Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Stars Episode #11 (November 21, 1981)

The eleventh and final hour-long episode of Hanna Barbera’s Space Stars (1981) opens with the Space Ghost story “Web of the Wizard.” 

Here, the Phantom Cruiser is trapped in a cosmic web of illusion.  Space Ghost and his friends encounter wacky delusions like killer chairs and dogs in space. Behind these illusions, however, is the Wizard, an evil space criminal. Blip saves the day because he is not impacted by the illusions.

The Teen Force episode in this last episode is called “Pandora’s Warp” and it involves a space station attacked by weird visitors from another dimension. These visitors resemble devils and demons, and are secretly controlled by Uglor, who has punched a hole into “the dimension of magic.” The Teen Force uses magic spells to repel the space invaders.

In “Mindbender,” the Herculoids encounter a weird alien in a suspended animation cylinder. Using a pendant which restores the evil telepath’s power, this interloper sets to awaken his brothers from suspended animation too.

The Herculoids (improbably) trap the villain in his own stasis chamber.  It’s ridiculous how they do it.  They tell him his missing pendant is in his cylinder, and the dome-headed, ostensibly brilliant alien invader willingly crawls inside to retrieve it. Then the Herculoids slam the door on him and submit him to another eternal deep freeze.

The second Space Ghost episode of the week is “The Shadow People.” In this one, Blip is possessed by an evil shadow bat on Romula Station, an abandoned space facility. There, the people have legends of Shadows, demons from another sector of space. Electra of the Teen Force helps Space Ghost rescue Blip and puzzle out the mystery.

The final “Space Ace” segment of the series is “Revenge of the Zodiac Man.” In the Stardust Constellation Ring, the most valuable gem in the universe is stolen by a criminal named Zodiac Man. Space Ace and his dog partners chase the villain to a galactic amusement park called “Play Station,” and then to the villain’s HQ on a “Zodia-steroid” to retrieve it. 

The Space Stars Finale, “The Cosmic Mousetrap” finds the Teen Force and Space Ghost battling Mega Mind, a villain who tests the heroes in combat to the death with three creepy aliens.  This episode is a veritable knock-off of the Space: 1999 (1975-1977) episode “The Rules of Luton.”

The Space Magic of this final Space Stars episode involves another lame card trick. The Space Fact finds Space Ace and Astro grappling with a black hole, and the Space Mystery similarly involves a black hole.

Having now watched all agonizing, eleven hours of Space Stars, I can report that it is mindless juvenilia that any self-respecting fan of science fiction -- or superheroes, for that matter -- would find a terrible embarrassment to watch.  

The attempt to ape the success (and formula) of The Super Friends fails utterly, and none of the long-lived Hanna Barbera properties featured prominently -- Space Ghost or The Herculoids -- are well-served by the simplistic storytelling and the even more simplistic understanding of the cosmos. 

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Stars Episode #10 (November 14, 1981)

The tenth hour-long episode of Hanna Barbera’s Space Stars (1981) opens with a Space Ghost tale called “Space Cube of Doom.” 

A space lab is attacked while Space Ghost is engaged in a job assisting the Herculoids on Quasar. The heroes discover that the cube-like spaceship is controlled by Ultima, a “space” computer. 

Ultima plans to conquer the galaxy by eliminating human individuality. Ultima reprograms human minds to think like it does, and brainwashes Jan and Jace as its first victims. Space Ghost must free them from this slavery, and trick Ultima into brainwashing himself (itself?)

The second story of the week is “Wordstar,” starring Teen Force. Here, Uglor intercepts a crashed spaceship and finds a chip that grants him total and complete power.

The Herculoids star in “Space Trappers,” a story which sees them captured by an intergalactic circus. This is the same plot, essentially, as the 1942 movie Tarzan’s New York Adventure. We have our Tarzan, Jane and Boy in Zandor, Tara and Dorno, and the Herculoid beasts of Quasar double as the animal friends of the Great Escarpment.

The second Space Ghost episode of the hour is called “The Time Master” and it involves a criminal named Tempus who is using his power to reverse a planet’s time-line, making it a prehistoric world.

The Space Ace episode of the week is called “Galactic Vac is back” and it is a low-point even for this show. Here, the villain “Galactic Vac” flies around the galaxy in a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up objects I hopes of becoming rich. When he is captured by Space Ace and Astro-mutt, Galactic Vac’s punishment is to hold a “galactic garage sale” where he gives back everything his space vacuum sucked up.

The Space Stars Finale episode of the week is “Uglor Conquers the Universe, and it’s pretty much exactly what is sounds like. Uglor uses the energy of a neutron star to come a giant in space. “I am the universe!” he declares. The Teen Force and the Herculoids team up to stop him, using the long-abandoned technology of the City of the Ancients on Quasar to get the job done.

At the end of the episode, one character notes “with great power comes great responsibility.” Where have I heard that before?

Yes, this is a series that steals from the very best (like Stan Lee, and Marvel) and yet is still the pits.

The Space Magic segment this week has Jan and Blip doing a card trick. The Space Fact involves the birth and deaths of stars. Supernovas are discussed, and featured as part of the Space Mystery.

Next week -- at last -- the final episode of Space Stars!

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Stars Episode #9 (November 7, 1981)

Hanna Barbera’s Space Stars (1981) episode #9 commences with the story called “Devilship.”

Here, Space Ghost’s young friend Jace discovers a space-dragster and starts to fly it.  Unfortunately, some force on the ship makes him turn evil, and he immediately sets out to steal the gold ore harvested on the twin moons of Bellerophon.

Space Ghost attempts to stop him, but when he boards the space dragster, he also grows avaricious and greedy…at least until Blip splashes him with cold water.

Space Ghost soon realizes that the criminal known as the Wizard is behind this plan to steal gold, described in the episode as the most valuable ore in the universe.

The Teen Force story in this episode is “The Space Slime,” and it sees Uglor again attempting to conquer the Free Worlds, this time with a deadly space slime that ages anyone it comes in contact with “50 years in a few seconds.”

Electra is super-aged in this fashion, but Uglor owns a rejuvenator ray to help reverse its effects.  Unfortunately, the space slime soon evolves, and grows out of control, leaving the Teen Force no choice but to set the ship’s course for a nearby star.

 

This story is riddled with risible dialogue, including the line “Call off your slime!”  And once more, it’s a veritable rerun, with the narrative concerning Uglor’s (thwarted) attempt to take over the Free Worlds.

The Herculoids story of the week is “Return of the Ancients.” It is an update of the Tarzan “lost city” formula in some ways. Here, aliens who lived on Quasar five hundred years ago return to the planet only to find their former metropolis in ruins, abandoned. 

They kidnap Doro to learn what has happened, while his parents attempt a rescue.  The aliens learn that their ancestors were killed by a poisonous flower, and Tara uses that very flower to send them scurrying back to the stars.

The second half of the hour commences with “The Deadly Comet,” wherein a comet, under remote control, is destroying space vessels in a shipping lane. Space Ghost and his friends come to the rescue and find that the comet is controlled by a villain called the Commander.

The worst story of the week -- again -- belongs to Space Ace and the Space Mutts.  

In “Jewlie Newstar” (Julie Newmar?) a jewel thief, Jewlie, steals the Jupiter diamond from her diamond ship.  

The story is typically lame, and Space Ace is such an irritating, whiny character. He’s always complaining with some variation of “why me?” In this episode alone, he asks “when will I ever learn” “and what else can go wrong?” 

The final story in episode nine, “The Outworlders” features Space Ghost and the Teen Force, and probably qualifies as the most interesting story, though that is slight praise considering the other offerings.  

Here, an “Outworlder” -- an insectoid -- gets aboard a starship and begins converting the solid matter into energy so as to feed itself.  

An “energy vampire,” the Outworlder is just one villain here.  The other is the ship’s captain, Delos, who is wired directly into the spaceship -- which he considers his body -- and is concerned only with his vessel, not his human crew.

One corridor on the ship looks exactly like the interior of the Millennium Falcon.  That may or may not be a coincidence.

The “Space Magic” this week is also incredibly stupid. Doro teaches Tundro about magnetism, but in fact is just blowing air from his mouth on a stick.  

Yep, that’s magic, all right.

“Space Fact,” meanwhile, finds Space Ace and Astro discussing the sun’s incredible heat, a concept which recurs in the “Space Mystery.” Here, Space Ace and his canine budz battle the Automan, who steals the fastest space car in the galaxy, but stops at the sun…because it’s too hot.

Finally, “Space Code” involves Space Ghost and the deciphering of the phrase “Trouble in the Martian Empire.”

Two episodes left!

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Stars Episode #8 (October 31, 1981)

More juvenile space adventuring is the order of the day for Hanna Barbera’s Space Stars (1981), episode 8. 

At times, the patronizing, kiddie nature of the adventure is downright distracting.  Science-free, thought-free, and maturity-free, the series is a huge disappointment at this point. I can’t imagine being a fan of Star Wars or Star Trek in 1981, and then tuning into this pre-adolescent program on Saturday mornings.  It gives science fiction a bad name.

First up is Space Ghost in “Space Spectre.”

This short is a riff on Star Trek’s (1966-1969) famous parallel dimension episode, “Mirror, Mirror.”  

Only here, a black hole is the passageway between mirror realities.  In one universe, we have Space Ghost, the hero, and in the opposite dimension is Space Spectre, an evil space pirate.  

The two heroes cross universes, and Jan isn’t even able to detect that the Phantom Cruiser -- now jet black instead of immaculate white -- has changed colors, before docking with it and immediately being captured. 

In the end the counterparts fight, and Space Spectre is defeated because Space Ghost has “friends” and Space Spectre does not.

Second in the roster is the Teen Force with “Ultimate Battle.” 

That name is a bit of misnomer since this is yet another story -- the same one we see each week, essentially -- in which our space cycle-bound heroes combat the hapless Uglor. 

When Uglor uses a weather control device on the “Free Planets,” the Teen Force surrenders to the warlord. They then suggest to him a contest in which they fight one another. But Uglor chooses the local: “The Evil Island” (which happens to be surrounded by an acid sea).

There, the story takes a weird and derivative turn -- becoming a strange knock-off of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) -- as the Teen Force encounters Uglor’s “humanimals.” These creatures, including a wolf-man and a giant star-fish, rebel against their cruel lawgiver.

The Herculoids story this week is a modest, though not insulting affair called “The Thunderbolt” in which the Herculoids contend with a friendly dinosaur who becomes electrified, and attacks them. 

The Herculoids must also save Zandor from a rock collapse.

The second part of the hour opens with another underwhelming Space Ghost story: “The Big Freeze.” The narrator tells us that this tale has a “chilling nature,” and so we are in for ten minutes of bad “ice” puns that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze cringe with embarrassment.

Basically, Space Ghost and his sidekicks must face off against an Insta-Freeze beam controlled by an alien troll in a purple robe, named Pharon. 

He is angry because all the inhabited worlds are tropical, but his people can only live in icy conditions.  Therefore, he is re-arranging planets to his biological requirements.

Following “The Big Freeze” is an installment of “Astro and the Space Mutts” called “The Greatest Show Off Earth.”

Here, Space Ace and his canine partners attend the Space-ling Flying Circus, but the circus -- and the crew’’s clothes! -- are stolen by a villain called Cosmic Clown. He is literally a clown; one flies in a circus tent spaceship and voices dialogue such as “Hang it up, Turkeys! Nobody catches Cosmic Clown!”  The Teen Force has a guest appearance in this segment, when Cosmic Clown is pursued into Uglor’s territory.

The Space Star Finale is called “Endangered Spacies,” and yes, the person responsible for that pun should be ashamed.  Here, a spaceship attacks Quasar. The alien who commands it abducts Zandor and wants to add him to the Alien Country Safari, “The Greatest Human Show in the Universe.” Astro and the Space Mutts also get involved, when Space Ace is similarly captured.

The “Space Magic” black-out this week involves the Herculoids, and a rope trick about tying knots. The coda finds Gleep tying himself into a bow tie. 

The “Space Fact” of the week features the Teen Force, who discuss why it gets dark at night, and comment on Earth’s rotation.  

The “Space Mystery” follows up on that “fact” and features a villain who hides in a planet’s arctic zone that features no night or day.  Finally, Space Ghost attempts to decipher the week’s “Space Code.”

Only three more episodes of this terrible series, but I’m going to power through!

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Stars Episode #7 (October 24, 1981)

In the seventh episode of Hanna Barbera’s Space Stars (1981), Space Ghost goes up against another space pirate. This one is named Krugar and looks like of Larry Niven’s Kzin.  

After Krugar is captured and held in a force field, the Phantom Cruiser passes through a radiation cloud.  The exposure to the cloud -- just like in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) -- causes the crew to shrink.  An antidote is developed, and Krugar’s annihilator ray actually makes it more effective. “No matter how large or how small,” the narrator intones, “no evil can defeat…Space Ghost.”

“Uglor’s Power Play” is the Teen Force adventure of the week. Harnessing the brilliant minds of the scientists on the planet Centrix, Uglor gives himself the powers of all the Teen Force members. One of the scientists is a floating brain in a jar!

The Herculoids story this week features a space pirate too. “The Buccaneer” finds an alien visiting Quasar in search of buried treasure. Amusingly, the Herculoids seek the help of a group of subterranean people called “Sand People.”  They resemble not Tatooine’s Tusken Raiders, however, but rather the Jawas! They have the cloaks, and the glowing eyes.

The second Space Ghost story, “The Sorceress” involves a witch “who depends on machinery,” and the unrequited love she has for Space Ghost. Here, she captures him and takes his power bands, all while demanding his “heart.”

In “Rock Punk,” the Astro and the Space Mutts story, a mountainside sculpture of the Space Stars – “Mount SpaceMore” -- is stolen by the villain Rock Punk. His next theft involves the Earth’s moon.  Rock Punk, strangely, wears roller skates.  He also says things like “Can you dig it?”  At the end of the tale, he is captured and sent to Space-traz, instead of Alcatraz.

The final story, “The Olympians,” finds the Teen Force helping the Hercuoids to battle descendants of the mighty Greek Gods, including the children of Hercules, Mercury, Zeus and Medusa.

The Space Magic interlude this week stars Kid Comet and the Astromites and involves making a magic wand disappear.  Space Fact and Space Mystery both start Space Ghost and involve an explanation of life support systems.  The space code is SKCOR ('rocks' backwards), and features host Elektra of the Teen Force.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Stars Episode #6 (October 17, 1981)

This week on Hanna Barbera’s omnibus series, Space Stars (1981), Kid Comet and Jan -- out on a date – escape collision course with a planet by breaking the time barrier.  They end up going into a distant world’s prehistoric era.  Meanwhile, Space Ghost pursues a space pirate in the Phantom Cruiser, and finds he is operating in the same prehistoric era, thanks to a time machine.

As you might guess, this is quite a coincidence, though Jan terms the serendipity a “miracle.”  This episode is distinguished not just by the contrivance of having two groups of superheroes encountering one another in a different time period, but by the use of the Super Friends sound track score.

“Elektra’s Twin” is the story of the week on “Teen Force,” and it involves another attempt by Uglor to take-down the team. Here, he lures them into space with a damaged star-liner and replaces the real Elektra with a twin he has grown in his lab. “Elektra Prime” then sets about to sabotage the Teen Force as they embark on a mission to save the free planets.  Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that Uglor’s scientists wear upside down Starfleet emblems around their necks.

The next adventure in the hour is “The Purple Menace,” a Herculoids story. Here, breakfast is interrupted on Quasar by an attack of giant purple plaints. The Herculoids investigate and find that the plants are drawing their strength from a strange growth in a nearby fissure. Radioactivity from that source is responsible for mutating normal ferns into the dangerous monsters.

In “the cold, lonely heart of space,” anything is possible, even “the supernatural,” according to this Space Ghost segment, called “The Haunted Station.”  Here, Space Ghost and his friends land on a space station an encounter zombies. These undead are actually the crew, who have had their souls stolen by a space-going, light-sensitive vampire called a Vorvoloka.  

And yes, this is a straight-up knock-off of the famous Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (1979-1981) episode “Space Vampire.” There, Buck (Gil Gerard) battled a soul-sucking, light-sensitive vampire -- a Vorvon -- on a space station.

The Astro and the Space Mutts assignment this week, “The Night of the Crab,” involves another ridiculous super-villain, The Crab. He steals Space Ace’s “space award” at a gathering of superheroes (which includes the Teen Force and Space Ghost) and then absconds to the “Crab” Nebula. The mutts and space ace pursue, even as the crab drenches their ship in a space storm.

About that storm, the Crab literally causes it to rain in space.  The rain floods Space Ace’s ship, and the dogs have to bail water from it.  Which makes me wonder why so many spacecraft on Space Stars have open cockpit designs.

The final story of the week, the Space Stars Finale, is called “The Crystal Menace.” The tale finds Space Ghost and friends chasing a crystal cyborg to Quasar, home of the Herculoids. This cyborg is turning everything in his path into crystal – including life forms -- and must be stopped.  The episode opens with everyone safe, and un-crystallized, but the phantom cruiser is left damaged, and according to Space Ghost will have to be replaced.

As usual, there are a number of black-outs or interstitial segments in this episode. Space Magic finds Moleculad tricking the Astromites with another coin trick, and a mighty implausible one at that.  In the Space Fact segments, the Teen Force heads to a “super hero reunion” on Earth and discusses the “international date line.”

The Space Mystery involves the Teen Force again, going after a criminal on another planet that possess an international date line.

Finally, this week’s Space Code comes from Space Ace.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Stars Episode #5 (October 10, 1981)

The omnibus space-age Super Friends knock-off Space Stars continues with this week’s stories.

In the Space Ghost story, “Eclipse Woman,” the “energy thief” known as Eclipse Woman attacks a primitive planet, draining it of all life…until the Phantom Cruiser and Space Ghost comes to the rescue.

Meanwhile, the Teen Force appears in “Decoy of Doom.”  The teen guardians detect a distress call originating from empty space. 

Actually, it’s a decoy by Uglor, who is testing a new weapon:  the Magnetron.  He captures the heroes in this magnetic “space net.”  Fortunately Kid Comet and the Astromites escape, and return to help their friends.

The Herculoids adventure this week is titled “The Energy Creature.” A “danger from the endless night of space” arrives on Quasar in a meteor: an energy creature that can alter its shape. The monster attacks Igoo and the other Herculoids, but Zandar tricks it into taking the form of a native plant that hibernates for a thousand years.

The second half of the hour kicks off with “Attack of the Space Sharks.”  

Vicious space sharks have been attacking the passenger ships on the regular space lanes. When Space Ghost and his friends investigate, they learn that the space-going sharks are actually starships controlled by the shark people of a water world.  Their leader, Remora -- who is dressed like Santa Claus for some reason -- has been collecting “souvenirs from the space lanes” in an attempt to take over the galaxy.

Apparently space magnets are the theme of the week since Astro and the Space Mutts, like the Teen Force story, involves them. 

In this case “Menace of the Magnet Maniac” involves Mario Magnetti, a magnet thief who attacks a “used rockets” lot. It’s Astro and Space Ace to the rescue.

The Space Stars finale is titled “Magnus,” and if features two grave threats for the Herculoids and Space Ghost to contend with.  

The first threat is a space criminal in an exo-skeleton suit, named Magnus.  

The second is a weird alien who is actually a child playing with strange, alien toys, not weapons.  

Magnus is defeated, and the alien’s parents arrive to take him home, in an ending straight out of Star Trek’s (1966-1969) “Squire of Gothos.”

The Space Magic interstitial this week finds Moleculad and Astromites performing a trick involving a one-step move to arrange coins in two rows of three. 

The Space Fact black-out stars the Herculoids and involves a discussion of gravity as it relates to Earth’s moon.  

The Space Mystery involves life on Quasar’s moon.  A warrior from that moon is a powerful enemy on his own planetoid, but on Quasar, the gravity differential renders him a weakling.  The Herculoids defeat him and send him home, where he can once more be a proud warrior.

Finally, there’s a numeric space code introduced by Space Ghost.