November's Space Babe is the lovely and mysterious
Katie Saylor as the half-alien Liana of the 1977 television series
The Fantastic Journey. The character first appeared in the second episode of the short-lived series, "Atlantium," and joined our inter-dimensional castaways Varian (Jared Martin), Scott (Ike Eisenmann) and Fred (Carl Franklin) as they traveled through the various time zones of a mysterious island in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle.
According to the series, her father was Atlantean and her mother was an extraterrestrial from a heavy-gravity world. Liana possessed superhuman physical strength (due to her being born on a higher gravity planet than Earth) and various psionic abilities. She traveled with a pet cat that she could telepathically communicate with, named Sil-El, which often acted as a scout for the adventurers.
There's very little information online about Ms. Saylor. She became gravely ill during the production of
The Fantastic Journey and was written out of the final two (and a half) episodes. She appears to have retired from acting at that time. Conflicting information online states that she either passed away in 1991, or is still alive and living a quiet life in California with her husband. Prior to
Journey, she appeared in exploitation films like
Invasion of The Bee Girls and
The Swinging Barmaids.
Wherever she is now - this world or the next - I hope she knows how many of us remember her fondly for her strong, dignified portrayal of the heroic Liana.
She was also very sexy in her partial nude scenes in Invasion of The Bee Girls,I just wish there was more info about her
ReplyDeleteI was a fan of "Logan's Run" but had never seen the fantastic Journey. I recently watched an episode on you tube and was amazed at how much it reminded me of "Logan's." I wonder if any of the Logan scripts were old fantastic journey scripts re-done for the new show?
DeleteI doubt any scripts were re-done (the Fantastic Journey scripts would have been owned by Columbia, while Logan's was an MGM show), but the two shows did have the same producers, story editor and shared some writers, so the similarity isn't surprising.
DeleteI only know this show fomr a couple of articles in Starlog. Would love to see it.
ReplyDeleteMetal Mark, me as well. Only Starlog articles back in the day, never actually watched the show.
ReplyDeleteWas too involved with Logan and Space:1999, perhaps.