Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Lost Saucer: "Return to the Valley of the Chickaphants"

The last episode of Sid and Marty Krofft’s The Lost Saucer (1975) available currently for viewing on YouTube is “Return to the Valley of the Chickaphants” by John Greene and Arthur Phillip. It is a sequel to another episode -- currently unavailable -- titled “Valley of the Chickaphants.”

What is a chickaphant? Well, it’s a giant chicken-elephant hybrid, of course. Or more accurately, it is an animal with the legs of a chicken and the head of an elephant.

In this episode, the lost saucer’s “year-o-meter” breaks down again, and the spaceship lands in a jungle that looks very familiar to the passengers. It turns out they have all been here before. In fact, they last visited this locale 700 years ago, and are blamed by the current caveman populace for the down-fall of their society.

The cavemen capture Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and make her sweep their cave with a broom, which necessitates a rescue attempt by Fum (Jim Nabors).

Meanwhile, a baby chickaphant boards the saucer after hatching, and its mother comes looking for her wayward clucker.

In a funny way, “Return to the Valley of the Chickaphants” anticipates the plot-line of The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2 (1997) since it features a baby monster captured by protagonists, and its mother’s quest to get it back. As you may guess, however, the productions aren’t exactly comparable.

There’s not much else to note about this episode, except that it probably isn’t the series’ finest hour.  Despite this fact, I’d very much like to see a full, official release of the series, so I can continue blogging it here on Saturdays.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Lost Saucer: "Beautiful Downtown Atlantis" (October 4, 1975)

In “Beautiful Downtown Atlantis,” the lost saucer emerges from a time warp in the year 2385 AD, and is sucked into an ocean. It then arrives at the lost city of Atlantis. 

The tyrannical ruler of the city, Nepto, captures Jerry (Jarrod Johnson) and Alice (Alice Playden), and locks them in a dungeon to prevent the strangers from leaving.

The visitors soon learn that air pollution has forced Earthlings in this future world to move underwater, away from the surface.

Worse, Nepto wants to move into the saucer and turn it into his new “tele-beam” studio. Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Jim Nabors) will provide the entertainment.

This week, as always, the lost saucer lands in the wrong place, not 1975 Chicago, but some alien “future.” Here, the saucer docks at Atlantis, which worries Fum, since he “is not programmed for swimming.”

The under-sea location of the episode paves the way for a number of silly water-related jokes. “He looks kind of fishy to me,” says Fum, of Nepto.

Fi and Fum also perform a musical number, “Beautiful Downtown Atlantis,” before they escape from Atlantis by reversing the magnetic thrust of the saucer.

The moral of the week concerns pollution, of course. At the end of the episode, the lead characters muse about the topic. “We should warn people about what could happen if we don’t stop polluting the air.”

Pollution, proved a key worry of the dystopian-obsessed first half of the 1970’s, the subject of movies such as Soylent Green (1973), and Silent Running (1972).  On Doctor Who (1963-1989), the John Pertwee era often worried about the topic too, in stories such as “The Green Death,” and at least tangentially, “Inferno.”

This Lost Saucer (1975) episode offers a child-centric approach to the material, warning of what could occur, if humanity doesn’t change its ways.  The idea of humans moving underwater after an apocalypse was also “in the water” of the 1970’s, and a major plot-line in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

As I’ve written before, the social commentary in Lost Saucer is certainly obvious -- often stated flat-out by the android duo of Fi and Fum -- but that because of the juvenile nature of the audience, this isn’t a big problem. 

The Lost Saucer is silly, imaginative, and, rewardingly, about the things that matter (or that did matter, in 1975).

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Lost Saucer: "Transylvania 2300" (September 27, 1975)

The saucer lands on the planet CR-3 in the year 2300 AD, and the androids encounter Dr. Frankenstein the 13^th (Stan Ross), who, from his laboratory, is building a perfect android.

Alice (Alice Playden), however, needs Dr. Frankenstein’s help, because Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Jim Nabors) have broken down. Dr. Frankenstein agrees to help, but wants to keep the androids as his new assistants. He rewrites their programming modules.

After Frankenstein fires Hugo (Billy Barty), his assistant, Hugo and Alice hatch a plan to free Fi and Fum from the mad scientist’s control.

Although its title suggests a stab at Dracula, “Transylvania 2300” is actually inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The story concerns the birth of an android, of new life form, and the obsessed scientist who creates that new life.

Only in the case of The Lost Saucer (1975), this story takes place in the distant future, not the 19^th century, involves an android instead of corpse-body parts, and the focus is on slapstick comedy, not man’s vain attempt to conquer death.

Despite the silliness, the story attempts to generate age-appropriate goose-bumps, even -- for the first time in the series -- setting some scenes in darkest night. 

Indeed, Fi and Fum malfunction in the first place because of a storm; because of lightning.  So this episode features an “it was a dark and stormy night”-type setting to make it feel a little creepier than the normal segment.

The jokes, as usual, are pretty goofy. We learn the androids don’t possess ears, but rather “sensor receptors,” and Frankenstein humorously tests their android reflexes, at one point.  Showing how time has passed the series by, however, we learn in this episode that Fi and Fum seem to operate off of 1970’s era mini-cassettes.

The social commentary in “Transylvania 2300” is not as strongly placed as in some episodes of The Lost Saucer, but there seems to be some under-the-radar thematic material here about automation and technology. Hugo -- a living, breathing person -- is replaced by mechanical people on the job, until he stages a kind of rebellion to get his job back.  That’s an idea that is still relevant, even today, with jobs disappearing because of technological advances.

Next week: “Beautiful Downtown Atlantis.”

The Lost Saucer: "My Fair Robot" (September 20, 1975)

After an asteroid breaches the saucer’s defense shields, Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Jim Nabors) must land on Earth in the 23^rd century.

There they encounter a clumsy robot named Goro, who is afraid to return to his human masters -- the Krugs -- who want to get their robot back and also for him to function properly.

Meanwhile, Jerry is captured by Sheriff Zork.

The Krugs, disappointed with their robot, want to send Goro to the recycling center. But Fi and Fum train Goro not to be too clumsy, and to function as a proper servant to the human family.

“My Fair Robot” is all kinds of wrong, at least in terms of the theme it conveys. Basically, the teleplay by John Fenton Murray concerns our lovable androids Fi and Fum teaching a robot how to accept a life of servitude to humans.

As the action starts, Goro has already run away from his so-called home because he doesn’t want to be a servant. But he returns when the androids convince the Krugs to give him a TV and not store him in the closet.

So slavery is okay, as long as you get a color television, and your own room, I guess.

I know the episode is meant to be a sitcom-type comedy, but the tale misses the mark in terms of progressive science fiction storytelling.  How is it okay for artificial intelligence like Fi and Fum to teach another artificial intelligence, Goro, to be happy as the equivalent of a second class citizen? Would they be happy to be treated that way?

In terms of inspiration, “My Fair Robot” clearly goes back to George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1913) but substitutes a futuristic setting, and a robot rather than a lower-class character, learning about how to fit in with society. Last week, Gulliver’s Travels was a source of inspiration, and I do find it rewarding that The Lost Saucer looks to fashion its narratives based on classic sources. Next week, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is re-parsed.

Visually, the Krugs resemble a live-action version of the characters in The Jetsons. Just look at those costumes and hair-cuts! It’s as though the production-designer for The Lost Saucer (1975) just decided to adopt the whole Jetsons aesthetic in terms of color, and wardrobe. It looks abundantly silly, which may be the point.

The other weak point of the episode, beyond the short-sighted theme, is the physical appearance of our guest star: Goro. He looks to be the kind of robot that pre-adolescent kids build in the Boy Scouts. The costume is basically made of two cardboard boxes; one for the head and one for the torso, both painted silver. It’s difficult to believe that anyone that that this costume could pass muster on TV, even in 1975.

Next week: “Transylvania 2300.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Lost Saucer: "The Tiny Years" (September 13, 1975)

The saucer travels through a time warp and lands on Earth in the year 2465 AD. There, the crew finds a culture of “Littleniks,” tiny humans who are the result of molecular cell reduction.

The tiny people capture Jerry after the Dorse accidentally litters near the city of Tiny-apolis. The mayor of the city (Gordon Jump) considers this incident no laughing matter, but rather an invasion by “Biggies.”

Meanwhile, Fi (Jim Nabors) has a case of the mechanical hiccups...

The title of this second episode of The Lost Saucer (1975) -- “The Tiny Years” -- has always seemed a play on Star Trek’s famous “The Deadly Years, only here the subject is tiny people, not aging. 

In terms of “tiny” people, this episode is also clearly a callback to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and the idea of tiny people -- there called Lilliputians -- capturing a normal-sized person and restraining him. In this case, the tiny people tie up one of the travelers, Jerry (Jarrod Johnson), with ropes and stakes.

Since this series is essentially a sitcom, the nature of the “enemy” encountered this story apparently necessitates an endless series of quips about height, or size. “Enough of this small talk,” says one character.  “What’s with this Gulliver routine?” says Jerry.

And, unfortunately, this episode repeats a shtick that was big in the seventies: one character constantly repeats what was just said by another character.

I suppose the most surprising element about the episode is that it isn’t really about size, or height, despite all the jokes, but rather a meditation on resources. Basically, the Littleniks dislike the Biggies because they are wasting the energy and resources of the world.  At the end, Alice (Alice Playden) sums it all up in one line of dialogue: “We biggies should learn to conserve our natural resources.”

It’s too bad the information has to be spoon-fed to the audience in so simplistic a way, and yet on the other hand, this is a kid’s show. Because of that, hammering home a theme or “moral” is clearly part of the game. What I enjoy, so far, about The Lost Saucer is that the series couples science-fiction imagination and slapstick comedy with these stabs at relevant social commentary.

That’s a lot of lifting to do in a half-hour show, and yet these episodes move by at a quick clip. Some of the insult humor (“You must have been put together with an erector set!”) grows wearisome after a while, but Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi sure seem to be having a good time.

In terms of technology, we see in this story that Fi and Fum are equipped with rocket boots that enable them to glide through the air, and run off their energizers. The flying scenes are realized through the ubiquitous technique of chroma-key.

Next Week: “My Fair Robot.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Lost Saucer: "894X2RY713, I Love You," (September 6, 1975)

Following the amazing success of Land of the Lost (1974 – 1977), Sid and Marty Krofft created another Saturday morning live-action series: The Lost Saucer (1975). 

This series aired on ABC Saturday mornings for a season (and then as an element in the Krofft Supershow)  and was part Doctor Who (1963 – 1989), part Star Trek (1966 – 1969), and part Lost in Space (1965 – 1968), with some comedic shtick thrown in for good measure.

The Lost Saucer is the story of normal 1970's kids Jerry (Jarrod Johnson) and his babysitter, Alice (Alice Playten). 

One night, they are visited by a flying saucer, and whisked away on an adventure. Aboard the highly-advanced craft are two androids, Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Jim Nabors). These friendly androids hail from the planet ZR-3 in the year 2369, and reveal that their ship not only travels through space, but across time as well.

Alice and Jerry also meet Fi and Fum’s other ship-mate, “The Dorse” (Larry Larsen), a “bio-genetically engineered” creature with the head of a horse and the body of a shaggy dog.

On their first interplanetary journey, Fi and Fum experience difficulties.  The time vortex is accidentally opened, and the “Year-o-meter” is broken, sending the ship to some distant, far off time. 

Alice and Jerry just want to return home, but instead, they are forced to reckon with one cosmic and temporal adventure after another.

You can see the genre antecedents or inspirations immediately in this format.  

We have the lost travelers trying to get home, similar to some extent, to the crew of the Jupiter 2.  

We have advanced time travelers stealing away “companions” and then having difficulty returning them to the right epoch.  And the saucer’s main control column and control room lay-out, even, in some sense, seems to resemble the TARDIS.

And from Star Trek, The Lost Saucer takes a sense of social commentary. Even though this is a silly, slapstick Saturday morning series, each episode tries to convey some imaginative and culturally relevant point. The stories, for all their goofiness -- like the notorious Chickephant episodes -- ape the Gulliver’s Travels aspect of Trek; that each new culture is actually a commentary on our own.

The series pilot, “894X2RY713, I Love You,” is a case in point. 

In this story, the saucer is hurled into the distant future. 

While Fi and Fum attempt to repair the saucer, Alice and Jerry go out to explore a fabulous metropolis and find that all the human inhabitants are covered in masks and thick suits, and go by numbers, not names.   

Indeed, the Earth kids are promptly arrested by police for being in public with no numbers, and held for trial.  Their judge is a giant, movable computer with no face, and no mercy either.

Jerry and Alice attempt to explain that where they come from, people have names, not numbers. Their captors reply that without a number, the “government” can’t “keep track” of people.

The fear expressed here, clearly (in the immediate post-Watergate, post-Vietnam Era) is of the State becoming a dehumanizing influence, one that fails to acknowledge the individuality and humanity of its citizens.

After Fi and Fum rescue Alice and Jerry (using “air-jets”), Fum reflects that it is truly awful “when numbers become more important than people.”  That may sound like an on-the-nose “lesson,” but it goes by quickly, and the episode’s visuals convey the story effectively.  The sets and costumes are inventive, and it is fascinating to imagine a world in which you can’t show your face, or identify someone by name. 

Everyone must be the same and treated the same, or the State intervenes. It’s heady stuff for a Saturday morning series. It's relevant to today's context too, strangely enough. We live in a world of death by drones, government surveillance, and so on, so the idea of the State controlling many aspects of life still resonates.

Of course, there’s also the “shticky” aspect of the series.  Fi and Fum are comic characters through-and-through.  They say things like “watch your tape deck” instead of “watch your mouth,” and are generally clowns. They bumble their way through the adventure, and yet are also depicted as happy, positive figures in the drama. They make mistakes, but they’re good-hearted.  The Lost Saucer arises from a time when heroes and other characters didn’t all have to be broken, broody and angsty. They could just be…goofy.

In terminology and technology, The Lost Saucer has certainly aged a great deal in forty years. Fi and Fum spew paper print-outs for example, and discuss the aforementioned tape decks. But the production values, at least for this episode, are pretty good given the time and the limited budget. 

This episode features a clutch of alien costumes, the judge robot, bubble cars, a future city miniature, and other nice touches.  One chase uses rear-projection, and so on.

The Lost Saucer is not officially available in any format at present, though you can find this and several other episodes available on YouTube.  I'll be reviewing the episodes that are posted there, in the coming weeks, to glean a further sense of the series for readers here.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Lost Saucer: "894X2RY713, I Love You," (September 6, 1975)

Following the amazing success of Land of the Lost (1974 – 1977), Sid and Marty Krofft created another Saturday morning live-action series: The Lost Saucer (1975). 

This series aired on ABC Saturday mornings for a season (and then as an element in the Krofft Supershow)  and was part Doctor Who (1963 – 1989), part Star Trek (1966 – 1969), and part Lost in Space (1965 – 1968), with some comedic shtick thrown in for good measure.

The Lost Saucer is the story of normal 1970s kids Jerry (Jarrod Johnson) and his babysitter, Alice (Alice Playten). 

One night, they are visited by a flying saucer, and whisked away on an adventure. Aboard the highly-advanced craft are two androids, Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Jim Nabors). These friendly androids hail from the planet ZR-3 in the year 2369, and reveal that their ship not only travels through space, but across time as well.

Alice and Jerry also meet Fi and Fum’s other ship-mate, “The Dorse” (Larry Larsen), a “bio-genetically engineered” creature with the head of a horse and the body of a shaggy dog.

On their first interplanetary journey, Fi and Fum experience difficulties.  The time vortex is accidentally opened, and the “Year-o-meter” is broken, sending the ship to some distant, far off time. 

Alice and Jerry just want to return home, but instead, they are forced to reckon with one cosmic and temporal adventure after another.

You can see the genre antecedents or inspirations immediately in this format.  

We have the lost travelers trying to get home, similar to some extent, to the crew of the Jupiter 2.  

We have advanced time travelers stealing away “companions” and then having difficulty returning them to the right epoch.  And the saucer’s main control column and control room lay-out, even, in some sense, seems to resemble the TARDIS.

And from Star Trek, The Lost Saucer takes a sense of social commentary. Even though this is a silly, slapstick Saturday morning series, each episode tries to convey some imaginative and culturally relevant point. The stories, for all their goofiness -- like the notorious Chickephant episodes -- ape the Gulliver’s Travels aspect of Trek; that each new culture is actually a commentary on our own.

The series pilot, “894X2RY713, I Love You,” is a case in point. 

In this story, the saucer is hurled into the distant future. 

While Fi and Fum attempt to repair the saucer, Alice and Jerry go out to explore a fabulous metropolis and find that all the human inhabitants are covered in masks and thick suits, and go by numbers, not names.   

Indeed, the Earth kids are promptly arrested by police for being in public with no numbers, and held for trial.  Their judge is a giant, movable computer with no face, and no mercy either.

Jerry and Alice attempt to explain that where they come from, people have names, not numbers. Their captors reply that without a number, the “government” can’t “keep track” of people.

The fear expressed here, clearly (in the immediate post-Watergate, post-Vietnam Era) is of the State becoming a dehumanizing influence, one that fails to acknowledge the individuality and humanity of its citizens.

After Fi and Fum rescue Alice and Jerry (using “air-jets”), Fum reflects that it is truly awful “when numbers become more important than people.”  That may sound like an on-the-nose “lesson,” but it goes by quickly, and the episode’s visuals convey the story effectively.  The sets and costumes are inventive, and it is fascinating to imagine a world in which you can’t show your face, or identify someone by name. 

Everyone must be the same and treated the same, or the State intervenes. It’s heady stuff for a Saturday morning series. It's relevant to today's context too, strangely enough. We live in a world of death by drones, government surveillance, and so on, so the idea of the State controlling many aspects of life still resonates.

Of course, there’s also the “shticky” aspect of the series.  Fi and Fum are comic characters through-and-through.  They say things like “watch your tape deck” instead of “watch your mouth,” and are generally clowns. They bumble their way through the adventure, and yet are also depicted as happy, positive figures in the drama.  They make mistakes, but they’re good-hearted.  The Lost Saucer arises from a time when heroes and other characters didn’t all have to be broken, broody and angsty. They could just be…goofy.

In terminology and technology, The Lost Saucer has certainly aged a great deal in forty years. Fi and Fum spew paper print-outs for example, and discuss the aforementioned tape decks. But the production values, at least for this episode, are pretty good given the time and the limited budget. 

This episode features a clutch of alien costumes, the judge robot, bubble cars, a future city miniature, and other nice touches.  One chase uses rear-projection, and so on.

The Lost Saucer is not officially available in any format at present, though you can find this episode on YouTube.