At Flashbak; The Fisher Price Movie Viewer (1973)

This week at Flashbak, I recalled a great toy of the 1970s: the Fisher Price Movie Viewer.

Here’s a snippet and the url: (http://flashbak.com/no-batteries-required-remembering-fisher-price-movie-viewer-1973-49908/)

“In 1973, Fisher Price introduced its popular “Movie Viewer and Cartridge” toy: a camera-like device that -- when operated by crank -- could show Super 8 mm films. 

This was the Fisher Price Movie Viewer, and as the commercials promised, children could crank the device in slow-motion, speed it up, or even run the film backwards.  Best of all, the device needed no batteries.

The Fisher Price Movie Viewer was sold with one cartridge, originally: a 1937 Walt Disney short called Lonesome Ghosts

Very quickly, however, Fisher Price developed a wide catalog of films for kids to purchase watch, including several animated Disney movies. 

Available on cartridge were Snow White (1937), Robin Hood (1973), Pinocchio(1940), and The Rescuers (1977).  There were also several Looney Tunes cartridges, one each for Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner, and Sylvester and Tweety.

Other cartridges sold by Fisher Prince included the Pink Panther, three Marvel Spider-Man titles, and in 1979, Disney’s big-budget space epic: The Black Hole.”

Continue reading at Flashbak.

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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Academy "Star Legend" (December 10, 1977)

This week on Filmation's 1977 Saturday morning space adventure, a Space Academy mission "marking the boundaries" of the Alderaan Triangle with "beacons," grows increasingly dangerous. Chris (Ric Carrott) and Paul's (Ty Henderson) Seeker experiences a mysterious power drain after going off course to avoid space junk.

The Seeker is miraculously rescued by a "strange old-fashioned laser beam," which pushes the craft out of the futuristic Bermuda Triangle.

On the view-screen, a strange disembodied head appears and warns the Seeker to stay away.

Meanwhile, back at the Academy, Commander Gampu (Jonathan Harris) comes to believe that the legendary Captain Rampo (Howard Morris), "the flying dutchman of outer space" may be responsible for the incident with the Seeker. 

Gampu describes the legend of how Rampo, captaining an early planetoid spacecraft not unlike the Academy, became lost in space, over a millennium ago. Believing the legend, Commander Gampu flies the Academy in to the Alderaan Triangle's lateral perimeter, and the Academy too is promptly drained of energy...

With the Academy frozen in the Triangle, Gampu takes Blue Team aboard a Seeker to Rampo's space craft, which resembles the Academy, but is lit green. Once on board, a strange specter warns them to "leave...or stay forever" and states that "all visitors here are doomed...doomed!"

Gampu and his cadets laser down a locked door and discover 1,603 year-old Captain Rampo, a funny old man dressed like a train conductor, circa 1910. 

Turns out he's been pulling a Balok strategy (from the classic Star Trek episode, "The Corbomite maneuver.") A thousand years ago, he was establishing a colony on a nearby planet when the sun went nova. A magnetic storm forced him to cross into the Alderaan Triangle, and he and his ship have remained trapped there, orbiting the space trap in an attempt to stop a "scourge of energy vapor" which drains ships of power. He's been pretending to be a fierce specter to keep other ships away...when in reality he's just a kindly old man. 

Gampu and the others decide to give the hungry energy vapor "indigestion." They lure it into the captain's quarters, then return to the Seeker and destroy Rampo's ship...thus ending the star legend, and freeing Rampo from his mission.

I love how "Star Legend" combines aspects of the Flying Dutchman legend with tales of the Bermuda Triangle (a regular 1970s obsession), and then reveals -- in glorious miniature -- a much earlier version of the Academy.  Rampo's "ship" glows green, inside and out, making it appear quite creepy. 

Still, you have to wonder how the builders of the ship could afford to lose it. Also, for being a thousand years old, Rampo's planetoid appears as advanced in terms of technology and production design as the Academy.

Next week: "Johnny Sunseed."

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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Chapter 11: The Haunted Planet" (November 18, 1978)

In Jason of Star Command’s (1978-1980) Chapter 11, “The Haunted Planet,” Jason (Craig Littler), Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon), and Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) must crash on an icy planetoid when their Star Fire’s radiation detector fails and the ship’s atomic core overheats.

They escape from the ship just as it explodes, and are soon confronted by a man named Bork (Angelo Rossitto), who claims to be an emissary from Queen Vanessa (Julie Newmar).  

Bork attempts to capture the folks from Star Command using a local monster enslaved by an obedience collar, but Jason frees the beast, who is actually an “energy” being.

Jason and the others see Vanessa on their own terms in a mountain base, and she addresses them.  She implores Jason to switch sides and work for Dragos, but he refuses. 

Accordingly, Vanessa informs them they will never leave her world alive.  She then incapacitates them using a toxic gas…

Julie Newmar -- the greatest Catwoman ever, bar none -- guest stars in this segment of Jason of Star Command. She is, as always, beautiful and poised, though the character she plays is hardly worth her time. 

Vanessa is called a queen, but where are her people? Why is she alone on this icy planetoid with just one servant (Angelo Rossitto of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome[1985]).

Similarly, Vanessa is in league with Dragos, but we don’t learn why she has chosen this course, at least not yet.  Hopefully future episodes will reveal more about her.

Also, it seems like going to a lot of trouble bringing Jason to the planet just to ask him to change sides, when his answer is pretty much pre-ordained.  Wouldn’t Dragos (her ally, remember?), have preferred her simply to let the ship’s atomic core blow up with all hands aboard the Star Fire?

I always find it laughable, and an example of poor storytelling, when a villain decides to lay a trap for his arch-enemy, thus doing the very thing that will assure his mission fails.  The Master did this all the time on Doctor Who, inviting, basically, the Doctor into his plans, and then cursing his name when the Doctor made them fail. Here, we are to believe that Jason is such a strong adversary to Dragos that the villain would rather “turn” him than kill him, given the opportunity.

Not likely.

Jason’s odyssey on Kesh continues in the next episode.

Next week: “Escape from Kesh.”

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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Chapter 10: "The Disappearing Man"

In Jason of Star Command (1978-1980), Chapter Ten, “The Disappearing Man,” a Seeker suddenly appears near Star Command, and then vanishes. It re-appears in the hanger bay.

While investigating, Jason (Craig Littler), Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon), Parsafoot (Charie Dell) and Commander Canarvin (James Doohan), find a high-speed recording on the ship.  Lt. Matt Prentiss (John Berwick), who disappeared from Space Academy a year earlier), claims to be a victim of Dragos’ (Sid Haig) evil.

Dragos has experimented on him and accelerated his metabolism to one thousand times the equivalent of human normal speed.  This is part of Dragos’ plot to develop an “ultimate weapon,” invisibility.

Professor Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) creates a device that can speed up Jason’s metabolism, and allow him to locate Matt.  But he only has 90 seconds to use it, before he too becomes trapped – permanently – at that accelerated rate of existence.

Jason is successful bringing back Matt, and the grateful man informs him of another secret.  Peepo – who is still missing – is under Dragos’ control.

“The Disappearing Man” is a knock-off of a classic third season Star Trek episode: “Wink of An Eye.”  

In that narrative, as you may recall, the Enterprise visited a planet called Scalos wherein a civilization was dying.  Its few survivors, including Queen Deela, had been affected by strange factors in their water.  

The result was that their metabolism accelerated to an unbelievable rate, making them impossible to see at our speed or our level of vision.

The story saw Captain Kirk accelerated in similar fashion (thanks to a drop of water in his coffee cup), and the neat visuals depicted him moving at normal speed through a world -- the corridors of the Enterprise -- frozen, as if in amber.

“The Disappearing Man” features the same sort of personal acceleration, vis-à-vis the missing cadet, Matt Prentiss, and also shows the “real world” in the same fashion; as so slow that movement is undetectable.  

In “Wink of an Eye,” the Scalosians could communicate, but their words were so fast, they sounded like insects buzzing about.  “The Disappearing Man” retains that concept as well. I wonder how James Doohan felt acting in an episode with such an obvious Trekkie antecedent?

Even casting aside these similarities, “The Disappearing Man” has some logical problems.  For example, Jason only has ninety seconds or he will be lost, accelerated.  The machine that can bring him back, however, is broken at the last second, leaving Dr. Parsafoot to attempt something else.  The question is: why is this a crisis?  Why not just repair the machine and send somebody else (Nicole, perhaps…) after Jason, just the way he went after the accelerated Prentiss?

“The Disappearing Man” plays a lot like a budget/time-saver. Although there is a guest star, John Berwick, all the action occurs on standing sets, not new planet sets with alien creatures, and there are no new significant outer space visuals, either, just some footage of a Seeker from Space Academy (1977).

Even the plot is thrifty, having been imported directly from Star Trek.

Next week: “Chapter 11: The Haunted Planet”

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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Chapter 9: Peepo's Last Chance" (November 4, 1978)

In Jason of Star Command (1978-1980) Chapter 9, “Peepo’s Last Chance,” Dragos (Sid Haig) has repaired his Dragonship and is scouring the universe for signs of Jason. 

On Arcturon, Drago’s minions locate a couple of Star Command droids: Peepo and Wiki.  They are there conducting a defense survey of the world, but Dragos orders them captured.

Jason (Craig Littler) and Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon) take a Star Fire to the planet, but in the mean-time 

Peepo is connected to a dragon terminal and made to reveal top secret information about Star Command and its technology. 

Jason manages to free his friends, but the day is not saved.  Though Jason doesn’t know it, Peepo has been brain-washed and now serves the evil Dragos.

“Peepo’s Last Chance” is not much more than a runaround -- a show with little emotional or narrative depth, concerning instead rescues, escapes, and chases.  In this circumstance, Jason and Nicole must save two diminutive robots, Peepo and Wiki from Dragos.

Wiki spends a great deal of time on the top of Peepo’s computerized head this week, and I could not help but think of Twiki and Dr. Theopolis from Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century.  

But the real antecedents here? 

R2-D2 and C3PO, the beloved droid duo from Star Wars (1977).  Here, Peepo considers Wiki an “annoying kid brother,” according to Jason, and that seems like an attempt to recreate the relationship dynamic of the famous gold protocol droid and his mischief-making astromech pal.

This is the first episode on my re-watch wherein I first felt a sense of creeping sameness or routine.  We’ve seen Dragos’ evil plan before, as well as his capture of Star Command personnel.  We’ve even seen the spaghetti-monster minions and the wasteland planetoid before. And, of course, we’ve seen rescues and escapes galore.

I guess in a large multi-part “serial” like this one, some parts qualify as filler. That’s certainly the case with “Peepo’s Last Chance,” though in fairness the episode does set up, ably, the possibility of future betrayal.  Peepo has been turned!

Next week: “The Disappearing Man.”

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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Academy: "Planet of Fire" (November 5, 1977)

This week on Space Academy, Tee-Gar Soom (Brian Tochi) experiments with a "cryotron," a device that will ultimately be able to "cool down hot planets."  He demonstrates it for his friends, and for Gampu (Jonathan Harris), and is pleased with his success.

But Tee Gar is also due for a vacation, so he leaves the Academy and doesn't learn that his experimental cryotron device --which looks like a ray gun with a back pack -- posseses a fatal flaw: the frozen objects become unstable and explode.

With Loki and Peepo, the oblivious Tee Gar heads to the asteroid of Daleus to perform further tests on the cryotron, only to see the potential weapon stolen by a strange, solitary giant named Dramon (Don Pedro Colley).

Dramon abducts and then freezes Peepo with the Cryotron, and then needs Tee Gar's help to restore the robot to normal. 

The only thing that can save the diminutive droid is "moist heat."  Fortunately, a hot spring on the planet surface gets the job donem and Peepo is saved.

At the end of the day, Peepo is back to being himself, and Dramon returns to the Academy as a new friend. 

Meanwhile, Tee-Gar promises to continue work on his freezing device.

"All great men have suffered disappointment," advises Commander Gampu "from Galileo to the Wright Brothers..."

"Planet of Fire" is a disappointment, I would assess. It's not that it is a terrible episode, it's that it is pitched a lot lower than earlier episodes.  "Countdown," "Survivors of Zalon" and "The Rocks of Janus" could largely pass muster on a prime time series like Star Trek (1966-1969) or Space:1999 (1975-1977).  The concepts are strong ones, and the execution is pretty good too.

But "Planet of Fire," is, in essence, about the cadets encountering a lonely giant who freezes their robot.  They make friends with him.

And that's it.

This isn't to say that the lesson about friendship is unworthy. It isn't. Dramon is confused that Peepo's buddies risked their lives to rescue him. "Maybe the way you act, you don't deserve them [friends]," Peepo suggests, and so Dramon reforms his anti-social ways.

There's also a lesson here about tenacity. Tee Gar has failed in his work, making the cryotron safe and functional, but one set-back cannot be the end for a scientist.  He must re-tool, and try again.  Otherwise, nothing of value will ever be invented right.  In some ways, Gampu's speech to Tee Gar about success is absolutely perfect.  It's something a good teacher would say. And it reminds me, absolutely, of moments between Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Wesley Crusher (Will Wheaton) in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), particularly in shows such as "Coming of Age."

Still, these lessons for Tee Gar and Dramon feel a bit too preachy, and they are grounded in concepts that aren't that great.  A giant? A freeze ray?  Space Academy often aspires to be more than pulp-branded entertainment, and it's a bit sad to see "Planet of Fire" rely on such hoary ideas.

Next week: "Life Begins at 300."

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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Chapter 8: Attack of the Dragons" (October 28, 1978)

In “Attack of the Dragons,” Jason (Craig Littler’s) star fire is buffeted by Dragos’ (Sid Haig) electron storm.  He determines that the ship can return to normal space only after the storm is struck by laser cannons.

But as Commander Canarvin (James Doohan) reports, Star Command is a sitting duck, coming under attack by Dragos’ drone interceptors. Still, the Commander manages to fire the lasers and free Jason. 

Jason returns the favor, launching a suicide run against Dragos’ Dragon ship and forcing the villain to withdraw. He succeeds, and Dragos retreats.

For Jason, Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon) and Professor Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) is a home-coming long awaited.

But Star Command has not yet heard the last of Dragos.

This fifteen minute segment of Jason of Star Command (1978-1980) is dominated by very strong Star Wars era visual effects. A Star Fire escapes from an electron storm, and meanwhile, Star Command is buffeted by an enemy squadron.

The effects hold up nicely, with only one caveat.  There’s a lot of model incongruities or dis-connects, largely because of one fact. Some episodes back, Princess Allegra returned to Star Command in a pod, so Jason’s Star Fire is now pod-less, so-to-speak.  However, many effects shots in this installment show confusion over that fact. Some shots feature the pod; some don’t.

Speaking of Princess Allegra (Roseanne Katon), she and Captain Kidd (Brendan Dillon) share the same fate after this show. They are not seen, heard from, or referred to again.  They are written out of the story, going forward.  Perhaps Princess Allegra decided to return home, but what about Captain Kidd?  He’s a man out of another time period all together. Where will he go? How will he get there? What will he do?

Jason of Star Command doesn’t answer any of those questions. Still, Captain Kidd has a nice moment in this episode when he navigates Jason’s Star Fire using nautical tools of a bygone era. 

“Attack of the Dragons” might be considered a kind of section break or pivot point in the sixteen episode first season saga. Dragos is vanquished (temporarily), and all the main characters -- Jason, Nicole, Canarvin, Parsafoot and Wiki -- are back home.

Next week, a regular character from Space Academy returns: Peepo!  That’s in Chapter 9, “Peepo’s Last Chance.”

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