MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
^Christopher and I were reviewing that series about a year ago. They were playing 12 episodes a week, so it went fast. Christopher's Batman and Wonder Woman reviews are an ongoing thing.
The anniversary was a recurring thing through the day on SiriusXM's 60s on 6. I caught them playing this in tribute:
If they played either of these, I wasn't tuned in at the time....
The anniversary was a recurring thing through the day on SiriusXM's 60s on 6. I caught them playing this in tribute:
If they played either of these, I wasn't tuned in at the time....
Check this thread--there's reviews posted for Superman, Admiral2. Batman is in the middle of its third and final season, so reviews for that series will go on for a few weeks to come.
Ah, 1966. A very good year. Those were the days. 
Ah, 1966. A very good year. Those were the days.
Yes, 1966 was an explosive, unforgettable year for TV of the fantastic.
It's also one of my favorite years in music...rivaled only by the surrounding two years. '65 through '67 is my musical sweet spot.
The '60s never get old...just a lot more seasoned.
The '60s never get old...just a lot more seasoned.
Somewhat like those of us who come from there. 
Batman--
Egghead & Olga return for their final series appearance in "The Ogg Couple" --get it? How.......clever.
If any 1967 audience member had the impression that season 3 plots were so hollow and pointless that they might as well be another series, they were not far off with that assessment. By this time on the sinking ship called Batman, Egghead was reduced to riding a burro while whining as a sight gag. Who informed episode writer Stanford Sherman or director Oscar Rudolph that any part of that crap was amusing? Loud man-children, whether it was Joe (Three Stooges) Besser, Dr. Smith, Goober, season three Joker, and now Egghead--are not amusing to children or adults.
Next, there's the plot (if you can call it that) about stealing 500lbs of caviar, or whatever. Along the way, Batgirl proves she's not so sharp when she believes she's convinced sniveling Egghead to turn on Olga, then lead her to the hideout. Yeah, that Batgirl actually bought Egghead's paper-thin, transparent act, and guess what happens to her (other than having her judgment called into serious question) once she arrives?
Yeah. Anyway, she's forced to dance, a Batfight finds some space in the episode and O'Hara acted like he was the unfortunate recipient of an alleyway lobotomy...by blindfolded surgeons.
Maybe the next episode will send things in another direction....
"Louie's Lethal Lilac Time"
With his variety show left as a pile of rubble in the previous TV season, Milton Berle was available to give Louie his all...which wasn't much. In yet another oddball scheme, the gangster is stealing ambergris, taken from whales to make perfume. Somehow, Bruce and Dick are taken as prisoners (to be held in exchange for a million dollars), with Louie trying to force "animal expert" Bruce Wayne to operate on animals for their scent pouches.
Honestly, there are easier ways to get into the perfume business. Ever heard of the endless, cheap factories making the stuff--including fake high end brands--across America's southern border?
Guess who is easily captured again? Yes--the one and only Batgirl.
The Bat-invention of the episode: Instant Unfolding Batcostumes activated by being submerged in warm water. That's right, full costumes including utility belts. At this point, the convenient inventions are more cartoon-level magic than the result of engineering.
Uh, were did Gordon and O'Hara get film footage from the Dynamic Duo's death traps? Who filmed it while Batman and Robin were fighting for their lives? Oh, well, that does not matter, since it served as obvious padding in an episode that could not have been more than a paragraph, instead of a full script.
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Just caught a commercial for the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk coming to ME-TV. No word on schedule. It would be nice if it replaces one of the shows in the "Sci-Fi Saturday" block. Every series in that block need a long vacation.
Egghead & Olga return for their final series appearance in "The Ogg Couple" --get it? How.......clever.
If any 1967 audience member had the impression that season 3 plots were so hollow and pointless that they might as well be another series, they were not far off with that assessment. By this time on the sinking ship called Batman, Egghead was reduced to riding a burro while whining as a sight gag. Who informed episode writer Stanford Sherman or director Oscar Rudolph that any part of that crap was amusing? Loud man-children, whether it was Joe (Three Stooges) Besser, Dr. Smith, Goober, season three Joker, and now Egghead--are not amusing to children or adults.
Next, there's the plot (if you can call it that) about stealing 500lbs of caviar, or whatever. Along the way, Batgirl proves she's not so sharp when she believes she's convinced sniveling Egghead to turn on Olga, then lead her to the hideout. Yeah, that Batgirl actually bought Egghead's paper-thin, transparent act, and guess what happens to her (other than having her judgment called into serious question) once she arrives?
Yeah. Anyway, she's forced to dance, a Batfight finds some space in the episode and O'Hara acted like he was the unfortunate recipient of an alleyway lobotomy...by blindfolded surgeons.
Maybe the next episode will send things in another direction....
"Louie's Lethal Lilac Time"
With his variety show left as a pile of rubble in the previous TV season, Milton Berle was available to give Louie his all...which wasn't much. In yet another oddball scheme, the gangster is stealing ambergris, taken from whales to make perfume. Somehow, Bruce and Dick are taken as prisoners (to be held in exchange for a million dollars), with Louie trying to force "animal expert" Bruce Wayne to operate on animals for their scent pouches.
Honestly, there are easier ways to get into the perfume business. Ever heard of the endless, cheap factories making the stuff--including fake high end brands--across America's southern border?
Guess who is easily captured again? Yes--the one and only Batgirl.
The Bat-invention of the episode: Instant Unfolding Batcostumes activated by being submerged in warm water. That's right, full costumes including utility belts. At this point, the convenient inventions are more cartoon-level magic than the result of engineering.
Uh, were did Gordon and O'Hara get film footage from the Dynamic Duo's death traps? Who filmed it while Batman and Robin were fighting for their lives? Oh, well, that does not matter, since it served as obvious padding in an episode that could not have been more than a paragraph, instead of a full script.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Just caught a commercial for the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk coming to ME-TV. No word on schedule. It would be nice if it replaces one of the shows in the "Sci-Fi Saturday" block. Every series in that block need a long vacation.
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Ah...I'd always wanted to see that come to Me...and now I don't have it, though I can currently watch the series on Netflix (hope that doesn't change).
I couldn't find a promo on Me's site, but I did find one site that said it would be coming on Feb. 8...which is a Monday, so that would indicate a weekday slot. But they were running Superman on weekdays and Saturdays about a year ago. It'd be a shame to see them break up the Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman 50s/60s/70s grouping, though...especially with Dawn of Justice right around the corner.
Maybe we'll get a TIH Decades binge or two out of this....
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Batman: "The Ogg Couple": Egghead and Olga are back, for better or worse. I gather they were meant to appear in a 3-parter, but someone didn't want their storyline to last that long, so the third part was postponed. (I wonder if they'd changed their minds by the time of the Londinium 3-parter, or if they just thought that one worked better.) Maybe that's why the opening scene is a near-exact replay of the ones from before, with the boy scout and old lady watching the unseen Cossack band ride by.
Have we seen the Wayne living room set at all this season? Bruce and Dick always seem to be in the study, making Alfred's role as Batphone answerer rather redundant.
Samarkand is not a country, but is historically one of the great cities of Central Asia and is currently in the Samarqand Region of Uzbekistan. It's some distance east of the Black Sea. I guess it's a more logical connection to the Russophone "Bessarovians" than Genghis Khan was, though. And "Taras Bul Bul" is a play on the novel Taras Bulba, whose title character is a Cossack.
It's always great fun to watch and listen to Vincent Price, but Egghead is still poorly handled here, reduced to cowardly comic relief instead of the ingenious mastermind he started out as. And while it was great to see Yvonne Craig get a chance to dance, the climax didn't make much sense. How did Batgirl coming in through a different door improve her chances against the Cossacks? And it's frustrating that they went for a damsel-in-distress beat and left the actual capture of Egghead and Olga to happen off camera.
The preview of "The Funny Feline Felonies" (which we saw last week, of course) made no sense. It was clearly out of continuity with the next episode, since it claimed Catwoman and Joker were already together, rather than Catwoman "kidnapping" Joker upon his release from jail. One more reason why I hate these previews.
"Louie's Lethal Lilac Time": Man, this was awful. Milton Berle is still phoning in the part of Louie, and he's such an uninteresting villain -- a gangster obsessed with flowers and perfume? And the whole scent-gland thing was kind of icky and weird. And what was with the mini-clip show of the cops watching home movies of Batman and Robin's deathtrap escapes? Where the hell did they get that footage???? And what's with Barbara telling Alfred she "strongly suspected" Louie of the kidnapping when she was actually there when it happened? She seriously didn't tell her father that she'd witnessed the kidnapping?
And then they set up what looks like a Batgirl solo adventure, then totally squander it by having Louie take her down effortlessly and reduce her to damsel mode again -- something that happened far too often in the back half of the season. Really disappointing. Although it was nice to get some exposition about where her secret room came from, with a little help from Percy Helton. And the Bat-costumes in pill form, complete with utility belts, were a nice comic-booky touch.
And now the teaser for next week actually has the villainess responding to the narrator and addressing the audience. Plus it's a preview for what's probably the most sexist episode of the whole series. Brace yourselves, Bat-fans.
(Ooh, according to a promo, The Incredible Hulk is coming to MeTV soon! With a tagline saying "Dont Make Me Angry," of course.)
Wonder Woman: "The Girl with a Gift for Disaster": Another Alan Brennert script with a sci-fi concept, a "jinx" girl who can alter the laws of probability. Of course, she's named Murphy. Interesting cast, including a young James Sloyan and Hill Street Blues's Charles Haid. But I don't think it really comes together. Bonnie is too pathetic and hapless. And it's just so old-fashioned that all the female character needs to give her confidence is for a good-looking guy to tell her she's pretty. So much for feminism. It should've been Wonder Woman telling her she could take control of her own life and her own abilities.
Oh, and it was pretty stupid of Mark and Bob to use Bonnie as a jinx because of her known ability to short out technology, then blithely take her along with them while absconding in a truck with a prototype device they needed for that evening's heist. They should've tossed her out of the truck as soon as they were a safe distance from Wonder Woman. Sure, then she wouldn't have heard the crucial clue, but given that the IADC already knew the Declaration was a likely target, was it that hard to figure out he'd use the device to black out the city?
Have we seen the Wayne living room set at all this season? Bruce and Dick always seem to be in the study, making Alfred's role as Batphone answerer rather redundant.
Samarkand is not a country, but is historically one of the great cities of Central Asia and is currently in the Samarqand Region of Uzbekistan. It's some distance east of the Black Sea. I guess it's a more logical connection to the Russophone "Bessarovians" than Genghis Khan was, though. And "Taras Bul Bul" is a play on the novel Taras Bulba, whose title character is a Cossack.
It's always great fun to watch and listen to Vincent Price, but Egghead is still poorly handled here, reduced to cowardly comic relief instead of the ingenious mastermind he started out as. And while it was great to see Yvonne Craig get a chance to dance, the climax didn't make much sense. How did Batgirl coming in through a different door improve her chances against the Cossacks? And it's frustrating that they went for a damsel-in-distress beat and left the actual capture of Egghead and Olga to happen off camera.
The preview of "The Funny Feline Felonies" (which we saw last week, of course) made no sense. It was clearly out of continuity with the next episode, since it claimed Catwoman and Joker were already together, rather than Catwoman "kidnapping" Joker upon his release from jail. One more reason why I hate these previews.
"Louie's Lethal Lilac Time": Man, this was awful. Milton Berle is still phoning in the part of Louie, and he's such an uninteresting villain -- a gangster obsessed with flowers and perfume? And the whole scent-gland thing was kind of icky and weird. And what was with the mini-clip show of the cops watching home movies of Batman and Robin's deathtrap escapes? Where the hell did they get that footage???? And what's with Barbara telling Alfred she "strongly suspected" Louie of the kidnapping when she was actually there when it happened? She seriously didn't tell her father that she'd witnessed the kidnapping?
And then they set up what looks like a Batgirl solo adventure, then totally squander it by having Louie take her down effortlessly and reduce her to damsel mode again -- something that happened far too often in the back half of the season. Really disappointing. Although it was nice to get some exposition about where her secret room came from, with a little help from Percy Helton. And the Bat-costumes in pill form, complete with utility belts, were a nice comic-booky touch.
And now the teaser for next week actually has the villainess responding to the narrator and addressing the audience. Plus it's a preview for what's probably the most sexist episode of the whole series. Brace yourselves, Bat-fans.
(Ooh, according to a promo, The Incredible Hulk is coming to MeTV soon! With a tagline saying "Dont Make Me Angry," of course.)
Wonder Woman: "The Girl with a Gift for Disaster": Another Alan Brennert script with a sci-fi concept, a "jinx" girl who can alter the laws of probability. Of course, she's named Murphy. Interesting cast, including a young James Sloyan and Hill Street Blues's Charles Haid. But I don't think it really comes together. Bonnie is too pathetic and hapless. And it's just so old-fashioned that all the female character needs to give her confidence is for a good-looking guy to tell her she's pretty. So much for feminism. It should've been Wonder Woman telling her she could take control of her own life and her own abilities.
Oh, and it was pretty stupid of Mark and Bob to use Bonnie as a jinx because of her known ability to short out technology, then blithely take her along with them while absconding in a truck with a prototype device they needed for that evening's heist. They should've tossed her out of the truck as soon as they were a safe distance from Wonder Woman. Sure, then she wouldn't have heard the crucial clue, but given that the IADC already knew the Declaration was a likely target, was it that hard to figure out he'd use the device to black out the city?
Oh? What's the story behind that?
Heck, can you imagine the better (IMHO) Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, doing any of that? She'd be like Bruce Lee as Kato compared to this Batgirl, really kicking ass and taking names.
To be frank, Uhura was just as poorly realized on Star Trek as Babs Gordon/Batgirl was on Batman. Julia Baker was also not liked as a character by many black people, and there's an essay about Julia that debunks how groundbreaking a show it was. The real ground-breaker was Cicely Tyson as Jane Foster on East Side/West Side in 1963-1964, playing the capable assistant to George C. Scott, but one who had more to do helping him.
The strange thing about Donna Reed's character Donna Stone, was that she was quite strong-willed, smart and capable, even going so far as to teach her son how to box in one episode, and being the real head of the house (because Alex Stone was too busy as a doctor otherwise), yet her daughter's a flighty debutante? That's some degrading of progeny there.
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Helton played the building maintenance man, who was trying to get into her secret room to investigate a grinding noise the neighbors had been complaining about. She explained that the wall had been built to rotate by a previous tenant. She pressed a button that somehow instantly disguised her Batgirl changing room as an ordinary storage closet, then showed him around to allay his suspicions. (One wonders why she doesn't use that as her default setting when she's out of the apartment.)
If she can instantly disguise a room, I'd wonder why she needs a Batgirl Changing Room in the first place. Just flip the main apartment back and forth.
I would imagine it wouldn't be particularly safe to be in the middle of a room that was in the middle of some superfast mechanical transformation.
True! Well played, sir.
I thought I lost MeTV for a minute there. When I went to check the schedule at my Mother's house yesterday morning, only paid programming was on the schedule. But the channel itself seems to be running normally.
I'm happy to hear that Incredible Hulk is coming. That was a really good show (despite not being the Hulk), and Bill Bixby is great. I wonder if it will replace one of the currently running superhero shows or if it will replace Star Trek, making it a full night of superheroes.
I'm happy to hear that Incredible Hulk is coming. That was a really good show (despite not being the Hulk), and Bill Bixby is great. I wonder if it will replace one of the currently running superhero shows or if it will replace Star Trek, making it a full night of superheroes.
Star Trek is the sci-fi jewel in the crown--sort of the anchor of that programming block, so i suspect it would not be replaced. Too many superhero series leans in one direction, and that's not the model of Sci-fi Saturday Night. Remove TOS and all you have left of "real" sci-fi is Lost in Space & Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and frankly, they would not make up for the loss of TOS.
One of the superhero series should be replaced; each has been run from start to finish over and over again, so they need a vacation. I've always said Me-TV needs to rotate that block's programming to avoid becoming stale--much like their summer crime block (called Catch Me if You Can) breaks up the weekend western monotony with The Mod Squad, The Streets of San Francisco and Hawaii 5-0. Since the Sci-Fi Saturday block is only a few hours on a weekend, this leaves room to add more short-lived series that will not be exhausted in a couple of months, like Land of the Giants, Space: 1999, The Time Tunnel, U.F.O.,The Green Hornet, etc.
Why not have a Marvel 70s TV movie block during summer weekends (again, acknowledging the limited content) where the non-Hulk TV films (Doctor Strange, 2 Captain America films, the Amazing Spider-Man pilot and the movies made from two part episodes) are broadcast?
Variety would be nice.
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^In general, they've varied their blocks quarterly and from year to year more than you're describing. None of those Sunday shows are regularly recurring in that particular slot from year to year, and they weren't displacing Westerns as you suggest. Their Westerns block has been done on Saturday late morning/afternoon for some time, but not on Sundays. (They've also been running a modest block of Westerns on weekday afternoons for some time.) Their Sunday programming has never been dominated by Westerns as far as I can remember. A couple years ago, they were doing four-hour blocks of the same program or episodes of multiple shows with a thematic connection on Sunday afternoons.
And it all depends on what programs they have access to and think people will watch. There are competitor retro channels.
A couple years back they did have a Friday night slot dedicated to made-for-TV movies for a spell, which would have been perfect for something like those Marvel TV films. They aired the Wonder Woman pilots in that slot.
And it all depends on what programs they have access to and think people will watch. There are competitor retro channels.
A couple years back they did have a Friday night slot dedicated to made-for-TV movies for a spell, which would have been perfect for something like those Marvel TV films. They aired the Wonder Woman pilots in that slot.
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