DC Fontana & Logan's Run

[ChallengerHK]

My wife gives me crap for watching...crap, but I'll frequently put on something substandard, shall we say, as background noise while I'm working. Right now, it's the Logan's Run series, where DC Fontana served as story editor.

I had thought that maybe I could raise my expectations a bit given Fontana's involvement. Sadly, this might be among the worst of 70s/80s genre TV, and the stories are all poor. Does anybody know the story behind this? Typically it's time and/or money, but I'm really surprised that the writer who penned some of Trek's best episodes would let the Logan's Run stuff get on the air.

 

[Noname Given]

My wife gives me crap for watching...crap, but I'll frequently put on something substandard, shall we say, as background noise while I'm working. Right now, it's the Logan's Run series, where DC Fontana served as story editor.

I had thought that maybe I could raise my expectations a bit given Fontana's involvement. Sadly, this might be among the worst of 70s/80s genre TV, and the stories are all poor. Does anybody know the story behind this? Typically it's time and/or money, but I'm really surprised that the writer who penned some of Trek's best episodes would let the Logan's Run stuff get on the air.

It's called - "Making a living". If she doesn't sell scripts, she doesn't eat.

 

[Christopher]

Does anybody know the story behind this? Typically it's time and/or money, but I'm really surprised that the writer who penned some of Trek's best episodes would let the Logan's Run stuff get on the air.

Like most SFTV series of the era, Logan's Run was under a lot of network pressure to keep things dumbed down for the supposedly juvenile target audience. Fontana and the scriptwriters aspired to make an intelligent show, but weren't given the freedom to do so.

Really, though, LR is a relatively smart show compared to its contemporaries. It certainly tries harder to tell actual science fiction stories than, say, Buck Rogers did, and it doesn’t get as campy as Buck or Battlestar Galactica. It’s reminiscent of other “wandering the post-apocalypse” shows from the period like Planet of the Apes and Ark II, and is probably similar to what Gene Roddenberry’s Genesis II/Planet Earth would’ve been like as a series.

The best episode is easily David Gerrold's "Man Out of Time," a superb drama delving right to the core of the series’s apocalyptic premise, with a Twilight Zone-worthy final twist. Gerrold took his name off it due to the rewrites and went with the punny pseudonym "Noah Ward," but I don't know why, since it's one of the best episodes of any 1970s sci-fi show, not just this one. I’d put “Carousel” second, since it develops the central plot and character threads of the series more than any other episode, including the mediocre pilot.

Otherwise, it's pretty weak, though a few episodes have partial merits. I reviewed the whole series on my Patreon a while back, and you can find an index to my reviews here: https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/patreon-review-index/#Logan

 

[Qonundrum]

My wife gives me crap for watching...crap, but I'll frequently put on something substandard, shall we say, as background noise while I'm working. Right now, it's the Logan's Run series, where DC Fontana served as story editor.

IMHO, all shows are subjective after a certain point. Kinda fun how we all latch onto some, but not others...

To me, LR is an oddity and clearly has Trek influences other than the involvement of her and other sci-fi writers, of which some also wrote for TOS, and in an era where sci-fi was more evolutionary than revolutionary at that point -- but of all the 70s adult sci-fi movies-turned-kid-fare, Logan's Run is something above average...

I had thought that maybe I could raise my expectations a bit given Fontana's involvement. Sadly, this might be among the worst of 70s/80s genre TV, and the stories are all poor.

Zoiks. I've seen far worse, and LR is definitely a product of its time -- and it didn't help that all these "movies-turned-kid-shows" had to keep a show running and with their own soft-reset button and no continuity as such (e.g. TOS) so they didn't get caught up in too much.

IMHO, I don't think all the stories are all poor. A couple are really well-done, especially considering they couldn't upend the show's format or add a hard dead-end... the others are hit or miss, but most had a few scenes of interest. The characters were a bit uneven and wonky, and Rem (ironically) got the least amount of detail as, without seeing his introduction, anyone would watch any random episode and think he's human and the other two are androids! I'll reflect on that later... Which reminds me for no reason, Heather Menzies (wife of actor Robert Urich) starred in the 70s corny animal horror flick/cult classic "Piranha", which is worth seeking out to get a glimpse of another fad from the same decade that introduced "pet rocks" yet the only people who bought those weren't stoned... of course, another such critter movie of the era was "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "Night of the Lepus" (which is by far the worst of the three mentioned) - featuring William Shatner and DeForest Kelley respectively; if there are other critter fright movies involving more Trek bridge crew cast as neat historical oddities, I'll let you know, but I digress on a digression from a digression and probably from a fourth one too...

Minor spoilers prevailing: One episode I find to be fairly brilliant for most decades of TV sci-fi and recommend highly* is "Man out of Time" (by David Gerrold with a pseudonym coyly spewing his dissatisfaction of it, which I think is misplaced but what do I know... I like pet rocks...) is easily the one episode that most closely ties into the show's format and pilot episode premise (wow!) and one I felt was quite good in of itself. It's one of two I'd highly recommend. Indeed, in a certain light it arguably explains the myth of "Sanctuary" - something it's suggesting rather than saying outright...

One of the last-aired episodes ("Carousel") actually took a lot of time to replicate the feel of the movie and is one of the most impressive of the bunch, as well as doing a rare thing of direct continuity with the show's pilot. The rest could have had everyone on the starship Enterprius and hopping solar systems and it wouldn't be out of place with Star Trek. Didn't mean some of the twists and innovations weren't entertaining, YMMV of course...

I recall liking "The Innocent" as well... other episodes had some decent and even dark themes, which could only go so far -- and the ending always had to be a soft reset and where the characters would be none the wiser next to any other episode.

The premiere was largely a pallid re-do of the movie, diluted, but the tweaks to the format seemed more interesting. If only they could have continued on, but the format was quick to get pigeonholed with the usual tropes. Partly because the premise of the movie doesn't have much wiggle room for a very wide universe (as the episodes ultimately prove), whether one is trying to find Sanctuary (which should actually and otherwise be very boring, if nothing else) or if one is content to live apparently guilt- and disease-free sex until they're 30 and then they're fried like Dana Barrett's grocery store eggs** and all while someone else heats up the frying pan... but if the TV series was going to end with the magical mystery group being overthrown just like how Luke and his biological sister found walking teddy bears after frenching and got them all to topple the galactic British RP-speakin' empire and all***, that would never happen...

I will agree there are repeating tropes - every week they're escaping from their domed city o' oppression only to find another base or underground place that's ran by... well, more oppression. In a planet ostensibly laid waste and all these little civilizations are nicely contained and littered around an impressively small area of space. And also by the Trope of the Week involving some robot or twisted individual, just as unaware of the planet outside in most cases. There is some repetition that sullies the freshness of each individually-wrapped event. (Sorry for the cheesy dialogue...)

Does anybody know the story behind this? Typically it's time and/or money, but I'm really surprised that the writer who penned some of Trek's best episodes would let the Logan's Run stuff get on the air.

Only from what I could observe while watching the series a couple years or so ago and to be frank, Christopher above is one I'd give a lot more credence to... But most writers of the day did all these shows as "day jobs". Rarely did they achieve the status of "Star Trek", and there was no home video so not all audiences would recognize every reused trope unless they were sci-fi geeks already. The authors simply took their skills and reflections on previous works and moved forward. Some innovations can be seen, but it was more evolutionary than revolutionary. Even Captain Kirk said once that ingenuity doesn't and can't work on an assembly line because one can't wake up in the morning and spout "Today I will be brilliant, squeeee!" If that really were the case...

Other sundry observations: When sci-fi back then showed humans being futuristic/slightly aloof/more formal and the androids end up being more human (a typical zinger aimed at TNG regarding Data vs the rest of the bridge crew, often by people who desperately needed to see LR where the phrase was never truer...)

Sci-fi was in such a different place back then. But it's also a reminder to me that some things never change; for all the gripes of "this show is borrowing from that one but they did it better", LR and most of the others have influences pointing right back to TOS, Twilight Zone, and lots of others. Like a fractal, the pattern moves forward yet remains the same. It's all recursive after some point...

And, yep, money is also a factor. All these properties that arguably had potential but to be done cheaply because sci-fi was expensive to produce, Star Wars was a long way away, television was not paralleled to big movie screens as well, and using the same props would just look stupid (never mind already proven in the 1960s show "Lost in Space" on a weekly basis, and sometimes less frequently in any other sci-fi show as well no matter how much they try to redress something but they did get clever at times... )


* all spoilers considered so I will probably say a few minor ones), if you watch these as one-offs and in their own mini-vacuums devoid of continuity or connections to any other episodes (which creates even more problems, like how far they got from the city and so on...

** silly and sensibly nonsensical reference to 1984's "Ghostbusters"

*** even more silly and sensibly nonsensical reference to 1977's "Star Wars"

 

[Schlegelmilch]

I haven't seen the show since the 70's. Is it available on any streaming service?

 

[Donald G]

I haven't seen the show since the 70's. Is it available on any streaming service?

I think I saw a thumbnail for it on Tubi recently (like, within the last two weeks). I downloaded the series off iTunes a decade or so back.

 

[Qonundrum]

I haven't seen the show since the 70's. Is it available on any streaming service?

Amazon Prime appears to have it available? There is a complete series DVD set as well, for $25 or so now as stores are probably trying to free up store shelves and/or are tired of increasing surface area for "dust bunnies" to build up on. Colloquialisms can be so rich and entertaining, noting that the phrase describes fecal matter left behind from Dermatophagoides Farinae (dust mites) that accumulates on any horizontal surface, as its mass renders it easy to float through the air... dust mites are unavoidable, they eat skin flakes as a main staple of their diet... yum. At least for them. Skin flakes are gross*, so I tried rounding up a few and feeding them corn flakes once... didn't work... neither did the bran flakes, but that tasty sugar coating on one side made up for the futility of the time used...

* anyone who's kissed or licked another person - regardless of reason - has inevitably tasted them...

 

[Christopher]

I recall liking "The Innocent" as well...

"The Innocent" is basically a gender-flipped "Charlie X" with a happier ending. Fontana co-wrote it, so maybe that's not surprising (though her coauthor Ray Brenner gets solo story credit). I find it unremarkable save for its unusually bad visual effects.

The premiere was largely a pallid re-do of the movie, diluted, but the tweaks to the format seemed more interesting.

Not really. It rushed through the movie premise in the first ten minutes or so, then hastened to set up its weird-enclave-of-the-week future-Fugitive premise in the rest of it -- doing two weird enclaves because of a network-mandated revamp that expanded it by half an hour and added the Rem character. Which is one of the best things ever to come out of network meddling, since Donald Moffat was by far the show's most engaging cast member. (Randy Powell was second; the two nominal leads were both so, so bland.)

but if the TV series was going to end with the magical mystery group being overthrown just like how Luke and his biological sister found walking teddy bears after frenching and got them all to topple the galactic British RP-speakin' empire and all***, that would never happen...

TV series back then rarely had planned finales or endgames; they just kept up a constant status quo until they got cancelled.

I will agree there are repeating tropes - every week they're escaping from their domed city o' oppression only to find another base or underground place that's ran by... well, more oppression.

Yeah. That's most evident in the pilot. They escape from one oppressive society only to get involved in two more. Why not just make the whole pilot about the City of Domes? Though of course, the probable answer is that networks wanted pilot episodes to give a sense of what a typical weekly episode would be like.

 

[ChallengerHK]

I haven't seen the show since the 70's. Is it available on any streaming service?

Confirm Tubi, with commercials. I'm not sure who may or may not have it otherwise.

I think part of the issue may be the talent. In general, I'm not digging the acting any more than the writing. The dialog grates on my ears, sometimes because of the diction, sometimes because of the delivery. There are exceptions; I think Donald Moffet does a serviceable job. For the most part, though, I'd compare what I'm seeing to, say, Jason of Star Command.

Another issue may be the contrast effect. I'll put crap on while I'm working, but when I'm not I seek out what I think to be solid entertainment. Right now that Route 66 is filling that bill, so when Logan's Run isn't on I'm seeing work from a person I think of as one of TV's best. Whether or not it's a fair comparison, it's a comparison that exists by temporal proximity.

 

[Christopher]

For the most part, though, I'd compare what I'm seeing to, say, Jason of Star Command.

I think that's a little unfair to Jason. It's apples and oranges, really, since Jason was a kids' show, and Logan's Run was actually fairly adult compared to its contemporaries. Fontana and the show's producer had worked together the previous year on The Fantastic Journey, so I watched and reviewed them back-to-back for my Patreon, and TFJ was much more of a children's show than LR. So LR was aiming for a higher (or at least more adult) bar than Jason, but didn't clear it as well.

 

[ChallengerHK]

We'll have to agree to disagree. I may be being harsh, but I'm just not seeing it with LR. Unless you're making the case that LR 1) is good for it's time frame, and 2) good considering the limited resources available, then I might agree.

 

[plynch]

Sci fi was behind the 8 ball from the starting block, money wise — due to props, costumes, sets needing to be designed and built, compared to a contemporary drama or Westerns. And you can only charge the advertisers according to how many eyeballs you’re drawing. I don’t know how any sci fi series did it, honestly.

BSG had near SW level effects (at least to these 70s-kid eyes). How in the world did they make it as long as they did?

 

[Christopher]

We'll have to agree to disagree. I may be being harsh, but I'm just not seeing it with LR. Unless you're making the case that LR 1) is good for it's time frame, and 2) good considering the limited resources available, then I might agree.

I think you miss my point. I said you were being unfair to Jason of Star Command, i.e. that it's better than Logan's Run. Jason was a pretty well-done kids' show, while Logan was a mostly mediocre attempt at an adult drama.

Although it is fair to say that Logan is, if not actually good for its time, at least moderately less bad than many of its contemporaries.

BSG had near SW level effects (at least to these 70s-kid eyes).

It helped to have the same FX supervisor as Star Wars, John Dykstra.

How in the world did they make it as long as they did?

In part, by recycling those same effects shots over and over ad nauseam. And throwing in some Silent Running footage here and there.

I'm not sure why they didn't cancel it midseason, given how swiftly the ratings fell, but I wonder if maybe it was too expensive to cancel, i.e. that ABC had poured so much money into it that they wanted to give it every chance to recoup its investment. That's the one and only reason that the dire Galactica 1980 sequel series was commissioned despite the profound uninterest of everyone involved with its production -- it was strictly an excuse to amortize the cost of BSG's expensive sets, costumes, and FX by recycling them in a cheaper show and adding more episodes to the syndication package.

 

[publiusr]

I liked Rem.

 

[ChallengerHK]

I think you miss my point. I said you were being unfair to Jason of Star Command, i.e. that it's better than Logan's Run. Jason was a pretty well-done kids' show, while Logan was a mostly mediocre attempt at an adult drama.

Although it is fair to say that Logan is, if not actually good for its time, at least moderately less bad than many of its contemporaries.

Yeah, I did misunderstand you. Honestly, though, it doesn't much change my personal assessment. If I'm evaluating something for my grandkids then I might say "Well, this seems OK for a kid's show", but otherwise it's either something I want more of or something I don't. I'm not jazzed about LR. I was when I started, because of Fontana's involvement, but it's clear to me that the full range of her abilities was not even close to being brought to bear.

It helped to have the same FX supervisor as Star Wars, John Dykstra.
In part, by recycling those same effects shots over and over ad nauseam. And throwing in some Silent Running footage here and there.

And by being the most expensive show ever while in production. The pilot for BSG was reported at $1M. And then, as you say, they endlessly re-used that pilot footage.

 

[Christopher]

And then, as you say, they endlessly re-used that pilot footage.

Which is not uncommon, to use the pilot budget to build a library of stock shots to use later on. In Star Trek: TNG, virtually every time you saw the Enterprise stretch out and go to warp, it was one of the three slit-scan warp entry shots ILM filmed for the pilot (the one exception being the shot from the side in "Where No One Has Gone Before," since that was a simple horizontal stretching of the image). And when ILM did the FX shots of the ship for "Farpoint," they extended many of them longer than what was needed in the episode so that they could be used as library shots later on. I figure that's why ILM got VFX credit in every TNG episode even though they only worked on the pilot and the later features.


This is probably also part of the reason why the network execs had Logan's Run reshoot and expand its pilot to add the Solarcraft vehicle. Giving the characters a vehicle meant they could use stock driving footage of it in multiple episodes.

Indeed, one reused shot that always bugged me was the close-up on Logan's hand switching on the Solarcraft's overhead controls. The first time he did it, his hand moved tentatively, slowly, as he was figuring out the controls as he went. But they kept reusing that same hesitant, slow activation shot every single time, even well after it should've become second nature to him.

 

[Ssosmcin]

The show was a favorite when I was a kid and we played "Logan's Run" in the schoolyard for one fleeting year (before Star Wars blasted it into oblivion). I didn't see it until TBS began running it in the early 90's and, I agree, many episodes are either bad or just bland. However, some are quite good and a few of these episodes have been pointed out already. I actually found "Crypt" to be pretty good for the series, with a (naturally rewritten) story by Harlan Ellison. It had a very creepy vibe to it and was more adult than many of the episodes. There's something very eerie about seeing a pulsating monitor with the message "More to come" which was made by a civilization long dead and therefore had no message actually on the way.

My only real issue with the series was that they kept winding up back at the city. How far did they actually get when at two episodes ("Carousel" and "The Judas Goat") ended with them just outside the domes? Having said that, both episodes actually expanded the backstory of the world they inhabited.

Yup for streaming free on Tubi and what I like about them is they try to place the ads where the commercials actually go. When they do that, ads are more tolerable.

 

[Christopher]

I actually found "Crypt" to be pretty good for the series, with a (naturally rewritten) story by Harlan Ellison. It had a very creepy vibe to it and was more adult than many of the episodes. There's something very eerie about seeing a pulsating monitor with the message "More to come" which was made by a civilization long dead and therefore had no message actually on the way.

It's one of the better ones, but unfortunately it has a huge, huge plot hole created by the process of rewriting Ellison's script to make it filmable on a TV budget (a common issue with Ellison scripts, cf. "Demon with a Glass Hand" and "The City on the Edge of Forever").

Spoiler: Crypt

The recording at the beginning clearly stated that hundreds of scientists went down to the underground complex before the war, that the plague ravaged them inside the complex, and the six most important of them were then chosen for preservation. We’d previously been shown the complex’s morgue/crematorium with dozens of containers of ashes. So clearly these six were chosen out of a group that had previously known each other.

But the solution to the murder mystery hinges on one of the six being an impostor. Rem figures this out and explains how someone could’ve faked computer records, since the six were chosen by computers before they ever met. This assumes a totally different situation where the hundreds of scientists lived spread out within society and six strangers were picked to go down to the bunker. That was the intent in Ellison's original treatment, but when they rewrote it to take place in a single bunker, they failed to realize the contradiction it created.

It’s a shame -- I like the claustrophobic bunker setting better for a mystery of this sort, and the outline’s elaborate business of finding the scientists just seems like a distraction. Really, they should’ve just dropped the impostor angle altogether; Rem’s point about each one considering their discipline essential was a better motive anyway.

My only real issue with the series was that they kept winding up back at the city. How far did they actually get when at two episodes ("Carousel" and "The Judas Goat") ended with them just outside the domes? Having said that, both episodes actually expanded the backstory of the world they inhabited.

Well, it's not like they just accidentally ended up there. Both episodes make it clear that they choose to go back to the city and that it's a big deal to go back, and both episodes allow for a significant amount of travel time to get there.

Besides, the core trio are making a lot of stops, at every populated place they come to, pretty much. And they've probably been wandering around the map rather than following a straight line. So a straight, non-stop journey back to the City of Domes would take less time.

Yup for streaming free on Tubi and what I like about them is they try to place the ads where the commercials actually go. When they do that, ads are more tolerable.

I'm surprised to hear that, because the things I've watched on Tubi usually put the commercials in at random, generally a few seconds into a new scene. Sometimes they align with an intended break, but not usually.

Although what I like about Tubi's presentation of ads is that little circle in the bottom corner that shows you how much time is left until the show resumes.

 

[dupersuper]

* anyone who's kissed or licked another person - regardless of reason - has inevitably tasted them...

Unless they've lost their senses of taste and smell...

 

[ChallengerHK]

My only real issue with the series was that they kept winding up back at the city. How far did they actually get when at two episodes ("Carousel" and "The Judas Goat") ended with them just outside the domes?

In one early episode, maybe even the first, there's a mention that they're heading for something like "the Western mountain city." Based on things as they are now, and given the proximity in the movie of the Dome City to Washington, DC, that would probably indicate Winchester, VA, or Martinsburg, WV, or possibly Harrisonburg, VA. We don't know if they ever reached that target, or if they reached it and continued onward from there, but from any of those locations a trip back to DC would be about three hours. This depends on things like road condition, but they never seem to lack for roads to support wherever they're heading.