The Childhood Recovery Project: 2009

MISSION: Impossible - Season 1

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?

Steven Hill as Dan Briggs

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

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. . .

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!!

Fortified Oat Flakes

Fortified Oat Flakes
Originally uploaded by Waffle Whiffer

Many of my childhood memories have their root in Saturday morning. Lots of good (well, maybe not good, but memorable) television on Sat. AM. And this was the morning the officially marked disengagement from the school week. This is MY time, dang it.

Any good Saturday morning vegging in your PJ's in front of the boob tube should start with a nuritious breakfast. One of my faves from this time period that has disappeared from the store shelves is Post Fortified Oat Flakes. This was a totally basic cereal: no raisins, no nuts, no crunch berries, no marshmallows. Just basic flakes of oat with a touch of brown sugar flavor. One thing I definitely remember about this cereal is that it did NOT stay crunchy in milk. We're talking zero to mush in about 90 seconds.

But it was good, tasty, comfort-food mush.

Doing some Googling on this classic breakfast food does not yield a lot of useful information, but I do recall it was discontinued sometime in the 80's, but returned in a revamped package for a few years in the 90's. I cannot recall seeing this cereal on the store shelves in the last 10 years. Several discussion boards contain posts from folks who would like to see this cereal return, but so far Post has not listened.

I could not turn up any images of the box, but there was an image of a coupon for this cereal on Flickr. The poster of the image states late 60's/early '70's vintage. I can't authoritatively argue this, but I believe this was the late '70's version of the box. I seem to remember a box the pre-dates the one shown on this coupon which featured a guy playing tennis. I can't remember is this was a "name" tennis player or just some Joe Blow with a raquet. The '90's version of the box was mostly blue in color, as I recall.

At the time I wrote this, there was also a 16mm film copy of a TV spot for this cereal starring actor Van Johnson listed for sale on eBay.

The AMT Starship USS Enterprise Model kit

Today, we reach back into my childhood for . . .

The AMT Starship Enterprise model kit, which was originally released in 1968. This is quite probably the best-selling sci-fi oriented model kit in history, as it was essentially in continous production from 1968 until about 1993. I'm sure I've built at least 5 of these.

Pictured here is a copy of the kit from the late '60's or very early '70's, which I purchased on eBay some years back. This example features engine nacelle caps molded in translucent amber plastic, as well as a grain'o'wheat bulb lighting kit to illuminate the engines and the top and bottom saucer lights. While kits popped from the original molds for this kit yielded a decent-looking replica, starship Enterprise sticklers will quickly find several detail flaws. There is also a MAJOR structural defect in the design of the kit where the warp engines attach to the engineering (lower cigar) hull. It was very difficult or impossible to get these things attached and aligned in the first place, and once they were attached, they were extremely fragile.

Klingons were not the chief nemesis of this model. Mom's feather duster presented a much more grave threat.

The original version of this kit was built and "battle damaged" to represent the USS Constellation in the second season episode, "The Doomsday Machine." The difficult-to-align engines were probably actually helpful in this instance. It was also built "stock" to appear in the window of Space Station K-7 in the episode "The Trouble With Tribbles." In several years of Googling, I have found no evidence that the "Constellation" miniature is still in existence, but a picture of the "Tribbles" Enterprise showed up sometime back after having been purchased at an auction.

The kit was re-tooled in the mid '70's. This led to several detail improvements as well a much more sturdy, easier-to-build replica, but for every detail that was improved, another one was compromised. An excellent and comprehensive history of this kit can be found here, so I won't spend many keystrokes re-hashing that in this post.

AMT never did release an "accurate" version of this kit, and a cottage industry has long been in place to make resin replacement parts to improve the model. It's fair to say the if you want a replica with excellent accuracy from this kit, you will literally need to modify or replace every single part in the kit.

These pictures depict a version that is very close to the first Enterprise kit I had as kid, though by the time I got one, the lighting had been discontinued, and the decal sheet had been replaced with one containing names of "all the ships in the fleet." This would have been a desirable improvement had AMT not switched to a font that looked totally wrong. I imagine there were some kids who bought and built a full fleet of 14 of these kits, but I was never quite that crazy.

Logan's Run - the original novel

Today's element of recovered childhood is "Logan's Run" - a science fiction novel I read mostly in time spent riding Bob Farmer's school bus #23 in about 1977. It is rare that I read a book more than once, but I am sure I've read this one at least three times.

This novel dates from 1967, during war protest/youth movement days. The premise is this: What if "Never trust anyone over 30" were carried to the nth degree, to the point that, in exchange for a life of luxury, hedonism and leisure, all citizens were required to turn themselves in for "sleep" (read as "dirt nap") at the age of 21? Logan is a DS (Deep Sleep) agent, a police officer whose job it is to enforce the age limit using a pistol which fires a very unique assortment of ammunition.

(If you've only seen the movie and are saying to yourself, "That's not how I remember it," you're probably remembering right, as the movie diverged considerably from the novel. The subsequent TV series strayed even farther from the source novel.)

Authors are William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Nolan (imdb.com, wikipedia) has been prolific in the science fiction and horror literary genres and has several TV and movie screenplays to his credit, including a "Logan's Run" television series pilot. Nolan also produced two "Logan" sequel novels written without Johnson. Johnson's (imdb.com, wikipedia) credits seem to lie mostly in short stories and television, and he may be best known as writer of the debut episode of "Star Trek," titled "The Man Trap," which aired on Sept. 8, 1966. He also contributed eight "Twilight Zone" episodes. As of this writing both authors are still living and have surpassed their 80th birthdays.

I suspect this novel might have faded into obscurity had it not been rendered as a movie in 1976 and a perhaps mercifully short-lived TV series in 1977. I may address both of these in future posts. My copy of the book pictured here features art from the 1976 movie poster with likenesses of Michael York and Jenny Agutter as Logan and Jessica. This rather rare cover features tattered costumes reflective of the end of the movie, after the heroes had spent several days in the hostile land outside the city of domes. Another, more commonly-seen cover showed them in "pristine" costumes.

The novel is much more expansive in setting than the movie, taking place in multiple cities and in the wilderness, and culminates in a space launch, unlike the movie which is set only in the single, nameless domed city and in the ruins of Washington DC. I don't want to give away much about the book since it is still worth a read whether or not you've seen the movie.

There has been an imdb.com entry for a movie remake of "Logan's Run" for several years. The project was once slated to star Leonardo DiCaprio. As of this writing, the entry lists a 2010 release date, but no cast is listed. The lack of a final cast in late 2009 makes it seem very unlikely we'll see a movie in '10. If anything, it seems this project has taken steps backward from actual production and release, though a truer cinematic representation of this book would be interesting.

What this is about

This is all I need. I already have one blog that is all too often ignored by myself and readers. So why not start another one?

Yeah. That's the ticket.

My other blog, Progeny of Light, is about photography, which is my work. This blog will be about my play. In fact, I plan to start by moving a few "off-topic" posts from Progeny of Light to this blog.

The play of my childhood has shaped my play as an adult. As the name of this blog implies, its main focus will be on movies, books, comics, TV shows, toys, model kits, and assorted pop culture from the 1970's, which is when I was growing up. Focus will almost certainly expand to the 1960's thru the 1980's, since much of what I grew up with in the 70's was left over from the 60's ("Star Trek", "The Wild Wild West"), and, let's face it, I didn't exactly rush headlong into adulthood in the 80's.

Who knows? At some point, if other readers, friends and family contribute, all chronological limitation may go by the wayside and treasures of recovered childhood from any era will be aired. Tonka Toys. Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes. Fiesta Ware. All fair game.

I've got a pile of stuff I plan to write about. You do your part by reading and interacting, I'll try to do my part by updating at least twice a week.

Play hard or go home.

Move along. Move along, folks. . .

Nothing to see here. Yet.