The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

[Farscape One]

I used to always watch CLASSIC CONCENTRATION and PRESS YOUR LUCK as a kid. Loved those game shows.

I wish they reaired CLASSIC CONCENTRATION like used to air PRESS YOUR LUCK on GSN.

 

[Christopher]

That reminds me, I should point out for those who aren't familiar with the show that this is an educated, well-spoken version of Tarzan, so no pidgin English, he talks in complete sentences.

Which is the way it's supposed to be. The novel character was extremely intelligent and well-educated, able to fit into the life of a nobleman as well as that of a jungle "savage." That's why he was called Lord of the Jungle. (The recent The Legend of Tarzan movie with Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie captured that very well.)

 

[RJDiogenes]

I used to always watch CLASSIC CONCENTRATION and PRESS YOUR LUCK as a kid. Loved those game shows.

I wish they reaired CLASSIC CONCENTRATION like used to air PRESS YOUR LUCK on GSN.

The only game show I used to watch when I was a kid was Beat The Clock. I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of those episodes again.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I watched plenty of game shows as a kid, but the classic game show channel that I have (Buzzr) hasn't caught my interest. Actually, my default TV setting on weekends lately when I'm not watching something that I DVR'ed has been the Music Choice Solid Gold Oldies channel. They lump the '50s and '60s together, but I'll take it.

They should have done an episode that was set back at the base. "There's Reed and Malloy trying to take another break. Give them one of those domestic disputes that are backing up."

Typical TV of the era...you never hear them call in a Code 8.

_______

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Sort of Do-It-Yourself Dreadful Affair"
Originally aired September 23, 1966

Solo is attacked by a cyborg (a mostly electronic being with some human organs) while on a mission. Later, it's discovered that a Thrush front company is seeking a $1 billion loan. Eventually, Solo and Kuryakin uncover a plot to mass produce cyborgs.

Whoever wrote that went through the trouble of using the term "cyborg" only to explain what it means, but the episode itself never uses the term. Although described as partly human, the "artificial humans" are treated more like androids, with many identical copies of the same model. Creator Dr. Pertwee says he used a dead woman's face for his base model.

In the climax, shots with multiple copies of the model in them have the lead artificial human played by the main actress in the role, while the rest are obviously wearing masks.

Waverly and Kuryakin both act so smug in their disbelief of Solo's story about his first encounter with the artificial human that when they discovered he was telling the truth, I wanted him to rub it in their faces.

Solo's manbag with the little wired charges for blowing locks is kind of cool.

By coincidence, this is the first of Jeannine Riley's two appearances on the show, and I'll be covering the second in this weekend's 50th Anniversary post.

I've noticed that Solo often gets ragged on for having a reputation as a womanizer on the show. For once, the plot gives us some show rather than tell in that department, with a scene in which Solo woos a THRUSH agent over an open channel while Sharyn Hillyer's Miss Townsend reacts to the situation back at HQ.

Marching, marching, marching...sweeping everything before them...taking a country in twenty-nine days....An army so vast, it would blacken the land with its marching, marching, marching...!

This rant by the episode's main THRUSH baddie was so distinctly Hitlerian that I thought it might have been a deliberate reference...especially with that specific figure of 29 days...but a little googling didn't turn up a match. Poland was taken in just over a month.

Solo and Kuryakin are so often quickly identified as UNCLE agents that I have to wonder in situations like this, when Solo is capable of maintaining a cover for most of the episode using his real name. Granted, in those days THRUSH agents couldn't just look him up quickly in a database, but by this point in the series Solo and Kuryakin would have smashed at least 60 major THRUSH operations...you'd think those in charge of the organization would have gotten around to distributing a high-priority dossier or something.

 

[Christopher]

Solo and Kuryakin are so often quickly identified as UNCLE agents that I have to wonder in situations like this, when Solo is capable of maintaining a cover for most of the episode using his real name. Granted, in those days THRUSH agents couldn't just look him up quickly in a database, but by this point in the series Solo and Kuryakin would have smashed at least 60 major THRUSH operations...you'd think those in charge of the organization would have gotten around to sending around a high-priority dossier or something.

The show was always kind of ambiguous about whether UNCLE was a secret organization or not. At least in early episodes, Solo and Illya often introduced themselves openly to civilians as UNCLE agents, and it seemed to be common knowledge what UNCLE was, an international peacekeeping and law-enforcement organization. (A United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, even.) There was even one episode where Solo recruited the innocent-of-the-week while she was throwing a party and they talked openly about the mission in front of her guests. But at the same time, the show used spy tropes like a secret headquarters and disguised radios (initially hidden in cigarette cases, before they miniaturized them to ballpoint-pen size in season 2). And later on, by sometime in season 2, there were stories where civilians had no idea what UNCLE was.

 

[The Old Mixer]

At least in early episodes, Solo and Illya often introduced themselves openly to civilians as UNCLE agents, and it seemed to be common knowledge what UNCLE was, an international peacekeeping and law-enforcement organization.

They still do that as needed in Season 3. But whether or not the organization is known to the general public is a completely different thing from how THRUSH, who've often dealt with UNCLE, disseminate information within their ranks regarding such frequently encountered UNCLE agents. Solo and Kuryakin often are quickly identified as UNCLE agents by THRUSH operatives, which just made this instance of Solo maintaining his cover for so long stick out more for me.

_______

This Week's 50th Anniversary Viewings

50 years ago this past week.

_______

Star Trek
"Errand of Mercy"
Originally aired March 23, 1967
Stardate 3198.4

The Federation and the Klingon Empire teeter on the brink of war as Kirk investigates a humble planet caught in the middle—Organia, inhabited by pacifists

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

See my post here.

_______

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Apple a Day Affair"
Originally aired March 24, 1967

Solo faces Thrush agents, a girl, her shotgun-toting father and a preacher, as he and Kuryakin search for exploding apples.

Open Channel Daisy Duke.

Jeannine Riley's character says that she's heard lots of stories about traveling salesmen....This would be a reference to farmer's daughter jokes, in an episode that involves Solo basically finding himself in one. This is at least the second time they've put Solo in a shotgun wedding scenario this season.

I got a good laugh when Ilya walks in at the "let him speak now or forever hold his peace" line, having no idea what's going on, and has to improvise an excuse for Napoleon to get out of the wedding.

I'm not sure that the apple plot made much sense, but I didn't care enough to put much thought into it.

_______

The Saint
"Simon and Delilah"
Originally aired March 24, 1967 (UK)

Temperamental film star Serena Harris is kidnapped at gunpoint from the set of a Biblical epic in which she is starring as Delilah in Rome. The Saint manages to locate where she is being held but, given her unpopularity, he has a wide number of suspects to choose from as the instigator of her abduction.

There are Saint guest actors who did some role or another in a James Bond film...and then there's Lois Maxwell, the only actor to appear in all of the first fourteen Bond films in the official series, including each of Connery's and Moore's installments. She and Roger Moore were old friends from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and the easy chemistry that they displayed in his seven Bond films is also evident in her two guest appearances on the show. (The previous was earlier the same season...one that I'd already watched, so it won't be coming up here.)

There's a somewhat clever bit of business where Simon is taken to the kidnappers' hideout blindfolded and uses a concealed tape recorder to gather audio clues to its location. Of course, the route is littered with distinctively audible landmarks.

There's also another one of those sign o' the times references to impending history:

They should have you working on the moonshots...you couldn't miss.

_______

Mission: Impossible
"Shock"
Originally aired March 25, 1967

Wilson, a U.S. ambassador stationed in a neutral country, has been abducted by an intelligence operative of an Eastern Bloc nation. An impostor has been put in Wilson's place. Briggs & Co. have a short amount of time to get Wilson back and foil whatever plot is underway. The IMF, in turn, abducts the impostor. A disguised Briggs takes his place. The impostor, Josef Gord, awakens to find himself in an IMF-manufactured mental hospital. The question is whether the IMF can break him in time to save Wilson.

This recording will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Dan.

It's not a reel-to-reel tape, but that's more like it! I had to do some googling to be sure, but apparently it's a dictaphone transcribing machine of a sort that used a cylinder. The closest match I found in an image search was this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bb/1a/ea/bb1aea88f3731d3a646428b97b9f7b6f.jpg

The whole imposter-of-an-imposter gimmick is pretty clever, especially how they use the imposter's limited knowledge of his subject against him in the scheme to kidnap him--He unwittingly plays along with Cinnamon pretending to be a niece of his subject.

The imposter's real name is Gort...

Klaatu barada nikto.​

Got that out of my system. Anyway, in the end the deceased Gort's disguise is ripped off...which makes you wonder why he didn't try to rip it off himself when he was in the fake asylum, to prove to the "doctors" or to himself that his story of being an agent impersonating somebody else was true.

TOS-shared guests include James Daly and Vic Perrin...though I tend to associate Daly more with his memorable Twilight Zone role. He gets quite a workout playing three characters wearing the same appearance. (Does anybody else think that he bears some resemblance to Sean Connery?) But the truly noteworthy guest star, whom I wouldn't have recognized if not for his IMDb thumbnail, is Sorrell (Boss Hogg) Booke.

_______

Coming up next week:

• Star Trek, "The Alternative Factor"
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E., "The Five Daughters Affair: Part I"
• Mission: Impossible, "A Cube of Sugar"
• The Avengers, "Epic"

 

[Christopher]

The imposter's real name is Gort...

Klaatu barada nikto.
Got that out of my system.

Sorry, but it's actually Josef Gord.

My thoughts on M:I: "Shock" can be found here. In short, I found it horrific, since their plan entailed rather brutally torturing a man -- and it looked to me like Dan assassinated him at the end while he was unconscious, though I've been told he only faked it. They even had the help of a doctor who was completely fine with a grossly unethical and abusive use of shock therapy. And the treatment of masks was as ridiculous as it ever got on this show -- you could eat and drink through them, sweat through them, and undergo electroshock therapy without the makeup being the least bit damaged. This was the lowest point of season 1 for me.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Sorry, but it's actually Josef Gord.

Blame IMDb. And I only just checked it, but my closed captioning agrees with them. Anyway, it produced the same association.

I'll have to read your blog before watching these, because doing that this week would have saved me a big, distracting search for the dictation machine.

And why did Dan have to pull off the makeup at that moment?

Drama!

 

[RJDiogenes]

I caught a couple of Avengers yesterday, one of which featured Donald Sutherland and the other of which featured a really nifty encounter between Mrs Peel and a moving vehicle. We're well into the surreal territory of the classic episodes that I remember from my childhood.

I watched plenty of game shows as a kid, but the classic game show channel that I have (Buzzr) hasn't caught my interest. Actually, my default TV setting on weekends lately when I'm not watching something that I DVR'ed has been the Music Choice Solid Gold Oldies channel. They lump the '50s and '60s together, but I'll take it.

I listen to that one, too, but I usually go for the 70s channel, and occasionally the 80s.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Oh, and the two Wild Wild West sequel movies are on Decades this morning. Unfortunately, there's no way I'll be able to sit down for four straight hours of TV watching, but I'll have them on and hopefully be able to see some of them. Too bad these retro channels don't have On Demand (also too bad I've been too much of a procrastinator to get a DVR).

 

[The Old Mixer]

Back to sidelist business. I'm not sure of the timing of it, but I'd like to catch up the sidelist viewing to the weekly Batman dates, at which point I'll sync them up as a weekly thing while they last.
_______

Tarzan
"A Life for a Life"
Originally aired September 30, 1966

The Lord of Jungle must race against time when Jai is bitten by a poisonous spider.

I don't know for certain, but this one smells strongly of being the first episode in production order / pilot. Not only do we get some background on Jai, which I'd been wondering about (he's the survivor of a plane crash who made it out of the jungle alone), but we get a lot of conspicuously placed exposition about Tarzan himself involving more than one guest character, including one bit that's used as voiceover for a brief montage sequence of Tarzan in the jungle.

The main story has Tarzan and Rao on parallel quests seeking out different potential donors, though eventually plot circumstances have them meeting up. And there's more lion wrasslin' along the way. The week's female guest character, Maggie, is one of the potential donors, and is portrayed somewhat unlikably, more interested in getting good pictures and ogling Tarzan when she meets him than saving a boy's life. She gets a brief beat of repentance when she sees Jai, but it turns out that she doesn't quite meet the stringent donor requirements--she did recover from a bite by the same type of spider, but it was little over a year previously, which is past the expiration date.

Given those strict requirements, it's perhaps a bit far-fetched that there are two potential donors within vine-swinging/motorboating range of the settlement within a 24-hour timeframe, especially with Tarzan having to run back and get the other one (a local tribesman who spends most of the episode being more interested in escaping the government authorities who are after him than saving some boy). But it works in a comic-booky way.

Cheeta's comic beats are more subdued here than in the actual first episode...we get lots of brief shots of him doing amusing things rather than entire sequences of people chasing him around and whatnot.

This episode has no TOS guests that I could identify.

Fair warning: Scanning over premises for upcoming episodes, I noticed another "Jai gets bitten by a _______ and Tarzan must race against time to save him" story in the surprisingly near future.

_______

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Galatea Affair"
Originally aired September 30, 1966

Solo and Kuryakin narrowly escape an attempt on their lives in Venice. Solo has caught pneumonia as a result of a swim in the Venice canals. As a result, he is replaced on the mission by Mark Slate (Noel Harrison). Slate is to prepare a stripper to take the place of a woman in the employ of Thrush (Joan Collins in a dual role).

Edited to remove the actor names of the series regulars (sheesh).

This one has a couple of decently Bondish elements--the Venice chase opener, however fakily realized it may have been, and the THRUSH baron's weaponized wheelchair.

As the synopsis alludes to, this would seem to be Vaughn's week off--He only appears in the opening sequence and coda. However, Slate seems like he'd be better cast as a sub for Kuryakin, being a youthful, fair-haired guy with a non-American accent.

True to that all-too-familiar formula, our guest is babysitting (training the imposter to act like the Baroness); Ilya is infiltrating; both are quickly identified as UNCLE agents. In fact, THRUSH is so far ahead of the curve that they kidnap UNCLE's would-be imposter and substitute her with the actual Baroness to infiltrate Slate's end of the operation--Shades of this weekend's M:I episode!

Joan Collins did an admirable job in her dual/triple role...acting as the imposter, and as the Baroness pretending to be the imposter. In-story, the Baroness's ability to slip into her real persona a little too easily, after Slate was ready to give up on Rosy, the actual imposter, is aided by some handwaving about subliminal training.

In one scene, I think there's a fly on Collins's face in a couple of shots.

I thought they might do a gag about Rosy fooling everyone at HQ by successfully impersonating the Baroness in the coda, but they didn't go there.

This one was written by Jackson Gillis, so maybe you'd like it @Christopher . Ooh, and looking at surrounding episodes' writing credits, it seems that the previous episode's story about the android/cyborg/whatevers was by Harlan Ellison.

 

[Christopher]

Columbo: "Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health": I had little memory of this one, which is surprising, because I usually remember when an installment is as bad as this one. George Hamilton gives a weak, unpleasant performance as the murderer Wade Anders, the host of an America's Most Wanted-type true-crime show who kills a rival newsman blackmailing him about an old porn film he once did. (Sign of the times -- the fact that he did porn at all is treated as more scandalous than the fact that he had sex with an underage girl in the film.) The movie is incredibly padded and slow-paced; it's nearly halfway through before Columbo and Anders even meet. And the reason Columbo latched onto Anders as the person he keeps telling about the case is unclear. He's not someone who appeared to be close to the victim, just the last known person to talk to him the day before his death. Columbo doesn't seem to have any cause to suspect him before he learns about the "party film." So why does he keep dropping in on this guy to tell him details of the case? Usually Columbo does that because he already suspects the person and is trying to trip them up, or sometimes because he doesn't yet suspect them but has reason to need information from them, or something. Here, the only evident reason is because the writers know he's the killer.

Also, the reasoning behind the murder is flawed. Okay, so Anders killed Bud so the truth about the film wouldn't come out. But Bud got the film from someone else, Robert Donner's character, who wasn't hard for Columbo to find once he located Bud's notes. Why didn't Anders consider the source of the film? Killing Bud removed the immediate blackmail threat, but he couldn't rule out the truth coming out through other means.

There are a couple of nice clues, like the hedges in the security tape revealing that the sequence had been altered to fake an alibi (although the bit where we saw the gardener promise to trim the hedges telegraphed that) and the curious incident of the dog scratches on the car door, but it just seemed there were maybe one or two more clues than there needed to be and it felt scattered.

It was kind of interesting how much of an artifact of its time the movie was. Smoking was on the way out as a socially acceptable practice, but still around enough to permit a story somewhat driven by the contrast between smokers and non-smokers, in that Columbo's smoker's knowledge lets him see through the flaws in the scenario that non-smoker Anders contrives. And ohh, those old 3.5-inch floppy disks and those ghastly dot-matrix printers with their continuous-feed paper. And the VHS tapes, and the heavily abridged audiobooks on cassette. This was all state-of-the-art, high-tech stuff at the time. Plus the popularity of true-crime re-enactment shows, another aspect of the times.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Well, I did see bits and pieces of the Wild Wild West movies and they looked really good visually, especially the first one. They seemed a bit sillier than the series, though, rather than straight camp. And Jo Ann Harris was in the first one, apparently playing the daughter of Dr Loveless. She was one of my favorites back in the day (and I'm reminded of how much I wish Cruise Into Terror would come to DVD).

The week's female guest character, Maggie, is one of the potential donors, and is portrayed somewhat unlikably, more interested in getting good pictures and ogling Tarzan when she meets him than saving a boy's life.

(a local tribesman who spends most of the episode being more interested in escaping the government authorities who are after him than saving some boy).

It's a jungle out there.

 

[The Old Mixer]

It's a jungle out there.

But in the end, the government authorities and the donor decide to do the right thing. And so Jai lives to get bitten by something else in a few more episodes.

_______

Tarzan
"The Prisoner"
Originally aired October 7, 1966

Tarzan's friend, policeman Khobi is close to death after being severely wounded by diamond smuggler Spooner. Tarzan intends to bring the criminal to justice as Spooner's gang tracks them through the jungle to free him.

Although they're not out of the series yet, this is the first aired episode with neither Jason Flood nor Rao. It's starting to become the show that it will be, in which Tarzan and Jai are the only regulars...and Cheeta, I guess, but he doesn't get a listing on IMDb. In fact, Cheeta gets a substantially bigger role here than Jai, who's off at school for the bulk of the episode.

And this is one in which you'd think Flood would at least come up, as Tarzan is sending Jai to school and there's no mention of Flood being Jai's tutor. The dialogue makes it sound like Jai is strictly Tarzan's responsibility.

They don't seem to be using the outpost from the earlier episodes here either, and the village that they do use seems to be cast with all black actors, unlike some of the tribal characters/populations we were seeing at and near the outpost. Plus we get a bit more exposition on Tarzan's origins. I wonder if the earlier episodes and a couple after this were from a limited initial order, with changes being made in the series after that point.

I've read that the part where Tarzan is shot and falls from the vine is actually a stunt accident that they worked into the story.

No Tarzan, no Spooner. No Spooner, no diamonds.

Sounded like he was slipping into the ol' pidgin English for a second there.

Spooner, he's a real class act, threatening revenge on a chimp.

Special guest animal: Hannibal, a small elephant that the injured Tarzan uses to transport Spooner around.

TOS guests:

• Charles Maxwell (Virgil Earp, "Spectre of the Gun")

_______

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Super-Colossal Affair"
Originally aired October 7, 1966

Mobsters are using the production of a movie as a front for an operation involving Las Vegas -- dropping a giant stink bomb on the city.

Open Channel Dud.

I was going to praise that as a short and sweet episode description...if a description involving a giant stink bomb can ever be described as "sweet"...but it turns out that the stink bomb part was an Act IV twist, so hey, way to try to ruin an already lousy episode, amateur description writer!

The plot makes no sense...why would the mobster latch onto a movie that uses Las Vegas as the setting of a modern Sodom and Gamorrah story as a means to destroy Las Vegas? It's an absurd long shot that he actually manages to stumble upon an opportunity in the film's production.

On the up side, Solo and Kuryakin actually work together for pretty much the entire episode. But Kuryakin riding the bomb down...oy vey!

 

[Christopher]

But Kuryakin riding the bomb down...oy vey!

Did he wave a cowboy hat and whoop loudly?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Did he wave a cowboy hat and whoop loudly?

He was too busy releasing the "essence of skunk" from the bomb and parachuting off it. He spent the coda in a vat being scrubbed down by UNCLE technicians.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Tarzan
"[The Three] Faces of Death"
Originally aired October 14, 1966

Tarzan helps out a woman seeking to retain leadership of her tribe.

Online sources call the episode "The Three Faces of Death," which is a term used for the series of dangerous tribal challenges that Tarzan faces in the episode...but onscreen it just said "Faces of Death."

I think this is the first one without that pre-credits origin narration. And it opens with a preview montage, which I've never seen on this show. This is also the first time we see Jai in his "Tarzan Jr." loincloth.

I started to notice shoe continuity coming up here as well, an issue that I knew of from my casual background viewing. As in The Incredible Hulk, the conceit is that the protagonist is supposed to be barefoot, but even in SD it's obvious that skin tone-matching footwear is often in use.

TOS guests:
Ena Hartman (Crew Woman #2, "The Corbomite Maneuver"--Hey, I'll take what I can get! And she evidently gets more to do here, as the inheriting leader for whom Tarzan is serving as champion.)

_______

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Monks of St. Thomas Affair"
Originally aired October 14, 1966

Thrush is operating out of a monastery it has taken over. The criminal organization plans to destroy the Louvre with a ray gun.

Open Channel Definitely Prefer Celeste Yarnall as a Brunette

He's square...he's not with it. If you mention the Beatles to him, he thinks of insects.

The plot? Some crap about a laser that bends with gravity so THRUSH can use it to shoot things past the horizon on Earth.

_______

Adam-12, "Million Dollar Buff" (Sept. 22, 1971): IMDb has this mistitted as "Million Dollar Bluff"...it's actually about a police buff / wannabe cop whose dilettante vigilantism causes trouble for the actual police. Noteworthy for being the first role listed on IMDb for a young actress named Lindsay Wagner. Ed Begley Jr. is also in it as one of a pair of young men that the blu...er, buff tries to arrest.

Adam-12, "The Radical" (Oct. 6, 1971): Guest-starring Robert Conrad! As Paul Ryan! (Well, not that Paul Ryan....) They thought it was a big deal, too, as they put his name in the opening titles...even though he doesn't pop up until the last 5 minutes of the episode.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I started to notice shoe continuity coming up here as well, an issue that I knew of from my casual background viewing. As in The Incredible Hulk, the conceit is that the protagonist is supposed to be barefoot, but even in SD it's obvious that skin tone-matching footwear is often in use.

Cheaters!

Open Channel Definitely Prefer Celeste Yarnall as a Brunette

She does look more Hippie, but that might be more the do than the color.

The plot? Some crap about a laser that bends with gravity so THRUSH can use it to shoot things past the horizon on Earth.

To destroy the Louvre? Is it just because they're a bunch of Philistines, or was there something to be gained? It makes them sound more like the Taliban than Bondian villains out to rule the world.

 

[The Old Mixer]

She does look more Hippie, but that might be more the do than the color.

I'd say her look is elegant, not hippie.

To destroy the Louvre? Is it just because they're a bunch of Philistines, or was there something to be gained? It makes them sound more like the Taliban than Bondian villains out to rule the world.

As a demonstration of their power, I believe it was. Reminds me of the bit in Diamonds Are Forever when Blofeld wants a target for his death-ray, finds that the satellite is currently over Kansas, and remarks that if they strike there, nobody will know about it for years.

_______

This Week's 50th Anniversary Viewings

50 years ago this past week.

_______

Star Trek
"The Alternative Factor"
Originally aired March 30, 1967
Stardate 3087.6

Kirk and Spock encounter an alien named Lazarus who claims to be from an anti-matter universe.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

My post here didn't really get into the episode at all, but some conversation about it follows. dodge did a pretty good job a couple posts below that of giving a play-by-play of the episode's abundant WTF-ness.

_______

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Five Daughters Affair: Part I"
Originally aired March 31, 1967

Solo and Illya track down the daughters of a murdered scientist who has discovered how to extract gold from seawater (and hidden the secret among his daughters), but THRUSH agent Randolph, who murdered the scientist, is after the secret as well.

Open Channel Dual Future Bond Villains, Telly Savalas and Curt Jurgens?
Open Channel Dual Trek Heroines, Kim Darby and Jill Ireland?
Open Channel Dearest Mommy, Joan Crawford?
Open Channel D) All of the above.

This is one of those two-parters that was made to be a theatrical release, and it shows. The whole thing looks higher-budget that usual, especially the opening sequence...and it's very interesting that they do a chase scene involving gyrocopters so shortly before You Only Live Twice was released. What's more, later in the episode Solo and Kuryakin are attacked by skiers with automatic rifles...two years before On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Savalas and Jurgens, OTOH...alas, neither plays a villain.

The opening theme music sounds different from that in the previous Season 3 episodes as well.

In-story, Jill Ireland makes quite a stir running around in a bikini. One of her scenes takes place in a club where Every Mother's Son is playing their claim to fame, "Come on Down to My Boat":

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

(#6 US)

There's actually a video of the scene from the episode on YouTube, but it's of very poor quality. The episode aired before the single was even released, according to my sources...and it didn't enter the charts until May. Wiki says that it was also used in the opening credits of the theatrical version, The Karate Killers. Perhaps the episode played a role in popularizing the song...it had already peaked on the charts by the time of the theatrical release.

_______

Mission: Impossible
"A Cube of Sugar"
Originally aired April 1, 1967

A U.S. intelligence operative, posing as a jazz musician, has been captured behind the Iron Curtain. In his possession is a new micro circuit hidden in one of several sugar cubes soaked in psychedelic drugs. Briggs devises a plan where Rollin will be arrested and put in the same prison. To execute the plan, Rollin will need to shed a strait jacket and inject the arrested intelligence agent with a drug making it appear he has died. Barney, Willy and Cinammon will also play key roles in the IMF leader's plan.

This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Dan.

There we go! Now just change the agent to whom the tape's addressed and we'll be all set!

So I was reading something on the web by a guy named Bennett, and he brings up some good points concerning how much the IMF agents know in advance about the place that they're infiltrating in this episode. I'll add the question of how Briggs could have known which cell Rollin would be put in...it looked like there was at least one other besides that one and the one that Deane was in.

I don't agree that there was any real criticism of the counterculture here, at least not the American hippie one. Psychedelic drug use would have certainly been topical at the time, but the only social backdrop we see for it here is some sort of Eastern European beatnik jazz club, and the two main characters who are associated with it...Deane and the wife that Cinnamon is pretending to be...are over-30 types. If you want to see the '60s counterculture dragged through the mud, Dragnet 1967 is your show.

Is it just me, or does the circular tunnel that Barney and Willy crawl through a couple of times seem to be the same piece as the Horta tunnel in "The Devil in the Dark"?

Ah, Willy. Maybe I haven't seen enough of the show yet and am calling this wrong...but so far, in a show whose entire main cast consists of cyphers pretending to be other people, he manages to stand out as the most boring of the bunch. I don't think I've seen him even pretend to be somebody vaguely interesting.

It seems that the Decades Binge I recorded skipped the last two episodes of Season 1--"The Traitor" (Apr. 15) and "The Psychic" (Apr. 22)--as well as the Season 2 premiere, "The Widow" (Sep. 10)...so unless those episodes come along sometime in the next five months, I'll be picking M:I back up on the weekend of Sep. 17. Also, I see that Decades will be doing an M:I Daily Binge on Apr. 12...moving forward into Season 4, and still skipping odd episodes along the way...but that means that when the time comes, I'll be able to continue past Trek into Nimoy's next gig.

_______

The Avengers
"Epic"
Originally aired April 1, 1967 (UK)

A demented movie mogul with an Eric von Stroheim fixation lures Mrs Peel to an abandoned movie studio, to star in a film of her own death.

Steed Catches a Falling Star
Emma Makes a Movie

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

So the film that Emma is trapped in is about her wedding and death...where's George Lazenby?

The problem with a story like this is that it seems to assume that Steed and Peel are well-known figures in their own world, such that somebody like this episode's movie director would target them at all.

This episode also reminds me a lot of "The House That Jack Built," but the earlier story was better realized. This one isn't quite as creepy, as Emma is interacting directly with the director and his two actors, whereas "Jack" has her trapped in a surreal environment mostly alone. (There's one other person there, but he's somebody who broke into the house randomly at an earlier date and has been driven insane there.) And IIRC, in "Jack" Emma pretty much figures the way out herself by the time Steed shows up, whereas here she seems too easily stymied by the actors until he arrives to lend a hand.

Shades of M:I's "The Train" from a couple weeks back--This episode also ends with a literal breaking of the fourth wall...this time to humorous effect.

_______

Coming up next week:

• Star Trek, "The City on the Edge of Forever"
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E., "The Five Daughters Affair: Part II"
• The Saint, "Island of Chance"
• Get Smart, "A Man Called Smart: Part 1"
• The Avengers, "The Superlative Seven"

 

[The Old Mixer]

On to some recent catchup sidelist viewing....

_______

Tarzan
"The Prodigal Puma"
Originally aired October 21, 1966

A big game hunter targets a puma Tarzan has captured.

Sounds like the title of a Saint episode....

The pre-credits origin narration is back...probably for the last time, like Flood and Rao in this episode. I can see why they'd want to tighten up the main cast, but it's too bad they dropped Rao. He and Tarzan seem to have a good working chemistry.

Flood sort of has the "birds and the bees" talk with Jai regarding the female Puma being in heat for her mate.

Do you know what this jungle is? It's purgatory with coconuts.

That took me right out of the episode and put me on a desert isle with seven stranded castaways.

"Forget it, Cheeta" seems to be a regular catchphrase, at least in the early episodes, for bits of business in which they tease us with the chimp actually doing something useful (like untying Tarzan), but it doesn't work out.

Sheri (this week's female guest), taken prisoner by the puma pilferers, sneakily opens the riverboat's fuel valve...but you'd think a Tarzan series would be a little more enviornmentally conscious....

No TOS guests in this one, but I did stumble upon a Bond guest:

Rafer Johnson (Mullens, one of the DEA agents in License to Kill)​

_______

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
"The Pop Art Affair"
Originally aired October 21, 1966

Thrushman Mark Ole has developed a chemical that induces fatal hiccups. He operates out of Greenwich Village in New York City and uses a gang of beatniks.

Why is a beatnik THRUSH agent meeting UNCLE on a golf course? Particularly as the beatnik and UNCLE are both located in Manhattan?

Illya trying to identify a man by showing around a picture of his corpse...nothing suspicious about that.

This episode does have a notable TOS guest: Sabrina Scharf, a.k.a. Miramanee. Also, it seems that the other main female guest, Sherry Alberoni, would go on to be the voice of Wendy on Super Friends...and her character's father is played by Charles Lane from It's a Wonderful Life.

We get a glimpse of another unconvincing prop comic book in this one.

On the subject of THRUSH destroying art...that's revealed to be a side goal of the main THRUSH baddie here, an avant-garde type whose reward is to be some examples of traditional art in the possession of THRUSH by the likes of da Vinci, which he intends to destroy.

And that's the last TMFU on my catchup sidelist...onward to future episodes when they air...give or take 50 years.

_______

The Saint
"The Reluctant Revolution"
Originally aired October 21, 1966 (UK)

Simon Templar visits a small South American country, meets a beautiful woman, and becomes immersed in a coup to oust a corrupt dictator and his American cohort.

See what I mean about the Tarzan title?

This is actually four episodes into this season of The Saint...I'd watched the others earlier before I decided to skip up to the 50th anniversary point.

Here Simon is introduced by being addressed as Senor Templar...the policeman didn't even use his given name, though it has the same initials.

Special Guest: Barry (Lt. Gerard) Morse! Turns out he's a Brit...and putting his experience doing an American accent to good use here.

The bloodless coup at the end, aided by some trickery on Simon's part, is way too quick and easy. It literally happens in real time in the episode, neatly wrapped up in a bow in a matter of minutes.

_______

Batman
"Come Back, Shame"
Originally aired November 30, 1966

Shame is back, and is using stolen vehicle parts to assemble a truck so fast even the Batmobile won't be able to catch him. Bruce Wayne tricks him into stealing his limo, which he (as Batman) and Robin use to track down his hideout. But the villain gains the upper hand in the ensuing fight, and the Dynamic Duo find themselves staked to the ground in the path of a cattle stampede.

"It's How You Play the Game"
Originally aired December 1, 1966

With his special truck finished, Shame goes to work on his final caper - the theft of four prize cattle worth over one million dollars. Batman and Robin deduce his plan, but realize they are too late to stop him and too slow to catch him. With little left to go on, the Dynamic Duo employ their "bat-logic" to try to figure out his next move.

Sorry for the whiplash, but I decided it would make the most sense to tighten things up by bringing these back here. After all, I am watching them on H&I now, not on MeTV a year and a half ago...and I plan to eventually sync them up with my sidelist viewing, and then with my 50th anniversary viewing. If the cross-quoting with the Me thread is an issue, I'll try to get by without it.

Cliff Robertson--caught somewhere between JFK and Uncle Ben...!

The (not-)platinum bullets...guess we all know what those are a nod to.

Only one man would have the unmitigated gall to pilfer an automobile and have it witnessed by more than 800,000 eyes.

Um...the Joker?

About the kid...his wandering randomly into scenes to do his multiple "Come back, Shame!" homages was so blatant that I just thought it was funny. But how did Batman know who the kid was or that he was hanging around with Shame?

About Bruce and Dick riding a mile on the Batcycle--They couldn't just stow their costumes on it?

Here the cape being a separate piece from the cowl is demonstrated in-story, when Batman plays matador during the stampede deathtrap.

I notice that when Batman describes Shame and his gang as wearing "peculiar-looking clothes," he touches his cape in the same way as he did in an earlier episode when he accused that columnist of being "too theatrical".

Hey, there's the Bat-Diamond...right in the foreground!

The Colonel Klink cameo is pure fourth-wall breaking and shouldn't be seen as anything more. I'm sure that Bruce and Dick enjoyed his zany antics on Hogan's Heroes as much as the next upstanding citizens of Gotham City in 1966.