But if it was making him feel "bad...terrible," perhaps that should have been enough. They played up the meteor having an effect on both David and the Hulk, but didn't make the simple connection of having it trigger the HO.
MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night
- Thread starter JD
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A late 1970s toy? Hmm. Looking into it, I could not find a toy using the red dome, but there was an indirect tie-in toy called the Hulk Rage Cage from a company called FunStuf ; it featured a Hulk with torn shirt and bending bars sort of predicting the desert cage scene from the "Married" episode.
...and that's short sighted of them, reaching a near (desired) conclusion without any evidence or confirmation.
Bixby started allowing his naturally wavy/curly hair grow out in 1980, so Ric Drasin's hair was set to match.
....and find himself under arrest for infiltrating a secret government facility / project location and impersonating a government employee. Now THAT would have washed the McGee right out of Banner's hair!
It was doing something to David, but not triggering a Hulk-out. The bees were merely the vehicle needed to expose the effect after he Hulked out.
Sort of suggesting his Hulk side was naturally drawn to a stronger gamma source.
How difficult would it be to say--
Demi-Hulk: "Me get too much stuff...make me green man. Reporter McGee think green man kill me, so I run"
...for Katie to get the point?
I agree about the "The Psychic" & the pilot, as discussion about / exploration of the condition were notable parts of both episodes.
But any military involvement would rip the Hulk out of his human interest style series, not to mention push McGee to the back seat of antagonists (when he's the one who started the fugitive life for David), as they would bulldoze their way through any situation with the Hulk. There would be no way to naturally dial back the military angle once they were aware of...and believe a Hulk exists.
Anderson was necessary....ooh boy...really necessary to restore DC humanity (style) to Kirby's "robot" Superman and Jimmy....
I wonder if maybe it was scripted to be the radiation triggering the metamorphosis, but they worried that wouldn't be clear enough to the audience (and that it would be hokey for David to do comic-book narration to himself like "Radiation... can feel it... burning me!!"), so they tossed in the bees as a quick fix. TV episodes often have clumsy things like that because they just didn't have time to fix a problem in a better way (cf. Naren Shankar's online apology for a bit of egregiously bad science in last week's The Expanse episode).
TREK_GOD_1 said:
No, I didn't mean I believed there actually was a red dome called the Rage Cage; I just mean that, in my own mind, I use "Rage Cage" as a nickname for the red dome because it's analogous to the devices of that name in the '90s animated series -- heavy-duty, helicopter-deployed enclosures so strong that they could theoretically hold the Hulk, at least temporarily. It wasn't until I looked into it for the purposes of my review in this thread that I discovered the devices in the animated series were named after an earlier toy.
I wouldn't say it was their conclusion, just their starting hypothesis. Science is a series of successive approximations -- you start with the best conjecture you can based on available evidence, then gather more evidence to test its validity and refine or replace it based on what you find. If you find an anomalous life form near an object that fell from space, it's conceivable that it might be a life form from space -- so you test it to find out whether it's actually that or something else instead. In this case, they found out it was something else.
I think what Mixer is suggesting is that revising the series format in that way, introducing a new approach and antagonists, would've been preferable to the slow fizzling out of the existing formula that we got. Having David be on the run from the military would've added a new urgency and higher stakes. As for McGee, maybe he could've even been reworked into an ally for David, learning the truth about him and running interference to stymie the investigations of Ross, Talbot, or whatever equivalent character they used.
Or maybe they could've done it in a way that didn't change the status quo too much. Maybe Ross's anti-Hulk unit would go too far in pursuit of the Hulk, maybe almost kill some civilians that the Hulk then rescued. And maybe McGee would expose that Ross intended to develop weapons based on what he learned from the Hulk, conduct illegal experiments, that sort of thing. So the government would cut his funding in response to the PR nightmare. So Ross would still be hunting the Hulk and trying to vindicate himself, but without the resources of the full US armed forces behind him, and thus he'd only be an intermittent threat.
I thought it was Curt Swan who redrew Superman's head. He was pretty much the definitive Superman artist for decades. Wasn't Anderson his inker?
^ I get multiple online hits saying that Murphy Anderson and Al Plastino where the head-redrawers there...and that Vince Colletta was the inker. Also, it wasn't just the heads...one source showed a before-and-after, with Superman's "S" clearly having been redrawn as well.
That's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking, though perhaps you'd floated the idea previously somewhere upthread.
So...if I were to nudge my tally, are there any other episodes that might fall in the "condition-related" category, that wouldn't already have been tallied as "cure-related"?
I'm willing to go along with whatever here, but I don't see what the big deal is. It's a 37-year-old show at this point in the series, and if you're catching episodes for the first time, and we're reviewing them at a consistent point in the week, then don't read the reviews until you've seen the episode.
It could be argued that our reviews are similar to advance reviews in newspapers or other media. Somebody who doesn't mind potential spoilers might find them useful for deciding whether or not to tune in.
I like doing them on Fridays because it has a good vibe for me, Friday having been the night the show was on for most of its run. And of the three people who are routinely reviewing here, all of us are watching/have watched through the show by means other than Me, so it's pretty arbitrary that we're reviewing at the pace of the Me airings at all.
It could be argued that our reviews are similar to advance reviews in newspapers or other media. Somebody who doesn't mind potential spoilers might find them useful for deciding whether or not to tune in.
I like doing them on Fridays because it has a good vibe for me, Friday having been the night the show was on for most of its run. And of the three people who are routinely reviewing here, all of us are watching/have watched through the show by means other than Me, so it's pretty arbitrary that we're reviewing at the pace of the Me airings at all.
Although I have been watching Land of the Giants and The Time Tunnel only once a week on Sundays (or sometimes later). Partly that's to pace it out, partly it's because I'm not invested enough in either show to be eager to race through them. I did initially watch Hulk once a week, but I binged the rest when I learned Netflix was about to pull it.
I don't think it's arbitrary, though, because presumably we're not doing this just for the three of us, but for the benefit of other readers who actually are watching once a week on MeTV and might want to join in the conversation. It's like a book club -- you may read the book faster than some of the other members, but you still get together at a specific time to talk about it.
Ah, true.
Land of the Giants: "Collector's Item" was the episode this week, again out of the usual sequence. Once again, the giants are using our heroes as playthings -- this time, Valerie is forced to play a ballerina in a music box as part of a man's plan to murder his uncle, who is an... evil collector of... music boxes... and who's killed people and ruined lives to steal valuable... music boxes. O...kay. (Oh, and he lives in Stately Wayne Manor.) The script does a pretty good job keeping up the suspense and putting obstacles in the path of the heroes trying to save Val, but it's still kind of an odd premise (and they get away from the dog way too easily at the top of Act 1). There's a nice action sequence where Steve clings to a rope on the back of a speeding car, and there's actually a little Steve doll dangling off the bumper in the long shots. Susan Howard (Mara from Star Trek: "Day of the Dove") makes little impression as the wife of Val's abductor (Guy Stockwell).
The Time Tunnel comes to an end with "Town of Terror," the third alien episode in a row, and the fourth in a row to have some fantasy/sci-fi element beyond time travel. It's their fourth episode in all to be set at least partly in Tony and Doug's future, and coincidentally is in the same year as their first trip to the future, 1978 -- although it's in a small Maine town, so it doesn't seem as futuristic as their trip to the Moon last time. You have to wonder, though -- if the Tunnel staff had 10 years' advance warning of this alien attack, how come the US military didn't repel them as soon as they arrived?
The aliens this time are androids that look like bad Savage Dragon cosplay made of purple aluminum foil. I guess the metal skin is supposed to be how Tony recognizes them as androids, but they don't look that much more artificial than the monsters last week. Anyway, if their planet Andros is all androids, how come they need to steal Earth's oxygen? And how come Andro Leader is always explaining their plan to Andro One? Don't they both already know the plan?
We've seen several TTT regulars guest-star as giants on Land of the Giants, but now we get the reverse, as LOTG regular Heather Young guests in TTT two years earlier. She's pretty useless, though, as your standard '60s girl who's terrified and helpless through the whole alien invasion.
This final episode episode is clearly a budget-saver, with few speaking characters and a confined location. But it is unusual in having almost no stock footage, aside from a reuse of the stock spaceship footage previously seen in "Visitors From Beyond the Stars," their first alien-themed episode. Anyway, it seems they'd really run out of ideas by this point, falling back so regularly on alien-invasion plots. If they wanted to do more sci-fi stuff, they could've just increased the number of episodes set in the future -- although they probably would've just been in enclosed corridors like in "The Kidnappers," so maybe not. IMDb claims that the plan for season 2, had there been one, was for Tony and Doug to be successfully retrieved, then to use the Time Tunnel at will to fix temporal anomalies they'd created (shades of Legends of Tomorrow season 2) or for other missions. It's possible that could've worked as a retool, but I guess we'll never know.
The episode -- and the series -- ends with a preview of the pilot episode, and many have interpreted this as a time loop, with Tony and Doug going back to the Titanic and having to live out the same cycle of events forever. But that interpretation doesn't really wash. For one thing, there's never been any story continuity between the main episode and the teaser for the next episode at the end, and often some story discontinuity (like Tunnel staffers who were injured suddenly being well, or Tunnel damage being repaired). So there's no reason to see them as consecutive events rather than simply previews. For another thing, this one is overtly done in the form of a standard episode preview of the era (albeit a long one), showing clips from the entire Titanic sequence, rather than just showing the travelers' arrival (necessarily, since Tony and Doug arrived separately). So I guess we can assume that Tony and Doug's adventures continued, or else that the Tic-Toc staff finally managed to bring them home, whichever you prefer.
The Time Tunnel comes to an end with "Town of Terror," the third alien episode in a row, and the fourth in a row to have some fantasy/sci-fi element beyond time travel. It's their fourth episode in all to be set at least partly in Tony and Doug's future, and coincidentally is in the same year as their first trip to the future, 1978 -- although it's in a small Maine town, so it doesn't seem as futuristic as their trip to the Moon last time. You have to wonder, though -- if the Tunnel staff had 10 years' advance warning of this alien attack, how come the US military didn't repel them as soon as they arrived?
The aliens this time are androids that look like bad Savage Dragon cosplay made of purple aluminum foil. I guess the metal skin is supposed to be how Tony recognizes them as androids, but they don't look that much more artificial than the monsters last week. Anyway, if their planet Andros is all androids, how come they need to steal Earth's oxygen? And how come Andro Leader is always explaining their plan to Andro One? Don't they both already know the plan?
We've seen several TTT regulars guest-star as giants on Land of the Giants, but now we get the reverse, as LOTG regular Heather Young guests in TTT two years earlier. She's pretty useless, though, as your standard '60s girl who's terrified and helpless through the whole alien invasion.
This final episode episode is clearly a budget-saver, with few speaking characters and a confined location. But it is unusual in having almost no stock footage, aside from a reuse of the stock spaceship footage previously seen in "Visitors From Beyond the Stars," their first alien-themed episode. Anyway, it seems they'd really run out of ideas by this point, falling back so regularly on alien-invasion plots. If they wanted to do more sci-fi stuff, they could've just increased the number of episodes set in the future -- although they probably would've just been in enclosed corridors like in "The Kidnappers," so maybe not. IMDb claims that the plan for season 2, had there been one, was for Tony and Doug to be successfully retrieved, then to use the Time Tunnel at will to fix temporal anomalies they'd created (shades of Legends of Tomorrow season 2) or for other missions. It's possible that could've worked as a retool, but I guess we'll never know.
The episode -- and the series -- ends with a preview of the pilot episode, and many have interpreted this as a time loop, with Tony and Doug going back to the Titanic and having to live out the same cycle of events forever. But that interpretation doesn't really wash. For one thing, there's never been any story continuity between the main episode and the teaser for the next episode at the end, and often some story discontinuity (like Tunnel staffers who were injured suddenly being well, or Tunnel damage being repaired). So there's no reason to see them as consecutive events rather than simply previews. For another thing, this one is overtly done in the form of a standard episode preview of the era (albeit a long one), showing clips from the entire Titanic sequence, rather than just showing the travelers' arrival (necessarily, since Tony and Doug arrived separately). So I guess we can assume that Tony and Doug's adventures continued, or else that the Tic-Toc staff finally managed to bring them home, whichever you prefer.
Wouldn't that be Giant Evil Stately Wayne Manor?
After 37 years, surely one more day won't hurt?!
For what it's worth, the thread is labeled "MeTV Super Sci-Fi Saturday Nights."
Just tossing in my two cents. (Mind you, I'm only really watching "Svengoolie" and "The Night Stalker" on a regular basis, so . . . whatever.)
If we're going to get all literal about it, then I should stop participating, because I don't get Me anymore.
It's all about Me.
Kolchak: “Primal Scream”: An okay one, featuring a surprisingly mundane fantasy concept. The missing link/Bigfoot-type creature is not that unreasonable an idea compared to most of the stuff on this show, aside from the bit about whole creatures growing from single cells without any parent to gestate them. For once, Tony actually seemed to believe Kolchak’s story and want to publish it. Although the relative credibility of the idea makes it implausible that the scientists and authorities would have any reason to cover it up, even with the oil company pressuring them. Usually the assumption in stories like this is that the authorities don’t think the public could handle the truth about the supernatural or aliens or whatever. And in the case of “Mr. R.I.N.G.,” where it was a classified military project, the reasons for the cover-up are clear enough. But this would just be a new discovery of the type that had been made many times before in science, so why hide it?
By the way, I may not be able to keep posting these reviews after the next three weeks. My hard drive crashed (I'm now back to using the potentially crash-prone one that the other one was a replacement for, ironically), and I'd neglected to back up my review file for quite some time, so I may have lost the rest of my Kolchak reviews unless I can find a way to get data off an unreadable hard drive. (The guy at the store said I could get a cable that could let me plug the drive into a USB port, but my laptop couldn't even read the drive for a startup test, so I'm not optimistic about that data being retrievable.)
By the way, I may not be able to keep posting these reviews after the next three weeks. My hard drive crashed (I'm now back to using the potentially crash-prone one that the other one was a replacement for, ironically), and I'd neglected to back up my review file for quite some time, so I may have lost the rest of my Kolchak reviews unless I can find a way to get data off an unreadable hard drive. (The guy at the store said I could get a cable that could let me plug the drive into a USB port, but my laptop couldn't even read the drive for a startup test, so I'm not optimistic about that data being retrievable.)
^Backup in cloud. I learned it after a disastrous data loss
I don't know how to do that. Usually I just copy things onto a thumb drive as I go, but I prioritize my fiction and important stuff like that, and I sometimes forget about side projects like the reviews.
