She's so pretty. I did watch Lost in Space, even in its 2nd and 3rd year with all the walking carrots that someone thought would be scary monsters ... and the ever-sillier Dr. Smith and his angsty friendship with Will Robinson.
It sure seemed like there was a psychedelic influence creeping into TV at the time. LOST IN SPACE went from being somewhat serious to ridiculous, and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA went completely off the rails. I've watched parts of a few episodes of that lately on MeTV, and saw the crew battling werewolves, ETs, and the vengeful ghost of Blackbeard, while the actors cast sidelong glances at each other and gamely struggled to deliver their lines with straight faces.
For a long time I've wondered if the writers of Paul Henning's shows were avidly experimenting with mind expanding substances, because a lot of BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and, to an even greater extent, GREEN ACRES episodes were downright surreal.
Such riches in those four shows .. but, speaking of Green Acres, the credits would appear and Lisa's comments of "Vhat are all doze verds, dahling?" or "Vhere is dat moosik coming from?" made me laugh then and now. Then Alf and Ralph, Mr. Haney, etc. made for a fun time.
I have a ghost of a wisp of a memory that Green Acres was, in fact, drug-induced as it later turned out - just as reportedly Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, 'experimented' with LSD and much of the bizarre surrealism of his clay work was enhanced thereby. I'm unable as I sit here to get corroboration for either rumor.
It sure seemed like there was a psychedelic influence creeping into TV at the time.
Two words (or one, depending on how you reckon the hyphen): SPIDER-MAN. Above all, third-season blacklight-poster recycled-from-ROCKET-ROBIN-HOOD SPIDER-MAN. We're talking post-apocalyptic cavemen. Lost subterranean cities of talking mandrills. Malevolent talking flowers. And then there was "Revolt in the Fifth Dimension", whose over-the-top spookiness got the episode banned in Britain; Spider-Man's confrontation with the cyclopean lich-lord Infinata in the hallucinatory realm of Dementia-5 sure looked a lot more like a job for Doctor Strange:
Au contrairebaron_wasteSeptember 2 2015, 14:45:43 UTC
Jonathan Harris deserves the Silk Purse Award, for using his brains to make lemonade out of lemons. You saw the first season, where he sure as all whatnot wasn't funny, he was scary… but, then what? How 'scary' can he be, out there Lost in Space? So he himself re-invented his character, he came up with all those alliterative insults for the Robot
and the ingratiating but in its own way essential relationship with Will, who may have respected his Dad but didn't have much of a relationship with him; he badly needed a friend nearer to his own social level who could teach him, if only what not to do…
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea? Name one episode. Time Tunnel? Name any of the characters. Yet even today if you say in a weak voice, “Ohh the pain… Oh, the pain…” or waggle your arms from the elbow, a startlingly high number of people will still get the reference!
Oh, no, don't put Mr Harris down. He won against ridiculous odds.
Re: Au contrairepronkerSeptember 2 2015, 15:31:54 UTC
Oh, I curtsey to Mr. Harris now, as an adult, but as a kid viewer, the scheming and taking unfair adult advantage of a smart yet vulnerable Bill Mumy seemed outrageous. I do remember applauding at the robot's comebacks to the insults.
VTBS: The Fearmakers, Ghost of Moby Dick, The Phantom Strikes ... etc. I'm afraid you're speaking with a rabid fan of the show. But getting back to Mr. Harris, I thought the same of him as I did of Chief Sharkey (Terry Becker) on VTBS, which is: impatient with the 'comic relief' and deploring the time away from the Monsters. Nowadays, life is easier and it's fun to appreciate comic talent and making do with scripts that had huge margins for improvement, so let's cheer Mr. Harris and Mr. Becker (who just left us last Dec. at age 93)!
Time Tunnel: Anne and Tony and Doug .. didn't like or remember this one nearly as much as VTBS.
Re: Au contrairebaron_wasteSeptember 2 2015, 15:46:25 UTC
What about Land of the Giants? Murray Leinster did the novelization, and again, deserves a Silk Purse award, for he put more thought into the concept than the TV show did! (Like, why anybody cared about the Spindrift & Co - its engines and even its radio were enormously destructive to their electrical infrastructure. Whenever it used either one it blacked out whole counties - which at Giant scale is saying a lot! In theory if they'd abandoned ship they could have made some sort of lives for themselves, but meanwhile the Giants were seeking the ship to shut it down!)
I liked also that Mr Leinster had JUST written a textbook on entomology, and put a LOT of that into this - I learned more about insects from reading this, than I had in school!
As for the show, everyone was gaga over Deanna Lund, but I thought Heather Young was more attractive. Matter of personal taste.
Re: Au contrairepronkerSeptember 2 2015, 19:54:40 UTC
Oooh, did not recall that about Leinster's plot, although I read the book at publication. So the Giants wanted to preserve their infrastructure, and who could blame them? The basic story appealed because it was Survival 101 and I'm a sucker for Gilligan's Island tropes.
Lund was pretty and married Matheson offscreen, but Heather Young was pretty, too. I remember that she was gone over much of s.2, and discovered later on iannDOTnet that she was pregnant and could only hide behind the control consoles so much.
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For a long time I've wondered if the writers of Paul Henning's shows were avidly experimenting with mind expanding substances, because a lot of BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and, to an even greater extent, GREEN ACRES episodes were downright surreal.
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I have a ghost of a wisp of a memory that Green Acres was, in fact, drug-induced as it later turned out - just as reportedly Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, 'experimented' with LSD and much of the bizarre surrealism of his clay work was enhanced thereby. I'm unable as I sit here to get corroboration for either rumor.
Reply
dangerousminds.
net/comments
/gumby_creator_art_clokey_describes_his_acid_trip
I didn't know that before, but am not surprised, because a lot of the Gumby episodes were extremely trippy.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything on "Green Acres," so it looks like we can only speculate about that.
Reply
Two words (or one, depending on how you reckon the hyphen): SPIDER-MAN. Above all, third-season blacklight-poster recycled-from-ROCKET-ROBIN-HOOD SPIDER-MAN. We're talking post-apocalyptic cavemen. Lost subterranean cities of talking mandrills. Malevolent talking flowers. And then there was "Revolt in the Fifth Dimension", whose over-the-top spookiness got the episode banned in Britain; Spider-Man's confrontation with the cyclopean lich-lord Infinata in the hallucinatory realm of Dementia-5 sure looked a lot more like a job for Doctor Strange:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2fuxnh
Reply
Jonathan Harris deserves the Silk Purse Award, for using his brains to make lemonade out of lemons. You saw the first season, where he sure as all whatnot wasn't funny, he was scary… but, then what? How 'scary' can he be, out there Lost in Space? So he himself re-invented his character, he came up with all those alliterative insults for the Robot
ht tp: / / irwinallen. wikia. com/ wiki/ Dr. _ Smith's_ Insults
and the ingratiating but in its own way essential relationship with Will, who may have respected his Dad but didn't have much of a relationship with him; he badly needed a friend nearer to his own social level who could teach him, if only what not to do…
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea? Name one episode. Time Tunnel? Name any of the characters. Yet even today if you say in a weak voice, “Ohh the pain… Oh, the pain…” or waggle your arms from the elbow, a startlingly high number of people will still get the reference!
Oh, no, don't put Mr Harris down. He won against ridiculous odds.
Reply
VTBS: The Fearmakers, Ghost of Moby Dick, The Phantom Strikes ... etc. I'm afraid you're speaking with a rabid fan of the show. But getting back to Mr. Harris, I thought the same of him as I did of Chief Sharkey (Terry Becker) on VTBS, which is: impatient with the 'comic relief' and deploring the time away from the Monsters. Nowadays, life is easier and it's fun to appreciate comic talent and making do with scripts that had huge margins for improvement, so let's cheer Mr. Harris and Mr. Becker (who just left us last Dec. at age 93)!
Time Tunnel: Anne and Tony and Doug .. didn't like or remember this one nearly as much as VTBS.
Reply
What about Land of the Giants? Murray Leinster did the novelization, and again, deserves a Silk Purse award, for he put more thought into the concept than the TV show did! (Like, why anybody cared about the Spindrift & Co - its engines and even its radio were enormously destructive to their electrical infrastructure. Whenever it used either one it blacked out whole counties - which at Giant scale is saying a lot! In theory if they'd abandoned ship they could have made some sort of lives for themselves, but meanwhile the Giants were seeking the ship to shut it down!)
I liked also that Mr Leinster had JUST written a textbook on entomology, and put a LOT of that into this - I learned more about insects from reading this, than I had in school!
As for the show, everyone was gaga over Deanna Lund, but I thought Heather Young was more attractive. Matter of personal taste.
Reply
Lund was pretty and married Matheson offscreen, but Heather Young was pretty, too. I remember that she was gone over much of s.2, and discovered later on iannDOTnet that she was pregnant and could only hide behind the control consoles so much.
Reply
ht tp:/ / www. scifiairshow. com/ ships- spindrift. html
An amazing website!
[Take II on this comment. Let's see if it spam-blocks THIS one as it did Take I.]
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Drear LiveJournal - Don't flippin' spam this you flippin' flipper.
h t t p s : / / v i m e o . c o m / 5 3 7 4 7 1 4 4
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