Sci-Fi Storm

I just realized I never actually posted my retro review for [sfs=859]The Starlost[/sfs]! This show had a very interesting history in its short life, ultimately becoming something of a parody of the genre and television production – or perhaps the epitome of a production that doesn’t “get it”.

Originally, only a handful of episodes were released on video tape, but a couple of years ago the entire series was [sfs=859]released on DVD[/sfs].

First, a basic synopsis:
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The 1986 movie SpaceCamp is one of those fun little movies. Hardly a masterpiece of factual information, hard science, or acting, it was simply a fun kid adventure movie, like 1985s The Goonies. And it has a young Joachim Phoenix (credited as “Leaf” while he was mimicking his siblings more nature-related names), and a robot named Max…what more could you want? Unfortunately it was doomed before release…

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I’ve been threatening to do this review for a while, and I’m pretty sure few of you have seen or even remember this show, but since I remember even the most useless of trivia, I hunted down this show to watch it again. Star Maidens can probably be summed up with: Only in the 70s…

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Unlike most TV pilots that never resulted in a full series production, this Gerry Anderson production did at least wind up on TV – and at least in the U.S. it did so several times, and for some reason memory of this show stuck in my mind. I even had to ask you what it was, with the memory having been corrupted over 30 years. I recently had the opportunity to watch this again – Read More about it, and you can get even more details about this and other Gerry Anderson productions (and DVDs) at the Fanderson web site.

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The past few weeks I finished off going through my Blake’s 7 VHS collection with Series 4, the final season of the BBC show. You’ve already lost your title character, now what are you going to do without your ship, arguably one of the “7” characters? Read More for thoughts on the final season.

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It’s been a while since I reviewed the first two series of Blake’s 7, but I’ve finally picked up where I left off and watched Series 3, which represents a departure – in more than one way – from the first two series, including the loss of the title character…alas, I still await a formal DVD release for Region 1…my piles of VHS tapes take too much room.

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First, there was the 1976 movie starring Michael York, Jenny Agutter, and Richard Jordan (and a heavily advertised Farrah Fawcett in a small role). As with all successful movies at the time someone decided to make a TV series, which starred Gregory Harrison, Heather Menzies, Randy Powell and Donald Moffat. Was it as successful? Hardly – it lasted 14 episodes. Read More to see why, although there is a spoiler for the end of the movie – but its been 31 years…if you haven’t seen it yet, you probably don’t care about this review.

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A political revolutionary named Roj Blake is convicted and sentenced to life on a prison planet. On the way there, the transport encounters a derelict ship of unknown design, and several crew are killed trying to board it. Blake, and two other prisoners manage to board and commandeer the ship and escape. They pick up several others and go on to fight against the Federation with the fastest ship in the known galaxy.

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First of a new series of reviews of older programs, some you have probably not seen, and some may have never heard of. First up is the BBC series Star Cops. Produced in 1987 and set in the very near future, it dealt with the police force in charge of keeping law and order in the internationally controlled “High Frontier” of space stations, moonbases, and even Mars.

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