Year: 1970

Categories
Classic Season 07 Doctor Who

Spearhead From Space

Doctor WhoDr. Liz Shaw is uprooted from her research at Cambridge to serve as the scientific advisor for the recently formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, headed by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The Brigadier seeks Liz’s help in the investigation of two mysteriously precise meteor showers which could be signs of alien interference with Earth. But the Brigadier’s luck improves with the arrival of a police box in the midst of the most recent meteor shower, though its sole occupant is a man he’s never seen before. The Doctor, however, does recognize the Brigadier despite recovering from the trauma of his forced regeneration at the hands of the Time Lords, and the two join forces – with a somewhat bewildered Dr. Shaw in tow – to fight an alien menace which can inhabit and control one of the most common substances manufactured on Earth…plastic.

Download this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by Derek Martinus
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Hugh Burden (Channing), Neil Wilson (Seeley), John Breslin (Captain Munro), Antony Webb (Dr. Henderson), Helen Dorward (Nurse), Talfryn Thomas (Mullins), George Lee (Corporal Forbes), Iain Smith, Tessa Shaw, Ellis Jones (UNIT personnel), Allan Mitchell (Wagstaffe), Prentis Hancock (Reporter), Derek Smee (Ransome), John Woodnutt (Hibbert), Betty Bowden (Meg Seeley), Hamilton Dyce (Scobie), Henry McCarthy (Dr. Beavis), Clifford Cox (Soldier), Edmund Bailey (Waxworks Attendant)

Broadcast from January 3 through 24, 1970

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 07 Doctor Who

Doctor Who and the Silurians

Doctor WhoUNIT and the Doctor are summoned to a nuclear power research center located near a complex of caves; something has been slowly driving members of the center’s staff mad, one by one, and at least one spelunker has been killed in the caves. The Doctor investigates the caves for himself, uninterested in what initially seem like personnel problems at the center, and finds a living dinosaur inside them; he also discovers evidence of a bipedal reptile species, both in the caves and outside. The center’s director doesn’t believe the story he’s being told, but the Brigadier prepares UNIT to defend against a possible invasion. The Doctor is convinced that the reptile humanoids are Silurians, the original inhabitants of the Earth before a mass extinction wiped out most of the large reptile species and allowed humans to evolve and thrive. The few survivors of the event went into underground shelters, and the energy released by the research center is slowly awakening them. The Doctor is determined to contact them and try to talk them into coexisting peacefully with humans on the surface, only to find that warlike factions exist among the Silurians as well – and some of them will be satisfied with nothing less than wiping out humanity.

written by Malcolm Hulke
directed by Timothy Combe
music by Carey Blyton

Guest Cast: John Newman (Spencer), Bill Matthews (Davis), Peter Miles (Dr. Lawrence), Norman Jones (Baker), Thomasine Heiner (Miss Dawson), Fulton Mackay (Dr. Quinn), Roy Branigan (Roberts), Ian Cunningham (Dr. Meredith), Paul Darrow (Hawkins), Pat Gorman (Silurian Scientist), Dave Carter (Old Silurian), Nigel Johns (Young Silurian), Paul Barton, Simon Cain, John Churchill (Silurians), Peter Halliday (Silurian voice), Nancie Jackson (Doris Squire), Gordon Richardson (Squire), Richard Steele (Hart), Ian Talbot (Travis), Geoffrey Palmer (Masters), Harry Swift (Robins), Brendan Barry (Doctor), Derek Pollitt (Wright), Alan Mason (Corporal Nutting)

Broadcast from January 31 through March 14, 1970

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doomwatch Season 1

The Plastic Eaters

DoomwatchAn airliner bound for San Pedro experiences serious problems during descent: something is eating away at controls, insulation on wiring, anything made of plastic. The pilot issues a mayday, but nothing can be done to save the plane or anyone on it.

Tobias Wren arrives to interview for a job at the recently formed Department of Scientific Work (informally called Doom Watch by those who work there), only to be given an immediate assignment by the Department’s director, Dr. Simon Quist: investigate the San Pedro plane crash. When Quist phones his government contacts to enquire about any experimental means of disposing of plastic, he’s given the cold shoulder, and sends Dr. John Ridge to dig deeper. Ridge finds reports pointing to a biological agent – “Variant 14” – that dissolves plastics. Ridge’s “research” draws the fury of a government minister, who intends to suspend both Quist and Doomwatch. In the meantime, Wren has obtained pieces of the wreckage and is flying back to London with them, completely unaware that the wreckage could introduce the hungry plastic-eating bacteriological agent to a new plane full of plastic…

written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis
directed by Paul Ciappessoni
music by Max Harris

DoomwatchCast: John Paul (Dr. Spencer Quist), Simon Oates (Dr. John Ridge), Robert Powell (Tobias Wren), Joby Blanshard (colin Bradley), Wendy Hall (Pat Hunnisett), John Barron (The Minister), Jennifer Wilson (Miss Wills), Kevin Stoney (Hal Symonds), Michael Hawkins (Jim Bennett), Tony Sibbald (First Airline Crew), Monty Brown (First Airline Crew), Gracie Luck (First Airline Crew), Richardson Morgan (First Airline Crew), John Lee (Second Airline Crew), Eric Corrie (Second Airline Crew), Pat Wallen (Second Airline Crew), Caroline Rogers (Second Airline Crew), Edward Dentith (Second Airline Crew), Christopher Hodge (Commissionaire), Andreas Malandrinos (Airline Passenger), Mike Lewin (Airline Passenger), Pat Beckett (Airline Passenger), Toba Laurence (Airline Passenger), Cynthia Bizeray (Airline Passenger), Peter Thompson (Airline Passenger), Michael Earl (Airline Passenger), Tony Haydon (Airline Passenger)

DoomwatchNotes: Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis are well known to fans of UK sci-fi fandom as the creators of the Cybermen, one of Doctor Who‘s most persistent enemies. Much as the Cybermen were the result of former Doctor Who script editor Davis and Dr. Pedler brainstorming about organ replacement gone berzerk, Doomwatch is the result of them continuing their brainstorming sessions about scenarios resulting from human technology and science growing faster than human wisdom. Of the 38 episodes of Doomwatch produced over three seasons (only 37 of which were shown, one being deemed too violent for the BBC), only 24 episodes are still known to exist, and those 24 have been released on DVD.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doomwatch Season 1

Tomorrow, The Rat

DoomwatchA spate of unusually aggressive rat attacks calls Doomwatch into action. The victims include the elderly, children, other small animals, and other relatively defenseless targets, and to the alarm of Quist and his team, it would seem that along with this atypical vicious streak, there are signs that the rats are beginning to use rudimentary tools and reasoning. The rapidly mutating, evolving rat population is a dire threat to the human race, and John Ridge meets the scientist who originally released the rats into society…and finds that he is attracted to her. With the death toll mounting, those feelings may be a fatal distraction for more than just the two of them.

written by Terence Dudley
directed by Terence Dudley
music by Max Harris

DoomwatchCast: John Paul (Dr. Spencer Quist), Simon Oates (Dr. John Ridge), Robert Powell (Tobias Wren), Joby Blanshard (Colin Bradley), Wendy Hall (Pat Hunnisett), Penelope Lee (Dr. Mary Bryant), Hamilton Dyce (Minister), Robert Sansom (Dr. Hugh Preston), Eileen Helsby (Joyce Chambers), Ray Roberts (Fred Chambers), Stephen Dudley (Small boy), John Berryman (Reporter), Marcelle Samett (Nurse), Ian Elliott (Ambulance driver)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doomwatch Season 1

Project Sahara

DoomwatchTobias Wren and Dr. Stella Watson are informed by Spencer Quist that they’re suspended, effective immediately, moments after Quist receives a phone call from the Ministry. Suddenly out of work, Wren hits the bottle, as he is wont to do when the chips are down, and winds up confiding in the wrong person on the topic of Doomwatch. Dr. Watson also finds herself under scrutiny, to the point that she suspects her own boyfriend is spying on her. Furious, Quist descends upon the Ministry to demand explanations, discovering that the “preemptive firings” he’s been instructed to carry out are based on computer predictions of potential criminal behavior, rather than on past actions with any basis in fact.

writer not credited
(written by Gerry Davis with additional dialogue by N.J. Crisp)
directed by Jonathan Alwyn
music by Max Harris

DoomwatchCast: John Paul (Dr. Spencer Quist), Simon Oates (Dr. John Ridge), Robert Powell (Tobias Wren), Joby Blanshard (Colin Bradley), Wendy Hall (Pat Hunnisett), Nigel Stock (Keeping), Robert James (Barker), Hildegard Neil (Stella), Philip Brack (Jack), Erik Chitty (Old Man), John Linares (Young Man), Peter Hawkins (Computer Voice)

Notes: For a television show produced in 1970 (and likely written and filmed in late 1969), this episode does a remarkably good job of anticipating the “slow scan” loading of an interlaced JPG file at dialup internet speeds…even though neither JPG files nor the internet were in existence at the time. Also Doomwatchanticipated: the pieced-together-by-computer speech patterns of pre-recorded words and phenomes now commonly associated with “voice assistants” such as Siri (and even in early video game voice synthesizers like the Voice of Odyssey2). The writers of this episode are not credited on screen, a very rare occurrence. The story seems to have been inspired by elements of Philip K. Dick’s “Minority Report”, which was published in 1956.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doomwatch Season 1

Re-Entry Forbidden

DoomwatchThe Sunfire 1 mission, the first orbital test flight of a nuclear-powered space capsule, is crewed by two Americans and the first British astronaut, Dick Larch. When the capsule returns to Earth, however, a disastrous dump of the nuclear fuel almost occurs, and an inquiry begins into the incident, with NASA keen to keeps its pilots’ names clear. Dr. Quist and Doomwatch are tasked with trying to determine if Larch is of sound mind, something Larch resents deeply. But is he hiding something…and why is he volunteering for the next Sunfire mission?

written by Don Shaw
directed by Paul Ciappessoni
music by Max Harris

Cast: John Paul (Dr. Spencer Quist), Simon Oates (Dr. John Ridge), Robert Powell (Tobias Wren), Wendy Hall (Pat Hunniset), Joby Blanshard (Colin Bradley), Joseph Furst (Charles Goldsworthy), Michael DoomwatchMcGovern (Dick Larch), Veronica Strong (Carol Larch), Grant Taylor (Kramer), Kevin Scott (Gus Clarke), Craig Hunter (Bill Edwards), Noel Sheldon (Max Friedman), John Kidd (Johnson), John Boxer (Brown), James Burke (BBC Man London), Michael Aspel (BBC Man Houston), Dougal Fraser (TV Commentator)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 07 Doctor Who

The Ambassadors of Death

Doctor WhoA British manned Mars mission has fallen silent, its crew incommunicado for months. A second manned space vehicle is launched to recover the first, but it too loses contact with Earth. Strange, piercing signals are heard in Space Command on Earth, and the Doctor quickly realizes that they may be messages from whoever took the astronauts – only to hear a similar coded reply being sent from somewhere on Earth moments later. The Brigadier is able to trace the source of the reply and finds that the people who transmitted it are better organized and better armed than anyone suspected, and they even have allies within Space Command who try to sabotage the Doctor’s analysis of the original message. The recovery mission returns to Earth, but when the hatch is opened, the crew is nowhere to be found. Three astronauts did, in fact, arrive safely, but they aren’t from Earth. When Liz is kidnapped and forced to experiment on the alien visitors, and the military suddenly becomes reluctant to aid the Brigadier, the Doctor finds himself racing against time to avert an interplanetary war sparked by one paranoid man.

written by David Whitaker
directed by Michael Ferguson
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: John Levene (Sergeant Benton), Robert Crawdon (Taltalian), Ric Felgate (Van Lyden), Ronald Allen (Ralph Cornish), Michael Wisher (John Wakefield), Cheryl Molineaux (Miss Rutherford), John Abineri (Carrington), Ray Armstrong (Grey), Robert Robertson (Collinson), Juan Moreno (Dobson), James Haswell (Champion), Bernard Martin (Control Room Assistant), Dallas Cavell (Quinlan), Steve Peters, Neville Simons (Astronauts), Gordon Sterne (Heldorf), William Dysart (Reegan), Cyril Shaps (Lennox), John Lord (Masters), Max Faulkner (Soldier), Joanna Ross (First Assistant), Carl Conway (Second Assistant), Ric Felgate (Astronaut), James Clayton (Parker), Peter Noel Cook (Alien), Peter Halliday (Alien voice), Neville Simons (Michaels), Steve Peters (Lefee), Geoffrey Beevers (Johnson), Roy Scammell (Peterson), Tony Harwood (Flynn)

Broadcast from March 21 through May 2, 1970

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 07 Doctor Who

Inferno

Doctor WhoJoining the Brigadier’s team at a hazardous research site where Dr. Stahlman plans to drill through the Earth’s crust to tap its core as a new source of energy, the Doctor is annoyed when Stahlman rejects most of his expert scientific advice. But this isn’t enough to prevent to Doctor from availing himself of power from Stahlman’s nuclear reactor for his own experiments – yet another attempt to restore the TARDIS to full function. But during one such experiment, the TARDIS console shoots the Doctor sideways in time, depositing him in another dimension where Britain is a fascist state. In this alternate Earth, the Doctor can only watch in horror as Stahlman’s experiment progresses to the point where it destroys the world. The Doctor barely escapes, only to find that he may be too late from saving the Earth he knows from the same fate.

written by Don Houghton
directed by Douglas Camfield & Barry Letts
music by Delia Derbyshire

Guest Cast: John Levene (Sergeant Benton), Olaf Pooley (Stahlman), Christopher Benjamin (Sir Gold), Ian Fairburn (Bromley), Walter Randall (Slocum), Sheila Dunn (Petra Williams), Derek Newark (Greg Sutton), David Simeon (Latimer), Derek Ware (Wyatt), Roy Scammell (Sentry), Keith James (Patterson), Dave Carter, Pat Gorman, Philip Ryan, Peter Thompson, Walter Henry (Primords)

Broadcast from May 9 through June 20, 1970

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Phoenix Five

Zone Of Danger

Phoenix FiveAfter a death defying re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere with a deliberately weakened heat shield, Captain Roke and Ensign Adam Hargraves emerge alive and victorious…with Roke not even upset that the heat shield was sabotaged as a test of his flying skill. The Controller on Earth not only welcomes Roker and Hargraves back, but introduces them to their new navigator, Cadet Tina Kulbrick and shows the three around their new ship, the Phoenix Five, Earth’s most advanced spacecraft. Its onboard sick bay and garden impress Captain Roke, while Hargraves and Kulbrick are simply excited to be flying the state-of-the-art ship…and learning to deal with the fourth member of the crew, a walking robotic “computeroid” named Karl.

Phoenix Five’s first assignment is the inhospitable planet Zebula 9, where would-be space dictator Zodian was finally brought to justice. Five previous missions to try to stabilize the planet’s atmosphere crashed. Zodian is imprisoned at Earth control, with a retinue of Martian guards keeping an eye on him. But a seemingly harmless arts & crafts project Zodian is undertaking in his cell has deadly uses, and he breaks out of prison to hijack the Phoenix Five – even if it means killing its new crew – to return to Zebula 9 and reactivate his headquarters, complete with its twin computers, Alpha and Zeta. Cadet Kulbrick shows her resourcefulness by programming Karl by remote to bring the Phoenix Five in for a survivable rough landing on Zebula 9 – rough enough that it becomes useless to Zodian’s plans. But it turns out that Alpha and Zeta aren’t going to help Zodian’s plans either.

Phoenix Fivewritten by John Warwick
directed by David Cahill
music not credited

Cast: Mike Dorsey (Captain Roke), Damien Parker (Ensign Hargraves), Patsy Trench (Cadet Kulbrick), Redmond Phillips (Zodian), Stuart Leslie (Karl), Peter Collingwood (Controller), Martin Bright (Martian Guard), Paul Bright (Martian Guard)

Notes: Filmed in 1968 and 1969 in Australia, but not broadcast until May 1970, Phoenix Five is part of a continuum with two previous shows, The Interpretaris (1966) and Vega 4 (1968), though each iteration of the show is more or less a rehash of Phoenix Fivethe series before it. The series was shot on film, and the Australian special effects industry didn’t exist yet, forcing the makers of Phoenix Five to devise some ingenious solutions to showing futuristic gadgetry. This was the beginning of a ten-episode run for producer Peter Summerton, who died unexpectedly after the tenth episode. As much as certain visual elements – chiefly the uniforms – resemble those of Star Trek, cancelled in the U.S. less than a year earlier, and as much as Phoenix Five was regarded as a children’s show, it was actually scheduled opposite the Australian run of Star Trek and Land Of The Giants on a competing broadcaster. Though produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the commercial Seven Network had rights to repeats of the show.

The Controller says that the usefulness of the Phoenix Five’s sickbay will be up to Captain Roke’s “specialized medical knowledge” – in other words, the show’s budget isn’t enough to hire an additional actor to portray a ship’s doctor. The voice artist performing Alpha and Zeta is not credited.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Movies Planet Of The Apes

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes

Planet Of The ApesTaylor and Nova explore further into the Forbidden Zone, beyond the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, where a gigantic wall of fire stretches across the horizon and sudden earthquakes rip through the ground at their feet. Taylor goes to explore onward, telling Nova to find Dr. Zira if he fails to return. Taylor is unaware that another expedition has been launched to find his missing ship and crew, and that disaster has befallen them as well: astronaut Brent and his crew are sucked into the same time anomaly and arrive on the future Earth. Brent survives the violent landing and discovers Nova roaming on her own, following her back into ape territory. There, he witnesses not only the evolutionary advancements of the apes, but an all-too-familiar sight: the apes are divided over whether to strike into the heart of the Forbidden Zone, or face a famine that threatens their food crops. General Ursus calls for war, and demands support from Dr. Zaius. The scientific elite – mainly evolved chimpanzees – are concerned about the rallying cry for war, while the gorilla military considers calls for peace to be a sign of weakness. Dr. Zaius is cautious: nobody even knows what’s in the Forbidden Zone, or indeed if there’s anything or anyone upon which to declare war. Despite his earlier mistrust of Dr. Zira and Cornelius, Zaius leaves them in charge and reluctantly joins the military advance into the Forbidden Zone.

Brent, still trying to fulfill his mission objective of finding Taylor’s expedition, flees from ape country into the Forbidden Zone. They find a subterranean complex there, filled with the sound of machinery: obviously the product of some kind of intelligent life. While Brent is relieved to finally meet (apparently) human beings underground, he’s horrified by what they tell him: they worship their god – an atomic bomb that survived the Earth-consuming holocaust intact – and they’re not afraid to unleash their god’s fury upon an invading force of apes, even if it leads to a chain reaction that could wipe out the entire world. The final revelation is even more disturbing: despite their outward appearance, these humans have been mutated almost beyond recognition. They throw Brent in a cell with Taylor, but the reunion is anything but a happy one: in order to take out both the apes and the mutants, Taylor is more than ready to detonate the holy bomb himself…

Order the DVDsscreenplay by Paul Dehn
story by Paul Dehn and Mort Abrahams
directed by Ted Post
music by Laurence Rosenthal

Cast: James Franciscus (Brent), Kim Hunter (Zira), Maurice Evans (Dr. Zaius), Linda Harrison (Nova), Paul Richards (Mendez), Victor Buono (Fat Man), James Gregory (General Ursus), Jeff Corey (Caspay), Natalie Trundy (Albina), Thomas Gomez (Minister), David Watson (Cornelius), Don Pedro Colley (Negro), Tod Andrews (Skipper), Gregory Sierra (Verger), Eldon Burke (Gorilla Sergeant), Lou Wagner (Lucius), Charlton Heston (Taylor)

Original title: Planet Of The Apes Revisited

Notes: Charlton Heston wanted the first Planet Of The Apes sequel to be the last – he agreed to appear in only as many scenes as could be shot in a two-week period, and only if the character of Taylor was killed off. If you noticed that new star James Franciscus bore more than a passing physical resemblance to Heston’s appearance in the majority of the first film, it’s no accident: 20th Century Fox hoped that, in trailers and other advertising for Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, Franciscus’ strong resemblance would help them conveniently gloss over the fact that Heston was putting in little more than a cameo appearance. Also absent from the cast, due to being booked for other projects, was Roddy McDowall – the only Planet Of The Apes live-action project of the 20th century from which he was absent.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
1954-75: Showa Series Godzilla

Monster Zero

GodzillaAstronauts Glenn and Fuji are sent to investigate a mysterious Planet X, which is beyond Jupiter. Back on Earth, Fuji’s sister Haruno is dating failed inventor Tetsuo Torii, who Fuji disapproves of. Tetsuo, meanwhile, is awarded a contract from toymaker World Education Corporation for one of his gadgets, the Ladyguard Alarm, which makes a high pitched wail – but his invention is put into development limbo.

Shortly after landing on Planet X, Glenn and Fuji are surprised by thunder and lightning. They discover a highly advanced civilization, that has been driven underground due to continual attacks by Monster Zero, known on Earth as King Ghidorah. The beast damages a water plant, causing the Controller and his staff to leave for a short time, but not before isolating the astronauts in a darkened room. When they return, the Controller asks to borrow monsters Zero-1 and Zero-2 Godzilla and Rodan to defeat Monster Zero. In exchange, Planet X will provide Earth with a miracle drug that will cure all disease.

Even though Earth officials agree to allow the aliens to capture Godzilla and Rodan, Glen and Fuji are cautious. They suspect Planet X is in a severe water shortage, and may have more malevolent plans. Glenn rushes off on a date with Miss Namikawa, the representative from World Education Corp. When he returns, he tells Fuji he suspects the woman of collaborating with the Controller. A short time later, they discover that the Controller and others from Planet X are already on Earth. The aliens encapsulate Godzilla and Rodan in giant bubbles and transport them, Glen, Fuji, and Dr Sakurai to Planet X. On the way, the humans discover the aliens are able to control the flying saucers, animals and planets with their minds.

Tetsuo follows Namikawa to a remote island and discovers the truth: she is an alien collaborator. He’s captured.

Planet X is under assault by Monster Zero. Godzilla and Rodan are released from their bubbles to battle the three headed space monster. After a short fight, they drive away Zero. Glenn and Fuji slip away during the battle and find an oddly beautiful gold park-like room. Namikawa enters the room, wearing the Planet X uniform, but she fails to recognize Glenn, then a second Namikawa enters. Glenn and Fuji are captured by a group of the aliens. The Controller decides not to press charges and releases the pair to Dr. Sakarai. They leave in a replica of their original ship with the medical cure, leaving Godzilla and Rodan behind.

Back on Earth, they discover the tape they brought back doesn’t have instructions on how to produce the miracle drug. Instead, it contains a demand by the Controller to place the Earth under the control of Planet X as a colony, or be destroyed. Riots breakout worldwide. In an abandoned and heavily damaged building, Glenn finds Namikawa wearing a Planet X uniform. She admits she is an alien, but has fallen in love with the astronaut. The two are surrounded by aliens. Before Glenn is led away, she secretly slips a note into his pocket. The aliens kill her for falling in love with a human.

The aliens arrive, and order the humans to surrender within 24 hours or face death. They have brought Godzilla, Rodan, and Ghidorah to Earth and are controlling them with magnetic waves. Glenn, who has been tossed into a cell with Tetsuo, finds the note from Namikawa. She writes that the aliens from Planet X can be defeated through the use of a certain sound. Tetsuo realizes his Ladyguard Alarm emits that sound. Pulling one out of his pocket, he turns it on, rendering their guards helpless. They escape and report their discovery to Dr. Sakurai.

The Xns release Godzilla, and Rodan to attack. The pair smash buildings and knock over bridges in Japan, and Godzilla sets the countryside on fire, while the aliens blow up land-based weapons. Ghidorah joins them as they press the attack into an urban area, devastating the city.

The Ladyguard Alarm signal is broadcast on radio and TV stations. As the aliens try to regain control over their saucers, the humans bring to bear a weapon that disrupts the magnetic waves controlling the monsters, causing them to collapse. They continue to fire the magnetic wave disruptors at the saucers, which are careening out of control. The Controller orders his minions “into the future, the dimension we have never seen.” He presses a button, blowing up the saucers and their island HQ.

Freed from the alien’s grip, Godzilla and Rodan turn on Ghidorah. While the wrestle, they fall over a cliff into the ocean. Ghidorah flies out of the water, but Godzilla and Rodan whereabouts are not known. But it’s not believed the earth monsters are dead. Glenn is advised he will be returning to Planet X as an ambassador to the remaining inhabitants.

screenplay by Shinichi Sekizawa
directed by Inoshiro Honda
music by Akira Ifukube

Human Cast: Nick Adams (Astronaut Glenn), Akira Takarada (Astronaut Fuji), Kumi Mizuno (Miss Namikawa), Keiko Sawai (Haruno Fuji), Jun Tazaki (Dr. Sakurai), Yoshio Tsuchiya (Controller of Planet X), Akira Kubo (Tetsuo Torii)

Monster Cast: Godzilla, Rodan, King Ghidorah / Monster Zero

Notes: The original Japanese language version is known as Invasion Of Astro Monster, and was released in 1965, but even in the Japanese language version, the creature is called Monster Zero or King Ghidorah, not Astro Monster. Among the differences in the Japanese and English versions: a change in the opening theme, the Controller offers “only” a cure for cancer (rather than a cure for all disease), and instead of Glenn being appointed as Ambassador to Planet X, both Glenn and Fuji are dispatched to conduct a survey of Planet X in the original Japanese version.

LogBook entry by Robert Parson

Categories
UFO

Identified

UFOWhen evidence of UFO visits and alien abductions becomes real, a top-secret international agency, SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization), is formed, under the direction of Commander Ed Straker. Housed in the underground levels beneath a film studio that hides its activities, SHADO is on the verge of a new detection technology that could turn the tide against future UFO incursions. But the aliens – as yet unidentified – are also aware of this development, and are already taking steps to stop that technology from being deployed. From submarines capable of launching jet fighters, to a moonbase capable of launching space planes, Straker puts all of SHADO’s resources on the highest alert. The prize: SHADO’s first captured alien…and only then does Straker realize that this is but the first volley in a much longer battle for the planet Earth.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Gerry Anderson & Sylvia Anderson with Tony Barwick
directed by Gerry Anderson
music by Barry Gray

UFOCast: Edward Bishop (Cmdr. Straker), George Sewell (Col. Freeman), Peter Gordeno (Capt. Carlin), Gabrielle Drake (Lt. Ellis), Grant Taylor (General Henderson), Basil Dignam (Cabinet Minister), Shane Rimmer (Seagull X-Ray Co-Pilot), Antonia Ellis (Joan Harrington), Gary Myers (Lew Waterman), Michael Mundell (Ken Matthews), Harry Baird (Mark Bradley), Keith Alexander (SHADO Radio Operator), Jon Kelley (Skydiver Engineer), Georgina Moon (Skydiver Operative), Dolores Martinez (Nina Barry), Jeremy Wilkin (Skydiver Navigator), Paul Gillard (Kurt Mahler), Wanda Ventham (Virginia Lake), Gary Files (Phil Wades), Matthew Roberton (Dr. Harris), Maxwell Shaw (Dr. Shroeder), Annette Kerr (Nurse)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Phoenix Five

Dream On

Phoenix FiveA brief visit to a pastoral planet leaves Cadet Kulbrick wishing she could stay among nature for a bit, and Karl brings aboard some flowers, giving one of them to Kulbrick. The flower has psychoactive properties, however…and Platonus is in control of them, using them to lull the Phoenix Five crew, one by one, into a distracted dream state. Which would be only a minor problem without the asteroid field for which the ship is heading…

Phoenix Fivewritten by Peter Schreck
directed by David Cahill
music not credited

Cast: Mike Dorsey (Captain Roke), Damien Parker (Ensign Hargraves), Patsy Trench (Cadet Kulbrick), Owen Weingott (Platonus), Stuart Leslie (Karl), Peter Collingwood (Controller)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Timeslip

The Wrong End Of Time – Part 1

TimeslipYoungsters Liz Skinner and Simon Randall, bored with the dull surroundings near the Skinners’ vacation spot, go exploring the surrounding countryside, finding a place near an abandoned naval station where they hear an unusual sound all around them. Venturing onward, they pass through some sort of portal, stepping into the same place, but a different time – World War II, to be precise. Shortly after they see men who they’re certain are speaking German, the two children are captured and taken to be questioned about what business they had near the naval station. When Liz recognizes their interrogator – from having met him in the future, later in his life – it only raises further suspicions. And then they meet a young sailor named Frank Skinner – Liz’s father, long before she was born. The older Frank Skinner claims he had a mental breakdown during the war and can’t remember what his role in it was…but his daughter is about to find out by being there.

written by Bruce Stewart
directed by John Cooper
music not credited

TimeslipCast: Cheryl Burfield (Liz Skinner), Spencer Banks (Simon Randall), Denis Quilley (Commander Traynor), Iris Russell (Jean Skinner), Derek Benfield (Skinner), John Alkin (Frank), Sandor Eles (Gottfried), Paul Humpoletz (Graz), John Garrie (Arthur Griffiths), Royston Tickner (George Bradley), Peter Sproule (Ferris), John Abbott (Phipps), Kenneth Watson (Dr. Fordyce), Virginia Balfour (Alice Fortune), Sally Templer (Sarah), Hilary Minster (German Sailor)

TimeslipNotes: This episode is introduced by ITV’s then science reporter, Peter Fairley, introducing the series’ premise but cautioning that it is purely fiction. Eduard Salim Michael’s classical piece “Rite de la Terre” is used as the series’ theme song, but there is no incidental music during the story itself. Timeslip was originally recorded in full color, but only one episode remains in that format. The original color videotapes of the other episodes were wiped and reused (a common practice in the early 1970s), and we only have the remainder of the show to watch thanks to black & white film recordings created to sell the series overseas to broadcasters who were not yet transmitting in color.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Night Gallery Season 1

The Dead Man / The Housekeeper

Night GalleryThe Dead Man: Dr. Talmadge is summoned to the home of an old friend and colleague, Dr. Redford, who introduces him to a man named John Fearing. Fearing, just by thinking of a disease, can manifest the symptoms of that illness. Redford says that Fearing’s ability is hereditary, and he hopes to learn more about it and harness it to cure all disease. Over dinner, Talmadge notices that Redford’s wife can barely hide her attraction to Fearing, who appears as a perfect physical specimen when he concentrates on being well. In his next experiment with Fearing, Redford hypnotically conditions his human guinea pig to imagine himself dead. Is he taking his experiment to a new level…or eliminating a rival?

Download this episode via Amazonteleplay by Douglas Heyes
from a short story by Fritz Lieber
directed by Douglas Heyes
music by Robert Prince / series theme by Gil Melle

Cast: Carl Betz (Dr. Max Redford), Jeff Corey (Dr. Miles Talmadge), Louise Sorel (Velia Redford), Michael Blodgett (John Fearing), Glenn Dixon (Minister)

The Housekeeper: Miss Wattle applies for a housekeeping job with the wealthy but eccentric scientist Cedric Acton. His plans for here go beyond tidying up the house, though – Cedric feels his wife has become too entitled to be tolerable. He wants to transplant another woman’s personality into his wife’s admittedly attractive body, and tells Miss Wattle of the riches she’ll be “inheriting” as the new inhabitant of that body. She reluctantly goes along with it, but finds she has no interest in remaining part of this experiment. When she tries to leave her “husband”, she comes face to face with the new housekeeper…her own replacement.

Night Gallerywritten by Matthew Howard
directed by John Meredyth Lucas
music by Robert Prince

Cast: Larry Hagman (Cedric Acton), Suzy Parker (Carlotta Acton), Jeanette Nolan (Miss Wattle), Cathleen Cordell (Miss Beamish), Howard Morton (Headwaiter)

LogBook entry by Earl Green