Netflix feels much better. . .

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"Dumbest idea since New Coke, Qwikster, is aborted. Go, #Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, and be stupid no more. (That was strike 2, by the way.)"

Above is a tweet posted by me on October 10. I'd like to expand on it a bit here.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings did the first smart thing he's done since his ham-handed summer price increase announcement when he smothered the idiotically named Qwikster in it's cradle. My earlier post on this subject highlights only a few of the reasons this was a moronic idea, so I won't rehash.

This move will do little to change the minds of customers and shareholders who have railed against and deserted Netflix in the past few months. But it should at least serve as a pressure dressing on the self-inflicted wound.

Personally, I have thought all along that one DVD at a time and all the streaming I can eat for about 16 bucks a month is a pretty darn good value. My wife, in recovery from a recent surgery, has probably gotten two months of value from the streaming in the last two weeks.

The most concerning thing to me about the lasting effects of this debacle is that Netflix will be handcuffed for quite some time to come in terms of making needed price increases to the streaming service. Sorry to splash a cold bucket of reality on you kids, but for the streaming catalog to grow as it needs to, the cost has got to go up sometime. Did you see what they had to pay for "Mad Men?" That's only one show, and one I'm not even that crazy about. How much do you think it will cost to get most of your favorite shows and mine? Mark my words. Either the price will go up or there will be a tiered subscription service sometime down the line.

Also, I can't imagine ISP's will continue indefinitely to carry all that streaming traffic on their backbones without either bandwidth caps for subscribers or extracting additional fees from Netflix. That's another cost that will eventually have to get passed on to us one way or another.

With Netflix licking it's public relations wounds, the next price increase is surely a lo-o-o-o-ong way off, which is a good thing for us consumers. I just hope Netflix doesn't run itself into the ground because it can't price itself reasonably in the face of pressure from ISP's and pressure from subscribers to not let the streaming library stagnate.

"Bring out yer dead!"

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Earlier this week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, recognizing he was in a public relations hole after a recent price increase, doggedly continued to dig deeper by arrogantly "explaining" his past arrogance just before dropping the bomb that the iconic DVD by mail service, along with it's website and billing accounts, would be spun off and given a really stupid name.

Somehow, Hastings managed to shoot himself in the foot even while that very same foot was jammed in his mouth. "You vill use Kvikster and you vill LIKE it."

All this reminds me of a scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," one of the many, MANY movies NOT available for streaming at netflix.com.

In the comedy classic, the "Dead Collector" is pulling a cart door-to-door calling, "Bring out yer dead!" A man brings out his grandfather and places him on the cart, but the sickly old guy protests weakly that he's not yet dead.

Nearly Dead Man: I don't want to go on the cart.

Large Man: Oh, don't be such a baby.

The Dead Collector: I can't take him.

Nearly Dead Man: I feel fine.

Large Man: Oh, do me a favor.

The Dead Collector: I can't.

Large Man: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.

Tech pundits on at least one podcast I've listened to liken the separation of the DVD and streaming businesses to housing one's sickly, nearly dead uncle up in the attic out of sight and mind until he expires.

That Netflix is doing this is understandable. DVD's are dying and Netflix wants to concentrate on the business of the future - streaming. DVD's are already under one layer of obsolescence since the advent of Blu-Ray. But the weak market uptake of this newer format makes even Blu-Ray look pretty diseased and arthritic.

Add to that the fact the DVD side of the Netflix business depends heavily on a healthy United States Postal Service. This once rock-solid government entity now can't seem to get through a fiscal year without racking up a multi-billion dollar loss and having to go hat-in-hand it's governmental parents for a bailout. Continued healthy function of the United States Postal Service will almost certainly depend on immediate positive and constructive action by the United States Congress, an institution famously disinclined toward any action not facilitating immediate short term and shortsighted partisan gain.

This seems similar to when Steve Jobs of Apple unilaterally, and somewhat prematurely, declared the floppy disk dead. History did vindicate his view eventually, but floppies still survived (much as DVD's will) a fair amount of time before succumbing to another now-dead storage medium, the Zip disk.

Netflix clearly thinks the DVD is dead, and I tend to agree. Any physical media I buy comes to me only after an exhaustive and fruitless search for any kind of download option. With music, if iTunes or Amazon doesn't have an mP3 or AAC file available, I sigh heavily and grudgingly schlep to Amazon or Best Buy to purchase a shrink-wrapped plastic disc. Once in hand, the disc is then be shoved into my Mac's optical drive for about 4 minutes and, once it's content was slurped into iTunes, the still shiny round coaster, er, disc, is then be tossed into an out-of-the-way drawer where it molders yet today, never since touched by human hands.

The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Yes he is.

The DVD: I'm not.

The Dead Collector: He isn't.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.

The DVD: I'm getting better. . .

My wife and I have a modest collection of DVD's that has in the last half-decade only grown by a very few "uber favorites," the ones we definitely want available to watch right when the mood strikes us, such as the Christmas favorites "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story," and the Star Wars movies. (And even these few DVD's were purchased used.) For all else, internet streaming or a delivery of a disc by snail mail is more than adequate.

The HUGE downside to this de-integration of the DVD-by-mail/streaming business for both Netflix and it's users is that current search and rating system will now be fragmented, causing the recommendation engine that has surfaced to many great movies I would not have found otherwise to only recommend from the much smaller pool of streaming moves. No longer will I be able to just search for a movie on streaming, and in the all-too-frequent instance that it is not available for streaming, pop it in the DVD queue.

I was really easy-going about the effective rise in the price of the Netflix DVD and streaming package, as it was still several dollars below my "bargain line." But if I now have to deal with two separate entities for DVD's and streaming, especially when one of them has the totally idiotic name of "Qwikster," Netflix MUST expand their streaming options with massive new content deals, and SOON. Otherwise, shedding the DVD business will be a shot squarely in the foot. Once the separation is complete, I will still go to Netflix first for streaming, but instead of staying on the Netflix site to put a DVD in the queue, I will have to leave them to check out other streaming and DVD offerings. There are a few others now, such as iTunes rentals and Amazon prime, and I'm sure the options will grow in the coming months and years. Netflix might have otherwise kept this marketshare longer if DVD's were still were still integral to it's business, thereby giving it more time to become an even more dominant player in streaming.

Maybe Netflix wants to sell the DVD enterprise? If so, why dress it up like a corpse and give it a dippy name?

Perhaps there is an opportunity for a third party to license the Netflix recommendation engine and incorporate it into an aggregator for different DVD and streaming services, similar to what is now done by Boxee.

Whatever happens, all I can say is, "Sorry, Netflix. I'd get that foot looked at by a doctor if I were you. . ."

Hour One out of Fifteen Hundred -- "The Man Trap"

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So, I did a little math today.

There are 79 episodes of the original Star Trek series. I haven't kept track, but I don't think it would exaggerate to say I've seen all of those, on average, six times each. If I channel surf into some episodes, like "Spock's Brain," I am very likely to continue surfing until I find something more intelligent, like maybe "Saved By The Bell." But if I happen on to "The Ultimate Computer" or "The Doomsday Machine," the seat cushions are guaranteed to stay warm for the remainder of the hour.

First part of the math equation: six views times 79 episodes = 474 hours of my life spent watching the original Star Trek.

Now let's consider the later incarnations of the series. I make it 617 episodes of "Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," "Voyager," and "Enterprise." I simply don't have the reps in on these shows. I gave up on about the last two seasons of Voyager, so score a big fat zero for those. I generally liked Deep Space Nine, but for most of those episodes, once was enough. I used to have a lot of Next Generation on VHS, so I have some reps in on those. My work and life schedule interfered with my seeing Enterprise as much as I would have liked, but I've caught most of them at least once. My ballpark guess is I've averaged 1.5 views of all these episodes, or 925 hours.


474 hours of the original plus 925 for the others, and throw in, say 80 hours or so with the animated series when I was a kid . . . let's just round it out to about 1500 hours of my life in dim rooms with the glint of "Star Trek" reflected in my eyeballs.

Out of those 1500 hours, let's today recognize hour number one. It's pretty hard for most of us to remember what it was like to discover "Star Trek" for the first time. But everyone who was tuned in to their local NBC channel on September 8, 1966, that's 45 years ago today, did just that. They were boldly going where no viewer had gone before.

The episode was "The Man Trap," written by George Clayton Johnson, who had penned a few episodes of "The Twilight Zone," many short stories, and would go on to co-author the novel "Logan's Run." One of my favorite old "Star Trek" books is "The Star Trek Compendium" by Allan Asherman (1981). I have a first edition copy of this book which, unlike later editions, lists the approximate shooting dates of each episode. Episode 12, "Miri" is shown as being filmed in "Late August 1966." It probably could have been through post-production by the September 8 original air date of "The Man Trap."

This gives us an idea of the episodes available for selection as the premier, which would be these:

"The Cage"

"Where No Man Has Gone Before"

"The Corbomite Maneuver"

"Mudd's Women"

"The Enemy Within"

"The Man Trap"

"The Naked Time"

"Charlie X"

"Balance of Terror"

"What are Little Girls Made Of?"

"Dagger of the Mind"

"Miri"

Was there a better choice than "The Man Trap?" Presumably the first two were not considered for the premier since they were "pilot" episodes and had different casting and a different look from the rest. Given the seemingly simpleminded nature of network executives, especially when dealing with the Sci Fi genre, my guess would be "The Man Trap" got the nod because it had a monster in it.

I think all 12 of these early episodes are good, but were I choosing a premier episode, I'd have narrowed it down to "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Man Trap," and "The Naked Time." And I probably would have selected "The Naked Time." It has an ice planet, suspense, action (thanks in part to Sulu and his fencing foil) and is a story designed to give a good look into the nature of the main characters.

Which one would you have chosen?

Discuss . . .

Top Ten Sci Fi shows of all time - Conclusion

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Holding down the number one spot in the conclusion of the Childhood Recovery Project Top Ten Sci Fi Shows ever. . .

1: Battlestar Galactica (reboot) - Hands down. The. Greatest. Sci Fi. Show. Ever.

Those of you who may have been following this list as it developed know I put "Star Trek" at number two. It had a stranglehold on the top spot until a few short years ago. Once "Galactica" had a couple of seasons under it's belt, it took over the top spot, and no other choice even entered my mind for this position on this list.

Where the 1978 incarnation of "Galactica" was informed by the cold war and featured a faceless "evil empire" as the enemy, the 2004 reboot took it's influence from the "war on terror," and played with the fear that "the enemy could be anyone and they are living among us." This led to a far more complex textured canvas on which to build the story.

This show made lots of bold choices from the very beginning and never let up. With full knowledge that comparisons to the original were inevitable, there was all manner of messing with the original format. They gave one of the main characters a sex change, fer cryin' out loud. The African-American Boomer character from the original was changed to an asian female in an era where political correctness led to many shows being especially severely criticized for a lack of representation of people of color. And they even turned Boomer to a sleeper agent bad guy.

I love the look to this show. The set design is "contemporary aircraft carrier." At first, I found myself a little distracted and confounded by the defiance of my expectation of Sci Fi set design and the lack of smooth, angular walls and fixtures and slick, glossy touch screen instrument displays. The sight of obvious, unmodified contemporary equipment, such as the corded telephone handsets, for example were jarring in the beginning. But as the story got moving, this seemed to settle into the background (where it belongs) and allow the characters and story to be front and center.

Finally a space show had the smarts to “shoot hand held” in the space battle scenes. Instead of the smooth, sterile video game look of most CG special effects, Galactica gave us a view that truly feels like WWII wing camera footage. With any other Sci Fi show, when a special effects scene comes on, my brain compulsively begins to evaluate technique. Is it CG or physical models? How is it lit? For the first time, my brain jumped past that nonsense and just reveled in what it was like to actually be in space.

I liked this show for what it did not have as much as what it did. This is a Sci Fi show with no aliens. What a concept? Just because you are in space doesn't mean you can't tell a HUMAN drama without the distraction of latex rubber foreheads. Alien cultures in Star Trek and other shows are so often 2-dimensional and defined by one single character trait. Vulcans are logical. Klingons are warlike. Ferengi are greedy. Producer Ronald D. Moore could have redefined aliens (like the original show's Borellian Nomen) in the same way he redefined so many other aspects of Sci Fi storytelling in this show, but he made perhaps the wisest decision of all. "Lets just not have any stinkin' aliens."

Technology had little to nothing to do with this show. In fact, one of the primary characteristics of the title "character" is that the Galactica has no networked computers. This is the main reason she survived the initial Cylon attack, which involved a computer virus. The weapons in the show, both handheld and heavy/aircraft-based, fire conventional bullets. Super-duper highly explosive bullets, to be sure, but bullets nonetheless. There are no laser beams to take us out of the atmosphere of realism.

There were no mysterious galactic phenomena, energy beings, or (for heaven's sake) holodeck malfunctions to put the characters in some kind of cute jeopardy for one episode only. Somewhat related to that, there was no technobabble. The day was never saved by "feeding a phase modulated graviton neutrino pulse through through the tachyon flux inhibitors to restore primary plasma coolant flow to the dilithium crystal matrix." Don't get me wrong. I love Next Generation. But there were just too many times when they had a great story that took characters in exciting new directions, but they didn't have a good ending, so they resorted grim faces, bombastic music, a lot of incomprehensible dialog followed by a big'ol slap to the reset button.

And speaking of that, there is no reset button in "Galactica." If you're dead, you're dead. (Well, except for Cylon resurrection, of course.) No waking up in the shower and realizing it was all a dream. If you lose an eye or a leg, there are no cloned or cybernetic implant replacements. Other shows put characters in different roles just for one episode or for a short arc, but Lee Adama handed in his rank insignia in a heated exchange with his father in order to become defense council to the foremost traitor to the colonies. That could have been a short detour, but it became a permanent change. "Galactica" had enough hot shot pilots and needed to groom a few statesmen, so the change was made without a flinch.

I have trouble getting into the anti-hero type of characters depicted in shows such as "Breaking Bad" and "Dexter," but I really dig it when characters have a dark side. Pretty much every character in Galactica does both heroic things and deplorable things. A primary example of this is the character of Gaeta, portrayed by Alessandro Juliani. In the pilot movie, he is a young, enthusiastic, hyper-efficient officer, almost in the Wesley Crusher mold, but through a long story arc, he becomes bitter and bigoted and ultimately the lever for some of the most grievous atrocities depicted in the show. But in the end, his character is not purely evil, but tinged with tragedy.

There is similar complexity another major character, Admiral Cain (Michelle Forbes). Clearly, there is an aura of heroism cast over her by the mere fact that she and her crew survived the Cylon massacre, but we are subsequently forced to confront whether the ends are justified by her means. Similarly, in the "New Caprica" arc, our heroes were forced to become in many ways the same kind of insurgents and suicide bombers we were finding so reprehensible in Iraq at the time.

I love a story that grabs me by the 'nads and makes me look at something from the other side.

I think very actor in this show was excellent, and Olmos, Bamber and Callis were SUPERLATIVE.

So, there's my Number One, and my primary reasons for choosing it. As mentioned in the Fusion Patrol podcast, there can be debate over the religion and mysticism depicted in the show, and many folks seem to take umbrage at the finale, which I found quite good. But all of that can be discussed in future posts, as this one has already gotten quite long.

Now, I suppose I do have to acknowledge something else: Dr. Frakkin' Who. Of the four of us taking this opportunity to publish top ten lists (Newsarama, Ben and Eugene from Fusion Patrol, and me), I'm the only one who doesn't have Dr. Who right at the top of the list, or anywhere on the list for that matter. When one's view is so apparently outside the mainstream an explanation is probably called for. So, in much the same way as I might have to explain why I, for hypothetical example, think powdered pig shit is good on corn flakes, I here briefly provide my take on Dr. Who: I just don’t get it. I’ve seen maybe 6 episodes of different vintages, so while I will grant that I may not have given it a fair shake considering it's inexplicably lengthy run, the fact is I never, ever saw one thing in Dr. Who that made me want to fight through another episode. Sorry.

Top Ten Sci Fi shows of all time - Pt. III

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Continuing the previous two day's posts, here are positions four thru two on my Top Ten Sci Fi Shows of All Time, in response to the Newsarama list and the Fusion Patrol Podcast.

4: Land of the Lost - It's very easy to dismiss this show simply because it was saturday-morning "KidVid." Even if you look past that, there's the campy over-broad acting and the jerky stop-motion dinosaur action and grainy blue screen chromakey compositing. But somebody smuggled some adults into the writers' room (like "Star Trek" veterans David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana, Norman Spinrad, Walter Koenig, and Theodore Sturgeon, as well as noted SF literature authors Larry Niven and Ben Bova). The results in terms of storytelling were considerably above what should have been expected.

NBC probably would have been happy with any random stream of clips depicting third-rate actors being terrorized by dinosaurs, anything to put between the commercials for Sugar Smacks and GI Joe's with the kung-fu grip. But, for the first two seasons anyway, the producers trusted that pre-teen kids would tune in and actually REMEMBER what they learned in previous weeks about the rules and physics of the Land of the Lost. If you didn't remember that pylons control the weather, you might be lost a few weeks later when were looking at the pylon that controls gravity. This show gives kids a lot more credit than do modern offerings like, say, SpongeBob.

Special effects technology of the day was pushed past the breaking point, and to this day, I find it jarring to go back and forth between the videotape of the actors, and the stop motion film of the dinosaurs, but if the story is actually making you think a little bit, maybe those things aren't quite as noticeable. Every answer revealed about the Land of the Lost led to another question, not the least of which is why Holly didn't grow completely out of her costume after the first season. To my knowledge, there was no pylon that opened a doorway to K-mart.

You know, "Land of the Lost" would be a great premise for a movie. Who would play the father? Maybe Liam Neeson? Anyone but Will Ferrell. . .

3: Nowhere Man: - There was not room for both The Prisoner and Nowhere Man in my top ten. So I had to choose. When I first saw "Nowhere Man," I thought, "gee, this is a lot like "The Prisoner." There are subtle references to "Prisoner" throughout, and one episode, "Paradise On Your Doorstep," while not a shot-for-shot re-make of Prisoner Episode 1, ("Arrival"), would have fit right in with Patrick McGoohan's show from the 1960's.

I chose "Nowhere Man" because of it is more contemporary and because it is set in "the real world" rather than what is to US viewers an otherworldly landscape. I may also relate to Thomas Veil more than Number Six because Veil is, like me, a photographer. There is, however, an annoying continuity problem in that the producers couldn't seem to decide if Veil used a Canon F-1 or a Nikon FM-2. (I'm a devoted Canon guy now, but I admit I did once have an inappropriate relationship with a Nikon.)

Both shows deal with a man deprived of his personal identity. While Number Six is abducted from his natural environment and incarcerated in The Village, Nowhere Man's Thomas Veil is "erased," all traces of his identity are deleted and he is set adrift with only a single strip of negatives to prove he has ever lived and breathed in this world. Where Number Six was taken away from his life, Thomas Veil's life was taken away from him. This enabled Veil to move around in any environment, while Number Six was stuck in The Village, unless there was an unusual plot device at work.

There was a heavy X-files influence on Nowhere Man. The show was filmed in Vancouver, just like X-files, and a conspiracy, either by the government or possibly something else much more organized, is the center of the plot. Both shows also have atmospheric music by Mark Snow.

This was another one-season wonder, and while I'm sure the season closer was intended to be a cliff-hanger leading into a season two, it holds up surprisingly well as a series finale.

The DVD set for this show is unusually rich in special features and commentary, and I recommend adding it to your Netflix queue.

2: Star Trek - Two reasons this show rockets directly to the Number 2 spot. First, it was great during the 1960's as the first "adult Sci Fi" in a time of "adult westerns" and is still great almost five decades later if you just look past some dated-looking technology and dippy costumes. (Dave Barry once said the uniforms looked like pajamas.) Sure, there are some '60's clinkers, like the line in Turnabout Intruder about, "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women." Obviously, at least in that one script, there was a failure to foresee the strides women would make in subsequent decades toward equality, but for the most part, considering these episodes are nearly 50 years old, the writing holds up tremendously well.

And second, without the enormous success of Star Trek, Sci Fi would possibly never again have gotten any kind of toe-hold on television. The track record of sci-fi failure through the 70's would almost surely have been death to the genre on TV if Star Trek had not been racking up killer numbers at the same time in syndication. Without the networks trying to re-capture this lightning in a bottle, we might never have had several of the shows on this and other top-ten lists.

Nobody put any of the other four Star Trek shows in the top ten, even though surely at least one of them would be worthy. Obviously, Star Trek could take five of the top ten, but in my opinion the other shows, while still good each in their own way, did not break significant new ground not already broken by the one that started it all. I feel the original series is by a significant margin the best of the bunch, but those who grew up in the 80's/90's instead of the 60's/70's like me often would put Next Generation at the top. It's generational. Deal with it.

Tomorrow: What else? The number one best Sci Fi show ever. The Fusion Patrol's Ben and Eugene ain't gonna like it.

Top Ten Sci Fi shows of all time - Pt. II

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Continuing yesterday's post, here are positions seven thru five on my Top Ten Sci Fi Shows of All Time, in response to the Newsarama list and the Fusion Patrol Podcast.

7: Land of the Giants - It doesn't seem right not to acknowledge Irwin Allen's contribution to the genre in tne 1960's. If for no other reason, he gets a tip of the hat for being (and someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on this - I could very well be missing someone from overseas) the only producer other than Gene Roddenberry and Gerry Anderson to produce three Sci Fi programs that lasted two or more seasons. Of the three main Irwin Allen sci-fi series (excluding one season wonder "Time Tunnel," which I have never seen) this was the one that tried to be at least somewhat serious (which "Lost in Space" did not even attempt), but didn't take itself way MORE seriously than was earned by the storytelling, like "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." The special effects were ambitious for the day and quite effective overall. This is my selection from the genre I call "60's camp."

6: Space: Above and Beyond - Top Ten spoiler alert: X-files is not in my top ten for much the same reason that Twilight Zone is not here. I consider X-Files more of an anthology type show than Sci Fi. Individual episodes were clearly Sci Fi, but the majority seemed to me to be much more fantasy or "magical realism." But Space: Above and Beyond can be thought of as what X-Files might have been as pure Sci Fi.

Produced by X-Files producers Glen Morgan and James Wong, "Space" has the conspiracy/mystery aspects that made the "mythology" episodes of X-files so captivating, but is firmly in the realm of Sci Fi with its future/space setting and cool space vehicles, aliens and 'splosions. Two major events in "history" were introduced in this show and very slowly drawn out and explored. There was the A.I. war, where human-built android slaves rebelled on their masters (hmmm. . .sounds familiar. . .), and in-vitros, artificially gestated humans who emerge from the tank ("womb") as physical adults with the minds of children destined to be grunt soldiers in the A.I. war. (Not surprisingly, they also rebelled.)

These two instances of human hubris are followed by colonization of another planet in the belief that we are alone in the universe. The massacre of this colony by a mysterious alien race is the start of the war that provides the show's backdrop. But are the aliens really so mysterious? Those corporate guys from Aerotech and certain individuals in the Earth government seem to know more than they are letting on. . .

Now the downtrodden in-vitroes refuse to fight for their human creators, and the A.I.'s, now exiled to space after losing the war (hmmm. . .sounds even more familiar. . .), are making common cause with the aliens. A gritty gung-ho marine war drama with well-drawn characters, there was a stunning cliff-hanger set up in the final episode of season one, a cliff-hanger that, unfortunately remains unresolved to this day.

Special effects early in the C.G. era don't hold up quite so well by today's standards, but the producers made the smart choice to keep the lighting dark on the space scenes, which is in keeping with the show's mood and mitigates the limitations of C.G. at the time.

5: Babylon 5 - There was at times a predictable sameness to the writing on this show, which is not surprising since the same guy wrote 90% of the episodes solo and shared credit on all the rest. Mr Straczynski should have relinquished the reigns from time to time to allow his own batteries to recharge and to let a different voice be heard from time to time. But Babylon 5, more than any other show I can think of, often captured the feel of the "golden age" of Sci Fi literature. I could see parallels to Asimov's Foundation series or the Rama books by Arthur C. Clarke.

Top Ten Sci Fi shows of all time

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The website Newsarama recently published a (rather baked) "Top 10 Sci Fi shows of all time" list. Ben and Eugene, the guys at the Fusion Patrol Sci Fi podcast (subscribe here) followed that up with a critique of the Newsarama list and their own Top Ten. Their list made a whole lot more sense. I recommend the Fusion Patrol podcast in general, but these two episodes in particular.

Here below, as the first leg of a planned four-part presentation of the Childhood Recovery Project, is the bottom three of my Top Ten. While I have my respectful differences with the Fusion Patrol list, I have only one (huge) disagreement. Check out the Newsarama list, the podcasts of the Fusion Patrol list, and my list and then discuss on the Fusion Patrol forum or on their twitter feed.

To wit. . .

While I try to make an objective case for most of my top ten, I am allowing myself subjective pics for positions 9 and 10. Bear with me.

10: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - I can already hear the howls of "that's not science fiction." Fair enough. But this show was solidly in the realm of science fiction for me with it's use of fanciful technology. Much of what was fanciful then is commonplace now. There were robotic arm manipulators, remote control flying saucers, gyro-controlled billiard balls in a rigged game of pool, computers able to defeat chess masters, felt on a poker table that could read the cards in a poker hand, and a computer that can't lose at Jeopardy.

OK. I made that last one up. But not really.

Mission: Impossible comes to my mind as sci-fi because for a couple of reasons peculiar to me. First, it was in an approximately six-month rotation with "Star Trek" as the post-Ten-O'clock news program on local TV station Channel 13 in Indianapolis in the '70's when I was growing up. I was always disappointed when Star Trek went on it's hiatus, but Mission: Impossible quickly grew on me as a worthy substitute. And, while this does not make it Sci Fi per se, Leonard Nimoy went directly from Star Trek to Mission: Impossible. He even appears to still be stuck in "Spock mode" in the first episode in which he appears. Watch his mannerisms in the "apartment scene" at the beginning of the Season 4 opener, "The Code." (That can be viewed on Netflix.) There is also the connection to "Space: 1999" in Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.

9: MAN FROM ATLANTIS - I haven't actually laid eyes on this show outside a few YouTube clips since the '70's, and I readily take the word of the Fusion Patrol Guys' that it sucks. But for all it's faults, in the drought of TV sci-fi in the '70's, this was a cool drink of water to a very thirsty kid. This is definitely a subjective pick on my part based much more on nostalgia and the impact it had on me at age 10 than any attempt on my part to evangelize for it and say, "You've GOT to see this." It was a show I very much looked forward to every week when it was originally on the air, though I am sure I would now find it extremely cringe-worthy now. One thing I will stand by, though, is that "Man From Atlantis" had great music. See my other post on the theme for this show by the late composer Fred Karlin.

(Incidentally, the only reason I ever found the Fusion Patrol podcast in the first place is because I did a search for "Man From Atlantis" in iTunes.)

8: SPACE: 1999 - First of all, let me acknowledge the bad, BAD science in this show. The moon traveling at hyper-light speeds? Randomly bumping into inhabited planets two dozen times a year? If the moon traveled at speeds necessary to reach a different solar system on average twice a month, it would zip by them so fast there would never be time for a story to develop. An attempt was made to explain this by introducing the concept of "Space Warps" in the second season, but it's still utterly preposterous to have the moon as a space vehicle.

I agree with the Fusion Patrol Guys that the first season was far superior to the second, and like them, I also admit I had the reverse opinion at the time the show first aired. But as a model nut, the great thing about this show for me is that it had more space ships on average per episode than pretty much any sci-fi show in history. Only the "Ragtag Fleet" of the original Battlestar Galactica can equal it. Martin Landau is superb as the Commander, and the special effects were low-tech, but very ambitious and mostly successful.

This show differs from Star Trek and many other shows in that mysteries are raised in many episodes and just not explained. This works with the setting in the near future (at least it was "future" in the 1970's) with the heroes becoming accidental space explorers before their time. They were fine tooling around the earth and moon, but just weren't ready for deep space. Episodes like "Collision Course" and "The Black Sun" emphasize how small we humans are in the context of the universe, and that there will simply be some shit out there that we never will understand.

TOMORROW: Positions 7 thru 5.

"Man From Atlantis" theme at the iTunes Music Store

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In the beginning, Gene Roddenberry looked upon television and saw it was void and without form. And Gene said, "Let there be Star Trek," and there was "Star Trek" and the Great Bird of the Galaxy saw that it was good.

Following "Star Trek," there was a long drought of good and successful science fiction on television. The roadside was littered in the '70's with an array of series that lasted only a half season before network axe fell. "The Invisible Man." "The Fantastic Journey." "Logan's Run." And "Man From Atlantis."

"Man From Atlantis" was produced by Star Trek veteran Herbert F. Solow, who would seem to have the pedigree to return science fiction to its rightful place on the airwaves. But it just was not to be. The show starred Patrick Duffy, who later went on to greater fame as Bobby Ewing, the occasionally dead brother of J.R. Ewing on "Dallas." As the Man From Atlantis, Duffy played the mysterious and amnesiac water-breathing man, who was named Mark Harris by the group of scientists who nurse him back to health after finding him "drowning" in the open air on dry land.



A more detailed post on "Man From Atlantis" will come later. I write today about the theme song from this show which has become available for download from the iTunes Music Store. Composed by the late Fred Karlin, who also scored the sci-fi movie classic "Westworld" with Yul Brynner, as well as its inferior but still entertaining sequel, "Futureworld," this theme has, as far as I know, only been available as a scratchy bootleg .mp3 file in the years since the show aired in 1977-78. Looking Karlin up on imdb.com, I see he also scored a memorable TV movie, "Bitter Harvest" with Ron Howard, and also a less memorable (except by me) cop series with James Earl Jones, "Paris." Karlin died in 2004.

I've searched the iTunes store about once a month for a few years now to see if episodes of "Man From Atlantis" would show up there, as "Logan's Run" did in 2007. I came up empty every time until about a month ago when a recording of the theme showed up. I wish the arrangement of this track had been more faithful to the original series theme, but it's still an entertaining track for any Sci Fi TV nostalgist. You can preview and download the track (99¢) from the iTunes Music Store by clicking the button below:

"Man From Atlantis" theme on iTunes Music Store

Alex Chilton - RIP

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I hate to follow the Peter Graves post so quickly with another obit, but the NPR "Fresh Air" podcast to which I subscribe has just gotten me acquainted (too late) with Alex Chilton, a member of the bands The Box Tops and Big Star. While not a huge commercial success for the most part, his music was popular with critics and the indie crowd. At the age of 16, he throatily performed the international hit "The Letter" with the Box Tops.

"Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane,
Ain't got time to take a fast train.

Lonely days are gone, I'm a-goin' home,
'Cause my baby just a-wrote me a letter."


Perhaps Chilton's most recent contribution to pop culture was the theme for the Fox TV series, "That 70's Show." The song "In the Street," performed by Cheap Trick for the show theme, was actually written and performed by Chilton with the band Big Star in the 70's. I found it refreshing to learn in an interview with Chilton that he didn't take umbrage to the changes made to his lyrics for the TV theme. With Pink Floyd being in the news recently for a breach of contract lawsuit against their record label for allowing the iTunes Music store to sell their songs as singles instead of strictly in album form (supposedly violating the integrity of the band's work product, not to mention, I'm sure, their profits), it's refreshing to hear an artist eschew pretentiousness about his work. He says he did not consider his songs a "sacred objects."

As proprietor of the Childhood Recovery Project, I should like "That 70's Show" better than I did, but I only found it a serviceable comedy with occasional flashes of nostalgia and never thought of it as appointment television. But it did have a cool theme song, and there was a certain magic to many of the scenes with Kurtwood Smith and Topher Grace as the no-nonsense father and the "dumb-ass" son who seems intent on disappointing him in new and creative ways every week.

As of this writing, the March 19 edition of Fresh Air is still in the podcast stream on iTunes. This program includes parts of interviews with Chilton from May 29, 1991, and May 1, 2000. Both the recent compilation of interviews and the original interviews be streamed at any time from the Fresh Air website.

Sorry I didn't get to now you sooner, Alex.

You Are Number SIX.

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Few, if any, television series have been as innovative or brashly experimental as 1967's "The Prisoner," which starred the late Patrick McGoohan. Such a series will never be made again (last year's re-make on AMC notwithstanding), certainly not on prime time television, where every second must grip the maximum number of eyeballs in the most desirable demographics.

"The Prisoner" is the story of Number Six, a former British agent who seems to have ruffled the wrong feathers by resigning from his position. The character is introduced in a two-minute sequence at the beginning of episode 1 ("Arrival") which is largely carried out almost in a sort of pantomime. No dialog is heard. The only sounds heard are the revving of the engine of Six's Lotus 7 sports car, his determined footsteps as he marches down a dark corridor toward the desk of a man who is apparently his supervisor, or thunder claps that punctuate Six's fist pounding his supervisor's desk as he plunks down his letter of resignation. Shortly after, Six returns to his apartment and packs his bags. Travel brochures can be seen, suggesting his motives are as benign as a vacation in spite of his obvious anger. As he packs, a mysterious gas pours in through the keyhole of his door and he loses consciousness. When he awakes, he appears to be in his own apartment, but when he staggers to a window and opens the blinds, he gazes out upon the unfamiliar landscape of his new prison, The Village. After some time exploring the deceptively quaint Village, he meets the "warden" of the prison, Number Two, and soon learns of his designation as "Number Six" in a society where there are no names, only dehumanized numbers.

The objective of his captors: to find out why he resigned. What did he resign from? That is never explicitly stated, though it seems to be some kind of "secret agent" type of job. Why did he resign? Well, that is for Six to know and for the powers that be in The Village (and for us, the viewers) to find out.

What is Six's real name? That is the subject of much debate. It would appear the Number Six is likely a reprisal of the role of John Drake, whom McGoohan had previously played for three seasons in the British series "Danger Man," which aired in the U.S. under the title "Secret Agent." McGoohan returned to that role for a fourth season after "The Prisoner" ended, but only two more episodes were produced. Six insists, "I am not a number," but also seemingly refuses to give his Village captors the satisfaction of pleading to be called by name. Therefore, the viewer never hears his name either.

McGoohan strenuously claimed that Number Six and John Drake were NOT one and the same. But McGoohan could be almost as enigmatic as Number Six (he very seldom granted interviews), and this may have been his way of keeping debate alive decades after "The Prisoner's" 17-episode run. Another interesting theory is that McGoohan may have been obliged to not make statements about the character because of British laws that make characters on television the property of writers and producers who created them and not the actors who portrayed them.

To me, the most compelling suggestion that John Drake and Number Six are the same is in the them song for "Danger Man/Secret Agent." "Secret Agent Man," performed by Johnny Rivers, includes the line, "They're givin' you a number, and takin' away your name."

It's natural for the viewer to side with Number Six because he is held captive against his will and someone is assuming the worst of him, probably unjustly. In addition, McGoohan's voice and manner carries with it a charisma that is hard to resist. However it seems to me that had the series gone on longer than 17 episodes, the breadth of the character could have been expanded to hint at the possibility of less than noble motives for his resignation. (But that is sheer speculation on my part.) It also seems to me that had his supervisors simply asked him why he resigned, he would have told them, but since they went to the ridiculous extremes to extract the information from him, the game is afoot, and Six is a player.

The mood of the show is aptly summed up in this exchange, repeated at the opening of nearly every episode:

Number Six: "Who are you?"
Number Two: "The new Number Two."
Number Six: "Who is Number One?"
Number Two: "You are Number Six."

The Village warders demand answers while giving Six only enigmatic replies or more questions.

There would be a different Number Two in nearly every episode, each one taking his or her own crack at extracting the information from Six. (Actor Leo McKern, who may be familiar to PBS viewers and Rumpole of the Bailey, is Number Two in the second episode, and with his return in the two-part finale becomes the only Number Two to get more than one swing at Number Six.) Number One is an unseen presence and is the only one who wields authority (and fear) over a Number Two, and each successive Two seems painfully aware of the growing number of predecessors who have gone to ignominious failure in their attempts to break Number Six. Who is Number One? Another enigma. An answer is hinted in the final episode, but is never explicitly stated.

I could go on with this for a VERY long time and only scratch the surface of this series. In future posts, I plan to compare and contrast the original series with the recent cable-TV remake. If you wish to do further reading on "The Prisoner," I recommend "The Prisoner Companion" by Matthew White and Jaffer Ali (Amazon.com) (pictured above).

Good Evening, Mr. Phelps . . .

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My last post (far too long ago) was on Season 1 of the classic espionage series "Mission: Impossible." Today, I have sad occasion to follow up on that post.

I opined that Steven Hill's performance in season 1 of this series is rather underrated, and it is not Hill's fault that the actor who succeeded him, based not only on acting skill but also looks and presence, upstaged Hill in almost every way possible . . . and impossible. Hill looks positively bookish compared to Graves, who strode on to the M:I set in 1967 with no explanation as to why the original series star had been replaced. He brought with him rugged good looks, unmistakeable stature (both in terms of physical height and impressive manner), and a shock of hair that seemed spun from brushed aluminum. As was common up until the late 60's, Grave's hair was treated with the customary greasy kid stuff early on, but morphed into "the dry look" sometime in the early '70's.

While "Mission: Impossible" was an Emmy Award magnet, Graves himself never won the award until his turn as host of A&E's "Biography."

As William Shatner would learn to do later in Priceline.com commercials and the series "Boston Legal," Graves would take the risk of stepping away from his hero-icon roots to make some serious fun of himself in the "Airplane!" movies. As loosely closeted pedophile Captain Clarence Oveur ("Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"), Graves was able to step out of the grimness and determination of Jim Phelps and create a great deal of ridiculous and memorable comedy.

After "Airplane!", Graves returned to the Phelps role in the 1988 re-make of the "Mission: Impossible" series. This new version had it's moments, but never captured the essence of the original series. Unfortunately, that show's best episodes were probably the ones directly re-made from the original series scripts during the writers' strike that occurred that year. The only way to make "new" television during the strike was to work from existing scripts, which is what was done with classic 60's episodes such as "The Legacy,""The Condemned," and "The Killer." (Here are links to imdb.com pages for the 1988 versions of "The Legacy,""The Condemned," and "The Killer.")

As Jim Phelps, Peter Graves always accepted the mission, and was only rarely caught and never killed. He died (no, I'm not going to say "self-destructed") following an apparent heart attack at his home on March 14, 2010. He will be missed.

MISSION: Impossible - Season 1

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In addition to the debut of "Star Trek," 1966 also saw the arrival of "MISSION: Impossible," which remains in a close second place behind "Trek" on my list of all time favorite classic TV Series. Season 1 of this series sometimes got left out of the rotation when the show was shown in reruns in syndication on local TV stations. Channel 13 of Indianapolis carried "Mission" for many years in my home state of Indiana, but I went several years without ever seeing a season 1 episode.

Peter Graves (as Jim Phelps) was such an iconic star of the series, that the season anchored by his predecessor, Steven Hill (as Dan Briggs), can be relegated to trivia question status. This is kind of a shame since the season 1 episodes were on the whole, very good in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact the "MISSION: Impossible" formula was not quite set in place yet.

One major difference in season 1 compared to the rest of the series is that most episodes do not open with a self-desctructing tape recording. "The Secretary" would instruct Dan Briggs to "dispose of this recording in the usual manner," which meant the tape would be removed from the player and deposited in a nearby incinerator, or in a barrel of acid that may have conveniently been located nearby. One of the earliest self-destructing recordings was an LP record that went up in smoke at a set interval of time after being peeled out of its sealed envelope. I recall there was another self-destructing record which seemed to go up when the needle reached the center close-out groove.

Here's where technology is not making our lives better. In the modern day, the mission would be delivered on an encrypted .mp3 file downloaded from a secure server onto an iPhone locked by thumbprint access. After being played, the iPod would write zeroes eight times over the data. (I'm sure there's an app for that.)

Now wouldn't that just be slightly more exciting to watch than drying paint?

In season 1, Martin Landau, who would later out-shine series star Peter Graves in many episodes of Seasons 2 and 3, made a "special appearance" in very nearly every episode. His character, Rollin Hand, even assumed a role very close to that of "team leader" in some cases near the end of the year as things got tense with Steven Hill and he was present on the set less and less. Hill, an devout jew, would leave the set at sundown on Friday regardless of the status of the shooting of that week's episode. In one particular episode, Barbara Bain received the recorded instructions (at a beauty salon, no less), selected the team, and carried out the mission (Episode #23, "Action!"). This seemed a clear sign that Hill was being pushed out of the picture. (Hill has been better known in recent years as District Attorney Adam Schiff on "Law & Order.")

Not yet developed in the first season was the reliance on split second timing and the miraculous technology seen in later seasons. However, season 1 did have at least one prototype for most of the major types of story lines that would make up the rest of the series. Several of the episodes, (such as Episode 9, "A Spool There Was,") were more subtle, with little in the way of technological razzle-dazzle and which more closely resembled a modern day police procedural, only with spies in foreign lands instead of cops.

"MISSION: Impossible" Season 1 would not be the first season of this classic I would buy on DVD, but it would be in the top 3, trailing closely behind seasons 2 and 3, which is when the show really hit a solid stride (and which will be fodder for a later post).

"V" - The Visitors

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Today in the Childhood Recovery Project we re-visit (pun alert) the mini- and TV series "V" which aired in a period spanning 1983 to 1985. This is all the more apropos in view of the fact the ABC television network has recently rebooted the show.

The original "V" was a 4-hour miniseries on NBC in spring 1983 and was followed in spring 1984 by a 6-hour miniseries sequel, "V: The Final Battle." Of course the "battle" wasn't final at all, as groundwork was already being laid for "V: The Series" in the fall of 1984. But, like all the other Sci-Fi TV series that came between the original "Star Trek" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation," that series was done after about half a season.

As NBC might have learned had they been paying attention, particularly to 1978's "Man From Atlantis," a miniseries or TV movie that hauls in bang-up ratings does not necessarily translate into a weekly series of the same caliber. Do any of you even remember "Man From Atlantis?" Didn't think so. Point made.

Especially by 1983 television standards, the special effects of "V" were superb. Footage of the sleek white visitor spaceships landing in terrestrial locations was quite convincing. The star of the show was Marc Singer as news combat photographer turned resistance fighter Mike Donovan. Singer never had much of a chance to display killer acting chops in this show, as his character is mainly "tough guy/action hero who squints grimly at camera." For characters like this, acting skills play second fiddle to gunslinging skills, tight jeans skills, and (at least in the '80's) parting-hair-in-the-middle skills. If there's one cameo appearance from the original series I'd like to see in the new version, it would be Michael Ironside, the central casting go-to tough-ass muttafukka who played mercenary resistance fighter Ham Tyler.

And surely the new series could create a part suitable for Robert Englund, who played the goofy, friendly lizard named Willie back in the '80's and went on to terrorize a generation as Freddy Krueger.

I won't attempt a critical review of the original series, as it's simply been way too long since I've actually seen any of it. (Maybe after I download a few of them from iTunes. . .) But it used an allegory of the rise of Hitler and the persecution of the Jews (The visitors wore an emblem which is clearly a stylized swastika) as a backdrop for good solid action adventure and the gross out factor of the Visitors, actually reptilians concealed inside a human-like skin, detaching their jaws and swallowing rats whole. They claim to have come as friends here to help us. But be warned! Much as in the old Twilight Zone episode based on a short story by Damon Knight, if the Visitors present you with a gold-embossed volume titled "To Serve Man," it's probably a cookbook.

I've watched the first two episodes of the new series and so far find it quite serviceable, but in the early going I can't call it outstanding. The second episode especially contained some dialog that had me inwardly groaning. But the mystery of "who's a good guy, who's a bad guy" is being unwound in a fairly compelling way. The special effects are excellent, but in these days of CGI, that is not an especially challenging achievement.

Series like this are always hobbled somewhat at the start because writers must not only introduce characters and settings, but also a large body of science, physics, political and dramatic machinations, in short all the "rules of the game" that make a Sci Fi series work. This causes substance to temporarily take a back seat to form. But I think the main problem the new "V" faces is that the yardstick by which all classic series re-boots are measured, irrevocably and for all time, will be Ronald D. Moore's "Battlestar Galactica." I'm not seeing Galactica-caliber episodes yet, but it's still very early.

It was reported for years that original series producer Kenneth Johnson has been shopping around plans for a continuation of the original "V" with the original cast, much the same way as there was once a hope for a Battlestar Galactica series in the same mold. I always think this is a bad idea. How do you fill in 25 missing years of story? Less important creatively, but more important in the almighty Nielsons is the question of how you appeal to younger viewers if the actors playing your main characters are all eligible for Medicare? Or dead? (R.I.P., Lorne Greene.)

Johnson is listed as a writer on the new show. I don't know if that means he has actual creative input or if it's just a courtesy title, as Glen Larson was given on Moore's "Galactica." Perhaps his only connection to the show is that his contact info is gathering dust in the producer's cell phone. But this series has steered almost entirely away from the original's characters and locations. The original was set mainly in Los Angeles, the new one is in New York. I can detect no original characters being re-created. The closest I can see to a re-created character is that the Visitor "queen bitch" is named "Anna" in the new show and was called "Diana" in the original, a tenuous connection at best. Kudos for wiping the slate clean.

Oh. My. GAWD!! Do I ever feel old. . .

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I'm a big time dog lover. So when I saw this college-age girl at a tennis match on Sunday with a nearly full-grown Schnauzer puppy, cute, spunky and friendly as hell, rapid-twitching a nubby tail (and here I refer to the dog, not the girl), I had to go up and say, "Hi." In the course of chatting, I learned the dog was named Zeus. "Cute name," I said. "Like one of the fierce dobermans on 'Magnum, P.I.'"

Blank stare.

"You know, Tom Selleck in the Hawaiian shirt?"

Nothing.

I prompted further. "Red Ferrari. T.C.'s chopper. Zeus and Apollo guarding the Robin Masters Estate. Higgins saying 'Oh. . .my. . . GAWD!!'"

No sign of recognition whatsoever.

Then I did some math in my head. This was a girl I took to be the girlfriend of a college tennis player, mostly likely age 21 or less. This would mean she was born in or after the same year Magnum slapped the clip into his 9mm and twitched his bushy eyebrows at the camera for the last time in prime time TV (1988).

You know, it was perfectly OK when I was a kid going around making adults feel old because I had never heard of Uncle Milty, or Dobie Gillis or "The Fugitive." But having the nerve to show oneself in public while so culturally uninitiated as to be unfamiliar with "Magnum, P.I."? That is just OUTRAGEOUS!!