Well! It's About Time. It's about time!
The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread
- Thread starter The Old Mixer
- Start date
Congrats, I guess. 
ETA:
The Avengers, "Castle De'ath" (British airdate: Oct. 30, 1965): A castle moat deep enough to sneak submarines into? That's utterly...oh, look, Emma's kicking butt in something skin tight. What was I saying?
ETA:
The Avengers, "Castle De'ath" (British airdate: Oct. 30, 1965): A castle moat deep enough to sneak submarines into? That's utterly...oh, look, Emma's kicking butt in something skin tight. What was I saying?
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Congrats, I guess.
Did I mention the sword fight in the harem costume? Submarines in a moat sounds pretty good. They just got more and more surreal as time went on. The ones I've got recorded aren't even up to the classic champagne opening yet. Can't wait till we get there.
The color episodes I've been watching in 50th anniversary sync (now by British airdate when I realized that the IMDb dates seemed to be a hodgepodge) use that intro starting at 0:37 (with the bigass logos I mentioned a bit upthread lasting until around 0:55)...the champagne part might have been cut for syndication, unless they added it mid-season. And as mentioned in the same post, COZI seems to be lopping the end credits off their shows entirely...at least, they do/did for The Avengers and Adam-12 that I know of.
The b&w episodes I've been watching from the '65-'66 season are on the catch-up sidelist. Since I switched to watching by British airdate, that's currently mostly a binge of that season of Avengers, with some recently recorded Honey West coming in toward the end of the season. I think the harem outfit episode is the last one of that season, so I won't be getting to it for a bit.
The b&w episodes I've been watching from the '65-'66 season are on the catch-up sidelist. Since I switched to watching by British airdate, that's currently mostly a binge of that season of Avengers, with some recently recorded Honey West coming in toward the end of the season. I think the harem outfit episode is the last one of that season, so I won't be getting to it for a bit.
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Yes, she was working for quite some time, although this is little more than a background performer.
Ah yes, the then-long awaited, first live action super hero crossover, which failed (in ABC's eyes) to give Dozier his chance to bring TGH back for an expanded 2nd year.
Later, I will post one of the ways the Dozier series were deliberately linked together / promoted in the print media of the period.
Probably at some point, but it was there when I started watching back in the 60s. Those were the first episodes I ever saw. I wonder if they even imported the black-and-white ones. At the time, network TV was playing up the newness of color TV, but channel 56 was about 99% black-and-white.
It's called "Honey For The Prince."
Indications are that Emma's first, b&w season (4) aired in the U.S. in the Spring/Summer of the '65-'66 season, though probably not in its entirety. That's where most of the IMDb dates lead, but they occasionally slip in a British airdate, leading to awkward instances of two episodes from different parts of the season the same week...possibly because one was an episode that didn't get aired in America. I read that the increase in production values that season was specifically so that America would air the show.
That's the one. I'm also looking forward to the episode that inspired the creation of the X-Men's Hellfire Club, "A Touch of Brimstone."
What's your opinion of the Tara King season? I was planning to record those and work them in when they come up, since they would have aired in America at the time. Haven't seen any of them, though.
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That would explain the "In Color" title card in the champagne opening, so common on network TV in those days. I didn't see it when it was on the network-- too early for me-- but only when it made it to UHF-- this would have been in 1969, possibly 1968.
That's a good one. I didn't see it for the first time until the 80s. I'm pretty sure I read that it wasn't included in the original syndication package because it was too risque for TV, even in the 60s.
I remember liking Tara. They did show those episodes on Channel 56 back in the day, so I was very young. I don't remember any specifics at this point and it's been many a year since I've seen them. I mainly remember the brick in her purse. Thwack!
As promised, here is one of the many ways Batman & TGH's characters and actors were promoted together--
Teen Book (Feb. 1967) was one in a long line of short lived media magazines published in the 1960s. Some simply published common press releases circulated by studios, while some featured interviews exclusive to the magazine. In this case, the article covers the off-screen friendship of West and Williams, the backgrounds of Ward & Lee, and much of what one would expect in an article timed to capitalize on the forthcoming crossover episodes (hence the "Big Fight" on the cover). Just a sample of how promotion meant the Dozier series were never far apart in the minds of viewers.
Interesting...a teen magazine that doesn't seem to have been aimed purely at the female audience, as the ones my sister bought in the '70s had been.
Too risque for American TV, anyway.
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OK, gonna try something new this week and see if it sticks. Because nobody demanded it...
This Week's 50th Anniversary Viewings
50 years ago this past week.
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Star Trek
"This Side of Paradise"
Originally aired March 2, 1967
Stardate 3417.3
See my review here.MeTV said:
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The Green Hornet
"Hornet Save Thyself"
Originally aired March 3, 1967
H&I could use a proofreader.H&I said:
Generally an interesting premise, putting Britt in a situation where he has to go on the run and clear his name as the Hornet. It's a good thing he already had a secret ID to fall back on!
The specific circumstances of the setup were a bit weak, though. First, Roger Korby was obviously the villain the second we saw him. In any case, you'd think he'd be under suspicion or at least considered negligent for the fact that he gave somebody a loaded gun as a gift without so much as a warning. And a major plot point in the episode is that Britt can't prove that the gun had a clip in it. If the shot fired was from a round in the chamber, how was Britt supposed to know that it was there?
It's pretty amateurish when Britt doesn't even notice the police pulling up outside the cleaner's. And the police are equally amateurish not leaving somebody at the door to block his escape the same way that he came in.
And maybe they should have said that Casey has a photographic memory, with the plot hinging on her visually remembering every detail of the incident.
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The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Matterhorn Affair"
Originally aired March 3, 1967
Open Channel Dull.H&I said:
I've had a hard time generating any enthusiasm for this show. It has its charms, but so far it strikes me very much as a "seen one, seen them all" type of show.
This particular episode suffers from the main guest characters including a mildly annoying and otherwise uninteresting victim, his annoying sister, and an even more annoying unibrowed THRUSH henchman. They could have done something a bit more entertaining if Marvin had been portrayed as a competent used car salesman instead of an incompetent one.
It took me a bit to recognize Marvin's boss as Otis from Mayberry.
If Quasimoto (as most of the actors pronounced it) is so secret that Waverly couldn't tell Solo and Kuryakin about it, why is everyone blabbing about it for the rest of the episode?
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The Saint
"The Counterfeit Countess"
Originally aired March 3, 1967 (UK)
IMDb said:
I liked it better in the black and white seasons when Simon would blatantly break the fourth wall by delivering his opening monologue directly to the audience, rather than as a voiceover.
This story puts Simon straight in the midst of a shady operation, rather than having him getting involved in a guest character's troubles semi-anthology style as is usually the case in my experience. The opening involves a fakey plane crash followed by fakier smoke. It has the novelty of Simon being identified from a distance, proving that he doesn't have to hear his name being spoken for the halo to appear.
Something I've started to notice is that the show sometimes made use of recurring law enforcement types as regular nemeses of Templar...in this case, Scotland Yard Inspector Teal.
If it hadn't already been established by this point in the series, we learn that Simon's ill-gotten skills include knowing how to test counterfeit bank notes (as they're known on that side of the pond).
The titular character of the episode is played up as a mystery to the audience; it turns out she's the twin of a character who's already been interacting with Templar for a good portion of the episode. The gimmick comes off as cheap here and not worth the attention that it draws to itself, as the two characters could just as easily have been played by different actresses for all the story cared.
One of the other bad guys has a white Persian cat, if that's not too on-the-nose.
The climax involves Simon narrowly escaping from a sabotaged car that proceeds to fall down a cliff...and, miraculously for a vehicle on television, doesn't blow up! Simon sure seems to get back to the chateau he'd been driving away from quickly and effortlessly enough, though.
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Mission: Impossible
"Action!"
Originally aired March 4, 1967
Wiki said:
A bit too much specific detail in there for a capsule review, but an interesting trivia point nonetheless.
"This tape recording will decompose immediately. Good luck."
Cinammon also doesn't go through the photos, we just get a shot of them on the table, including her own...and one special guest photo that's thrown on the table by an unseen hand.
Rollin impersonates somebody he didn't resemble and without a mask. (The actor playing the filmmaker is actually much more of a similar type to Landau.)
There's that fake-language signage that I'd read about, and it's even worse than I thought: RESTRIK FUMEN PROHIB
Rollin needs a better poker face...he spends way too much time in this episode reacting to stuff out of his assumed character and looking directly at stuff that he shouldn't be drawing attention to.
If they're trying to pass this faked film off as actual captured newsreel footage, it seems like somebody other than the filmmaker should be showing the film to the press...wouldn't his involvement with it draw suspicion?
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The Avengers
"The Hidden Tiger"
Originally aired March 4, 1967 (UK)
Steed Hunts a Big CatWiki said:
Emma Is Badly Scratched
The first half of this episode plays far too similarly to "The Winged Avenger," which was just two episodes ago by British airdates. A series of murders are committed by a mysterious clawed attacker, with the camera showing the assailant's POV. I think the two episodes even used the same music cue during the attacks, but I don't have the previous one on my DVR anymore.
It picks up a bit in the second half when the true nature of the threat proves to be different from that in the prior episode. It might have worked better as a play on expectations for people who'd seen the previous story, if only the episodes were a wee bit further apart, and if they hadn't spent so much time repetitively teasing the attacks in the same manner as before.
But we get this saucy bit when Steed is going undercover at a philanthropic society dedicated to cats, which got a great LOL out of me:
Emma also does a sexily convincing purr in response to a later line of Steed's...and still later, gets in a winky-nudgy reference to "pussies galore."
They really missed a golden opportunity to put Rigg in a kitty cat costume, though.
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Although you had a large number of female-centric teen magazines in the 60s, at least they were not so one-sided that they would avoid covering popular media having nothing to do with a "crush of the week." as you would see in the 70s.
Well, yeah.
It probably comes down to Solo, Kuryakin, and Waverly being so cool.
Would have been funny if she didn't choose herself. "See you, guys. You're on your own."
There wasn't a sign that said "Time Safari Inc.," by any chance, was there?
I had forgotten about the subtitles that they used during that era. The first color episode popped up on the DVR yesterday (a time travel story that, disappointingly, turned out to be a fraud), complete with "Mrs Peel, we're needed" and the champagne opening, hold the champagne. And I set the DVR to record the first Tara King episode. It may very well be only the second time I'll have ever seen it.
^ That's why I thought to ask about Tara. Those episodes aren't scheduled to come up in my viewing until Fall of 2018, but they'll start filling space on my DVR tomorrow night.
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50 years ago for the new week (also updated in my signature for the duration).
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ETA: Over on the catch-up sidelist, watching The Avengers, "Murder Market," from late '65...there's Patrick Cargill, the very famous superintendent from Help! again...for the first time on this series, chronologically speaking.
Something about The Avengers that I'm finding enjoyable...in addition to her general attractiveness, Diana Rigg demonstrates a particular talent for face-acting...some of her expressions/reactions are priceless.
I find Waverly's delivery a little awkward, but I've come to enjoy the apparent hostility/rivalry between Solo and Kuryakin, which I've gleaned may have owed to friction between the actors themselves.
Had to look that one up.There wasn't a sign that said "Time Safari Inc.," by any chance, was there?
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50 years ago for the new week (also updated in my signature for the duration).
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ETA: Over on the catch-up sidelist, watching The Avengers, "Murder Market," from late '65...there's Patrick Cargill, the very famous superintendent from Help! again...for the first time on this series, chronologically speaking.
Something about The Avengers that I'm finding enjoyable...in addition to her general attractiveness, Diana Rigg demonstrates a particular talent for face-acting...some of her expressions/reactions are priceless.
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Well, that's Leo G Carroll's standard delivery. But he is, and was, a beloved character actor.
Heh. There was a nice adaptation done on Ray Bradbury Theater some years ago. It might be available on YouTube-- it was at one time. But it's one of the all-time classic genre short stories, up there with "Nightfall" and "The Star."
Oh, yeah, that's what made her a classic. She oozes personality and sparkles with mischief.
Columbo: "Uneasy Lies the Crown": This Stephen Bochco-penned episode is a bit better than I remember -- not brilliant, but a perfectly serviceable installment. It's a nice touch that the real killer is trying to direct Columbo's suspicions toward his wife, but Columbo doesn't fall for it. It's a little unclear when the lieutenant first begins to suspect the dentist, though. Sometimes the show seems to assume he just intuitively knows who's guilty, which is a valid idea -- that he's good at reading people -- as long as it isn't taken too far.
James Read is okay but unmemorable as the killer. I was more struck by the presence of Jo Anderson as his troubled wife. Anderson was the actress who replaced Linda Hamilton as the lead in CBS's Beauty and the Beast in its third season, and though the show's fandom resented the change, I found Anderson enormously more appealing than Hamilton. She's not quite as interesting here, with a much more fragile and passive character to play, but she's still got a soulful and appealing quality, and really lovely coppery hair.
They also indulged themselves a bit by throwing in a celebrity poker game with a number of actors and a baseball player portraying themselves. The only ones I recognized, though, were Nancy Walker and Dick Sargent. Columbo said he recognized Walker from "the Rock Hudson show," which is an in-joke, since that show was McMillan and Wife, one of Columbo's partners in the NBC Mystery Movie. I don't think those shows ever crossed over, otherwise we'd have a continuity problem.
I think the ending was kind of weak, falling back on the cliche of the detective tricking the culprit into confessing by claiming to use a formula that changes color in the presence of whatever illicit thing the culprit handled. Heck, they did that one in a M*A*S*H episode! For that matter, he didn't even really confess, just said "All right, don't bother to continue," which is rather ambiguous. I'd think a defense attorney could knock that down rather easily, even if he made a fuller confession afterward off camera. Although you could say the same about a lot of mystery-show resolutions.
James Read is okay but unmemorable as the killer. I was more struck by the presence of Jo Anderson as his troubled wife. Anderson was the actress who replaced Linda Hamilton as the lead in CBS's Beauty and the Beast in its third season, and though the show's fandom resented the change, I found Anderson enormously more appealing than Hamilton. She's not quite as interesting here, with a much more fragile and passive character to play, but she's still got a soulful and appealing quality, and really lovely coppery hair.
They also indulged themselves a bit by throwing in a celebrity poker game with a number of actors and a baseball player portraying themselves. The only ones I recognized, though, were Nancy Walker and Dick Sargent. Columbo said he recognized Walker from "the Rock Hudson show," which is an in-joke, since that show was McMillan and Wife, one of Columbo's partners in the NBC Mystery Movie. I don't think those shows ever crossed over, otherwise we'd have a continuity problem.
I think the ending was kind of weak, falling back on the cliche of the detective tricking the culprit into confessing by claiming to use a formula that changes color in the presence of whatever illicit thing the culprit handled. Heck, they did that one in a M*A*S*H episode! For that matter, he didn't even really confess, just said "All right, don't bother to continue," which is rather ambiguous. I'd think a defense attorney could knock that down rather easily, even if he made a fuller confession afterward off camera. Although you could say the same about a lot of mystery-show resolutions.
Had a shorter list this week, so it's already time for...
This Week's 50th Anniversary Viewings
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Star Trek
"The Devil in the Dark"
Originally aired March 9, 1967
Stardate 3196.1
See my review here.
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The Green Hornet
"Invasion from Outer Space: Part I"
Originally aired March 10, 1967
And so we come to the beginning of an ignominious end for The Green Hornet....The start of the episode, with the reports coming in via that nice console hi-fi, seems to channel the famous War of the Worlds broadcast. The premise might have worked better in Hornet's more grounded and noirish setting if they'd stayed with something more like that.
Instead, Reid gets a visit from the guest cast of a Lost in Space episode. At least the story didn't dwell on the conceit of potentially fooling the audience for long...and yet they still milked this idea for a two-parter...and they still seemed to think it was a good idea a year later, when Batman did a fake alien invasion story late in its final season.
But Casey gets ample opportunity to show her stuff as a member of Team Hornet...and we get not one but two sign o' the times references to a then-anticipated moment in history:
The preview of the next episode twice refers to the conclusion as a "final episode". The first time it seems to be in context of the two-parter, but the second time there's no such qualification.
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The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Hot Number Affair"
Originally aired March 10, 1967
Open Channel DVR Mishap. I'm not sure why I don't have this one, and H&I won't be coming back around to it for awhile...so, since I've got tons of other stuff to watch, onward for now.
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The Avengers
"The Correct Way to Kill"
Originally aired March 11, 1967 (UK)
Steed Changes Partners
Emma Joins the Enemy
This episode marks a return appearance by Michael Gough...though here he looks less like an Alfred and more like a 1970s+ Jim Gordon. And Steed's temporary Russian partner is played by Anna Quayle...who, it turns out, was also in:
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No "new" episodes of The Saint or Mission: Impossible this week in 1967, so that's all for now.
This Week's 50th Anniversary Viewings
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Star Trek
"The Devil in the Dark"
Originally aired March 9, 1967
Stardate 3196.1
MeTV said:
See my review here.
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The Green Hornet
"Invasion from Outer Space: Part I"
Originally aired March 10, 1967
H&I really needs to get a better writer for these descriptions...particularly as they use the same one for Part II.H&I said:
And so we come to the beginning of an ignominious end for The Green Hornet....The start of the episode, with the reports coming in via that nice console hi-fi, seems to channel the famous War of the Worlds broadcast. The premise might have worked better in Hornet's more grounded and noirish setting if they'd stayed with something more like that.
Instead, Reid gets a visit from the guest cast of a Lost in Space episode. At least the story didn't dwell on the conceit of potentially fooling the audience for long...and yet they still milked this idea for a two-parter...and they still seemed to think it was a good idea a year later, when Batman did a fake alien invasion story late in its final season.
But Casey gets ample opportunity to show her stuff as a member of Team Hornet...and we get not one but two sign o' the times references to a then-anticipated moment in history:
"You'll soon be landing people on your moon."
"We're going to land an astronaut on the moon."
"We're going to land an astronaut on the moon."
The preview of the next episode twice refers to the conclusion as a "final episode". The first time it seems to be in context of the two-parter, but the second time there's no such qualification.
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The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Hot Number Affair"
Originally aired March 10, 1967
Yeah, it just ends there. Sheesh. Maybe IMDb can get to the point....H&I said:
Open Channel DVR Mishap. I'm not sure why I don't have this one, and H&I won't be coming back around to it for awhile...so, since I've got tons of other stuff to watch, onward for now.
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The Avengers
"The Correct Way to Kill"
Originally aired March 11, 1967 (UK)
(A British chap wrote that, can't you tell?)Wiki said:
Steed Changes Partners
Emma Joins the Enemy
Somebody's killing agents--There's one we haven't seen before! The real gimmick here, in addition to the swapping of partners with enemy agents, is that the killers all dress like Steed...a situation that he takes advantage of in order to infiltrate this oddball society (There's another one!) of bowler hat- and umbrella-sporting gentleman assassins.John Steed said:
This episode marks a return appearance by Michael Gough...though here he looks less like an Alfred and more like a 1970s+ Jim Gordon. And Steed's temporary Russian partner is played by Anna Quayle...who, it turns out, was also in:
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No "new" episodes of The Saint or Mission: Impossible this week in 1967, so that's all for now.
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The black-and-white Emma Peel episodes definitely aired in the U.S. back then. I know because that's when I first saw them -- and fell totally in love with Diana Rigg.
(Didn't everybody?) AFAIK that's true. The first three seasons of The Avengers were videotaped and done pretty much like live TV (complete with the occasional flub). The show's producers began using film and upped the production values with a specific eye to the American market.
The "In Color" bumpers were added by the ABC network (the U.S. one, that is). Each color show on that network had its own individual "In Color" intro.
Your feelings about Sonny & Cher will determine how much you like this one.
This cannot be allowed to stand!
As far as I know.The black-and-white Emma Peel episodes definitely aired in the U.S. back then. I know because that's when I first saw them -- and fell totally in love with Diana Rigg.
They remind me a lot of Dark Shadows.
Ah, of course. I probably should have guessed that.