The Childhood Recovery Project: 03/2010

"Man From Atlantis" theme at the iTunes Music Store

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

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.

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 . . .

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.