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The Worst
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"Lost in Space" (1965-68)
Irwin Allen's original
"Space Family Robinson" sci-fantasy takes the viewer back to the
exciting space-age days of 1997, when the first deep-space mission
lifted off with the American nuclear family in a deep freeze.
There's no science in this goofy fiction, and the dimwitted stories
are among the silliest of Allen's many effects-driven
adventures series. The highlight is the camp theatrics of prissy Jonathan Harris (as a
Cold War spy) locked in a battle of wits with adolescent Bill Mumy, while the
Robby-like robot swings his slinky arms and drones "Danger,
Will Robinson!" Stupid, but harmless. But mostly stupid.
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"Space: 1999" (1975-77)
The
premise is absurd, even as sci-fi TV goes: An explosion on
a
nuclear-waste dump on the dark side of the moon sends it
out of
Earth's orbit and shooting about the galaxy like a
rogue
asteroid. Taken along for the ride are a moonbase full
of
scientists (among them Martin Landau, Barry Morse and
Barbara Bain). Luckily,
they swoop past another promising
planet in time for a futile
exploration for a new home on almost every episode. It can be a
visually impressive show (producers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson know
their special effects), but the bland characters and dizzyingly
incomprehensible adventures become simply
stupefying.
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"Battlestar
Galactica" (1978-79)
This shameless "Star Wars"
knock-off, co-produced by special-effects godfather John Dykstra,
charts the flight of the last survivors of the human race on their
journey to find the Eden of legend called Earth, under the paternal
guidance of their wise old Admiral (Lorne Greene). Meanwhile,
the unspeakably evil and unbelievably short-sighted traitor Baltar
leads the robot chrome-dome Cylon army to finish their mission of
genocide. Myth and legend are recklessly slathered through the
series (dig those crazy Egyptian-themed space helmets), but the
series devolved into an almost comic predictability as Baltar, the
Wile E. Coyote of interstellar villains, fails, survives to attack
another day, and repeats until cancelled. After a single
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"Buck Rogers in the 25th
Century" (1979-81)
Gil Gerard dons the
Spandex jumpsuit to play the American astronaut who blasts off from
Earth in 1987 and returns 500 years later to the war-ravaged world
of the 25th century, where he's just the kind of two-fisted,
red-blooded American they need. Teamed up with Col. Wilma Deering
(Erin Gray) and little
robot buddy Twiki (voiced by Mel Blanc), he plays space
cowboy on the galactic frontier, where the evil Draconian Empire
spins its plots of galactic domination. At once corny and
kitschy, it drops campy humor in a vision of the future that hasn't
progressed much from the 1930s serials. In the words of Twiki,
"Bidibidibidi -- this stinks, Buck!" | |
| Sean Axmaker is a film critic for the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer and a DVD columnist for IMdB. He is a regular
contributor to Amazing Stories, Asian Cult Cinema, Greencine.com and
StaticMultimedia.com. His reviews and essays are featured in the recently
released "Scarecrow Movie Guide."
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