CULT TV FLASHBACK #38: The Twilight Zone: "Walking Distance"

There are probably more than seventy-five episodes of Rod Serling's classic series The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) worth remembering in one of these cult tv flashbacks. And I intend - over the years - to get to many of 'em! There's William Shatner spying a gremlin on the wing of an airliner in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," or my personal Shatner fave: "Nick of Time," a second season Zone which sees the Shat waging a psychological war with a bobble-head Devil on a dime-store fortune-telling machine. God, I love that episode even more than the gremlin one, maybe because the true subject nature (like the best episodes of the series), is human nature and especially the pitfalls of our nature that trap so many of us.

And then there's "Time Enough At Last," with Burgess Meredith as a dedicated book reader who survives a nuclear holocaust only to...

Or the one about the woman in the bus station who spies her double... but no one believes her until more doubles start showing up...

Or the episode about the woman in bandages, getting plastic surgery, and we don't see her face (or the face of her surgeon...) until the denouement...

Well, you know, don't you? The funny thing about The Twilight Zone is that there are 156 episodes of this classic anthology series, but during the yearly marathons on Sci-Fi, the same fifty or so episodes get rerun. The one with "Talky Tina," or the woman (Agnes Moorehead) in the remote cabin with little spacemen chasing her ("The Invaders'), or the one about a very special alien cookbook ("To Serve Man.") These episodes are all timeless and terrific and worthy of broadcast from here to eternity.

But there are other eminently worthy wonders in this land of imagination too; ones that don't quite bite with scalding irony, or sting with surprise and O'Henry twists. Instead, these installments tug at the heart strings and evidence a deep melancholy. Which brings us to my selection today: "Walking Distance," by Rod Serling. It originally aired in 1959...nearly fifty years ago, during The Twilight Zone's first season on CBS.

This is the story of 36 year old "vice president of media" Martin Sloan (Gig Young), a successful but overworked businessman. He feels like he's been at a "dead run" for a long time, and has grown tired. Martin makes an unexpected stop at a rural gas station one day, only to realize that he's within walking distance of his hometown, "Homewood." It's a place he hasn't visited in over twenty years. While his car is serviced at the station, Martin walks down a dusty road (and we watch him go down that long path in a clever shot utilizing a mirror...), and straight into the Twilight Zone.

For that old town - a place of ice cream sodas, merry-go-rounds, games of marbles, Sundays in the parks and band concerts - hasn't changed a whit in two decades. It still costs a dime for a chocolate ice cream soda with three scoops. Martin wanders the streets and begins to remember a time in his life when things were simpler; slower...happier. He remembers a time when he was eleven years old carving his initials onto a gazebo in the park.

Then, wonder of wonders, Martin spies himself as a teenager carving those initials. He has returned home....to the past. He has traveled back 25 years. Excited, Martin runs to his house and sees his Mom and Dad; both long dead in the present. He pleads with them, telling them he's their son. However, they fear he's a crazed man, a lunatic escaped from an asylum. Determined, the adult Martin chases down his young self on a merry-go-round, and tries to tell him a very important message. He succeeds only in scaring the teenage version of himself, and the boy falls and injures his knee. It's an injury that both Martins feel simultaneously - since they are one in the same. "I only wanted to tell you that this is a wonderful time of life for you," the elder Martin whispers sadly after the boy has been taken away. "Don't let any of it go by without enjoying it."

Finally, Martin meets his father again at the foot of the merry-go-round...and his Dad knows who he really is now (Martin dropped his wallet). His father is loving but stern, and tells the elder Martin he must return to the present. "There's no room. There's no place," he tells him. "...maybe there's only one summer for every customer..." Giving the kind of advice only a Daddy can give, Martin's father also suggests "You've been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead."

As Serling's closing narration makes plain, "Walking Distance" is about the fact that no matter how hard we try, we can't go home again. The past is sometimes so close to us that we feel we can reach out and touch it, that it is merely "walking distance" from here. A scent, a turn of a phrase, a photograph, a song, even a retro-toy flashback(!) can spur images of a past that we have left behind...yet not forgotten. And many people, like Martin Sloan, experience that "errant wish" as Serling describes it, that a "man might not have to become older," might never have to outgrow the merry-go-rounds of his youth.

"Walking Distance" is a beautifully-shot episode of The Twilight Zone, as well as an emotional journey that speaks to human truth. At the center of the story is the merry-go-round as metaphor. Life is indeed like a merry-go-round, we understand: we climb on, it starts to spin, and it feels like we can't easily get off....not without jumping. The episode plays with that notion artfully as the adult Martin chases down his younger self on the spinning amusement park ride.

The merry-go-round is depicted at a cockeyed angle, spinning ever faster. As Elder Martin nears his prey, the camera adopts a high-angle during the chase. Tellingly, Martin never quite reaches himself, just as a merry-go-round spins and spins, moves and moves, but never actually goes anywhere or reaches any destination. When Martin turns around and goes against the tide of the merry-go-round, time seems to slow down and this descent feels like a reckoning, as past and future finally collide, and Martin must make a choice about where he is going to live, and more importantly, how he is going to live. His world needn't be one of "no more cotton candy," "no more band concerts" but to change it, he has to change how he sees life. I love how the episode culminates around a tender conversation between father and grown son...a conversation that could not occur anywhere but the Twilight Zone, because in reality, the father is long dead. Here, the "fifth dimension" makes room for a son - no longer a kid - to experience the wisdom of his father one last time; when he needs it most. Martin's father is the age of the elder Martin, and one sense in both the performance and the dialogue that his Pop understands too well Martin's desire to return to the past; a past without responsibility or stress.

Rod Serling died young, and much of his work, including "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" on Night Gallery expressed this wistful desire to return to a "simpler" time. "A Stop at Willoughby" on The Twilight Zone is a darker meditation on the same demons haunting "Walking Distance," but there the quest to stop running, to find peace, results only in death, not learning. In some sense, I guess I prefer "Walking Distance" because Martin Sloan does get a second chance to get life right; to change who he is. As sad as it is that the past is gone, there's also an optimistic side: every new day is a chance to recapture what we lost; or find a different kind of happiness. I wonder if Rod Serling - who wrote a whopping 90 episodes of the Twilight Zone's 156 - felt like life was a merry-go-round he couldn't escape, or if - with the help and catharsis of the Twilight Zone - he managed to exorcise the same demons expressed by Martin Sloan in "Walking Distance."

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

This isn't my choice for the greatest science fiction film ever made. For me, that honor goes to another film of the year 1968, Franklin Schaffner's Planet of the Apes. However, objectivity requires that I state my bias here and explain a little bit about my decision-making process.. Planet of the Apes is a rip-roaring, exciting, dramatic social allegory about race, war, religious fundamentalism and more, whereas Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey appeals almost entirely to the intellect...and the eyes. The film is lugubrious and steady, the mood...removed, clinical, not exciting by any conventional sense. Another way to put it: Planet of the Apes makes the blood run hot; 2001 -- chills it. So this is a personal preference for me, and yet even in acknowledging my preference as a reviewer, I would easily award 2001: A Space Odyssey the number #2 slot on that "greatest" films list, and today seek to acknowledge some of the elements of the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece that make it such an amazing and rewarding viewing experience.

Going back and watching 2001: A Space Odyssey again today, there are three elements that combine to make it a brilliant and visionary science fiction film. One: director Kubrick visually crafts a sense of "cosmic order," an order to the universe beyond that which humanity perceives, via his understanding and deployment of film language or grammar. Secondly, the film serves as a sometimes-ironic meditation on the development and drawbacks of man's technology (or tools), and thirdly, A Space Odyssey functions indeed as the "amazing experience" I noted above. Today's viewers, perhaps more interested in pace, narrative, characterization and the like may harbor little patience for a cinematic venture that pays such attention to reality, scientific accuracy, and the "details" of a futuristic journey into space. Crudely put, 2001: A Space Odyssey isn't a film that you can just interface with passively. It...happens to you. In many ways, it's like you are a passenger aboard the Discovery One, or the Moonbus, or the Pan Am Clipper with the other characters, You're watching -- almost in real time -- as events occur. If you take the title literally, this is nothing more and nothing less than a chronicle of what life is like in "the space age" of the twenty first century. You aren't going to see space battles, time warps and the like, but you will get a bird's eye view of planet Earth, or an orbital space station...after the stewardess serves lunch.

COSMIC ORDER
Stanley Kubrick's film, often billed as "the ultimate trip," tells the story of mankind: from the beginning to the "next step." From the "Dawn of Man," to "Jupiter and the Infinite Beyond," the film charts his development as a species. Watching over mankind (with unknown intent and agenda) are the alien monoliths: black, featureless obelisks that appear almost as signposts in the development or evolution of humanity. In the distant past, a monolith appears on Earth over the home cave of a tribe of primitive apes, and - emitting a strange signal - pushes the apes to grow, change, develop. After contact with the monolith, the apes miraculously develop an understanding of technology, or tools - weaponry.

The next monolith is discovered buried deep inside the crater Tycho, not terribly long after modern man has developed the ability to travel to the moon. The monolith sends a transmission to Jupiter and it is there, in orbital space, that man will have his next rendezvous with the monolith; one that will push forward the species' development again further; evolving mankind into enigmatic "star children."

Taken as given the idea that the monoliths are far more advanced than the race they shepherd, it is crucial for filmmaker Kubrick to craft a sense of overarching order in the universe. He begins doing so from the very first shot of the film. It is a beautiful outer space landscape which depicts Earth's pocked moon in slow descent. Beyond the moon, growing visible, is Earth itself - blue and beautiful. And over the Earth, even more distant, is Sol, our sun - shining brightly. The three bodies are aligned, forming some aspect of geometric progression, a perfect one-two-three. This is the first indication of a cosmic order, but not the last.

We see this kind of geometric staging of heavenly bodies in "The Dawn of Man" sequence as well. There is shot from ground level, gazing up at the imposing monolith. The sun - high in the sky - is intersected by the monolith's apex, and here we have another viewpoint that intimates order: a direct line from the monolith to the heavens above; to the "star" people or aliens.

Late in the film (near the climax), Kubrick's camera depicts a shot of Jupiter and its myriad satellites. Once more, the heavenly bodies are lined up in symmetric, precise sequence, but then - interestingly - a black monolith intersects the line of planets and moons almost perfectly on the horizontal xis, splitting the line in two. It is almost as though we are gazing at an algebraic equation created by the planets' positions. It is at almost exactly at this moment that the "trip" into the Monolith begins, and represents another symbol of Kubrick's obsession with a sense of cosmic order. It is an order beyond mankind's understanding or comprehension since we - unlike Kubrick's omnipotent camera - can never see such a view; never act as "the eyes of the universe," as it were. We travel between worlds; in orbital space, but can we see the stars how God does? Or how the Monoliths do? In all these views, the stars are immaculate and perfect, ordered for eyes not our own.

In charting a cosmic order, Kubrick also splits his film into what I see as three distinct movements. One is natural ("The Dawn of Man"), one is technological ("18 Months Later; aboard the Discovery) and one is spiritual or supernatural, ("Beyond the Infinite"). These are the three stages of existence mankind must travel in order to evolve to the next realm of existence: the star children.

In "The Dawn of Man," Kubrick's locked-down camera reveals a sunny, barren Earth in a succession of beautifully composed static landscape shots (no fewer than eight separate shots). There is life here (and our first indication is the sight of animal bones on a bluff...), but the long, vacant emptiness of the landscape seems to reflect the life and times of the apes. They huddle at night in their cave, afraid of the dark, and by day fight inconclusive battles over territory with a nearby family group. The apes are living beings who possess intelligence, but not true self-awareness or anything beyond rudimentary instinct. The arrival of the monoliths change all that.

By the year 2001, mankind - long gone down the path established by the monolith all those aeon's ago - now dwells in a totally technological world. Whereas "the Dawn of Man" featured a wholly natural world, one of bleak landscapes, wide savannas and rocky outcroppings, everything in the year 2001 is totally and completely artificial. We do not glimpse even an iota of something "natural" (besides man himself, perhaps). Man has utilized "tools' to remake the world around him and in doing so has even left behind that very world. Once he achieves space and lands on the moon (a sign, perhaps, of a technologically advanced world...), he has reached the second threshold desired by the monolith; the threshold which will lead him, finally, to the spiritual world.

The last portion of the film, "Beyond the Infinite," depicts astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) leaving behind his technology (the star ship Discovery and the malfunctioning computer HAL 9000) for the enigmatic black monolith in Jupiter's space. He flies into the monolith and upon intersection point the film cuts to a very long, very odd montage -- a "cosmic trip" -- in which we are treated to a plethora of strange visions. Light seems to swirl by the camera, and then the viewer is left gazing for long periods at otherworldly vistas. Green oceans; mountaintops turned red. High angle views of an orange planetary surface and the like. It is distinctly as though nature (the world of "the Dawn of Man") has literally been inverted in the quest for the spiritual. Here, nature is different; the land is different.

There is no room for technology, either, in this realm and very soon David Bowman finds his pod and space suit gone as he ages (seemingly at warp speed) in an odd Victorian apartment. He spends his days (or minutes, perhaps...) waiting to die so he can achieve the next form of human evolution, which I believe the film suggests is a metaphysical form. People often ask what the Victorian sitting room represents or symbolizes and my best description of it is that it is evolution's antechamber. The body's natural death is apparently a prerequisite for the next stage of human life (otherwise, the monolith could just zap Bowman with a laser beam and send him on his way). Instead, David Bowman must grow old locked in his aging body, let his physicality fail. And in that last moment, when the astronaut is old and infirm, laying in bed, he seeks to touch the Monolith (which re-appears before him). He can't quite grasp the afterlife; can't quite touch the Monolith. But then, when he dies, his body disappears, re-formed into the glowing "star child," a baby with soulful eyes dwelling in a kind of translucent womb. This is the birth of man as a spiritual being, and Kubrick has prepared the viewer for the transition by taking man from nature, to technology, to what lays beyond...if not the dark night of the soul, than the glowing brilliance of spirituality; the soul.

TECHNOLOGY

In charting the development of the human race from its natural beginning to its spiritual future, Stanley Kubrick seizes on an irony. The very intelligence brought to humanity by the Monolith - the wherewithal to understand tools and technology - is the very thing that could actually destroy humanity. In "The Dawn of Man" stage of the film, the first "tool" or technology utilized by the apes is a discarded animal bone. It can be used to kill prey during a hunt and therefore assure survival for man (as we see in a montage as a giant beast falls dead after being struck...) or it can be used as a devastating weapon with which to kill enemies and hold on to territory.

The ape armed with the animal bone kills an enemy ape and in a moment of nearly orgasmic delight and triumph, tosses the bone high into the air. Up and up, Kubrick's camera tracks the ascending weapon until - boom - the greatest (and most sweeping) film transition in history. The bone becomes an orbiting satellite in the 21st century. This transition dramatizes in one shot the entire sweep of human history: he has gone from wielding animal bones in the desert to building spaceships and leaving Earth's gravity. The understanding of how to use a tool (and a weapon) has led him to create an entirely technological world around himself.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the HAL 9000, the last word in mellifluous-voiced computers. Like that animal bone in prehistory, HAL is no more than a tool or a device to make life easier for humans. But - also like the prehistoric bone - HAL is dangerous, a weapon. Worse, technology has evolved to such a point now that the "tools" mankind creates can out think him (winning at a Chess game...), and even kill him, as HAL murders the astronauts in suspended animation and cuts the air line of astronaut Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood). The agenda from Kubrick, I believe here, is a word of warning. It might very well be that Kubrick saw this period -- the technological period that precedes the spiritual period - as the era when the human race is in most danger of destroying itself. 2001: A Space Odyssey was produced in the late 1960s during a war that seemed like it was going on forever (Vietnam). It was the era of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation...a time when a push of a single button (the use of technology again...) could rain death upon millions across the planet. HAL is not just Frankenstein's son, a child of a creator turning bad, but the embodiment of the technological age and inherent dangers thereof.

If man can survive his flirtation with deadly machines, with the technology he himself has forged, 2001: A Space Odyssey seems to suggest, than there will be no limits for him in the universe. If he lets go of the things he made, the destructive things, the sky's the limit.

THE ULTIMATE TRIP
2001: A Space Odyssey runs over two hours, and yet there is barely 45 minutes of dialogue in the entire film. Kubrick tells his tale with beautiful, icily precise visuals, stunning special effects, and - often - classical music. The middle section of the film involves Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) traveling from Earth aboard a Pan Am passenger ship to a rotating space station. After a time on the station, he boards a vessel bound for the moon, and continues his journey. This part of the film serves as a travelogue, a day in the life of a commuter in the 21st century. Some people may find it interesting; others may find it dull, for it is the equivalent of one of us taking a trip across country by plane: sitting in our seat on a 747, going out to the runway, flying to another airport, boarding another plane, and so forth. There's a lot of waiting, phone-call making, and even a bathroom break.

The point of all this, I believe, is two-fold. First, Kubrick has created a drama of the near future, and hopes to dramatize what life is like in that time period. It should seem both familiar and strange at the same time, and it is. These sequences are unerringly realistic. But also, I believe Kubrick's naturalistic approach in this middle-part of the film best sells the "cosmic" order and "danger of technology" elements of the film. Mankind believes he controls the universe, as we see here, in the kitchen-sink depiction of space travel as "routine" and "ordinary." But, it is only the illusion of control, as we understand when we meet HAL later. We don't control our technology; the opposite is true. Also -- remember - we don't create the order in the universe -- it is beyond us; and all those geometrically perfect shots of planets in lines reflect that. This section of the film establishes well the illusion man has built around himself. That bubble of delusion soon gets punctured.

One of the longest and most beautiful portions of 2001: A Space Odyssey arrives in this middle section. It is the docking of the passenger flight on the station. It is a lengthy scene (far lengthier, even, than the Enterprise in drydock sequence in Star Trek: the Motion Picture [1979]) and it is cut and paced to Johann Strauss's waltz, The Blue Danube. This selection of music adds an elegance and pace to the scene, but also connotes almost a sense of whimsy. The two space vessels (the station and the ship), are performing a technological waltz of their own, aren't they? The players aren't even human, but the Blue Danube suggests that this space docking maneuver is...a dance. Emotionally, I think we respond to the use of this music in two ways. One, it is a hypnotic piece of music, and we succumb to its spell. But secondly, it is - after some fashion - a humorous or silly selection...and here I think Kubrick is sneaking in that devilish sense of irony once more. He's scoring the future...with the past. He's reducing a technological marvel to...a dance.

The kitchen sink reality of the middle-portion of the film (the travelogue, let's call it), is heightened by Floyd's tour of the space station. He makes a long distance telephone call to Earth and speaks to his daughter The phone booth he uses is adorned with a Pacific Bell logo. He walks past the station restaurant (a Howard Johnsons) and later we catch a glimpse of the billeting accommodations...A Hilton hotel. Later, en route to the Moon, Floyd has to take a potty break and - in a neat visual gag - must read the rather lengthy directions for operating a "zero gravity toilet."

Once the movie has shifted to the Discovery One, there is still this sense of the routine, of the Earthly norm, only transplanted to outer space. Frank Poole is first depicted jogging around a control room, then watching cable TV (BBC 12) while he eats his dinner from a tray. Again, all these scenes of "the routine" establish that two-fold Kubrick agenda: that we are not the masters of technology but vice versa, and that we are taken in by the illusion that we are the masters of the universe.

Why does HAL go nuts and kill the crew of the Discovery? The answer comes at us, almost invisibly, during Dave's sojourn into the Logic Memory Center to unplug the homicidal computer. A message plays revealing that HAL is the only "person" aboard Discovery who knew about the mission to contact the Monoliths. See? We have now outsourced "need to know" information to our tools...and it has driven them mad. The ultimate misapplication of technology, perhaps. The machines control the mission.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a meticulously-crafted, beautifully rendered cinematic journey. It's a film I can watch any time and become hypnotized by, even if it doesn't punch me on the gut level of Planet of the Apes, The Matrix or Star Wars. Above all, It is a splendid match of director and subject matter. One senses Kubrick behind the scenes, like those enigmatic monoliths, manipulating each and every moment. Almost forty years old, the film is as fresh and gorgeous and as open to possibilities and interpretation as it was when first created in the 1960s. Perhaps it isn't as flashy as later sci-fi epics, but it is surely one of the grandest, most thought-provoking, most carefully (and artfully) constructed visions of mankind and his future ever brought to us in the cinema.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 37: Space: Above and Beyond (1995-1996)

Imagine a "gritty, gutsy" (per TV Guide...) futuristic war drama colored in hues of moody battleship gray. It takes place in deep space following a devastating sneak attack on humanity by an unfathomable and merciless enemy. Our protagonists in the war effort (which we are "losing badly") are young, attractive (but headstrong and angsty...) pilots. Much of the action occurs inside the cockpits of cramped space fighters and in military briefing rooms. The universe depicted by the series is one of murky morality and hard truths which shift in the troublesome and ambiguous sands of wartime. For instance, the specter of torture (here termed "re-education") is brought up in one installment.

You don't think I'm talking about the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, do you?

Instead, the first paragraph of this review describes the Glen Morgan/James Wong sci-fi war drama, Space: Above and Beyond, a mid-nineties-era TV endeavor that aired on the Fox Network for one season (and twenty-three hour-long episodes), and which concerned a squadron of rookie - but committed - soldiers serving in the United States Marine Corps Space Aviator Cavalry aboard a mobile space headquarters; not the Galactica, but the Saratoga.

Set in the year 2063, Space: Above and Beyond sets its stories in the immediate aftermath of a devastating ambush on an Earth Colony ship bound for distant Tellus, ("the furthest any human has ever ventured,") and thus this nearly-forgotten series imagined a futuristic 9/11 scenario...six years before 9/11 (and eight years before the Ron Moore remake of BSG). The enemy in this case was not the Cylon race, but the menacing and mysterious "Chigs," a derogatory slang name which refers to chiggers... fleas which burrow into the skin.

What remains so interesting about Space: Above and Beyond is not merely that the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica co-opted so much from its look, feel and narrative without so much as a "by your command," but rather that the creators' of this cult series seemed to understand - far earlier than most of us - how truly divided Americans were becoming as a people; and how - as bad as it might be - a war effort could conceivably bring us together.

Some context: Space: Above and Beyond premiered just a year after the 1994 "Contract with America" Republican Congress swept the elections, a stinging rebuke to President Clinton and a victory for Nute Gunray...I mean Newt Gingrich. I often recall the 1994 elections as the "revenge of the white man" referendum, because this was the era in recent history in which there was so much complaining in the press about Hilary Clinton's (unelected) role in policy decisions (like health care), as well as lamenting over censorship re-crafted under the new term "political correctness." There was also a mighty backlash against social progress that appeared to the hard-right in America to undercut the white man in favor of women and minorities, specifically programs such as affirmative action. Remember, this was post-Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas America, when the buzz word "sexual harassment" was all the rage. On a personal note, it was around this time that I first heard the name Rush Limbaugh, and began to meet otherwise seemingly-normal people who followed his every rant like he was some kind of cult leader.

Space: Above and Beyond reflects this reality in nineties America by featuring a diverse group of pilots, the men and women who will fight the Chig attackers. In particular, one of the pilots is Lt. Cooper Hawkes (Rodney Rowland), who is part of a new minority in America called a "Tank," a term which is more derogatory slang, this time for "in vitros," citizens who were conceived and born in artificial gestation tanks.

America is still land of the free and home of the brave in 2063, but that doesn't mean that the "in vitro" class can expect total equality. As one character states bluntly in the pilot, "we believe in civil rights for in vitros, but not at the expense of our rights." This is EXACTLY what the debate was in the country at the time: women and African-Americans should have equal rights, as long as we didn't establish any laws that gave them privileges over the white man, some believed. Meanwhile - on the show - racism towards the in vitros still flourishes in the ranks of the space marines, mostly out of ignorance. "Tanks are lazy and don't care about anyone," reports one soldier, relying on an old stereotype. Later, a character registers surprise that "Tanks" actually dream. It's always easier to demonize the enemy (even a domestic one...), when you can somehow render them sub-human. Even the military equipment on hand in the Corps. doesn't fit the "Tanks," and Hawkes has to cut off part of his space helmet to accommodate a common "Tank" birth mark. "They don't make nothing with In Vitros in mind," he laments.

Like the new Battlestar Galactica, everything is kind of dingy and military on Space: Above and Beyond - it's a dirty, used, lived-in universe. But unlike the new BSG, which is often derided as "West Wing in Space" because of its on-the-nose and deadly-serious political agitprop, on Space: Above and Beyond there is actually a sense of humor in evidence. In particular, the series alludes directly to film and television history in several sequences. "I knew we couldn't be alone," says one character, an answer to the Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) ad-line "We are not alone." Early on, another character states "In space, no one can hear you scream...unless it is the battle cry of the United States Marines!," a twist on Alien's (1979's) famous tag. Then there's the guest performance by Lee Ermey in the pilot, reprising his drill sergeant role from Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987), only sans profanity. In another situation, a space satellite blare...the Ramones.

In the second episode of the series, "The Farthest Man from Home," one character, a pilot named Nathan West (Morgan Weisser) watches archival footage (on the History Network) of JFK delivering his landmark speech about going to the moon "not because it is easy...but because it is hard," a rallying cry for progress and common purpose. Yet in the context of Space: Above and Beyond, I think it means something equally important. A society divided by inequalities of race and sex (like the reactionary America of the mid-1990s...) could still come together in the face of a looming threat. The most direct metaphor was likely World War II and Space: Above and Beyond perhaps hoped to suggest a space age Greatest Generation, one that would put politics aside and unite to fight the greatest foe mankind had ever faced. This generation would have boasted - according to the dialogue -"faith in each other; in a better world," - and more so, it would stick together in times of hardship because (according to the second episode) "every life in this war is tied together." Isn't it a shame that a fictional series about a sneak attack predicted the coming-together of a divided free society, but when the sneak attack came on September 11, 2001, our real-life leaders sought only to gain political points and prestige and to deride political opponents as unpatriotic and weak? Space: Above and Beyond depicts how things could be (and how things were in World War II): national shared sacrifice and common purpose as "storm clouds of war gather."

Going back and watching Space: Above and Beyond, I can see how it is a more thoughtful (and prescient) series than I recognized when I first saw it twelve years ago. In fact, the series feels more timely and important now, since so much about our national context has changed in the last twelve years. The only place in which the series has aged badly is the realm of special effects. Since the series was produced in the mid-1990s, very primitive computer generated imagery is utilized for all the combat and outer space sequences, and in truth...it looks like a video game. I'm sure the effects were expensive and realistic in their day, but CGI ages worse than miniature work...and faster. Also, some of the green-screening in the episodes I watched is horrendous: you can see the green outline around the main characters during effects shots, and it is a distraction. Despite such shortcomings, Space: Above and Beyond deserves for hosannas, especially from battlestar fans. Nearly a decade before that re-imagination, Morgan and Wong sought to accomplish the same things as the Sci-Fi series. It wasn't always successful; but nor was it always obvious. It's always a little galling (not to mention historically inaccurate...) to hear how the new Battlestar has revitalized televised science fiction by taking the genre away from the Star Trek model. This series did so; and earlier.

A final note that may offend (and I apologize): If Space: Above and Beyond had been lucky enough to air on the Sci-Fi Channel, it might have lasted four seasons too. That's right, I said lucky. You've got to laugh at all those BSG fans who complain - boo-hoo - that the Sci-Fi Channel doesn't know how to handle a "quality" series (Jamie Bamber, j'accuse). Here are the facts: if Battlestar aired anywhere else (the CW, the old WB, UPN, or any of the big four...) it would have lasted half-a-season at best with the ratings of the last three years. Heck, my favorite show, the brilliant but low-rated Veronica Mars drew higher ratings than Battlestar Galactica its last season on the CW...and it got canceled anyway! Fans of BSG should laud the Sci-Fi Channel for sticking with a very lowly-rated program through thick and thin. It wasn't always that way for genre programming; as those who remember Space: Above and Beyond and other one-season wonders could testify.

RETRO TOY FLASHBACK #69: Pulsar: The Ultimate Man of Adventure (1976; Mattel)

In 1976, Kenner dominated the toy market with its excellent and diverse line of toys related to The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Desiring a share of that same market, Ideal produced a 16 inch superheroic figure named Electroman (with an enemy alien called "Zogg"), Mego produced "The Bionic Villain" Dr. Kromedome(!) and not to be left out, Mattel got into the act with an interesting hero of their own called Pulsar, "The Ultimate Man of Adventure."

As advertised on his box, Pulsar stands an impressive "13 1/2 inches tall with space boots and costume. Jacket has emblem on his right breast. Transparent chest exposes "workable" vital organs. Two computer "brain" mission disks & complete instructions included."

Thus, this white-haired hero (with a very serious face...) wears a spiffy black and white uniform with lightning emblem or insignia on his chest. If you remove the velcro wrappings of his suit, you can see all the major organs of Pulsar's chest: lungs, heart, intestines, everything. You can even see his blood flowing around in there. "You activate his vital systems!" screamed the box, advising children to "Push his back, Heart beats! Lungs breathe! Blood flows!" I guess this was competition of sort for Colonel Steve Austin, who had a bionic arm and a bionic eye.

Pulsar also, apparently, could be programed for each mission you sent him on, and you could lift his up face and "insert mission disks" directly into his brain. "He almost comes alive!," said the box. Recommended for ages 5 and up, "no mission is impossible for" Pulsar.

The intrepid Pulsar fanatic could monitor Pulsar in a well-constructed playset (sold separately) called the Life Systems Center. This device allowed you to "program him" for missions, "double-check X-rays", "light-scan his brain", "set all systems," and "activate vital organs." Molded in blue plastic, the Life Systems Center is essentially a very large laboratory wall with three sections. In the left-most section is a body-length X-ray scanner, "screen" and machine (which lights up; batteries not included).

In the middle section, Pulsar is strapped in with a belt, for monitoring, and there are "shoulder braces" and a "brain probe light."

And in the right most section of the Life Systems Center, you have your control panel,which you activate with a large press-key molded in orange, here described as a "remote activator." A wheel allows you to change Pulsar's program from "status check" to "Go*Program A4*Go," to "Backup Program" to "Start Program" to (in red letters) "All Systems Max." There are also programs D10, C8 and B6...whatever they are.

Pulsar's "Pulsatronic system" is monitored and can be keyed with a control dial set on "verge" or "C8" or "0.20." His biologic system can be made to read "verge," "go" or "limit" and his Power Systems also includes several cryptic read-outs. It's all very technical and neat, if you are living in the year of the Bicentennial. Heck - I love it.

Finally, not pictured (because I don't have him...yet...), is Pulsar's dastardly nemesis: Hypnos, "The Ultimate Enemy." Hypnos is a villainous-looking humanoid who has a giant hypno wheel embedded in his chest. Molded in black and purple, he's pretty scary and alien-looking.

I remember seeing "Pulsar The Ultimate Man of Adventure" in toy stores when I was six years old, and passing them up for Six Million Dollar Man and Space:1999 toys, but really, Pulsar is pretty damn cool. I don't exactly what precisely his skill set is, except that he has a transparent chest, but still, he seems like a pretty neat collectible. He didn't have the advantage of his own TV show, so maybe I need to create one. Now I just need to find someone with a see-through torso...

Theme Song of the Week 12: The Powers of Matthew Star (1983)

McFarland New Releases

This month, McFarland continues to chart the worlds of film and television reference with an interesting assortment of books. You've got two treatises on superheroes, one focusing on Superman, and one looking at the nexus between superheroes and ancient gods. Then there's a study of Sopranos' creator David Chase. Even game show hosts get their due. Here's a look at the cinema/tv titles this month:

Television Game Show Hosts
This unique work profiles the private lives and careers of 32 American game show hosts, including the originals (e.g., Bill Cullen, Peter Marshall), the classics (e.g., Bob Barker), and the contemporaries (e.g., Regis Philbin). Organized alphabetically by host, each chapter begins with a personal profile including dates and places of birth, family information, and a complete career history. Immediately following is a detailed biography highlighting the most significant developments of each host’s early life and career, complete with successes, failures, and scandals. Frequently, the biography is accompanied by personal interviews with the host and/or his family and closest friends.

Considering David Chase
A compelling and innovative television writer, David Chase has created distinctive programs since the 1970s, each reflecting his edgy humor and psychological realism. These critical essays examine Chase’s television writings, placing particular emphasis on how his past works have shaped and influenced the current cultural phenomenon of HBO’s The Sopranos, and studying Chase’s use of identity, community, and place in defining his on-screen characters. Topics explored include Chase’s constructs of the urban L.A. environment in The Rockford Files, the portrayal of hybridized American archetypes in Northern Exposure, and the interpretation of sexual identity/masculinity in The Sopranos. An appendix containing complete episode guides for The Rockford Files, Northern Exposure, and The Sopranos is also included.

Politics and the American Television Comedy
This work examines the unique and ever-changing relationship between politics and comedy through an analysis of several popular American television programs. Focusing on close readings of the work of Ernie Kovacs, Soupy Sales, and Andy Kaufman, as well as Green Acres and The Gong Show, the author provides a unique glimpse at the often subversive nature of avant-garde television comedy. The crisis in American television during the political unrest of the late 1960s is also studied, as represented by individual analyses of The Monkees, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and All in the Family. The author also focuses on more contemporary American television, drawing a comparative analysis between the referential postmodernism of The Simpsons and the confrontational absurdity of South Park.

Superheroes and Gods

The work provides a unique study of superheroes and gods in literature, popular culture, and ancient myth. The author selects a number of mythological figures (e.g., Babylonia’s Gilgamesh and Enkidu), ancient gods (e.g., Greece’s Eros and Tartarus), and modern superheroes (e.g., the United States’ Superman and Captain Marvel) and identifies the often striking similarities between each unique category of characters. The author contends that the vast majority of mythological superheroes follow the same archetypal character patterns, regardless of each hero’s unique time period or culture. Each of the first nine chapters examines the heroes and gods of a particular region or country, while the final chapter examines modern descendants of the hero prototype like Batman and Spiderman and several infamous anti-heroes (for example, Dracula and The Hulk).

Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway

First introduced in a 1938 comic book, Superman has since become an iconic character in American entertainment. This complete history covers Superman’s appearances in film and television, from the 1941 introduction of the first Superman cartoon to the 2006 live-action film Superman Returns. The book includes several rarely seen photographs of the actors who have brought Superman to life for over seven decades, including Clayton “Bud” Collyer, Kirk Alyn, George Reeves and Christopher Reeve. Multiple appendices provide a complete listing of Superman-related books and websites, along with a comprehensive list of the cast and characters featured in Superman films, television shows, and radio programs since 1941.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 36: Veronica Mars (Season 3)

Conventional wisdom aside, I'd say the best series on TV got even better during its third and regrettably final season. I mention conventional wisdom because the MSM meme on Veronica Mars 3.0 was that it somehow was "less than" the first two seasons; in particular that the shift from the high school setting to the Hearst College locale was somehow detrimental to the series' vibe and authenticity. Also, the format shift from a seasonal mystery to several seasonal mysteries (lasting several episodes a piece) was viewed as a deficit by some critics.

I couldn't disagree more. In fact, going back and watching the third season on DVD, I'd state that this third season - in many ways - is the most confident and self-assured season of Veronica Mars; and that's saying something considering the high bar established by the first two seasons. But let's re-cap before diving in to a discussion of Season 3.

Veronica Mars is a highly-addictive contemporary mystery series is set in and around the town of Neptune in sunny Southern California, a virtual playground for the very rich kids of privilege and wealth. There, cynical, sharp (but sweet...) teenager Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) and her detective father, Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni) work together in his detective agency, solving petty, occasionally sleazy cases about adultery and the like.

But delightfully, this premise is only the starting point for something far richer than a crime drama. Informing each and every mystery featured on the series is a two-pronged social commentary (or more accurately, social observation). One level of the tale focuses obsessively on class warfare, the battle between the haves and the have-nots at Neptune High as Veronica - an outsider - navigates between worlds. She's a woman with no nation, distrusted by the rich and poor alike.

Secondly, Veronica Mars is a colorful, brilliant (and extremely tech savvy.) updating of the film noir genre, replete with femme fatales, a private dick, labyrinthine mysteries, laconic voice over narration and other staples of the form. Noticeably, however, the mysteries featured in the series revolve around a unique central conceit: how 21st century gadgets impact crime and crime solving. Wireless computers, I-Pods, blogs, web pages, cell phones, etcetera, are crucial tools (and crucial clues) in Veronica's universe. Veronica is thus Sam Spade for the Wikipedia generation, and thus she's very true-to-life in an important sense: like many youngsters of her generation, she's "connected. Not to all the people around her, necessarily, but to the vast amounts of information now available for the grabbing...if you know how. Personally, I find this "tech" private eye conceit a welcome change from all the forensic nonsense on TV. This is a show where the detectives still do the detecting.

In the third season, Veronica attends Hearst University. She’s still dating the millionaire bad boy son of a movie star (and convicted murderer) Aaron Echolls, the angst-ridden Logan (Jason Dohring). Veronica also maintains her “Scooby gang” of helpful associates and hangers-on, which this season includes old friend and tech girl Mac (Tina Marjorino ), a kid from the wrong side of the tracks named Eli "Weevil" (Capra), and the loyal and trustworthy Wallace (Percy Daggs). New to the squad this year: Wallace’s dorky roommate, Piz (Chris Lowell). Oh, and there's also Mac's uncomfortably perky roommate, Parker (Julie Gonzalo).

With Veronica out of high school, one might suspect that a critical element of the series format is sacrificed: the central location of the class-warfare subplot. That's true, perhaps, but the third season has pinpointed a good and welcome corollary that shifts the series' debate a bit.

In particular, the Hearst College campus is a hotbed of competing interests and agendas and Veronica very soon finds herself a woman without a nation once more, viewed suspiciously by all those bearing entrenched, closed-minded points of view. In particular, the first run of episodes, from "Welcome Wagon" to "Spit and Eggs," involves the pitched battle between a politically-incorrect fraternity (and by association, the Greek system...), and a group of radicalized, hostile feminists. Now, at first glance, you might expect a series entitled Veronica Mars to reflexively, mindlessly adopt the point of view of the feminists; but Veronica Mars is a post-feminist efort in a glorious and illuminating way. Polarization is the true enemy, the series appears to conclude, and in the course of several exciting episodes, Veronica discovers that although the fraternity jocks are a bunch of neanderthal sexists, the feminists - though different in their concerns and agenda - are really no better. Each side is committed to the humiliation and destruction of the other side. Veronica's only commitment? To the truth. The first several episodes deal persuasively with the idea of parody (or free speech), sexual assault, hypocrisy and more.

For her courageous stand against entrenched agendas, Veronica wins no popularity contests on campus; she doesn't toe to the feminist party line when she helps to prove that a particularly nasty fraternity house was not involved in series of campus rapes. And on the other hand, she gleefully goes after the fraternity system - and those involved - when necessary to find the truth. Veronica's stance points to a fascinating facet about modern America, and one that I've only seen dramatized on Veronica Mars. Which is: no cause is honored when one takes glee in the destruction of an enemy; or more accurately, when one lies, maneuvers, plots and manipulates to see that the enemy - no matter how bad - stumbles and falls. Veronica even comes to realize this herself in one story. In "There's Got to Be a Morning After Pill," she is given a golden opportunity to seek glorious revenge against an enemy named Madison Sinclair, but Veronica chooses an interesting (and new) path.

It isn't merely the competing ideologies of feminism vs brain dead fraternities that are exposed on the third season of Veronica Mars. The series features a great episode about human nature and why it is all to easy for some people to commit torture in "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week," a story that assigns characters roles as either guards or prisoners as part of a sociology class experiment. Another story, "Show Me The Monkey," pits animal rights activists against researchers experimenting on animals. What I like about Veronica Mars is that, not unlike South Park (except without the profanity), the series permits both "polarized" sides to get their say, and then - in the end - with a minimum of preaching or sanctimony, Veronica comes in and devastates both sides with a dose of common sense, logic and clarity. It is...cathartic.

At this point, I can only say this: Veronica Mars for President of the United States. Seriously. If the last fifteen years have proven anything in this country, it is that intense polarization is a dead end for the country. Because what are we left with? Half the country on one side, angry. The other half on the other side, equally angry. And whoever ekes out 51% does a victory lap and gets its way...regardless of the fact that 49% of the people voted against them. Environmentalists versus business, feminists versus sexists, pro-life vs pro-choice. In the end...where does it get us as a people and a country? Veronica Mars deals with this idea in an intelligent fashion. I hate to reduce it to platitudes, but the message seems to be: truth above all.

Watching Veronica Mars' third season this time around, I am reminded not just of the film noir format, nor class warfare, nor snarky teen drama, but rather - surprisingly - the Western genre. In some sense, Veronica Mars -- with that heroic sounding name -- is herself the stranger who rides into town, unattached and unsullied by politics, who seeks and then metes justice for the townspeople. The trappings are all different, of course, but Veronica Mars speaks to the same hunger that superhero films and TV shows often do. It speaks to this deep longing in America - this long-standing myth - of the lone individual who rides into a society and fixes the problems. Unlike Superman or Spider-Man, Veronica doesn't have superpowers, however. Her standing and power and authority arises from the fact that she is a member of "no party or clique" (like my favorite blogger Andrew Sullivan). She is unattached and thus susceptible to...the truth.

Veronica Mars also concerns the love life and personal experiences of the lead character, not merely the mysteries she routinely solves. But the approach on the "home front" is just as intelligent and cleverly written. It is even-handed to the same high degree as the social observation. One thoroughly impressive episode this season, called "Of Vice and Men" thoroughly dissects the male of our species. Yep, men - in all shapes and forms - find themselves under Veronica's microscope in this episode, and her conclusions are witty, fascinating, canny, and I must say, all together fair. How many other series can say the same thing?

Veronica Mars is a character I admire (and love) on a series that is brilliantly-written and well-performed. Television of this quality doesn't come around very often and it's hard to say goodbye...especially after this terrific season. But Veronica...we'll always have Neptune. And Hearst College.

Booklist Likes Horror Films of the 1980s

In time for Halloween, Booklist reviewed Horror Films of the 1980s. Here's a sample of the review:
"The author watched hundreds of films, interviewed talents behind the movies and invited guest reviewers and critics to round out the details...Writing is clear, with a personal but expert tone. The 2-column layout facilitates reading the dense text."

"Can a horror film reference book be pleasurable browsing? This volume does a good job, combining useful information and enjoyable commentaries, and is recommended..."

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

COLLECTIBLE OF THE WEEK: The Bionic Woman Sports Car (1976)

"Designed for action packed bionic adventures," is this impressive vehicle from Kenner. You are looking at the sports car for the world's first bionic woman (no, not Katee Sackhoff..) but Lindsay Wagner's Jaime Sommers. Why a bionic woman (who can run very, very fast...) needs a sports car is another question all together.

Anyway, this spiffy and (very large) toy from the heyday of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman in the 1970s is a great collectible. The sports car features a "front storage area with "bionic plug-in for first aid and repairs" as well as a back storage area "for extra clothing, shoes and mission purse." Of course, that last bit is kinda sexist, no? This is a secret agent for OSI and she gets a mission "purse?" The trunk is for...shoes? The extra clothing I understand, since Jaime was always going undercover as a cop or a nun or the like. But again...shoes?

The car also has an interesting bionic adventure feature. As the box reads: "Emergency brakes failed! Don't worry, door swings open to help Jaime make bionic stops." Ah, maybe that's why she needs extra shoes? Stopping a speeding car with your toes is hell on footwear, I'm told. Yes, that must be it, since this car originally came packaged with special shoes.

The Bionic Woman Sports car came fully assembled, with no batteries needed. However, figures and "mission purse" were not included.

Same Time Next Centon: A Tale of Two Battlestars

Number Six, the blonde Cylon seductress of the contemporary Battlestar Galactica, often informs a wavering Gaius Balter that in terms of cosmic events, “this has all happened before; this will all happen again.” Battlestar Galactica fans understand from interviews with re-imaginer Ronald D. Moore that her warning adheres to Moore’s overarching thesis about a cyclical galactic timeline, about history repeating itself.

However, there’s another way to read the remake. Indeed “this has all happened before”...because Moore’s Battlestar Galactica is a 21st century re-imagination of the original 1978-1979 series, and the two efforts intertwine in a complicated, multi-faceted way. The programs share many significant ingredients: characters, central situations, mythologies, settings and antagonists. Moore’s notation that series events will “happen again” may even represent a joke about the cutthroat Hollywood scene; that given the industry’s predilection for remakes, it is just a matter of time before Battlestar Galactica is remade again, depicting the same incidents a third time. Understanding that we have seen these characters before and that all this is cyclical, let's compare some of the events, characters and contexts of each Battlestar Galactica.

The Story So Far

A side-by-side survey of Battlestar Galactica 1978 and Battlestar Galactica 2003 reveals several narrative similarities worth noting. Let’s pick out these plot details and look at some points of commonality.

Firstly, both series involve the same premise: a surprise attack on the Twelve Colonies of Man in a distant solar system. In both universes, a Cylon ambush renders mankind virtually extinct, leaving a handful of survivors to board a “rag tag” fleet of spaceships in search of a quasi-mythical planet called Earth.

Following the Cylon assault, the fleet’s first order of business in both universes is identical: the procurement of much-needed supplies for a long trek across the stars. In “Saga of a Star World,” the first episode of Glen A. Larson’s series, the Galactica clears a path through the Nova of Madagon and arrives at a distant outpost called Carillon. There the Colonials acquire stores of the precious fuel, Tylium.

In Ronald D. Moore’s re-telling, the 2003 miniseries, the about-to-be-decommissioned Galactica requires supplies too, only this time it is ammo (bullets, specifically). This Galactica jumps to a distant outpost called Ragnarok Anchorage.

These destinations differ, but Carillon and Ragnarok Anchorage both tellingly cloak insidious Cylon traps. In the case of the former, it’s the Ovion feeding grounds (where fleet members are devoured), as well as a nearby Cylon base star. At Ragnarok, a Cylon fleet circles above the atmospheric disturbance while below a Cylon agent, Leoben, tangles with Commander Adama on the station. In both situations, the Cylons have planned better than the humans. After the first strike, the enemy has already plotted a second strike.

Following an escape from Cylon terrain, the Galacticas of both universes navigate to the planet Kobol (based on the Mormon “Planet of the Gods,” Kolob.) There the quest for Earth – a subplot both series share – takes shape. This is important: if you're going to have a space odyssey, it's good to have a defined destination, and that order of business arrives in both series not terribly long after the escape from the Cylon attack. Also, the existence of Earth (The Thirteenth Colony) in both series is considered shaky: a “fable.” In the original series, Baltar even calls it “a myth of half-drunken star travelers.”

In the episode “Lost Planet of the Gods,” Commander Adama searches for the path to Earth on Kobol in a subterranean, Egyptian-style pharaoh’s tomb. He translates ancient hieroglyphs before a Cylon air assault forces a hasty retreat. What he makes out however is enigmatic: a spotty record of the exodus, the departure of the Twelve Tribes, and finally, the last days of the planet and the second exodus, that of the Thirteenth Tribe.

On the new Galactica, President Roslin assigns Kara Thrace to obtain the Arrow of Apollo, an ancient artifact which unseals the tomb of Athena on Kobol and point the direction to Earth. In “Home,” a two part story, the tomb of Athena is opened on Kobol and a “map” is activated, a virtual reality affair revealing the constellations of the Twelve Colonies in Earth’s night sky. In both cases, the map serves as an incomplete and ambiguous clue, a first step to Earth, but not the last puzzle piece.

Kobol also adversely affects both versions of Commander Adama. The dignified military leader in both instances uncharacteristically resorts to physical violence on the planet surface, strangling a treacherous enemy. In “Lost Planet of the Gods,” Adama lunges for Baltar’s throat, and Apollo and Serina physically restrain him.

In “Home Part II,” Adama chokes Boomer, the Cylon who shot him in first season cliffhanger, “Kobol’s Last Gleaming Part II,” and Apollo and Starbuck hold him back.

The narrative similarities hardly end with these incidents. The final episode of the original Battlestar Galactica, “The Hand of God” features the Colonials tiring of their long retreat from the Cylons and opting to launch a surprise attack against an unsuspecting base ship. The traitorous Baltar provides critical knowledge of the Cylon spacecraft so that Apollo and Starback can successfully destroy it.

In the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, the episode identically titled “Hand of God” also sees the Colonials retaliating, punching the Cylon “bully” in the nose by destroying a supply depot on a desolate planet. Cementing the connection to the earlier series, it is Baltar whose expertise is required for the raid. Is this fact just coincidence? No - not at all. It's all happened before, and here we see it happening again.

Both versions of Battlestar Galactica also feature adventures in which our stalwart crew(s) encounter another surviving Battlestar, the Pegasus. In the original version (“Living Legend”), Cain is a charismatic Patton-type commander; in the re-imagination (“Pegasus”), Caine is a psychotic, murderous female admiral who acts like she might have worked for Blackwater. In both stories, the Galactica and Pegasus teams clash, then eventually join-up to take out Cylon forces. In the 1970s version, the target is a Cylon base on the planet Gamorray; in the post-9/11 re-do, it’s a Cylon “resurrection ship.” Both attacks are successful.

Another similarity in storytelling involves “missing pilot” stories, episodes wherein a viper pilot is feared lost after crash landing on a planet. Search parties look for the missing hero until a last minute rescue. On the original Battlestar Galactica, Captain Apollo was stranded for a time on a “frontier” planet with a Cylon enforcer named Red Eye.

In “The Young Lords,” it was Starbuck who found himself trapped on a swamp-covered world of unicorns and forests. There he aided teenagers in their organized resistance against a Cylon garrison.

In the revamped series, Kara fights for survival on an inhospitable world following a crash in ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.” And in “The Farm,” she is stranded on Caprica with navigator Helo. Together, they join the resistance forces led by ex-Buccaneer Simon Anders.

Other events from the adventures of the original rag-tag fleet resonate across the new series. In both universes, convicted criminals are deployed for a difficult mission in an extreme environment (an ice-world). In the classic series, “Gun on Ice Planet Zero” sees hardened thugs launching a mission to destroy a Cylon pulsar cannon. In the re-imagination, Tom Zarek’s ship of prisoners, the Astral Queen, is needed to work subterranean ice into water during a water shortage (“Bastille Day.”)

Also, the training of new “raw” recruits (called nuggets on the new series) crops up in both ventures. Starbuck trains shuttle pilots and (gasp!) women including Athena and Serina to fly vipers during “Lost Planet of the Gods” while his successor trains raw recruits in “Act of Contrition.” Notably, both Starbucks offer the same guidance to the rookies: “stick to your leader.”

The second season episode of Sci-Fi Channel’s Galactica, “Valley of Darkness,” shares elements with the original series installment “Fire in Space.” In both cases, a Cylon ship crashes into one of Galactica’s hangar bays, setting off a series of disasters. In the earlier show, a fire rages out of control aboard; in the latter, a Cylon attack party aims to depressurize the ship. In both stories, Adama lays incapacitated in a surgical theater while Colonel Tigh takes the bridge (or CIC, as the case may be).

It is conventional wisdom that that the two series are quite different, but just look here at all the common ground in terms of the overall story. It is not the text itself that is so different from show to show. As Roger Ebert often writes about movies, it isn't what a movie is about, it is "how" it is about it that's important. The differences in Galacticas fall under the same category, if you think about it. We begin to see differences more clearly when we examine the characters populating each show.

The Face in the Mirror

Characters in different Battlestar Galactica incarnations often share name and rank, but differ in substantial fashion. First an issue of nomenclature: in the original series, characters boasted one name: Apollo, Starbuck, Baltar, or Athena. The new series more closely resembles Earth-style names with familiar-sounding monikers like Laura Roslin and Saul Tigh. The mythological names such as “Apollo” are retained but converted to pilot call-signs, much like “Maverick” in the 1986 film Top Gun.

A man named Adama commands Galactica in both versions of the Larson-based material, but is truly a different man depending on incarnation. In both worlds, he is the father-figure of the fleet and the biological father of Zac (or Zak) and Apollo. The most important difference between leaders is that Lorne Greene’s character serves the religious, political and military commander of the fleet, rather like Pat Robertson holding the posts of U.S. President and commander of the U.S.S. Nimitz simultaneously. The first Adama also believes with all his heart that the planet Earth is real and that the legends handed down from the Book of the Word are true.

In the new series, Adama’s religious beliefs have been transferred to a new character, the President of the Colonies, Laura Roslin. The new Adama is not a man of faith nor a political leader who sits on the Quorum of Twelve. Instead, his duties are restricted to military functions. Like his namesake on the original series, this William "Husker" Adama came up through the ranks and is a former viper pilot.

Adama’s right-hand man in both incarnations is Colonel Tigh. Both men share a long history in the military alongside Adama but the first Tigh is a black man who doesn’t share Saul Tigh’s primary vice: alcoholism. Nor is the original Tigh married. What the two Colonel Tighs do share is a reputation as a hard-nosed officer and enforcer of wayward pilots. We also now know the "new" Tigh is a Cylon sleeper, which also differentiates him from his predecessor.

In the earlier Battlestar Galactica. Boomer and Starbuck - both male – served as viper pilots, and their characters have countenanced dramatic change in the re-vamp. The original Boomer was a black man, not an Asian female, and was raised on Caprica. Sharon “Boomer” Valerii by way of comparison, was raised on Sagitarron and is actually a Cylon sleeper agent.

Kara Thrace adopts many characteristics of Dirk Benedict’s Lt. Starbuck yet is also quite different. She boasts a fondness for card games (Pyramid, specifically), regularly chomps a cigar, is sexually promiscuous (counting Baltar, Zak, and Simon Anders among her conquests), and most importantly, one hell of a viper pilot. The original Starbuck, an orphan, was a fun-loving scoundrel, a rogue, whereas the new Starbuck is angrier and meaner, a product, perhaps, of her abusive childhood. Kara is confrontational and disrespectful, particularly to Colonel Tigh, whereas the original Starbuck was easy-going and charming.

Baltar is a very different man in each version of this material. In the original, Adama states that he possesses “the tongue of an angel” and the “soul of a serpent.” The original Baltar commands his own battlestar and sits on the Council of the Twelve, but it is he who engineers the destruction of the Colonies with his Cylon allies. His goal is to subjugate the survivors of the massacre under his command, a plan which never materializes. Later, Baltar commands a base star in the Cylon Empire and pursues the Galactica through the stars.

Gaius Baltar is a different animal. One of the most brilliant minds on Caprica, Baltar is a scientist and advisor to President Adar. His crime is not the betrayal of the human race, but rather permitting a personal relationship with a woman (a Cylon agent), to cloud his judgment. He allows her access to Caprica’s Defense Main Frame, which paves the way for Cylon nuclear bombardment. An important distinction: the re-imagined Baltar never intended to collude with the Cylons or harm humanity. Instead, he is left trying to cover-up his complicity in the attack, knowing he will be executed as a traitor if discovered.

Of all the main characters, perhaps it is Captain Apollo who has changed least from one version of this space saga to the next. In both universes, Apollo is a man of integrity. He is an accomplished pilot, a respected officer, a son of Adama and a thoughtful, heroic man. In the original, Apollo faces many personal tragedies (including the deaths of a brother and wife), and broaches fatherhood by adopting Boxey.

Lee “Apollo” Adama has lost his brother, Zak, a death which estranges him from his father as the mini-series begins. This breach is repaired in time but re-asserted when Lee takes Roslin’s side during a military coup in “Kobol’s Last Gleaming.” The original Apollo never sided against his father publicly, not even when the evil Count Iblis became a popular figure in the fleet or Cain arrived with the Pegasus.

It is the Cylons who have changed the most on Battlestar Galactica. In the original series, a race of lizard-people called Cylons long ago constructed humanoid robot servants. Eventually, the Lizard people became extinct, but their malevolent machines lived on. The Cylon Centurions on the series appear mechanical in nature, including Lucifer’s IL series, but the Imperious Leader retains a more lizard-like appearance.

On the re-imagination, Centurions survive in more advanced mechanical form. However, a new Cylon breed also exists: Twelve humanoid models that function as sleeper agents inside human communities; very much like the Terminators in James Cameron's 1984 Schwarzenegger film. They are sometimes referred to as "skin jobs," which is how human-appearing and acting replicants were verbally denigrated in Ridley Scott's 1982 film, Blade Runner. However, the real difference in the Cylon races involves genesis. In Moore’s version, man played Frankenstein and created the Cylons. They are not the product of an alien culture, but man’s own children, grown-up and resentful.

Supporting characters from the original Battlestar Galactica appear in the remake occasionally, particularly Boxey and Jolly. Some, however, including the “socialator” Cassiopiea, viper pilot Sheba, and the mechanical drone Muffit, remain M.I.A.

Ronald Moore introduced in 2003 a whole raft of new dramatis personae, including President Laura Roslin, Number Six, Chief Tyrol, bridge officers Dualla and Gaeta, Tom Zarek, and Billy.

The new series has attempted at times to appear faithful to the vehicle designs of the original. Several ship designs in “new” rag-tag fleet, including the Astral Queen derive almost entirely from the source material. The Galactica herself maintains - in very broad terms - the same outline: roughly crocodilian, but with markedly different surface detail and markings. A modification of the vessel for the new series involves the hangers, which can now be retracted during a “jump” to light-speed.

Vipers are similar to their predecessors, but Cylon Raiders and base ships have undergone a dramatic face lift. In the original series, three Cylon Centurions worked in “communist” unison to fly a raider. In today’s remake, the raider (which resembles the Dark Knight's batwing) is a living machine, a Cylon pet requiring no pilots. The new series resurrects the colonial shuttle design nd is seen in such episodes as “Kobol’s Last Gleaming” and “Home,” while also introducing a new design: the Raptor.

If one considers “music” as an important character on a TV series, one could note that the majestic Battlestar Galactica fanfare by Stu Phillips and Glen A. Larson has been brought out of mothballs for the new series, particularly for the mini-series and the second season episode “Final Cut.”

Strange Bedfellows

Where Battlestar Galacticas most controversially and dramatically differ is in the arena of political persuasion. The original series was crafted during an unpopular Presidency, Democrat Jimmy Carter’s, in a time of war, specifically The Cold War with the Soviet Union. Powerful forces in the opposition party, the Republicans, criticized the President for engaging in defeatist negotiations with the enemy. Treaties like SALT II were dismissed as “giving away the nuclear store” and weakening America. As a response, the Republican Party adopted as its platform the notion of “Peace through Strength,” meaning that diplomacy could only be carried out with military force backing it up.

In the original series, civilian leaders proposed unilateral disarmament with the Cylons (“The Saga of the Star World”), fell under the sway of a charismatic Devil, Iblis, (“War of the Gods”), and attempted to negotiate a peace with the untrustworthy Eastern Alliance (“Baltar’s Escape.”) Political leaders were seen as well-meaning fools while the military was lauded as heroic. In “Baltar’s Escape” it was revealed that the fleet had been living under martial law since the Colonies’ destruction…and it was viewed as a good thing! In “Experiment in Terra,” Apollo stood before the government of an imperiled world fighting the “Eastern Alliance” (Eastern Bloc?) and told the members of the administration that the opposite of peace is not war, but slavery, echoing Ronald Reagan's 1964 speech in support of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Ronald D. Moore’s remake airs during another unpopular presidency, that of Republican George W. Bush, and during a time of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It adopts the terrorist attacks on America of September 11, 2001 as its central metaphor (rather than the original's Cold War context) and, much like its predecessor, espouses the philosophies of those in opposition to the Administration. In this case, the show offers a leftist, moral-relativist stance on hot-button issues.

The traditional, moral absolutes of the original Battlestar Galactica have given way to a sense of moral equivalency. Cylons are often treated with sympathy by the new series. Viewers see that “the enemy” possesses a competing religious faith for instance; that Cylons were wronged by the Colonials (treated as slaves), and that they have emotions just like any human being would. Even after a Sharon model attempts to assassinate Adama in “Kobol’s Last Gleaming,” Starbuck fights for another Sharon’s “rights” because she helped her escape from occupied Caprica.

Another way to look at this: the original Battlestar Galactica was about certainty – about the concrete belief that for democracy to survive it must remain strong (militarily, economically and spiritually) and “stay the course.” By contrast, the new Battlestar Galactica is about uncertainty, about a fear that we don’t know who our enemies are. That, in dangerous times, civil liberties will be jeopardized (as they are when Tigh declares martial law) or that controversial techniques to fight enemies (including congressional-style investigations) can be turned into witch-hunts against lawful citizens (“Litmus.’) A military out of control leads to torture in “Flesh and Blood” and rape in “Pegasus,” just like at Iraq’s prison, Abu-Ghraib.

Pop Culture Influences:

In his 1968 treatise, Chariots of the Gods, Swiss author Erich Von Daniken proposed the notion that ancient astronauts traveled to our planet and were regarded by our ancestors as Gods because of their advanced technology in the realms of construction, flight, and medicine. He pointed to the Egyptian Pyramids, the statues of Eastern Island and Paleolithic cave paintings (which depicted men in what might have been space helmets) as evidence of extra-terrestrial hands in early human affairs.

Von Daniken’s speculation about ancient astronauts in human prehistory, though dismissed by scientists, proved vastly popular to a wide readership in the 1970s, and Daniken penned sequels including Gods from Outer Space (1971), Gold of the Gods (1973), Miracles of the Gods (1975), and In Search of Ancient Gods (1976). Glen Larson credited Chariots of the Gods as a key inspiration for Battlestar Galactica. Taking into account this popular theory about the origin of man, Larson seeded his space opera with names and references related to early Earth cultures and mythology. Colonial gamblers thus played a card game called “Pyramid,” and the Viper pilots wore helmets with a distinctly Egyptian flair. Characters were named for Greek gods, including Apollo and Athena.

The name “Adama” was derived from the Old Testament name for the first man to inhabit the Garden of Eden, Adam. In Hebrew, “Adam” also means Earth. Adama’s grand mission also relates to early human mythology. He is the cosmic version of Moses, who led his people out of Egypt circa 1250 B.C. in the Great Exodus. In Battlestar Galactica, Adama does not split the red sea, but leads his people through the red-colored Nova of Madagon.

The name “Baltar” comes from Baal, the ancient Canaanite god of darkness. The name Lucifer – Baltar’s servant – is a name from Christian mythology for the Devil, and “Cylon” – a creature with one eye – alludes to the mythical creature called a Cyclops, who also had a single orb.

These references tie extra-terrestrial characters on Battlestar Galactica to early Christian mythology and Greek myth on Earth, and in conjunction with the opening narration (which states “life here began out there”), reinforce the then-in-vogue belief that ancient astronauts had visited Earth; and that “brothers of man,” might still exist in other parts of the galaxy.

Battlestar Galactica premiered in autumn of 1978, a little over a year after George Lucas’s Star Wars took the world by storm and became the highest-grossing film of all time. John Dykstra, Star Wars special effects maestro, jumped ship to join Galactica, so clearly Star Wars remains a powerful pop culture influence on the series.

By contrast, the new Battlestar Galactica was forged in an epoch of TV and cinematic “re-imaginations” including Godzilla (1998), Lost in Space (1998), The Wild, Wild West (1999), Planet of the Apes (2001) and Smallville (2001 - ). Much as original Battlestar leap-frogged off the success of Star Wars and the newfound popularity of outer space adventures, Moore’s Galactica exploits a pop culture trend that sees nostalgic genre favorites re-booted for a new generation; offering a product with easy and instant brand name identification.

The new Battlestar Galactica also adopts the herky-jerky, hand-held camera techniques of Fox’s “War of Terror” action series 24 to grant the re-imagination a new sense of visual immediacy. As for its dazzling scenes of space combat, Battlestar Galactica builds on the visual effects breakthroughs established by Joss Whedon’s late lamented Firefly (2002), which was the first TV series to incorporate shaky zooms and pans into the space adventure format.

Pick Your Poison: Popular or Acclaimed?

Now the 64,000 dollar question. Which Battlestar Galactica is more successful? That depends entirely on one’s definition of success. The original was inarguably more popular with audiences, drawing sixty-five million viewers to the tube the night it premiered on ABC, September 17, 1978. It was the sixth-highest rated new show of the 1978-1979 season, as well as the highest-rated science fiction TV series of all time until The X-Files premiered in 1993. And when Battlestar Galactica was re-cut and released theatrically, in Sensurround, its surpassed the international box office grosses of mega-hits Grease and Jaws II in Japan, Canada and Great Britain.

Inarguably, the original Battlestar Galactica passed the “test of time.” A one season TV series from 1978 proved so popular and enduring with rabid fans that it survived a quarter-century to become the subject of the 2003 remake. Unsuccessful TV shows don’t get re-imagined; that’s a Hollywood edict.

New Battlestar Galactica has never earned a tenth of the ratings success its predecessor enjoyed, but by contrast has survived longer: airing for four seasons on the Sci-Fi Channel Network. Finally, Ronald Moore’s new Galactica by far and away is the victor in terms of critical acclaim. It has won Emmy Awards, a Peabody, and is a regular staple on critics’ annual “Best Shows on TV” lists. Recently, Time Magazine listed the series as one of the one hundred best in the history of the medium.

Similar stories, different characters, opposite political leanings, different cultural contexts. Which Galactica suits you best?