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Watching Buck Rogers In The 25th Century

Editing was still done on film in those days. The titles were created optically, i.e. shot on film and matted in by overlaying and rephotographing strips of film in an optical printer, the same basic way that animated effects like phaser beams were done. There's a visible difference between the optically composited titles of the '70s and early '80s and the video titles they switched to later in the '80s, because the latter have more of an electronically generated, scan-lined look to them. For instance, the ST:TNG episode titles as opposed to the TOS titles. I think the '80s-style electronic titles were also more prone to just pop in and out, while earlier optical titles faded in and out.
The movie versions would vary depending on whether they had access to the film masters, and also whether the bosses would pay for that.
 
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It's a bit like reading the SPACE 1999 tie-in novels, or Alan Dean Foster's first nine TREK logs.
Some of the 1999 'movies' had new framing sequences with Patrick Allen back around Space Control on Earth.
I think, not seen them since the original episodes came out in the 90s.
 
Some of the 1999 'movies' had new framing sequences with Patrick Allen back around Space Control on Earth.
I think, not seen them since the original episodes came out in the 90s.
I think you're right about that. I just rewatched Space:1999 with the new (for the US) blu ray set that just came out. I remembered additional scenes on Earth and was waiting for them to appear in the episodes, but they never did. I think I'm remembering those extra scenes from the movies. But, it's been a long time so it's all kind of vague!
 
Pretty sure about that, but as they're not on the dvds I last saw them 30 years ago!
It was called Alien Attack. It was 2 episodes spliced together, Breakaway and War Games. I actually still have it on vhs. http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/epguide/t00aa.html
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Some of the 1999 'movies' had new framing sequences with Patrick Allen back around Space Control on Earth.
I think, not seen them since the original episodes came out in the 90s.

That was the sort of thing where they rework TV episodes into feature films for overseas theatrical release or TV syndication. I've seen a couple of the movies they made from episodes of The Man from UNCLE back in the '60s, where they added more sex and violence for European theatrical audiences. There's one where they add a new opening sequence of one of the main guest villains breaking into a military base at the start of the episode, killing a succession of guards under the movie credits. He had a shaved head in the original, but the new footage was filmed later and he has a pretty obvious bald cap (because bald caps are always obvious). And then the new footage of him breaking into the base ends and we cut to the episode footage where he's still outside the base and breaks in "again"! :lol:

Then there's the one where they added Yvonne Craig as a sexy UNCLE receptionist. Most of her material was in scenes where Napoleon Solo called up UNCLE HQ on his pen radio and they'd just insert a few moments of her taking his call, flirting, and relaying the call to the person he was actually contacting in the episode.

Although a more interesting case concerns the pilot episode. They shot a whole extra subplot to expand the hourlong pilot to feature length, then later they built a whole new episode around the movie subplot footage, dubbing over a character name from the pilot to hide the connection.
 
Then there was Cosmic Princess with two Maya-centric episodes, including her debut with Brian Blessed. Plus if memory serves, The Bringers of Wonder was also movie-fied with chintzy end credits music by ''Oliver Onions.'':cool:
Oliver Onions did the song for Italian edition's end credits too :cool:
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Lyrics (google translated)

There is a monster that destroys all the spaceships
it reduces missiles and robots into a thousand pieces

Space is full of mysteries
help help-me S.O.S.

Ten nine eight seven
six five four three
two one zero
from a black hole suddenly it jumps up

I feel that it is searching my thoughts
in my mind there is a blackout
stop the rocket Mr. Koenig
help help-me S.O.S.

Come, man ...
Come on, man ...
Come, man ...

We are not the only ones in the immensity of the heavens
millions of light years how dark there is

Space is full of mysteries
help help-me S.O.S.

Ten nine eight seven
six five four three
two one zero
a long journey that can never end
The earth seen from afar
it's a ping-pong ball
where do you take me Mr. Koenig
help help-me S.O.S.
Come, man ...
Come on, man ...
Come, man ...
We are not the only ones in the immensity of the heavens
millions of light years how dark there is
 
There was also a second first season movie, think it was called Journey through the Black Sun. Guess what one of the episodes was...
 
They were blowing up NAZIs with those Turbikes by episode 3.

If the show had continued, the scouts would have borrowed the bikes, had a joyride and gotten caught by CHP officer Poucherello.
 
I watched the full series twice through and the 2nd time around I dropped out on the episode where that giant ship with the big wheels was rolling across the Moon. I mean it was a good story but that just looked so silly.

The first time around I watched the full series and did enjoy it for what it was.
 
Hulk was a standout, yes. But most early-'80s sci-fi TV was still quite dumb; this was the decade of Knight Rider, Automan, Voyagers!, and Manimal. We got the smart, allegorical V miniseries in '83, but its sequel mini and weekly series got progressively dumber. It wasn't until later in the decade that we started to see glimmers of intelligence. The Twilight Zone revival started in '85 -- though it was alongside the well-produced but often staggeringly stupid Amazing Stories on a different network. We got the heartfelt Starman in '86, Max Headroom and ST:TNG in '87, and Alien Nation and Quantum Leap in '89. So it wasn't until the end of the '80s and into the '90s that we started to see multiple smart, successful genre shows coexisting.

As for the '70s, they also gave us ST:TAS and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, plus imports like Blake's 7 and Star Blazers. And there was some good stuff in the bionic shows early on. Kenneth Johnson started out on those before moving to Hulk.

Kolchak was excellent. I did like voyagers though. Yeah it was made for the younger crowd and was ridiculous in some ways but was entertaining. Another excellent show as space 1999 from the 70s. I think a lot of the critiquing of older shows is based on what we see today. We tend to think everything is better today and older stuff is crap or simplistic. Simply not true. It's different today in that we get more retreads or adaptations of books that are done a second or even third time.
 
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I did like voyagers though. Yeah it was made for the younger crowd and was ridiculous in some ways but was entertaining.

I was 14 when Voyagers! aired, and even then I thought it was ridiculous. They never explained what was causing history to "go wrong" or why and by whom the version in school textbooks was deemed the "right" version. Logically, if history would spontaneously go a certain way unless time travelers intervened to make it go a different way, then surely the spontaneous version should be the "right" one, yet the show insisted it was somehow the "wrong" one. Drove me crazy. (And in retrospect I know that a lot of what textbooks at the time taught as the "right" history was frequently fictitious and ethnocentric, so it would probably come off even worse to me now.)


Another excellent show as space 1999 from the 70s.

Not an opinion I've heard about it often. It's generally considered one of the worse ones, though it did have cool production values, and season 1 is often interesting if you take it as surrealist/existentialist fantasy rather than SF.
 
The Kolchak series is interesting; Darren was unhappy with it, and I think puzzled that it's so well remembered (in the 80s, only three episodes had aired in the UK, and then only in one area, so they were like gold dust)
 
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