Would 'Assignment Earth' really make it as a series?

[Christopher]

It's an elevator pitch, not a treatise. The DW elements in "Doctor Who meets Mission: Impossible" would be the presence of an older, fantastically-wise man with a young female assistant. That's the extent of the comparison in that particular elevator pitch.

Fair enough, but that also describes The Avengers, and to an extent Sapphire & Steel as well, which is why I chose them. The Doctor Who comparison is the most recognizable one to American audiences, but it's the poorest "elevator pitch" of the three, for the reasons I explained. And a pitch is just an invitation to have a longer, more in-depth conversation about the subject, which we've already been doing.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I've mentioned elsewhere that if it had become a series, the most natural crossover in the world would have been with Here's Lucy, which ran from '68-'74 (AE aired in '68, and would've been a show by '69-'70.)

Here's Lucy featured an employment agency whose goal is "finding unusual jobs for unusual people". So maybe Roberta takes a vacation or is sick, and Carter's Unique Employment Agency is tasked with finding a temp to fill in for her. As secretary Lucy often does, she takes the job herself, and chaos ensues, also per usual. Although the series name-drops Star Trek in the episode "Lucy's Replacement", shows have done that before without people caring (i.e. mentioned a show as a show, then later featured characters from it as if they share a universe).

 

[Richard S. Ta]

If we're making British TV analogies, it would've been far closer to The Avengers, or maybe Sapphire and Steel.

I'd agree with The Avengers but not Sapphire and Steel. That is a show that's truly out there. Nothing else like it IMO.

 

[Christopher]

I've mentioned elsewhere that if it had become a series, the most natural crossover in the world would have been with Here's Lucy, which ran from '68-'74 (AE aired in '68, and would've been a show by '69-'70.)

Crossing a mundane sitcom over with a sci-fi show seems unlikely, but then, I Love Lucy did that George Reeves Superman crossover episode in a way that left it deliberately ambiguous whether "Superman" was George Reeves being addressed by the name of his TV character, or the actual Superman.

I'd think a Mannix or Mission: Impossible crossover would've been more likely, though.

Although the series name-drops Star Trek in the episode "Lucy's Replacement", shows have done that before without people caring (i.e. mentioned a show as a show, then later featured characters from it as if they share a universe).

Like how characters in Batman watched The Green Hornet on TV and characters on The Green Hornet watched Batman on TV, and then Batman and Robin met the Green Hornet and Kato in person.

As I've mentioned, though, I think it's entirely possible that an A:E series would have avoided any mentions of Trek or would've soft-rebooted itself to be out of continuity with the Trek backdoor pilot episode. So it wouldn't have been an issue in that case.

I'd agree with The Avengers but not Sapphire and Steel. That is a show that's truly out there. Nothing else like it IMO.

Yeah, which is why I was iffy about suggesting it. Still, it takes place almost entirely on contemporary Earth, and doesn't generally involve aliens other than the main characters, although it does tend to involve threats involving time in various weird ways. So as poor an analogy as it is, it's at least a bit closer than Doctor Who, which just goes to show what a poor analogy Doctor Who would have been, despite what people generally assume.

How about we split the difference between the various elevator pitches suggested herein? Assignment: Earth would've been like The Avengers if it had starred Klaatu and Jo Grant.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I'd think a Mannix or Mission: Impossible crossover would've been more likely, though.

True, though regarding HL, the crossover would be Seven on her show, not Lucy Carter on his, and would be played for laughs, not drama. HL had several spy-ish plot episodes.

 

[Sci]

Fair enough, but that also describes The Avengers,

Sure, but the thing Assignment: Earth has in particular in common with Doctor Who but not with The Avengers is that that young female sidekick is not native to or at first comfortable with that older man's larger-than-life world, and serves to some extent as an audience identification vehicle.

The Doctor Who comparison is the most recognizable one to American audiences, but it's the poorest "elevator pitch" of the three, for the reasons I explained. And a pitch is just an invitation to have a longer, more in-depth conversation about the subject, which we've already been doing.

Sure, but the particular context of me calling it "Doctor Who meets Mission: Impossible" was that I was trying to quickly describe the basic idea behind Assignment: Earth to my wife to explain why I was geeking out over the transporter fog at the end of a PIC S2 episode.

 

[Christopher]

Sure, but the thing Assignment: Earth has in particular in common with Doctor Who but not with The Avengers is that that young female sidekick is not native to or at first comfortable with that older man's larger-than-life world, and serves to some extent as an audience identification vehicle.

Which is not the part that most people take away when they hear that comparison. Hence, it's misleading.

Sure, but the particular context of me calling it "Doctor Who meets Mission: Impossible" was that I was trying to quickly describe the basic idea behind Assignment: Earth to my wife to explain why I was geeking out over the transporter fog at the end of a PIC S2 episode.

You explained that already. And I've already said it's perfectly understandable why people would think that Doctor Who was a good analogy if they were basing their opinions only on the Trek episode. But that's the whole reason I've been focusing on what the series prospectus reveals about what was actually intended, which was different from what we expected. What matters isn't what we said or thought in the past, but how we improve our understanding going forward.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Why couldn't some missions be in the future, and on other planets?

Where Roddenberry productions were concerned, the brick wall preventing too many visits to the future (and not appear to be discount Lost in Space) would have been the budget, since that was always a problem for the then-continuing TOS. Yes, a Gary Seven series may not require the amount of futuristic sets, etc., but the format was sci-fi, and going cheap and/or limiting the potential suggested by "Assignment: Earth" (purposely from the Roddenberry end, or due to Paramount) would kill the series, or as noted previously, rendered it some sort of Man from U.NC.L.E., which--by 1968--was not what audiences were interested in watching.

Then again, on TOS, Roddenberry, et al., recycled costumes, matte paintings, etc., so I'd expect some TOS elements to find their way into a Gary Seven series, to keep costs down.

 

[Skipper]

I would love a reboot-sequel-whatever of Sapphire & Steel...

 

[Christopher]

I would love a reboot-sequel-whatever of Sapphire & Steel...

I honestly wasn't crazy about it. I guess if you like eerie, inexplicable ghost stories, it might appeal, but I didn't find it to my taste. It was also really, really low-budget and stagey, built around multi-part stories taking place in a single setting, like a haunted house or an empty train station. I think they only did location shooting once, and that was on a rooftop. Although I guess a reboot/sequel wouldn't be limited to that, necessarily. Unless they wanted it to be.

There have been several series of S&S audio dramas by Big Finish, starring Susannah Harker as Sapphire and David Warner as Steel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sapphire_&_Steel_serials#Audio_serials

 

[Richard S. Ta]

How about we split the difference between the various elevator pitches suggested herein? Assignment: Earth would've been like The Avengers if it had starred Klaatu and Jo Grant.

Works for me! Especially the Jo Grant part!

 

[johnnybear]

I could have seen it happening in a Six Million Dollar Man style way except set in the sixties, but that Gary Seven is not bionic and just has the alien science and devices to assist him in catching spies, maniac tyrants and possible alien invasions. A bit like a Gene Roddenberry Mission:Impossible sort of thing.
JB

 

[johnnybear]

Slow motion and the chimping noise was a must for this series but Gary Seven wasn't a mechanical man as far as I know although he was resistant to the Vulcan nerve pinch!
JB

 

[plynch]

The chimping noise! Love it. Was that a typo? Or do you mean the nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh noise when he lifted things? Does it sound like a chimp? I never heard it that way, but this sure made me smile for some reason.

 

[drt]

He probably meant "chirping".

I think the slow motion was a good choice, it's been many years since I last saw it, but I think in the pilot they used sped up motion for some scenes and it looked way goofier.

 

[Christopher]

What I meant by the Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman comparison was that the situations being dealt with were mostly mundane crime, intrigue, or adventure stories with the main science fiction element being the technology the hero used to solve the problems, with occasional episodes where the problem itself involved some light SF element like a near-future scientific advance or a pseudoscientific ability like ESP (which was seen as scientifically plausible at the time, before the experiments seeming to demonstrate it were debunked).

I think the slow motion was a good choice, it's been many years since I last saw it, but I think in the pilot they used sped up motion for some scenes and it looked way goofier.

Not just the pilot. There were occasional moments where they showed a bystander's point of view of Steve running and used an undercranked camera to speed it up (e.g. in the season 2 premiere "Nuclear Alert"), and it did indeed look silly.

Interestingly, the iconic "ta-ta-ta-ta-tang" bionic sound effect took a couple of years to become standardized in 6M$M. It was first used in season 1's "Day of the Robot" for a machinery sound made by the robot impostor during battle with Steve. It was first used for Steve's exertions in "Dr. Wells is Missing," but oddly was also used for a non-bionic goon swinging a heavy lamppost. From there through early season 2, oddly, it tended to be used to represent fists or objects swinging laterally through the air, whether through bionic strength or not (e.g. when rage monster Mike Farrell swung a railroad tie in "The Pioneers"), but not for other things. By midseason, it started to be used more consistently for bionic exertions (or robotic ones in "Return of the Robot Maker"), and was codified as an exclusively bionic sound effect by season's end, but it wasn't used for bionic running until season 3.

 

[plynch]

I didn’t remember it for running. I haven’t seen these since airing. Loved it as a kid, though. Was it not in syndication/reruns that much?

Does the fandom have a name for that noise? I like “chimping,” but that doesn’t really fit.

 

[Christopher]

Does the fandom have a name for that noise?

Not that I know of. It's just the bionic sound. Although it was already in Universal's sound effects library before the bionic shows; for instance, it's heard in the alien complex at the climax of The Questor Tapes.

 

[somebuddyX]

I want the Cigarette Smoking Klingon to be the mastermind of the takeover of the United States government.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

indeed, even the Trek episode stressed that Gary Seven was from the 1960s and only the Enterprise had engaged in time travel. At most, it hints that Seven would have foreknowledge of certain things that he and Roberta had to head off.

That's untrue. From the episode [http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/55.htm]:

SCOTT [on monitor]: Still unable to analyze it, sir. It was so powerful, it fused most of our recording circuits. Could have brought him back through great distances, could have brought him back through time. There's no way for us to know.​

SEVEN: That's impossible. In this time period, there weren't (notices Spock) Humans with a Vulcan? You're from the future, Captain. You're going to have to beam me down to Earth immediately.​

It's unambiguous that Gary Seven has knowledge of other time periods, including the future.

Scotty's line about Gary's transporter beam being powerful enough to bring him back through time and their having no way of knowing whether that's what happened is the exact opposite of the episode stressing that only the Enterprise engaged in time travel.

The episode opened the door wide open for Gary Seven himself to have traveled through time. He certainly associated with aliens who did so.