Ten cool things about Battlestar Gallactica

If you have to ask which Battlestar Gallactica then slap yourself now.

1-At the time it came on there not been any other sci-fi show quite like it.

2-The ships were fantastic.

3-The Egyptian inspired space helmets looked great.

4-I wouldn’t have thought brown and tan would look good but hey it did.

5-Cool blasters.

6-Triad combined basketball and hand ball and it looked fun.

7-Not since Star Trek had anyone landed on such awesome planets (gunfighters, ice worlds and more)

8-Cylons, they great even they got beat so easily.

9-This show made sour Star Wars fans cry and scream “boohoo they copied my movie”.

10-They cussed. If you don’t believe me then frak you and eat felgercarb.

 

Monster squad (no, not that one-the other one)

Back in the mid-70’s while I was eating whatever sugary breakfast cereal we had in the house I was watching all kind of stuff on Saturday morning. I  probably watched ever came on whether it was good or bad, but a few shows really drew me in. One such show was the Monster Squad. The 13 episodes were shown on NBC from September to December of 1976 and then re-shown through to September of 1977. Walt (Fred Grandy later of Love Boat) was a criminology student and night watchmen at a wax museum. He had a crime computer that he could use to bring wax figures of Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the wolfman to life. The monsters would fight crime as week after week a new villain would pop up to cause trouble frequently a monster type villain like a mummy or a witch. The monster heroes had their own utility belts they wore and a black monster van that they used to travel to emergencies in. Stanley Ralph Ross who worked on the 60’s Batman, the Monkees and Wonder Woman had a hand in this show. It’s comparable to Batman only much more on the silly side. When I was a kid I took to monsters a superheroes right away.  The villains were over the top and the plots were frequently ridiculous. It came out on DVD some years ago and I bought it and was glad to see these episodes again. I remember in second grade we would have a Christmas party and everyone would buy a gift, wrap it and then you drew names to get one. I don’t remember what I bought, but I think it may have a pack of multiple Hot Wheels cars. Anyone like fours kids got the same Star Wars board game. I got a Monster Squad board game and was thrilled. One particularly worthless second grader said something like “haha, you got that game instead of Star Wars”. I was like “have you watched this show?” he stumbled and said no and then told him it was great and I would much rather have a Monster Squad game over Star Wars. Anyways I hope to get to reviewing three episodes of this show over the next few days. Hope you enjoy them.

 

Logans Run the series

I wanted to set this up before I get into reviewing two episodes from this show. The movie hit theaters in the summer of 1976 and it was a hit. It even spawned a comic from Marvel. However I think when Star Wars hit less than a year later in 1977 that kind of changed sci-fi films. Not just the spectacular effects of George Lucas’ creation, but the space opera action and the theme of hope went against the negative dystopian themes of so many sci-fi movies made between say 1968 and 1976. Anyways Star Wars did help boost sci-fi in general. So a Logans Run TV series was put together to go on in the fall of 1977. The Logan and Jessica characters would star just like in the film only played by different people. Logan was Gregory Harrison (from Trapper John M.D.), Jessica was played Heather Menzies  (The sound of music,Sssssss, Pirahna) and Donald Moffatt (The Thing, One life to live) was Rem They added an android Rem who Logan and Jessica would take with them when they left the city of domes to go in search of Sanctuary. The character of Francis the pursuing sandman was brought back as well despite the fact that the character was killed in the movie. In the debut episode they take the plot of the film and even borrow a lot of scenes from it, but put their actors and actresses in place of the originals. We see sandman Logan take up with runner Jessica and eventually leave the city to look for a better place called Sanctuary. The difference between the movie is that in the film Logan pretended to run as an assignment, but in the show he comes to believe in their being a better way than being killed when you hit thirty and that there needed to be a better place. They take the android REM on their journey and on occasion Francis and other sandmen give chase. Each episode our heroes run into a different situation or group of people while in pursuit of Sanctuary. Our heroes also have a land rover type vehicle that they ride around in. The surroundings may look familiar and is looks like they used some of the same locations used in the Planet of the apes show and Little house on the prairie. The special effects were lacking as they frequently used basic aniamtion for any kind of beam. However I think the scripts and the chemistry between the leads made up for the lack of budget. Some episodes were better than others, but largely I think they were on the right path.

D.C. Fontana (Star Trek) served as story editor for the show. The pilot episode went through numerous changes and re-shoots before getting the green light from CBS. The show initially had good ratings, but the network kept pre-empting it which likely caused it to lose some of it’s early audience. There was a time between mid November 1977 and early January 1978 where CBS showed only one episode in a six week span. Only 11 of the 14 episodes were shown on the West Coast, but all 14 are on the DVD set. I’m going to review two episodes between now and the end of the week. Enjoy!

80’s arcade games that should have been made

 

Now the long name for this list would be 80’s arcade  games based on TV shows and movies that I think should have been made. There were a few arcade games based on movies in the 80’s including Star Wars, Star Trek, Tron and Robocop, but not so much on TV shows. There were home games based on movies like Raiders of the lost ark and ET (games buried in the desert). However I wished that more arcade games based on shows and movies had been made back then. Here are my choices in no real order

A-team-This show just screamed side scrolling shooter with maybe levels where you drive BA’s van and maybe even play Murdoch and do crazy helicopter flying. Perhaps you could collect parts and build a crazy weapon to fight the main baddies.

Knight Rider-Imagine a sit down version of this complete with dashboard and various controls.

Beauty and the beast-I see with different levels making your way through the city.

Dukes of Hazzard-Another awesome idea for a sitdown driving game. Imagine avoiding Roscoe on dirt roads and jumping over creeks yeeehaw!

The incredible Hulk-I see this as playing on the idea of the show where Banner has to get his butt kicked so he gets mad and turns into the Hulk. You’d only get limited Hulk time to take care of business before turning back.

 Movies-

Running Man-This one also screams for a game. Battling various psychos as you go along. The 1990 arcade game Smash TV borrowed some ideas from this film.

Die Hard-A crazy violent one against many game in a big building. This could have been cool.

Predator-Guns against an invisible enemy in the jungle. This could have been a challenging and fun game.

Monster Squad-Probably not popular enough for it’s own game, but playing a kid fighting classic monsters has a certain appeal.

For your eyes only (or Octopussy)-I always wished there was a Bond game in the early 1980. Now 1989 saw Secret Agent (Sly Spy) come out and it was close even though it didn’t have the Bond name. However a game based totally on a good film would have been fantastic.

There you. Feel free to add your own ideas.

Robin’s Holy Exclamations!

This week’s Holy Exclamation is “Holy sudden incapacitation!”. A slightly unusual one, but hopefully you can find a use for it during the upcoming week.

Buck Rogers-Space Vampire

1980

Buck and Wilma stop at this space base that looks like was built from Legos. They are to drop off Twiki for repairs and then go off on a trip. Hey, wouldn’t you know it a spacecraft comes crashing into the base -kerplooie! Everyone is dead, but not dead according to the doctor of the space base although maybe he’s a doctor and maybe he’s not. Anyways something  fishy is going on. Tapes by the ship captain say someone was killing their crew off one at a time, but they couldn’t see anyone because you know invisible killers are the cheapest kind to create. A red dot appears and a cat chases it, oh wait all that is true except for the cat part. So this red dot floats around and stalks Wilma and she feels all icky, but doesn’t know why. The doctor is attacked by and turned into the dead/not dead crewmembers. That’s what you get for giving out crap information! Wilma is attacked by the worst looking space vampire ever as he looks kind of like Nosferatu if a eight year with their eyes closed did the designing. Buck shows up to scare off the vampire, but the beastie vanishes right before the space station commander gets there to see Buck pointing a gun at Wilma. So Buck gets put in jail-take that, Mr. I’m from the cool past. The vampire comes after Wilma and drains her force/power/whatever with his fingernails-really, trim those things! She is now semi-vamp like and goes into the cell to get Buck. He wards here off with this vampire repellent thing which looks more something you scrape your foot with. So time is running out-let’s get this over with. The vampire gets Wilma and Buck and the space station commander see him and give chase. Vampire and Wilma leave in Bucks ship. Oh, no that’s terrible oh wait quick thinking and paranoid Buck put a thing on device to prevent someone else from leaving through the stargate. The vampire tries to get through and it shocked (not as shocked as I was by his uni-brow) and poof he’s gone. The people who were not dead are not really not dead and actually alive again. All is well so roll the credits.

The negatives-Logic is tossed out the window on this one as it in most episodes of this show.

The positives-Although not  a well thought out episode it does try to offer some suspense and action. Chistopher Stone (The Howling and tons of shows) plays the space station commander and he was a decent enough actor.

TV Terror Thursday-Little house on the praire

 

The monster of walnut grove
1976

It’s Halloween Eve as opposed to the day before which would have been Halloween Eve Eve. Anyways Laura scares her sister Carrie by reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to her-take that, little kid. Laura and Mary get to go vandalize Olsen’s store by soaping the windows, but it’s okay because the Olsen’s let people do this. While there Laura thinks she sees Mr. Olsen cut his wife’s head off with a sword-kawhack! Come on, Laura that couldn’t be but she thinks it is. She tries to convince Mary that it happened and Mary makes some snooty comment, although Mary always seem to be on her high horse so nothing new there. Laura has a nightmare about Mrs. Olsen Laura convinces her friend Carl due to the fact that Mrs. Olsen left on a coach to go see her mother so she’s gone. Really Mr. Olsen only cut off mannequin head, but if Laura knew then this would have been a seven minute show so with the misunderstanding. Laura tells Nellie and Willie what she saw and they think she’s been sniffing wild berries or something. Back at the Olsen household Nels spills blood sauce on his wife’s apron ooopsie. When Nellie and Willie find it they think maybe Laura was right. Nellie says something to her father about it and what Laura said and he says “are you insane?”. No, actually he tells them what really happened and asks them to tell Laura. They say yes, but of course we know they won’t set her straight-the little skunks. Meanwhile Laura has a dream that Mr. Olsen is a ghoul with nasty teeth and he serves up Mrs. Olsen’s screaming head on a platter. This scared Laura so badly that she didn’t want to go out in the dark to use the outhouse so she holds it all night and then goes and pees a river once morning comes around. Laura and Carl are freaking out now as Willie and Nellie play them like violins. Willie says he heard digging in their basement and thinks his dad was burying something so he invites Laura an Carl over to be scared to death. They reluctantly show up shaking like leaves. Willie brings them in and takes them down to the basement so they can soil themselves they can see what is going on. Of course Nellie is down there waiting under a white sheet. She jumps out and scares Laura and Carl who run back up the steps quickly, but thinking the ghost got Willie already Carl stacks heavy boxes over the hatch trapping Willie and Nelson in the cellar. Mrs. Olson shows up giving Laura and Carl another scare, but they accidentally run into Mrs. Olsen and knock her out. Mr. Olsen shows up and wonders what in the blazes is going on? He tells Laura and Carl about the mannequin head and that Nellie and Willie were supposed to tell them about that. Laura says they’ll go tell Willie and Nellie that Mr. Olsen wants to see them. Carl has a good idea and they go with. They toss the mannequin head down the steps which despite the fact that Nellie knew this wasn’t her mom’s head earlier she still screams like crazy. Laura and Carl head home and run into the headless horseman on the way home. Wait, what the heck? Yep, headless horseman and you thought crapped their drawers earlier.

The negatives-Just some holes like Nellie being scared of a mannequin head she’d seen before. Also it’s supposed to be late fall in Minnesota, but it’s still fairly green because it’s really summer in California.

The positives-Although this show can be sickening sweet it could also be kind of creepy as we have here. I saw this one probably when it was first on and have vivid memories of it. The idea of scaring other kids and being scared is always appealing. I love the basement scene and the headless horseman despite the fact that this last figure’s appearance makes no sense except that Laura was reading about him earlier in the episode.

Twilight Zone-Back there

You’re not the Skipper.

1961

These rich, fancy pants guys are sitting around in black and white yacking about time travel and whether or not events in time could be changed and blah, blah, blah on and on. Corrigan (Russell Johnson) decides to leave and he talks to an attendant William before departing. Then he feels all whoozy headed and suddenly everything is all olden days and such. He gets to what he thinks is his house, but it turns out it’s really a boarding house and it’s 1865 instead of 1961. Normally when people tie one on they go forward in time not back-oh wait maybe he’s sober. Because everyone who thinks they have just gone back in time almost 100 years must be sober. He realizes it’s the day that Lincoln will be assassinated. He rushes to stop the event, but is rushed to the police station and believed to be touched in the head. A dude named Wellington takes Corrigan into custody. He gets him out of there and begins asking him questions. Corrigan tells him what he knows and then takes a drink from Wellington and is probably just glad it’s not served in a coconut. However it is drugged, Corrigan wakes up later and realizes that Corrigan is John Wilkes Booth and it’s too late. he gets back to his time and is convinced you can’t change history. At least that it until he runs into William who is now rich because back in the past Corrigan convinced William’s policeman relative to go and try to stop an assassination before it happened. This apparently caused him to rise in position and pass on wealth to his relatives.

The negatives-Not a whole lot.

The positives-A strong script and solid acing pull off this bare bones time travel tale. It’s a great episode that is good now and when I first saw it years ago.

Pull my finger.

Ooops I think we just failed to change history.

UFO-Timelash

 

 

1971

Commander Straker shows up busting computers down in SHADO headquarters. Paul and other try to stop him, but he flees leading them on a chase. They run past weird things like a corpse in a moving car, but eventually catch Straker. Next he wakes in a bed and the doctor and Paul try to get to what in the word is going on. Straker’s memories are shown. He and Commander Lake were on there way to HQ and discover everything is frozen in time. Turns out that a SHADOW agent Turner has …

A-turned bad

B-frozen everyone in time

C-invited the bad aliens to send a UFO down to take over

Straker straightens his wig and prepares for action. He and Lake try to nab Turner, but Turner still using time tricks to stay one step ahead of them. He taunts them, pokes at them and gets them all riled up grrrrrr! Meanwhile the UFO is on it’s way so Straker and Lake go to a nearby rooftop with the hopes of setting up a rocket launcher to destroy the UFO. Good idea, but that nasty skunk Turner shows up, knocks out Lake, steals the rocket launcher ignition key and runs off using his time travel tricks. Straker gives chase as the UFO begins to appear up in the sky on it’s way to cause trouble. Straker chases Turner in a little car, but Turner uses him times ttickery and appears to constantly be one step ahead. That it until he opens his big and makes that classic villain mistake and of telling the hero how to beat him. Turner is driving his little car in a circle around Straker using time manipulation to dodge Straker bullets. Then he says something like you can’t hit me because I am either seconds ahead or seconds behind where you are shooting. Once he hears this Straker just fires bullet in the circular pattern that the car was traveling in and boom they find Turner. Straker gets the key, hauls behind back to the rooftop, shoots the UFO and it flees. Straker makes sure that Lake is okay and then we are back to the beginning and everything makes sense to everyone else. So now everyone knows Straker is a hero and not a fruitcake. Roll the credits.

The negatives-This is tough to follow at first.

The positives-This is one of the best episodes of the series. We get a unique script, lots of action and Patrick Allen is fittingly insane as Turner.

This is pretty awesome use of time travel in a short range of time. If only Turner had kept his mouth shut and kept running then it really would have worked out.

Star Trek-Tomorrow is yesterday

1967

The effects from a black star throw the Enterprise back to the 1960’s-like groovy, man. However an Air Force has been dispatched to locate the starship when it shows up on military radar-uh oh. The Enterprise accidently breaks the ship with it’s tractor beam-oopsie. However they beam the pilot one Captain John Christopher onto the ship first. So he’s okey dokey but he has seen too much-computers, weapons, Spock so he can’t go back because he might blab. Spock looks to make sure this guy isn’t going to do anything important in the future and he doesn’t. However the son he doesn’t have yet will be involved in a space ship launch thingie that could effect the future if his dad isn’t there to make sure the son exists. Captain Christopher lets Kirk know that he took film of the Enterprise and that it’s likely on earth and will be seen. Kirk and Sulu beam down and break in to get the film, but they have to beam up an Air Force officer to keep cover and then Kirk gets nabbed. Sulu later returns with Spock and Captain Christopher, but the guy from the 1960’s wants to stay now and causes trouble so Spock puts the old Vulcan nerve pinch on him. They beam back and Scotty says he thinks they can slingshot around the sun to get back to their own time and Captain Christopher would go back to not having known about them. They try it and bimbamboom all is right in the world both past and future.

They are right, the film shows that I am a ham.

 

The negatives-For a time travel event the actual travel part isn’t shown much but that goes with the lack of budget that the original Trek had or didn’t have.

The positives-This is a good, but not great episode. The time travel is handled in a rather low key way, but the aspect of one’s offspring effecting the future was interesting as was the Enterprise being mistaken for a UFO.

You have women in your time too I see.

Now suppose you tell me why they still have hairpieces in the future?