Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command (1978); "The Victory of Star Command" (December 23, 1978)

In the final episode of the first season, “The Victory of Star Command,” Jason (Craig Littler) evades a trap set by Dragos, destroys the medallion that creates the minions, and flees the Dragon ship with Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon).

Meanwhile, Space Academy falls under attack from Dragos’ drone fighters.  But the attack falls short, and Space Academy is victorious.

Refusing to accept defeat, however, Dragos promises to return.  “I will be alive in every dark corner of the universe,” he promises.

“The Victory of Star Command” is kind of a silly ending for the first season of this series.  When Dragos disappears in the last scene, for example, he leaves behind his helmet, gloves and cape.  

Why?  

Isn’t he going to need his helmet wherever he is going? Why has he left pieces of his uniform, but not all of it?  

Secondly, Jason of Star Command has established all along that energy clones are real flesh-and-blood beings. But Drago’s duplicates this week are intangible and untouchable.  So they aren't energy clones at all, and the series' last chapter doesn't tightly tie in with the first few (wherein we discover Canarvin is an energly clone).  

This is a missed opportunity to tie back to the beginning of the season, and the whole energy clone subplot. But then, the series has long since stopped being coherent at this juncture. It's all phantasmagoria.

What makes the finale a little disappointing, even as phantasmagoria, is the fact that many of the effects are but stock footage at this point.  We've seen the Starfire escape the belly of the Dragon ship before, and we've seen the attack on the Academy by the drone fleet too.  So a sense of freshness and excitement is missing here.

Indeed, I’m not sure why this is the “finale” storyline except that the Dragon ship is destroyed, and Dragos leaves his items behind in his command center.  But we have seen in earlier episodes that Drago, whenever defeated, just comes right back and picks up where he left off.

And indeed, that’s sorta what happens in the second season of the series, isn’t it?  Next week, Season Two!

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

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

No, I’m just kidding.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next week: "Return of the Creature."

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Chapter 11: The Haunted Planet" (November 18, 1978)

In Jason of Star Command’s (1978-1980) Chapter 11, “The Haunted Planet,” Jason (Craig Littler), Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon), and Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) must crash on an icy planetoid when their Star Fire’s radiation detector fails and the ship’s atomic core overheats.

They escape from the ship just as it explodes, and are soon confronted by a man named Bork (Angelo Rossitto), who claims to be an emissary from Queen Vanessa (Julie Newmar).  

Bork attempts to capture the folks from Star Command using a local monster enslaved by an obedience collar, but Jason frees the beast, who is actually an “energy” being.

Jason and the others see Vanessa on their own terms in a mountain base, and she addresses them.  She implores Jason to switch sides and work for Dragos, but he refuses. 

Accordingly, Vanessa informs them they will never leave her world alive.  She then incapacitates them using a toxic gas…

Julie Newmar -- the greatest Catwoman ever, bar none -- guest stars in this segment of Jason of Star Command. She is, as always, beautiful and poised, though the character she plays is hardly worth her time. 

Vanessa is called a queen, but where are her people? Why is she alone on this icy planetoid with just one servant (Angelo Rossitto of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome [1985]).

Similarly, Vanessa is in league with Dragos, but we don’t learn why she has chosen this course, at least not yet.  Hopefully future episodes will reveal more about her.

Also, it seems like going to a lot of trouble bringing Jason to the planet just to ask him to change sides, when his answer is pretty much pre-ordained.  Wouldn’t Dragos (her ally, remember?), have preferred her simply to let the ship’s atomic core blow up with all hands aboard the Star Fire?

I always find it laughable, and an example of poor storytelling, when a villain decides to lay a trap for his arch-enemy, thus doing the very thing that will assure his mission fails.  The Master did this all the time on Doctor Who, inviting, basically, the Doctor into his plans, and then cursing his name when the Doctor made them fail. Here, we are to believe that Jason is such a strong adversary to Dragos that the villain would rather “turn” him than kill him, given the opportunity.

Not likely.

Jason’s odyssey on Kesh continues in the next episode.

Next week: “Escape from Kesh.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Academy: "The Cheat" (November 19, 1977)

Well, there's another crisis on the 1977 Saturday morning live-action, Filmation TV series Space Academy this week. An "energy distributor" on asteroid BX3 is leaking and could poison outer space for three parsecs, including an inhabited space colony.

But on the Academy, the cadets are embroiled in a crisis. Captain Chris Gentry (Ric Carrott) has ordered Cadet Matt Prentiss (John Berwick) called up on charges because he showed "flagrant disregard for procedure" on their last mission. Commander Gampu settles the crisis by suspending the hearing on the matter, and putting Matt Prentiss, a laser technician, in charge of the mission to seal the malfunctioning energy distributor.

The mission proves dangerous, and Matt orders the Seeker through an ion storm and - again - Chris reacts negatively to Matt's irresponsibility. 

But when Matt is injured during his attempt to seal the energy distributor, Chris takes over and saves the day, using the Seeker's bulldozer-like arms to push a small asteroid into the energy distributor, thereby creating a new "artificial" sun to provide energy to this part of the galaxy.

"The Cheat" is essentially the same story as the previous installment of Space Academy, "Life Begins at 300."

A pushy non-regular learns a valuable lesson about working with "the team" after initially being a hothead. This episode distinguishes itself primarily because Matt asks Laura (Pamelyn Ferdin) out on a date(!), and also because the episode features a funny slow-motion interlude wherein Tee Gar Soom uses his karate skills to break down a jammed engine room door on a Seeker.

Meanwhile, fans may remember that John Berwick's character, Matt Prentiss shows up in a first season episode of Jason of Star Command (1978-1980). In Chapter 10, "The Disappearing Man," it is reported that he has been missing for months. In truth, he has been a guinea pig for the invisibility experiments of Dragos (Sid Haig).  So Berwick's character represents a little cross-series continuity.

I do think that Space Academy missed a bet on teaching a good lesson to kids with stories like "The Cheat." In both this and the previous installment, our heroes were proven to be correct in their convictions all along, and it was the dangerous interloper who had to learn a lesson. 

All the good guys really had to do was express "forgiveness" for the trespassers. 

Wouldn't it have been nice had Chris or Gampu or one of "our" team been proven wrong in "The Cheat" instead? 

And Matt -- the guest star -- been proven correct? 

Sometimes, a good lesson for kids to learn is that it's okay to be wrong; and to be the one asking for forgiveness. Right? It seems that Chris reacts negatively to Matt's position of authority...maybe he was just threatened all the way along by someone as capable as he was...and again, that's something that kids should learn about: feelings of competition and jealousy and how to deal with them.
Otherwise, this episode introduces a new feature for the versatile Seeker.  Here, we see that the front section can extend arms, which prove useful in pushing an asteroid from its collision course.

Finally, the energy distributor is a nice new miniature for the series.  It is asteroid-based in terms of construction too, which marks it as being produced by the same culture that created the "planetoid" for Space Academy.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Chapter 10: "The Disappearing Man"

In Jason of Star Command (1978-1980), Chapter Ten, “The Disappearing Man,” a Seeker suddenly appears near Star Command, and then vanishes. It re-appears in the hanger bay.

While investigating, Jason (Craig Littler), Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon), Parsafoot (Charie Dell) and Commander Canarvin (James Doohan), find a high-speed recording on the ship.  Lt. Matt Prentiss (John Berwick), who disappeared from Space Academy a year earlier), claims to be a victim of Dragos’ (Sid Haig) evil.

Dragos has experimented on him and accelerated his metabolism to one thousand times the equivalent of human normal speed.  This is part of Dragos’ plot to develop an “ultimate weapon,” invisibility.

Professor Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) creates a device that can speed up Jason’s metabolism, and allow him to locate Matt.  But he only has 90 seconds to use it, before he too becomes trapped – permanently – at that accelerated rate of existence.

Jason is successful bringing back Matt, and the grateful man informs him of another secret.  Peepo – who is still missing – is under Dragos’ control.

“The Disappearing Man” is a knock-off of a classic third season Star Trek episode: “Wink of An Eye.”  

In that narrative, as you may recall, the Enterprise visited a planet called Scalos wherein a civilization was dying.  Its few survivors, including Queen Deela, had been affected by strange factors in their water.  

The result was that their metabolism accelerated to an unbelievable rate, making them impossible to see at our speed or our level of vision.

The story saw Captain Kirk accelerated in similar fashion (thanks to a drop of water in his coffee cup), and the neat visuals depicted him moving at normal speed through a world -- the corridors of the Enterprise -- frozen, as if in amber.

“The Disappearing Man” features the same sort of personal acceleration, vis-à-vis the missing cadet, Matt Prentiss, and also shows the “real world” in the same fashion; as so slow that movement is undetectable.  

In “Wink of an Eye,” the Scalosians could communicate, but their words were so fast, they sounded like insects buzzing about.  “The Disappearing Man” retains that concept as well. I wonder how James Doohan felt acting in an episode with such an obvious Trekkie antecedent?

Even casting aside these similarities, “The Disappearing Man” has some logical problems.  For example, Jason only has ninety seconds or he will be lost, accelerated.  The machine that can bring him back, however, is broken at the last second, leaving Dr. Parsafoot to attempt something else.  The question is: why is this a crisis?  Why not just repair the machine and send somebody else (Nicole, perhaps…) after Jason, just the way he went after the accelerated Prentiss?

“The Disappearing Man” plays a lot like a budget/time-saver. Although there is a guest star, John Berwick, all the action occurs on standing sets, not new planet sets with alien creatures, and there are no new significant outer space visuals, either, just some footage of a Seeker from Space Academy (1977).

Even the plot is thrifty, having been imported directly from Star Trek.

Next week: “Chapter 11: The Haunted Planet”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Academy: "Life Begins at 300" (November 12, 1977)

In "Life Begins at 300," another segment of Space Academy (written by Jack Paritz), a haughty cadet from Yellow Squad, Gina Corey (actress Paula Wagner) warns Commander Gampu (Jonathan Harris) that he should abort a Seeker mission to collect the mineral Zolium from a distant planet. 

She thoughtfully quotes "Stanley Crane's paper on Zolium Distribution," but Gampu doesn't consider the mission particularly dangerous.

Unfortunately, he's proven wrong, and Paul's life support badge malfunctions while he's collecting the Zolium on the planet surface. 

Worse, Peepo malfunctions in the atmosphere when sent out to save the cadet (with, of all things, an inflatable raft...). 

Though Paul is finally saved, Gampu now has serious questions about his own leadership. Was Gina right?  Did he underestimate the danger?

"There's a very old saying: you can't teach old dogs new tricks," he bemoans. Then, Gampu tenders his resignation from the Academy and orders Gentry to transmit it to Earth.

But Gina, who has constructed a device called "an extractor" to collect Zolium, also fails her mission, and it's up to Gampu -- with his 300 year old wisdom and experience -- to save her. He does so, and his faith in himself and his capabilities is restored. 

"We all need the experience of age, which I have, and the exuberance of youth, which you have," he tells the thankful Gina.

The most interesting aspect of "Life Begins at 300" is that it's the first episode thus far to include Jonathan Harris (Gampu) in more than a supporting role. He does well in the role.  I like that he can be both stern and gentle, and that he is alwys driving the cadets to be better.  Gampu is a far cry from Dr. Smith on Lost in Space.  He is a great elder spokesman for the human race and its values, and I like that Harris was given an opportunity to reveal another side of his persona.

I also just have to note how "Life Begins at 300" fits into that wonderful sci-fi TV convention: the mineral hunt. 

In so many science fiction TV series of the 1960s and 1970s, the hunt for a rare mineral resource was the plot of the day. Dilithium was in short supply in Star Trek ("Mudd's Women,") along with Ritalin ("Requiem for Methuselah.") On Space:1999, the moonbase desperately needed titanium ("The Metamorph") and tiranium ("Catacombs of the Moon.") On Battlestar Galactica, it was the valuable substance "tylium" that had to be mined by the Ovions in "Saga of a Space World." Here, on Space Academy, Zolium is used to "regenerate life support badges."  That's an intriguing background note that helps us understand how the seemingly miraculous future world exists.

I suppose it makes abundant sense that sci-fi TV series would focus on this aspect of outer space: ideally, we hope it's a realm brimming with the resources we require to sustain ourselves. But that remains to be seen. So when do we start mining the asteroid belt (and move into Outland territory?) I hope it happens soon. 

Next week: "The Cheat."

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Jason of Star Command: "Chapter 9: Peepo's Last Chance" (November 4, 1978)

In Jason of Star Command (1978-1980) Chapter 9, “Peepo’s Last Chance,” Dragos (Sid Haig) has repaired his Dragonship and is scouring the universe for signs of Jason. 

On Arcturon, Drago’s minions locate a couple of Star Command droids: Peepo and Wiki.  They are there conducting a defense survey of the world, but Dragos orders them captured.

Jason (Craig Littler) and Nicole (Susan O’Hanlon) take a Star Fire to the planet, but in the mean-time 

Peepo is connected to a dragon terminal and made to reveal top secret information about Star Command and its technology. 

Jason manages to free his friends, but the day is not saved.  Though Jason doesn’t know it, Peepo has been brain-washed and now serves the evil Dragos.

“Peepo’s Last Chance” is not much more than a runaround -- a show with little emotional or narrative depth, concerning instead rescues, escapes, and chases.  In this circumstance, Jason and Nicole must save two diminutive robots, Peepo and Wiki from Dragos.

Wiki spends a great deal of time on the top of Peepo’s computerized head this week, and I could not help but think of Twiki and Dr. Theopolis from Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century.  

But the real antecedents here? 

R2-D2 and C3PO, the beloved droid duo from Star Wars (1977).  Here, Peepo considers Wiki an “annoying kid brother,” according to Jason, and that seems like an attempt to recreate the relationship dynamic of the famous gold protocol droid and his mischief-making astromech pal.

This is the first episode on my re-watch wherein I first felt a sense of creeping sameness or routine.  We’ve seen Dragos’ evil plan before, as well as his capture of Star Command personnel.  We’ve even seen the spaghetti-monster minions and the wasteland planetoid before. And, of course, we’ve seen rescues and escapes galore.

I guess in a large multi-part “serial” like this one, some parts qualify as filler. That’s certainly the case with “Peepo’s Last Chance,” though in fairness the episode does set up, ably, the possibility of future betrayal.  Peepo has been turned!

Next week: “The Disappearing Man.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Academy: "Planet of Fire" (November 5, 1977)

This week on Space Academy, Tee-Gar Soom (Brian Tochi) experiments with a "cryotron," a device that will ultimately be able to "cool down hot planets."  He demonstrates it for his friends, and for Gampu (Jonathan Harris), and is pleased with his success.

But Tee Gar is also due for a vacation, so he leaves the Academy and doesn't learn that his experimental cryotron device --which looks like a ray gun with a back pack -- posseses a fatal flaw: the frozen objects become unstable and explode.

With Loki and Peepo, the oblivious Tee Gar heads to the asteroid of Daleus to perform further tests on the cryotron, only to see the potential weapon stolen by a strange, solitary giant named Dramon (Don Pedro Colley).

Dramon abducts and then freezes Peepo with the Cryotron, and then needs Tee Gar's help to restore the robot to normal. 

The only thing that can save the diminutive droid is "moist heat."  Fortunately, a hot spring on the planet surface gets the job donem and Peepo is saved.

At the end of the day, Peepo is back to being himself, and Dramon returns to the Academy as a new friend. 

Meanwhile, Tee-Gar promises to continue work on his freezing device.

"All great men have suffered disappointment," advises Commander Gampu "from Galileo to the Wright Brothers..."

"Planet of Fire" is a disappointment, I would assess. It's not that it is a terrible episode, it's that it is pitched a lot lower than earlier episodes.  "Countdown," "Survivors of Zalon" and "The Rocks of Janus" could largely pass muster on a prime time series like Star Trek (1966-1969) or Space:1999 (1975-1977).  The concepts are strong ones, and the execution is pretty good too.

But "Planet of Fire," is, in essence, about the cadets encountering a lonely giant who freezes their robot.  They make friends with him.

And that's it.

This isn't to say that the lesson about friendship is unworthy. It isn't. Dramon is confused that Peepo's buddies risked their lives to rescue him. "Maybe the way you act, you don't deserve them [friends]," Peepo suggests, and so Dramon reforms his anti-social ways.

There's also a lesson here about tenacity. Tee Gar has failed in his work, making the cryotron safe and functional, but one set-back cannot be the end for a scientist.  He must re-tool, and try again.  Otherwise, nothing of value will ever be invented right.  In some ways, Gampu's speech to Tee Gar about success is absolutely perfect.  It's something a good teacher would say. And it reminds me, absolutely, of moments between Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Wesley Crusher (Will Wheaton) in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), particularly in shows such as "Coming of Age."

Still, these lessons for Tee Gar and Dramon feel a bit too preachy, and they are grounded in concepts that aren't that great.  A giant? A freeze ray?  Space Academy often aspires to be more than pulp-branded entertainment, and it's a bit sad to see "Planet of Fire" rely on such hoary ideas.

Next week: "Life Begins at 300."