CULT TV FLASHBACK #107: The A-Team: "Children of Jamestown" (1983)

During the original NBC run of The A-Team (1983 - 1986), my father had a word he used to describe the Stephen J. Cannell, Frank Lupo series:

Diverting.

Now, diverting can mean "entertaining" or "amusing," but it can also mean to "turn aside" or "distract from a serious occupation."

In the case of The A-Team, my Dad probably meant all of the above.

The A-Team is a vintage action series of unmatched cartoon violence, colorful but superficial characters, outrageous stunts...and not much narrative or thematic depth to speak of. But taken on those very limited terms, The A-Team truly and fully "diverts."

What does this mean, exactly? Well, even today, you can't take your eyes off the bloody thing.

Oh, there are significants causes to complain, I suppose, if that's your stock and trade. Nobody on the show ever dies or is badly wounded...even in the most horrific car crash or gun-fight.

And women? They are pretty much utilized as set decoration.

How about realism? Well, let's just say that any TV series featuring John Saxon as a drugged-out religious cult leader probably isn't aiming strictly for realism.

But again, you either take a series like this on its own terms, or you don't take it at all. Your rational, logical mind may complain or rebel about some very important aspects of storyline, plot resolution and yeah, physics, but after watching an A-Team episode you may nonetheless find yourself smiling almost uncontrollably. There's a joie-de-vivre about the players on this classic TV program, and it acts like a giant black hole...sucking you in, even if you put up resistance.

The A-Team, which aired for 98 hour-long episodes, follows a group of Vietnam veterans hunted by the U.S. military. Renegades and modern-day cowboys, these team members now serve as sort of on-the-run mercenaries.

So, as the series' opening narration reminds viewers -- at least before staccato machine-gun fire kicks in -- "if you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.

Team members include leader John "Hannibal" Smith (George Peppard), whose catchphrase is "I love it when a plan comes together," charming con man Lt. Templeton "Face" Peck (Dirk Benedict), crazy helicopter pilot "Howling Mad" Murdock (Dwight Schultz) and perpetually-cranky mechanic/driver B.A. (Bad Attitude) Baracus, played by Mr. T. Melina Culea portrays reporter Amy Allen in the early seasons of the series.

The first season A-Team episode "Children of Jamestown" is a perfect representation of the series' aesthetic. It begins in mid-mission (and in relatively tense fashion, I was surprised to see...) with the team attempting the rescue of ra ich girl from the clutches of Martin James (Saxon), a sun-glass wearing, religious cult leader. The freed girl is delivered safely to her wealthy father, but Face, B.A., Hannibal and Amy are captured and taken to the Jamestown compound for "judgment."

There, the A-Team is granted an audience before James, who pretentiously recites a poem to them. Hannibal recites a poem in kind: "Hickory, Dickory, Dock..." he begins.

Outraged, James orders his machine-gun armed acolytes -- hulking muscle men in brown monks robes -- to free the prisoners and then hunt them down. In a convoy of surplus Army jeeps that the compound conveniently maintains

So, it's kind of like The Most Dangerous Game at Jonestown...

Now, right here, an engaged (and sober) viewer will start asking some mighty pertinent questions. Why do these macho, grim acolytes feel it necessary to wear monk robes? More trenchantly, what do they get by serving the egotistical and difficult (and clearly bonkers) James? Why did they join the order? Furthermore, why all the jeeps and machine guns at a religious commune? What is the religious foundation for this order that it can incorporate both monks robes and heavy artillery?

But okay, the A-Team requires an army to fight every week, and in this episode, we get an army plus a wacky cult leader. It might not make strict sense, but there you have it.

So anyway, the A-Team escapes to a nearby farm, where a farmer and his gorgeous daughter live in fear of the cult and the cult leader. The family helps the team out, and Face has a little romance with the farmer's daughter, unaware, apparently, that the "farmer's daughter" scenario is the set-up of too many dirty jokes to count.

But hey! This is no ordinary farmer, let me tell you. He also happens to be an artist who sculpts metal in his spare time. His back yard thus resembles an auto junk yard. So in short order, Hannibal, B.A., Amy and Face construct a flame-thrower turret on top of a commandeered jeep. Then, using a hot water heater and acetylene tanks, they build a missile launcher.

Then they take the battle right to James, who is leading his jeep convoy against the uncooperative farmer.

I love it when a plan comes together. Don't you?

I've watched several seasons of Mission: Impossible (1966-1973) recently, and was very, very impressed. Every single week, that series played matters absolutely straight, with a real, sincere attempt to seem realistic...even with strange gadgets, face-masks, and complicated plots in the mix. In other words, Mission: Impossible crafted a larger sense of "truth" around its stories, settings and characters. And the suspense was almost universally intense.

The A-Team, by contrast, plays nothing straight. It's a knowing put-up job from start-to-finish. For instance, this episode doesn't look seriously at cults, or at cult leaders. It doesn't examine the reasons why a farmer in the middle of nowhere would also have a machine shop. Nor does the narrative see the main characters -- except for Amy -- break a sweat. Instead, the narrative is but a hook for the action scenes and a lot of admittedly funny jokes.

What holds "this plan" together, in simple terms is the grace of the performers, and the unfettered sense of violent fun. Again, I can't argue that the A-Team is socially valuable stuff, only that -- as my Dad stated so memorably on a Tuesday night long, long ago -- it "diverts."

The A-Team hangs a lot on the chemistry between the actors. So it's a good thing they're such an agreeable bunch. Watching Face describe "the jazz," or having Hannibal get mad over the fact that James has taken his prized boots may not sound like scintillating television, but somehow -- with these guys, with these jokers, -- that's exactly what it is.

"Children of Jamestown" attempts, at one point, to wax serious, with Baracus telling Amy that the only to get through a situation like this is to "accept death." Why? Because it "frees you."

And the playful attitude of the A-Team TV series, I suppose, "frees you" too. After an especially hard day's work, the the knowing silliness of this show is oddly infectious.

I featured the A-Team as my cult-tv flashback today because, very shortly, a feature film revival (starring Liam Neeson as Hannibal) will be playing in theaters. I'm sure the temptation will be to update the series by making the film "dark" and "bloody." But in keeping with the tenor, spirit and odd fun of this weird old TV show, I hope the movie evidences absolutely no redeeming social value whatsoever.

It should remember instead just to include..."the jazz." If it doesn't, well -- to coin a phrase -- I pity the fool....

CULT TV FLASHBACK #106: Airwolf: "Pilot"

From 1984 to 1986 on CBS, "the attack helicopter of the future," -- dubbed Airwolf -- flew circles against the competition, including a disastrous TV version of Dan O'Bannon's Blue Thunder (1983).

Created by Donald Bellisario (Tales of the Gold Monkey), Airwolf aired at 9:00 pm on Saturday nights, and -- at least during its first season -- featured a dark, brooding quality that distinguished it from run-of-the-mill 1980s TV action-adventure fare. Less jovial than MacGyver, less tongue-in-cheek than The A-Team, this series charted its own distinctive trajectory.

The universe of Airwolf is introduced in "Airwolf: The Movie," the two-hour pilot episode written and directed by Bellisario. A traitorous genius, Dr. Charles Henry Moffet (David Hemmings) steals the futuristic attack helicopter (a re-dressed Bell 222A) from a branch of the C.I.A. called "The Firm." Moffet takes the top-secret craft, which can exceed the speed of sound, to Libya, where he uses it under the employ of America's big enemy of the early 1980s, Colonel Mu‘ammar al-Qaḏāfī.

A high ranking official in the secretive "Firm," code-named Archangel (Alex Cord) attempts to recruit loner and pilot, Stringellow Hawke (Jan-Michael Vincent) to steal Airwolf back from Libya after Moffet uses it to destroy an American naval destroyer at sea. Hawke isn't inclined to help out at first, but the Firm steals all of his priceless art collection (gifted to him by his grandfather) as an incentive. Also, another agent, gorgeous Gabrielle (Belinda Bauer) romances Hawke, and the two fall in love.

With the help of pilot and old family friend, Dominic Santini (Ernest Borgnine), Hawke finally undertakes the mission to recover Airwolf, but in the process loses Gabrielle, whom, Moffett tortures in the Libyan desert and leaves for dead.

Using Airwolf's awesome weaponry, Hawke kills Moffett and takes the chopper back to the States. But instead of turning it over to Archangel and the Firm, Stringfellow decides to hide Airwolf in an undisclosed location. He will only return the fearsome weapon of destruction to the government when the Firm reveals to Hawke everything it knows about his M.I.A. brother, St. John, who disappeared in Vietnam.

Archangel suggests that an accommodation can be reached, especially if Hawke occasionally flies important missions in the Firm's interest.

The quality that largely differentiated Airwolf, at least during its first season, from the vast majority of action series on the air at the time (like the immensely enjoyable but cartoonish A-Team), was its melancholy tone and personality. Jan-Michael Vincent portrayed a taciturn, haunted hero who clearly forecasts "the dark age" of such heroes following Tim Burton's Batman in 1989. In its original review of the series, Variety noted Hawke's "intricate background," and much of that personal history is revealed in the pilot movie.

Specifically, Stringfellow's parents died when he was twelve. The love of his life died in a car accident when he was a young adult. And his beloved brother disappeared in Vietnam during the war. And, following the action of the pilot, Gabrielle is also dead and gone. This history explains why Hawke lives the life of a hermit at his log cabin in Big Bear, keeping only a dog and a circling bald eagle as company: he believes he is cursed. Anyone who gets too close to him will die.

Introspective and cynical, Hawke spends his days playing a Stradivarius cello for the aforementioned flying eagle, a lonely serenade from one majestic creature to another, perhaps. As TV Guide's Robert MacKenzie noted, Vincent has a "glum magnetism" in the lead role of Hawke, and "can carry a scene." Indeed he can. The most emoting Vincent ever does is with his cheek muscles. They flex when he's angry. He's the show's unlikely center of gravity, unmovable and mostly unmoved by the destruction surrounding him.

A loner and a musician, Hawke was also presented on Airwolf as something of a serious, independent thinker, at least initially. In the pilot movie, he wonders if there's any real difference between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Archangel's assistant, Mariella answers that the Americans "wear white hats." Stringfellow doesn't look convinced at that distinction. During the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, Stringellow's question about the use of power (and weaponry) was rare on television, if not all together invisible.

Airwolf might have quickly proven a cold, mechanical series about a super helicopter blowing things up, but with the unconventional and downright anti-social Stringellow Hawke as its lead character, the first season boasted the sort of gravitas and humanity that today we associate with modern action characters like 24's Jack Bauer (who has faced his share of personal tragedy too.)

Alas, CBS was apparently baffled by the gloomy, serious tone and burgeoning story arc of Airwolf, and demanded "family friendly" changes for the ensuing seasons. For one thing (in the tradition of Mission: Impossible), the action would shift from foreign to domestic, hopefully to ramp-up audience interest and identification. For another thing, a possible regular love interest for Hawke was added to the series with the outgoing, spicy character of Caitlin O'Shannessy (Jean Bruce Scott). Hawke and Santini also became more willing, less-questioning agents for the Firm.

Still, even these modulations in formula looked great compared to Airwolf's final TV sortie. The series shifted from CBS to the USA Network for its fourth season, ditched Jan-Michael Vincent, and featured an all-new cast (including Barry Dillon as the missing St. John). Even Airwolf herself was MIA: the series now only featured "rerun" stock footage of the amazing chopper (culled from previous episodes). The second and third seasons might have been a corruption of the series' original adult intent, but the fourth season was an out-and-out travesty. In all, 79 episodes of Airwolf were made; 55 of them airing on CBS.

As we all realize, remakes of once-popular properties are arriving hot and heavy these days, so it's likely only a matter of time before someone takes a crack at an Airwolf feature film. While it would be nice to see the further adventures of Stringfellow Hawke, one can only hope that prospetive producers recall the program's first season, and the mood of icy introspection, loneliness and melancholy that the series crafted with relative skill. Otherwise, Airwolf is just a show (or movie) about a cool helicopter...and that gets old. Fast.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 104: Star Trek: Voyager - The Early Seasons (1995-1996)

So...I've been wanting to post an article here to celebrate 2010 as the fifteenth anniversary of Star Trek Voyager's premiere on the (now-defunct) UPN Network.

Actually, I can't really believe it's already been fifteen years since Voyager debuted. I vividly recall watching the series for the first time in 1995. I was 25-years old...and met Voyager with great enthusiasm and hope as a continuation of the Star Trek mythos.

The series premise - a solitary Starfleet vessel lost in another quadrant of deep space -- promised an important quality in 1995: accessibility.

At last, general viewers could experience an untangling of the intricate, overlapping, dense mythologies that had transformed Gene Roddenberry's once clear-cut, moral universe into Space Politics 101. Voyager's Delta Quadrant format was thus a restoration of the formula vetted in the Kennedy-1960s: going where no man has gone before on a weekly basis. Voyager also promised the uncertainty of an effort like Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Space:1999 by sending Starfleet officers on an unplanned galactic sojourn without back-up, without infinite resources, and without allies.

Starting out the journey, I was impressed. Voyager was indeed more accessible than the other latter-day Treks (DS9 and Next Gen). It's also the only Star Trek besides the original series that my wife, a novice fan, can stomach. In addition -- strikingly -- Voyager seems far stronger in terms of ensemble acting. In fact, no Star Trek TV cast before or after Voyager gelled quite so quickly or so ably.

Kate Mulgrew's Captain Kathryn Janeway promptly became my favorite Star Trek Captain after James Kirk, and I loved the way that Mulgrew's distinctive voice, -- her command "purr" -- would transform into a sort of guttural tiger's "growl" as her ship faced off against the menace of the week.

I also appreciated Mulgrew's seemingly boundless energy level. Janeway was a captain who hardly ever sat down in her center seat. She was constantly in motion on her command bridge; as though to sit down was to slow down the mind; to miss a vital fact or necessary information.

Mulgrew was, in my opinion, a great anchor. She brought a larger-than-lfe dimension to Janeway on Day One (like Shatner's Kirk) and I appreciated that mythic approach after the more work-a-day performances of Stewart and Brooks in the other programs.

Over the years, my enthusiasm for Star Trek: Voyager waned significantly. Looking back at the first two seasons today, you can see how the writers relied too heavily on fictional Star Trek techno-babble to save the day. Optronic relays, ODN circuits, EPS systems, baryon sweeps, Heisenberg compensators and so forth...it all just makes your eyes glaze over. There's no connection between this imaginary tech and the human experience. It's all just jargon.

Simply put, there was no crisis that a good deus ex machina couldn't get the crew out of. Next Gen and DS9 suffer equally from the same affliction, so this malady was hardly unique to Voyager...but it was still disappointing to see it replicated and re-transmitted. In the humanist realm of Star Trek, reshuffling the tech-of-the-week shouldn't have been the solution to so many important crises. Not when you had a woman as strong as Janeway as our moral, emotional guide.

Another problem was that the series never seemed to authentically cope with the very important idea of limited resources. I was deeply disappointed to see Voyager resort to familiar holodeck stories (only here based on Victorian literature rather than 1940s film noir). I mean, in a universe of limitations, was it really prudent to use the holodeck (especially since use of the replicator was rationed)? The series attempted to explain that that holodeck worked on a different kind of energy matrix than the rest of Voyager, and therefore its energy couldn't be harnessed in other realms.

Uh-huh. This was really just a crutch for the writers, and seemed to negate the very premise of the series. I see this failure of creativity as an example of Voyager refusal take real chances, and play it safe instead. I once asked Johnny Byrne, story editor of Space:1999 what he thought of Voyager, since it boasted a similar premise. He said, famously, "Look, when I start to see people with big ridges on their heads, I tune out...Voyager is the antithesis of Space:1999. I think it's dull and formulaic. It's lost any sense of urgency. My problem is that the characters have so much, but accomplish so fucking little."

Then, when Voyager unceremoniously sacked one of the most interesting characters ever created in the Star Trek universe, Kes (Jennifer Lien) -- an alien nymph (Ocampa) who had the limited lifespan of nine years -- for a 7-foot tall Amazon in a cat-suit, Borg babe Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), I knew the series was really and truly on creative life support.

For the character of Kes offered talented writers everything a Star Trek series could possibly require in terms of story lines.

Here, embodied in one package, was a person who could go from childhood to puberty, to adulthood, to old age, to death. Every aspect and stage of "humanity" and the mortal existence could have been examined through Kes alone over a seven-to-nine year series span. Youthful exuberance, teenage rebellion, adult drive, middle-age regret, wise old age...acceptance of death. Just imagine the stories that could have been told.

Finally, here was a character as rich in potential as the logical Mr. Spock had been in the 1960s, but one not in a Spock-imitation mode (like Data or Seven, or T-Pol). Watching Kes age across a seven year span, our crew would have been forced to consider their own human mortality too. And the best part was Kes wasn't suffering from a "disease," and her impending death wasn't reversible...it was natural. Kes and her friends on the crew just had to "accept" her life-span as a fact of life.

But Kes -- and all her potential -- was dumped for overt sexuality. Ryan was fine as Seven of Nine, but the commercial crassness of her appearance and her sudden prominence in the story lines (to the detriment of the other characters) was hard to forgive in a show supposedly about "human" values. Imagine just for a moment how unforgettable it would have been had Kes stayed with Voyager throughout the series and actually died of natural causes as the ship neared home in the Alpha Quadrant. This character-based story would have granted the final episode, "Endgame," a kind of melancholy, emotional, character-based lift that it clearly lacked. The joyous (a return to Earth) would have been mixed with the sad (Kes's demise), and the episode would have reflected more accurately the essence of our human existence; the way that the good goes hand-in-hand with the bad.

But okay okay, this post isn't supposed to about cursing the darkness, but rather praising the things that were indeed good and memorable about Star Trek Voyager. I can say this with some degree of certainty: the early Voyager years, produced by Jeri Taylor and Michael Piller and featuring Kes, are a great deal stronger than some of the later episodes. Here's a brief survey of some high points from Season 1 and 2.

The first story after the pilot "Caretaker," titled "Parallax" is a techno-babble story in terms of the scientific threat-of-the-week, but the installment nonetheless boasts authentic character fireworks as Chakotay (Robert Beltran) lobbies Captain Janeway on behalf of the volatile half-Klingon, B'Elanna Torres. Chakotay thinks she should be chief engineer; Janeway thinks she's not Starfleet material. This story is written with real passion, and is one of the few Voyager episodes that pays more than lip service to the concept of two unlike crews (Starfleet and Maquis) attempting to blend. Over the course of the episode, Janeway comes to realize that Torres boasts a thirst for knowledge similar to her own, and the rapid-fire theoretical dialogue comes across at warp speed. This show is alive with the possibilities of new discoveries, and since the characters are engaged, so is the audience.

"Prime Factors" is another great episode, primarily because it involves Voyager running afoul of an advanced, peaceful civilization that refuses to share its superior technology (and send Voyager home...)...simply on principle. This is exactly what Starfleet officers do every day with General Order One, or the Prime Directive. They deny those planets more primitive the benefit of their know-how and help. I'll never forget smug Captain Picard condemning a drug-addicted race to a horrible, painful fate in the Next Gen episode "Symbiosis," for instance. In Voyager's "Prime Factors," the shoe is finally on the other foot as Janeway must contend with somebody else's self-righteous sense of morality. Some Voyager crew members ultimately attempt to steal the alien technology in this episode, in a surprisingly real (rather than idealistic) portrayal of human beings.

"Phage," "Faces" and "Deadlock" are three episodes that feature Voyager's best villain: the Vidiians, an alien race dying of a terrible plague. The Vidiians aren't interested in diplomatic relationships or treaties. They show up in space, lock onto your ship, and harvest your organs...in seconds (thanks to a weapon/medical device based on transporter-style technology). All the Vidiians care about is their continued survival, and that single-mindedness makes them Star Trek's scariest and most effective villain after the Borg. It also makes them, perhaps, the most tragic. We learn in their introductory episode ("Phage") that the Vidiians were once a race of artists and musicians, for instance, but now their entire economy and culture is geared towards fighting the plague, the phage. In one downright vicious episode ("Deadlock"), we witness the Vidiians overtaking Voyager, and cutting crew members down in the corridors for organ harvest. It's all incredibly nightmarish.

One of my favorite of all Voyager episodes is "Alliances," during which Chakotay urges a "new" way for Janeway, suggesting she makes alliances with races (like the evil Kazon) she finds reprehensible. It's a good episode that could have been the basis for a multi-episode arc in the vein of Coppola's Godfather, since it involves betrayal on an epic scale, and even a mob-like "hit" at episode's end. Alas, the segment ends with utter retrenchment: Janeway would rather have a philosophical ally in Starfleet rules and regulations than an alliance in real life, with flawed partners. If her kind of thinking ruled in the Alpha Quadrant, the Feds would have never made peace with the Klingons...

One of the best episodes of Voyager -- one so good it takes your breath away -- is "The Thaw." It concerns a conceit I hate: holodecks, but manages to do something interesting and new with the concept. In this case, Voyager runs across a group of scientists on an alien world who are wired into their own holodeck/virtual reality environment. To everyone's terror, this computer-generated realm is dominated by a surreal carnivalesque atmosphere and a gruesome clown (Michael McKean), Fear Itself. And the trick of this world is familiar to fans of the Nightmare on Elm Street film series: if you die in the holodeck, you die in real life. And that clown has a nasty habit of putting those who disobey him under the guillotine...

What I admire about this episode is that it deploys all these surreal, bizarre visual compositions to assert the clown's total dominance over the dream scape and ends without bells and whistles, but rather with a one-on-one, intimate battle of the wits between Janeway and Fear. Like I said above, it's just stunningly good and superbly written and orchestrated.

In "Resolutions," Voyager is forced to strand Captain Janeway and Chakotay together on an idyllic forest planet, and -- without regard for the cliches of the genre (evil aliens, etc.) -- the story observes simply how the two characters cope with their sudden marooning. Chakotay finds acceptance quickly, and settles into his new life without looking back or asking questions. Janeway, on the other hand, never stops fighting, and never relaxes. If she's occupied, she believes, she won't feel alone...or left behind. Again, it's just a simple story of two alternate worldviews, but it is handled in a compelling, character-based fashion.

Star Trek: Voyager is clearly not the paradigm shifting sci-fi outer space series that Farscape or Firefly or Battlestar Galactica proved to be. It was just the latest in a familiar concept, tweaked and twisted to seem "new enough." I do believe that if the makers of the series had truly been bold in their choices -- turning off holodecks, featuring arguments between the two crews, and asking the characters to make moral compromises in a world of limited resources -- the series would be remembered today in much more positive terms.

The early seasons of Voyager are strangely inconsistent: one week the series daringly breaks formula and the next week it offers a storyline you've seen on Star Trek a dozen times. A prime example of the latter is Brannon Braga's "Threshold," which involves a galactic breakthrough and an unwelcome twist in human evolution. In other words, it's "Where No Man Has Gone Before," only dumber.

I don't know if you've given Voyager a try in the last fifteen years, but the good episodes are so good ("The Thaw," "Parallax," "Deadlock," "Resolutions") that you really mourn what amounts to a lost opportunity to update and modernize the increasingly-familiar and trite Star Trek universe.

I guess my ultimate statement on Voyager is this: a lifelong Star Trek fan, I stopped watching the series regularly by season six (about the time "The Rock" was guest-starring as an alien gladiator...). I didn't stick around to see the lost crew get home (though eventually I did watch that episode...), because I'd lost faith in the writers to wrap up the show in a novel, exciting and legitimately dramatic fashion.

You can only take so much disappointment before you become a lapsed Trekker...

CULT TV FLASHBACK #103: The Others (2000)

In the year 2000, veteran genre writers Glen Morgan and James Wong joined the staff of the Jon Brancato/Michael Ferris-created supernatural TV production, The Others.

The short-lived dramatic series concerned the frightening adventures of a sort of psychic "A-Team" investigating creepy cases of demons, ghosts and other denizens of the spirit world (much in the spirit of Poltergeist: The Legacy [1996-1999], but not nearly as cheesy).

The Others lasted for a dozen episodes on NBC (airing on Saturday nights from 10:00 to 11:00 pm EST) before a hasty cancellation brought the investigations to an end.

Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks executive-produced the genre program, and during its brief run, The Others saw episodes helmed by prominent horror directors such as Tobe Hooper, Bill Condon, Tom McLoughlin, and Mick Garris.
Also on board was one of my all-time favorite genre TV directors: Thomas J. Wright, who over the years has guided great episodes of Beauty and the Beast, Nowhere Man, Dark Skies, The X-Files, Millennium, Freaky Links, Dark Angel, Tru Calling, Angel and Firefly.

In terms of format, The Others revolved around a troubled college student named Marianne Kitt (played by Julianne Nicholson), and her decision to join a misfit group of psychically-inclined investigators (the titular "Others.") Kitt came to this decision after a case (in the pilot episode) involving her haunted dorm room, visions of the dead, and a realization about her own psychic capabilities.

On The Others, Melissa Crider played Satori, a New Age "sensitive." Gabriel Macht was Mark, a handsome young empath with medical training, Bill Cobb played the group's spiritual leader, the respected medium Elmer Greentree, and a pre-Enterprise John Billingsley was a professor in folklore and mythology, Miles Ballard. John Aylward was also aboard as the cranky blind-man and expert in ESP, Albert. Finally, Lord of Illusion's Kevin J. O'Connor portrayed Warren, the sort of "Mad Dog Murdoch" of this psychic bunch. The series approached the supernatural subject matter with seriousness, but -- as is the case in all Morgan and Wong efforts -- there was also a sly sense of humor in evidence.

One of the finest (and most harrowing) episodes of The Others was titled "Souls on Board," which aired February 26, 2000 and was directed by Texas Chainsaw Massacre auteur, Tobe Hooper. Penned by Daniel Arkin, the story at first glance involves a cliche common to genre TV: the imperiled plane, and in-flight crisis. You've seen it before, perhaps, on The Twilight Zone ("Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"), The Sixth Sense ("Coffin, Coffin in the Sky"), Freddy's Nightmares ("Cabin Fever"), The X-Files ("Tempus Fugit") and The Burning Zone ("Night Flight"). Yet despite the familiarity to other horror shows, "Souls on Board" proves a tense, atmospheric and claustrophobic hour.

For director Hooper, "Souls on Board" represents a return to Poltergeist (1982) territory, as it involves the idea of restless spirits aboard Spartan Air Flight 602. It turns out -- our investigators learn -- that the plane was recently re-fitted with salvaged parts from a crashed plane, Flight 390, and the new airline may be haunted by the (dead) crew of Flight 390.

Like many episodes of The Others, "Souls on Board" is beautifully shot. It feature a slight blue-gray tint that makes everything in the mechanical world of the airliner interior seem cold, inhuman. A shiver-provoking prologue spotlights a black box that hauntingly broadcasts the moaning cries of anguished spirits. And a scene involving Elmer's flying phobia captures well the common fear of flying (which yes, I share...) In one thoroughly frightening moment, Hooper's camera captures the image of an ivory-white, open-palmed hand banging on the exterior of a plane window. The white- against-black night-time imagery is startling and highly unsettling.

Other episodes of The Others are just as macabre and creepy. Space: Above and Beyond's Kristen Cloke portrays a gorgeous demon in one episode, and the show's final installment is a real shock to the system. Without giving away the end of The Others, let's just say it shares much in common with Blake's 7's final episode. If you did happen to catch this climactic episode, let's just you probably never forgot it...

The Others aired during the reign of The X-Files, and so could easily be dismissed as another exploitative knock-off or rip-off (like Sleepwalkers, The Burning Zone, Fringe, etc.), but the talent involved here raises the bar, I think. And as I recall from my initial viewing (admittedly ten long years ago...), The Others was downright chilling at times.

As of yet, there's been no official DVD release of The Others, but dedicated fans of genre TV would surely welcome it.

CULT TV FLASHBACK #102: Space: Above and Beyond: "R&R"

This is Morgan and Wong Week over at Back to Frank Black, the campaign spearheading the return of Millennium's beloved, cult-TV, criminal profiler.

As you may recall, Glen Morgan and James Wong were writers on Chris Carter's The X-Files, producers of MIllennium's second season, and cult-TV creators in their own right. They were behind an excellent paranormal series, The Others, in 2000, for instance. But given this special BTFB event, I thought it would be an appropriate time to look back at another Morgan and Wong production from the 1990s: Space: Above and Beyond (1995-1996).

I featured the pilot episode as my 37th CULT TV flashback back in November of 2007, and today I want to remember another segment, "R & R" produced by Morgan and Wong and written by Julie Selbo. But before we leap into a description of that particular tale, here's (some of) what I wrote about the series premise of Space: Above and Beyond, introduction-wise, back in 2007:

Imagine a "gritty, gutsy" (per TV Guide...) futuristic war drama colored in hues of mood battleship gray. It takes place in deep space following a devastating sneak attack on humanity by an unfathomable and merciless enemy.

Our protagonists in the war effort (which we are "losing badly") are young, attractive (but headstrong and angsty...) pilots. Much of the action occurs inside the cockpits of cramped space fighters and in military briefing rooms. The universe depicted by the series is one of murky morality and hard truths which shift in the troublesome and ambiguous sands of wartime. For instance, the specter of torture (here termed "re-education") is brought up in one installment.

You don't think I'm talking about the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, do you?

Instead, the first paragraph of this review describes the Glen Morgan/James Wong sci-fi war drama, Space: Above and Beyond, a mid-nineties-era TV endeavor that aired on the Fox Network for one season (and twenty-three hour-long episodes), and which concerned a squadron of rookie - but committed - soldiers serving in the United States Marine Corps Space Aviator Cavalry aboard a mobile space headquarters; not the Galactica, but the Saratoga.

Set in the year 2063, Space: Above and Beyond sets its stories in the immediate aftermath of a devastating ambush on an Earth Colony ship bound for distant Tellus, ("the furthest any human has ever ventured,") and thus this nearly-forgotten series imagined a futuristic 9/11 scenario...six years before 9/11 (and eight years before the Ron Moore remake of BSG). The enemy in this case was not the Cylon race, but the menacing and mysterious "Chigs," a derogatory slang name which refers to chiggers... fleas which burrow into the skin.

What remains so interesting about Space: Above and Beyond is not merely that the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica co-opted so much from its look, feel and narrative without so much as a "by your command," but rather that the creators' of this cult series seemed to understand - far earlier than most of us - how truly divided Americans were becoming as a people; and how - as bad as it might be - a war effort could conceivably bring us together.

Some context: Space: Above and Beyond premiered just a year after the 1994 "Contract with America" Republican Congress swept the elections, a stinging rebuke to President Clinton and a victory for Nute Gunray...I mean Newt Gingrich. I often recall the 1994 elections as the "revenge of the white man" referendum, because this was the era in recent history in which there was so much complaining in the press about Hilary Clinton's (unelected) role in policy decisions (like health care), as well as lamenting over censorship re-crafted under the new term "political correctness." There was also a mighty backlash against social progress that appeared to the hard-right in America to undercut the white man in favor of women and minorities, specifically programs such as affirmative action.

Remember, this was post-Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas America, when the buzz word "sexual harassment" was all the rage. On a personal note, it was around this time that I first heard the name Rush Limbaugh, and began to meet otherwise seemingly-normal people who followed his every rant like he was some kind of cult leader.

Space: Above and Beyond reflects this reality in nineties America by featuring a diverse group of pilots, the men and women who will fight the Chig attackers. In particular, one of the pilots is Lt. Cooper Hawkes (Rodney Rowland), who is part of a new minority in America called a "Tank," a term which is more derogatory slang, this time for "in vitros," citizens who were conceived and born in artificial gestation tanks.

America is still land of the free and home of the brave in 2063, but that doesn't mean that the "in vitro" class can expect total equality. As one character states bluntly in the pilot, "we believe in civil rights for in vitros, but not at the expense of our rights." This is EXACTLY what the debate was in the country at the time: women and African-Americans should have equal rights, as long as we didn't establish any laws that gave them privileges over the white man, some believed. Meanwhile - on the show - racism towards the in vitros still flourishes in the ranks of the space marines, mostly out of ignorance. "Tanks are lazy and don't care about anyone," reports one soldier, relying on an old stereotype. Later, a character registers surprise that "Tanks" actually dream. It's always easier to demonize the enemy (even a domestic one...), when you can somehow render them sub-human. Even the military equipment on hand in the Corps. doesn't fit the "Tanks," and Hawkes has to cut off part of his space helmet to accommodate a common "Tank" birth mark. "They don't make nothing with In Vitros in mind," he laments.

So this is the cultural context that Wong and Morgan were working on with Space: Above and Beyond. And the episode "R & R," directed by Thomas J. Wright, takes the characters of the 58th to yet another new horizon: furlough.

Specifically, the squadron is exhausted after multiple tours-of-duty, and the In-Vitro pilot Hawkes (Rodney Rowlands) is injured during a Chig attack on his patrol. Colonel T.C. McQueen (James Morrison) is relieved when the group is assigned 48 hours of vacation on a pleasure ship called "The Bacchus."

This vessel is described as "Vegas, New York City and Oz all rolled into one." I immediately thought of Sinoloa in the Buck Rogers episode "Vegas in Space" and "Space City," the so-called "Satellite of Sin" in Blake's 7.

In Space: Above and Beyond, this viper's den looks like a Trump Casino in space, and the futuristic Cabaret's master-of-ceremonies is none other than Coolio (!). He promptly informs the visiting soldiers that Bacchus is the place "where what you can only imagine, we make happen."

He also notes that this is not a world of virtual reality or "phony Holodecks," a pointed line which clearly differentiates Space: Above and Beyond's gritty, hard-bitten universe from that of another 1990s outer space franchise, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Remember, Star Trek off-spring dominated the 1990s, and Space: Above and Beyond was a first dramatic step away from that Utopian world of plenty. Again -- in the heyday of BSG and SGU -- we might not appreciate the pioneering aspects of Morgan and Wong's space combat series as much as we should. Not entirely unlike Space:1999, this program ventured to present a realistic look at man in space; rather than going for an idealistic approach.

Back to "R & R." In short order, the pilots of the 58th start to let their hair down. On Bacchus ,Lt. Shane Vansen (Kristen Cloke) sets about winning some dough in the ship's pool hall, only to be verbally upbraided and relentlessly "played" by a psychologically-adroit android pool-shark, Alvin...an uncredited David Duchovny. This characters snarls like Clint Eastood and even asks Vansen "do you feel lucky?" I loved this subplot because it played on expectations (the audience's and the character's): Vansen arrives in the pool hall in a slinky black dress, manhandles her pool cue seductively (!) and vamps it up...expecting to get one by the other players on sex appeal.

Didn't count on a robot, I guess...

Meanwhile, Hawkes has to deal with the specter of drug addiction because of the pain medication he's been prescribed, for his injury. On The Bacchus, goes in search of sexual comfort. A virgin, Hawkes soon meets up with a beautiful in-vitro hooker who is far less glamorous than she appears. She's addicted to drugs too (so she doesn't have to think about how she earns her cash...), and she's the mother of an infant.

And yes, this distinctly un-romantic subplot indeed sounds familiar if you've seen the re-imagined, second season Battlestar Galactica episode "Black Market."

As "R & R" continues, another sub-plot: West (Morgan Weisser) learns that the seemingly-humorless colonel, McQueen, has a fondness for old, black-and-white, W.C. Fields movies. Before long, however, the brief respite from war is called off, and the pilots are back to combat. Hawkes, for his part, has trouble leaving the events on The Bacchus behind. The Colonel, who has also faced drug addiction, tells him "There is there . And here is here."

What we get in "R & R," which aired originally on April 12, 1996, is a dissection of virtually all the program's dramatis personae. Sometimes that dissection is explicit: Alvin (Duchovny) finds the right words about Shane's family life to shake her; to make her lose at pool. Sometimes the character dissection is more subtle: the episode tackles everything from loneliness and virginity to the way "closeness" in combat sometimes creates a false sense of intimacy. James Morrison's character, McQueen doesn't have a tremendous amount of screen time, and yet we learn a lot about him here.

It isn't often in Space: Above and Beyond that audiences got see the characters relate to one another and their universe outside of the battle situation, and their time on the Bacchus (except for the W.C. Fields movies...) doesn't seem relaxing at all. But perhaps that's part of human nature too: our need to pursue love, money and yes, danger, even when we're off the job, supposedly taking it easy. Of course, there's even more danger in pursuing these things when outside the confines of "responsibility. It's hard, as Vansen might say (especially after her encounter with Alvin), to "keep your head screwed on straight" in an environment like the pleasure ship.

Space: Above & Beyond is a remarkably prophetic show. I wrote a few months back about the sense of anticipatory anxiety evident in the works of Chris Carter, and I think you might detect that quality here too, in the efforts of Wong and Morgan. It's the belief that the apparent good times don't last forever, and bad times are imminent. The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica of the 21st century also highlighted artificial people, sneak attacks, hookers, R & R, psychological mind-fucks, and gritty space combat, yet it's hard to ignore that Space: Above and Beyond hit the same notes (and without some of the more questionable soap opera plotting) almost ten years earlier. Also, Space: Above and Beyond always remained humanistic, rather than telling us that we are all the fools of the Gods, the victims of a fate we can't control.

So much of success in Hollywood is based on timing. Space: Above and Beyond in the Roaring Nineties, apparently didn't resonate with a wide audience (though its ratings were higher than many genre shows airing on television today). If it the program aired after 9/11, maybe we would have gotten to know Morgan and Wong's intriguing characters and solid writing for four seasons, or more...

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 101: Cosmos: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean" (1980)

"The cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be..."

-Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Personal Journey

I still remember feeling a keen sense of anticipation as I sat down to watch the first hour-long episode of the PBS series, Cosmos: A Personal Journey (September - December 1980). I was in the fifth grade at the time -- just ten years old -- and my English teacher, Mr. Rice, had assigned me to "review" the premiere episode, "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean." It was my first written TV/film review of many, I suspect...the inauguration of my own "personal journey," as series host Carl Sagan (1934-1996) might have aptly described it.

I recently re-screened the first episode of the award-winning Cosmos, "The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean," and it was amazing and gratifying to me how many ideas, how many visuals, how many specific moments I recalled with clarity, nearly thirty years later.

"The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean" opens with a view of tumbling, crashing waves, and then a long-shot view of a solitary man on a mountaintop. As this figure nears us, this very intense-looking man garbed in a red turtleneck and corduroy jacket begins to speak in forthright, blunt terms about the human race and our place in the universe. Meet Carl Sagan, our host, teacher, and philosopher-in-residence.

He speaks explicitly of the danger of the Cold War and our new found technological capacity to destroy ourselves. But he also notes appreciatively that, as a species, we are "young, curious and brave." What will follow this introduction, he states, is nothing less than the story of us, of humanity, floating "like of mote of dust in a morning sky."

After reminding us that for this TV journey we will require "imagination and skepticism both," we then board "a ship of the imagination," a glowing star craft that resembles a dandelion seed.

Next, we travel alongside our host for a close-to-thirty-minute voyage through the universe. We visit quasars, pulsars, a supernova, a stellar nursery, various galaxies ("chains of islands in the cosmic ocean") and more. We see the Orion Nebula, the Hercules Cluster, Andromeda, the planets of our solar system large and small, and then set a course into "the shallows of the solar system," where we finally reach blue, clouded Earth. This great, beautifully-rendered sojourn through galactic space ends pointedly with a montage of human faces, one that reveals us in all our great diversity and all our great similarities.

This entire segment features a trippy 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) quality, with host Sagan at the lonely control panel of a vast, minimalist-looking space ship bridge, staring into a huge view-screen.

The evocative, emotion-provoking Vangelis musical score adds to the aura of portentous discovery, and even the narration (written by Sagan, Ann Duyan and Steven Soter) boasts a lyrical, poetic quality. Sagan speculates about alien life forms; about their politics, music and religion. He wonders if alien races, like humans, pose a danger to themselves. His every word is, without exaggeration, mesmerizing.

Yes, Cosmos is an educational program produced in 1979-1980 for Public Broadcasting, but it has such a distinctive feel and mood. Some less-than-generous souls might term the vivid language a tad florid, but I disagree. Sagan loves words -- loves the act of communication -- as much as he loves science here. Therefore, his mode of transmitting fact and speculation is both colorful and individual. This is his "Personal Journey," the series announces; the equivalent, perhaps, of a modern-day vlog, in some weird sense. So indeed it is appropriate Cosmos should be stamped with Sagan's persona, his unique and dramatic way of both seeing and saying things.

After disembarking from our "ship of the imagination," Sagan next time-travels back to the Great Library of Alexandria in antiquity, "the brain and glory of the greatest city on the planet Earth." Thanks to some 1970s-era blue-screening composited with miniatures, we actually see Sagan stroll through the corridors of this great "citadel of human consciousness," telling us of the over one million scrolls of knowledge it once housed. It is right here, says our host, that Euclid studied and learned; that Archimedes pondered; that Ptolemy contemplated the stars.

In detail, Sagan relates how another user of the great library, Eratosthenes, calculated the circumference of the Earth...and was pretty darn accurate in his estimation. This particular segment of Cosmos reminds us of humanity's capacity for greatness. "The drama of the human species," as Sagan would say, is about our curiosity, our quest for knowledge, our unending capacity to grow, change and adapt to our new understandings about the cosmos.

The final bit of "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean" is downright humbling. Sagan leads us to a giant calendar displaying the twelve months of one year. Then he describes "cosmic time," stretching from the Big Bang...to now. The human portion of that calendar, Sagan says -- our entire recorded history -- fits into the last ten seconds of December 31st. Before that, perhaps, we were just "star stuff."

As Sagan is visually "zapped" or "beamed" into this cosmic calendar, I registered again how cleverly Cosmos deploys special effects. This is no dry science show; no emotionless recitation of dull fact. It is -- as promised -- a kind of imaginative, speculative journey rendered dynamic through up-to-the-minute, state-of-the-art visuals (for 1980, of course...).

This first episode of Cosmos culminates with Sagan's suggestion that a new calendar year is about to commence, and how long our dominion lasts in that new year will depend on which of our human qualities wins outs: our tendency towards self-destruction; or our curiosity and need to acquire ever more knowledge.

Other segments of Cosmos include "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue," "The Harmony of the Worlds," "Heaven and Hell," "Blues for a Red Planet," "Traveler's Tales," "The Backbone of Night," "Journeys in Space and Time," "The Lives of the Stars," "The Edge of Forever," "The Persistence of Memory," "Encyclopedia Galactica, "and "Who Speaks for Earth?"

Yet it is this premiere that I recall most vividly so many years after the initial broadcast. Sagan had a way with words, and a personal mode of contextualizing the cosmos in distinctly human terms. Nothing lasts forever, "not even stars," he tells us, reminding viewers that mortality is universal. The series Cosmos won't last forever, either, but after thirty years, Sagan's intellectual curiosity remains irresistible, and his exploration of "all there is, was or will be" is both valuable and illuminating.

I'm definitely going to get this series for Joel when he is old enough to appreciate it. Why? Specifically, Cosmos, though educational in tenor and approach, is actually dramatic, even enthralling, in a unique way. It boasts an unending sense of wonder about everything, about the order of the universe. And today -- in the era of seemingly "billions and billions" of dark science fiction TV series -- that sense of limitless imagination, that sense of renewed marvel and optimism makes Cosmos not a just a retro-curiosity, but a beacon in the night as bright as a pulsar.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 100 Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982)

Donald Bellisario's name remains familiar to a wide audience of TV viewers, not just for popular programs such as NCIS, JAG, and Quantum Leap, but for eighties classics such as Magnum P.I. and Airwolf.

Yet way back in the year 1982, Bellisario also crafted the cult adventure program Tales of the Gold Monkey, an expensive, high-profile initiative set in the South Pacific during the late-1930s.

At the time of the series' broadcast on ABC, many TV reviewers complained vociferously that Bellisario's latest endeavor was nothing but a rip-off of Steven Spielberg's high-profile, summer blockbuster, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

To wit: like Raiders, Monkey was set in the 1930s. And like Raiders, Monkey was considered a "pastiche" of 1930s era cliffhanging adventures, one re-purposing old genre tropes and chestnuts for a younger generation not yet familiar with them.

Adding to the lurking (but inaccurate...) sense of "copying" Raiders of the Lost Ark, another very similar adventure series aired on TV the same season that Tales of the Gold Monkey bowed, CBS's Bring 'Em Back Alive starring Bruce Boxleitner as Frank Buck. It was also set in the 1930s, in Singapore.

To misquote Oscar Wilde, to produce once TV series like Raiders of the Lost Ark in a season may be regarded as unfortunate; to produce two looks like a pattern. Or so the critics implied.

But whereas Bring 'Em Back Alive disappeared without a trace in short order, a dedicated fan base sprang up around Tales of the Gold Monkey. And it has been lobbying for years to bring the series back alive on DVD in the States. The reason for this steadfast dedication: it was far from the rip-off reviewers accused it of being.

On the contrary, the series was a loving excavation of the classic Hollywood 1940s-1960s adventure film...and one with spirit, camaraderie, and an abundance of humor. Simply stated, Tales of the Gold Monkey was much more Howard Hawks than Steven Spielberg. It was more Cary Grant than Harrison Ford.

Tales of the Gold Monkey is set in the year is 1938, as fascism is on the global march. Heroic but capricious American pilot Jake Cutter (Stephen Collins), his loyal mechanic, Corky (Jeff MacKay), and Jake's trusted one-eyed terrier, Jack, face peril and intrigue during their runs to the South Pacific island of Boragora. They battle Nazi spies, the Japanese Empire, slave traders, and even primitive natives. They just want to mind their own business, but the winds of war are upon them.

Jake's romantic interest in the series is Sarah Stickney White (Caitlin O'Heany), actually a secret agent for the United States government who is masquerading as a second-rate singer/entertainer. Bon Chance Louie (Roddy McDowall), the enigmatic French proprietor of Boragora's most popular watering hole, the Monkey Bar, is another of Jake's allies.

While piloting his beloved (but always-in-need of repair) seaplane, The Grumman Goose all across the Marivellas, Jake frequently butts heads with two recurring foes: Kohi (Marta DuBois), a seductive Japanese princess, and her warrior guardian, Todo (John Fujioka). These villains hardly seem like Raiders characters either; more like Princess Ardala and Killer Kane from Buck Rogers, actually.

Several years ago, I interviewed Gold Monkey writer and director Tom Greene on assignment for Cinescape (before it went out of business), and he shared some of the behind-the-scenes history of Gold Monkey with me. In particular, Greene established the fact that Bellisario first pitched Gold Monkey to the networks in 1979. Chronologically speaking, that's well before the cinematic arrival of Indiana Jones. Bellisario's inspiration in creating Gold Monkey was actually...the films of Humphrey Bogart.

"Tales of the Gold Monkey was homage to those great Hollywood films of old," Greene reported. "Don's a romanticist when it comes to Hollywood -- he lives it and breathes it -- and that's what Tales of the Gold Monkey was all about."

An example of this love of "old Hollywood" is evident in the very names Bellisario selected for the Gold Monkey dramatis personae. Series hero Jake Cutter was named after Captain Jake Cutter, a Texas Ranger portrayed by John Wayne in the 1961 film Western, The Comancheros, directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca [1942]).

And Jake's profession as independent, small-time transport pilot was a reflection of Cary Grant's similar occupation in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), a Howard Hawks production.

Even Gold Monkey's loyal sidekick "Corky" was intentionally designed as an amalgam of all those famous Hollywood "character" or "sidekick" roles that had been seen throughout the years.

"Corky was a combination of three characters in film history," the late actor Jeff MacKay described for me during a phone interview in 2000. "One is Curly Howard of The Three Stooges. The second is Walter Brennan in To Have and To Have Not (1944), and the third is Thomas Mitchell in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Corky was the heart-of-gold, true-blue friend that the hero could always rely on, even though he had human foibles and weaknesses."

While preparing the series for its network run on ABC, the creative staff of Tales of the Gold Monkey moved into the old Alfred Hitchcock building at Universal Studios, another place rife with history. Though the series was budgeted at a once-astounding $900,000 per hour long segment, an entire island (and the recreation of a time period...) still had to be constructed in believable fashion

"Don's a perfectionist" episode director Harvey Laidman, who helmed several episodes of Tales of the Gold Monkey, told me during another phone interview. "He has a very vivid picture in his mind of what he wants...at the time we were doing Gold Monkey, I think he saw it as an action show and he wanted good, credible action that made sense."

Greene likewise notes. "Don's one of the last producers who makes television like feature films, Every week on Tales of the Gold Monkey is like watching great 1930s features." Indeed, that very quality is what brings dedicated viewers back to the series over the decades.

Tales of the Gold Monkey survived an entire season -- 22 hour-long episodes -- and audience attention slowly began to build. In no small part, that was probably due to the increasing boldness of the series' writers, who kept piling on more action, and more expensive stunts.

Greene gleefully reminisces about one such inspiration which also, not surprisingly, came from movie history. "One of the last episodes we did was "Boragora or Bust" about a gold strike, and the whole thing had to do with a revolution. We had this magnificent stuntman, Richard Farnsworth's son, and I said to him, 'can you jump a motorcycle with a sidecar, like the Steve McQueen motorcycle jump in The Great Escape (1963)? He said he could, so suddenly I had this flash of Steve and Jeff in this motorcycle and side car, going over a collapsing bridge, and soaring over it. The next thing I knew, we had it in the episode!"

That kind of thing went on all the time, which is why, decades years later, director Laidman still considers Gold Monkey the most exciting (and demanding) series he's been associated with. "It was a war movie every week. It had flying -- which I loved -- and we were in the Goose shooting process shots for two whole days on episodes. There were war scenes, battles, and I got to use vintage equipment. There was even one show with a China Clipper, but the production company just built a door, and Albert Whitlock painted the rest of the plane around it. It was incredibly ambitious."

Unfortunately, Tales of the Gold Monkey had a secret enemy in its midst. "The network didn't like the lush look of the series," line producer Don Baer reported to me. "They wanted it to be light and sunny, like a kid's show. They saw it as bright. The villains had to be clear-cut and the very idea that characters might speak with foreign accents really bothered them. It was unbelievable. Everything had to be articulated and clear, and the intrigue was not what they were looking for, so the show was considered controversial."

"Right after the pilot, we had a meeting with network staff in Bellisaro's office," Baer remembers, "and Don was reciting some of the developing story lines. We were all nodding our heads...it was great stuff. But the network staff just sat there and said, 'No, that's wrong. Don't do that.'"

And rather than encouraging Tales of the Gold Monkey to break away from any and all similarities to Raiders of the Lost Ark, the network demanded commonalities. "The studio kept pushing for mud people and monkey people and other elements that would play up the similarities," Greene told me with not a little irritation.

For Greene, working with ABC -- and their demands to turn Gold Monkey into a kid's show -- was daunting. "We had to overload episodes with swearing so we would have grounds to negotiate with Standards and Practices," he relates. "We would trade them a 'damn' or 'hell' for something we wanted to leave in. During one episode, we had these gorgeous dancers doing the can-can and I offhandedly joked that the performers were not wearing underwear. Well, someone from the network overheard and thought I was serious. Before I knew it, execs were screening the can-can footage frame-by-frame to see if they could detect visible genitalia...."

Ultimate, ABC canceled the series at the end of the first season, yet even that didn't mean that the show couldn't go out in style; or in the tradition of "old Hollywood" it had established with such conviction and fidelity in its almost two-dozen episodes. In fact, the series was supposed to end with another unlikely homage.

"I'd been working on Gold Monkey around the clock, and one night I turned on the TV and fell asleep," Tom Greene told me. "Suddenly I woke up and saw Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy walking around our Monkey Bar set! I thought I'd gone nuts. Then I realized I was actually awake, watching a movie called Devil at 4 O'Clock." That film -- concerning a volcanic eruption on a South Sea Island, was made in 1961, but Greene detected how it could add some visual effects luster to Gold Monkey's final show.

He continues: "The next day, I went to the art director, and he told me that he had built our series sets based on old studio blueprints from Devil at 4 O'Clock. So I said, 'great, let's do a volcano show and the stock footage from the movie will match our standing sets.' That's exactly what we did, in what was supposed to be the final episode of the series, called "A Distant Shout of Thunder." When people saw it, they thought we'd spent millions of dollars destroying our sets when in fact it was just a perfect, magical blend of new footage and stock...."

It seemed a spectacular finish to a spectacular series, but before long, the network struck again. "After we completely destroyed the island, ABC asked us to do one more episode..." Greene laughs.

Today, director Laidman attributes Gold Monkey's continued cult popularity to its timeless tales of adventure. "I thought the stories were absorbing, interesting, and a little corny in a fun kind of way. Bellisario had a rough-n-tumble sense of humor that resonated with audiences."

Producer Baer concurs: "It had the romance of the 1930s, the bigger-than-life hero with the leather jacket, and the elements of intrigue of that time period. It was a lot of fun. That plane [the Goose] was a magic carpet and it could take you anywhere..."

So here we are in 2010, still lacking a boarding pass for that magic carpet. Isn't it about time for an official DVD release here in the United States? There's been one in the UK, I understand. But after all, if (TV) adventure has a name, it must be...Jake Cutter.

(JKM's note: My ill-fated Cinescape retrospective on Tales of the Gold Monkey was not printed before the magazine went under in 2001; but that [lengthier and much more-in-depth] retrospective is posted at my web site here.)

CULT TV FLASHBACK #99: The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula

Don your bell-bottoms, cue the stock-footage thunderstorms, and turn up the library archive sound-effects of wolves baying at the full moon. It's time to ride our blogging TV time machine back to that great year 1977. Our destination: The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, a Glen A. Larson production that ran for three years on ABC (1977-1979).

This once-popular detective TV series (styled after the popular, long-lived, mystery books by Edward Stratemeyer) starred teen heartthrob Shaun Cassidy ("Da Doo Ron Ron...") as Joe Hardy and Parker Stevenson (later the husband of Kirstie Alley...) as his cleverer brother, Frank.

On the Nancy Drew side of the equation, lovely Pamela Sue Martin portrayed the dedicated part-time sleuth. At least that was the case for the first two seasons of The Hardy Boy/Nancy Drew Mysteries. Then she permanently exited the series, breaking the hearts of pre-adolescent boys across the nation. Concurrent with her departure, Pamela Sue Martin shed her "good girl" image forever by posing nude in Playboy.

Little known fact: I still own that particular issue...

But for this 99th cult tv flashback, I want to direct your attention to the two-part, second season opener of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, the charmingly-titled "The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula," which aired on September 11th and September 18th, 1977.

In most of my reviews, I prefer not to use descriptors such as cheesy or camp -- because in time, all programming turns to cheese or camp -- but this series is indeed a very cheesy. It's also rather charming...and innocent. In other words: perfect stuff for kids. Even better: it's perfect stuff for kids with a burgeoning interest in the horror genre.

So, in this particular tale, hapless Hardy Senior -- Fenton Hardy (Ed Gilbert) -- disappears at Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania (on June 4th, 1977...). Weeks later, Joe and Frank go in search of him...in Paris. Then, they run into the lovely Nancy Drew in Munich, and learn more about their father's unusual disappearance. Fenton and Nancy were "comparing notes" on a mystery involving international art thefts. Many of the world's most valuable paintings have disappeared, and Fenton was on the case.

The three amateur detectives concur that all roads lead to Transylvania, where a Dracula Festival is being held at Vlad The Impaler's historic castle. Shooting a rock concert there for ABC is the rock sensation Allison Troy...really the incomparable Paul Williams (who appeared EVERYWHERE in the 1970s, including in Battle for the Planet of the Apes...).

And here (in Part I), Williams performs a great song from one of my favorite movies of all time (and one by Brian De Palma, no less...), 1974's Phantom of the Paradise.

Anyway, the Hardy Boys go undercover as members of a band called "Circus"....which is just a transparent excuse for Shaun Cassidy to sing "That's Rock'N'Roll" ("Come on Everybody, get down, get with it, come on everybody get down, get with it...")

While Joe sings his heart out for costumed revelers, Frank and Nancy Drew separately investigate the creepy caverns underneath the castle; a locale they have been warned about repeatedly. Before long, Frank ends up locked in a dungeon with the apparent victim of a vampire attack.

Soon vampire bats are attacking a night-gowned Nancy Drew in her hotel bedroom (!) and the Transylvania town elders start panicking. Before long, they are on the receiving end of vampire neck bites. Inspector Stavlin, played by Lorne Greene -- a traditional sort-of-guy -- hints that Dracula may be perturbed that his castle is being used for such crass commercialism (meaning Allison Troy's concert, not this two-part Glen Larson episode...).

But deep in the caverns -- behind the ancient Dracula family crest -- a secret chamber awaits. And there, Frank, Joe and Nancy finally learn the truth about vampires, and international art thieves too.

Directed by Joseph Pevney and written by Glen A. Larson and Michael Sloane, "The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula" is a show I vividly remember from my childhood. I guess I was seven years old when I watched it originally, and, well, what can I say? it had a lasting impression on me.

For instance, I've always recalled the Dracula-"stalking" scenes that dominate this two-part episode. We just see Dracula's stylish boots as the count hunts his prey in the dark caverns. Of course, the villain was filmed in this manner so we couldn't discover Dracula's real identity. But there was always something unsettling (to my young mind, anyway....) about the way those shiny boots came out of the darkness and followed everybody through the catacombs.

And, of course, how can you not love Paul Williams? The performer gets to camp it up here as an egotistical rock star. I love that he sings "The Hell of It" in this episode, because it features nihilistic song lyrics that aren't exactly as kid-friendly as the rest of this landmark Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew endeavor. Anyway, I've embedded the Paul Williams Hardy Boys performance below this review, so you too can share in the joy.

All right, so it''s all too easy to make fun of 1970s costumes and lingo, right... turkey? And vampire bats on visible strings? Han Solo hair cuts? Lorne Greene -- Ben Cartwright -- as the Prince of Darkness, Dracula?

But all snark aside, from 1976-1979, I loved this series. I mean, I loved it. I never missed an episode. The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries had fun stories, featured engaging performances and depicted some great tales about The Bermuda Triangle, King Tut, the Phantom of Hollywood and other weird 1970s era obsessions. I often write about TV series as "time capsules" for their era, and -- my god -- what a time capsule this show is. It's just a whole lot of goofy, 1977-style fun.

And now, before I sign off, may I present Paul Williams on The Hardy Boys...?