Aucbvax.1470 fa.sf-lovers utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!JPM@MIT-ML Mon Jun 1 07:07:18 1981 SF-LOVERS Digest V3 #136 SF-LOVERS PM Digest Sunday, 31 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 136 Today's Topics: SF Movies - Outland & Barbarella query, SF TV - Here's the Plot,What's the Title, SF Radio - HitchHiker Guide Guide, SF Topics - Children's stories & Children's TV (Roger Ramjet and Rocky and Bullwinkle and Jay Ward Productions and Super Chicken and Speed Racer and Captain Scarlet) Digest Correction - Duplicate message ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 26 May 1981 1753-CDT From: Bob Amsler Subject: Outland, genre "future shock" I have read through the Outland mail messages and feel it is still worth making one point that was only touched upon. The fact that A. Ladd's own film company produced this is significant, as is the continuity with "Alien" in terms of what "Outland" is all about. I suggest that a new "formula" has been discovered, and for my part it DOES work. The "formula" is to take a used-up genre film, for "Alien" this was the horror film, for "Outland" it is the Western, and to remake it in the science-fiction setting with lush space scenery. "Outland" is magnificently "atmospheric". George Lukas established the validity of beat-up equipment giving a science-fiction movie more character and that lesson has been followed in "Outland" to an extreme I found almost over-done. Nearly everywhere in the Con-Am mining facility one sees grubbyness. Apart from the "white" of the medical quarters, the corridors are grimy, with streaked walls where something leaked through. O'Neil's wife mentions she's leaving in part because she is tired of air that smells like the inside of a machine-room (or some such). The living quarters remind one of cramped submarine bunks. Informal dress is grubby sweat-shirt modern. Anyway, the point of this message is that there is a new "pattern" for science-fiction movie-making and I think "Outland" will spawn a series of imitations as well as foster a new effort to extend the "genre transplants" into other non-SF genres. Clearly we could see a Science-Fiction Mystery akin to Asimov's Robot novels; a Spy movie set in the future; not to mention the War Movie (if TESB didn't already achieve that). The results are pleasing enough, but the fun of "Outland" clearly involves making the comparisons with "High Noon". There are many. O'Neil's one-line utterances (to which attention is drawn by his wife in the film); the reactions of those on the mining facility to helping O'Neil in the show-down; the "bottom of the heap" marshall job as the last chance for O'Neil to show he's not the broken-down lawman everyone expects him to be; the "why don't you leave town" query; the "countdown" for the show-down with it's psychological stress.... Pure camp. ------------------------------ Date: 28 May 1981 22:10 edt From: JSLove at MIT-Multics (J. Spencer Love) Subject: Movie Cast Query Sender: JSLove.PDO at MIT-Multics I have been asked by a friend who played the Great Tyrant in Barbarella. In particular, was she played by more than one person, as Darth Vader was: one for the body and another for the voice. A bet hinges on this although I am unable to obtain a percentage for whoever can answer this. Reply to JSL at MIT-Multics and I will send just one copy of the answer to the digest. [ Yes, please reply directly, NOT to the digest. -- Jim ] ------------------------------ Date: 1981-5-22-11:31:21.76 Sender: YOUNG at DEC-MARLBORO From: NIGEL CONLIFFE at VAXWRK at ORION at METOO Subject: Old, Bad TV Shows of beloved memory (sic) On the subject of old, bad TV shows, there was an old TV show called Phoenix - 5 which used to be shown on Saturday mornings. It was a sort of "Space Patrol" concept, where our three heros (actually two heros, one heroine and a robot) travelled through space protecting Earth against whatever the current nastiness from outer space was. Their principal enemy was a space pirate (whose name I forget, fortunately) who had a beard, and an artificial limb and all the usual cliches. The show was memorable for only two reasons - (1) They must have spent all of $7.32 on special effects - the "master computer" was a collection of christmas tree lights and some actual household light switches! (2) They landed on some strange planet, which was all snow and ice. The pilot asked the robot what the outside temperature was, to which our mechanical friend replied "It's -12 degrees Kelvin", to which the pilot replied "That's cold!" They then donned parkas and down vests and went outside. Does anyone else remember this series (I think it was originally produced in Australia) or is my memory generating parity errors again? Nigel A Conliffe ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 1981 1642-EDT (Saturday) From: Roy.Taylor at CMU-10A Subject: HitchHiker Guide Guide Could someone provide a list of episodes in the HitchHiker's Guide currently running on NPR Playhouse? They don't seem to be numbered nor can I tell how many there are. -- Roy ------------------------------ Date: 28 May 1981 06:06:20-PDT From: decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley Subject: Children's Science Fiction While wandering in a local bookstore, I saw a rack labelled "Teenage Favorites", which contained about 14 different Danny Dunn books, plus "Miss Pickerell Goes to the Moon." Guess they're still around, though I had trouble reconciling the copyright dates with the order of books in the series and my own recollection of when I read them. ------------------------------ Date: 25 May 1981 20:32:17-EDT From: cjh at CCA-UNIX (Chip Hitchcock) Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle It has been confirmed by various sources that R&B will be back in distribution for the fall season of Saturday morning shows; I'm told that in NYC they'll be broadcast right after DR. WHO. I have warm memories of that show (and of seeing a complete serial, complete with all the other self-contained episodes they included, at last year's Minicon), although I would have said it actually began in the late 50's rather than the 60's. But as for it being pioneering, a somewhat older acquaintance (born 1946) maintains that the first intelligent cartoon show, from which most of the rest took varieties of inspiration, was "Crusader Rabbit" (with Rags the tiger), which I've never seen. Comments? ------------------------------ Date: 26 May 1981 (Tuesday) 0044-EDT From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt) Subject: Bullwinkle Ah, at last a topic I still enjoy! I still remember skipping many a class as an undergraduate to watch the morning editions of Johnny Quest, followed by Bullwinkle. I add to Lauren's list some more bad puns found in B: An entire series devoted to a gemstone boat, the "Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayam"... one of the opponents was a high leader of the mid-east, the "Grand Brassiere"... (some things I really didn't catch when I was 5 or 6 years old...) --- whatever became of Jay Ward and JW Productions, anyway? -Steve ------------------------------ Date: 26 May 1981 (Tuesday) 0026-EDT From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager) Subject: Animated Kiddy SF Mr. Peabody (the dog) and his pet boy, Sherman, used to use a "wayback" machine to visit the past. This was one of the more instructive shows around but all of the history lessons ended in bad "shaggy dog" punch lines. Remeber Tennessee Tuxedo (a pseudo-penguin) and his friend waldo walrus? They had a friend who was a professor (name forgotten). This character used to explain things by way of a device known as the 3DBB (Three Dimensional Black Board). The things would come out pocket sized and then expand into a rather large (but still only two dimensional!) blackboard. There was some Hanna-Barbara animation called, I think, "Secret Squirrel". He had a gadget ridden car that did everything from fly to play submarine. Along the same line... "Tom, the man from T.H.U.M.B." [Tiny Human ?U? ?M? ?B?]. He had his office in a file drawer and was sent off on secret assignments of an FBI-like flavor. -- Jeff ------------------------------ Date: 30 May 1981 1559-EDT From: MD at MIT-XX Subject: Rocky and Bullwinkle I dug up a lot of information on Jay Ward cartoons from the LSC (MIT Lecture Series Committee - the campus film group) files. It would have been appropriate for the Film-Buffs mailing list, but I'm not sure I should tie up SF-Lovers. I can give you the titles of all 28 Rocky and His Friends series (326 total episodes), the 39 Bullwinkle's Corner episodes, the 60 Mr. Know It All's, the 91 Peabody's Improbable History's, and 91 Fractured Fairy Tales [it's not clear from the sheets I'm looking at whether Aesop and Son was also Jay Ward]. I can also tell you how to go about renting them. If people are really interested, I'll type in the lists (but there's quite a bit of typing involved). It might make sense to set up as a separate file which people could look at or FTP. Send reactions directly to me, MD@MIT-XX. Mike Dornbrook [ Please send your reactions directly to Mike. If enought people are interested then the information will be distributed via the digest's FTP procedures. -- Jim ] ------------------------------ Date: 31 May 1981 1228-EDT (Sunday) Sender: David.Ackley at CMU-10A From: Dave Ackley Subject: Tom SLICK and more theme songs The race car driver was Tom Slick, not Tom Swift, in the show featuring him, George of the Jungle, and Super Chicken. Fragments of theme songs: Super Chicken: ... and it looks like you will take a lickin'. There is one thing you should learn, When there is no where else to turn, To ca-all for Super Chicken! ... he will drink his Super Sauce And throw the bad guys for a loss, So ca-all for Super Chicken. Pluck pluck pluck pluck Ca-all for Super Chicken! Pluck GAWK! Speed Racer: Here he comes! Here comes Speed Racer! He's a demon on wheels. He's a demon and he's gonna be chasin' after someone. ... [he will catch them in his powerful?] Mach Five! [At the junior high school age that my buddies and me used to watch this show after school, we got much amusement out of the Mach Five. It had buttons in the center of the steering wheel which could make the car do some impressive things, like sprout wings, go under water, and put out two large sawmill blades in front of the car so Speed Racer could drive pell-mell through dense forest. Classicly Awful! His comic relief characters were his little brother (phonetically) Spridle and his monkey Chim-Chim.] Captain Scarlet: [I remember the music distinctly but can't get words beyond:] Captain Scarlet! [and maybe repeat?] In-De-Structible CAPTAIN SCARLET! [Another classic Japanese Super Marionation import. He was a member of the Spectrum organization, HQed in a thing called Cloud Base, which had no visible means of support. The CO was Colonel White, of course, and the heavy was Captain Black, of course, who had been on the original Mars mission and was taken over by the Mysterons of Mars. The show always opened with some random getting killed and taken over by the Mysterons, with the following voice-over: This is Captain Black, relaying instructions from the Mysterons. [then "plot"-specific details of what evil this guy was to do.] Captain Scarlet suffered a near-miss with the Mysterons which left him "indestructible" and not a candidate for take over. Understandably, the Mysterons didn't like him very much. The equivalent of "Aye aye, sir", on the show was "S.I.G.", which we eventually discovered meant: "Spectrum Is Green". Now THAT makes sense.] Well, enough of this. If anyone is interested, a friend of mine and I recently managed to come up with a complete set of lyrics to "The Patty Duke Show" too! -Dave ------------------------------ Date: 27 May 1981 00:44:13-PDT From: CSVAX.wildbill at Berkeley Subject: Errata and R.R. When Noodles Romanoff threatens to play some music on his "violins" (i.e., not e.g. machine guns), he pronounces it "wye'-o-lince". There is another verse to the Roger Ramjet theme song, and the refrain as originally sent is incorrect. The corrected version is: Roger Ramjet Theme Song Roger Ramjet and his Eagles, Fighting for our freedom. Fly to win in outer space Not to join 'em, but to beat 'em. REFRAIN: Roger Ramjet, he's our man Hero of our nation. For his adventures just be sure And stay tuned to this station! So come and join us all you kids For lots of fun and laughter As Roger Ramjet and his men Get all the crooks they're after. (refrain) Roger Ramjet Closing Theme When Ramjet takes a proton pill, The crooks begin to worry. They can't escape their awful fate From proton's mighty fury. (refrain) So come and join us ... ------------------------------ Date: 31 May 1980 8:40 PST From: The Moderator Subject: Digest Correction - duplicate message In the Friday digest (volume 3, issue 134), a message by Bruce Hamilton (Hamilton.ES at PARC-MAXC) appeared twice. The second occurance of this message should be replaced by the following message. Jim Date: 26 May 1981 1431-PDT (Tuesday) From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Re: new mailing lists I am glad, but I am also sorry. It would have been fun. Someday, on another network! --Lauren-- ------------------------------ 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.