In
“Peepo on Trial,” Space Academy/Star Command falls into a Galactic Typhoon,
while Peepo – under the sway of Dragos (Sid Haig) sabotages the planetoid’s
engines at a critical moment.
Jason
(Craig Littler) uses W1k1 to stop Peepo, and Professor Parsafoot (Charlie Dell)
attempts to undo Drago’s reprogramming.
The poor bot has had his “circuits
poisoned,” according to Parsafoot.
Meanwhile,
The Academy must attempt a risky move, going to extreme speed in hopes of
blasting through the typhoon. The maneuver is attempted, and Space Academy
survives the danger!
We
get more derring-do and cliff-hanging excitement in this installment of Jason
of Star Command (1978-1980), but not much else. W1k1 again saves the
day and -- title aside -- there’s no actual trial here for Peepo.
The
most memorable aspect of this brief segment, perhaps, is James Doohan’s role as
Commander Canarvin. Here, the character
begins talking about the Academy’s engines and how they were never designed for
such “extreme speed.” This is all very deja-vu, and brings to mind
many such moments on Star Trek involving Scotty.
The
threat of the week is a “galactic typhoon,” a kind of space storm, and exactly
the kind of space phenomenon that was featured prominently in many sci-fi TV
series of the 1970s. In Space:
1999’s “The Séance Spectre,” for example, Moonbase Alpha encountered a
space “weather belt,” and in the original Star Trek, Spock’s shuttle was
briefly lost in the storm-like quasar in “The Galileo 7.”
Next
week “The Trojan Horse.”
A fun episode to watch as a boy in '78.
ReplyDeleteSGB