Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Chapter 14: Peepo on Trial" (December 9, 1978)

In “Peepo on Trial,” Space Academy/Star Command falls into a Galactic Typhoon, while Peepo – under the sway of Dragos (Sid Haig) sabotages the planetoid’s engines at a critical moment.

Jason (Craig Littler) uses W1k1 to stop Peepo, and Professor Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) attempts to undo Drago’s reprogramming.  The poor bot has had his “circuits poisoned,” according to Parsafoot.

Meanwhile, The Academy must attempt a risky move, going to extreme speed in hopes of blasting through the typhoon. The maneuver is attempted, and Space Academy survives the danger!

We get more derring-do and cliff-hanging excitement in this installment of Jason of Star Command (1978-1980), but not much else. W1k1 again saves the day and -- title aside -- there’s no actual trial here for Peepo.

The most memorable aspect of this brief segment, perhaps, is James Doohan’s role as Commander Canarvin.  Here, the character begins talking about the Academy’s engines and how they were never designed for such “extreme speed.”   This is all very deja-vu, and brings to mind many such moments on Star Trek involving Scotty.

The threat of the week is a “galactic typhoon,” a kind of space storm, and exactly the kind of space phenomenon that was featured prominently in many sci-fi TV series of the 1970s.  In Space: 1999’s “The Séance Spectre,” for example, Moonbase Alpha encountered a space “weather belt,” and in the original Star Trek, Spock’s shuttle was briefly lost in the storm-like quasar in “The Galileo 7.”

Next week “The Trojan Horse.”

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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Return of the Creature" (December 2, 1978)

In “Return of the Creature,” Jason of Star Command (Craig Littler) encounters the Gill-Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

No, I’m just kidding.  

In this episode, Jason, Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon) and Parsafoot (Charlie O’Dell) have been delivered to Dragos (Sid Haig) on his Dragonship.  There, Jason escapes, and encounters the monster with an electrically-charged tongue from a few episodes back.  He defeats it and rescues his friends.

Meanwhile, Dragos re-programs Peepo, the kindly little robotn from the Academy, and re-wires his circuits so he will turn against Star Command.  At the same time, Dragos spawns a galactic typhoon, and Star Command falls into its gravitational pull.

Well, “Return of the Creature” is a pretty dire entry in the first season of Jason of Star Command (1979-1980).  When this series is at its worst, it is simply a series of escapes, rescues and more escapes. 

That’s what “Return of the Creature” is. It consists of a lot of Jason running down cave-like corridors, escaping from monsters and guards, and rescuing his friends.  That’s pretty much it.  The whole story is filler until we get to a significant plot turn or point.

Commendably, the returning monster (or creature, per the title), still looks pretty good.  The stop-motion animation is strong, particularly in its coordination with the live-action elements of the action.  We learn that the monster is one of Drago’s energy clones this time, and the special effects are good as Jason destroys it.  The production values of this series never fail to impress.  Just some entries are narratively empty, from time to time.  And "Return of the Creature" is one of those times.

"Return of the Creature" fast-moving filler, a place holder until the next big story pivot point.  We should be getting that soon, with poor Peepo getting brainwashed by the evil Dragos.

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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command (1978-1980): "Escape from Kesh" (November 25, 1978)

In Jason of Star Command (1978-1980) Chapter 12, “Escape from Kesh,” Jason (Craig Littler), Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon), and Professor Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) continue to languish in the planetoid cave-bound prison of Queen Vanessa (Julie Newmar).

She creates a metal cage around the heroes in a cave, and then reports to Dragos (Sid Haig) that she has secured the captives.  While Vanessa is away, the heroes shrink Jason down to tiny size so that he can get out of the cage, and de-materialize it.

After Jason is returned to normal height, he and the others flee to the planet’s surface, and are surprised to see that their Star Fire -- thought destroyed -- awaits.  They take off in it, but find that Vanessa has tricked them again.

The Star Fire is her ship, and they are all on course for a rendezvous with Dragos aboard his dragon ship.

“Escape from Kesh” is an even sillier-than-usual entry in the on-going “serial” that is Jason of Star Command. Here, the pulpy (or perhaps, hoary…) idea of shrinking people (see: Dr. Shrinker [1976]) is resurrected to provide the escape of the week.  

Exactly how and why Jason gets shrunken and escapes Vanessa’s prison are not questions that should be closely scrutinized.  It’s just more phantasmagoria to throw at kids.  That fact established, the special effects aren’t bad. In this case, gigantic, Land of the Giants (1968-1970) sized props help sell the illusion that Jason has been reduced to six inches in height.

The episode’s notable high point is Julie Newmar’s over-the-top performance as Vanessa.  She plays the character as stark, raving mad. She swirls about, dances, enunciates and chews every syllable of every word with delight.  In short, Newmar looks like she is having a hell of a lot of fun, and that’s as it should be.  Her character, Vanessa, however, remains undeveloped.  She delivers Jason to Dragos in this episode, and then disappears next episode, her piece of the serial puzzle apparently finished.

The writing in “Escape from Kesh” is a little goofy too.  Jason, Parsafoot. and Nicole barely escaped the destruction -- and ensuing explosion -- of their Star Fire in the last episode.  Here, the ship is intact and ready to launch, and they don’t question this fact at all. They nearly got clocked with debris in Chapter 11!   Now, they just board the craft, and head for space.

Ironically, Vanessa takes them where they wanted to go anyway, the Dragon Ship!  But the big question goes unanswered: Where did Vanessa get a Star Fire?  Did she repair the destroyed one, and if so, how did she accomplish that herculean feat with only one dwarf minion by her side?

Next week: "Return of the Creature."

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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: 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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