Don’t tell me you have seen every single episode of The Twilight Zone at least a million times. The show’s like crack; after a few seconds upon landing on whatever channel the show happens to be airing, it becomes impossible to turn off. There must be scientific studies lurking about that analyze the particular section of the brain that demands one watch TZ without interruption. Or, diabolically, Rod Serling placed subliminal messages within the episodes. Viewers trance out, drool a bit, say to themselves, “So that’s where William Shatner got his start!” (Hint: John Lithgow reprised one of the roles, but WS actually starred in two episodes)
I attribute my own particular attraction to this show when my age came in single digits. At that point, most shows were in color but still watching the black and white ones wasn’t unusual or weird. TZ didn’t make sense and that was fine by me. Later, in college, my friends and I stayed up well past midnight to catch episodes and quasi-pretend to be surprised (impossible, since the show was fodder for our misspent youths) or comment on the double meaning of the episode (“To Serve Man”). Even now, during marathon showings, I manage to sneak in a little quality TZ time and hope to catch one of my favorite episodes.
After my Mom passed, inevitably we had to sort through her drawers. That’s never easy. Personal belongings are an assessment of one’s life; items chosen by Mom had purpose and meaning. A favorite scarf, her mother’s wedding ring, photos of people I’ll never meet whose names are lost to time – all jammed without mercy in her vanity top drawer. Major natural disasters wouldn’t have budged the contents. Mom kept all her accumulated possessions bound together like old friends who see no reason to part company.
One afternoon, I chose the unwieldy task of sifting through her clown car dresser. I say this because I marveled at the amount of stuff she shoved into it. The more I grabbed at old clothes, hats, papers, candles, etc., the more intrigued I became. So tightly packed had everything become, items towards the back refused to relinquish the turf they so jealously guarded over time.
Nearly emptying the bottom shelf, I came across a cardboard box, slightly smashed and held together with an ancient rubber band. Since I had no clue what was inside, I opened it. Within the box rested a collection of miniature masterpieces, lithos of relatively unknown artists combined with a few superstars. I shuffled through them, saw the obligatory Van Gogh “Sunflowers” plus a few other Greatest Hits.
And there it was: Pig Girl.
Glancing at me, her brown eyes hinted at nonchalance. Pig Girl appeared as a young woman, possibly a teenager, with a round face and pug nose, sassy upturned brown hair, charming white hat, her collar tied with a bow tie that seemed to float in a sea of crisp whiteness. She wore a brown outfit suggesting a school uniform.
It hit me then: this one’s from that Twilight Zone episode, “The Eye of the Beholder.” In it, pig people valiantly try to plastic surgery-ize a gorgeous woman, regarded by the Piggians as hideously ugly. Perhaps the young, confident Pig Girl lifted herself straight from that episode. Charmed her way into the studio of the artist (Frango? Franga? Franca?) and insinuated herself into the Masterpiece collection. She had a partner, too, a clown boy. No siree, Pigitty wasn’t going through life on this planet alone. She had this fella for fun times:
Hobo-clown, sporting a look of resignation on his face, seems determined to find a purpose despite his genetic mutation. Both he and Piggity survived the DNA splicing of human and pig, they planned to make the best of it and damned be the world.
Can you imagine what might come next if these two produce an offspring? What horrors might come of that?
I closed the box and its unsettling contents rested once more in their dark shelter. I must admit, their presence haunts me still. Strangely, I can’t find Piggity. She seems to have vanished. Kind of scary, don’t you think?
So here’s a word of warning: when a parent dies, use extreme caution going through their former possessions. It can be a real trip through…The Twilight Zone.
So there I was, a little kid, really, laying on my stomach on the living room floor. That’s how the small set viewed television, at least back then, when TV sets weren’t flat screens but part of the furniture. This show, Star Trek, was on and Mom was glued to it. Only a few years later, she’d do the same with Tom Baker’s version of Dr. Who.
Every Saturday afternoon, she’d turn on Channel 17 in the kitchen and watch whatever horror movies they happened to play. I’d turn on the set in the living room and watch from the couch. Mom peeked up from the ironing board, giant pot of dinner or pile of something she happened to be tending to at the time, and me, well, I’d be there, glued in stupefied fascination over the ridiculous plots. I mean, come on. A giant moth taking over a city? I never could get used to lips not moving in sync to the voices that never quite seemed to match up to the person speaking them.
Still, countless Saturday afternoons with Mom went by, watching an enormous man tangle with electric wires as his former girlfriend implored him to stop, or yet another man shrunk down shorter than the grass he hid in contemplating the stars. Why were the victims generally men? Sure, occasionally you had the disfigured, angry woman out to kill whomever did this to her, but on the whole, it was some luckless fellow falling down a hole, getting sprayed with a mysterious liquid, blasted by X/gamma/nuclear/unknown rays and having his soul wrenched from him as his body contorted/transformed/vaporized into an unrecognizable mass that wreaked havoc in the nearest city…and always a city.
Mom’s fascination with this stuff naturally influenced mine, except I developed a liking to those story lines that involved spaceships, aliens, misguided off-world adventures, and the like. I still think one of the best vintage sci-fi films is The Day The Earth Stood Still (the one that stars Patricia Neal and Michael Rennie), and so did Mom. Klaatu had it going on, and I thought he should have taken Patricia Neal with him, maybe the kid, too. That would have been a good story. Neither Mom nor I didn’t think much of the remake with Neo, but it did have its merits.
What Mom didn’t find to satisfy her thirst for science fiction adventure, she found up in the evening skies, when she was so inclined to peek at them. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I spent many an hour glancing up at them and I always told her what I saw, even showing Comet Kohoutek to her (a MAJOR disappointment). Occasionally a planet might wander by or an eclipse might occur. Come to think of it, my first total eclipse of the sun was shared with Mom, back in the 1970s. How amazing that in the afternoon all the lights went on in the street, the birds stopped singing and a few bright stars appeared as the sun played coy with the moon. We stood outside, afraid to look at it but in the end taking a quick peek during totality, gasping at that miracle of nature.
As years went by, my mother never lost her love for stuff not readily explainable, either via television or the movies. Once, she and my father even saw what they believed to be several UFOs flying over the coast, where they lived. That confirmed their belief by hundreds of reports the next day, covered both in the paper and on the morning news. We watched as the real Enterprise went piggyback on a plane, then as all the space shuttles, SkyLabs, ISS and anything else that left this planet went up and aided the Earth’s population, scientific and otherwise, to explore whatever lie out there and beyond.
On May 24, 2014, my mother went up there in the heavens to become one with the stars. I’d like to think she currently resides there, since she took so much interest in them. She had a very peaceful journey, laying down to take a nap from which she never awoke. There was nothing truly wrong with her, said the doctor, apart from it was her time. Mom had 85 action-packed years and I’d like to think they were all incredibly interesting ones. She leaves behind her family, terribly sorry to see her go and missing her every day.
I couldn’t write a single word of this blog until now. Nothing came to mind. Then, just like magic, the memories of how I’d laugh and joke with Mom over those vintage Saturday afternoon sci-fi groaners we used to watch together popped into my mind.
For the heck of it, I took a random episode of Space: 1999 and watched it again; I’ve included the link above. That’s what I love about YouTube; it’s such a marvelous way to visit the past’s recollections about the future. All sorts of great offerings are posted there and I’ve spent many an hour lingering over its pages.
As it turns out, the Dorcons are digging around in Maya’s brain. She has what they don’t. Or, rather, she has the last of what those pesky Dorcons need. See? Here we are with the brain again. As I had mentioned in a previous post, those mind matters sure come up often, because people desperately need to control what they can’t have. I’m figuring they couldn’t come up with their own supply of artificial intelligence, provided from their own biological source that they grew in some distant lab, harvesting other’s brains to reconstruct and contort for their own wicked purposes. If a society has to rely on one person to keep them ticking, when that person dies (which was inevitable), what next?
So here I sit, in 2014, looking back at the future in 1999. Odd. I find myself wondering if this is what I have to look forward to? I ask that question every time I check out the future. Not mine, of course, that’s kind of nebulous at the moment (whose isn’t?). There’s just so many options.
Take, for instance, a simple object like computers. I love the computer in Cloud Atlas. How about District 9? Even Iron Man. Notice how fluid and oddly shaped the displays are, how one can pluck from the air directives and commands, or plain information?
I’m kind of a fan of the computer in Max Headroom (the TV show) when floppy disks were those 3.25″ and that was considered the cat’s pajamas. Well, that was kind of a deconstructionist future, so I think it’s kind of valid today as back in the 1980s when it first broadcast. Brilliant show.
If you happen to watch the above episode of Space: 1999, you’ll see a more practical, button-pushing kind of keyboard/monitor setup. Similar TV shows also relied on the same technology, and if you dare to watch early episodes of Star Trek, you’ll see the most crude of crude. Still, those systems got them where they wanted to go, so they couldn’t have been all that bad.
Once in a while, there is some crossover. If one compares the hand mechanics to operate the computer/typing in Michael Palin’s office from the Terry Gilliam masterpiece Brazil to the hand mechanics in the scene in Children of Men where Clive Owen sees his nephew play a computer came as he asks his brother for a favor, they’re pretty similar.
Anyway, it’s fun to see what’s going on out there in the future. Gives us something all to remember.
A great deal of what occurs in the world of science fiction involves the mind and/or brain. Strange forces, and not necessarily alien, want to control others thoughts, expressions, decision making capabilities, functions and more.
Why is that?
Well, for starters, the brain/mind is who we are. What we see. What we do. It governs our perception of the world and how those react towards us. It goes without saying that a brain controlled is a person conquered.
Mind control is like getting the keys to the kingdom. Figure out how to rob one’s senses and you have the entire population cornered.
Take, for instance, Invasion of the Body Snatchers or its modern update, The Invasion. A pod of sorts lodged itself to a human form and, long story short, assumed that person’s entire being except for its soul. Seemingly, the soul was destroyed in the process and everyone was pretty much like the women in The Stepford Wives. In that film, the women were duplicated via robot/android. Then it’s assumed everyone was bumped off and buried anonymously in a hidden grave deep in the Connecticut woods.
In A Clockwork Orange, our hero Malcolm McDowell has a rather questionable attitude when it comes to women, violence and society in general. It’s a pretty simple fix when he’s subjected to the Ludivico Technique. After that, the urge to vomit pretty much takes over when he’s starting to explore those negative tendencies. If that were me, the idea of having my eyelids pinned open would be enough to gross me out and get me to never do anything evil again.
Oh, let’s not forget the classic Jedi Mind Trick, either. It’s one way Luke Skywalker invites himself in for a visit our revolting friend Jabba the Hut. Come to think of it, just by simple virtue of being a Jedi all that is familiar to your being is a mind trick.
The mind is a mystery. We all have one, but who knows what’s in it? How many times have you said, “What are you thinking?” Haven’t you ever taken your fist and rapped it on your brain, or that idiot friend of yours and said, “Dude, are you nuts? What happened to your brain?” Yet, we still wonder what occurs during the thought process, what makes us arrive at the decisions we so nimbly or slowly do. Our influences, our impressions, our decision to eat yet another piece of food that will stuff us silly all comes from that thick grey matter residing in our skull. Is it a machine? Is it will? Is it hope and dreams?
I’ve come to notice that one thing many aliens have in common: they’re angry.
Why?
Now, I’m not talking all sci-fi films or TV series. In fact, some are really quite friendly and helpful. Paul, Alf and E.T. made good friends and lifelong connections with their earthling counterparts. And a quick look at Star Trek/Wars/Gate will tell you that there’s a bounty of otherworldly types just itching to make nice with us inferiors.
But then again, how many baddies have you come to enjoy over the years?
Let’s take, for example, the Borg. They’re a pretty economical lot. If you ask me, they become part of a collective, kind of like communism in its most evil form twinned with just plain communes. They readily adapt to any situation, yet they clearly enjoy being together. One could argue it’s the system making them relate to each other so well, but they’re so anxious to turn complete strangers into buddies that they readily adapt the most innocent of bystanders, hook them up to machine-like apparatus and get them angry enough to kill anyone the collective doesn’t like.
Now, here’s what I’m talking about: Mars Attacks!
These guys made no pretensions, minced no Ack! Ack! to their sworn enemies on Earth. All they knew is that they looked humble and willing for about twenty seconds, let us earthlings make fools of ourselves and then wreaked utter destruction. Heck, they even brought down Jack Nicholson! Yet it was a simple yodel that brought them to their knees and made their gooey green brains blow up like bubble gum in a microwave. Don’t tell me you didn’t get the parallel between that and germs in War of the Worlds.
Yet, for all the seeming variety out there, we keep coming back to this stereotype:
Now, this guy’s pretty cool and the star of his own film, Paul. But really, he is indicative of the stereotype. If anyone says they’ve seen someone that didn’t look like they belonged here on Earth, went finger-pointing up a section of the anatomy not commonly known for engaging positive thoughts, and generally dug around in someone’s insides uninvited, it would be similar to the person/thing above.
I’m asking: where did this image come from? Where did it originate? Is this the one imprinted in our brains that makes us react when we think we’ve seen something that doesn’t quite belong to our planet? Is this vision of an alien comforting to us, as in if we see something just like this, we’ll know to run (if we can)?
Will it angry with us?
Will be have the courage to ask why?
Will it accept a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers to kiss and make up?
But first, I’d like to know what it is that we did in the first place…
Okay, I’ll admit it: I had a crush on this guy. I’ll also admit to being, what, 15 at the time too. But in my teenage head, Patrick Duffy…er…Mark Harris had it going on. Strangely, one of my best friends in the universe, Marc Harrison (whose names strangely seemed familiar and made me wonder about where exactly was he from) didn’t think the same way.
Anyway, just look at him: angry, wet, confused. If you saw this guy wash up on the shore, complete with gills and webbed hands/feet, and naked too, wouldn’t you think this was some kind of college frat prank? How’d you react when this being woke up, didn’t know who he was or where he came from? I admit, I’d be scratching my head, too. “Sure, buddy, I know…it’s those Delta Taus again, eh? All right, who put the ‘shroom in your booze?”
Sadly enough, it wasn’t me that found him, since he washed up on California (I think, anyway) and I lived in New Jersey, where other sorts of stuff managed to find their way on our beaches. That honor was left to Dr. Elizabeth Merrill, who discovered him, saw real potential and made him whole again.
And BOY! could he swim! There Mark was, in that weird swimming motion with his hands to his sides, a bit like a jackknife under water. Since I grew up on the ocean, I tried this maneuver regularly, generally managing to get copious amounts of water up my nose (or bang into people).
Mark sure caught the attention of the US Navy and, as the United States government generally does, found a purpose for him. They recruited him to find a lost submarine filled with important people (as if the regular crew didn’t count). After deciding this person has to be the last remaining survivor of Atlantis (which I believed existed under my ocean, but what do I know), the Foundation for Oceanic Research thinks he’s pretty cool too. They offer him a job and although Mark first demurs, he changes his mind and, much to the delight of Dr. Merrill, stays.
Of course, every show worth its salt needs a boo-hiss character, and MFA had Schubert. He was a forward-thinking kind of scientist, largely misinterpreted and ill-understood. Aren’t they all? In his arsenal he had, of all things, giant microwaves to melt polar ice caps. Strangely enough, if Schubert had survived long enough to be around today, he’d realize how unnecessary that instrument of evil is, since they’re melting anyway due to the effects of climate change…unless Schubert is behind this…and the giant microwaves are REALLY the culprit…
Schubert also altered genetics to create a monstrous jellyfish designed to wreak terror on the unsuspecting innocent. That’s a common plot theme now, but in 1977 that was rather amazing. He even devised a weapon to knock out satellites, a common occurrence as well in sci-fi.
Unwittingly foreshadowing the future, Mark meets his twin Billy in a Wild West Town, although Billy’s webbing has been removed. A short time later, Patrick Duffy plays Bobby in that other Wild West town, Dallas. He doesn’t have webbing in this one, but he dies and miraculously appears in the shower. That’s pretty close to washing up on shore and saying you don’t remember who you are or where you came from.
Probably the most shocking thing about MFA is that while it aired in the UK, it beat Dr. Who in the ratings.
What a shame this show with such potential only lived for four movies and 13 episodes. My teenage heart was crushed. Still, I always had in the back of my mind Mark Harris would wash up on my Jersey shore, ready to launch a new adventure.
I’d like to know this: who comes up with the uniforms for all those space missions out there? I mean, once we’re out and about in galaxies afar, does anyone really care whether or not our outfits match? Or that they’re in uniform?
Take, for example, this example:
Space: 1999 publicity shot
The color palate is beige with a touch of red and a slap of mustard, reminiscent of a hot dog bun with ketchup and mustard.
Now, compare it to this:
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan publicity shot
This is a riff off of the above, except we’ve gotten rid of the ketchup and replaced it with relish and chafing dish pan.
Both are going for the comfort angle, because, as we all know, traveling in either a ship or moon requires it. Take a closer look at both casts. S:1999 pose as if they own the look; STII gaze embarrassingly off into the distance.
And these two for women: for whose benefit are these impossibly short hemlines? Even sitting’s a chore in these, a constant battle between modesty v. duty. Sure, Kirk’s going to throw down his pen and say, “Say, can you pick that up for me?” as he gives his best lecherous stare. And the hair – if you’re fighting Klingons, who’s got the time to fuss with such an intricate do?
This drove me nuts: why is it open? Does it allow for more comfort, sort of like opening the top button? Does it show that an officer has his guard down, or up during battle and needs to breathe? How do you keep it closed, anyway?
And speaking of dresses, Picard in his literal dress uniform. Note the look of defeated resignation in his face. I’m sure he’s thinking: Magenta? REALLY? This would have been much chicer in grey…
ST: Enterprise publicity shot
Although purple wouldn’t have been my first choice, kudos for at least some consistency in the uniforms. At least T’Pol has coverage, albeit rather snugly. She’s shapely, so she pulls it off well.
STSG: Nemesis publicity shot
Finally, I have to admit, the above is the most professional and utilitarian of all uniforms in the ST series. Why, oh why, didn’t they just go to these in the first place? Guess it takes many tries before you get it right.
Ah, once again it’s time for Game of Thrones! Now, who out there isn’t a big fan, eh? Oh, come on, of core you are!
Despite the casts of millions, a mind-numbing mixture of destinations, arrivals and journeys, including the slowest military march on record, I kind of manage to keep abreast of where the people are located at a particular point.
Just don’t ask me to name anybody, their kingdom/allegiance or who’s loyal to whom.
You see, to me GOT is like the ocean. One sits on the beach and enjoys the complexities that the moving tides offer, what the water casts upon the shore, how the curls of the waves vary with each undulation and the changing colors of the sea, depending on the time of day and weather. It’s all great to watch, and you never know what the sea’s going to toss in your direction.
I sit there on Sunday night, watching HBO at 9:00 pm (EDT) on the beach that is my couch. The ever-shifting fortunes of the characters never quite know what’s going to bring, even though they all speculate and plot what they believe to be their destinies/goals/outcome. Sometimes, their plans go splendidly, and other times, there’s that red herring no one expected to turn from celebratory to devastation.
I didn’t read any of the books the series is based on, “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George RR Martin. Not that big, huge books frighten me, I’ve been a fan of loads of 500+ paged books and the authors who wrote them (James Michener is one – not sci-fi, but a wonderful storyteller all the same). I have consulted a wiki of Ice and Fire occasionally to help keep me kind-of straight with who’s who. That’s about as far as I’ll commit to the novels. Truth be told, there’s so much out there to pay attention to and I only have so much time to spare. Dedicating one’s self to both a multi-part miniseries AND an ongoing series of books strains my free time. Although this is horrible to admit, I do have to set my priorities. That’s not to say one day I’ll find myself on a beach reading them, I just can’t right now.
Anyway, the HBO series is too well-produced to pass up, and from what I understand, they do a fine job of translating the novels to the mini-screen. Best of all, I only have to devote one hour a week. Fantasy for the fast track, I’d like to admit.
Thank God there’s FINALLY something good to watch on Sunday night!
I’ve been absent of late, living a drama probably played out on television in some shape or form. For those who have been following me, I apologize and hope you’ve been patient waiting for my next post.
You see, my husband had to have surgery and let’s face it, it wasn’t pretty. Part of his stomach went away for good. Fortunately, he’s going to be okay.
It wasn’t totally easy stuff. His heart wouldn’t wake up after the surgery and as a result, he was participating in time-travelling maneuvers to the Land of Nod. There he lay, on the bed in the recovery room, passing in and out of consciousness, aware that I stood next to him. I kept shaking him, willing him to join me in the here and now, and he rapidly fell back into unconsciousness. His heart rate dipped as low as 32. Not far from him, there was a patient facing an alternate reality, having been loosened from the grip of anesthesia. That one kept hooting, over and over, while thrashing about. As is generally the case, the recovery room was a tad short-handed. Our nurse, who was wonderful, flew back and forth between my nearly comatose husband and the flailing man. Finally, she added a wonder drug to Andrew’s drip and like magic, perked up fairly quickly, and his heart rate maintained a respectable 80.
A morbidly obese nurse stationed at the desk checked over her records to determine if a room had been assigned for my respectably-alert husband. I thought to myself how is it that that nurse developed such a condition when all the nurses around her flew like the wind. She called over Andrew’s attending nurse, who announced to us his room was ready.
Mercifully, Andrew was wheeled out shortly thereafter, leaving the hooter to his own particular recovery fate. I hope it wasn’t serious, whatever afflicted him, because if that was his natural state, his caregivers were in for it.
We totally scored with the room. It was on the end, the bed was out of sight of the door, and as luck would have it, Andrew’d be its only occupant. Totally private. I welcomed that, since he was kind of miserable. “Say, look” I said, “There’s the TV. Let’s see what’s on, eh?” I flick on the TV and flip through the channels. Well, thank GOD they have BBC America AND Syfy! The surgery’s timing allowed us to catch a bit of Dr. Who, and later, we switched over to catch the Helix marathon leading up to the season finale. Sure, both of us have seen all of these episodes already, but hey, we love them both and it’s great to see them again…and again…and again…
Andrew grows more attentive now that the last Helix episode for the season comes on. I figure I might as well stay and watch, too, since I don’t really want to miss it and our kids can survive without me for one day (“Pick up the phone, order pizza…do I have to do everything?”). It’s an oddly parallel experience since the show focuses on a deadly virus, medical issues, and all sorts of liquids dripping and panic ensuing, and here’s Andrew hooked up to related equipment, including machine that randomly screeches for the nurse to check.
As we watch the body count rise and literal head roll, I say out loud, “Geez, who’s left to act in next season? Where’d the cast go?” Major Ballesaros is, quite literally, the ball to kick, having been subjected to numerous counts of assault and stabbings (and yes, we know, he deserved it). Dr. Sarah Jordan preggers? Well, that’s pretty unexpected, but not her close encounter with Dr. Farragut. And WTF with Dr. Walker?
Upon its conclusion, it’s really time for me to get going. It’s REALLY late. Andrew’s had quite a day. So have I. Grabbing my jacket and keys, I kiss my husband goodnight and leave him be, as I ponder the fate of Ilaria’s Arctic Biosystems occupants.
By the way, Andrew’s home, and he’s doing just fine.
Source: TC/ATV Space 1999 Publicity Book (1975), promotional photo distributed in the press kit for the series Space 1999
I might be a little behind the 8-ball, but one can’t keep up with everything, especially with two teenagers running around my house. Now, they’ll be the first to tell me that I know nothing – NOTHING! – but yet, I’ve been more ahead in trends than my 16-year-old daughter. Hey, I’m the one who tells her that my favorite bands don’t play on regular stations, and I fork out $$ for satellite radio just so I can hear some decent music.
So I was trolling the sci-fi web the other night, picking through my favorite sites and lo and behold, I tripped upon a website regarding Space 2099. Space 2099! Really? Eagerly I rifle through the pages, hoping a tiny tidbit of info would pop out and get me stoked.
I remember the old series, “Space: 1999” back in the seventies when I watched it with my mother. Ma got me hooked on sci-fi as a tiny tot; I can say that I remember watching the original “Star Trek” on its first run, and then on its multitude of reruns, as well as Dr. Who with Tom Baker (on PBS at the time, who also had the foresight to air “Monty Python”).
Look at their outfits: they were so 1970s, and yet had a practical sensibility about them. Designed for comfort and ease of movement, their stylish togs nodded to the fashion of the day (Bell bottoms? Why not!). And this is what impressed me: those costumes were unisex. No deep cleavage cuts and short hemlines for the ladies, no sir. How else can one chase around evil in dystopian universes when one has to spend a portion of one’s concentration on whether or not one’s secrets might be revealed? Besides, if a character’s outfit didn’t fit, he or she could exchange it with anyone, male or female. How practical is that? Certainly the folks back at WANDER looked to economize even then.
Barbara Bain and Martin Landau (who would go on to be an even greater character, Bela Lugosi) ran Moon City with a combination of authority, grace and structure. They didn’t even give a second thought to the fact that now the moon was its own ship steering through the stars and its (unlikely) departure from Earth’s influence might wreak final havoc on tides, coastlines and general principles of physics. They were busy folks, and who has time to worry about such things when there’s Dorcons to chase?
Regrettably, there were only two seasons and 48 action-packed episodes to enjoy. One might catch it in repeats here and there, but it generally disappeared from view. So when I caught the news that it was announced (back in 2012 – how did I miss that?!?!?) that there’d be a 2099, naturally I was intrigued. I’m certain that this incarnation’s going to have a lot more bells and whistles than the decidedly low-budget tactics that made the original so charming. But the sucker that I am, I’m sure I’ll be pulled into its vortex and grab all the episodes I can.
Moon, Stars and Beyond 