Closet Sci-Fi Geek

Starfleet

In the DVD Player

The Tomorrow People, Thames Television (A&E Home Video)

Starring Nicholas Young, Peter Vaughan-Clarke, and Elizabeth Adare

For those of us who tuned into “Nickleodeon” on weekday afternoons in the 1980’s, the US-formatted DVD release of “The Tomorrow People” is a blast to our Gen-X retro past. Yeah, the special effects were cheesy and the acting amateurish in that special British sci-fi way, but the stories were powerful and spoke to those of us who felt “different.” For those who value style over substance in a sci-fi series, just compare the forty-plus year run of “Doctor Who” to the twenty-seven year run of the Roddenberry “Trek” franchise. Which one is still currently in production? That’s right. “Doctor Who.” And the Lucasing of TOS Trek doesn’t count.

The premise of “The Tomorrow People” is one explored extensively in the Marvel Comics universe: people developing powers through natural mutation and evolution. In the series, the powers manifest themselves at the onset of puberty in a traumatic process called “breaking out,” a metaphor for the whole junior high experience if ever I heard one. While powers acquired in the Marvel universe are usually singular and specific (laser eyes, control of the weather, etc.), the powers displayed by the Tomorrow People include telekinesis, telepathy, and teleportation. Each of the People display all three abilities, but some have a greater degree of speciality in one of the other. One characters is adept at picking locks, while another is able to project images of ghosts through telepathy.

 A mainstay of the series is the characters’ ability to teleport, or “jaunt,” a term borrowed from the novel The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Just by thinking about it, they can teleport to any location they can imagine. I never did get why they had to be mechanically assisted by the “jaunting belts.” I guess it so the “TIM” character could play a greater role in the series. TIM is the biomechanical computer, voiced by Phillip Gilbert. Gilbert’s is one of the classic sci-fi computer/robot voices, right up there with Roddy McDowell, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Douglas Rain, and Dick Tufeld.

The episodes in the DVD sets are presented in their original 30-minute “serial” format, with opening and closing credits between each episode. While this makes for disjointed viewing of the entire story and can be tedious when viewing the “flashback” sequences from the previous episode, the format keeps the entire set true to the original series. The lack of original series artwork on the box makes it hard to spot on the shelf. For some reason, A&E elected to go with original art on the box and DVD cases.

It’s a set worth owning. Here’s to A&E for finally bringing this series to DVD on our shores.

LarryJP

Samurai Pizza Cats

If you woke up tomorrow with a different set of memories, would you still be you?

A while back I watched A Scanner Darkly. While this is a good enough film (and yet another cinematic adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel), it’s certainly not the best film I’ve seen about fractured identities and perspectives that are warped by drugs or technology. Total Recall has much more fun with the

topic. Based on “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick, it raises the fundamental question - do memories define character? If your memories tell you that you are a gun-slinging, ass-kicking spy; does that make you a gun-slinging, ass-kicking spy? Bladerunner (based on Philip K Dick’s, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) takes a more meditative approach to the topic. Is the film-noiresque hero, Deckard, real or not? Is he a human or is he a replicant who has forgotten that he is artificial. The random selection of antique photos on Deckard’s piano gives us a clue. Are they a record of Deckard’s past or are they a badly constructed history; a collation of tenuously linked memories. Then there’s the unicorn dream he keeps having. Again, is this his subconscious at work or another memory, implanted by Tyrell Corporation? Similarly, if you can hide memories, can you hide a personality? Take Talia Winters from Babylon 5. One minute she is a mild mannered telepath, minding her own business as best she can, the next minute her ’sleeper’ personality has been activated and she’s a cold-blooded killer. Ditto with The Long Kiss Goodnight. Amiable housewife becomes professional killer. There are many many many other examples. But just one question really. If you woke up tomorrow with a completely different set of memories, would you still be you?

Mighty Orbots

Here’s a TV series I loved as a kid in the early eighties. Mighty Orbots was similar to Starfleet in that it involved a bunch of different machines that joined up to make one big, kick arse robot. But in this case, the machines are the characters themselves – Tor, Bort, Crunch, Bo and Boo. Crunch was my favourite (the blue fat one of the left). He’d eat anything, including rocks. There’s something about chomping through granite like it’s chocolate that’s really cool.

I used to almost run the kilometre of gravel road home from school to catch Mighty Orbots, and dreamed of us having the latest of luxury inventions, the mystical ‘video recorder’ so that I could record them and watch them again. Alas we got our Black Diamond some time after Mighty Orbots finished screening.

While Starfleet was a Japanese production over-dubbed for the English market, Mighty Orbots was a joint American/Japanese production. I only realise this now, looking back, but I must have had quite a thing for the Japanese aesthetic.

What Dreams May Come

I remember seeing the 1998 film What Dreams May Come when it first came out in the theater. I loved it then; the visuals were absolutely spectacular, especially by 1998 standards. It’s now 10 years later and I just watched it again at home. I’ve also since read the book (which the movie was based on).

What Dreams May Come, in case you missed it, is a film about the afterlife. Specifically, it’s about an afterlife where your thoughts create your reality. Thus, if you are a good person and in a good mental space, you may see an afterlife that is filled with beauty and lush scenery. If not, it’s off to your personal hell you go.

Robin Williams starred in the film as a man who dies and goes to heaven. Soon his wife commits suicide and is sent to hell. (She’s the one who has sent herself to hell.) Throughout all this, we get to see sappy flashbacks of their affluent life, before their kids died in a car crash and everything turned sour. Continue reading What Dreams May Come…

Star Trek Generations

I’m digging through my VCR vault…and finally watching and donating my old VCR tapes. And what did I find? Star Trek Generations, the first of the “Next Generation” movies.

Watching it some 10 years later (yikes, has it been that long?), I’m a bit more forgiving. Maybe it’s the years of disappointing Trek on television, but Generations is actually a pretty decent movie, Trek-wise. (Never mind that it’s an odd-number Trek film!)

Highlights:

Captain Kirk (though we need to see more of him).
Some great lines from Scotty at the beginning of the film.
Data and his new emotion chip (nothing like a tricorder puppet to liven up an away team mission!).
Guinan looking incredibly worried with her big cool hat.
Gordi’s stupid-ass visor finally getting the obvious critique from Malcolm MacDowall’s character…and then being used as a security risk.
The Enterprise-D biting it in a fantastic, spectacular planetary wipe-out (I always hated that model).
Data’s big four-letter swear as the Enterprise-D is about to bite it.

Cons:

Not enough from the original cast, and no Uhura, Bones, or Sulu.
Yet another ridiculous time paradox that does not make any sense.
Kirk’s somewhat ignominious and controversial death.
A bit gloomy with the constant death talk.

Mostly, however, Star Trek Generations stands out as a good Trek movie because of Data. He steals the show. In case you forgot, here is the highlight of the film, Data singing his “tiny little lifeforms” song:

Gotta love it!

Stephen King’s The Shining - 1997 Miniseries

In 1980, Stanley Kubrick directed the horror masterpiece The Shining. It’s something I grew up with (all the school kids used to mimic “Redrum” at lunchtime) and it is definitely a classic. So it was with low hopes that I popped in the DVD for the 1997 version of The Shining.

This is the version Stephen King always wanted to do - he was unhappy with Kubrick’s version, which veered greatly from the book. For example, Kubrick added a hedge maze instead of topiary animals. So King decided he wanted to set things right by creating a miniseries for The Shining. Continue reading Stephen King’s The Shining - 1997 Miniseries…

Space: 1999 - Season 1, Episode 2 - “Matter of Life & Death”

Now we get to the first “real” episode of Space: 1999. In this episode, the moon passes by a mysterious planet that could support human life. The crew of Moon Base Alpha wants to land there and start a new life, since they have no hope of getting back to earth. But wait! How on earth did Dr. Russell’s dead husband show up in the spaceship that was probing the planet? How mysterious! Oooh!

Hey, it’s been done before, but it still works. We’re hooked because there’s a mystery to be solved: We know that the dead husband is not really the dead husband, but in what way? Is he an alien? A projection of their minds? Or something else completely?

We also get to see our first planetary excursion. This is shades of Star Trek, complete with unrealistic technicolor sets (with parrots on fake trees?) and muddy brown water that tests as “drinkable.” For a planet that is supposed to be similar to earth, you think they would have just walked outside and shot something in the woods - but this is the 70s, remember, back when sci-fi was weird and goofy and not this ultra-realistic nonsense they push on us today on shows like the new Battlestar Galactica.

Decent, if just for the kitsch value. And oh - that theme song! Who doesn’t love wocka wocka 70s guitar! Let’s bring that back already!

Space: 1999 - Season 1, Episode 1 - “Breakaway”

I’m finally getting around to checking out Space: 1999, the British cult sci-fi series from the 1970s that happens to star two Americans. Martin Landau and his former real-world wife Barbara Bain are the Yankee leads in this retro space epic. They work on Moon Base Alpha in the year 1999. (Funny how the folks in the 1970s were so optimistic about our space futures!)

“Breakaway” was the premiere episode, one that sets up the premise for the entire series - a huge explosion on the moon that sends it, along with the Moon Base Alpha crew, into deep space.

I love retro sci-fi, and I particularly love 70s sci-fi and all its sleek costuming, minimalist design, and bizarro sound effects. Space: 1999 does this to great effect. There’s a never-ending list of quirky things to spot. For example, we have TV monitors showing a strange transmission from a distant planet: It looks just like a moving Spirograph drawing complete with eerie droning in the background. Fun!

And the video communicators that double as door openers! They didn’t have that on Star Trek!

The tone of the show is dead serious in that 70s Andromeda Strain style. The crew are constantly either frowning or standing around with a serious look on their faces. Everything is down to business! It doesn’t make the show bad - just slightly intense in their own low-key 70s sorta way. This is definitely not a kids show like the original Battlestar Galactica was.

The special effects are dated, but not as bad as you think. The ships look OK - but it’s the monitors inside the station that really date the show. Not one of them has any color to them. My favorite part of the set is the big view screen, complete with superfluous squares of color bleeping around it just like you might see on the Disneyland Space Mountain ride.

The plot itself was decent. People on the moon are coming down with a strange ailment that either puts them into a coma or makes them go space nuts. From there we discover some strange anomalies that ultimately lead to the moon’s blast off into deep space. In spite of the story not really making much scientific sense, it was still interesting and I enjoyed it.

While I did not get a good sense of how the characters will interact with each other as a team, we’ll see how this shapes up over time. If you are interested in retro sci-fi, then check this one out.