Irwin Allen Television Productions, 1964-1970: A Critical History of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel & Land of the Giants
Jon Abbott
Language: English
Pages: 479
ISBN: 2:00189445
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Before establishing himself as the "master of disaster" with the 1970s films The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, Irwin Allen created four of television's most exciting and enduring science-fiction series: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants. These 1960s series were full of Allen's favorite tricks, techniques and characteristic touches, and influenced other productions from the original Star Trek forward. Every science-fiction show owes something to Allen, yet none has equaled his series' pace, excitement, or originality. This detailed examination and documentation of the premise and origin of the four shows offers an objective evaluation of every episode. A close-up look at these television landmarks demonstrates that when Irwin Allen's television episodes were good, they were great--and when they were bad, they were still terrific fun.
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Centauri. Here, he’s being an ass because he’s the show’s comic relief (believing the dog to be a hostile alien) and resident plot-serving trouble-maker (the ruined weapons and the “posse”). In even his most deluded moments Smith knows very well that he can’t reassemble the guns, and so his brainless malice in taking them apart is quite simply unbelievable. As the first season goes on, his actions become both more predictable (making the Robinsons look stupid and short-sighted) and less credible
this.” Fact is, Balter’s reply was disingenuous at best and a downright lie at worst, but in those days there was no home video to contradict readers’ memories and ABC tellingly left “Turn Back the Clock” out of the summer reruns. Although there is no stock footage from the movie in the first two of the four acts (just in the pre-credits teaser), three lengthy sequences are plundered in acts three and four, including the one Balter admits to, and the entire climax of the adventure is lifted from
the network sequence rather than the production order (as they often do). Consequently, the Land of the Giants episodes will be discussed sequentially, in the order episodes were given a production number, rather than in the wildly haphazard network running order, for reasons concerning the development of the series which will become apparent as we proceed. REGULAR CAST: Gary Conway (Captain Steve Burton), Don Matheson (businessman Mark Wilson), Kurt Kasznar (embezzler Alexander Fitzhugh),
but his scripts are hopeless—they have nowhere to go, and so go nowhere. Furthermore, we are never sure exactly how this return of Blackbeard has occurred. Is he a ghost, an immortal, or reincarnated? He has the attributes of a ghost, but where does his futuristic technology come from? Where did he get the force field device, or the ability to control men’s minds? Hampered by the bored direction of Addiss and the unquestioning, careless script of Gail, this episode has none of the fun of “The Sky
tank-like bus, before returning to the camp-site for a mostly excellent first season of adventures. Although the Chariot would be used again that season for a couple of expeditions, it sadly remained stationary or studio-bound for the rest of the series, but for stock footage inserts. The greatest gift to the historian, social commentator, or archivist is that of 20/20 hindsight, and with this advantage we can see how, episode by episode, at key moments in the series’ development, Lost in Space