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Nerd Lunch Episode 71: Re-do of Star Trek Voyager

Posted in podcast, pop culture, Star Trek, TV shows with tags Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, podcasts, pop culture, Star Trek, TV shows on February 5, 2013 by Paxton

For this episode of Nerd Lunch CT and I are still missing our comrade-in-arms Jeeg as he moves all of his junk North for a new job. To replace Jeeg, we brought back Rob Graham and we take this opportunity to talk about one of the more maligned Star Trek franchises, Voyager.

We start with a ground level reconstruction of the concept of the show and we talk about the things in the show that worked, and the many plethora of things that did not work. We recast many of the roles and play around with the concept of Star Trek: Lost in Space. I honestly think we made it better.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it online right here.

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Bionic Review: Wine, Woman and War (1973)

Posted in Bionic Man, movies, pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags Bionic Man, Bionic Review, movies, pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, SMDM Movie, TV shows on January 28, 2013 by Paxton

After the original Six Million Dollar Man TV movie, there were two more produced and both of them aired in 1973. The first was called Wine, Women and War and aired on Oct 20, 1973. Here’s an ad from a 1973 newspaper featuring the TV listing for this movie. Lee Majors’ picture is on the right, the blub about the movie is in bold in the far left column.

SMDM - Wine Women War

Wine, Women and War doesn’t go directly to the action, it actually has an opening title sequence. And it’s an awesomely 70s opening sequence with an awesomely 70s theme song by Dusty Springfield. Check it out.

“Catch him if you can, feed him if you can, love if you CAAAAAAAAAAAN! He’s the Six Million Dollar MAAAAAAAN!” Amazing, isn’t it?

So, right off the bat we see a few things that are new. Richard Anderson debuts as Oscar Goldman and Alan Oppenheimer debuts as Rudy Wells taking the place of Martin Balsam. You also notice the absence of Darren McGavin as Oliver Spenser. This movie was sort of an overhaul of the Six Million Dollar Man as far as the cast goes. Only Lee majors would remain. The weekly television series would have been in production at this point as its debut was only months away in Jan 1974. I assume the player pieces were falling into place. The story concepts were still being worked out, though, as the story for this movie is essentially, “What if James Bond were bionic?”. This movie is a complete rip-off of the Bond franchise. Austin is treated as the debonair super-spy.

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So the story begins with Austin on assignment in Egypt to steal an arms dealer’s catalog. In classic Bond fashion we see Austin pull off his wet suit to reveal a fully dry tux underneath. Later, during the action, Austin’s female companion is killed. Afterwards Steve is reluctant to go out on another assignment so Oscar arranges for a vacation. However Oscar doesn’t tell Steve that the vacation is actually his next assignment, just manipulated by OSI agents that are following along to look like a vacation. Oscar can be kind of a dick. Although we do get to see Steve mistake a lady who is flirting with him on his plane for a prostitute. That was pretty funny. And plenty of other Bond-like double entendres ensue throughout the movie.

So Steve discovers Oscar’s ruse and stumbles upon the trail of the previously mentioned arms dealer and Steve goes after him hoping to get revenge for his companion’s death. Like I said, all very Bond-like.

Honestly, on one level it totally works. It’s just so absurd and contrary to the Austin we come to know in the TV series that it’s almost fun to watch.

I can recommend this, but honestly, you can’t really watch it as a Six Million Dollar Man movie/episode. It’s a spy movie that just happens to have Steve Austin, the bionic man.

Bionic Review: The Six Million Dollar Man TV movie (1973)

Posted in pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags Bionic Review, movies, pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, SMDM Movie, television, TV shows on December 21, 2012 by Paxton

Steve Austin first appeared on TV in the made-for-television movie The Six Million Dollar Man which was broadcast in March 1973. It appeared as the ABC Wednesday Movie of the Week. Here’s an item from the TV section of a 1973 newspaper announcing the airing of the movie. You can see Lee Majors’ picture in the upper left and the mention of the movie is in the upper right. Majors is sporting a pretty hardcore 70s mustache in that picture which he does NOT have in the movie.

Unlike the other bionic TV movies (and TV show), there really is no “title sequence” per se in this special. This particular movie starts with a computer screen telling the viewer the definition of the word cyborg and then cuts directly to a desert airfield and the movie title over Lee Majors walking towards camera. smdm_pilot1 The very first scene is the airplane crash that will create the future bionic man. We then get all the setup with the OSO, or Office of Special Operations (changed to OSI, Office of Scientific Investigation, in the subsequent movies and TV show). A man named Oliver Spencer, Oscar Goldman won’t appear until the second movie, is petitioning for money to create a “cyborg” for use in special ops. Oliver Spencer is played very cold and calculating by Darren McGavin who would famously play the Old Man in A Christmas Story. Spencer approaches Dr Rudy Wells, played by Martin Balsam, to convince Steve to volunteer to become their cyborg.

Most of the TV movie follows the original book, Cyborg, fairly closely. The movie focuses on Steve coming to grips with his bionic limbs and being trained to go out on missions. Majors plays Austin as very reluctant to accept the limbs and even when he does accept them, he still has a lot of problems understanding why they would want to do that to him and what is eventually going to be the cost to him. After all of the psychological drama, Spencer sends Austin on his first mission and we find out that it’s essentially a suicide mission. One that Spencer wants to see if Austin can complete. He remarks to Rudy that they can always build another bionic man. Totally cold and hardcore, that Spencer.

This was a pretty good beginning. It wasn’t great, but it was good. A little slow in parts, but overall, I enjoyed it. It should be noted that the bionic sound effect most identified with the show is not present here. It had yet to become a staple in these early adventures. It’s honestly weird to see Austin perform bionic feats and not have the bionic sound. It just doesn’t sound “right”. Other than that, I like Lee in this role and I look forward to the two other TV movies.

It’s interesting to note, though, that years later this TV movie was subsequently re-edited for syndication as a two-part episode called The Moon and the Desert. This newer edit puts a later season intro on the episodes which is confusing considering the episodes’ content. Also, Martin Balsam returned to do some voice over work to help bridge some of the disjointed scenes. That in and of itself is off putting since Balsam never played Rudy Wells on the TV show, it was Allen Oppenheimer. Also, since this syndicated cut was created after the show had gone off the air, there were several other scenes that were added from later season Six Million Dollar Man and even Bionic Woman episodes. It’s a pretty crazy and baffling amalgamation of footage. Surprisingly, the syndicated “Moon and Desert” episodes are included as a bonus feature on the complete series box set. However, they are really only good to watch as a curiosity and not very entertaining.

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My pitch for a new Rankin-Bass Christmas special

Posted in Christmas, holiday, pop culture, Rankin/Bass, Santa Claus, TV shows with tags Christmas, holiday, pop culture, Rankin-Bass, TV shows on December 19, 2012 by Paxton

Last week I talked about the Rankin-Bass Santa Claus Trilogy and how those specials are probably my favorite of all the Christmas specials. On Tuesday, the Nerd Lunch podcast cobbled together ideas to create our own Christmas special. However, in preparing for that podcast and picking the characters and plot points I sort of created my own pitch/idea for a fourth Rankin-Bass Santa Claus special to act as a semi-sequel to the Santa Claus Trilogy.

So check out that Santa Claus Trilogy article for a refresher on the first three specials and sit back and let me tell you about my proposed fourth Rankin-Bass Santa Claus special.

It’s many years after the events of A Miser Brothers Christmas. The elves are working in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole late in the night. Tinsel, Santa’s head inventor/technician, is working on some advancements to the workshop’s magical systems. All of a sudden, there’s an explosion in the Workshop and a terrifying man-beast appears in a magical swirl of smoke and sparks. He roars, “I’M FREE!” and vanishes out of the ruins of the workshop leaving Tinsel staring at the empty spot wondering what just happened.

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Tinsel immediately reports what happened to Santa who is equally as baffled as the elf. Santa consults Winter the wizard about the strange events and Winter’s face falls and he whispers one word. “Krampus.”

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Santa asks Winter, “What is a Krampus?” Winter explains to Santa and the elf that Krampus is a malevolent being that thrives on making people feel sad and miserable. “He hates Christmas.”, Winter explains, “And he hates you, Santa.”

Continue reading →

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A look at Rankin-Bass’ Santa Claus Trilogy

Posted in Christmas, holiday, nostalgia, Rankin/Bass, Santa Claus, TV shows with tags Christmas, pop culture, Rankin-Bass, TV shows on December 13, 2012 by Paxton

It’s Christmas time. Time to start watching all of my favorite Christmas movies (A Christmas Story, Elf, White Christmas) and Christmas specials (Rankin-Bass, Mickey’s Christmas Carol). Probably my most favorite things to watch this time of year are the Rankin-Bass Christmas specials from the ’70s. More specifically, I love to watch the specials informally called (mostly by me) the Santa Claus Trilogy. This trilogy tells the origins of Santa Claus and his adventures in delivering toys. The main character is Santa and he’s voiced by Mickey Rooney in all three specials.

The three specials that make up this loose “Santa Claus Trilogy” are:

Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970) – Narrator SD “Special Delivery” Kluger answers questions about the early adventures of Santa Claus. We see a young Kris Kringle clash with Burgermeister Meisterburger, win over the evil Winter Warlock and start delivering toys to good little boys and girls. This special is great because we actually get to see the origins of Santa Claus and how he came to be, including many of the traditions of Christmas like hanging stockings and Santa coming down the chimney. It’s very well done and the music is awesome. Some of the great characters include Kris Kringle/Santa, the Winter Warlock who I feel should have been used more, especially in the followup specials, and, of course, the awesomely bad Burgermeister Meisterburger. You just can’t do it much better than Rankin-Bass did it in Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. But you can do it worse. Check out this stop motion music video of Justin Bieber singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town featuring characters from the special. Awful. Just, awful.

The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974) – Santa has been doing his job for a long time. He wakes up with a cold and starts to complain that no one has the Christmas spirit anymore. So, Santa just decides to quit. It’s up to elves Jingle and Jangle and the reindeer Vixen to find people that still care about Christmas, all while trying to avoid the quarreling Miser Brothers. Here we get even more great songs and characters, most especially we are introduced to Heat and Snow, the infamous Miser Brothers. Their quarreling and antics are the highlight of the special. I’m still not sure why Winter Warlock did not make an appearance in this special. Even a cameo would have been sufficient. He was one of my favorites from the previous special and they didn’t even use him. Unfortunately, in 2006, there was a live-action remake of this starring John Goodman and Delta Burke with Harvey Firestein and Michael McKean as the Miser Brothers. It nearly destroyed all the goodwill I had for the movie. It still airs from time to time on ABC’s 25 Days of Christmas.

A Miser Brothers’ Christmas (2008) – The North Wind sabotages Santa’s sleigh causing him to hurt his back and requiring someone to take over the job on Christmas. Since apparently Mother Nature is in charge of Santa’s job, she assigns the Miser Brothers to take over Christmas, much to the chagrin of The North Wind. However, the North Wind continues to manipulate the Miser Brothers so they will fail and Mother Nature will put him in charge. For this special Mickey Rooney returned to voice Santa and George S Irving returned to voice Heat Miser. Both actors were over 84 years old at the time of recording. Dick Shawn (Snow Miser) and Shirley Booth (Mrs Claus) didn’t return because they had died before the show went into production.

The first two specials have been favorites of mine since I was a child. I loved those stories and the characters within. Many people prefer the iconic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, which I love dearly, but the first two specials above are my absolute favorites. While many deride the third special, it actually wasn’t that bad. The music was good and I, for one, enjoyed seeing the Miser Brothers back on TV. Was it the same? No, but it had enough of a nostalgia factor that I enjoyed it.

Miser Brothers

If you check out the schedule at ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas, you can see when these specials are playing. As of now the first two specials will run this Friday night. However, they will inexplicably run out of order. The Year Without Santa Claus will air first at 7pm EST and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town will air at 8pm EST. Not sure why they did that.

The third special, A Miser Brothers’ Christmas, will air on Saturday at 10:30am EST. However, all three specials are airing multiple times so if you miss this weekend’s showing you have multiple opportunities to see them before Christmas day.

So that’s the Rankin-Bass Santa Claus Trilogy. I thought this would be a good time to talk about these specials because I have several other things coming up in the next week pertaining to them. So this is sort of a primer for you to get out there and watch them. Starting on Tuesday’s episode of Nerd Lunch we will actually create our own Christmas special using characters from not only the Rankin-Bass specials, but ALL Christmas specials. EVER. And it actually turns out pretty good. Check back on Tuesday to hear that episode with special guest Digio from The Atomic Geeks.

After that, I’m going to pitch to you my idea for a fourth special in this franchise. So stay tuned.

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