Cult-TV Theme Watch: Airlocks

An airlock is a chamber which allows people and cargo to pass between environments of differing pressure.

In cult-TV history, the airlock is famous as a way of getting rid of undesirable characters, at least in theory.  Although airlocks are actually rarely featured in Lost in Space (1965-1968), the famous joke about the series is that Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) deserves to be kicked out the airlock.  

More modern series actually visualize that idea, in particular the re-booted Battlestar Galactica (2003 – 2008).

In Space: 1999’s (1975-1977) Year One episode, "End of Eternity, Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) must rid Moonbase of Alpha of a psychotic maniac named Balor (Peter Bowles), and blows him out the airlock.

In the Year Two episode, “Brian the Brain,” a diabolical robot, Brian, traps Dr. Helena Russell (Barbara Bain) and Commander John Koenig (Martin Landau) in adjacent airlocks. He makes them endure a love test, where air is limited, and only one of them can survive.

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993 – 1999), the episode “The Nagus” reveals Rom (Max Grodenchik) attempting to assassinate his brother Quark, the new high Nagus of Ferenginar (at least temporarily…) by trapping him in the station’s airlock.

In “Ariel,” an episode of Joss Whedon’s Firefly (2002), Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) learns that Jayne (Adam Baldwin) has betrayed him, personally, as well as other members of the crew, and knocks him out.  When Jayne awakens, he finds himself in the airlock, about to be jettisoned.  He begs for his life, and Reynolds spares him, but the message is plain: one more betrayal and it is adios.

In the aforementioned Battlestar Galactica (2003-2008) re-imagination, in the episode “Flesh and Bone,’ President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) has Cylon enemies, including Leoben (Callum Keith Rennie) pitched out the airlock.

The Cult-TV Faces of: Airlocks

Identified by Carl: Doctor Who.

Identified by SGB: Gerry Anderson's UFO.

Identified by Hugh: Space:1999

Identified by SGB: Man from Atlantis.

Identified by Brian: Blake's 7.

Identified by Hugh: Deep Space Nine.

Identified by SGB: Star Trek Voyager

Identified by Hugh: Farscape.

Identified by Brian: Firefly.

Identified by SGB: BSG Remake.

Identified by Hugh: Star Trek: Enterprise.

Identified by Terri Wilson: Lost.

Identified by Hugh: Red Dwarf.

Not Yet Identified...

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At Flashbak: Monsterous [sic] Combiner (Tonka)

This week at Flashbak, I remembered Tonka’s robot combiner who was added to the Gobot toy line in the mid-1980s: “Monsterous” [sic])

Here’s a snippet and the url: (http://flashbak.com/before-transformers-there-were-gobots-apart-theyre-awful-together-theyre-monsterous-363361/ )

“Today, everybody loves Hasbro’s Transformers toy line, but back in the mid-1980s the Autobots had mechanical, transforming competition…from Tonka’s Gobots (“Mighty Robots/Mighty Vehicles”). 

Like the Autobots of Cybertron, the Gobots had two opposing teams: Guardians (the good guys) and Renegades (the bad guys). 

And for a while, the Gobots even had their own TV show: Challenge of the Gobots.

One of the weirdest and most wonderful toys from the 1980s Gobot catalog is the (notably misspelled…) "Monsterous," a large-scale combiner, consisting of six Gargoyle-like Gobot villains.

The toy box describes Monsterous as a “Renegade Robot Giant.”    It also notes a bit about his shapes/abilities: “Six Robots to Six Vehicles to One Monsterous Giant!”

And where did Monsterous hail from, at least in terms of Gobot mythology?

The box had an answer there too.  “Out of the depths of the Antares Solar System arises a band of six renegade monsters.”

The story continued: “Apart, they’re awful. Together, they’re: Monsterous, a Renegade Robot giant that’s more gruesome than the evilest being alive. Their mission is destruction...The starting point is Earth!”

The six individual Renegades that convert into the Monsterous being are: Weird Wing, South Claw, Heart Attack, Gore Jaw, Fangs, and Fright Face…”

Please continue reading at Flashbak. 

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Space Stars Episode #4 (October 3, 1981)

In the fourth episode of Hanna Barbera’s Space Stars (1981), Space Ghost encounter the Nomads, a group of aliens seeking to escape persecution by their dictatorial people. SG saves them from a space snake and offers to take them to the galaxy core so the free governments can discuss a place to settle them. 

Unfortunately, the Nomads are really conquering robots in disguise; their transports really battleships.  Space Ghost threatens to send the nomadic robots into a black hole if they don’t surrender, so they comply.

This episode, like so many, features villains who appear to be biological, but are actually disguised robots.  This trope recurs once more in this episode alone. It also re-appears in a Space Ghost story next week ("Attack of the Space Sharks.")

In “Trojan Teen Force,” the Teen Force seeks to help the Trojan Emperor and his daughter, who have been foolish enough to seek a peace treaty with Uglor.  

Uglor wants to marry the princess, however, and holds the royals captive until she acquiesces to his demands. The Teen Force uses a “Trojan Horse” trick to get aboard Uglor’s ship and conduct a rescue.   This story features the unusual scene of Uglor’s marriage. He is about to wed the princess when a second Trojan horse is revealed: she is really a shape-shifted Moleculad!

In this week’s segment of The Herculoids, titled “The Invisibles,” the family comes under attack from a series of invisible weapons. Igoo gets trapped behind an invisible force field, for instance. 

Zandor suspects the Zeelos, “the flying monkey men” who live nearby on Quasar, have broken a peace treaty with the Herculoids. The King of these villagers reveals that his rebellious son may actually be behind the attacks.  Space Ghost arrives on Quasar and reveals that the prince has been using “magna lite” -- debris from an explosion inside a black hole -- to render matter invisible.

In “The Space Dragons,” miners come under attack from space dragons. Space Ghost fights them and learns the dragons are giant robots attempting to steal the most valuable fuel in the universe.

In “Astro and he Space Mutts,” the dog cops fear they will be outmoded when Space Ace gets a new partner: Brucie the robot “Wonder Dog.”  The robot performs admirably but ultimately malfunctions and goes bananas.

The Space Stars finale this week is called “Mind Witch,” and the action starts when foragers on Quasar accidentally awaken a diabolical witch from suspended animation. 

Zandor reveals that these sinister, all-powerful mind-witches once ruled the planet. Space Ghost arrives to help the Herculoids, but is brainwashed into being a slave by the witch.

The black-outs for this week’s omnibus episode are as follows: 

In “Space Magic,” Jan, Jace and Blip do a “mind reading” trick.  

In “Space Fact,” the Herculoids discuss what it would be like to travel at the speed of light, and ponder the effects of time distillation. This bi makes no sense, however, in light of the technology of the series.  

For the ships and cycles to cross the distances they do in each Space Stars story, they must possess faster than light travel, but no time distillation is ever featured.  In fact, several episodes mention a “hyper drive,” which is a faster-than-light form of propulsion, and again -- no time distillation is featured.

In “Space Mystery,” a stranger claiming to have traveled faster than light speed attacks Quasar, but the Herculoids know he is lying because faster-than-light travel is impossible. The stranger is revealed as a mole-man who came from beneath the planet surface.

The Space Code this week is “JHPP,” which in code spells out the name of one of the Herculoids.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Shazam: "The Treasure" (October 19, 1974)

In “The Treasure,” Billy (Michael Gray) and Mentor (Les Tremayne) learn that thieves have been stealing Native American treasures from sacred ground, and desecrating “the desert,” which is a prime concern of the Elders, who declare the territory “rich” in Indian “history.” 

Billy and Mentor team up with a Native American boy, Johnny and his grandfather to stop the thieves, and preserve “the beauty of the land.”  

The thieves, however, nearly escape from a nearby airport…until Captain Marvel stops them.

Like almost every episode of Shazam’s first season thus far, “The Treasure” features no interior locations, only exteriors. 

What makes “The Treasure” fun, however, is the nature of the location shooting.  

The episode is shot at the famous Vasquez Rocks, home of the Zanti Misfits (The Outer Limits), the Gorn (Star Trek), and other cult-TV series including The Invaders, Man from Atlantis, Space: Above and Beyond, and Alias.  

The famous angled/pointed mountain rock can be seen in “The Treasure” but from a different angle than featured in most programs.  Here, Mentor’s RV -- with the Captain Marvel lightning bolt emblazoned on the hood -- drives down a path right in front of that craggy outcropping.

Otherwise, “The Treasure” is distinguished primarily by its more-accomplished than-usual final action scene.  

Here, Captain Marvel (Jackson Bostwick) chases down a fast-moving plane on the runway, grabs a rudder, and brings the craft to a dead stop.  Through the use of fast-motion photography and a few other tricks, the super heroics actually come off looking rather impressive.

And for those cataloging such factors, “The Treasure” marks the second time in seven episodes (after “The Brothers”) in which Billy’s secret identity as Captain Marvel is learned by an outsider. In this case, it’s the trustworthy Grandfather who knows the truth.

The Films of 1969: Captain Nemo and the Underwater City

Across the various Jules Verne-inspired films surveyed here on the blog the last few weeks, we've seen the classic literary anti-hero Captain Nemo depicted as self-sacrificing savior and anguished anti-hero (Fleischer's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea [1954]), and Nemo as older (and perhaps wiser?) benevolent benefactor of mankind (Mysterious Island [1961]). 

1969's Captain Nemo and The Underwater City provides yet another interpretation of the character, and to put it bluntly, it isn't one of my favorites.

Here, as played by diminutive, thin Robert Ryan, Captain Nemo is portrayed as a soft-voiced, beardless, kindly, grandfather-type. In this British-made feature, Nemo commands not merely the advanced submarine Nautilus, but serves happily as friendly ruler of a golden undersea utopia, a domed metropolis called "Temple Myra," if I have it right.

More to the point, however, this 1969 version of Captain Nemo is rather toothless, given to the occasionally 'bout of grumpiness, but overall most determined, apparently, to forge a romantic relationship with a castaway named Helena (Nanette Newman) whom he has rescued from a sinking ship. I suppose there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a film dramatizing the softer side of Nemo, but it's still a bit jarring to see such an edgy character rendered so...harmless.

Captain Nemo and The Underwater City (shot by the always-impressive Alan Hume) depicts the tale of six men and women who are rescued by Nemo when their vessel sinks during a storm on the high seas. These characters include the honorable U.S. Senator Robert Fraser (Chuck Connors), plucky widower Helena Beckett (Newman), her young boy, Phillip, a twitchy claustrophobic named Lomax (Allan Cuthbertson) and two petty crooks -- Barnaby (Bill Fraser) and Swallow (Kenneth Connor) -- who comprise the film's egregiously tiresome comic-relief duo.

Nemo transports these survivors to the bottom of the sea and to his gold-plated commune, a domed city of peace and prosperity. 

In fact, Nemo is even planning a construction expansion there: two additional domes are in the offing. 

Life in Temple Myra is a paradise, but for the people from the surface, it's also a cage because Nemo won't permit the new arrivals to return home out of fear that they will reveal the existence of his amazing metropolis to the warring nations above. 

Soon, Fraser romances a sexy citizen in the city, Mala (Lucianna Paluzzi), which enrages her current beau, Joab (John Turner). We know Mala and the Senator are hot for each other, because she serenades Fraser with a strangely phallic musical instrument that she strokes romantically (and in soft-focus), while Fraser looks on, entranced.

Meanwhile, Nemo becomes a kindly father-figure to young Phillip, and develops a a close friendship with the obstinate women's libber Helena. When offered the choice to betray Nemo and leave the city, or stay with Nemo and form an ad hoc family (along with Phillip's little kitten...), Helena chooses to remain.

As all this soap opera occurs inside the safety of the city walls, a deranged giant manta ray named "Mobula" threatens the peace outside. Fraser becomes a hero after dispatching the murderous beast while in command of Nautilus.

Despite this act of bravery, Fraser plots escape aboard a brand new Nautilus #2 with the help of the treacherous Joab and the avaricious Barnaby...

I first saw Captain Nemo and The Underwater City with my (patient) parents sometime in the very early 1970s, on a drive-in double-bill, as a I recall. As a child, I loved the movie simply because it featured cool submarines, undersea domes, and the giant Mobula monster. 

And did I mention Lucianna Paluzzi in a bathing suit?

Watching the film as a more discerning adult, however, Captain Nemo and The Underwater City doesn't wear quite as well.

For instance, the production design is rather underwhelming. Specifically, the underwater city is saddled with an unfortunate and hackneyed leitmotif: not only is everything gold Futura, but every architectural detail is ridiculously marine-life-centric. What I mean by that is that Nemo makes his announcements through a microphone that is molded into the shape of a fish. And when a siren sounds, the alarm bell features a vibrating lobster figure. 

Nemo's diving suits are also somewhat silly in appearance. The suits feature transparent shoulder epaulets in the shape of fish fins. This sort of decoration resembles a bad seafood theme restaurant rather than the Utopian headquarters of the world's greatest genius.

The miniature work is also terrible. I should add, this is not a case of the years being unkind to good special effects, to be certain. If you go back to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea in 1954 or Mysterious Island in 1961, you can see some amazing and convincing miniature work and optical effects. In both cases, those effect still hold up remarkably well: you believe the Nautilus is a full-sized vehicle ramming actual surface vessels. 

Captain Nemo and The Underwater City's effects never achieve that level of verisimilitude. It puts forward inferior -- and obvious -- model work.

Captain Nemo and the Underwater City also wastes an inordinate amount of its melodramatic narrative concentrating on unfunny comic-relief. Barnaby and Swallow make pests of themselves -- and in one cringe-worthy moment -- Barnaby squirts a stream of alcohol in his face while trying to master an undersea drink dispenser. 

Much more troubling and difficult to accept is the fact that secretive Captain Nemo not only goes out of his way to rescue a few survivors from a passing ship (when in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea he was willing to let Ned and the others die in the sea...), but that he here turns around and bestows upon them his instant and unquestioning trust. 

Specifically, Nemo permits Joab to give the Lomax and the gold-hungry Barnaby and Swallow full access to the city (except for a carefully labeled "Forbidden Area.") Joab obediently and politely shows these visitors everything: the gold repository room, and the pressure control room...the one room in the city that could be sabotaged, and could destroy the utopia.

Frankly, Nemo's insistence that these visitors remain at the bottom of the sea (10,000 fathoms below the surface...) is also more than a little mystifying. The good captain should have just dropped the survivors off on the nearest island, or given them a small raft so they could find help from a passing vessel. Nemo's stated motive for not permitting Fraser and others to return to the surface is that they would tell the world about his underwater utopia.

Yes, but what could they do about it?

I mean, it's not like any nation in the world at this time in history (roughly the period of the American Civil War) boasted the technology to reach the city, let alone attack and pillage it. 

Nemo is the only human being in the world with the capacity to even reach the bottom of the sea at this juncture in time. Fraser and the others could be sent back freely with their wild story, and even if by chance they were believed by the authorities, there would be nothing that could be done about it. 

In fact, if you follow my logic, the only way malicious forces (or spies...) from the outside world could reach the domed city would if they were...rescued by Nemo and brought down by him as guests. 

Once inside they could then sabotage the city and escape back to the surface in his submarines. 

And that, in fact, is what happens. 

This is purely and simply a case of a narrative scenario without a whit of logical consistency.

A couple more things: it seems to me that if you wanted to write the story of Captain Nemo falling in love and becoming a father-figure, you would want to highlight his sad past, especially his alienation from the world-at-large. 

You'd want to include much information about the family he lost too. 

Captain Nemo and The Underwater City does none of that, providing instead a lukewarm romance between the elder Nemo and one of his much-younger visitors. It is also baffling that the anti-social Nemo, who exiled himself in the sea to escape his past, would cheerfully become the very visible leader of an undersea commune, presiding over school swimming competitions and the like. I'm not kidding, either. That's actually what Nemo is doing (celebrating All-Seas Day, poolside...) when Fraser steals the Nautilus # 2.

I've been rather tough on Captain Nemo and The Underwater City, but in closing, I would like to write something positive about it. 

And that is this: for all the hoary aspects of the movie (from the miniature design to the pedestrian script by Pip and Jane Baker), the film does boast a unique approach to villainy: Not one character is really a "bad guy" in the traditional movie sense. 

Lomax is a sick man, mentally unbalanced. 

Barnaby is simply greedy. 

And opponents Fraser and Nemo come to respect and admire one another, despite the fact they end up in conflict. Too often, movie villains are evil "just because," when in reality we know that battles are waged over ideologies or differences of opinion. 

As childish as Captain Nemo and The Underwater City sometimes seems, it's at least a little rewarding that the characters are occasionally less two-dimensional than the production design is. The movie has a nice way of focusing on character motivations and decisions instead of assuming that all the visitors to Nemo's world would reflexively want to return home.

"Even Utopia has its hazards," one character states in the film, but Captain Nemo and The Underwater City's best quality is that it realizes our world has hazards too. 

And that choosing a "home" ultimately comes down to more than just returning to the place where you started out.

Movie Trailer: Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969)

Movie Trailer: Green Room (2016)

A Disneyland Record and Book: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Comic Book of the Week: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Classics Illustrated)