The next time you bemoan the state of TV today...

[Kegg]

With Harvey on this. Sure, there's good 1960s TV series. I recently finished watching Raumpatrouille, a German show that holds up very well - solid space opera with tight, often clever scripts and engaging characters and - yes - an addictively kick-ass theme song:
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-p5A_GislM[/yt]

I don't quite go bowlegged generally over the period, though. Star Trek was great, The Prisoner was good fun, I'm sure if I blink and think hard I'll name a third series I actually enjoy... uh... I'll count The Twilight Zone as 60s because why not.

Intros are like commercials - I'll zap them unless they're good. But I do appreciate the good ones. I'll watch Dexter's intro more often than I zap.

I always watch the intros, but then, i always leave the TV on for the credits. That's probably just unhealthy compulsiveness more than anything else. It's probably why Enterprise's intro really got to me - I don't like this song, but damn it I'm going to listen to it every week.

As far as credits today goes... yes and no, really. Yeah, I've seen some series cut down drastically on the length of their intros, but I've also seen some pretty indulgent modern intros (cable seems to like these, and Dexter's is indeed great).

What I really can't stand is the previously-last-week segments. If a show has an ongoing plotline, I'll watch each episode and I don't have Alzheimers! I can remember what they did last week!

It does feel a little like handholding. Watching the back-half of Caprica's season now, in a line-up of TV that includes two other serial dramas, and Caprica is the only one to beat me over the head with last week's news. (Why don't I just flast-forward it? Compulsiveness, see above).

I don't know. I grew up on TV where a 'previously on' tag was an accepted staple I never questioned and made perfect sense at the time, but for whatever reason I no longer feel a great need for it, even when picking up a serial drama I'd left by the wayside for a year or more. That may say more about me lazily mellowing out than anything else, I'm sure.

 

[Christopher]

I'll count The Twilight Zone as 60s because why not.

Only the first 12 of its episodes aired in the closing months of 1959; the remaining 144 aired in the 1960s. I'd say there's no good reason not to call it a '60s show.

I always watch the intros, but then, i always leave the TV on for the credits. That's probably just unhealthy compulsiveness more than anything else. It's probably why Enterprise's intro really got to me - I don't like this song, but damn it I'm going to listen to it every week.

Even with a theme tune I like, I usually start hitting the mute button after the first few weeks, because even a good theme can wear out its welcome.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Good call on the theme songs, too. That's something you don't see much anymore. But that's more a function of time constraints on modern shows; one-hour shows were about ten minutes longer then than they are now.

Also, with remote controls, it's easier to change channels, so shows have to grab viewers with content right off the bat and keep them watching -- and those viewers have much shorter attention spans and are less likely to sit through a minute-long opening that's the same every week.

Yeah, that's all true as well.

I have to admit though, I'm curious about what a dark and brooding Mr. Rogers would look like.

But, seriously, though, how could you be creepier than the original?

What I really can't stand is the previously-last-week segments. If a show has an ongoing plotline, I'll watch each episode and I don't have Alzheimers! I can remember what they did last week!

And it cuts even more into the story time.

 

[ToddPence]

Now, The Prisoner was an interesting and creative spy series made in the 1960s, but it was also a bit of a flop at the time and short-lived.

The Prisoner was short-lived by design. Patrick McGoohan never intended it to be a long-running series; and in fact, didn't even want to make as many as the seventeen episodes that were ultimately done.

 

[Christopher]

The Prisoner was short-lived by design. Patrick McGoohan never intended it to be a long-running series; and in fact, didn't even want to make as many as the seventeen episodes that were ultimately done.

Right. I think there are only seven episodes McGoohan considered crucial -- the first five ("Arrival," "The Chimes of Big Ben," "A, B, and C," "Free For All," and "The Schizoid Man") and the last two (the 2-parter "Once Upon a Time"/"Fall Out"). The ten in between are more episodic and expendable, and the last couple of those in particular ("Living in Harmony" and "The Girl Who Was Death") feel like padding.

 

[Lost Periphery]

Any sort of laugh track, live or not, is distracting. It breaks the fourth wall. I can't tolerate it.

Me neither. It takes me away from the show itself. Thank god MASH dvds have the option to turn it off . Too bad I haven't found other series dvds like those. That's one good option to have.

This feature alone makes want to buy a MASH DVD. How bloody cool!

 

[Temis the Vorta]

i always leave the TV on for the credits.

I'm watching all the old Twilight Zones I've missed over the years (skiffy is good for something after all) and I like watching the credits to find out whether it's a Serling story (I can usually tell those because of the pomposity factor ).

If you ever get a chance to watch a TZ ep called "The New Exhibit," there's something very eerie that I noticed. The story is about a wax museum with a display of serial killers (no points for guessing whether they come to life and kill people), and at the beginning, one of the people visiting the museum is a dead ringer for Michael C. Hall. I watched the credits to see if maybe the actor was his father? (Apparently not, anyway I don't think he comes from a family of actors.)

 

[Greg Cox]

i always leave the TV on for the credits.

I'm watching all the old Twilight Zones I've missed over the years (skiffy is good for something after all) and I like watching the credits to find out whether it's a Serling story (I can usually tell those because of the pomposity factor ).

I'm curious: are you able to pick out the Matheson episodes?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yeah, I've noticed these trends:

Serling writer episodes with social or political messages and/or involves someone giving a long-winded speech. Examples: "I Am the Night - Color Me Black" (a freaky episode where a town's racism causes the sun not to come up) and then the darkness starts spreading all over the globe; "He's Alive" (Hitler returns to counsel a failing neo-Nazi); "The Obsolete Man" (Orwellian scenario in which reading is a capital crime) and of course "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" which needs no introduction.

Matheson writes imaginative and/or scary mindfrak kinds of episode. Example: "Little Girl Lost" (a child is lost between dimensions and her parents can hear her through the walls) and "Nick of Time" (William Shatner psychs himself into thinking a magic box can tell the future.) He also writes sci fi very plausibly, like "Steel," which is about robot boxers, very convincing and made me wonder why we don't have real robot boxers by now. (Maybe video games took over that market?)

If it's twisted, there's a good chance it's by Charles Beaumont. Examples: "Miniature" (the one where Robert Duvall becomes obsessed with a dollhouse) and "Long Distance Call," (the one where a grandmother's ghost is apparently trying to get her grandson to commit suicide so they can be together again). Beaumont also wrote "The New Exhibit" and also "Queen of the Nile" (aging actress murders suitors to stay young) - he seems to go for stories about depraved obsession and unhealthy relationships.

Between the three of them, Serling, Matheson and Beaumont wrote almost all of my favorite episodes, as long as you count the episodes Serling adapted from short stories, which overall are the very best episodes.

 

[Greg Cox]

^ Interesting observations. I'm partial to the Matheson eps, of course, having worked with Richard for years. Believe it or not, he's still writing well into his eighties.

I think "The Howling Man" is probably my favorite Beaumont episode.

 

[Christopher]

Matheson ... also writes sci fi very plausibly, like "Steel," which is about robot boxers, very convincing and made me wonder why we don't have real robot boxers by now.

Well, we do have things like Robot Wars and Battlebots, which are close (although they aren't actual robots there, just radio-controlled vehicles).

By the way, "Steel" has been remade into the movie Real Steel, which is coming out this October and stars Hugh Jackman.

 

[Greg Cox]

Matheson ... also writes sci fi very plausibly, like "Steel," which is about robot boxers, very convincing and made me wonder why we don't have real robot boxers by now.

Well, we do have things like Robot Wars and Battlebots, which are close (although they aren't actual robots there, just radio-controlled vehicles).

By the way, "Steel" has been remade into the movie Real Steel, which is coming out this October and stars Hugh Jackman.

And, by amazing coincidence, Tor is putting out Steel and Other Stories by Richard Matheson the same month!

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Well this is derailing the thread thoroughly, but I starting thinking how each writer would write the others' episodes.

If Matheson wrote "Miniature," he'd probably focus less on Duvall's character and how he can't cope with life, and more on how a person manages to get themselves miniaturized as a doll. How did the girl in the dollhouse do it? She was based on a real person - did she have access to some kind of miniaturization technology that would grant her immortality? Duvall's character would be obsessed with figuring out the trick.

If Serling wrote the episode, Duvall's character would be trying to live in the dollhouse in order to escape the existential terrors of modern existence and would make a big speech about it.

If Beaumont wrote "Little Girl Lost," the situation would be a metaphor for the frakked up family dynamics. If Serling wrote it, the story would end with the whole family entering the alternate dimension one step ahead of nuclear bombs.

Matheson is interested in the sci-fi-ness (or fantasy-ness) of a scenario and focuses on how it works and what the ramifications are, so that his stories seem like things that could actually happen (and that makes something like "Little Girl Lost" very scary). With Beaumont and Serling, the stories are more like metaphors. Beaumont's are metaphors for screwed up human psychology and family dynamics, Serling's are metaphors for screwed up society and politics.

 

[Christopher]

Matheson is interested in the sci-fi-ness (or fantasy-ness) of a scenario and focuses on how it works and what the ramifications are, so that his stories seem like things that could actually happen (and that makes something like "Little Girl Lost" very scary).

I recall reading that Matheson's approach to fantasy is to include just one fantastic element and make everything around it (including its consequences) as believable and grounded in reality as possible.

 

[Greg Cox]

Matheson is interested in the sci-fi-ness (or fantasy-ness) of a scenario and focuses on how it works and what the ramifications are, so that his stories seem like things that could actually happen (and that makes something like "Little Girl Lost" very scary).

I recall reading that Matheson's approach to fantasy is to include just one fantastic element and make everything around it (including its consequences) as believable and grounded in reality as possible.

Was that Matheson or Theodore Sturgeon? I was watching the extras on my TOS DVDs the other day, and somebody quoted Sturgeon to that effect . . . .

 

[Christopher]

Pretty sure it was Matheson. I've never read much by or about Sturgeon. And I think I may have come across the reference in an anthology featuring works by Twilight Zone authors.

 

[ToddPence]

A really GREAT article about the Twilight Zone writers:

http://www.rodserling.com/csorcerers.htm