Sci-Fi Wisdom of the Week

"End, begin, all the same. Big change. Sometimes good. Sometimes bad."

- Aughra, in The Dark Crystal (1982), to be reviewed here tomorrow.

Memory Bank: Star Trek: The Role Playing Game (FASA; 1982 - 1989)

I recently signed up to play Star Trek Online and commenced my training as a Starfleet officer of the 24th Century.  I stopped playing after about an hour (and just as I was about to board a Borg ship too...) because I realized the game was very quickly going to become a black hole of lost time.     

Someday, I plan to return...

But Star Trek Online reminded me of an earlier experience of imaginative interface with Gene Roddenberry's universe: The Star Trek role-playing game by FASA (1980 - 2001).

 I was never really a Dungeons and Dragons kid -- though I played it several times in high school -- because I always leaned more toward hard sci-fi and horror than fantasy.  

But a Star Trek role-playing game?  I was so there.

In particular, during my first year at the University of Richmond, my group of friends and I played this role-playing game.  A lot.  We had no car with which to escape from the campus, we weren't allowed to join fraternities until sophomore year, and we were all strapped for cash.   After a few weeks, we'd spent our respective budgets playing Gauntlet (1985) at the student recreational hub, The Pier.  So we had to do something, besides play endless games of Risk.

And remember, when I was in college -- a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away -- the newest, hottest technology was the Fax machine, so it wasn't like we could all surf the net, text friends, e-mail, watch YouTube or do anything cool like that.

Accordingly, FASA's Star Trek was just what the doctor ordered in my dorm room at Thomas Hall.

My roommate became our heroic ship's captain (of the U.S.S. Nassau), I served as first officer, and other pals  played a Vulcan security officer, a Caitian science officer, and an Andorian communications officer, respectively.  My wife, Kathryn -- then my girlfriend -- even joined us for an adventure or two as a protocol officer keeping an eye on our "cowboy diplomat" captain.  

I loved the game (and my role as executive officer) because my roommate wasn't a Trekkie. But he was an ingenious and resourceful fellow, capable of innovative thinking.  I was the one with the encyclopedic knowledge of the Trek universe, so between his ingenuity and my contextual skills, we made a potent command team.

I still own a couple of the modules or "episodes" from the Star Trek game that we played back in the day, including "Where Has All the Glory Gone" and "The Dixie Gambit."  In total, there were twenty or so FASA adventures that Trekkers could enjoy, if I recall, with titles such as "Denial of Destiny," "The Vanished," "A Doomsday Like Any Other," "Return to Axanar" and "The Mines of Selka."   Many of the games were sequels to original series episodes.

The thing that I also enjoyed so much about the game, as I remember, was that many of the stories were set not in the days of the Original Series or The Next Generation, but in the movie era.  As I've said before, the movies, in a very real way, represent "my" Star Trek: the productions I grew up with in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Paramount suddenly revoked the license to FASA's Star Trek game in 1989, just as The Next Generation was really taking off in syndication.  There are reports that this cancellation occurred because of growing discontinuities between the FASA Trek universe, and the canon universe imagined by Gene Roddenberry.

One such continuity apparently involved the depiction of the Klingons and their Empire in FASA.  Still, it seems a shame that the game was canceled just as Star Trek was taking off on television again...

I must admit, I'm pretty divorced from role-playing games today, as a 42 year old, but my understanding is that, like Star Trek Online, they've all moved to the Internet.

There's nothing wrong with that development, but I'll always remember my days at UR with my friends, sitting around in a circle in our dorm room, eating Dominos Pizza, drinking Mountain Dew, staying up too late,and foiling the plans of the Klingons.

Collectible of the Week: Buck Rogers Galactic Play Set (HG Toys; 1979)

By the time Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979 - 1981) aired on NBC, I suppose you could state I was primed to love the show.  I had "grown up" through Star Wars (1977) and Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979) and had seen The Black Hole (1979), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Moonraker (1979).  

But the nice thing about Buck Rogers was that the series, unlike many of those other titles, didn't take itself too seriously.  The program, starring Gil Gerard and Erin Gray, boasted a great sense of humor, at least during the first season.

Mego released a good-sized line of Buck Rogers toys and vehicles back in the day, but HG Toys also got into the act, recycling and retro-fitting a pre-existing play set as the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Galactic Play Set.  It came complete with "over 35 pieces" and a nice diorama/backdrop.  

This HG Toy set included a "space station with movable ladder, 2 Draconian marauders, 2 starfighters, 8 space commandos, 10 aliens," and "fully detailed figures of Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, Killer Kane, Dr. Huer, Tigerman, Draco, Twiki and Princess Ardala."

Also present: "a colorful diorama set-up and assembly instructions."

I have fond memories of playing with this particular play set, because I took it on a cross-country vacation with me.  My family traveled (in our new Ford van) from New Jersey to California and back over the span of six weeks.  Space was tight since we were traveling for such a duration and this one of the few toys I was allowed to bring along.  I set it up in camp sites from Lake Michigan to Lake Tahoe.   On days where we seemed to be endlessly driving through desert terrain, I also set up the Galactic Play Set in the back of the van and played with it, though the bumps in the road could occasionally wreak havoc.

Cloned from a Mutual Zygote # 10: Quentin and Ianto

The Horror Lexicon #4: The Sting in the Tail/Tale

In his landmark book of genre film analysis, James Bond in the Cinema (1981), the great John Brosnan often wrote about "the sting in the tail," that moment near the end of a James Bond film, when the surviving villain gets the jump on 007, and there's one last thrill before end credits roll.  Think of Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd spoiling a perfectly nice cruise at the end of Diamonds Are Forever (1970), for instance, or Nick Nack doing same in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).

In the horror lexicon, the sting in the tail/tale is that devilish scorpion strike at the very end of the movie, the turn or twist of the tale towards the unexpected in the final, valedictory moment.  In the horror genre, the sting in the tail/tale is designed to forge a final, spiky crescendo, one that audiences will remember as they file out of the auditorium.  Sometimes the sting in the tail/tale causes a laugh; sometimes a shriek.

The sting in the tail/tale comes in many shapes and sizes.  Often the final "sting" is a development you don't expect, something that ratchets up the terror and changes the very nature of the narrative, even setting up the grounds for a sequel.  

The sting in the tail/tale at the end of AVP (2004) is the birth of the Pred-Alien, for example.  The sting in the tail/tale at the end of Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), is the shocking death of Nancy Thompson's Mom, as Nancy is helplessly driven away in The Freddy Mobile.  

In other cases, the sting in the tail/tale is a moment of high drama and terror ultimately revealed to be a dream sequence (through the auspices of the "Stay Awake" shot.)  

Films including Carrie (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980) and Prince of Darkness (1987) all resolve with stings in the tail/tale that get the blood pumping, but are revealed to be phantasms of the mind, not reality.  

A great play on this aspect of the convention occurs in Phantasm II.  Mike (James LeGros) insists to a terrified Liz (Paula Irvine) that the terror around them is all a dream.  Then the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) appears and punctures that particular balloon.  "No...it's not!" He croaks.  Fade to Black...

Sometimes, a sting in the tail/tale reveals that a "beloved" character didn't really die (Fright Night [1985]), and sometimes, the sting resolves a lingering question in the narrative.  The great, final sting of John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) is a direct answer to Father Malone's (Hal Holbrook) interrogative about why the vengeful Blake didn't seek revenge upon him.  

Off with his head!  

One of the great sting-in-the-tail/tale endings of film history is seen in another Carpenter film, Halloween (1978). To me, this is one of the most elegant and beautiful stings in film history.  After we see that Michael Myers is still alive, Carpenter cuts to a montage of empty rooms and dark houses...places where Michael Myers already has been during the course of the film.  We don't see him, but the montage is accompanied by the sounds of his heavy breathing.   

This sort of "where's Michael" final sting is so much more effective and inventive than a last jump wherein Michael re-appears, and gets shot in the head.  Instead, Carpenter sort of "universalizes" the terror of Michael.  He could be anywhere now, the montage suggests.

Even in the back seat of your car...

Another sting in the tail/tale ending I admire tremendously arises in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1983).  Here, Ash defeats the Deadites and limps out of his cabin in the woods, only to be pursued -- one last time -- by a horrible, unseen force.  

The orchestration of this P.O.V. attack is remarkable, and audacious. We race (on the camera, apparently...) through the woods, through the very cabin interior, over a fallen door, right into Ash's screaming, protesting face.    

This ending is not only terrifying, it's a reminder of the film's bravura "pummeling-the-audience" aesthetic.

Most often in horror films, the sting-in-the-tail/tale ending is as simple as a killer you believed was dead, popping up for one, final scare before being put down (Scream [1996], The Resident [2011]).

The sting-in-the-tail/tale, in various forms, has appeared in films including (but not limited to...): Carrie (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Dressed to Kill (1980), Humanoids from the Deep (1980), Friday the 13th Part II (1983), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Fright Night (1985), Critters (1986), Psycho 3 (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (1988), Hide and Go Shriek (1988), Phantasm 2 (1988), Leviathan (1989), Scream (1996), and AVP (2004). 

Terra Nova Gets the Axe

The media is now reporting the cancellation of the time-travel/sci-fi/family drama Terra Nova.

From Yahoo News: 

"The prehistoric drama "Terra Nova" is history on Fox.

The network said late Monday it is dropping the pricey sci-fi series after a single season.

The ambitious series, filmed in Australia with expensive special effects, got a lukewarm reception from viewers despite high anticipation from sci-fi fans. It averaged less than 8 million viewers weekly.

The series followed a family on its journey back to prehistoric Earth on a mission to save the human race. It starred Jason O'Mara and Stephen Lang, with behind-the-scenes principals including Steven Spielberg."

I must confess, I never tuned back in to this series after the dreadful pilot episode. Terra Nova struck me as hopelessly dumb and hackneyed, and yet I always, sincerely, intended to go back to it and give it a second go.  In fact, all the episodes are still safely ensconced on my DVR.   I hate to see science fiction programs cancelled, but also can't help but think, given what I saw, that Terra Nova was a very poorly-conceived standard-bearer for the genre on television.

Also, the news of Terra Nova's cancellation reminds me how totally arbitrary programming choices truly are.  The series was drawing eight million viewers a week on Fox.  On the CW, such numbers would have made it a blockbuster.  On Sy-Fy, those numbers would have been historic.  So, was axing Terra Nova the right call, or was mainstream success/acceptance of it just around the corner?

Movie Trailer: The Resident (2011)

Theme Song of the Week: Supertrain (1979)

Cult-TV Theme Watch: The Vent Shaft

As I’ve written before, the vent shaft remains perhaps the greatest (and perhaps most irritating) crutch of the cult-TV writer.  There’s always a convenient vent shaft around when a hero needs one, and it is always large enough to house that hero too.  The vent shaft is most often utilized in cult-TV as hero's spur-of-the-moment escape route, one that villains are too dumb to remember and too forgetful to seal or board up.

Star Trek (1966 - 1969) often made use of the over-sized vent shaft to get the heroic Enterprise crew out of trouble. 


The first season episode "Dagger of the Mind," set in the subterranean Tantalus Penal Colony -- a rehabilitation center for criminals -- is a notable and memorable example. 


This colony is described in the episode’s dialogue as a high-security, impenetrable installation.  It takes a long elevator (turbo-lift) ride underground to enter the hermetically-sealed installation in the first place. Additionally, the entire asylum is shielded from the rest of the civilized galaxy by a protective force field which prevents beaming. Finally, the prisoners inside the colony are controlled by a fiendish brainwashing device called a "neural neutralizer."

Sounds like quite the inescapable trap, doesn’t it?  

Well, after Captain Kirk (William Shatner) is captured and brain-washed by the neural neutralizer, he is held inside a locked ward room. Guess what should be conveniently located on the wall of his prison?

Yep: an absolutely huge vent-shaft, replete with decorative wall-grate. And naturally, this vent leads right to the control room for the installation's security force field, so that Kirk's associate, Dr. Helen Noel, can de-activate it.

Logically-speaking, why go to the trouble of building a facility deep underground, of surrounding it with an impenetrable force field, and controlling your wards by mind-control devices if you're just going to leave high-security areas accessible from ward room vent shafts?

In Space:1999's final second season episode, "The Dorcons," the convenient vent shaft comes in handy yet again.  Commander John Koenig (Martin Landau) has become trapped aboard the flagship of the Dorcons, the most terrifying military force in the universe.

Aboard the Dorcon ship, Koenig breaks free from custody, climbs into a comfortable, over-sized vent shaft, and then uses it -- undetected -- to travel throughout the warship and make mischief.  He bypasses Dorcon security, rescues his friend, Maya (Catherine Schell), and then manages to escape back to Moonbase Alpha with her in tow.

Again, you might think the most fearsome military Empire in the galaxy would boast better security, and do away with those gigantic vent shafts entirely. At least in this case, Koenig pays a physical price for the welcome convenience of the easily accessible, roomy vent shaft: the vent grate cuts open and bloodies his fingers when he shimmies it loose.

And here's another odd quirk of Space:1999 vent shafts.  The Dorcons represent a super-advanced society and yet are equipped with man-sized vent shafts. Meanwhile, the much-less technologically-advanced Alphans (denizens of our 20th century...) possess what we would consider normal-sized vent shafts. In an earlier second season episode, "The Beta Cloud," we see that Maya (a metamorphing Psychon) must transform into a tiny cockroach to pass through the small vents of the man-made moon base...

In a similar vein, Glen Larson's Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979) boasts an episode called "Fire in Space" -- an ode to Irwin Allen's The Towering Inferno -- in which a Cylon kamikaze attack starts a raging conflagration aboard the imperiled colonial Battlestar.   A group of off-duty humans, including Boomer (Herb Jefferson Jr), Athena (Maren Jensen) and young Boxey (Noah Hathaway) become trapped inside a rec center as the fire grows hotter, and smoke inhalation becomes a deadly threat.

Fortunately, there is a convenient vent shaft in the back of the rec center, and the robot daggit Muffit is sent inside it (he fits easily, of course...) to travel the length of the rather large battlestar and retrieve a bag of oxygen masks for the threatened Galactica crew. Along the way, Muffit also spots (and later rescues...) an injured fire crew worker.

Just look at that photograph of the battlestar vent shaft for a moment. If Muffit can fit through it comfortably and his robotic fur coat is not badly burned (just a little singed...) in the process, why don't the trapped Galacticans travel to safety through the vent shaft themselves, using ripped clothing as protection for their hands and knees?

Other cult-tv programs have made use of the vent shaft too.  In The Fantastic Journey’s “Funhouse,” Fred (Carl Franklin) uses a vent shaft to navigate the magical headquarters of a villainous magician.   The vent shaft collapses at just the right point to land him in a position to save his friend, Lianna (Katie Saylor).  

In Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century’s “Happy Birthday, Back,” Buck uses the vent shaft as a location from which to spy upon the bad guys, and, again, to leap into view at an opportune time.

More recently, cult-television has featured some welcome subversions of the trope.  In the classic first season X-Files episodes, “Tooms” and “Squeeze,” a mutant named Tooms (Dough Hutchison) was able to elongate and shrink his body so he could utilize modern vent shafts as a passageway, thus co-opting the common TV “escape” avenue for a villain instead of a hero.  


In Alias's "The Box" (2001) -- an ode to Die Hard -- Sydney Bristow used the vent shafts to secretly move around while SD6 was under siege (from Quentin Tarantino).  And in one third-season episode of Kiefer Sutherland’s 24, the dedicated terrorist-catcher, Jack Bauer, duct-taped the entrance of a vent shaft so he couldn't be followed by the bad guys.  Smart move.  


And about time, too... 

As late as 2010, the vent shaft genre convention appeared again in cult television.  In this case, it did so in  the ninth season finale of Smallville, with Green Arrow (Justin Hartley) under attack in a vent from an unknown enemy...

The Cult-TV Faces of: The Vent Shaft



Identified by Anonymous: Dr. Helen Noel (Marianna Hill) in Star Trek: "Dagger of the Mind."




Identified by Hugh: Dr. Who: "The Ark in Space."




Identified by SGB: Space:1999: "The Dorcons"




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Identified by Hugh: Battlestar Galactica: "Fire in Space."




Identified by SGB: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: "Happy Birthday, Buck"



Identified by Pierre Fontaine: Marc Singer in "V."

Identified by Jay-Jay: The X-Files: "Squeeze."

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Television and Cinema Verities # 9

...you can go deeper and deeper into a world and discover more and more things. A feature film has an ending. A continuing story doesn't. Eventually it could, but it can just go and go and go, and if the ideas keep flowing, it can be pretty thrilling."

- Director David Lynch compares film to television, in relation to Twin Peaks (1990 - 1991)