Captain's bLog: 1023.11

I wanted to explain why there have been no new posts here for the last week or so. I was informed by several visitors through e-mail and the Space: 1970 Facebook page, that they were getting malware alert warnings when they visited the site. Upon investigating, I discovered that asshole hackers/hackbots had installed malicious code within one of my online accounts, an account where I store many of the image files used on my various websites and blogs, including this one.

My wife, much more computer-savvy than I, went into the account, found intruder code and deleted it. The site was re-submitted to Google for examination and approval. I don't know if it has cleared Google's scanners as yet, but I haven't seen any new warnings in my Firefox or Explorer browsers. If anyone is still getting warnings, please let me know.

I didn't want to post anything new here until I (hopefully) had the problem taken care of.

With luck, everything will be cleared up by November 1st - the second anniversary of this blog. Keep your fingers crossed, Star Kids.

THE BIONIC WOMAN Season 3

I picked up the Season 3 DVDs of The Bionic Woman last night, and just finished watching the opening two-parter, "The Bionic Dog." (I'll get to "Fembots In Las Vegas" tomorrow night!) As always, I'm struck by how much heart and humanity Lindsay Wagner brought to the role of OSI agent Jaime Sommers, no matter how far-fetched - or absurd - the scenario.

The Universal DVDs appear to be up to the quality of the previous two season sets - of course, I've only watched two episodes so far - with solid, 1.33:1 "full frame" transfers and mono audio. As with the earlier sets, there's a surprising number of extras, especially writers' commentaries on select episodes.

I'm looking forward to working my way through the episodes over the next week or two, and am genuinely thrilled to now have the entire series - one of my childhood favorites - on my DVD shelves. It's rather remarkable how well the show holds up, and most of that is due to Wagner's sincerity, humor and dramatic ability.

Now I'm waiting for the retail releases of the individual Six Million Dollar Man season packages. I bought Season 1 when Time-Life offered it as a special deal a few months ago, but I simply cannot afford the big, complete series, box set.

News: BUCK ROGERS (1979) Season 1 DVD Re-release in 2012

Back in 2004, Universal Home Entertainment released Buck Rogers In The 25th Century - The Complete Epic Series on DVD. This package contained both seasons of the television series. (These episodes are all currently available on Netflix Instant, BTW.)

Now, according to the TV Shows On DVD website, Universal has announced that they'll be re-issuing the first season only of the Space: 1970 TV favorite as a stand-alone, 6-disc DVD set in January of 2012.

All 21 episodes of the first season will be included on the half-dozen single-sided DVDs, presented in full screen video, English mono sound, and with subtitles in English, French and Spanish. The original 2004 complete series release had no bonus material, and there have been no extras announced for this edition, either.

The forthcoming Buck Rogers Season 1 discs will have a Suggested Retail Price of $24.95. The Complete Epic Series set, which is still available, is priced around $26.95. (And currently only $20 at Amazon: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: The Complete Epic Series)

Gil Gerard PSA (1981)

Buck Rogers himself, Gil Gerard, encourages young people to embrace technology and pursue high-tech careers in this Public Service spot from 1981. I love these sort of pop culture artifacts!

STAR TREK (1983) Arcade Game Flyer

Here's the flyer for Sega's cockpit model of their Star Trek "Strategic Operations Simulator" game, which appeared in arcades and bowling alleys a few months after Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan surprised everyone by becoming a huge box office hit and demonstrated that the Trek franchise still had plenty of exploitation potential left in it.

I honestly don't remember playing this game; does anyone know if it was the first authorized Star Trek electronic video game? I know there had been a couple of pinball machines, but I'm wondering whether there was a Trek video game before this one?

THE BLACK HOLE (1979) by Jack Kirby

Click on Image For Larger View

Back in 1979, the Disney folks hired legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby to adapt their new sci-fi epic, The Black Hole, into comic strip form for newspaper syndication. Like the Star Trek newspaper strip that appeared around the same time, it was intended to promote the expensive film. Apparently, it did get picked up by a few papers, but didn't last long - no doubt because the movie was a box-office disappointment.

In 2007, Disney published at least some of the strips - with new, digital colors - in their Disney Zone digest magazine.

LOGAN'S RUN (1977) TV Guide Preview

From the September, 1977 "Fall Preview" issue of TV Guide, here's the magazine's write-up for the Logan's Run television series. Based on the Michael Anderson MGM feature film of the year before, which was based, in turn, upon the novel by George Clayton Johnson & William F. Nolan, the Logan's Run television show only ran for 14 episodes. It was produced by the guys who had run The Fantastic Journey the year before, and starred Gregory Harrison, Heather Menzies and Donald Moffat.

I was - and remain - a big fan of the show. I've been told that the Warner Archive manufacture-on-demand DVD label has a complete series set in the works, but no release date has been announced as yet. In the meantime, the series is apparently available for online viewing and download from iTunes and at Amazon.

Behind -The-Scenes Pix #9: STAR TREK

William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, on location (at Vasquez Rocks, I'm guessing - doesn't quite look like Bronson Canyon to me, but I may be wrong) perusing some high-brow literary magazine between takes on the original Star Trek television series.

October's Space Babe: Sigourney Weaver

October 2011's Space Babe is Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ripley in director Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi Gothic, Alien. As portrayed by the then-relative newcomer, the strong-willed Ripley proved to be the ultimate survivor, not only escaping from the clutches of the titular extraterrestrial xenomorph, but going on to thwart its toothy brethren in three sequels. Of course, most of us here at Space: 1970 remember her primarily for her scanty panties at the original film's conclusion. Shame on us.

Born as Susan Weaver, the tall, striking brunette has appeared in a number of genre films, but has also garnered considerable acclaim as a serious dramatic actress. Among her sci-fi/fantasy credits are the aforementioned Alien franchise sequels, the Ghostbusters films, James Cameron's Avatar, Paul, and the delightful spoof, Galaxy Quest, which poked good natured fun at the kinds of TV shows we celebrate here at Space: 1970.

Captain's bLog: Supplemental

Been suffering from a stubborn head cold, but I'm starting to get back on track. I plan to have some new posts up here throughout the week, including this month's "Space Babe." Stay tuned.

PLANET OF THE APES (1968) Theatrical Posters

"It's a madhouse!" As Planet Of The Apes co-writer Rod Serling might put it: submitted for your approval... a selection of colorful theatrical posters and one-sheets from around the world, all heralding 20th Century Fox's first simian sci-fi epic back in 1968. Enjoy!

Fourth Coolest Toy Ever: Mego STAR TREK Communicators

When I was in fifth or sixth grade (circa 1975-76), my pal Mark Usher and I formed a short-lived Star Trek "club." There were four of us in all, as I remember, and once a week, we'd all go over to Mark's house after school and basically play Star Trek all afternoon. He lived on an old farm, and his parents cleaned out an old outbuilding for us to use as a clubhouse - or, in our case, "starship." His father even made a sign that said "U.S.S. Enterprise" and placed it over the door. (I vaguely recall that he misspelled it somehow, but I could be misremembering.)

His mother was an artsy-craftsy sort, and she wanted to make sure that we weren't getting into trouble, so she actually created Trek-themed projects for us to do. We made plywood "control panels" for our "ship" - including a "transporter console" with sliding levers (wide beads on strings) - which Mark's father mounted on the walls of the shack. We made uniforms out of appropriately colored tee-shirts, which his mother helped us draw insignias on with fabric paints, and we made papier-mâché planets, which we suspended from the ceiling of our clubhouse/starship with fishing line.

But mostly, we role-played being crew members of the Enterprise, and explored the alien cornfields and woods on the Usher property. We kept in touch with the Mego Star Trek Communicators, which were - as the advertising proudly exclaimed, "real, working walkie-talkies!" But unlike the other walkie-talkies we had as kids, these had flip-up lids, just like the ones on TV. Of course, they were considerably larger than their television counterparts, colored blue, and had telescoping antennae - but they worked.

If you didn't wander too far apart, anyway.

Mark also had the "Command Communications Console," which was a nicely Trek-styled base set tuned to the same CB frequency, and the only actually working piece of equipment in our ramshackle starship. It didn't get used much, as I recall, because no one wanted to be the Communications Officer and stay behind "on the ship" while the rest went exploring.

For those keeping score, the coolest 70s toy ever was the Mattel Space: 1999 Eagle Transporter. The second-coolest toy of the Space: 1970 era was Kenner's 18" Alien. And the third was Kenner's Bionic Bigfoot from The Six Million Dollar Man.