MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[The Old Mixer]

The sad thing is, Steinem was totally wrong, because she didn't actually read the comics she was criticizing. She claimed that taking Wonder Woman's superpowers away undermined her as a feminist icon, but I think just the opposite is true. Mod-era Diana Prince was shown to be a crimefighter every bit as capable as Batman, without needing any special advantages to play on the same level as male heroes. I think that made her a far better feminist icon.

Not to mention that when they ended the Mod era in response to Steinem's criticisms, they did so in a way that was aggressively anti-feminist. They brought back the former writer, Robert Kanigher, who was the chief architect of the era when Wonder Woman was reduced to stories focusing on romance and man-chasing, and he cavalierly reset everything to the former status quo in a cursory and slapdash way, even having her new boss dismiss Diana as a "plain Jane" because she was wearing glasses and a sweater. Granted, Kanigher's return was short-lived, but Steinem's ill-informed criticisms ended up having exactly the opposite of the impact she would've wanted.

(Here's my review of the Mod era from my blog.)

I read the blog previously, and while there's certainly a good argument to be made that mod WW was more empowering, I think that Steinem had the right idea symbolically. Costumed, powered Wonder Woman was/is a cultural icon approaching the league of Superman and Batman. Mod WW could just as easily have been a completely new character.

 

[RJDiogenes]

You didn't miss anything important. Really. Lee Van Cleff+Crazy 80's Ninja hysteria.

Yowza.

For your eyes only!!!

Ah, the 80s. But, hey, Demi Moore as a TV guest star early in her career.

Bill Bixby as Harry Banner: "Well there's no point in getting angry...."

Whoa, spooky.

ETA: Historical point of interest--An "If they can put a man on the moon..." line...in 1967.

That's interesting. Certainly the Apollo Program was in full swing and on the tips of everybody's tongue, but they hadn't even put a man into space yet.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The sad thing is, Steinem was totally wrong, because she didn't actually read the comics she was criticizing.

That's quite a charge that Steinem didn't read those issues of Wonder Woman. What's your source for that?

She claimed that taking Wonder Woman's superpowers away undermined her as a feminist icon, but I think just the opposite is true. Mod-era Diana Prince was shown to be a crimefighter every bit as capable as Batman, without needing any special advantages to play on the same level as male heroes. I think that made her a far better feminist icon.

Honestly, that sounds like a textbook example of mansplaining.

Costumed, powered Wonder Woman was/is a cultural icon approaching the league of Superman and Batman. Mod WW could just as easily have been a completely new character.

That's my take on it, too.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Ditto. If you change a character beyond recognition, you've got a new character.

So, wow, Glenn Corbett's debut on Route 66 was great. This is always a great show, but this really was a standout. He plays a Vietnam vet just coming home, with some tough memories weighing on his conscience (and, admittedly, stories about Vietnam always get to me because of the era I grew up in). He's subjected to all the abuse, awkward remarks, and unwanted adoration that vets had to face. It's one of the best depictions of Vietnam Syndrome (which didn't even have a name until decades later) that I've ever seen-- and this was in 1965, when nobody was writing stories about Vietnam for TV. At the beginning of the episode, a bus driver refers to the VC as "geeks." I wonder how much else they had to change.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Although DECADES was tying them to that date in history on 1965 (when U.S. Marines were first sent to Vietnam), the Route 66 episodes were actually from 1963 and 1964. It seems that the show was very ahead of its time in its depiction of Vietnam's affect on those who served there.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Was it that early? I thought I saw 1965 when I looked at the guide. That's amazing. I really need to get the rest of the seasons on DVD.

I didn't get to watch anything yesterday, but I noticed they were showing Have Gun, Will Travel, which is probably the best TV Western ever. That's a show I have seen every episode of.

 

[Noname Given]

Although DECADES was tying them to that date in history on 1965 (when U.S. Marines were first sent to Vietnam), the Route 66 episodes were actually from 1963 and 1964. It seems that the show was very ahead of its time in its depiction of Vietnam's affect on those who served there.

From:

http://www.vietnamwar50th.com/education/us_army_in_vietnam/

The United States had supported the French army in Indochina through the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), and U.S. advisers continued to train and organize the South Vietnamese Army to repel an invasion from the North. In 1955, MAAG numbered 342 officers and men--most of them Army personnel—rising to around 700 by 1960. In February 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff established the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), appointing General Paul D. Harkins as the first commander. General William C. Westmoreland succeeded Harkins in June 1964. As MACV’s responsibilities expanded, U.S. military strength in South Vietnam increased to 23,000 by the end of 1964. Of these, about 15,000 were Army personnel.

So it seems the U.S. began top become way more involved with Vietnam starting in 1962.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I was aware that we were already involved in Vietnam at that point...but stories about Vietnam vets having trouble adjusting to life back in the States were ahead of their time...something that would become more common in later decades.

ETA: Next weekend's DECADES Binge: Love, American Style...seems like we just did that....

 

[Christopher]

Batman: "Green Ice"/"Deep Freeze": Here's the second of our three Messrs. Freeze, with director Otto Preminger taking the role this time. He's still out for revenge on Batman, and has a devious plan this time, smearing him in the press (didn't Penguin just try that in the election?). And kidnapping Miss Iceland and trying to brainwash her into his mate... that's just creepy. Plus he manages to wreak real havoc on Gotham in part 2, even though it's all offscreen. Panic in the streets, cars jamming the highways in flight, children screaming in terror? Holy cataclysm! Even Ra's al Ghul didn't cause this much chaos in Gotham! Wild!

Wait -- one of his henchmen is named Chill?? Did he ever gun down a married couple coming home from a movie? Boy, is he ever gonna be in trouble if the other bad guys ever find out...

I love it that the actor playing the police sergeant who reported to Chief O'Hara was named James O'Hara.


Wonder Woman: "Mind Stealers from Outer Space, Part I": Holy cow, practically the whole teaser is footage from This Island Earth! That's brazen.

But it's just about the only excitement in this episode, which takes forever to get anywhere. It's really padded to fill a 2-parter. I kinda like the underlying idea, that the only thing of universal value is knowledge and so minds are a precious commodity. That's kind of a neat science fiction concept. But the episode built around it is weak, and doesn't have any of the philosophical depth (such as it was) of the first Andros storyline last season. It's the same writer, Stephen Kandel, but I wonder how much his script was rewritten by the new producers.

Why did Wonder Woman jump out of the way of the speeding car? She's Wonder Woman!

I liked the creepy twin-sister aliens who led the monster to Diana. Sort of like evil versions of Mothra's heralds.

Hold on... green aliens called the Skrill, who can disguise themselves as human beings and mount a sort of secret invasion? Shouldn't someone from Marvel be dealing with these guys?

 

[Morpheus 02]

Batman: "Green Ice"/"Deep Freeze": Here's the second of our three Messrs. Freeze, with director Otto Preminger taking the role this time. He's still out for revenge on Batman, and has a devious plan this time, smearing him in the press (didn't Penguin just try that in the election?). And kidnapping Miss Iceland and trying to brainwash her into his mate... that's just creepy. Plus he manages to wreak real havoc on Gotham in part 2, even though it's all offscreen. Panic in the streets, cars jamming the highways in flight, children screaming in terror? Holy cataclysm! Even Ra's al Ghul didn't cause this much chaos in Gotham! Wild!

Wait -- one of his henchmen is named Chill?? Did he ever gun down a married couple coming home from a movie? Boy, is he ever gonna be in trouble if the other bad guys ever find out...

I love it that the actor playing the police sergeant who reported to Chief O'Hara was named James O'Hara.


Wonder Woman: "Mind Stealers from Outer Space, Part I": Holy cow, practically the whole teaser is footage from This Island Earth! That's brazen.

But it's just about the only excitement in this episode, which takes forever to get anywhere. It's really padded to fill a 2-parter. I kinda like the underlying idea, that the only thing of universal value is knowledge and so minds are a precious commodity. That's kind of a neat science fiction concept. But the episode built around it is weak, and doesn't have any of the philosophical depth (such as it was) of the first Andros storyline last season. It's the same writer, Stephen Kandel, but I wonder how much his script was rewritten by the new producers.

Why did Wonder Woman jump out of the way of the speeding car? She's Wonder Woman!

I liked the creepy twin-sister aliens who led the monster to Diana. Sort of like evil versions of Mothra's heralds.

Hold on... green aliens called the Skrill, who can disguise themselves as human beings and mount a sort of secret invasion? Shouldn't someone from Marvel be dealing with these guys?

And the Earth Final COnflict has an alien hand weapon with energy beams called the Skrill! They must've watched the same episodes!


The "effects" were quite laughable to this 42 year old. The tinsel on the masked midget aliens...the Darth Vader mask on the monster...i'll just stop there

Oh my -- but my 10 year old, who's a Wonder Woman fan, actually was enthralled by the episode. So if this was the intended fan base they succeeded (and how we should judge the show).

I dropped in 15 minutes in... but what I saw was that apparent Andros (who is the son of Andros of last season). From the dialogue, it sounds like she worked with this Andros before as well? Sounds like a missing episode or something. It's too bad they never mentioned how Andros was supposed to visit in 50 years (what he said in Season 1). I forget .. was the original actor on Buck rogers at that point? (making the movie or the show)

What's up with WOnder Woman and her attraction to the sons of guys there was some possible mutual attraction too?

 

[Christopher]

I dropped in 15 minutes in... but what I saw was that apparent Andros (who is the son of Andros of last season). From the dialogue, it sounds like she worked with this Andros before as well? Sounds like a missing episode or something.

Sounds like the first draft was written for Tim O'Connor, they couldn't get him, so they rewrote it as his son and threw in a line about him working with Wonder Woman before so they didn't have to rewrite the parts where they already knew each other. The same kind of laziness that led them to use the same character name for both father and son.

It's too bad they never mentioned how Andros was supposed to visit in 50 years (what he said in Season 1).

Well, that would still have been 15 years in the future anyway.

I forget .. was the original actor on Buck rogers at that point? (making the movie or the show)

No, that wouldn't go into production until the following year.

What's up with WOnder Woman and her attraction to the sons of guys there was some possible mutual attraction too?

I didn't see any attraction here. And any hint of attraction with Steve Jr. was abandoned quite a few episodes back.

 

[RJDiogenes]

ETA: Next weekend's DECADES Binge: Love, American Style...seems like we just did that....

Not since the change in format. But that's okay anyway-- I can't get enough Love, American Style. It's nice to revisit a more liberal era.

 

[Christopher]

By the way, I noticed something in "Deep Freeze" that I don't think had been done in Batman up to that point: The reuse of music cues from the '66 theatrical feature. There was a bit of the Penguin-sub motif while Mr. Freeze was explaining his fiendish plan to his goons, and the climactic fight was scored with the fight music from the movie.

 

[Silvercrest]

"Wild!"

 

[Christopher]

I sometimes wonder why Mr. Freeze only had that "Wild!" catchphrase in this one story. I did a search, and one article suggested it was a reference to Bela Lugosi, that Preminger modeled his performance on Lugosi in The Devil Bat. But I can't find confirmation that Lugosi used "Wild!" in that film, although it sounds familiar.

 

[Christopher]

Batman: "The Impractical Joker"/"The Joker's Provokers": This is another one of those episodes where the writers found it necessary to give the villain a secondary gimmick in addition to his usual schtick, like the Riddler's wax/candle and silent-movie capers last season. I've heard it conjectured that they wrote episodes like this for original villains, but wrote the big guns into them if they happened to become available. Had Cesar Romero not been free at this point, this story might've featured Batman and Robin versus The Skeleton Key or some such character. Indeed, the time-changing stuff in part 2 seemed more like a job for the Clock King than the Joker.

And man, that was awkwardly handled. Not only the absurdity of the Joker inventing a machine to alter time, but the fact that he could somehow show his henchmen the effects it was having miles away when they were in a windowless room.

The window cameo was by Howard Duff, in character as the lead of Felony Squad, a contemporary crime series that was also on ABC and made by 20th Century Fox.

Robin becoming "a key to a lock with many wards?" Was that a metatextual nod to Burt Ward?

Oh, they've truncated the recaps. Not a full scene-by-scene overview, but just picking up from the cliffhanger.

Cornelia is hot. But what was with that line, "You're so forceful when you demand things from fathers, Joker! What is it this time?" Given how young and pretty she was, I wonder if there was some kind of innuendo there. (By the way, the actress, Kathy Kersh, married Burt Ward the following year.)

And it's the spectacular debut of the Alfcycle! And the first of two times that Alfred single-handedly defeats the Joker, although he fumbled the dismount.

Really weak tag scene, too. All in all, this is not one of the stronger installments.


Wonder Woman: "Mind Stealers from Outer Space, Part 2": The recap reminds me that nobody told Lynda Carter how to pronounce "Cygnus." Given the spelling of her own first name, you'd think she would've known better -- unless her name has actually been pronounced "Line-da" all these years.

And oh yes, the aliens are able to deduce Wonder Woman's secret identity through the super-advanced technology of comparing two photos. No mere mortal mind could have conceived of that!

And the recap is four minutes long. Talk about padding.

Hey, wait a minute. Diana changes to Wonder Woman... goes through the glass doors onto her balcony... jumps from the balcony... and then is shown jumping down from the window of an apartment without a balcony! Whaaaaaa????

Steve: "If only we could capture one of these Skrill, find out where they're hiding." Umm, you mean like the Skrill you captured last week, the one that Wonder Woman interrogated with her magic lasso? Don't you still have her?

Okay, so: They have 48 hours to stop the Skrill before the decontamination happens... and they waste 30 hours of it arranging to speak to the UN about the consequences of their failure to meet the deadline? Is that really the best approach to time management, guys? (Also, shouldn't WW have worn her formal cloak for addressing the UN?)

Oh, and they finally remember their prisoner when they have less than two and a half hours left. Brilliant work, guys.

The Sardor creature looks like a really bad Darth Vader cosplayer.

And oh, joy, it's a monotone-talking computer with a wisecracking personality. How did we ever manage without one of those? (Although I did laugh at "I rack my brains.")

 

[publiusr]

As for Superman, George looks more intimidating as Clark.

That coat he wears is just about a Zoot Suit.

Something else I have noticed. There was a spot about Carol Burnet where she is wearing a sweater with a face on it.

So help me, but it looks a lot like the LG face
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/350788258445367090/

Anyone remember that?

 

[Zaku]

And oh yes, the aliens are able to deduce Wonder Woman's secret identity through the super-advanced technology of comparing two photos. No mere mortal mind could have conceived of that!

 

[Christopher]

Batman: "Marsha, Queen of Diamonds"/"Marsha's Scheme With Diamonds": Kind of a weird one here. Marsha is an odd hodgepodge of a character -- she's got an Arabic theme, but is named Marsha, and she's obsessed with diamonds, even named for them, but that seems secondary to her love-potion gimmick. And then there's the whole weird Aunt Hilda angle, which feels like an attempt at an Addams Family nod. Still, Carolyn Jones carries it well with her comic flair and charm.

This is, I think, the first time the cliffhanger hasn't put Batman and/or Robin in mortal peril. And it's kind of convoluted the way they set it up. First she takes Robin hostage with her love potion to force Batman to take her to the Batcave, but he took a vow never to bring in a stranger, so she suggests marriage so she won't be a stranger? That's quite a shaggy-dog story. But it does provide an excuse to continue Alfred's enlarged role in the series, and to give Aunt Harriet something to do as well.

And what a coincidence that Batman and Robin are installing a new Batdiamond just when the Queen of Diamonds is in town!

Unusually, we don't see Bruce and Dick out of costume in the entire first episode, or until the tag scene of part 2.

Notably, these are the first episodes of the series not to be scored by Nelson Riddle, though they rely heavily on stock music from earlier episodes. The bits of new music we get are by Warren Barker, who was, fittingly, the composer for Bewitched, and who also had a TV series called King of Diamonds in his CV. Some kind of in-joke, or just a coincidence? Anyway, his contributions are very conventionally sitcommy and forgettable. In fact, all the stuff with Aunt Hilda feels about as sitcommy as the show ever got.


Wonder Woman: "Light-Fingered Lady": Hmm, another one that feels like a script from another show that got repurposed. Why is the IADC going after a bank robber, even a high-level one? At least before, when they went after petty targets, they made a token effort to throw in some kind of national-security justification.

Anyway, watching Wonder Woman use her powers to commit an act of breaking and entering, even in the name of national security, just feels wrong. Not to mention the silliness that Leech can see Wonder Woman one minute and Diana (without glasses) the next and think they're two completely different women. Does the tiara do that much to change her appearance? Then again, maybe that's not the part of her costume that people are looking at.... at least not men.

Still, it's a halfway decent generic crime-caper episode, with a lot of familiar faces in the cast, notably Greg Morris and Bubba Smith (but also perennial '70s guest stars Christopher Stone, Titos Vandis, and Gary Crosby). But my favorite part was Wonder Woman talking to the vicious guard dogs and winning their cooperation. Wonder Woman's power to talk to animals is part of her repertoire in the comics, but one that hasn't really been used much in adaptations. It's nice to see here, and makes this actually feel like a Wonder Woman story in a way the rest of the episode fails to do.

 

[Christopher]

Batman: "Come Back, Shame"/"It's How You Play the Game": Oh, right, this is the one with the annoying little kid doing the Shane homage. I never liked that kid.

Hmm... I wonder how many times I saw this episode as a kid before I found out that it was a play on Shane. I've never actually seen that movie, as it happens.

I wonder why, given that B&R set up the theft of their limousine as a trap, they actually went to the trouble to install the special components that would allow Shame's super-truck to work. At least, it was implied that they did, since they still seemed to treat the super-truck as a genuine concern afterward. Although the truck subplot totally failed to have any payoff in part 2, which was disappointing.

Hold on, how come the radio station is KGC instead of WGC? Not only is Gotham City always treated in the show as a pastiche for New York City, but it's explicitly stated in part 2 that Gotham is east of the Mississippi.

"Who makes the best chili and avocado dip in Gotham?" "Holy guacamole!" Clever how they set that up. I also liked the gag of the little old lady from Pasadena buying a used car.

And once again, the show saves money on sets with the old "They returned to their old lair since they assumed we'd never think to find them there" trick.

Oh, man, I hate that little kid.


Wonder Woman: "Screaming Javelins": Yes, that is actually the episode title. I couldn't make that up. Nor could I have ever imagined that anyone would cast Henry Gibson as a supervillain. At first, I thought this was a really stupid and incoherent episode. But Gibson's rant to the hired assassin about how obscure and overlooked his country was in the eyes of the world was kind of brilliant. That was when I began to suspect that this was a deliberate farce.

But, no, the rest of it was pretty much a mess. Gibson was superb, but his scenes were the only parts that worked. How stupid does Diana have to be to fall for the "special delivery" trick after it's already been tried on her earlier in the episode? And they're still being ridiculous with the double-identity thing. Diana pounds on Nadia's door and then Wonder Woman comes through seconds later, and nobody figures out they're the same person? Oy.

And then they take Diana hostage as a lure for Wonder Woman, then don't keep her under guard? How convenient. And sheesh, WW, maybe ask before you ruin the guy's toaster!

The episode is notable for featuring a young Vaughn Armstrong, whom I hardly recognized. Oh, and Rick Springfield too, for what it's worth.