Sears Wish Book: 1979

When my son was little (probably a decade back at this point), I explained to him the idea of ordering items from a catalog. 

I explained that it’s like ordering something from Amazon.com, only your choices are more limited, you can’t buy the items online, and you have to wait longer to receive your toy.

He didn’t see the appeal.

But when I was growing up, it was tremendously exciting to order from a catalog, or I should say from one catalog in particular. 

Every year, Sears sent out a mammoth Christmas catalog or “Wish Book,” a hugely fat inventory of everything it sold, from appliances and clothes to toys galore.  

One of the Wish Books that I’m remembering today -- from the year 1979 -- was illustrated with the tag-line “Where America Shops For Value.”

Forget value, I just wanted space toys. 

The 1979 Sears Wishbook Catalog had ‘em too. 

From Page 613 thru 620 in that catalog, there was everything a 1970s space-kid could possibly desire: toys from Mego’s Micronauts, Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, Star Wars, and Star Trek too.  There were models, play-sets, toy action figures…the works.

And the great thing about Sears was that it not only offered toys you could find elsewhere, it also offered exclusive toys, like the Star Wars knock-off playset called “The Star Fortress” (seen on page 617).  I’ve covered this toy before on the blog, but the giant fold-out space base has a position of honor in my home office to this day.  

Another Sears exclusive from the same era (although it may have been first sold in 1978…) was the Star Wars “The Cantina Adventure Set” (not to be confused with the Creature Cantina).  The legend in the catalog read “If you stop at this cantina, watch out for strangers.”

This diorama of the exterior of the Mos Eisely drinking hole came with four new Kenner action figures that were unavailable elsewhere: Greedo, Hammerhead, Walrus Man, and Blue Snaggletooth.  The Blue Snaggletooth has become a highly-prized collectible.

Without me knowing, my Mom ordered me the Cantina Adventure Set, and I loved it. 

I kept it intact until about five years ago when the diorama base finally ripped. But it’s the item I remember most from the catalog.  

After I received the toy in the mail, I would play adventures with Sheriff Snaggletooth and Deputy Hammerhead.  They’d drive the land speeder around Mos Eisely, catching the gangsters Greedo and Walrus Man.

Back in the 1970s I loved coming home from school and finding in the mail either the next week’s issue of TV Guide (so I could see if Star Trek or Space:1999 was playing), but it was a day of absolute delight and toy nirvana when the Wish Book arrived.

I still remember the feel and scent of the Wish Book catalog's pages. I remember poring over those toy pages too, imagining adventures with Buck Rogers, the Micronauts, the Cantina, and that Space Fortress.

40 Years Ago: Enemy Mine (1985)

Wolfgang Peterson's Enemy Mine (1985) is a Cold War Era film about the possibility of brotherhood between unlike people, in this case man and alien.  The story's backdrop is war itself; and the model for the film's conflict is clearly World War II, particularly the War in the Pacific fought between the U.S. and Japan.

Though based on Barry B. Longyear's story of the same title, the film version of Enemy Mine actually harks back to a 1968 film from director John Boorman: Hell in the Pacific.

In Hell in the Pacific, Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin play pilots in opposing air forces who crash on an inhospitable island and who, over time, accept each other -- and their differences -- in the battle for survival.

Hell in the Pacific's amazing natural photography, by Conrad Hall, captures the primacy of that difficult island landscape in the blossoming of the friendship between these sworn enemies. There is comparatively little dialogue spoken in the film (Mifune speaks only his native Japanese...), and the tension is often made bearable only by what Variety's reviewer called Marvin's "sardonic" lines, "which resemble wisecracks intended for onlookers."

In very precise terms, Enemy Mine strives for the same atmosphere, but does so under the bailiwick of a sci-fi veneer.

Story-wise, the tale involves the Bilateral Terran Alliance (think the Allies...) battling in space (think the Pacific...) against the reptilian, stoic Dracs (think the Japanese...).

The pilots crash not on an island, but on the inhospitable planet of Fyrine IV, which is subject to wild seasonal changes, not to mention incessant meteor showers. The Terran pilot, Willis E. Davidge (Dennis Quaid) and Jeriba, the Drac (Louis Gossett Jr.) first fight with one another, before eventually joining forces to survive death from above (the meteors), and death from below in the form of carnivorous sand pit monsters. Enemy Mine's screenplay also gives Davidge (Dennis Quaid) the same kind of sardonic banter that Marvin excelled with in Hell in the Pacific. From the very shape of that sarcastic language, we learn how Davidge feels about the Drac. He's given to derogatory nick-names (not "gook," but "Toad Face") and seems to view the Drac as inherently inferior, deigning to learn a "few words" of Drac's "crude lingo."

Over time -- and the togetherness of the three years -- Davidge begins to understand the grace, beauty and dignity of the Drac culture. In that regard, Jeriba comments on the fact that humans are "always alone" within themselves and thus somewhat capricious by nature. By contrast, the Dracs seem more at peace with themselves, a fact which allows them to give birth without the help of a mate. The Drac are also tied, explicitly, to their ancestors, and Jeriba teaches Davidge how to recite the "Jeriba Line" -- 170 generations of ancestors -- so he can testify for Jeriba's son, Zamis, at the Holy Council on Dracon.

It is never stated anywhere in the film, and this no doubt will make some viewers uncomfortable, but watching Enemy Mine this time around, I couldn't escape the notion that young Zamis is actually the spiritual offspring of Jeriba and Davidge's friendship. Not a literal, biological offspring, but the logical, inevitable result of a friendship as deep and intense as that shared by these two unlike men. 

On a more epic scale, Zamis becomes the bridge between Drac and Terra, and in the film's beautiful last sequence, we come to learn how the human Davidge literally becomes part of Jeriba's family. This is a beautiful message of peace and brotherhood, especially since it came at the height of the Cold War.

Although The New York Times derided Enemy Mine as a "costly, awful-looking science fiction epic," I disagree. Taking a cue from Hell in the Pacific, I submit that Enemy Mine is a beautifully-realized film, though -- as always -- it is best not to judge by today's standards of special effects. The visuals are as stirring, convincing, impassioned and persuasive as the film's central friendship.

Enemy Mine's very first shot stands as a stark example of this. It gives the audience a dynamic example of counterpoint.

On the soundtrack, Davidge's voice-over narration informs us that all the nations of the Earth have found peace. But on screen, we actually see the contrary: the next frontier; a war with an alien species.

The film opens with a creepy view of a human skeleton in a ruptured space suit -- a futuristic yet resonant image -- and then pulls back to reveal that this corpse drifts in a debris field in the aftermath of a star battle. Again, this shot could be accomplished easily with CGI today, but even for 1985, it remains gorgeous, macabre, and powerful. It shows us that even in space, our nature to "fight" that which we don't understand may be our worst enemy.

Later, the film lingers on long shots of lonely, rocky landscapes, as a solitary figure (Davidge), traverses the surface of an inhospitable world. Again, in the spirit of Hell in the Pacific, the landscape of Fyrine IV is almost a character in this particular play, always driving Human and Drac towards a friendship that might never have existed on another world.

Again and again, Peterson provides us shots of Jeriba and Davidge besieged by the natural Fyrine-ian elements: snow, rain and fire. And so we understand that petty differences (over territory) don't play a role in this harsh environment. 

In the battle for survival, there is no time for political differences.

While discussing visuals, it's necessary to make a special note of Chris Walas's make-up, which transforms Gossett Jr. into the reptilian Jeriba.

Whereas some of the mattes and optical composites of Enemy Mine have indeed aged in the intervening decades since the film's theatrical release, the make-up has not.

Jeriba or "Jerry" is on screen for a tremendous amount of the film's running time, and transmits to my eyes as a completely believable being. Simply put this is some of the finest make-up in cinema history, especially given the fact that it is put up to such intense and long-lasting scrutiny. 

Gossett's performance is also impressive. His Drac is an inquisitive, bird-like thing of trilling, hissing language; cockeyed-looks, and a real sense of nobility. There's nothing stock, silly, or remotely derivative about the actor's performance. From the moment we first see the Drac (coming up out of a lake, naked...) to his last sequence, giving birth to his son, nothing about Gossett's make-up or performance rings phony in the slightest. I remember there was a lot of talk in 1985 that Gossett should have been nominated for an Academy Award for this performance, but sadly it never happened.

Perhaps the finest visual imagined by Enemy Mine arrives just before the final fade-out. In the film's stirring, awe-inspiring closing-shot, we see Davidge and Zamis standing at the Holy Council on Dracon. A human being -- for the first time in history -- recites a Drac lineage before the gathered peoples of the planet.

This watershed view of a beautiful, water-rich alien world is a truly glorious one. The prominence of the sun in the auburn Drac sky cements the parallel to the Hell in the Pacific template since Japan is known, in some corners, as "the Land of the Rising Sun."

A sun on ascent may also be an efficacious metaphor for the Drac/human relationship: a sign of impending peace between people under the new "light" of understanding.

The closing shot even serves as the perfect visual punctuation for Davidge's personal journey. Before life on Fyrine IV, the callow, All-American pilot had lived under the specter of jingoism and hatred/prjeducide for an "enemy," although he had no personal cause to hate Dracs ("It's funny, but I'd never even seen a Drac...").

By film's end, however, Davidge has been "illuminated" by an understanding of the Drac culture, So much so that he had fought to save Jeriba's son, Zamis, from slavers (fellow humans). He has traveled to this alien homeworld -- the enemy homeworld -- to speak on the boy's behalf. By film's end, Davidge basks in the sunlight of understanding, peace, and even the kind of belonging that Jeriba suggests evades humans.

Visually, Enemy Mine is unimpeachable. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, then Enemy Mine achieves whatever greatness it possesses through those gorgeous, inspirational visualizations. In terms of words, and narrative, however, one wishes that Peterson's film had stuck more closely to the film's two central relationships: Davidge and Jerry/Davidge and Zamis, and not gotten bogged down in action-adventure set-piece at a slave ship compound.

Specifically, in the last third of the film, Zamis is captured by snarling, vicious human scavengers (led by the bug-eyed Brion James) and Davidge mounts a rescue operation to save the Drac boy. A film about relationships -- about survival in a harsh wilderness -- is suddenly transformed into a shoot-out: a Hollywood-ish stock battle that makes use of the most hackneyed movie cliches.

It is disappointing in the extreme that a movie which has toiled so hard to remind us that every person is more than the sum of stereotypes about their people descends to the easy stereotype of vicious, cruel, violent villains. I like and admire the late Brion James and he is always an effective villain, but his savage, wild-eyed, two-dimensional "evil" has no place in a film about shades of gray.

Enemy Mine gets back on track with that beautiful finale at Dracon and in that dynamic, heartbreaking last shot.  But I wish the film had heeded its central message and excised the unnecessary material with the silent-movie slavers. The third act of the film could simply have consisted of Davidge and Zamis working together to escape Fyrine; to build a "raft" to space (as in Hell in the Pacific), or something like that. The black hat villains just aren't necessary, and they drag down an imaginatively presented, near-great film of the 1980s. Enemy Mine is a powerfully-told story about the universal nature of friendship, spectacular in presentation, and acted with authentic heart. The film would likely be remembered as a classic instead of as a cult film today were it not for the disappointing third act.

Remembering Gil Gerard -- A Look Back at Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981)

The media is reporting the death of Buck Rogers actor Gil Gerard today.  Buck (and the talented man who played him so well, from 1979 to 1981) was and will remain one of my great childhood heroes.  Today, in honor of Mr. Gerard, I'm reposting a look back the Buck Rogers production that brought the character back to life for the disco era.

The beloved heroic character of Buck Rogers first appeared in the pop culture fifty years before the 1979 television series debuted on NBC TV. Conceived first in comic-strip form by John Flint Dille, and artists Russell Keaton and Rick Yager, "Rogers" became a perennial American fan favorite in 1929. A radio serial about the pilot trapped in a future world was produced in 1932, followed by a series of cinematic cliffhangers starring Buster Crabbe in 1939. 

It is fair to say that Buck Rogers, along with Flash Gordon, personified space adventure in the first half of the twentieth-century. Even that was not the end of Buck, however. Ken Dibbs took on the role for ABC television in 1950, in a series of twenty-five minute episodes that aired for a single season. Shot lived, it was limited to small sets and primitive (by today's standards...) special effects.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, the 1979 series, is Glen A. Larson's second science fiction "opus." It premiered on NBC scarcely a year after Battlestar Galactica bowed on ABC. And like its 1978 compatriot, the first Buck Rogers television pilot played with great success in movie theaters throughout the United States. Starring Gil Gerard and Erin Gray, the series lasted for two years, thirty-six hours in all. It was a moderate success in the ratings during its Thursday night time-slot, slated against the highly-rated Mork and Mindy (ABC).

The 1979 Buck Rogers series was a hip updating that kept all the character names from earlier incarnations, but veered sometimes into tongue-and-cheek, humorous settings. We all know the premise: Astronaut Buck Rogers awakes in 2491 and finds Earth has survived a devastating nuclear war. Vulnerable, the planet is on the verge of annihilation from many alien sources. Pirates regularly attack shipping lanes, and every two-bit dictator in the galaxy has set his sights on conquering the green planet. In this environment of danger, Buck, his "ambuquad"(!) Twiki (voiced by Mel Blanc) and the gorgeous Colonel Deering defend the planet as secret-agent type operatives. In addition to his peerless ability as a starfighter pilot, Buck takes the world of the 25th century by storm with his 20th century wisdom and colloquialisms.

Unlike its somber Galactican counterpart, Buck Rogers was, essentially, a lark, at least to start. It was Mission: Impossible in space, only lighter, and on that basis a tremendous amount of fun. In the first season, the series eschewed morality plays, focusing instead on Buck's "unofficial" missions to bring down galactic criminals. 

In "Plot to Kill a City", Rogers disguised himself as a mercenary named Raphael Argus and combated an organization called the Legion of Death, led by Frank Gorshin's Kellog. In "Unchained Woman," he masqueraded as an inmate on Zantia to rescue from a subterranean prison a woman who might finger a crook. In "Cosmic Wiz Kid" - starring Gary Coleman(!) - he rescued a 20th century genius from the hands of mercenary Ray Walston.  Through it all, star Gil Gerard seemed the epitome of cool, and decency, and is performance grounded the series, even when the humor threatened to be too much.

This was essentially the pattern for the first 20-something episodes, and in many ways it was a unique formula for the genre on TV at the time. The "caper" was all that mattered. On Buck Rogers, there was no continuing alien menace, although Princess Ardala (Pamela Hensley), Kane (Michael Ansara) and the Draconians showed up occasionally. And unlike Star Trek, there was little or no exploration of new worlds. Instead, Buck was an outer space crime/espionage show. And that meant - that for the first time I'm aware of -- all the conventions of crime and spy television were transposed to the future; to outer space. 

On Buck Rogers, this transposition was accomplished with charm and a degree of wit. There were telepathic informants selling their services in "Cosmic Wiz Kid," powerful assassins from "heavy gravity" worlds in "Plot to Kill a City," super-charged athletes looking to defect from dictatorial regimes (the futuristic equivalent of the Kremlin) in "Olympiad," cyborg gun runners in "Return of the Fighting 69th" and a planet conducting a booming slave-trade in "Planet of the Amazon Women.".

However, in one important category, Buck Rogers was a letdown. The outer space battles were competently achieved with the special effects of the day (models; motion-control), but were often badly mis-edited into the proceedings. In the early episode "Planet of the Slave Girls," mercenary ships transformed into Draconian marauders - a noticeably different design - from shot-to-shot. In the same episode, a shuttle on the distant world Vistula launched skyward and passed the matte painting of New Chicago (on Earth), a matte painting that was used EVERY SINGLE WEEK to depict Directorate headquarters. This was the kind of goof that occurred repeatedly. The impression here is of an over-worked special effects department, and an editor with no eye for detail.

Another repetitive and very bad edit concerned the principal spaceship of the show, the very cool-looking starfighter. There were two different designs for this craft, the single and double seaters. Each one had a distinctive and recognizable cockpit design: one slim, one fat. However, the "space" footage of different crafts were often cut together interchangeably within one sequence. In one shot, Buck tooled around space in the single-seater, and in the next, his ship was the impossible-to-miss wider version.

Special effects from Buck's sister series, Battlestar Galactica, were mercilessly plugged into the proceedings too. In "Planet of the Slave Girls," the Cylon base from "Lost Planet of the Gods" substituted for Vistula's launch bay. In "Vegas in Space," "Cosmic Wiz Kid," and many others, the Galactica planet Carillon, seen in "Saga of a Star World," was substituted for the planet of the week. This was achieved in so sloppy a fashion that the Cylon-mined Nova of Madagon, a red star field, was even visible for a few seconds. BG spacecrafts were also brought out of mothballs. The Galactica shuttle doubled as Buck's shuttle in the second season, and ships from Galactica's rag tag fleet showed up in "Planet of the Amazon Women" and "Space Vampire" among others.

Make-up, costumes and props from Galactica also materialized with regularity. The alien "Boray," the focal point of the Galactica episode "The Magnificent Warriors," was seen in the BR episode "Unchained Woman," and Colonial fatigues, also BG hand-me-downs, were utilized as the uniforms for Roderick Zale's henchmen in "Cosmic Wiiz Kid." This oppressive re-use of Galactica equipment, effects, make-up and sets, along with the frequent editing glitches, often made the future depicted in Buck Rogers appear cobbled-together, cheap or just unimpressive.

Story-wise, Buck Rogers also rehashed identical plot elements in tale after tale. A spy in the Directorate might have made an effective plot development in one or two episodes. However, different spies in Huer's HQ showed up in "Planet of the Slave Girls," "Plot to Kill A City," "Return of the Fighting 69th," and "Unchained Woman," episodes 2, 4, 5, and 6 of the series! 

There was also the embarrassing overuse of what this author calls the goofy drug. This was a chemical compound that, when injected into suspects, made them look like a total goofball, stoned and "groovy" feeling.

Buck received the goofy drug twice in "Awakenings," and once in "Cosmic Wiz Kid." He used it on a thug in "Vegas in Space," and Wilma utilized it on Quince in "Polot to Kill a City" and then again on Mykos in "Olympiad." This drug was a truth serum, and interesting to see deployed, but six times in less than two-dozen episodes may have been too much.

After its first year on the air, Buck Rogers underwent dramatic changes. Gil Gerard and Erin Gray were both apparently unhappy with the less-than-substantive storylines. In an interview with Starlog, Gerard confided that he'd re-written virtually every episode of the first year, sometimes on-set, to make terrible stories passable. As a result of his disenchantment, a new format was devised. Dr. Huer, the Defense Directorate, Dr. Theopolis and the Draconians were axed. Buck, Wilma and Twiki became crew-members aboard a starship called the Searcher (really the redressed cruise ship from "Cruise Ship to the Stars.") The Searcher's mission was to locate the "lost tribes" of Earth, men who were believed to have fled the planet sometime after the nuclear holocaust of the late 20th century.

But let’s revisit the premiere episode.

Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century -- though designed as a TV series -- actually had its premiere in American movie theaters on March 30^th, 1979.   

The film, originally a pilot called "Awakening" quickly provided a remarkable return on Universal’s investment.  It was produced for a little over three million dollars (or one-third of Star Wars’ budget, essentially, in 1977) and the movie grossed over twenty-one million dollars in American theaters alone.  

Perhaps even more surprisingly, the film was generally well-received by critics, despite its TV origins.  Vincent Canby at The New York Times belittled the film as “corn flakes” while simultaneously comparing it to the big boys: Star Wars and Superman: The Movie.  He also noted (with grudging admiration) the ingenuity of the film’s makers.

I remember seeing Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in theaters and enjoying it tremendously, unaware that it had been conceived and shot as a TV series pilot and then kind of exploded into becoming a full-fledged feature film.  In 1979, the special effects held up on the big screen beautifully (particularly the moments in Anarchia, a ruined 20^th century city inhabited by mutants…), and the film, overall, was a lot of fun.  

Today, however, it is not difficult to detect some of the “growing pains” of this production as it stretched from being, essentially, a kid-friendly TV pilot to a more adult-oriented,“big” event movie.  What began as a relatively straight space adventure inched closer to a nifty and ingenious paradigm: James Bond in Space.  

This shift in premises is best exemplified by an opening credits sequence which features Buck romancing scantily-clad women of the 25^th Century, who pose and preen on the over-sized letters of his “name” while a Bond-like ballad blares on the soundtrack.  It’s a little bit ridiculous, and a little bit cheesy, but it definitely captures the 007 aesthetic: sexy women and a catchy pop-tune.

The Women of James Bond Buck Rogers.

The women of Buck Rogers #2

The Women of Buck Rogers #3

The Women of Buck Rogers #4

The Women of Buck Rogers #5

Other moments are more clumsily folded into the narrative than the enjoyable Bondian-opening.  Late in the film, aboard the Draconia, for instance, Ardala declares she wants Buck to take her father’s “seat” on the throne.  Suddenly, the film cuts to a shot of Buck -- obviously shot at some later date, on a different set -- declaring that her father’s “seat” is the furthest thing from his mind (implying it’s her seat – her buttocks – that interests him).  

Thus sexual double-entendres were ham-handedly added to the production when the shift in venues was broached.  Other double-entendres work a little better than this one because they arrive via the auspices of ADR or looping, and therefore we don’t get the chance to visually note the inconsistencies.

Another not-entirely successful addition to the original pilot sees Buck going mano-a-mano with Tigerman, Princess Ardala’s hulking bodyguard and the film’s equivalent of Oddjob, or Jaws…a so-called soldier villain.  There’s nothing wrong with the climactic physical confrontation between Buck and Tigerman, except that Buck faces a different Tigerman here, not the one seen throughout the film.  This discontinuity is left unexplained, but Derek Butler plays the character throughout the film, and H.B. Haggerty (who returned to the role in “Escape from Wedded Bliss” and “Ardala Returns”) plays him for the fight sequence.  The two men are both imposing, but boast very different looks in terms of muscle-mass and body-type.  Honestly, I didn’t notice the substitution as a kid, but the switch is impossible to miss now.

Tigerman #1 (Derek Butler)

Tigerman #2 (H.B. Haggerty)

These last minute additions to the enterprise feel somewhat jarring, even if they add to the James Bond mystique of the thing.  A more significant problem, however, involves the thematic approach to the material.  Buck -- in both the film and the series – is raised up as some kind of paradigm for Earth’s future, the ideal man.  A professor and friend at Hampden-Sydney College called the idea “American Exceptionalism in Space,” and he was right. 

The only problem, of course, is that Buck is from the very age on Earth that brought about the devastating nuclear holocaust.  His generation, in essence, destroyed everything.  It seems strange and counter-intuitive, then, to deride the sincere 25^th Century folks -- just climbing out of a five hundred year economic and cultural hole, as it were – for depending on computers, since the episode makes plain the notion that ungoverned emotions and passions were what brought about the end of 20^th century mankind. These benevolent robots, acting dispassionately but helpfully, instead rely on logic and rationality.  As Dr. Huer notes, they saved the Earth from "certain doom" and have been "taking care of areas where we made mistakes, like the environment."

So…would you really want to go back to the approach that led to Earth’s ruin?  Would you life Buck up as a role model, or see him as a backward man from a much more primitive time?

It would be one thing if the movie noted that some balance between approaches -- logic and emotion -- needed to be struck.  But the 25^th century characters are treated, in broad strokes, as gullible fools who can’t even pilot their own star-fighters (even though those ships are built with very prominent joy-sticks designed for manual control).  

It’s all a little bit…incoherent.  Yet the film gets away with it because, again, of the James Bond comparison.  We all know that James Bond is irresistible to all women, best in a fight or shoot-out, and supreme exemplar of style and taste.  Nobody does it better, right?  Here, Buck Rogers seems to have the same magic touch.  We accept the premise, in short, because we recognize it from that other franchise.

Despite such flaws, the movie vets an intriguing premise involving the Draconian “stealth” attack (a kind of Trojan Horse in Space dynamic), and features at least one authentically great sequence set in Anarchia, or “Old Chicago.”  Here, Buck goes in search of his past, and finds it…in a grave-yard.  

This scene in Anarchia is particularly well-shot, acted, and scored, and adds a significant human dimension to the film’s tapestry.  We are reminded that Buck has lost everything.  Not just his family…but the world he knew.  Here, Buck Rogers harks back to a 1970s movie tradition earlier than Star Wars: the dystopia or post-apocalyptic setting of such efforts as The Omega Man, Logan's Run or Beneath the Planet of the Apes.  I’ve always wished that the ensuing TV series had followed up on this plot-line a little more sincerely.  There were many stories to be vetted in Anarchia, but in its two-year run, Buck never returned there (that we know of).

I should add, the special effects visualizations of New Chicago and Anarchia are nothing less-than-spectacular, even today.  Again, it’s difficult to reckon with just how cheaply this movie was made because it features extensive, highly-detailed matte paintings, numerous space dogfights, and huge sets (like Ardala’s throne room…replete with Olympic-size swimming pool).  

Finally, I would be remiss without mentioning Buck Rogers’ other great “visual.”  Vincent Canby writes: “Pamela Hensley is the film's most magnificent special effect as the wicked, lusty Princess Ardala, a tall, fantastically built woman who dresses in jewelry that functions as clothes and walks as if every floor were a burlesque runway.”

There’s probably a case to made that Hensley is one of the Best Bond Femme Fatales ever…except that she’s not technically in a Bond film, of course.  Still, the material is close enough, and boy does she have a sense of…presence.  I can't think of many actresses who could pull-off that "boogie" scene with Buck Rogers here.  But Hensley disco dances with the best of them, retains her character's regal sense of dignity, and is awfully sexy...

Pamela Hensley as Princess Ardala

I can’t really argue that Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century is in the same artistic class as contemporaries like Star Wars or Superman: The Movie.  But the movie is undeniably fun, and it sets up – with tremendous entertainment value -- the boundaries of Buck Roger’s new life in the 25^th Century.  In other words, it’s a pretty great TV pilot for 1979 even if -- blown-up to the silver screen – it all plays as a bit scattershot.

50 Years Ago on WPIX: Space:1999 "Matter of Life and Death"

An eagle returns from an apparently habitable planet that Computer has code-named Terra Nova: “New Earth.”  Before docking can occur, however, the pilots are rendered unconscious by an unknown force.

Upon boarding the landed Eagle Commander Koenig (Martin Landau), Professor Bergman (Barry Morse) and Dr. Helena Russell (Barbara Bain) are shocked to see a third person aboard the craft: Lee Russell (Richard Johnson).

Russell was believed to have died years earlier, when his Astro 7 mission became locked in tight orbit around Jupiter.

Koenig halts Exodus, the operation to abandon Moonbase Alpha for Terra Nova, fearing that Russell’s appearance signifies a mystery regarding the planet.  Lee Russell has no memory of being on the planet, or aboard the Eagle, but seems to draw his energy from Helena’s presence.  

Lee eventually warns Koenig not to go to Terra Nova, and then appears to die.  

Koenig authorizes a mission, though Bergman warns that Lee’s corpse is beginning to “reverse polarity,” starting the transformation process towards anti-matter.

On Terra Nova, Koenig’s landing party meets with disaster as the planet’s true nature -- anti-matter -- begins to impact the Eagle’s systems and machinery…

Historically, I have not been the biggest admirer of Space: 1999’s (1975-1977) second produced episode, “Matter of Life and Death.”  

I had the honor and privilege of talking to co-writer Johnny Byrne (1935-2008) about the episode many years back (in the year 2000), and this is how the conversation went:

BYRNE:	First I was asked to go to Pinewood Studios and see the series sets and the production.  When I first got there, they were in final preparations for the first episode, “Breakaway,” and there was a bit of a panic because there was no second script prepared.  I was shown two scripts and they were both completely un-filmable as far as I could see when I tried to marry them to the briefing notes I had received at the time.
MUIR:	So your job was to make one of them acceptable?
BYRNE	I was asked to rewrite one of them, and the Art Wallace script (“Matter of Life and Death”) was the one I suppose they had selected as easier to develop.
MUIR:	How did you feel about rewriting the teleplay of another artist?
BYRNE:	I would have preferred to write something from scratch, and I only had about two or three weeks to rewrite the script.  But I wrote it at Pinewood, and was taken on almost as a kind of staff writer.  Somehow or other, I revised the concept, and by the end of it, realized I should really claim sole credit.Still, it was more ethical to include Art Wallace’s name.  It wasn’t his fault the script was unusable because he was writing for a series that literally hadn’t been created yet.
MUIR:	The episode you revamped, “A Matter of Life and Death,” is a sort of problematic episode, and is not often considered one of the best of the series. The climax of the story, in which the Alphans die but are miraculously brought back to life, didn’t sit well with many critics.
BYRNE:	I wasn’t entirely happy about making it all come right at the end, either.  But you have to remember that at this time there was enormous pressure to get something done they could shoot.  I never felt during the writing of that episode that I was sailing in blue water.
MUIR:	Is Terra Nova in “Matter of Life and Death” really the planet Meta?
BYRNE:	No. They put all the Meta stuff into the first episode, “Breakaway,” which was being shot while I was writing “Matter of Life and Death.”
MUIR:	Was the intention ever that Terra Nova be Meta?
BYRNE:	No.  There was a strong pull to make each episode a stand-alone story because the series would have been selling in syndication, and we didn’t have a clue in what order the shows would be screened.  If I had been told to follow on with Meta, then I would have used Meta.  Instead, I created Terra Nova, and there seemed to be reason to do that, to actually get away from Meta. Had I been wrong to do that, Christopher Penfold or someone would have surely told me I was wrong.
MUIR:	What [else] do you remember about working on that particular story?
BYRNE:	I spent a long time with Charles Crichton putting this into a shooting-script in the most maddening form of detail.  It was kind of a primer in filmmaking, and if there had been flaws that kind of stood out, Charles would be the one to spot them.  I was really at the mercy of superior experience there.
MUIR:	Since this was a re-write of an Art Wallace script, can you recall what your contributions were?
BYRNE:	Looking back, I see the things that interested me.  I was very fascinated that Richard Johnson had been cast, and I liked the idea of someone being Helena’s husband.  I would have looked for a level of human story there, and seeded it into the script.  The problem was that nobody was sure who was having who, or who was supposed to be having whom.  At that time, Koenig was calling Helena “Dr. Russell,” and all sorts of things.  It was a bit formal.  Nobody had sat down and planned out in detail how it was going to develop.  That Lee Russell relationship made the show special for me.  I remember that.
MUIR:	[Personally speaking] I have a problem with the story in that everybody dies in the climax, and then is miraculously resurrected when Helena wishes it.  The same sort of “reboot” was used in “War Games” later in the season.
BYRNE:	If you kill off your main characters too often, you do have this terrible reality gap.  So you have to choose your moments very carefully.
MUIR:	I’m not a huge fan of “Matter of Life or Death,” but I think it only fair to mention that at least one critic (Dick Adler for the Los Angeles Times) noted you should be nominated for an Emmy Award for the script.
BYRNE:	There is a small band of people who like it.  I think Gerry is very keen indeed on waving a magic wand, and everything comes out all right in the end.  I’m not sure I would have worked it out in quite that way.

I featured that interview segment as a prologue to some of my comments about the episode.  

Basically, I am very much of two minds about the show.  Yet when I watched it in 2016 in preparation for this week, I liked “Matter of Life and Death” more than I ever had before.

What is my problem with it?

Well, in a nutshell, I feel that Commander Koenig is portrayed as a very weak character in this drama. All along, he seems to feel pressure from his subordinates (including Alan Carter, Paul Morrow and Sandra Benes) to commence Operation Exodus, and send an Eagle to Terra Nova. 

It is fine that this pressure exists, and that he feels it. This is realistic, and one of the reasons I love Space: 1999 is that it, despite its far-out premise, it attempts to showcase human beings in realistic rather than romanticized conditions.  

Koenig is a modern administrator, essentially, forced to become an ad hoc (and un-elected) governor. Unlike Captains in Starfleet, he has no hierarchy and no guiding regulations to consult on every decision. He is on his own.  He would feel such pressure to please those with whom he serves.

At first, Koenig resists the landing completely, noting that -- quite accurately -- the Alphans have not acquired enough information to mount a landing. There are too many questions marks, including Lee Russell’s presence on the Eagle, and the injuries of the Eagle pilots. 

For about roughly 50% of the narrative, Koenig is remarkably persuasive about the fact that a landing on Terra Nova represents a significant threat, and should be avoided, if further information is not gathered. 

But then, after Lee Russell’s death, Koenig flip-flops completely. He says things like “what’s going to stop us?” regarding the landing. 

Well, what should stop him is the same set of unresolved variables that made a landing unwise in the first place.  

Worse, Koenig receives additional and vital information from Victor that makes a successful exodus to the planet a less-likely, not more likely, possibility. Victor attempts to warn him on at least two occasions (once in his office; once when he is already in the Eagle cockpit) not to go to Terra Nova.

But now Koenig double-downs on his complete about-face, and won’t accept any information contrary to the decision to go. 

In real life, we would say he makes a catastrophic decision.  And indeed, it is. 

Koenig and the landing party die because of his choice. The eagle blows up. The moon (with all on Alpha…) explodes too.  Terra Nova is proven to be not merely dangerous, but catastrophically so.

Then, Lee shows up to talk to the surviving Helena, and tells her she can “wish” everything back to the way it was.  

In essence, the universe grants Koenig a mulligan, an extra shot at getting this (bad) decision right.

I am concerned about this turn of events for two reasons.  

First, Koenig is our central protagonist, and as viewers we should either have some confidence that in a situation like this, he will make a good decision.  Or contrarily that if he makes a bad decision, we should understand his motives for doing so.  I understand that, from a writing perspective, the Alphans had to overlook warnings and go to Terra Nova.  I accept that.  But If Koenig’s arguments were presented in a coherent, consistent fashion, we would understand his decision to go, and perhaps even support it.

Instead, Koenig spends half the episode being cautious, and half being incredibly impulsive.  I would have actually preferred it if he were impulsive all the way through.  The character could have taken the tack -- since this is early on in series continuity -- that the Alphans must seize this opportunity, questions and concerns, or not.  At least then, we would understand Koenig as a character, a leader, and a human being.

That’s my problem with “A Matter of Life and Death” in a nutshell. I feel that Koenig’s character is manipulated in terms of the writing, to achieve a particular end.  And that weakens the character, and our support for/belief in him. I love it when characters make mistakes in drama. But when the mistake is such that everybody dies a horrible death, and only divine intervention can save the them, there's a problem.

However, I do feel that what I have always failed to see, understand and appreciate about “Matter of Life and Death” is the nature (and indeed value) of the Helena/Lee story.  

Some may see it as a cold relationship, since the two hardly have the opportunity to speak with one another.  Indeed, I have often felt it was remote and distant, or Helena states about her feelings: “numb.”  

The relationship is not very warm for a husband and wife separated by tragedy.

But while watching "Matter of Life and Death" this time, I saw more plainly how the visuals carry the story, and symbolize the essence of the Lee Russell mystery so beautifully.  

As Victor’s thermal plates point out (in one of the episode’s best scenes…), Lee Russell only exists in the form he does -- as a human being -- because he is drawing energy from Helena, from the person he loved most in life.  

There is a beautifully-rendered scene, consisting of no dialogue, during which Lee wakes up in the Care Unit, and Helena sits up, in her quarters, some distance away.  They communicate, without words -- perhaps even without conscious thought -- establishing a link between the source of energy (Helena), which might even be termed imagination, and the product of that energy, which is Lee’s physical form.

This imageric meaning or approach is important, if subtle. 

If matter can be shaped by thought (such as Helena’s thoughts or memories), then, the ending of the episode with the “waving of a magic wand” is supported in some sense, and not the umotivated "divine intervention" I noted above.  

Helena creates the form of Lee Russell -- a voice of warning -- and later re-arranges the matter on Terra Nova, also to conform with her thoughts/desires, restoring life to all those who died. 

The episode’s ending, which I have, I admit, always considered a special effects showcase for special effects sake, is actually built in, and paid for, so-to-speak, by that scene of symbiosis. That moment wordlessly connects Helena’s thoughts to the manifestation of those thoughts: Lee in the flesh.  What I once called a “bankrupt” creative ending, I can now see is properly prepared for, and accounted for in the story’s structure and specifics.

Lee is only really “alive” and, indeed, Lee Russell, as Victor suggests, when in the presence of Helena, his personal battery/power source.  He cannot exist in that form when not in her presence.  It is his connection to her which permits him to warn the Alphans, and take that form.  His love for her, his connection to her, is what gives him dimension and life.  The "matter" of life and death of the episode's title may not be anti-matter, but the matter that results from thought; from love itself.

This is a fascinating and romantic notation, that love and the memory of love, can create new life, new forms. Some have seen the episode as a reflection of 1972’s Solaris, and certainly, I can see that connection, but don’t find it bothersome. In both stories, an alien world gives shape and breath to those who inhabit our memories.

I have always admired Lee's final speech to Helena, in which he notes that "matter never dies."  He might as well be saying, perhaps, "love never dies" as long there is thought and energy, and memory behind it. 

The episode provides no real scientific underpinning for any of this, and most of the talk of anti-matter seems murky, but I nonetheless appreciate that this episode, in the thoughtful words of Johnny Byrne, establishes the thesis, in essence, behind Year One of Space: 1999.  As Victor notes:

“We’re a long way from home, and we’re going to have to start thinking differently if we’re going to come to terms with space.”

When I wrote my first book, on Space: 1999, over 30 years ago, I understood this theory in principle. 

But it has taken me probably over a dozen re-watching of “Matter of Life and Death” to come to grips with the way this story conveys the “the terms” Space: 1999 negotiates as a work of art.