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Operation: Annihilate Question

John Williams was really wasted on a lot of television work in the '60s, wasn't he?

I'd hardly call it a waste. Williams's scores for the first season of Lost in Space are my favorite works of his to this day.

Oh, I love his work on Lost in Space. It's just a shame some of his best television scoring ended up on shows that were so terrible. (I just read that he scored The Tammy Grimes Show of all things, a notorious four week flop; I suspect his scoring was impeccable for it as well).

Then again, I suppose many film and television composers have done fine work on mediocre projects (Goldsmith practically made a career of it).
 
I'll bet they could have gotten Sally Kellerman (Dr. Dehner) as third lead, at that point in her career. She would have been great, and certainly had the presence needed for an authority figure.

[Yeah, I know, but a slight re-edit of WNM's final scene on the bridge would fix that. Simply edit the dialog and add a Captain's Log voice over to imply that she's below decks recuperating nicely. And then, just as physist Sulu became helmsman, Dehner could have become Chief Medical Officer.]
Wasn't Dehner a psychiatrist? Great career and excellent gender representation in terms of the episode, but not quite a suitable branch of medicine for a CMO, I would think.
 
Wasn't Dehner a psychiatrist? Great career and excellent gender representation in terms of the episode, but not quite a suitable branch of medicine for a CMO, I would think.

It's television. I don't think they'd have to be quite so strict about which specialty she was "really" suited for. Especially since, as you know, psychiatrists are in fact medical doctors.

I'm just saying, an attractive woman doctor (in place of McCoy) could have had a much more interesting triangular relationship with Kirk and Spock. No sex, but always the theoretical possibility, the "will they or won't they" that viewers love. [Imagine The X-Files or Moonlighting with two dudes instead of a man and a woman. Something is lost.]
 
I don't think they'd have to be quite so strict about which specialty she was "really" suited for. Especially since, as you know, psychiatrists are in fact medical doctors.

In "Court Martial", McCoy's field of specialization was also said to be "space psychology"... (Which sort of makes it doubly odd that he was so unwilling to give medical evidence against either Kirk or Decker when the two skippers showed clear signs of flipping.)

Timo Saloniemi
 
I've never seen The Time Tunnel. Any good?

Typical Irwin Allen brainless adventure.

John Williams was really wasted on a lot of television work in the '60s, wasn't he?

Wasted?

Hardly. His scores for the already mentioned Lost in Space was bold and atmospheric--the same as the cues composed for Land of the Giants. Both series benefited to a great degree from his understanding of Allen's larger than life concepts, but it was all original--no repeating ideas used on other series.

I would argue that Williams was at his most original in this period--as opposed to his post-Star Wars work, where he often produced sound-alike variations of his big main titles over and over again with few exceptions, such as the scores for The Empire Strikes Back or Dracula.
 
From Magnus Robot Fighter #3 (great comic book by the way!)

magnus03-2.jpg
 
Wasted?

Hardly. His scores for the already mentioned Lost in Space was bold and atmospheric--the same as the cues composed for Land of the Giants. Both series benefited to a great degree from his understanding of Allen's larger than life concepts, but it was all original--no repeating ideas used on other series.

I would argue that Williams was at his most original in this period--as opposed to his post-Star Wars work, where he often produced sound-alike variations of his big main titles over and over again with few exceptions, such as the scores for The Empire Strikes Back or Dracula.

Like several guys here, I have all the Lost in Space CDs (three GNP volumes and the 2-disc set from LLL), and I would never part with them. For those of us who can appreciate it, LIS music is a lifelong treasure-- like TOS music itself.
 
Now that I finally have a phone with a working music player, I recently put together a playlist of all my season 1 Lost in Space scores in episode order, although I haven't yet had a chance to listen through the whole thing (I keep getting interrupted). I'm tempted for completeness's sake to get the soundtracks for the Bernard Herrmann film scores that were used as stock music in several first-season episodes and incorporate the relevant cues into my playlist.
 
Mission: Impossible ('65) is a good example.

'66, actually -- it premiered just nine days after Star Trek did.


I haven't seen them, but it would appear Ironside ('67), The Big Valley ('65), The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. ('66) all had strong female characters as part of their primary casts.
I haven't seen them either, but I've read that the titular girl from UNCLE wasn't really allowed to be as strong as contemporaries like Emma Peel and 99 -- she generally stayed out of fights and depended on her male partner to do all the heroics and rescuing. Or so I gather.

I'm rewatching Girl off and on lately, and yes, April Dancer was too often in distress and rescued by Mark. It was the other way around occasionally, though. But she was never the timid, screaming damsel in distress; she always expressed confidence.

Big Valley was headed by Barbara Stanwick. She was an incredibly powerful presence, and a very strong character.

Ironside? I've watched some of season 1 recently, Barbara Anderson is pretty much an equal member of the team. She gets to tell off the boss once in a while. Bur I recall she was replaced in alter seasons, and I don't remember that actress at all.
 
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