I hope they bite!
FACT TREK—The Death Slot (or: The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate)
- Thread starter Maurice
- Start date
I hope they bite!
They seem interested in both pitches I made. The article I mentioned has the working title of Project Genesis: A Deep Space Design.
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The Monkees feels a bit like a spiritual successor to The Addams Family. It's been filling that niche for us (as The Green Hornet roughly fills the hole left by the departure of Burke's Law).
That's an interesting comparison. I kind of see what you mean.
The sixties were my favorite era for sitcoms. So many weird ones, so many that didn't fit a standard mold and experimented with different subjects and formats. I kind of lost interest in sitcoms by the '90s when they all seemed to be about workplaces or schools or families in the living room or friends hanging out together.
The 60's was full of "anything goes" escapist television. Comedies were fantasy flavored with adventure plots (I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan, It's About Time etc), or period farces (F-Troop, Here Come the Brides) as well as other experimental genres. It was really just a "try anything" sort of time. The schedule was filled with so much escapism, the 60's was also my favorite era of television. Do you like westerns, sci-fi, espionage, action, hard hitting drama, variety shows, anthologies, news hours? Well, you're in luck. There was something to everyone. All on just a scant few channels.
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They didn't universally have laugh tracks, either.
Oh man. Finding all the TV to fill the station is practically a full-time job. And then half the time, it's just crap and I wonder why I bothered.
But it's cool finding stuff by accident. We really liked The Man Who Never Was (the project of John Newland, who directed "Errand of Mercy") and I'm now intrigued by T.H.E. Cat (which has to be better than Hawk).
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The late 50s/early 60s was a period of "true to life defenders" dramas, which had waned somewhat by middle of the decade. The avalanche of escapist fare more or less began with the debut of My Favorite Martian, which managed to land at #10 for its first season in 1963-1964, so come 1964 you suddenly get all these fantasy comedies: Bewitched, My Living Doll, The Addams Family, The Munsters, and Gilligan's Island. 1965 gets you I Dream of Jeannie, My Mother the Car, and The Smothers Brothers Show (not to be confused with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour).
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Even a fairly "normal" sitcom premise like Green Acres embraced surreal, reality-bending storytelling where the fourth wall was mutable and the characters were aware of the onscreen credits, the background music, and the like. And I loved how Gilligan's Island started as a fairly straight sitcom about castaways on an island (though even that was a very novel premise compared to all the workplace and school and household sitcoms), but threw in more sci-fi and fantasy elements over time until you had space robots, body-swapping mad scientists, and a 6-foot tarantula showing up on the island. (In my headcanon, the latter is proof that Gilligan's Island is the surviving remnant of Captain Nemo's Mysterious Island.)
And then there was Batman, which I didn't even realize was a sitcom until I was nearly an adult. As a kid, of course, I took it at face value as an adventure show, and then as an adolescent I self-consciously scoffed at it as ridiculous. IIRC, it was actually my father who rediscovered it on his own and helped me see that it was ridiculous on purpose.
Monkees aimed to be somewhat Marx brothery. John Lennon, who loved the Goon Show in UK was a fan and he and Micky Dolenz became buddies and fellow carousers during the Lost Weekend 1.5 years.
Monkees also ditched laugh track in s2 when they were deconstructing the show and ready to move on. Unfortunately those get less funny as they’re often high and not improvising well. Everything runs its course.
Monkees also ditched laugh track in s2 when they were deconstructing the show and ready to move on. Unfortunately those get less funny as they’re often high and not improvising well. Everything runs its course.
Yes, that's a good analogy.
It was also innovative in cross-promotion and blurring the line between fiction and reality, in that the fictional rock band The Monkees, created for the TV show, actually went on real-life concert tours and released albums and so forth. Which worked so well that they actually became a real band that outlived the show, at least for a little while (and again on reunion tours decades later).
I really should watch The Monkees again sometime.
I have great affection for the early-mid 60s dramas before everything went to escapist fare. Well, of those that I've seen. And some of them had far more biting commentary than anything in 79 episodes of TOS.
The Defenders is next on my list.
But I found For The People (starring Shatner) to be very good, including an episode on police brutality and racism.
Also, and I've cited this here before, the first season I,Spy episode with Eartha Kitt tackles substance abuse far better than anything Trek has done on the subject.
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Has Trek ever done a good substance abuse episode?
Nope. And nope. Although I can appreciate "Symbosis" a lot more as an indictment on Big Pharma, in retrospect.
PICARD tried with Raffi, but her substance abuse problem felt inauthentic to me. At least the writing did. Michelle Hurd was excellent with the material she was given.
I have recovered from a substance abuse issue, which I don't shy from discussing.
Some of my own experience informed the fan STAR TREK webcomic serial I co-wrote with our own @Mark 2000 , "Red Meat."
Click here to read the currently ongoing serial from the beginning.
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Nope. And nope. Although I can appreciate "Symbosis" a lot more as an indictment on Big Pharma, in retrospect.
PICARD tried with Raffi, but her substance abuse problem felt inauthentic to me. At least the writing did. Michelle Hurd was excellent with the material she was given.
I have recovered from a substance abuse issue, which I don't shy from discussing.
Some of my own experience informed the fan STAR TREK webcomic serial I co-wrote with our own @trekcomic, "Red Meat."
Click here to read the currently ongoing serial from the beginning.
Thank you for sharing. I'm a person who's struggled with substance abuse for the last few decades and I'm still nowhere near being on top of it, but it's heartening to know you found the light at the end of the tunnel.
No thank you for sharing. If you ever want someone to chat with, my DMs are open.
Same @Richard S. Ta. If having a friendly, no judgment person to talk to would help, I'm always around.
I don't think TOS ever really approached the subject. The alcohol flowed pretty freely with Spock diving in for a comment here and there. But that's it.
A much better show than one would expect, thanks entirely to Julie Newmar.
I'd submit that This Side of Paradise was a decent drug-themed episode.
Have you seen East Side, West Side? Brilliant show.
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My biggest problem with "This Side of Paradise" is the issue of consent (something that's actual rampant in all Trek, TBH). Spock doesn't consent to being drugged. Leila being "high" doesn't excuse what she did to Spock.
If only that were discussed it the episode...
I have not, but I'll go hunt for it! Thanks for the recommendation!
Ugh…you almost root for the obligatory disaster or “very special” episode…Spitting Image—or something—had Fred Willard say of Freddy Krueger’s habit of killing teenagers:
“Nobody likes them anyway…”
