Loved this one. Especially the Dracula segment.
Sci-Fi TV Shows that you're pretty sure only you watched.
- Thread starter Dale Sams
- Start date
Loved this one. Especially the Dracula segment.
Found it! It was called Exo-Man:
http://www.superheroeslives.com/originals/exo-man_(1977).htm
Here's an obscure one: Once a Hero. It was Ira Steven Behr's first SF series, and it ran for all of three weeks back in 1987. Its premise was that fictional characters really existed in some sort of alternate reality, and it focused on a superhero, Captain Justice, who crossed over into our world and found that reality was a lot more complicated and morally ambiguous than his comic-book reality. Robert Forster played a fictional Sam Spade type who also crossed over and was sort of his mentor/gadfly. It sounds like a comedy premise, but it was actually a pretty thoughtful and intelligent drama -- which is probably why it failed, because audiences expected one thing and got something very different.
The tragedy is, the fourth episode would've guest-starred Adam West as an actor who'd played Captain Justice on TV and was suing the real CJ for stealing his act. It was previewed at the end of episode 3, but then the show was yanked and the episode was never shown. I dearly wish somebody would unearth it and put it on YouTube or something.
I loved John Doe. The producers were promised enough time to wrap up the show if it were facing cancellation, but they never got a heads up and it was cancelled anyway. Fortunately you can find some answers to the show's questions if you look around.
Pretty sure a couple of you have seen "Being Erica", but its still worth a mention. 
Here's an obscure one that I'm guessing very few people have seen: PBS shot a pilot for a live-action kid's show, CONAN THE LIBRARIAN, in which Conan was magically transported to modern times and got a job working as an assistant librarian at a community library. ("I see! Books are the magic of this strange new world. I must learn about books!")
Brian Thompson played Conan and Tyne Daly (!) played his boss, the head librarian. I was going to edit the book tie-in, but, alas, PBS passed on the show. I have no idea if it ever actually aired, but a VHS copy of the pilot was floating around the Tor offices for years . . . .
Brian Thompson played Conan and Tyne Daly (!) played his boss, the head librarian. I was going to edit the book tie-in, but, alas, PBS passed on the show. I have no idea if it ever actually aired, but a VHS copy of the pilot was floating around the Tor offices for years . . . .
One of my favorite shows of all time.Pretty sure a couple of you have seen "Being Erica", but its still worth a mention.
Just got all four seasons on DVD.
^Was that before or after the scene from Weird Al's UHF?
"Don't you know the duodecimal system?!?" CHOP!
You mean the Dewey Decimal System, right? If we're talking about libraries?
^Was that before or after the scene from Weird Al's UHF?
"Don't you know the duodecimal system?!?" CHOP!
This would have been around 1991. I've never seen UHF. I take it they did the same joke?
Best scene in the PBS pilot: a library patron asks Conan where he can find Little Women. Conan's response?
"Tis said that in the fleshpots of fabled Shadizar there are Zamoran wenches no more than three feet tall . . . ."
Or so I recall.
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^Was that before or after the scene from Weird Al's UHF?
"Don't you know the duodecimal system?!?" CHOP!
You mean the Dewey Decimal System, right? If we're talking about libraries?
Yeah, had a brainfart and couldn't remember how it was spelled, So I let spellcheck take a crack at it.
You poor, deprived human being. Go Now! Watch and be amazed!
^Spellcheck is evil.
After all these pages, I'm still convinced I'm the only one who has seen Marine Boy.
Alright, here's an obscure one for you lot. Captain Star. A Canadian/British production that aired 13 episodes back in 1997-1998. I used to watch that show all the time on Teletoon.
7 Days? Only saw an episode here or there and only because I was waiting for Voyager. It was low-rated, though CW's best ratings are lower than its worst ratings though. For a series on 3 seasons as a lead-in to the network's flagship show, one would think there would have been more mentions of it over the years. I too am curious about people who actually regularly watched it. I wondered if a lot of them weren't online at the time, explaining the lack of chatter?
The Sentinel? Another series tied to Voyager. Mildly interesting, but not enough to get into. Saw many episodes as a lead-in to Voyager. Saw both parts of "Sentinel Too" (Jeri Ryan as a rival Sentinel). I got the ratings for a crapton of UPN & WB shows and sci-fi shows from that time. I should eventually make a site and post them.
BTW, Voyager's companion series on the schedule:
95: Platypus Man & Pig Sty (2 sitcoms)
95-96: Nowhere Man
96-98: The Sentinel
98-01: 7 Days (for a few weeks it was Special Unit 2)
Enterprise had less remarkable pairings:
01-02: Special Unit 2
02-03: Twilight Zone (and a crappy one at that)
03-04: Jake 2.0, then filler
04-05: reruns of America's Next Top Model
The Amazing Spider-Man? Saw some episodes on Sci-Fi Channel. It's hilariously bad, but still watchable. Watched "The Captive Tower" & "Night of the Clones" a few months ago. It takes him forever to climb buildings, he's easy to get the one up on... heh, he's got super powers, but not exactly a superhero physique.
John Doe was on Fox at the same time as Firefly and got much better ratings than it. Still not enough to not get cancelled though. Fastlane was on at that same time too.
The Sentinel? Another series tied to Voyager. Mildly interesting, but not enough to get into. Saw many episodes as a lead-in to Voyager. Saw both parts of "Sentinel Too" (Jeri Ryan as a rival Sentinel). I got the ratings for a crapton of UPN & WB shows and sci-fi shows from that time. I should eventually make a site and post them.
BTW, Voyager's companion series on the schedule:
95: Platypus Man & Pig Sty (2 sitcoms)
95-96: Nowhere Man
96-98: The Sentinel
98-01: 7 Days (for a few weeks it was Special Unit 2)
Enterprise had less remarkable pairings:
01-02: Special Unit 2
02-03: Twilight Zone (and a crappy one at that)
03-04: Jake 2.0, then filler
04-05: reruns of America's Next Top Model
The Amazing Spider-Man? Saw some episodes on Sci-Fi Channel. It's hilariously bad, but still watchable. Watched "The Captive Tower" & "Night of the Clones" a few months ago. It takes him forever to climb buildings, he's easy to get the one up on... heh, he's got super powers, but not exactly a superhero physique.
John Doe was on Fox at the same time as Firefly and got much better ratings than it. Still not enough to not get cancelled though. Fastlane was on at that same time too.
^Define "superhero physique," though. Spider-Man isn't supposed to be some big muscleman. Some artists have defaulted to that, but originally he was designed to be light and wiry, built like an acrobat.
The funny thing about the climbing scenes in the '70s Spider-Man is how sometimes they didn't even bother trying to hide the winch at the top of the building. I guess they couldn't for safety reasons. But in the near-contemporaneous Japanese live-action Spider-Man series, they sometimes used a sort of split-screen or matte effect to solve the problem, though it wasn't seamless enough to avoid creating new problems.
The funny thing about the climbing scenes in the '70s Spider-Man is how sometimes they didn't even bother trying to hide the winch at the top of the building. I guess they couldn't for safety reasons. But in the near-contemporaneous Japanese live-action Spider-Man series, they sometimes used a sort of split-screen or matte effect to solve the problem, though it wasn't seamless enough to avoid creating new problems.
How about Space Patrol? Probably unknown in the US, but a cult classic overseas. There's only seven episodes. A friend of mine in Germany sent them to me, but they're all in German. They look fantastic, though.
Thriller was a little before my time, but I did see Starlost in first run.
I meant to comment on that, too. I loved Cliffhangers (not surprising, since I love the old serials). I wish somebody would try the idea again. The original only failed because it was on NBC, and pretty much everything failed on NBC in those days.
And the mommies complained about Katy Perry.
Raumpatrouille, despite the cheap sets (plastic-beakers n the ceiling and the infamous clothes-iron on the engine control panel) IS a fantastic series with an enormous following; they even cut up the old (black and white!) episodes and made an entire feature-film that ran in theatres in 2003!!! out of it
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it has a greater following in Germany than even Star Trek
When I was an itty-bitty kid I watched it with my grandma
[I'm relatively sure you could find English subtitles somewhere on-line.]
For that matter, what about Space Patrol? The British one, that is.
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