Aucbvax.1469 fa.sf-lovers utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-AI Mon Jun 1 05:16:22 1981 SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #135 SF-LOVERS PM Digest Saturday, 30 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 135 Today's Topics: SF Fandom - James H. Schmitz, SF Movies - Outland, SF TV - Twilight Zone Mini-Fest & Gerry Anderson Productions (UFO and Space: 1999 and The Protectors), SF Topics - Children's TV (Gerry Anderson Productions and Supercar and Fireball XL5 and Stingray and Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 26 May 1981 at 0314-CDT From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 Subject: Our Loss... ________________________________________________________ | ______________________________________________________ | || || || || || James H. Schmitz || || || || 1911-1981 || || || || || ||______________________________________________________|| |________________________________________________________| ------------------------------ Date: 26 May 1981 1056-PDT From: ICL.REDFORD at SU-SCORE Subject: more on Outland First, technical nits. Putting a mine on Io strikes me as a bad idea to begin with. Not only do you have lift the stuff out of the moon's gravity well, but you have to get it out of Jupiter's as well. And Io makes ordinary space look like the Riviera; not only does the crust shift from week to week but the radiation levels are incredibly high. One of locals with experiments on the Pioneer probe gave a seminar here and I asked him how long you could live without rad shielding on the surface of Io. He said, "About a minute". Mining the asteroids would be far easier, though you wouldn't get that spectacular view of Jupiter. Second, a thematic nit. Alan Ladd's excuse for setting what is essentially a Western out in space is that he wanted to show that the frontier is still going to be the same whether it's in Arizona or the outer solar system. Well, building the transcontinental railway wasn't much like building the Alaska pipeline (whaddaya mean we've got to delay this ten billion dollar project because of the caribou?) or even much like building the Panama canal. Mining Io two hundred years from now will not be like mining Colorado in the 1880s because mining Colorado today is not like mining it in the 1880s. ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 1981 12:55 PDT From: Newman.ES at PARC-MAXC Subject: Twilight Zone Mini-Fest at UCLA, June 1 For Twilight Zone fans in the LA area: Three half-hour episodes will be shown at UCLA's Melnitz Hall auditorium on Monday, June 1 at 5:30 p.m. Titles of the episodes are "Escape Clause", "Steel", and "Mirror Image". /Ron ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 1981 1153-EDT From: MLEASE at BBNC (Michael V. Lease) Subject: Tom Swift on George of the Jungle? Isn't that Tom SLICK??? Mikey ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 1981 1408-PDT From: Friedland at SUMEX-AIM Subject: answers to some SF TV shows questions 1. The racecar driver cartoon that appeared with George, George, George of the Jungle, friend to you and me ..... was Tom SLICK, not Tom Swift. 2. The Supermarionation show about a family that lived on an island and rescued people was "Thunderbirds" who ran a group called International Rescue, and had five vehicles, named Thunderbirds 1 - 5. 3. Some information about SF TV is documented in a book called "Fantastic Television". This mostly covers adult SF TV (like Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Voyage to See What's on the Bottom, etc.), but does mention some of the "kid" TV shows. IT certainly does cover Tom Corbett and Video Rangers, etc. 4. Glad to hear someone else verifies Gidney and Cloyd--it was the answer that won my team the 1978 Stanford Trivia Bowl Championship. Peter ------------------------------ Date: 26 May 1981 0357-PDT (Tuesday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Gerry Anderson and Television SF This digest's ongoing discussion of television SF has now passed through arenas ranging from the mundane to the simply bizarre. There are still some gaping holes, one of which I will attempt to fill at this time! In a past digest, brief mention was made of the "puppet" programs. Let's look more closely at the truly unique variety of programming that has appeared under the banner of "supermarionation" (or some similar spelling ...) A substantial line of programs featuring marionettes appeared during the 60's and 70's. All of these programs placed the very human-like puppets in "high-tech" situations of various sorts; situations which frequently involved adventure, intrigue, and, quite frequently, massive explosions! The marionettes "lived" in perfectly scaled worlds, spoke with lip-sync, and generally were so well controlled that the viewer was led to forget that he or she was not watching actual human actors. That all of these programs had major similarities (including musical style) should not be surprising, since all were created and produced by the same man -- Gerry Anderson -- under the auspices of the ITC releasing company. What were these programs, you ask? Supercar -- starring Mike Mercury, the "Supercar" was actually a flying vehicle chock full of tricks and special abilities. Mike and the rest of his "team" spent each half hour episode saving all sorts of dire situations and generally doing good deeds for mankind. This program brought us the immortal words, "Open Roof Doors", several times in each program, as Mike entered or left the "hanger" where the supercar was kept. Fireball XL5 -- A "space"-oriented program, with our heroes flying around to various planets and whatnot, to save dire situations in each episode (sound familiar?) "I wish I were a fireball..." Stingray -- Sort of a "Supercar" -- underwater. The usual dire situations. Thunderbirds -- This program represented pretty much the culmination of the marionette business in this area, and was by far the most elaborate and dramatic. Consisting of both half hour and hour programs, Thunderbirds involved an organization known as "International Rescue", which operated out of a privately owned island. International Rescue had a vast variety of vehicles for use in the air, in space, and underwater, and specialized in getting people out of impossible situations when all hope was lost. Actually a very fine program. Amazing gizmos and technology abounded, and even the usual explosions, fires, and other disasters were performed with extra care and quality. [ Thanks also to Barry Margolin for a description of the Thunderbirds. -- Jim ] By the way, it appears that a couple of existing Thunderbirds episodes have recently been re-edited into a feature film, "Thunderbirds Are Go", which will shortly be making the rounds in the pay-tv circuits around the country -- try to catch it if you have a chance. This brings us to the end of the "puppet" programs, but Gerry Anderson did not stop here. He moved on into live action programming, most of which maintained the high-technology "SF" theme, and which continued to use his classic style of miniatures in effex sequences, with the same style of musical scoring throughout. These programs were also all released by ITC, and included: UFO -- A very unusual program, to say the least. The premise was that aliens are in the process of attacking Earth and, among other things, abducting people for use as transplant donors. The general public, however, is not aware of what is going on ... all incidents involving "ufos" (pronounced U-FOES) are kept secret, and other "explanations" are created for these incidents. The ufos are fought by an organization known as SHADO, which is headquartered under a film studio in England. They possess an impressive array of land, sea, and space equipment (much of which looks very similar to that from "Thunderbirds"!), and even have a secret moonbase. The show is probably best taken with a grain of salt -- frequently technical accuracy takes a back seat to character conflicts and relationships. There is a very active fanclub for this program (which, I believe, also includes a number of Gerry Anderson's other programs). In fact, one of the primary officials of this club reads this very digest [and you know who you are!] I will respect their privacy and allow them to remain anonymous -- perhaps they will see fit to unmask themselves on their own -- maybe to correct any inaccuracies (horrors!) in this message! All in all, UFO can truly be described as "unique". Watch a few and see what I mean; they can be rather enjoyable if viewed in the proper spirit. They still show up sometimes as half hour fillers at random times... Space: 1999 -- This is practically contemporary, so I won't say much about it. A nuclear waste dump on the moon explodes, sending the entire moon (and Moonbase Alpha) off through space on a series of adventures involving a variety of planets, aliens, and things that go bump in the night. There were actually two versions of this program: most of the cast was changed, as well as portions of the "format", between two seasons. The program was indeed notable for the starring roles of Martin Landau and Barbara Baines -- the husband/wife team back together on a program for the first time since "Mission: Impossible". The Protectors -- This one is obscure, and was not at all SF. It involved a group of British, well, "detectives", who were involved in (you guessed it!) a variety of dire situations. Most of the time they were busy "protecting" people -- but since the people would often disappear anyway, it took considerable detective work to find them again! I believe there was at least one other live-action program from Anderson. It may have been the program that starred Gene Barry as an actor who was a part-time "detective" -- "The Adventurer"? I'm not certain. I may even have missed some obscure marionette programs from Anderson, though I know I've covered the main ones. Gerry Anderson's productions through the 60's, 70's, (and, may we presume, the 80's?) have represented an innovative style that stands alone amidst the otherwise often "oatmealy" sameness of television. His programs might well be vulnerable to criticism on various levels, but they were frequently, on a technological and production basis, truly at the forefront of the art of true television "creation". --Lauren-- ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 1981 1706-PDT From: CSD.BOTHNER at SU-SCORE Subject: More nostalgia (Anderson puppet films; The "uncle" books) Gerry and Sylvie Anderson produced in the sixties a whole slew of puppet animation series for children. I think Stingray and Fireball XL-5 were among them. The ones I've seem most of though were Thunderbirds (Geoff@SRI-KL's "unknown") and Captain Scarlet. I saw most of the episodes for both while I was in England. (The Andersons were later responsible for UFO and Space:1999.) Thunderbirds was one of my favorite TV series. A secret organization (International Rescue) lived on a South Sea island. An american millionaire widower (Tracy) was the head, and his 5 (?) grownup sons each had the responsibility of piloting a rocket, named Thunderbird 1 though ... 5. All these ships were hidden below the island, and I still (almost) remember the theme music as, say, the swimming pool slid aside to allow one of the Thunderbirds to take off. The most interesting characters were the English agent, the aristocratic Lady Penelopy, and her devoted cockney ex-con schauffeur and assistant Parker. A couple of feature films were made. I think the full title of Captain Scarlet was "... and the Mysterons", where "Mysterons" was the names given to his Martian adversaries. Scarlet was the head agent of the Mysteron-fighting Spectrum, which had its headquarters in the clouds, borne up by powerful (and energy-thirsty?) jets. One of the Mystersons' main powers was the ability to resurrect someone they had killed and take them over. Their best agent was a resurrected spectrum agent, Captain Black. (Spectrum's boss was Colonel White which presumably was meant to suggest both his age and his stature as a good guy.) On another topic: A series of books I read which I don't suppose have been exported to America were the "Uncle" books by J.P.Martin. Uncle was a fabulously rich elephant who owned a gigantic castle where all sorts of things were wont to happen. His secretary was a chimp, otherwise most of the characters were human. I enjoyed the books a lot (I think there were about 4, including "U. and the Treacle Vat", and "U. and his Detective"), but even at the tender age of 12(?) I found the social and economic philosophy simplistic. For example there was little mention of where U. got his wealth, except that fabulous gifts were always pouring in from admirers around the world. And the ruffians who were always plotting against U's money were obviously Martin's picture of the dirty communists plotting against us honest capitalists. --In re nostalgia, Per Bothner ------------------------------ End of SF-LOVERS Digest *********************** ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.