CULT TV FLASHBACK #62: Otherworld (1985)

"Other Worlds lie outside our seeing; beyond the beyond; on the edge of within. The Great Pyramids: erected by the Ancient Ones as a barricade at the portal between two dimensions; two separate realities. This is the story of one family drawn through a mysterious vortex into the other world and their perilous trek homeward."

-Opening narration to Roderick Taylor's Otherworld (1985)

In January of 1985 -- just days after Ronald Reagan's second inauguration as President of the United States -- CBS introduced a new science-fiction TV series entitled Otherworld. Created by Roderick Taylor, this obscure but fascinating genre series was something of a wolf in sheep's clothing.

On the surface, Otherworld looked rather rather like The Cosby Show or Family Ties meets Lost in Space or The Fantasic Journey.

However, underneath the superficial "family" veneer of the series, Otherworld was often something else: a satire and pointed social commentary on American life in the Gipper's 1980s. It was Gulliver's Travels all over again, made modern, or rather, made futuristic.

During a short shelf life (the series was gone forever from network TV by mid-March of 1985...) Otherworld attempted -- with some dedication -- to achieve the same delicate and ambitious alchemy that had made Star Trek a classic of the form: it served up thoughtful science fiction under the guise of action-packed entertainment.

To be certain, the show wasn't always great (and some episodes were downright bizarre and surreal...) but -- also like Star Trek before it -- Otherworld boasted a weird, attractive sort of charm; a quirky, individual sense of humor and joie de vivre that could, for the most part, gloss over the budgetary inadequacies and the occasionally trite writing.

The first episode of the series, "Rules of Attraction," set up the series premise, protagonists and ground rules. Hal Sterling (Sam Groom) and his wife June (Gretchen Corbett) were typical American middle-class parents -- Reagan democrats (and yuppies...) -- with 2.5 kids: teenagers Trace (Tony O'Dell) and Gina (Jonna Lee), plus pre-adolescent Smith (Brandon Clark in the pilot; Chris Hebert thereafter).

As "Rules of Attraction" began, the Sterling family, on vacation in Egypt, decided to visit the Great Pyramids on a very special day; a day in which six planets in the solar system would align in a manner that "hadn't happened in over 10,000 years."

Before you can say "Land of the Lost," the American family Sterling is whirled through a glowing blue vortex and into an alternate dimension, a mysterious "other world." Yes, It's the same premise, to a degree, that informed not only Land of the Lost, but Fantastic Journey as well.

Only in the latter venture it was not a planetary alignment, but rather a force in the Bermuda Triangle (a strange green cloud) that opened the doorway to another world. Still, The concept of humans crossing over between our world and an "Otherworld" is also one common to ancient mythology; not just Egyptian lore, but Celtic myth as well. For instance, in Irish myth, it was believed that such dimensional crossovers were indeed likelym but only on special calendar days (like planetary alignments...).

But Otherworld derives inspiration from many sources. Even the character names have been created with an eye towards literature and pop culture. The family name "Sterling" means, literally, "admirable" or "fine," even "the best" or "the very best." This is an appropriate choice since this American family in a strange new world represents us as we'd like to be; at our finest.

"Hal Sterling" also sounds a lot like Rod Serling, don't you think? Again, that's appropriate, given the Twilight Zone nature of the dimensional vortex. And Mom's name is June. In case you've forgotten, "June Cleaver" is the name of Barbara Billingsley's matriarch in Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963). Finally, the little boy's name is Smith...as in Dr Smith on Lost in Space. And yep...he's the little tyke who's often getting into trouble (playing with military weather control devices, even, in one episode).

Anyway, after arriving in the "Otherworld" underwater (!), the Sterlings swim to the shore of a strange, foggy lake and spy two moons in the night sky. "I don't think we're in Egypt anymore," young Smith quips.

Searching for help and hoping to be rescued, the Sterlings make for a desert road, only to be intercepted by a hovercraft piloted by a Zone Trooper Commander named Nuveen Kroll (Jonathan Banks).

A sort of otherworldly Nazi Commandant, the villainous Kroll attempts to arrest the family for illegally traversing "The Forbidden Zone" between Provinces, but the Sterlings incapacitate Kroll, steal his all-important "Class One Access Crystal" (a kind of master key to computers and gateways in this strange world) and make off with the hover craft. When he awakes, Kroll makes it his duty in life to catch these "terrorists."

Yep, Kroll becomes, in Muir lingo -- the hapless pursuer; the cliched character who -- in the spirit of Barry Morse on The Fugitive or Jack Colvin on The Incredible Hulk -- chases the good guys each and every week, but never manages to catch them.

After ditching the hover vehicle on the border of a province called Sarlex, the Sterlings attempt to "blend in" with the local community. They go to an orientation with other newcomers, and are given housing and even job assignments. Hal gets a job at a printing press and Mom -- a veterinarian back in America -- is assigned the duties of housewife. "This is a time warp back to the 1950s," she complains.

Meanwhile, while attending high school, Trace falls head-over-heels in love with a beautiful girl named Nova (Amanda Wyss), and she begins to tell him something of this strange world.

For instance, there are 77 independent provinces in this Other World, and the distant city of "Emar" is the capitol. Emar, in case you wondered, is also the name of a real historical city, one of great power in the Bronze Age, in the Third Millennium B.C. In this Other World, however, Emar is ruled by a fascistic dictator, The Praetor. He brought all the provinces together in a war of "Unification."

Even today, however, strange obelisks mark the long road to Emar, and some people believe that strange magics there can send strangers home to their dimension. "They say a long, long time ago, people from other worlds would follow monuments to Emar and return home kings and sorcerors," Nova reveals.

As Dad begins keeping a journal of the family's adventures ("I want to leave a record behind, so someone else will know our story," he explains), the Sterlings soon learn that all their neighbors in Sarlex are actually "plasmoid replicants," human-like androids created to work in the local Sarlex mines, where a new form of radiation is lethal to human beings. When June falls ill, the Sterlings realize they have to leave the province immediately, but Trace wants to remain with Nova.

And this is where the premiere episode of Otherworld gets really clever: Trace asks Nova to leave her family behind and join him, because she's "just" an android. She replies that perhaps he should leave his family; and Trace responds that it's "not the same" because she's a "machine." Suddenly, we're in the territory of racism here; not malicious racism but ignorant racism just the same...and not on the part of some otherworldly alien; but on the part of our all-American boy, our "Sterling" representative.

Nova's response to Trace's ignorance is brilliant and telling: she shows Trace exactly the location of her android "soul" and then asks Trace pointedly: where's yours? This moment is not heavy-handed or preachy and comes up almost as a surprise. It's one of Otherworld's smartest and most unexpected twists, because as Americans we expected the Sterlings would be teaching those otherworlders our values; not vice-versa. Here, we get schooled.

The remaining seven episodes of Otherworld involve the Sterling family's trek across the provinces (following the obelisks) to Emar. As you might expect, Kroll is always in pursuit. Just a little behind...

The second episode aired, "The Zone Troopers Build Men" by Coleman Luck, finds the Sterling family (living a new life as the "Hardins" in the Tarka Province) horrified to learn that for flunking out of high school, Trace has been drafted into the Zone Troopers.

His superior at boot camp is none other than Star Trek's Mark Lenard, here portraying a heartless man with a mechanical hand/torch device. The Sterlings follow Trace to the"Triangula" province to attempt to free the boy from bondage, but the episode really concerns Trace making his own decisions...becoming a man; stepping out of his father's shadow.

Although Hal warns that "This is not the United States; they don't see things like we do," Trace manages to live up to the Zone Trooper ethos ("Proficiency, pride and prowess"), while simultaneously renouncing the belief that "compassion is a weakness."

In a move reflective of the Vietnam War experience (a big deal in the 1980s, with films like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Hanoi Hilton and so on...), Trace -- now a Zone Trooper -- refuses to fire on innocent civilians during a bombing raid aboard a "vampire attack craft." The point here is that proficiency, pride and prowess necessitate something more than blindly following orders. Even soldiers under orders must be moral; most question command.

Otherworld's third episode, "Paradise Lost" finds the family stranded at an island resort, "Club Paradise," where there is a dark underside beneath the idyllic exterior. Located on a volcanic island, the resort was formerly a military base; one devoted to biological experiments.

It turns out the club's beautiful hostess, Scarla Ray (not to be confused with Charlotte Rae...) is mass-producing "coloma," a drug that is the "essence of life," which "gives us joy untouched by death" and "transforms us into Gods."

Ray acquires this vital (and apparently addictive...) drug by extracting it from the souls of the unwitting vacationers. In one sense, this is another "myth" story re-told for Otherworld; Homer's Odyssey. You know, the one about Odysseus and the Sirens. Accordingly Hal -- ever the loyal family man -- is seduced by the beautiful Ray until June stands up to fight for him.

Again, "Paradise Lost" finds Otherworld operating on several thematic levels. On the surface there's the villain (Scarla Ray) and the threat to the family's survival; but on another narrative dimension all together, "Paradise Lost" concerns Hal's mid-life crisis.

Sure, it's a drug-induced mid-life crisis, but it's the kind of thing that real families go through and fight through. "She's got some kind of strange power over him," June worries about the beautiful Raye, afraid of losing her husband. And she almost does: Hal rejects his wife, selfishly stating: "From now on, I only think about me and what I need."

Remember, the early 1980s saw a record number of divorces (over a million divorces granted) in the United States, and Ronald Reagan is our only divorced commander-in-chief in history, so Otherworld is discussing matters of life and death for the contemporary American family here; about how infidelity hurts; about the cost to the family unit.

In "Paradise Lost," what ultimately draws Hal back to the family hearth is June's sincere entreaty that though they may not know eternity and youthfulness forever, they do share the "hope of growing old together." Hal concludes that "paradise begins at home," and flees the island with his wife and children When he steals a look back at the abandoned Scarla Ray, she has been transformed into a monstrous old crone...

If fans remember Otherworld today at all, it's likely either for the cool, upside-down hand-guns of the Zone Troopers (where the trigger is on the handle butt...), or for the bravura, nutty fourth episode: the surreal, amazing and truly bizarre "Rock & Roll Suicide."

In this trademark episode, Trace and Gina introduce rock music to a staid, conservative province that resembles (right down to the automobiles...) 1950s Eisenhower America. After Gina and Trace perform "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" at a local talent show, their new-fangled music stokes the impulses of the province's repressed youth and earns enemies of the Otherworld's dominant religious faction, The Church of Artificial Intelligence. It's not long before the Church is burning Gina & Trace albums at a bonfire.

The most amazing thing about "Rock and Roll Suicide" is that it charts the entire rise of rock and roll, from rock music as voice of rebellion and anti-authoritarianism (think juvenile delinquent movies of the 1950s), to rock as transformative cult movement (think Beatlemania), to rock music as marketable pop product (here we see Mego-style Gina and Trace dolls mass produced...just like those of Donny and Marie, and Cher).

Many scenes in this virtuoso episode of Otherworld are actually lensed as cheesy 1980s rock videos, utilizing old school MTV techniques (split screens, fog, soft focus, etc.) And don't even get me started on the fact that the show's father figure (Hal) spends virtually the entire episode in clown make-up and costume...a sure "anti-establishment" swipe at fuddy-duddy parents.
Depending on your perspective, you will either find this episode absolutely hilarious...or totally ridiculous. I favor the former interpration, simply because "Rock & Roll Suicide" finds a new and inventive way to to introduce "American" (or at least Western...) values to the "civilization of the week."

On Star Trek, Captain Kirk gave the Yangs and The Cohms the U.S. Constitution in "The Omega Glory." On Otherworld, the Sterlings share rock and roll with the natives, fostering an all-out revolution against the fascist establishment (a tyranny which forces households to decorate with signs that read propaganda, like "CORPORATION" or "Emotions can be DANGEROUS.")

Other episodes of Otherworld included "Village of the Motor Pigs," which found Trace falling in with a bad element: a motorbike gang out of The Road Warrior (1982). "Mansion of the Beast" was another mythic story re-cast for Otherworld, this one The Beauty and the Beast (with Mom, June, as Beauty). "Princess Metra" saw Gina mistaken for the ruling dauphin of another province.

In all, just eight hour-long episodes aired. There remains an enduring fan myth that thirteen episodes of Otherworld were actually created and that in the final episode, the Sterlings arrived at Emar and found their way home. Alas, this just isn't the case. Only eight episodes were made, and they've all been seen. Period.

During a short time on broadcast television, Otherworld managed to accomplish a whole lot with very, very little by way of resources (meaning budget). The production values were minimal, and most sets were re-dressed suburban houses and schools, with the oddball futuristic technology (like a weird game system) thrown in to provide the show an "other" worldly feeling.

But the settings hardly mattered. It was in the characterization (the dynamics of the family unit) and in the quirky storytelling that Otherworld truly found its niche. The series has a goofy, 1980s vibe, and an awful lot of heart.

Truth be told, before Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, Otherworld was as close as we got in the 1980s to genuine, Star Trek-type "civilization of the week" storytelling: science fiction adventures with real social commentary as well as entertainment value. And let's face it, the characters on TNG suffered under the burden that they always had to be evolved and perfect. On Otherworld, these everyday Americans, these "Sterlings" -- grown-ups and kids -- could fail, make mistakes, and authentically prove themselves heroic without the advantage of living in a utopia.

Otherworld also boasted a great 1980s synth-pop theme song, and featured a number of memorable guest stars, from Ray Walston ("Rules of Attraction") and Mark Lenard to Amanda Wyss and Vincent SchiavellI ("Village of the Motorpigs.")

While Otherworld no doubt seems pretty dated today, an official DVD release absolutely seems in order. If -- for no other reason -- to bring "Rock & Roll Suicide" back into the Light of Day. That episode is a hoot.

CULT TV-MOVIE REVIEW: Killdozer (1974)

"I don't like the way she handles..."

- quite the understatement, in Killdozer (1974)

Muir's Law of Nostalgia # 3: Some "gems" (both cinematic and earthen...) are better left unexcavated.

Or to put it another way: not everything you remember from your youth is a treasure. Sometimes it's just...poopie.

The 1974 hit TV-movie Killdozer -- another touchstone from my disco decade, mis-spent youth -- proves (like 1960's dreadful Dinosaurus!) a prime example of this theorem.

I'm sad and disappointed to report that under the microscope of critical viewing, this old made-for-television movie is a bit of a bust. Yep, Killdozer is stuck perpetually in idle.

And yes, this is a film that was constantly joked about on MST3K (for good reason, I see...). And no, I was not expecting great art upon my recent viewing.

On the contrary, I was simply expecting to have a good time; to be entertained on the level of a production such as Duel, Trilogy of Terror, Gargoyles, Snowbeast, Someone's Watching Me, Death Stalk or Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. Those are all 1970s TV-movies that hold up pretty darn well in 2008, given budgetary and censorious limitations. Unfortunately, Killdozer doesn't make the grade. By a long shot.

That's a bit of surprise, because the source material is strong stuff. Killdozer is based on a great and highly-suspenseful Theodore Sturgeon novella first published in Astounding Magazine back in 1944. Sturgeon's tale concerned a malevolent alien intelligence waging war against humanity (particularly a small work crew) by possessing a bull dozer.

The TV-movie pretty closely hews to that simple outline, but lacks the most basic sense of craft to bring to life the bizarre premise. To wit, Killdozer features a dearth of action, impossible-to-distinguish characters, and is poorly filmed. In short, it makes Maximum Overdrive (1985) look like King Lear.

Think of The Thing by way of comparing the ingredients: isolated location (here an island two hundred miles off the coast of Africa), few characters (all male...), an alien menace (not a shape shifter but "pure energy"), and a fierce battle for survival.

In fact, Killdozer's opening shot is one quite similar to John Carpenter's vastly superior The Thing (1981) remake. It's set in Earth's near-orbital space. Instead of a flying saucer crashing into the Antarctic snow 200,000 years ago, we see a meteor crash to Earth on that isolated island shore...time indeterminate.

We then cut to a small construction team working for Warburton Oil Resources. There are six men on the team, led by a recovering alcoholic named Kelly (Clint Walker). Before long, one of the workers, Mac (Robert Urich) spies an eerie blue glow transfer from the meteor to a bulldozer...and then he promptly dies of something like radiation poisoning.

An alien hum (like one emanating from the meteor), is soon detected in the bulldozer's bucket blade, but gritty mechanic Chub (Neville "Eaten Alive" Brand) can't pinpoint the source.

Before you can say "Bob the Builder," the alien-controlled bulldozer goes out of control. Its first act is to crush the team's one and only radio (clever girl...).

The next thing it does is go after the film's token African-American, Al (James Watson). Al's death is an especially absurd scene: I mean, how hard is it to outrun a slow moving bulldozer, when there are trees not far distant?

And answer me this: if you were being chased by a malevolent construction vehicle, would you stop in the vehicle's path to hide in a hollow pipe?

Sorry, but to quote Killdozer, "pain makes me snide."

The remainder of the film's seemingly eternal running time (74 minutes) is devoted to a lackadaisically-paced and poorly-orchestrated man vs. machine war.

Unfortunately, the machine seems to possess the upper hand here in terms of intelligence, and the construction team members are killed one-at-a-time in mostly idiotic fashion. For instance, the bulldozer pushes an avalanche of rocks down a mountainside onto one unlucky man who doesn't have the wherewithal to look up.

Then another character spontaneously decides to go joy-riding in a jeep on the beach...only to be surprised that the bulldozer is waiting on the shore for him, having sprung a trap.

I have to admit, this latter moment is hysterically funny. Staged as a shocking surprise, the film cuts suddenly to the bulldozer on the beach... just waiting to strike as the joy-rider appears on the scene. You have to ask yourself: how did the malevolent bull dozer know exactly where the jeep would show up on the vast shore line, and then park there undetected? Do bulldozers have stealth mode? How, precisely, can a loud bull dozer "sneak up" on someone?

I often joke that in horror movies, human beings do not possess peripheral vision. In Killdozer, human beings also do not have the capacity to hear, apparently. Ears are purely decorative. For example, there's a moment in which the parked bulldozer raises its mechanical blade (to smash a worker), while an imperiled character stands cluelessly in front of the machine, just inches away. Does he hear anything and turn around? Nope. Not until the bucket smashes at his feet. (Yes, the killdozer conveniently misses his target...).

The dialogue in Killdozer is mostly atrocious too, a piss-poor stream of endless lines like "machines don't just run by themselves!"

Well, if you are trapped on an island and your comrades are being murdered at an alarming rate, are you going to cling to that particular theory or believe your own lying eyes?

Obviously the damn bulldozer is running itself!!! Jeez! The movie tries to squeeze some mileage out of the fact that Kelly is a former drinker, and therefore he doesn't trust what he sees, but come on, Killdozer...don't insult my intelligence! How many people do you have to see crushed by a self-operating bulldozer before realization starts to dawn?

But Killdozer's biggest deficit remains that, from a visual standpoint, it is a remarkably ugly film. The island setting is chalky and dusty -- not exotic at all -- and there is no variation (therefore no relief) whatsoever in location. From start to finish, the movie looks as though it were filmed in a quarry somewhere. The scared work men drive back and forth from one chalk pit to another, trying to come up with a plan to kill their nemesis. After dynamite doesn't do the trick, electrocution proves efficacious (a nod to Hawks' The Thing?) But even the iconic battle between crane and bulldozer is visually underwhelming. A clever filmmaker might have tried to play up the beauty of the location; making a distinction between the natural beauty of the island and the mechanical ugliness of the bulldozer.

Total honesty requires that I admit one thing. I did feel a plesant flush of nostalgia while watching Killdozer (especially during the yellow-lettered, Universal Studios, 70s-style opening credits). In particular, I remember how I first encountered it as a little kid (as a Saturday Afternoon Super Spectacular or some such thing...). But the happy glow of nostalgia fades quickly during this monotonous TV-movie and the audience is left with the realization that these interchangeable characters are so dumb, so slow-witted, that they deserve to die at the hands (or gears) of the killdozer.

The best part of Killdozer is the clever title. However, the operative syllable there is "doze."

Theme Song of the Week # 33: The Herculoids (1967)

RETRO TOY FLASHBACK # 80: Golden Books' The Black Hole Collection

I still remember the day that my grandfather (who passed away in late 2002), purchased this sci-fi movie collectible for me.

It was a hot day in the late summer of 1980 (August, I think...) and my family was spending a week's vacation at the Jersey shore with my grandparents. I was sun-burned, and wanted to play inside.

We all went out to a local five-and-dime store, and my grandfather instructed me to buy anything I wanted...within reason.

Well, I wanted this:

...The Golden Books' The Black Hole omnibus of officially licensed items, which included in one rectangular collectible box a potpourri of goodies including a little Golden Book, a Golden Poster Storybook, a Golden Book of Things to Do, a Press-out Book, a coloring book (with crayons), and two robot puppets.

All of these treasures -- naturally -- related to Gary Nelson's The Black Hole, the notorious and expensive 1979 Disney sci-fi bomb...which I happened to love. And which, beyond all reason, beyond all explanation, I still love. So sue me.

The Black Hole Press-Out Book was my favorite item in this collection. It was a giant over sized book constructed of heavy paper. You could perforate and punch out the various components of the unique space ships seen in the film (including the probe ship, the Palomino, and the mysterious Cygnus), and then put them together to have good-sized replicas.

You could also punch-out paper "stand-up" figures of the movie's primary characters: Captain Holland (Robert Forster), Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), Joe Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins), Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine), and even the evil Dr. Reinhardt (Maximillian Schell).

The robots were also represented in the Press-Out book, and you could stand-up little card-board figures of V.I.N.cent (voiced by Roddy McDowall), Maximillian and even Old B.O.B. (Slim Pickens). Once you were finished poking out the figures, you could put all of these cut-outs against an accurately illustrated backdrop of the multi-story Cygnus command center. Reinhardt's vast command chair and console was also included.

The "Press Out" Robot Puppets were fun too. They were ostensibly "easy to assemble" and the set came with two characters. First was Maximillian, "the sinister robot," and the second was V.I.N.cent, the "lovable" robot from The Black Hole. I remember I did a particularly botched job of assembling V.I.N.cent, which disappointed me no end. He ws my favorite character.

The "Golden Poster Storybook" was this gigantic poster which told the story of the film in glorious, colorful photographs. In the days before VCRs and DVDs, this was priceless (especially as the Black Hole comic-book featured really bad art in which the characters bore no resemblance to their on-screen counterparts).

Yep, this Golden Books toy set was truly "an astronomical assortment of fun that's out of this world." Hard for me to believe I've had the bloomin' thing for about twenty-eight years now.

Jeez, I feel old; like my youth got sucked into a black hole along with that probe ship...

VOTE!

Just sayin'...

Be the change. The power is in you.

Midwest Book Review Likes Superheroes Mark II

The Midwest Book Review critiques The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television, Second Edition:

"...John Kenneth Muir...presents a newly updated and significantly expanded second edition of The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television...a work of impressive dimensions and enthusiastically recommended for personal, community, and academic library reference collections."

The House Between 3.1 Trailer ("Devoured")

Here's a 57-second preview of the season three House Between premiere, "Devoured."

CULT TV FLASHBACK #61: Space Rangers (1993)

In the early 1990s, Star Trek's syndicated child, The Next Generation (1987-1994), spurred a new renaissance in science fiction television of the "outer space" variety.

Spin-off Deep Space Nine was on the way (1993-1999), Babylon 5 (1994-1998) was rising, and all of the sudden, the big networks were willing -- for the first time in over a decade (and the demise of NBC's Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [1979-1981] -- to take a chance on expensive, otherworldly space adventures again.

This boomlet would eventually bring such memorable (but short-lived...) ventures as Earth II (1994), Space: Above and Beyond (1995), another Trek called Voyager (1995 - 2001]) and, finally, this relatively obscure curiosity, Space Rangers (1993).

Created by Pen Densham, Space Rangers was broadcast from January 6 to January 26, 1993 on CBS. Only six hour-long episodes were produced, and only a handful of those actually aired.

For some reason, I was one of the few people who actually watched the show in its original run. I remember having high hopes for it, in part because of my growing ennui and dissatisfaction with 1990s-style Star Trek.

I felt at the time (and still do...even more strongly) that The Next Generation squandered the original Star Trek's sense of fun and adventure for too many dull "love boat in space" stories (Troi's Mom is visiting again! Or, this week, Worf's brother beams up!) It was either that, or the series featured irrelevant holodeck stories (look, Picard plays a 1940s detective...again; Riker goes to a jazz bar and plays the trombone! Alexander has a mud-bath! Ad infinitum, ad nauseum).

The upshot was that it seemed that only about half of TNG's stories concerned actual space exploration (you know, boldly going anywhere...) or the hazards of space travel.

Why had this happened? Well, it seemed that the series writers had badly misunderstood the concept of "character development"...replacing genuine growth with hackneyed old soap opera-type stories (in which Riker makes peace with his visiting, estranged Dad ["The Icarus Factor"], or Troi has to choose between an arranged marriage or a Starfleet career ["Haven"]).

Yep, Star Trek: The Next Generation committed the unpardonable sin of space adventures: it was often boring.

As hell.

In concept, if not execution, Space Rangers certainly promised to be an antidote to the increasingly safe, stale, predictable and dull universe of 1990s era Star Trek progeny.

Set in the year 2104, Space Rangers was set on "the frontier," on a distant world called Avalon, where an outpost named "Fort Hope" had been established.

The series' central characters were law enforcement officials dedicated to "upholding the law." They were "space rangers" -- "part peacekeepers, part marines."

And they were all essentially blue collar in nature. Which means that the rangers complained about over-time, about risking their lifes on "straight-time" and they often lobbied for "hazard pay." Off-duty, the rangers caroused in Fort Hope's "Geno's Bar;" gambling their currency (called "solars"), drinking zulus and occasionally wasting their hard-earned dough on prostitutes.

One episode of the series, "The Replacements," concerned Headquarters' secret plan to "outsource" the human (and alien...) rangers with pliable androids called "Ringers," and the dramatis personae all feared they would lose their jobs not to foreigners, but to A.I.

Job loss was an especially pertinent issue at the time, because America was undergoing an economic recession at the end of the first Bush era, and there was an epidemic of "downsizing" and "outsourcing" throughout the U.S. in 1993-1994. Or as one character on Space Rangers noted, "budget cuts are affecting everyone."

They were affecting technology and infrastructure too. The Ranger space vessel of choice -- a "sling ship" [#377] called "Lizzie"-- was an old rust-bucket with an interior like a revamped World War II submarine. It had no holodeck, no replicators, no warp speed and no transporters.

Instead, Lizzie was a no-frills, low-tech affair, held together by spit-and-polish...and the Rangers often talked about how -- even though they requisitioned HQ for new parts -- they never got them.

The only way for Lizzie to achieve light speed was to travel through an orbital "light speed donut," which would "slingshot" it to incredible velocities. If the Rangers wanted to get down to a planet surface, Lizzie would actually have to land the ship, or the rangers could hop into confining "para-jets," one-person pods designed for trips below. When approaching quarry, whether smugglers or drug-runners, Lizzie could also hide by using a "radar shrouder." The only problem was, it rarely (if ever...) worked.

Captain Boon (Jeff Kaake) was the hero of the series, the principled leader of one "misfit" squad of Space Rangers. In the first episode, "Fort Hope," we learned that Boon was in a difficult marriage (to Friday the 13th Part II's Amy Steel...) and had a young daughter named Roxie. In ensuing installments, Boon's wife and child returned to Earth, and the couple was officially separated....a fact which made Boon angry and short-tempered.

Captain Boon was an old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes, blue-collar kind-of-guy, and a distinct switch from the more high-minded, highbrow, intellectual captains of 1990s science fiction tv. Boon was a simple man who believed in the rules, but who also knew when the rules ("the Territorial Code") should be bent, stretched or broken.

Many episodes of Space Rangers featured Boon's voice-over narration, as he explained the universe, the alien races he encountered, the rangers' rule-book, and his own personal perspective to viewers. Often, he talked about matters of loyalty -- either his wife's lack of loyalty; or his crew's loyalty. "Everybody else would call us misfits" he notes at one point, "but I call us family."

Boon's right-hand man was Doc Kreuger (Jack McGee), a hardened old engineer who had seen more than his fair share of action. Scruffy and sarcastic, he had a heart of gold...or, er...metal.

Tasked with keeping Lizzie running under the most unenviable of positions, "Doc" had unwittingly become more machine than man during his stint in the rangers. He had a mechanical arm, a synthetic liver, a mechanical heart, and even one artificial ear. Doc kept all this information hidden from Headquarters, an organization that would shit-can him in a heart-beat (and foul his retirement plans...) if they knew Doc was in such poor physical condition.

A nadir on the series was a faux-heartwarming moment in "Banshees" in which Doc ripped off his mechanical ear and gifted it to a deaf adolescent. This moment was, in a word...ridiculous. But in general, Doc was interesting because -- despite his expertise as a mechanic (notice I didn't say engineer...) -- he was also kind of willfully ignorant and fearful of bureaucracy and progress. You know, like the people who were convinced that Bill Clinton was going to personally take their guns away or something. Again, think blue collar. Doc was so afraid of HQ that he gave up the chance to have a prosthetic arm; he just wanted to stay off the radar.

Lizzie's gunner and pilot was statuesque Jo-Jo Thorson (Marjorie Monaghan), a futuristic Amazon. Jo-Jo was from the planet New Venus and held a "personal grudge" against the alien Banshees (the space frontier equivalent of savage red-skins...). It turns out that all of New Venus's cowardly men had evacuated their planet when Banshees encroached on the world's "space lanes," leaving the Amazonian women behind to "re-shape" their culture alone. According to Jo-Jo, "no woman from New Venus" ever ran "from a Banshee" and she certainly wasn't going to be "the first."

Another resident alien in the space rangers was the noble savage Zylyn (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a fierce "Graaka" warrior who lived by an alien code of honor. Citizens of Zylyn's race were such fierce fighters (and, apparently, cannibals...) that to work successfully alongside human beings in the Ranger corps, all Graaka had to wear "pacifier" collars (also known as "repressor yokes") around their necks.

The Graaka were also known to wear "power rings" (just like the Green Lantern!) and could sense sense "life, movement," even "violence" and "tension" by feel, if in close proximity. (Though apparently these senses didn't work on the Banshee...).

In the episode entitled "Fort Hope," Boon awoke Zylyn from hibernation to join him on a mission to recover a Graaka crystal that had been hidden one thousand years ago, and could destroy the whole world (and perhaps the galaxy itself...) with a single thought. In that episode, Zylyn revealed how the Crystal had created a schism amongst his people, and how -- after defeating the crystal the first time -- the historical Graaka had devoted themselves to becoming "warriors of peace."

Other characters populating the series included Commander Chennault (Linda Hunt), the likable, charismatic leader of New Hope, and Boon's immediate superior. I have to say, I thought Hunt was terrific in this series: offering a human and powerful "anchor" amidst all the craziness. Unfortunately, the sympathetic but diminutive Chennault was often overruled in important matters by a cliched character: the wrong-headed Colonel Weiss (Gottfried John). A consummate chess player, Weiss had it in for Boon and his misfit crew and sought -- like Dr. Smith on Lost in Space -- to make mischief at every turn. [And a side note: Space Rangers might be described as the unofficial bridge between Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan eras of James Bond films, because it features both Licence to Kill's [1989] Tagawa and Goldeneye's [1995] John.)

The last two members of the Space Rangers team included a kooky (!) scientist/physician named Mimmer (played by an over-the-top, apparently-deranged Clint Howard), and Danny Kincaid (Daniel Quinn), a wet-behind-the-ears marine rookie whose dad was a higher-up at Central Command.

The villains on Space Rangers included the aforementioned Banshees: mysterious, Giger-esque alien beasts who would often launch "kamikaze" raids on ranger vessels in flight, and who could move effortlessly through time and space. In "Banshees," the aliens overtook a ship carrying illicit smugglers and attempted to take the ship back into a Banshee dimension, where a giant, alien hive awaited.

Back on Fort Hope, another villain was Isogul, a bald, long-finge-rnailed Roddy-McDowall sound-alike who was basically a Jabba-the-Hutt-style gangster, one who was responsible for importing the illicit narcotic "XJ" to Avalon. Boon soon dedicated himself to bringing down the "untouchable" Isogul, but the series ended before we could see this happen. Isogul came from a race called the "Hoboma" who were known for manipulating the emotions of others.

A different Space Rangers episode (guest starring Babylon 5's Claudia Christian) was entitled "Death Before Dishonour" and it dealt with another space-faring villain, the Vilons (who looked like humanoid snakes). The Vilons were quick to take offense at perceived insults, and Prince Gordo (the leader of the Vilons...) challenged Boon to a duel to the death during trade agreement negotiations. Guess who won?

So, what was good about Space Rangers? Not a whole lot, frankly. However, it's certainly fair to state that the series served as a valiant (if failed...) attempt to create a universe and mood notably unique for an era in which space programs such as Star Trek and Babylon 5 had become, essentially, "politics in space" obsessed with inter-Empire conflicts and micro-strategies for brinkmanship and one-upsmanship.

Also, Space Rangers is a futuristic series in which the characters don't dwell in paradise. They boast oil smudges on their faces and show stains on their uniforms; they even listen to rock-and-roll music as they launch their about-to-fly-apart spaceships. I dig this deliberate veneer of "blue collar cops in space" and appreciate how that overriding leitmotif is apportioned throughout the series. The villains are often either "stupid hoods" working for gangsters or villainous assassins who can re-arrange their molecules so as to more easily kill their prey. In other words, the nemeses are "far future" and "alien" extensions of the cops and robbers conventions of contemporary crime series [see also Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct, for more of this...]

Although the special effects have aged rather dramatically in fifteen years, Space Rangers nonetheless offers some stunning and ambitious otherworldly vistas. In "Fort Hope," there's a planet of jungles in which a second sun rises every day and basically scorches the surface (forecasting Chronicles of Riddick). Another episode reveals a Graaka temple (which looks like the planet Vulcan from "Amok Time" crossed with The Guardian of Forever.)

But what works best about Space Rangers is undeniably the utter lack of pretension. The series remembers that action-adventure should be...well, exciting. There's a jaunty sense of fun about this series; and it doesn't get bogged down in long, self-important Picardian platitudes or lectures.

On the downside, a jaunty sense of fun is extremely difficult to support and maintain. While I appreciate that Space Rangers sought to distance itself from the lugubrious TNG in tone, "jaunty" all-too-often translates here to "campy." Space Rangers frequently lapses into embarrassing silliness, to its own detriment. Furthermore, the performances are pretty darn variable. The way to play "jaunty" is straight and serious; and performers like Hunt, Tagawa and Kaake seem to understand that.

By contrast, Clint Howard -- a cult fave of mine -- just doesn't get it. His crazy-haired, crazy-eyed Mimmer is horrid and ludicrous; a cartoon, one-note joke. Every time Mimmer is on screen, you just cringe, and feel bad about yourself for watching this tripe.

Also, it's virtually impossible for Space Rangers to effectively distinguish itself from The Next Generation when thematically it focuses so heavily on alien warrior races. In the six episodes produced, we meet the Graaka, the New Amazons and the Vilons....all warrior races, all with their individual "codes." Arguably, Next Gen's greatest achievement was the layers and depths it added to the Klingon people (and the Klingon psyche) in episodes such as "The Bonding," "Sins of the Father," "The Emissary" and so forth. It seems foolish and counterproductive for Space Rangers to so recklessly tread into the "warrior race" ethos when that terrain was clearly the bailiwick of the more expensive, more serious TNG.

Space Rangers dramatized some seriously derivative stories too: "Banshees" was pretty clearly an Aliens rip-off, down to the left-behind kid hiding under vent grates (like Newt) and the design of the villainous xenomorphs. Again, that's kind of insulting. In 1993, anyone interested in a show called Space Rangers had certainly watched Aliens. Probably many times.

Another pet peeve: every noun on Space Rangers seemed as though it was preceded by the descriptor "New." Jo-Jo was from New Venus. The spaceship in "Banshees" was The New Mayflower. Boon attended school at New Annapolis. The city New Rio was mentioned in passing during one episode. This uncreative naming system became so laughable that by the third episode, my wife Kathryn was calling everything "new" (the New Banshees, The New Gangstas, etc.). Again, someone on the writing staff should have been paying attention to this; to keep it from being so damn pervasive, and therefore so silly.

Overall, the harder-eged, less utopian settings and concepts for Space Rangers, as I wrote above, certainly held tremendous potential. The idea of soldiers/policemen toughing it out on a space frontier -- fighting budget cuts as well as alien criminals -- was a concept potent enough to inform a longer, more accomplished series. As opposed to the new Star Trek, in which human beings were so evolved that they no longer had conflicts with each other, Space Rangers was set in a universe of fallibility wherein "human beings are human beings...wherever they are."

Again, in theory, I really like that.

It's just that Space Rangers during its short life so often tread on woeful cliches (whether imititating Klingons, Giger's aliens or falling back on the old chestnut of "ritual combat" between opponents) that it never distinguished itself in terms of narrative or storytelling. When you throw in the wince-inducing campy quality of some moments (like the time that Doc pulls out his mechanical heart to see if it's still beating; or blithely hands off his mechanical ear to a deaf boy...) the damage to Space Rangers was terminal.

So this was a missed opportunity; another series that had much more promise than it delivered. Space Rangers differentiated itself from The Next Generation, all right, but likely not in the ways that serious fans of exciting space adventure could ultimately embrace.