overlapping seasons of the same shows, I think I'll save further Season 2 viewing of The Monkees and The Rat Patrol for the hiatus period, and focus on the Season 1 episodes of those shows that I have on my DVR as 51st Anniversary Viewing for now.
_______
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Seven Wonders of the World Affair: Part II"
Originally aired January 15, 1968
Open Channel DONE! Thank God!
We start with a 4-1/2 minute pre-credits recap framed by a TV news broadcast...would they be announcing the disappearance of an UNCLE agent and the fact that UNCLE was on the case on the news? Plus we get some repeated scenes after the credits.
Alas, the story hasn't lost its overly large and complicated guest cast--too many reluctant conspirators, too many people on the sidelines with their own agendas; too little of me giving a crap about any of them. Throw in a goes-nowhere, does-nothing romance between the young adult kids of two of the scientists.
For some reason, the Seven Wonders' standing-room-only docility gas chamber involves hoisting the glass cage into the air in an overly long process that they can't stop it if they want to (thus Leslie Nielsen's General Harmon is exposed to the gas). They don't get into how the gas is meant to be dispersed across the entire globe from a central console that displays a few tubes of it.
Solo & Kuryakin go into action in the last 10 minutes, but as with the previous half, they mostly seem incidental to the story playing out around them.
I was hoping that maybe the show would pull something special out for the finale--and maybe they thought they were doing that--but it was as much of a mess as any other installments.
And with the replacement of TMFU by Laugh-In, "good" can chalk up a victory in the battle between good and bad television. Sock it to me!
_______
The Rat Patrol
"The Fatal Reunion Raid"
Originally aired January 15, 1968
Figured I'd go ahead and keep in sync with The Monkees by covering this week's episode.
TOS-guesting Louise Sorel as the old flame, Gabrielle. The details of Moffitt's earlier wartime fling with her are related in an extended flashback sequence, which is an unusual touch for the show. The whole episode has a Casablanca-ish vibe to it, and I've never even watched Casablanca.
Tully's not in the episode or opening credits; Dietrich's not in the episode either, but he's always in the credits. IMDb tells me that this is the first-aired of several episodes that Justin Tarr missed this season. In his absence, we get a guest Patroller named Andy who's basically just filling a Jeep seat.
The entire main operation in the second half takes place on the desert set, which is adorned with ruins for the occasion and includes the use of moving vehicles.
_______
Batman
"Nora Clavicle and the Ladies' Crime Club"
Originally aired January 18, 1968
I'm in full agreement that this particular episode is a huge, embarrassing step in the wrong direction. Christopher beat me to utilizing this quote, but its aptness at describing the episode also jumped out at me while watching...
Mayor Lindseed should be removed from office for conflict of interest; and I have to imagine that all those fired policemen would have some legal recourse.
The bank doesn't have its own security guards?
Even in 1968 dollars, $10 million seems like a low insurance policy for an entire major metropolis. And you have to wonder how much it would have cost Nora to make or acquire enough mechanical mice with tiny charges in them to destroy an entire city...not that we see anywhere near that amount of mice. The whole scheme has massive scale issues.
The episode isn't completely devoid of virtue--I always enjoyed the Siamese human knot bit. And I find the Pied Piper sequence to generally be goofy fun...though it features another extremely minimal outdoor set...this time the dockside.
It's all a pity, because Nora seems like she could have been a good villain if done as a straightforward criminal mastermind without the "ludicrously inept policewomen" angle.
TOS guest-spotting rehash: Two of the female cops outside the bank are Alyce and Rhae Andrece, the Alices from "I, Mudd".
_______
Ironside
"To Kill a Cop"
Originally aired January 18, 1968
And the cop-hater, played by former Bonanza star Pernell Roberts, is indeed the culprit. When they revealed that he was having an affair, I was anticipating a potential twist that his wife was committing the murders to frame him...but here the story comes down to figuring out where the killer hid the gun that he used in the first murder.
This episode gives us another example of stoned being used as slang for drunk in this period.
_______
"Sixty-Five on the Aisle"
Originally aired January 18, 1968
Don Penny is back in his second of two appearances as Ann's agent, Seymour. Also guesting Norman Fell--not as a landlord, but as the director of the play, and sporting a goatee to boot!
It's specifically because the party from Brewster plans to leave 10 minutes early to catch the last train that the director cuts Ann's scenes to shorten the play, without knowing that they're coming specifically to see Ann. Of course, Lew (as some sources tell me Mr. Marie's given name is spelled, which matches the actor's actual name) doesn't let Ann know about the size of his party, she just thinks her parents are coming.
When they finally get things straightened out, a wrench is thrown in the works by the old "stuck in an elevator" situation; Ann gets out just as her scene is starting, running onstage half-covered in grease, and gets a scene-interrupting standing ovation from the home town folks upon speaking her first line.
"Oh, Donald" count: 1
"Oh, Daddy" count: 1
"Oh, Mr. Paperny" count: 1+
"Oh, Seymour" count: 2
_______
The Prisoner
"The Girl Who Was Death"
Originally aired January 18, 1968 (UK)
This one is a lot like "Living in Harmony" in that we're thrust into a situation that takes place somewhere other than the Village with no hint of explanation. In this case, we see Six on a mission in England, which feels a lot more like The Avengers. Also reminding me of that show was the very repetitive way that Six kept reactively walking into deathtraps for most of the episode. And "you have just been poisoned" echoes the motif and title of one of this season's Avengers episodes.
There's a distinct-sounding soul instrumental playing in the record shop scene. Six getting instructions from a record in a public place is a distinctly M:I touch, but with a bit of surrealism in that the record answers something that he says.
One guy at the pub is sporting a distinctly post-Pepper look:
Trapping Six in a steam booth is straight out of Thunderball, with the added touch of putting a fishbowl thingie over his head.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to Six going in and out of disguise during his pursuit of the girl.
During the car chase, what's with her ability to seemingly make the world go upside-down? Yeah, it all turns out to be a story in the end, but still....
For all of her uber-competence while putting Six through his death-defying paces, once the girl is with her father, the pair prove to be comically inept. Her father's Napoleon complex is a bit literal; and yet he's not doing anything with his accent...he couldn't sound more British. The chirping countdown sound in the lighthouse control center reminds me of Bond...I think maybe it was from Dr. No or You Only Live Twice.
Overall, this one seemed very filler-ish...in the end it proved to all be a story within the story with nothing particularly intriguing going on in the show's real world. (Have we seen small children in the Village before?) But all viewing orders on the show's Wiki page agree that this one goes before the two-part finale...which has me wondering if it ties in somehow.
The episode's Wiki page says that this was based on an unused script from Danger Man.
_______
Tarzan
"Creeping Giants"
Originally aired January 19, 1968 (or possibly December 29, 1967)
I'm starting to think that online sources indicating this as the episode's airdate are wrong, since the same sources also got the episode title wrong ("The Creeping Giant"). H&I's episode list and the cable info have the right title, so they may have the right order/date as well.
The episode begins with a scene of Jai being flustered by Cheeta and friend (Cheetas?) monkeying around in the treehouse, including some elevator action with Hannibal the baby elephant. I have to wonder if there are literally supposed to be two Cheetas in-show. Jai addresses the two of them as "you guys," but nobody ever addresses the second chimp by a separate name. Jai disappears from the story after the first scene, coming back for a bookend when Cheeta returns to the treehouse just in time for his/her birthday party.
When we first see Tarzan, they make a point of telling us that he's recovering from an arm injury. Is this possibly continuity with an earlier episode? It's all the harder to tell without knowing for sure what the original airing order was. Maybe they were just trying to account for an injury that Ron Ely was suffering from during the filming that I wouldn't have noticed anyway.
The mountain area known as the Creeping Giants uses an establishing shot of what has to be the Grand Canyon...in Africa! The crooked land owner wants the blasting of the dam to fail, diverting a river into the inhabited gorge instead, to keep the locals under his heel.
Tarzan is put in the private prison where the land owner disciplines his miners; the Lord of the Jungle uses gunpowder from some pilfered bullet cartridges to blast his way out.
This one definitely felt padded, especially with the long bookends and all the story-irrelevant shots of Cheeta following Tarzan around throughout the episode.
_______
Star Trek
"The Immunity Syndrome"
Originally aired January 19, 1968
Stardate 4307.1
See my post here.
_______
50th Anniversary Viewing
_______
Mission: Impossible
"A Game of Chess"
Originally aired January 14, 1968
Wiki said:
Am I correct in remembering that the last time they used that bit, it was a tiny reel-to-reel player in the compartment?The tape reel built into the coin compartment of a pay phone said:
This scheme is a bit layered in that the IMF team isn't just going for the gold, but conning somebody else who's after it.
Rollin's rockin' a goatee here...he looks like Mirror Rollin. I thought I could see where the use of the computer and earpiece to help Rollin's game was going...but getting found out early was part of the plan; and using the computer to cheat at chess wasn't even the point, it was about using its side effect of making timepieces run fast to get into the time-locked vault.
IMDb tells me that Don Francks, who plays our evil chess champion Groat, did the voice of Boba Fett in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Every time Groat meets with the IMF team, who are supposed to be Rollin's character's accomplices, they gain members, and Groat doesn't bat an eyelash.
Jim's accents are so bad they're good...and he does two here, in different roles.This week's bad guys come off a bit poorly for being taken so easily...it basically amounts to the IMFers betraying them once they have the vault open...like the bad guys wouldn't have accounted for such a contingency anyway--You don't have to be the IMF to pull something like that! And once that happens, the episode just stops, without even the customary "Mission: Accomplished" drive-off.
_______
The Monkees
"Monkees Watch Their Feet"
Originally aired January 15, 1968
Wiki said:
Pat Paulsen said:
The Monkees are supposed to be teenagers in-show? Granted, Davy and Micky are only 22 at this point, but c'mon...and Micky is described as a millionaire, which seems out of continuity with the show's usual premise of the Monkees being a struggling band.
Micky said:
Connected song sequence:
"Star Collector"
When Peter sings "got a date with a blender," it sounds like he's doing it to the tune of "Daydream" by the Lovin' Spoonful.
This is the last Season 2 episode that I had on the DVR. While I have the option of watching full-episode videos of both shows on YouTube, in the interest of lightening the load and not having so many overlapping seasons of the same shows, I think I'll save further Season 2 viewing of The Monkees and The Rat Patrol for the hiatus period, and focus on the Season 1 episodes of those shows that I have on my DVR as 51st Anniversary Viewing for now.
_______
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Seven Wonders of the World Affair: Part II"
Originally aired January 15, 1968
Wiki said:
Open Channel DONE! Thank God!
We start with a 4-1/2 minute pre-credits recap framed by a TV news broadcast...would they be announcing the disappearance of an UNCLE agent and the fact that UNCLE was on the case on the news? Plus we get some repeated scenes after the credits.
Alas, the story hasn't lost its overly large and complicated guest cast--too many reluctant conspirators, too many people on the sidelines with their own agendas; too little of me giving a crap about any of them. Throw in a goes-nowhere, does-nothing romance between the young adult kids of two of the scientists.
For some reason, the Seven Wonders' standing-room-only docility gas chamber involves hoisting the glass cage into the air in an overly long process that they can't stop it if they want to (thus Leslie Nielsen's General Harmon is exposed to the gas). They don't get into how the gas is meant to be dispersed across the entire globe from a central console that displays a few tubes of it.
Solo & Kuryakin go into action in the last 10 minutes, but as with the previous half, they mostly seem incidental to the story playing out around them.
I was hoping that maybe the show would pull something special out for the finale--and maybe they thought they were doing that--but it was as much of a mess as any other installments.
And with the replacement of TMFU by Laugh-In, "good" can chalk up a victory in the battle between good and bad television. Sock it to me!
_______
The Rat Patrol
"The Fatal Reunion Raid"
Originally aired January 15, 1968
H&I said:
Figured I'd go ahead and keep in sync with The Monkees by covering this week's episode.
TOS-guesting Louise Sorel as the old flame, Gabrielle. The details of Moffitt's earlier wartime fling with her are related in an extended flashback sequence, which is an unusual touch for the show. The whole episode has a Casablanca-ish vibe to it, and I've never even watched Casablanca.
Tully's not in the episode or opening credits; Dietrich's not in the episode either, but he's always in the credits. IMDb tells me that this is the first-aired of several episodes that Justin Tarr missed this season. In his absence, we get a guest Patroller named Andy who's basically just filling a Jeep seat.
The entire main operation in the second half takes place on the desert set, which is adorned with ruins for the occasion and includes the use of moving vehicles.
_______
Batman
"Nora Clavicle and the Ladies' Crime Club"
Originally aired January 18, 1968
H&I said:
I'm in full agreement that this particular episode is a huge, embarrassing step in the wrong direction. Christopher beat me to utilizing this quote, but its aptness at describing the episode also jumped out at me while watching...
The Caped Crusader said:
Mayor Lindseed should be removed from office for conflict of interest; and I have to imagine that all those fired policemen would have some legal recourse.
The bank doesn't have its own security guards?
Even in 1968 dollars, $10 million seems like a low insurance policy for an entire major metropolis. And you have to wonder how much it would have cost Nora to make or acquire enough mechanical mice with tiny charges in them to destroy an entire city...not that we see anywhere near that amount of mice. The whole scheme has massive scale issues.
The episode isn't completely devoid of virtue--I always enjoyed the Siamese human knot bit. And I find the Pied Piper sequence to generally be goofy fun...though it features another extremely minimal outdoor set...this time the dockside.
It's all a pity, because Nora seems like she could have been a good villain if done as a straightforward criminal mastermind without the "ludicrously inept policewomen" angle.
TOS guest-spotting rehash: Two of the female cops outside the bank are Alyce and Rhae Andrece, the Alices from "I, Mudd".
_______
Ironside
"To Kill a Cop"
Originally aired January 18, 1968
Wiki said:
And the cop-hater, played by former Bonanza star Pernell Roberts, is indeed the culprit. When they revealed that he was having an affair, I was anticipating a potential twist that his wife was committing the murders to frame him...but here the story comes down to figuring out where the killer hid the gun that he used in the first murder.
This episode gives us another example of stoned being used as slang for drunk in this period.
_______
"Sixty-Five on the Aisle"
Originally aired January 18, 1968
Wiki said:
Don Penny is back in his second of two appearances as Ann's agent, Seymour. Also guesting Norman Fell--not as a landlord, but as the director of the play, and sporting a goatee to boot!
It's specifically because the party from Brewster plans to leave 10 minutes early to catch the last train that the director cuts Ann's scenes to shorten the play, without knowing that they're coming specifically to see Ann. Of course, Lew (as some sources tell me Mr. Marie's given name is spelled, which matches the actor's actual name) doesn't let Ann know about the size of his party, she just thinks her parents are coming.
When they finally get things straightened out, a wrench is thrown in the works by the old "stuck in an elevator" situation; Ann gets out just as her scene is starting, running onstage half-covered in grease, and gets a scene-interrupting standing ovation from the home town folks upon speaking her first line.
"Oh, Donald" count: 1
"Oh, Daddy" count: 1
"Oh, Mr. Paperny" count: 1+
"Oh, Seymour" count: 2
_______
The Prisoner
"The Girl Who Was Death"
Originally aired January 18, 1968 (UK)
Wiki said:
This one is a lot like "Living in Harmony" in that we're thrust into a situation that takes place somewhere other than the Village with no hint of explanation. In this case, we see Six on a mission in England, which feels a lot more like The Avengers. Also reminding me of that show was the very repetitive way that Six kept reactively walking into deathtraps for most of the episode. And "you have just been poisoned" echoes the motif and title of one of this season's Avengers episodes.
There's a distinct-sounding soul instrumental playing in the record shop scene. Six getting instructions from a record in a public place is a distinctly M:I touch, but with a bit of surrealism in that the record answers something that he says.
One guy at the pub is sporting a distinctly post-Pepper look:
Trapping Six in a steam booth is straight out of Thunderball, with the added touch of putting a fishbowl thingie over his head.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to Six going in and out of disguise during his pursuit of the girl.
During the car chase, what's with her ability to seemingly make the world go upside-down? Yeah, it all turns out to be a story in the end, but still....
For all of her uber-competence while putting Six through his death-defying paces, once the girl is with her father, the pair prove to be comically inept. Her father's Napoleon complex is a bit literal; and yet he's not doing anything with his accent...he couldn't sound more British. The chirping countdown sound in the lighthouse control center reminds me of Bond...I think maybe it was from Dr. No or You Only Live Twice.
Overall, this one seemed very filler-ish...in the end it proved to all be a story within the story with nothing particularly intriguing going on in the show's real world. (Have we seen small children in the Village before?) But all viewing orders on the show's Wiki page agree that this one goes before the two-part finale...which has me wondering if it ties in somehow.
The episode's Wiki page says that this was based on an unused script from Danger Man.
_______
Tarzan
"Creeping Giants"
Originally aired January 19, 1968 (or possibly December 29, 1967)
H&I said:
I'm starting to think that online sources indicating this as the episode's airdate are wrong, since the same sources also got the episode title wrong ("The Creeping Giant"). H&I's episode list and the cable info have the right title, so they may have the right order/date as well.
The episode begins with a scene of Jai being flustered by Cheeta and friend (Cheetas?) monkeying around in the treehouse, including some elevator action with Hannibal the baby elephant. I have to wonder if there are literally supposed to be two Cheetas in-show. Jai addresses the two of them as "you guys," but nobody ever addresses the second chimp by a separate name. Jai disappears from the story after the first scene, coming back for a bookend when Cheeta returns to the treehouse just in time for his/her birthday party.
When we first see Tarzan, they make a point of telling us that he's recovering from an arm injury. Is this possibly continuity with an earlier episode? It's all the harder to tell without knowing for sure what the original airing order was. Maybe they were just trying to account for an injury that Ron Ely was suffering from during the filming that I wouldn't have noticed anyway.
The mountain area known as the Creeping Giants uses an establishing shot of what has to be the Grand Canyon...in Africa! The crooked land owner wants the blasting of the dam to fail, diverting a river into the inhabited gorge instead, to keep the locals under his heel.
Tarzan is put in the private prison where the land owner disciplines his miners; the Lord of the Jungle uses gunpowder from some pilfered bullet cartridges to blast his way out.
This one definitely felt padded, especially with the long bookends and all the story-irrelevant shots of Cheeta following Tarzan around throughout the episode.
_______
Star Trek
"The Immunity Syndrome"
Originally aired January 19, 1968
Stardate 4307.1
MeTV said:
See my post here.
_______
But just imagine how much more awesome the Caped Crusader's cover of "Build Me Up Buttercup" might have been...!Well, clearly the Batman one is superior.
Last edited:
Ah, well....
And it's infested with clown-faced people. That's got to lower property values.
