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.”
Julie Newmar and Sid Haig also appeared together in the 1980 Buck Rogers In The 25th Century season one final episode "Flight Of The War Witch".
ReplyDeleteSGB
Looks like the costume got recycled with minor changes from Queen Medusa to Queen Vanessa or vice-versa. Makes you wonder if there's some evil-queen temp agency with a franchise in that part of the galaxy.
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