40 Years Ago: The Equalizer (1985-1989)

 

I was a devoted viewer of the original CBS TV series, The Equalizer (1985 – 1989), which starred the great Edward Woodward as an ex-spy, Robert McCall, helping out ordinary -- but desperate -- people, in the crime-ridden Reagan Era New York City.

McCall was a hero unlike virtually any other on TV at the time. Although he was an older man (in his sixties, perhaps), he was an absolute bad-ass. McCall didn’t tote big guns like Rambo and he wasn’t physically intimidating, either. Instead, he had presence...and cunning. He was sharp like a knife, and could out-wit -- as well as out-fight -- any opponent. I loved watching Woodward in his role on The Equalizer, and was sorry to see the series end after four seasons.

The introduction to The Equalizer is a great artifact of its age: the mid-to-late 1980s. 

It features a barrage of music-video jump cuts, a pounding, staccato theme song and it is all about one thing: the extreme danger of the “urban” jungle.  

The series was broadcast during a time when the crime rate in New York was through the roof. The Equalizer started airing not long after the Bernhard Goetz subway incident (December 22, 1984), and was on the airwaves for both the Jennifer Levin/Robert Chambes “Preppie Killer” case, and the Central Park jogger/wilding case.

The idea of New York City as a concrete jungle is played out visually in the series’ introduction.  

The montage begins with a point-of-view shot from a busy street, as if we are in car, racing down the avenue.  But in truth, it looks like we are in a canyon between giant skyscrapers.  Making the image more terrifying, it is night time.  The sky is dark, impenetrable.

A second shot is a pan across the skyline, from a high-altitude.

These two opening shots inform us of something important about the series. The Equalizer concerns both “street level” crime, and the crimes of those in penthouse apartments.  McCall can help you in either case

In the next shot, we swoop (or zoom) back down to city level, and see a person running across a mostly-vacant street at night.  He seems to be running for his life.  The figure is tiny, a victim unnoticed by the Establishment, or by society at large.

This visual is followed quickly by other shots that suggest overt,  immediate and frequent danger.  We see a door crack open, and someone peering in at us.

After that, we gaze down (from a view suggesting doom), at a woman alone in an elevator with someone who reads, visually, as a gang member or thug.  He may be planning to rob, rape or murder her.  To accent the point, we get an extreme close-up of her panicked eyes.

The litany of horrors continues. A man standing in a phone booth sees head-lights shining on his face, as if he is going to be attacked by someone in a car.  

Then, in broad daylight, a stalker leaves his car and pursues an unwitting woman into an office building.  The point of view suggests he is watching her, and planning no good, and that she is unaware both of his presence and his intentions

Up next, we get one of the most important compositions in the montage: a hand works at a small scale, and the balance of the device is off. One of the scale’s plates dips at a lop-sided angle…because crime is winning in this urban jungle!  

Who will right the scales of justice?

Then, the horrific moments of out-of-control crime resume. A woman misses her subway, and a stranger steps out onto the lonely platform to challenge and threaten her

Then our hero appears, in shadow, for the first time. We see McCall’s silhouette.  He can no longer remain in the shadows and watch all these injustices.  He will soon emerge to help the helpless…

Another stalking incident is next. We watch from another first-person subjective shot how someone -- a shadow – is stalking a woman on the side-walk.  At first we see only her feet, increasing their pace.  Then we get an extreme high-angle, looking down, as the shadow nears his quarry.

Now the force of justice emerges at last.  At first he is merely a shadow on a brick wall.  But soon, the mist clears -- literally -- and we meet…The Equalizer!

After the title of the series, we meet our star, Edward Woodward, and the punchy theme jump-cuts us out of the montage.

One of the most paranoid, over-the-top TV series introductions ever created, The Equalizer depicts a populace in total fear and a city in chaos. It suggests that one man -- the right man -- can shine a light on this terrible, urban darkness.  

Lost in Space 60th Anniversary: "The Magic Mirror"

In “The Magic Mirror,” a violent storm reveals a weird mystery: a solid platinum alien mirror.  Highly ornamental, the mirror has glowing eyes on its decorative top, and Penny (Angela Cartwright) is intrigued by it. Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) by contrast, wants to possess its wealth.

While Penny examines the mirror ore closely, Debbie the monkey actually travels inside it, revealing that the decoration is a portal to another world, a surreal one decorated in quasi-Egyptian fashion.  Penny also goes inside the mirror and finds there a young man (Michael J. Pollard) living alone.

This boy is a Peter Pan-type figure, one who never ages and never grows up.  He wants Penny to be his companion in this everlasting limbo, but she sees the world for what it is: a trap.

Frighteningly, there is also a cyclops/monster living in this world…

If “My Friend, Mr. Nobody” and “The Magic Mirror” are examples, then the Penny-centric episodes of Lost in Space (1965 – 1968) tend to be the best installments of the series.  Perhaps that’s being too broad.

“The Magic Mirror” isn’t quite as terrific as “My Friend, Mr. Nobody,” but -- more than many other installments of this fifty year old series -- it does tread into deeper themes and ideas.  The last Will-centric episode, “Return to Earth” was a puzzle box story about the boy returning to Earth and having to get back to his family in time, but it didn’t really examine Will as a character. By contrast, both Penny stories so far dig deeply into her psychology and feelings.

In “The Magic Mirror,” Penny -- on the verge of adolescence -- doesn’t want to grow up.  She wants to continue being a child, like Will is. She doesn’t care much about grown-up things, and we see this in light of her relationship with Judy.  Judy wants Penny to change her hair and care more for her physical appearance.  It’s a shame that these qualities are stereotypically and sexist female things (especially since Judy is a scientist…), but the series aired fifty years ago, when our culture had very different perceptions of what it means to be male and female.  Despite the kind of hackneyed or out-of-date example -- Penny should dress and wear her hair like a grown-up -- we still get the point.  

And that point is that you can’t resist change, or growing up. It’s inevitable.

Soon after Judy and Penny talk, Penny is thrown into the mirror’s odd universe, a place where there is never any change at all.  This idea of being frozen in time is captured visually by the fact that stopped clocks seem to litter this world, weird tokens without purpose or function.

In this world, a Peter Pan-like character, The Boy lives in eternal youth, never growing, never maturing.  He forever dwells in the land of games and play.

Penny is drawn to this youthful, exuberant character, but before long realizes how this stasis has trapped him, and diminished him.  The surreal world of the mirror is one of eternal life, but also eternal stagnation.  

What is the purpose of life if you never change, never grow?  The Boy notes “it’s just the way we always are,” and Penny, despite her affection for him, realizes that she doesn’t desire stagnation to be her destiny.  

She opts out. She tries to bring the boy with him, but he won’t come.

In the episode’ last scene, Penny no longer resists coming adolescence. She changes her hair-style, and thus symbolically she lets go of being a kid, and takes the first steps towards adult-hood.  She has learned, through the narrative’s events, that change is the essential process of all life, and it is better to embrace it than to resist it.  Stagnation is death, in a very real sense.  

Again, it is easy to quibble with how the episode parses being a “grown up” -- focused on external, physical qualities like hair-style and wardrobe – and yet “The Magic Mirror” is still sweet and, indeed, bittersweet.  

Although Penny faces growing up with composure, she is still bracing for an ending; for a loss.  Childhood does end, and that’s sad. But adulthood will possess wonders for her as well.  This story could be re-done today in a less simplistic (and yes, sexist…) way, and still be amazingly powerful and relevant.  All of us go through this transition, the letting go of childish things…but not always entirely willingly.

In terms of series continuity, “The Magic Mirror” continues the tradition of featuring Dr. Smith as an avaricious fool.  He really serves no purpose in this story except to take attention away from Penny, and the magical world she encounters in the mirror.  We already know that Smith is greedy, so his attempts to acquire the mirror don’t add to our understanding of the character.

More intriguing, perhaps, is the casting of Michael J. Pollard as “the Boy,” a Peter Pan figure, as I noted above, who lingers in eternal childhood.  He plays a variation of this role -- a man-child refusing to brace change or adulthood – in the classic Star Trek episode “Miri.”

Lost in Space 60th Anniversary: "The War of the Robots"

In one corner, we have Robby the Robot, famous cinematic automaton of the classic film, Forbidden Planet (1956). 

And in the other corner, we have lovable B-9, mechanical guardian of our space family Robinson and popular hero of Lost in Space.

May the best robot win!

In very silly terms, that's the set-up for this classic first season Lost in Space (1965-1968) episode, "The War of the Robots," which aired originally on CBS on February 9, 1966.

Here, the stranded Robinsons unexpectedly discover a quiescent "robotoid" in an overgrown grove near their homestead, covered in vines. 

The Robinsons' protective robot insists the alien machine (Robby...) is an "extreme danger" to the humans, in part because of Robby's very nature: he's a "robotoid" (unlike the Robot), and robotoids are advanced machines which can go beyond the bounds of their programming.

Robotoids have a "choice,” according to the Robot in the way they follow (or don't follow...) orders and instructions. 

The Robinsons and especially Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) believe their Robot is just jealous of the new machine, which -- when activated by Will (Bill Mumy) -- shows an affinity for repairing watches, the damaged chariot, and other crucial devices.

Dr. Smith derides the familiar family robot as a "clumsy has-been" and "obsolete" as, in short order, Robby the Robotoid becomes practically invaluable to the marooned Robinsons (save for Penny, who has mysteriously vanished from the entire episode...without it being noticed by her Mom or Dad). 

Soon, Robby confronts the B-9 and tells him that the Robinsons no longer need their original robot and that "in comparison" to himself, the B-9 is "very ignorant."

Alone and abandoned, B-9 skulks away into the rocks -- having lost his family -- and soon Robby's true motives emerge. He is actually the dedicated servant to an alien scientist (a kind of dog-alien that very much resembles the Anticans from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Lonely Among Us" that was produced and broadcast twenty-one years later...). 

The Robotoid's mission is not to serve the Robinsons, but rather to disarm them, render them "harmless" and deliver them as experimental subjects to the aliens. 

"You are weak and vulnerable creatures," Robby tells the Robinsons, "but there are others who have need of you..."

In the end, it's a battle-to-the-death between a nearly-invincible Robby, the most famous robot in film history, and a vastly-under-powered Bubble-Headed Booby, the most famous mechanical man of television...

I love the way the first season of the series is shot, and this episode is a prime example. In "The War of the Robots," for instance, a fluid camera glides in menacingly towards Robby the Robot at least twice, pushing portentously towards the inscrutable juggernaut. 

A less efficient production might have used a zoom instead of taking the time and energy to move the camera, but you can tell that there was no expense spared in early Lost in Space, and generally, the series is really well-filmed. 

There's even a sense of visual ingenuity (and wit...) in the episode's final battle between clunky metal men. They flap and lumber their way through a cloud of opaque smoke, laboring to find the best kill position.

In some ways, “War of the Robots” is also like the dam breaking in Lost in Space, at least in terms of the depiction of the Robot.  He has been mainly the tool, so far, of Doctor Smith, and occasional helper of the family...but he hasn’t been sentimentalized.  

The sentimentalization of the machine begins in earnest at this juncture.  The Robot is seen as lonely, emotionally wounded, and looked over by his beloved family.  Will and Maureen, similarly, begin to express their feelings for the dutiful robot in this emotional fashion.

The "War of the Robots" narrative is one we can all identify with. The Robot feels squeezed out by his new "sibling," Robby, and becomes jealous that, well, there's somebody newer and more exciting in the room. 

The Robot begins striking out at those who love him (refusing to help Will...), becomes petulant and even self-loathing (describing the fact that he has been denied or "cheated" out of human characteristics evidenced by the Robotoid.)

Let's face it: haven't we all felt displaced like that from time to time? By a brother or a sister? By your best friend's 'new' buddy? 

It's strange that a story so plainly concerning sibling rivalry involves an ostensibly "emotion-less" robot, but again, that's the great thing about science fiction on television: it can dramatize stories in a way a regular drama can't.

"The War of the Robots" is a fable or lesson about jealousy, and every other dramatic consideration  about the episode is largely secondary.

In this way, the series conforms to its overarching idea: that of a pioneer family determining how to thrive on the frontier, with all sorts of challenges around.  

Only in this case, it is clear that the robot is part of the family, and not just an instrument or device. 

When we enter the space age, Lost in Space tells us, even our technology will be part of "us."

Lost in Space 60th Anniversary: "My Friend, My Nobody"

In “My Friend, Mr. Nobody,” Penny (Angela Cartwright) unexpectedly makes an alien friend in a cave. This cave manifests, at first, as just as a voice, but soon is able to demonstrate strange and fearsome powers.

Penny attempts to convince her family that Mr. Nobody is real, and a million-year-old life-form, as he claims but she is ignored and disbelieved by the other Robinsons, who are busy improving their settlement.

When Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) learns that there are diamonds in Mr. Nobody’s cave, he becomes determined to drill there, with no worry whatsoever about the well-being of Penny’s friend…

“My Friend, Mr. Nobody” is a magical episode of Lost in Space (1965 – 1968), a story of both great empathy (for Penny) and remarkable imagination.  

"My Friend, Mr. Nobody" takes the familiar “imaginary friend” trope (later featured, less imaginatively, on Star Trek: The Next Generation as “Imaginary Friend,”) and transforms it into a story about loneliness, friendship, and purpose.

In particular, the story’s main character, Penny, is at loose ends.  Her mother is busy working at the Jupiter 2. Her father and Don are busy with the laser drill.  Even Will is too busy to play with her.  

So Penny must spend her days alone, without attention, feeling unloved and unimportant. But before long, she encounters this “friend” in the dark cave, a friend who values her, and talks to her about things that matter.  They speak of “death” and what it means (‘when someone can’t speak anymore, or move anymore”) and become fast-friends, dedicated to each other’s well-being.  Penny realizes, through her conversations with Mr. Nobody that her thoughts and words matter; that they make a difference.

There are moments in “My Friend, Mr. Nobody” that ring very true in terms of earthbound childhood too. For example, Penny feels hurt when the person she trusts the most, her mother, fails to believe her story of Mr. Nobody.  

Of all the people who should believe her, it is Mom. When Penny catches her mother humoring her, treating her as just a "kid," the moment represents an unwelcome entrance into the grown up world of awareness.  

Dr. Smith -- who says “oh, the pain; the pain” for the first time in this episode -- is pretty despicable here too.  He attempts to trick Penny by pretending to be the voice of Mr. Nobody. And then, later, his attempt to acquire diamonds means, essentially, the murder of this imaginary friend.  Penny's lesson here is that many adults treat friendship as secondary, and wealth as primary.  Penny's friendship means nothing to Dr. Smith if he has a chance to get rich.

The episode ends, finally, with Mr. Nobody facing off against the robot, evolving, heading off to the stars to his next stage of existence, but no doubt carrying his friendship with Penny with him to that destination.  

It’s a nice note to go out on, and one that suggests that a child's friendship is not an unimportant, or insignificant thing.  Everyone treats Penny like she is a dumb kid, but she proves a crucial part of Mr. Nobody’s maturation process.  She alone helps him grow.  She alone can understand that he is not a monster.  The adults, in this case, are dead wrong.  

“My Friend, Mr. Nobody” is one of the very best episodes of Lost in Space episodes because it serves well an under-utilized character, Penny, and does a remarkably thoughtful job of imagining what her life must be like, always playing second fiddle to Will.

But more than that, the episode finds that there is inherent value in the friendship of a child. Spending time with your children is not a waste of time, not a lark.  It is something, instead, that matters.  This episode plays like a space age fairy tale, replete with darkness and fear, but also with a happy ending that validates a child’s sense of wonder, and his or her sense of self, as well.

Lost in Space 60th Anniversary: "The Derelict"

In “The Derelict,” the second-ever episode of Lost in Space (1965 – 1968), Maureen Robinson (June Lockhart) dons a space suit and attempts to save John (Guy Williams), who is outside the Jupiter 2 on a delicate repair mission gone awry.  

As the Robinson parents attempt to return inside the vessel, the airlock jams and a flaming comet nears.  If they can’t make it inside the ship’s protective hull, they will burn up.

A last minute rescue brings the Robinson elders inside, and sometime later, John reflects in his journal that the Jupiter 2 must have gone through hyperspace at some point, which accounts for its extreme distance from Earth, and the crew’s inability to pinpoint the ship’s location. Robinson also declares that the man responsible for the ship’s plight, Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) will henceforth be treated as a “stowaway.”

Even as Alpha Control declares “America’s first space family” lost, Will (Bill Mumy) picks up a signal somewhere nearby the Jupiter 2. Smith suspects his own people are attempting to rescue him, but the truth is far mysterious.  The source of the signal is a derelict of alien origin.

The Jupiter 2 is pulled inside the derelict, and John uses the opportunity to search the vessel for a star map that could pinpoint their location. Meanwhile, Will discovers the denizens of the ship...and Dr. Smith promptly shoots one of the aliens.

“The Derelict” has always been one of my favorite episodes of Lost in Space because I enjoy both the idea of humans encountering a mysterious alien space vessel, and because the aliens -- weird, electrically-charged bubble-things -- are not humanoid in design

Still, on this re-watch I couldn’t help but notice how long it takes to get to the central action. The first portion of the episode, with Maureen and John still on an ill-fated spacewalk takes forever to resolve. 

And everything is slowed down exponentially by the creative choice to act as if outer space is water, and all physical movements are occurring, essentially, in molasses. The end of “The Reluctant Stowaway” and the beginning of “The Derelict” are harmed to a large extent by the fact that the story -- and the characters themselves -- move so slowly.  This is one area where the fifty year old series has not held up well.

Once the Jupiter 2 enters the alien ship (which folds open in glorious, mid-1960s, pre-CGI miniature work…), the action picks up.  The Robinsons are confronted with an unknown species, a spaceship interior littered in cob-webs, and then truly alien appearing beings.  Leave it to Dr. Smith to turn an opportunity for friendship into a disastrous first contact experience.

Still, this “chance encounter” with the aliens grants the Robinsons the information they need. And they set off towards a nearby planet, where they hope to settle.  The setting of the alien ship provides some great production design.  I like the weird computer alcove, where Major West and John Robinson seek to extract information. And the alien first emerges (near Will) behind an area that looks very much like brain matter.

After so much 1960s “future” tech in the first episode, the interior of the derelict -- dark and frightening -- makes a great visual diversion.

Indeed, I like the mysterious aspects of “The Derelict,” and the idea that the Robinsons are now un-tethered from Earth not only in terms of location and communication, but in terms of chronology. They reckon here with a spaceship that could be ages old, and certainly is the product of a culture far different from their own.

The special effects in this episode area all extraordinary, from the comet that approaches the Jupiter 2 to the composites from the ship’s control room that show the approach to the derelict.  The landing sequence of the Jupiter 2, in dark, chaotic terrain, also holds up remarkably well. Perhaps aided by the moody black-and-white photography, these moments don’t show their age at all.

The alien beings -- when they are first seen -- are similarly impressive. Non-humanoid in design, they appear to be genuinely from a different world and different form of evolution.  They only time they don’t impress is during the final chase, when they seem to scoot across the ship’s floor as if on wheels (like Daleks).

In terms of characterization, and in particular, Dr. Smith, John Robinson is right to treat him as a “stowaway” but in the very next episode, “Islands in the Sky,” he still has free run of the ship.  There’s an old joke (originated by David Gerrold?) about Dr. Smith being given a tour of the nearest airlock. There are times in these early episodes, with lives grievously threatened, that Smith is treated too well by the others.  He is constantly endangering the crew, and represents not just a current threat, but a future threat as well.  If I were Robinson, I might not have tossed him out the airlock, but rather marooned him on that alien derelict and let him take his chances with the crew that he attacked.  

That’s his problem…let him clean it up.

Speaking of airlocks, we’re only in episode two of Lost in Space at this juncture, and already the Jupiter 2 is malfunctioning a lot.  A sensor stops working. The airlock jams. And so on.  This thing needed a shakedown cruise!