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Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Now You Don't" (October 23, 1976)

In “Now You Don’t,” the stolen weather machine is still missing, and in the hands of criminals.  

The criminals, however, don’t know how to use it properly, and plan to capture its creator, Rick Mason (Brian Cutler), to help

Meanwhile the three “Super-Sleuths – Ranji (himself), Feather (Craig Wasson) and C.J. (Evan Kim) attempt to draw the crooks out.

Also on the case are Captain Marvel (John Davey) and Isis (Joanna Cameron)... 

“Now You Don’t is the final episode of The Secrets of Isis (1975-1976), and like last week’s show, it feels more like a bid for a new Super Sleuth series than a story involving Mrs. Thomas and Isis.  

That’s a bit of a disappointment, given the fact that we don’t get to see Isis again.

Captain Marvel is also present in this story, making the half-hour relatively crowded.  At the very least, "Now You Don't" is fast-moving, and full of energy.  

And, like “Now You See It,” the episode seems a little more serious and substantive than the run-of-the-mill Isis programs. For once, we aren’t in a world where some prejudiced/angry/isolated teen must be taught a lesson about tolerance.

Gazing across the breadth of the Isis catalog, it’s clear that the show’s real strength is not its storytelling, but Joanna Cameron’s centered performances, which anchor the material and provide the series a degree of dignity.  Her performances are typically restrained, and lacking in histrionics, and that’s good.  Isis (and Mrs. Thomas too…) is a person children can look up to.

Unfortunately, the whole Rick Mason/Lois Lane and Cindy Lee or Rennie/Jimmy Olsen supporting cast aspect of the series makes certain that Secrets of Isis is never much more than an Adventures of Superman knock-off.

Next week: We begin Sid and Marty Krofft's Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Now You See It" (October 23, 1976)

In “Now You See It,” a criminal posing as Rick Mason (Brian Cutler) steals a top-secret weather control device from government lab.  

Almost immediately, Rick is arrested for the crime.  He is concerned, not only for his freedom, but because the weather control device could wreak havoc.

Mrs. Thomas (Joanna Cameron) and Rennie (Ronalda Douglas) attempt to clear Rick’s name, but it isn’t easy. 

To help, they recruit three local youngsters: “The Super Sleuths.”  

These Super Sleuths include the magician, Ranji (himself), a street-wise kid, Feather (Craig Wasson), and an Asian martial arts expert, C.J. (Evan Kim).

But when the Super Sleuths get into trouble, the mighty Isis is needed.  And she brings assistance: Captain Marvel (John Davey).

At the end of the day however, the weather control device remains in the hands of criminals…

The last two-part story of Secrets of Isis (1975 – 1976) commences with this week’s “Now You See It.” 

It’s a bit of an odd story. 

For one thing, it plays a lot like the pilot for a new series, featuring heavily the aforementioned “Super Sleuths.”  

A very young Craig Wasson --star of Body Double (1984) and A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (1987) -- plays streetwise “Feather.”  And fans of V (1983) will recognize Evan Kim.

The upshot, however, is that Isis feels more like a guest star on her own series than a regular character this week.

The second oddity involves Rick Mason.  

He is a high school teacher and a bit of an amiable bumbler, as we have seen over the course of twenty-or so half-hour episodes at this point.  And yet here, he is a brilliant scientist toiling on a top secret weather control device for the U.S. government.   

His work for the government has never even been mentioned before this episode! More to the point, it’s not entirely believable, at this juncture, that his laid-back 1970s groovy teacher is a genius capable of constructing a weather control device.

“Now You See It,” is also another cross-over episode with Filmation’s brother series, Shazam!  Here, Captain Marvel pinch hits, helping Isis when she is over-worked by the always-in-danger Super Sleuths.

Next week: the final Isis episode: “Now You Don’t.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "The Cheerleader" (October 2, 1976)

In “The Cheerleader,” Ann (Laurette Spang) is desperate to head the school’s cheering team, and plots to steal the answer key to a chemistry test to keep her academic scores high. She lures Tut out of Ms. Thomas’s (Joanna Cameron) room, and Rennie has to find the missing raven. When Rennie returns, Ann has copied all the answers.

Then, to exacerbate her sin, Ann frames the top cheerleader on the squad, Wynn (Colleen Camp) for cheating on the test.  While the academic board debates what should happen to Wynn, however, Ms. Thomas looks into the matter and determines the truth.

When Ann is nearly caught for cheating, she flees in her car.  But after a strange turn of events, the car nearly runs her down on a hillside, necessitating a visit from Mighty Isis.

Battlestar Galactica’s (1978-1979) Cassiopeia -- Laurette Spang -- makes quite a splash in The Secrets of Isis, playing a ruthless, manipulative and scheming cheerleader.  She’s a good actress, and Spang makes one both loathe and then feel sorry for Ann, a girl who “wants everything,” according to Wynn, but who is not “willing to work for anything.”  

The result?  “She could end up with nothing.”

Despite a good guest appearance by Spang, “The Cheerleader” certainly raises some issues of continuity in terms of the series. 

 For example, the first half of the episode involves the fact that Ann frees Tut, Isis’s bird, and that the bird becomes lost, and later endangered in the great outdoors.  In her first appearance in this segment, in fact, Isis must save Tut from a wild dog.

But we already know from other episodes that Tut flies out of the lab quite a bit, and can handle himself just fine.  

He flew into a junkyard in one episode from the first season (to rescue Cindy Lee), and had to go find and recruit Captain Marvel in another episode, late in that season.  

So why is he suddenly helpless and at risk in the great outdoors?

Secondly, this episode seems to point out just how little the faculty actually does at Ms. Thomas’s school.  While Rick and Andrea walk the grounds working and fretting, they leave a student --- Rennie -- to type up the chemistry test answer key.  Isn’t this something they should be doing, rather than requiring a student to do it? (And Rennie is in the class, isn’t she?  How does that work if she prepares the exam’s answer keys?)

Isis saves the day (and Ann…) in “The Cheerleader” when she levitates the cheerleader far from the ground, and lets the runaway car go by her.  The superhero also manages to make the offending wild dog disappear, so she can retrieve Tut, and keep him safe from harm.  These powers are ones we’ve seen, in one form or another, on the series before. She used levitation in "Dreams of Flight," for example.

Next week: "Year of the Dragon."

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Class Clown" (September 25, 1976)

In “Class Clown,” a new student named Rudy (Alvin Kupperman) has been forced to transfer from another school because he constantly plays dangerous practical jokes in a bid to be popular and well-liked.

At his new school, he starts making the same mistake.  

Mrs. Thomas (Joanna Cameron) takes an interest in Rudy and reminds him that “making people laugh doesn’t mean you’re making friends,” but Rudy doesn’t get the message.

Instead, he orchestrates a practical joke in the chemistry classroom, using an inflatable life raft. And then, when he is forbidden from going on Mr. Mason’s class field trip, he ends up driving a runaway bus down a mountainside!

Another troubled student learns another lesson about being a good kid in “Class Clown,” a routine, instantly-forgettable episode of the Filmation Saturday morning series, The Secrets of Isis (1975-1976).  

Once more, Isis/Mrs. Thomas meets a student and sees that he or she is trouble, and once more she offers counsel. That counsel is ignored, and Isis is required to save the day.  

At the end of the tale, the offending student is “scared straight” and promises that there will never be a repeat of the bad behavior.

Case closed.

We’re nearing the end of Isis (just four or five more episodes, I believe, in the second season…), and by now the formula is well-established and kind of dull.  Nothing too Earth-shattering ever occurs, and Isis is never off doing something important (like rescuing a ship at sea, or preventing a forest fire...) when she is needed to help a wayward teen learn an important fact of life.

Occasionally the formula gets beefed up with an exceptional stunt or special effect.  Last week, in “The Hitchhiker,” for example, a car drove off a mountain, after traveling “through” a parked bulldozer that Isis had rendered intangible.  That was pretty cool.  This week, Isis levitates up into a class-room to end a dangerous situation in the chemistry lab. She also creates a stairway of mist that Rick and Rudy use to escape the bus accident.

Other times, the formula is so ingrained that the repetition just makes you think about other things, like how Isis could be doing some humanity some real good, somewhere, instead of acting as nurse maid to a bunch of entitled middle class American teenagers.

Is this really what Oh Mighty Isis had in mind, when she provided this power to her heirs? 

Next week: “The Cheerleader.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "The Hitchhiker" (September 8, 1976)

In “The Hitchhiker,” two high school girls -- Hope (Jewel Blanch) and Joanne (Lynn Tufield) -- make a habit of hitchhiking. 

One morning they almost die when their driver, an irresponsible teenager named Charlie (Barry Miller) takes them on a speeding trip that catches the eyes of the police and nearly ends with a deadly wreck.

Fortunately, Isis (Joanna Cameron) is present, and helps the girls avoid a deadly crash. Joanne promises that she will never “hitchhike again,” but Hope doesn’t seem to get the message.

The next day, rather than wait for the bus with Joanne, Hope gets back in the car with Charlie, and another dangerous ride ensues.

This time, however, his car breaks down on railroad tracks as a train barrels towards it...

According to Saturday morning television, hitchhiking was apparently one of the great social issues of the 1970s. It was dangerous…and everybody was doing it!

Secrets of Isis (1975 – 1976) takes on the problem in “The Hitchhiker,” an episode which sees the super heroine helping two teenage girls who fall in with the wrong driver.  

And yes, this narrative or plot-line was absolutely re-used on an episode of The All-New Super Friends in 1977 (“Hitchhike.”)  There, two high-school girls also ran afoul of a bad driver, and required rescue from the Wonder Twins.

The idea of both of these stories (and for audiences) is: get scared straight!  

Violent, dangerous hitchhiking incidents should prove how dangerous it is, and prevent people (especially kids) from doing it. Today it all feels like silly exaggeration, and much ado about nothing.  I find it hard to believe that teenage hitchhiking was ever quite the epidemic that Saturday mornings of the disco decade made it out to be.

Intriguingly, this is one of the few episodes of Isis in which we see Mrs. Thomas (Cameron) actually teach a class.  Here, she undertakes a chemistry lesson, but it’s really all about hitchhiking. She discusses the danger of a “catalyst” in an unpredictable situation, and likens it to the plight of Joanne and Hope.

The driver in this case, Charlie, is the episode’s real menace.  He decides to take the girls on a police chase, drives the car through a parked construction vehicle, runs off the road, drives without a license, and stalls out on the aforementioned race tracks. Charlie learns the error of his ways at the end (on Isis, the perps always do…) but if anyone on the series ever deserved some jail time, it’s this guy.

In terms of Isis and her abilities, we see her take apart the molecular cohesion of a vehicle in the road, so that Charlie’s car won’t crash into it.  

“Molecules by which we’re bound separate…let space be found,” she says, invoking the mighty goddess.

Vis-à-vis the series’ special effects, there appears to be some new footage of Isis in flight this week. I would say this is so, in part, because these shots feature Isis’s new hair-do and cut.

Next week: “Class Clown”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Seeing Eye Horse"

In “Seeing Eye Horse,” a young man named Noah (Gregory Elliott) who has been blinded in an accident is sad because he can no longer ride horses on his family ranch.  On the day his bandages are to be removed, he is disappointed to learn that his sight still hasn’t returned.

Hoping to help, Mrs. Thomas (Joanna Cameron) gets Noah a seeing-eye horse named Sonny, one who bonds with Noah, and helps him when tragedy strikes on the ranch. First, Noah nearly drowns in a lake, and then a fire starts on the property.

Fortunately, Isis is also around to render aid and assistance.  Specifically, she makes it rain to put the fire out.

The second and final season of the Filmation series The Secrets of Isis (1975 – 1976) commences with this episode, “Seeing Eye Horse.” 

The first thing to note regarding season changes is that Cindy Lee (Joanna Pang) -- Mrs. Thomas’s favored student -- is gone…apparently having graduated. She is replaced by Rennie Carol (Ronalda Douglas), another student.

Secondly, Isis herself looks a bit different this season.

In particular, when Thomas changes into the famous superhero, we see that Isis has lightened her hair, and it is no longer straight. Cameron, as Isis, also wears heavy eye-make up this season. Apparently the producers were going for a more Egyptian-styled look, but Cameron is a natural beauty, and to bury her expressive eyes in garish make-up seems a shame.

The second season’s first episode, “Seeing Eye Horse” re-establishes the continuing characters of the series, basically Mrs. Thomas, Rick Mason (Brian Cutler), and Tut the Raven. It also re-establishes the idea of focusing its narrative on a teenager with a problem, rather than a typical superhero-type crisis (like the committing of a crime, and the catching of the person responsible for it).

Here, a blind boy loves horses, and can’t ride them anymore, at least until Mrs. Thomas thoughtfully acquires him a Seeing Eye horse.  Filmation had already, at this point, done a similar story with a horse at its center, on the sister series, Shazam, 1974’s “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

As is typical for Isis stories, there is no real villain here, only a set of dangerous circumstances that endangers people.  Noah falls off a pier into a lake, and a fire starts on the ranch.  Isis/Mrs. Thomas, spend a lot of time trying to encourage Noah, telling him that he can still achieve his dreams, if he is willing to do the hard work.  She notes that many professionals are blind.

Finally, there’s the Isis rescue scene, where she saves the day. In this case, she asks clouds to part, rain to fall, and the fire to be put out.

Next week: “The Hitchhiker.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Dreams of Flight"

In “Dreams of Flight,” a braggart named Mark Dawson (Paul Hinckley) attempts to prevent a Mexican-American girl, Chela (Cynthia Aida) from flying her model plane in an upcoming celebration, Aeronautics Day. 

Chela’s brother, Raul (Fabian Gregory), meanwhile, doesn’t believe that girls can fly planes, or compete against boys in contests, and forbids her to participate in the festivities.

Mrs. Thomas (Joanna Cameron) intervenes with Raul, and he realizes he cannot stand in the way of his sister’s dream, especially since Mark is a racist and a jerk.  But when Raul is left to guard Chela’s plane, Mark steals it and runs away.

Raul gives chase to a construction site, but Isis’s powers are required to make certain both boys survive…

In The Secrets of Isis episode “Dreams of Flight,” a young woman, Chela, finds the path to her dreams blocked at every step by sexists and racist fellow-students (including her brother!), but ultimately gets to show her stuff…thanks to Isis.

Once again, it’s a little weird to consider how this Filmation series of the 1970s constantly addresses intercultural issues, gender issues, and the like, yet explores so little in terms of super-heroics. 

Most episodes of Isis are kind of bracing to watch because the conflicts are so issue-oriented (a boy doesn’t think a girl can fly a plane, for example).  There’s almost never a real criminal or bad guy to contend with, just anti-social issues or prejudices to combat  

And suddenly then a superhero appears -- reversing time or some such thing -- and nobody blinks an eye. Everyone just accept that Isis exists, operates nearby, and can magically achieve miracles. Yet she isn’t out there stopping fires in a nearby city, diverting tornadoes or ending wars or riots. 

No she’s helping high school students learn lessons in morality. 

What would the press say about such a person?  Local and national authorities?  “Gee, we love Isis.  We sure could have used her help during the hurricane, but she was busy teaching a kid not to judge a book by its cover.”

It’s just incredibly weird, and insular. 

I realize, of course, the series is aimed at children and that it aired on Saturday morning. It takes as its model, Adventures of Superman (1951-1958), but that series had a wider more realistic scope in the sense that viewers actually saw how the press reported the Man of Steel’s activities, or how the local police (and Inspector Henderson) viewed his exploits. As viewers we could contextualize Kal-El more fully and thoroughly.  The world of Isis is so small and closed-off that we don’t get this viewpoint.  We are limited basically, to a high school population.

“Dreams of Flight” loads on the social and intercultural issues -- racism, sexism, culture-based value-systems and so forth -- and ends with peace, understanding and friendship.  That’s a wonderful message to send children, but not exactly entertaining on its face.  The episode ends with the racist, Mark noting that he’s “really been a dope,” and Mrs. Thomas adding that “I guess we learned something today.”

It’s pro-social, for sure, and valuable for kids to see how people of different belief systems get along, but perhaps the most “fantastic” element of the series is the way that offenders (racists, sexists, etc.) turn around and forsake their beliefs, seeing the light.  Life is rarely that easy, or that simple. Changing a belief system is hard, and even the magic of Isis would have a tough time with it.

As far as Isis’s powers go, this week’s episode finds her levitating Mark from a high perch, and bringing him gently to the ground.  He thus gets the experience of flight, which he has longed dreamed about, and his life is saved at the same time.

Next week, season two of Isis starts with “Seeing-Eye Horse.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Girl Driver" (November 29, 1975)

In “Girl Driver,” a young woman, Freddie Charleston (Susan Lawrence), is a mechanic and car lover running for Auto Club President at the local high school. She is the first girl to do so.

But a sexist boy at school, Mac (Steve Doubet), doesn’t believe that a female can possibly know anything about cars.

Hoping to settle the matter, Mrs. Thomas (Joanna Cameron) organizes a rally, a competition for the two drivers. It will occur in the mountains, and involve successfully following a map.

Mac, however, decides to cheat. 

It’s a decision he comes to regret, however, when he runs his car off the road, and nearly dies.

Fortunately, Isis is nearby and ready to intervene…

This episode of Isis (1975 – 1976) confronts an “attitude that is pretty old fashioned,” namely that women cannot be leaders, or even more basically, decent mechanics. Mac is the male chauvinist pig who says things like “No girl is gonna beat me!”

Of course, to prove his point about the inherent superiority of men, Mac cheats and nearly gets himself killed.  

Isis intervenes in the battle of the sexes and teaches Mac a lesson about treating people fairly.  By the end of the episode, he concedes that Freddie is not so bad “for a girl” and that he might even vote for her for Auto Club President.

Isis demonstrates some amazing powers in this episode. She snuffs out a gasoline fire in Freddie’s garage by declaring: “Power of fire at my command, disappear when I raise my hand.”  

Later, she gently rides Mac’s plummeting car down the mountainside to a cushioned impact. 

Perhaps most impressively, Isis is able to look back in time, into the past, and see Mac cheating during the rally.  That’s a power she has never used before, if memory serves.

Every week there’s a lesson to learn on Isis, which can make the series a chore to get through.  On the other hand, it was aimed at kids and every now and then a story would really work, sometimes in spite of itself. 

For some reason I can’t fully fathom, I found “Girl Driver” rather engaging, and found myself looking to see how Freddie would manage a win in the rally, especially with a competitor dedicated to cheating.

Next week: “Scuba Duba.”