Closet Sci-Fi Geek

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

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.

Deconstructing the Death Star’s Trash Compactor

I accidentally stumbled upon this very funny analysis of the famous trash compactor that appears in the original Star Wars.

I will attempt to respond to each point raised here:

Ignoring the question of how Princess Leia could possibly know where the trash compactor is, or that the vent she blasts open leads to a good hiding place for the rescue crew, why are there vents leading down there at all?

Let me first respond by saying that Princess Leia, as we find out in Return of the Jedi, has as much talent with the Force as her brother. So the Force told her where the trash compactor was.

As for her shooting at a “vent” leading down to the trash compactor. That vent was obviously a garbage shoot. They had to throw their garbage somewhere, didn’t they?

Why do both walls of the trash compactor move towards each other, rather than employing a one-movable-wall system that would thus rely on the anchored stability, to say nothing of the strength, of the other, non-moving wall, to crush trash more effectively?

Because it looks cooler.

Why does the trash compactor compact trash so slowly, and with such difficulty, once the resistance of a thin metal rod is introduced?

The thin metal rod is made from a space age metal that happens to be extremely strong when jammed lengthwise in between two moving trash compactor walls.

Why does the trash compactor only compact trash sideways?

The flattened pieces of trash are used as insulation for new Death Star condos being constructed. It is a little known fact that the Death Star was part of a real estate bubble that hit the galaxy at that time, and developers were extremely busy building condos and other prime habitats on the Death Star for the evil denizens of the Empire. Grand Moff Tarkin was actually quite the real estate investor, and had previously “flipped” a few planet-sized battle stations prior to his command of the Death Star.

And what of the creature that lives in the trash compactor?

He is obviously an abandoned pet of one of the Stormtroopers, who has been flushed down the toilet much like a baby alligator and has grown to tremendous size in the sewage system.

Why not have separate systems for organic and inorganic waste, thus allowing full compaction of the inorganics and a closed sanitary system for the organics?

Now, now. Would Darth Vadar, half-man, half-machine, order such obvious and blatant discrimation to be instituted against so-called “inorganic” material?

Why does the Empire care, anyway, about reducing its organic garbage output?

Is it really about reducing organic garbage output? Or creating nifty bits of insulation for those Death Star condos I mentioned above?

If the Empire insists on ejecting trash into space, why do they bother compacting it?

Ahh, assumptions, assumptions. The author has assumed that the Death Star ejects its trash, much like the spaceships do. But as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, such garbage is perfect material for condo-making. The Empire is smarter than you think!

I hope I have satisfactorily answered the questions about the Death Star trash compactor. It is important that we respect the Empire…or suffer Vadar’s wrath.

The Black Hole - Disney’s Answer to Star Wars

In 1979, Disney released The Black Hole, an epic sci-fi “spectacular” coasting on the success of Star Wars. I recently watched The Black Hole on DVD, which is the first time I’ve seen the film since I was a child. (My memories, as such, were faint, but included vague ideas of some crazy villain getting sucked into a swirling black hole at some point.)

The Black Hole never matched the success of Star Wars nor the amount of respect, and as such, I was expecting the film to be total shlock. Surprisingly, I found The Black Hole to be enjoyable and interesting on many levels. It’s not a perfect film, and has several problems that have obviously kept it from becoming a classic, but it does have some good things going for it.

The basic story: A spaceship runs across a derelict ship, the Cygnus, that has been lost for 20 years. Now circling a massive black hole, the Cygnus is being manned by a mad scientist who has plans to travel through the black hole on the ship. Running the ship is a cadre of menacing robots and cyborgs, including Maximillian, a large clunky red monstrosity that has what appears to be spinning metal egg beaters as its main weapon.

The cast includes Anthony Perkins (Psycho) and Ernest Borgnine, with Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens providing the voices for the two good guy, cutesy robots, Vincent and Bob. These robots were patterned after R2D2 but they fly and have big eyes that show expression by the raising and lowering of their helmets. I wasn’t taken in at first, but warmed up considerably after a bit.

As plots go, The Black Hole has some interesting, dark twists (for a Disney film), and the film doesn’t waste any time. From the moment the movie starts, we’re drawn into action as the small spaceship starts getting sucked into the black hole prior to landing on Cygnus, the bigger ship. From there, it’s mostly non-stop action throughout the film.

The film’s main problem is that it’s dated - and in fact, the acting and directing style seems dated even for 1979. I felt like the heroes were stuck in a 1960s time warp, for all their chirpy Disney dialogue and clean-cut appearances. The worst part of the film were the laser fight scenes, which are just slow and boring for today’s audiences, never mind the bizarre turns the soundtrack takes at those points. (The orchestral music slows down and practically turns into “Pomp and Circumstance” for the fight scenes - so much so, I found it distracting.)

Yet, some of The Black Hole stands up well to the test of time. Visually, I found The Black Hole to be absolutely mesmerizing in many ways, despite the old school technology. The close-up shots of the Cygnus, lit up against the starry sky, were spectacular. The interior of the ship has massive dimension and is beautifully designed. In these cases, I don’t find new CGI technology to be any better than the use of models or matte paintings.

Not all holds up well - the “meteorite” shower is a bit clunky, especially on a standard TV screen, except for the fantastic ride of one mighty “meteorite” through the ship in what is often recognized as the precursor to Indiana Jones’ famous boulder scene.

Sadly, a few basic scientific faux pas hurt the film, and probably keep it from getting taken too seriously. At times, people seem to be able to step outside the spaceship into a vaccuum and still breathe, even as they float off into space towards the black hole. The roof of the spaceship seems to disappear on convenient occasions, just to allow someone or someting to float towards the spinning black hole. And the ending is…well, just bizarre.

They explain in the bonus materials that The Black Hole didn’t have any real ending written into it at first…well, this is obvious. But you’ll have more respect for the film overall when you see what machinations they had to go through to make the film appear as it did, back before CGI. The film received Academy Award nominations for special effects, and for good reason. Three years later, Disney created “Tron” using computer graphics, which was a pioneering move on their part, and marked the end of the old way of doing special effects.

Still, it’s not the old school effects that keeps The Black Hole firmly in the “film curiosity” file. Ultimately, what keeps The Black Hole from becoming a sci-fi classic is its lack of rewatchability. It’s just not fun enough to want to watch over and over again, like Star Wars, and it’s not deep enough to matter. Still, it’s worth a looksee, if you enjoy seeing how people did sci-fi “back in the day.”

A Boy and His Dog - Only for Die-Hard Misogynists

Don Johnson had quite a film career in the 1970s prior to starring in Miami Vice. First, he was The Harrad Experiment, which was a film about a college where the students were shacked up with one another to explore concepts of sex and group marriage. (That film, by the way, is worth renting, because it’s so dated and silly on many levels.)

He continues his career as a walking sex fiend in 1975’s A Boy and His Dog. There, in a post-apocalyptic America, Johnson runs around a Mad Max world as a serial rapist, with a telepathic dog as his only companion.

Some have called this the greatest science fiction film ever made. I can only guess that such folks either haven’t watched a lot of good sci-fi films or they’re just off their rocker. Besides the awful politics, which I’ll get into in a second, A Boy and His Dog has this main problem with it:

An absolutely annoying “talking” dog. He talks in his mind the way the kids from Look Who’s Talking do. There’s no explanation as to how he got these mysterious powers. It’s completely unbelievable, never mind that the actor has a voice who sounds a lot like KITT from Night Rider. I’m not sure what the heck a real dog might sound like if he spoke telepathically, but this sure wasn’t it.

The dog is also surprisingly mean and sarcastic. I might have even bought this rotten personality, if the dog had been some sort of mean-looking hound, like a pit bull with a scar over his eye. But no, he’s one of those shaggy dogs, the same type of dog found in the Shaggy Dog movies. Ridiculous.

If you can get past the fact that the dog talks, then you must then accept the fact that he’s somehow lost his ability to sniff out food, and yet he can find any woman in the vicinity through his psychic powers.

This is hardly “hard” science fiction.

From there, we find that the dog finds these women so that Vic (Don Johnson’s character) can rape them. Really pleasant.

It is with this astonishing premise that the film sets off on its journey. Vic gets conned by Quilla June, a woman from the underworld whom he initially tried to rape. The underworld is community that lives under the ground, protected from the effects of the nuclear holocaust. Only, the men there are sterile, so they want Vic for his sperm.

Vic is lured underground and captured. They tie him up on a bed with a tube attached to his nether-regions to suck out his sperm, which is, in my mind, some small payback for the rapes that he perpetrated on women.

The only good part of the film is the bizarre depiction of this underground community, called, appropriately, Topeka. Here, people are living in a surreal uber-patriotic Christian dictatorship, flying the last remants of the American flag in an obscene recreation of small town America.

Some of the scenes here are reminiscent of the best of The Prisoner, with mindless citizens wandering around a world where marching bands play incessantly for no good reason and constant commands are given over a loudspeaker system.

I felt that part of the film, at least, was a political satire. The representation of Topeka was pointed and pertinent, especially today with the rise in Christian fundamentalism.

But I could not figure out, until the end, whether the misogyny in the film was making some sort of statement against it, or was the film just reveling in it. What was the whole point of the film? Did it even have a point?

A Boy and His Dog has one of the most controversial, shocking film endings of all time. Because of the nature of the ending, I will need to discuss it in order to complete my political analysis…so be forewarned…

SPOILERS AHEAD: Do not read further if you don’t want the ending to be spoiled!

Quilla June rescues Vic from being a walking sperm bank. So they escape to the surface, only to find the dog bleeding and starving to death. Quilla June, expressing the most bizarre, unbelievable personality switch, had already gone from yelling at Vic about what a horrible guy he was to telling him that she loved him and wanted to spend her life with him. This, after he had attempted to rape her at gunpoint. (Whaaaat?)

She is portrayed as this inane, manipulative woman, who just sucks up to Vic the rapist for no good reason except that she wants stuff from him. I suppose she would be the post-apocalyptic version of a gold digger.

So at the end, given the choice to run off with Quilla June, or save the dog, Vic choose to kill Quilla June and feed her to the dog. It’s also implied that Vic had a bite of Quilla June as well.

Pretty darn sick, if you ask me.

What amazes me about this is that I’ve read other reviews on the Internet by regular guys, who think somehow A Boy and His Dog is a love story about a man and his dog.

I’m not even sure if I can begin to touch that particular sentiment.

But apparently a lot of guys find this film to be funny. Hilarious. Sick and twisted, and “kinky.”

Honestly, even before the shocking ending, I didn’t find the film to be funny at all, in any way. Not because I was railing against it the whole time, but because it just wasn’t. Lengthy scenes with Vic and the dog arguing over getting food, with Don Johnson’s somewhat painful acting? Ummm, no, not funny.

So I can only guess that the reason guys find this film funny is that it taps into some sort of primal anger and resentment they have towards women. It’s a release for them.

My concern with this, however, is that without there being any greater social commentary on the misogyny, this film is in effect encouraging the rape and killing of women.

It does this very explicitly. At the end, we see Vic walking off into the sunset with his canine companion, having learned nothing whatsoever, but victorious against the horrible woman who plotted against him.

I’d be open to this whole setup if there was a bigger point to be made. But I’m afraid, there really isn’t. If anything, the film makes a sad statement about what some men think the true nature of the male gender really is - selfish, violent rapists who don’t care about anyone but themselves. (Themselves, and their dogs.)

I don’t think that’s the real truth, thankfully.

DVD: Why I Love “The Andromeda Strain”

1971’s sci-fi thriller “The Andromeda Strain” may seem slow to modern audiences, but I love it. Based on Michael Crichton’s book, the film follows a group of scientists as they rush to find a cure for a deadly pathogen from outer space.

I’ve seen “The Andromeda Strain” a couple of times on TV, but it’s cut and edited. Renting the DVD is far superior - you get the full widescreen picture and the entire film, including all the decontamination sequences.

Some might complain that the film is very slow - it’s not laced with a ton of action shots or running around (except at the end) - and the soundtrack is minimal. I have a great nostalgia, however, for that sparse 70s style of filmmaking. I find it to be gripping in another way.

More nostalgia and kitsch can be found with the gleaming, sparse sets, the ancient computers, and the special effects. And while we may laugh at those effects, they were extremely difficult to create back then, when computer graphics were non-existent. It’s a good idea to watch the “Making of” bonus feature after you finish the film. You’ll have new respect for those old “cheesy” effects.

“The Andromeda Strain” boasts some classic lines, memorable images, and characters. Who doesn’t love Ruth, the smart alecky, epileptic scientist?

As sci-fi films go, “The Andromeda Strain” is one of the best from the early 70s and a classic. Check it out when you get a chance.