In
“Siren’s Song,” The Porters, Stink, Tasha and Christa go back to the beach to
visit Namaki, the mer-man they met a few episodes back, in “Life’s a Beach.”
While
resting, however, the Porters encounter a crisis. Annie (Jenny Drugan) disappears without a
trace, and Mr. Porter (Timothy Bottoms) blames himself. Of late, he has been thinking of his dead
wife, Natasha (Marta Du Bois), and how he spent more time focusing on his
career than on his family.
The
Porters and Namaki go in search of Annie, and Kevin finds her in a dark grotto,
mesmerized by a siren that has taken the form of their mother. When Kevin is ensnared by this witch as well,
Mr. Porter must save the day.
The
siren’s true form -- that of an old crone -- is revealed, and she is freed from
her imprisonment in the grotto once she acknowledges her own guilt, and once Namaki defeats her guard...a monstrous dragon.
“I was once a beautiful woman,” she reveals,
but was so obsessed with her beauty that it became more important to her than
her own family.
Having
exorcised that demon -- just as Mr. Porter exorcises his -- the siren finally goes
free.
Many
episodes of the 1991 – 1992 Land of the Lost remake bear a close
resemblance to episodes of the 1970s version. This week’s entry, “Siren Song” is a case in
point. The installment plays like an
echo of the original series episode “Album,” which saw Will (Wesley Eure) and
Holly Marshall (Kathy Coleman) ensnared by a Sleestak trap that took the form
of their dead mother. In that case, the
“siren” appeared in a cave, or grotto, much as she does in “Siren’s Song.” The close replication of details regarding
the Siren’s disguise (as a deceased parent) and her location (in a cave…) can’t
be coincidence.
The
resemblance to “Album” is worth noting, but it doesn’t severely undercut “Siren
Song’s” value as one of the better entries in the remake’s second season.
For one thing, there is a sturdy literary
antecedent at work here, and Annie Porter mentions it explicitly: Homer’s The
Odyssey, and Odysseus’s
encounter with the monstrous sirens. This
is a nice touch.
For
another thing, the siren has appeared frequently throughout cult-television
history, in series as diverse as Space:1999 (“Guardian of Piri”), Star
Trek Voyager (“Favorite Son”) Millennium (“Siren”) and even Batman
and Smallville. The siren is thus a legitimate cult-tv “monster,”
and in Land of the Lost she is well-cast indeed.
Marta
Du Bois plays the siren both in beautiful human form, and in scary old crone
form. Long-time TV fans will remember Du Bois from her memorable turns on Tales
of the Gold Monkey (1982), Star Trek: The Next Generation
(“Devil’s Due” [1990]) and Voyagers.
Also,
finally, “Siren’s Song” provides some much-needed background detail about the
Porter family. We not only meet a specter of Natasha, the dead matriarch, but
we get a little bit of insight about Mr. Porter’s life before he arrived in
this strange world. Apparently, he was a
workaholic and a bit of a narcissist too, traits he shares in common with the
life-form banished to the grotto. The
episode “Future Boy” even makes note of this, when Annie tells the boy from
2062, Simon, that her father used to “work all the time.”
I
enjoyed this episode of the remade Land
of the Lost more than many because of its attention to character, and
because of its call back to franchise history, and more than that, TV
history. Du Bois is also, perhaps, the
most notable (and welcome…) guest star of the entire remake catalog.
Next
week: “In Dinos We Trust.”
John I agree with your review. This LOTL episode works because of it's connection to the original LOTL. If only this series had been a direct sequel series as Star Trek TNG was a direct sequel to TOS.
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