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Classic Season 1 Tomorrow People

The Medusa Strain – Part 2

Tomorrow PeopleJust returned from hyperspace, Carol and Stephen seem to be the only people on Earth who aren’t frozen in their tracks. Even TIM is frozen, forcing the two to make short jaunts across London to see if anyone else is moving or alive. They find a handful of strangely dressed people robbing the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, one of whom is a boy being forced to help them. Stephen is able to escape, while Carol is captured by the robbers and taken back to their spaceship. Only too late does Carol realize that one of her captors is Jedikiah.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Brian Finch and Roger Price
directed by Roger Price
music by Dudley Simpson

Tomorrow PeopleCast: Sammie Winmill (Carol), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Stephen Salmon (Kenny), Roger Bizley (Jedikiah), Michael Standing (Ginge), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Roger Booth (Robowski), Richard Speight (Peter), Dave Prowse (Android), Norman McGlen (The Medusa)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 1 Tomorrow People

The Medusa Strain – Part 3

Tomorrow PeopleJedikiah once again forces Carol and Peter, the boy from the future, to wear silencer bands that rob them of their abilities as Tomorrow People. Jedikiah then threatens to kill Carol unless Peter programs the time travel device to allow Jedikiah to prevent the Tomorrow People from becoming a dominant force in history. The raid on the secret base in 1973 goes awry, though, thanks to Ginge, who has stuck around to help John and the others. John and Stephen prepare to rescue Carol, but only put themselves in further danger.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Brian Finch and Roger Price
directed by Roger Price
music by Dudley Simpson

Tomorrow PeopleCast: Sammie Winmill (Carol), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Stephen Salmon (Kenny), Roger Bizley (Jedikiah), Michael Standing (Ginge), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Roger Booth (Robowski), Richard Speight (Peter), Dave Prowse (Android), Norman McGlen (The Medusa)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 1 Tomorrow People

The Medusa Strain – Part 4

Tomorrow PeopleJedikiah is so obsessed with destroying the Tomorrow People that he turns against his allies. Despite this, he nearly succeeds in neutralizing their power. Only Carol and Peter can save their own kind (with some help from Ginge), and their best hope is to use Jedikiah’s newfound fixation of time travel against him.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Brian Finch and Roger Price
directed by Roger Price
music by Dudley Simpson

Tomorrow PeopleCast: Sammie Winmill (Carol), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Stephen Salmon (Kenny), Roger Bizley (Jedikiah), Michael Standing (Ginge), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Roger Booth (Robowski), Richard Speight (Peter), Dave Prowse (Android), Norman McGlen (The Medusa)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 1 Tomorrow People

The Vanishing Earth – Part 1

Tomorrow PeopleSevere storms and violent volcanic eruptions are increasing in frequency the world over; John decides that it’s up to the Tomorrow People to do something about it…but even John admits that it may be far beyond their powers. At a seaside amusement arcade, Ginge finds a pleasant distraction in the person of a young woman named Joy, and then finds himself in a metallic world populated by robots…and by something of a decidedly more organic nature called Spidron.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Brian Finch and Roger Price
directed by Paul Bernard
music by Dudley Simpson

Tomorrow PeopleCast: Sammie Winmill (Carol), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Stephen Salmon (Kenny), Kenneth Farrington (Smithers), Michael Standing (Ginge), Derek Crewe (Lefty), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Kevin Stoney (Steen), John Woodnutt (Spidron), Nova Llewellyn (Joy), David Weston (No. 300), Bara Chambers (Control voice)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 1 Tomorrow People

The Vanishing Earth – Part 2

Tomorrow PeopleLefty returns to the Tomorrow People’s base to report Ginge’s disappearance, and Stephen returns with him to look for Ginge. Carol and John are still preoccupied with studying the outbreak of storms and volcanic eruptions, but when they return to their base, TIM tells them not only of Stephen’s mission, but that it may represent an immediate danger to Stephen. When Stephen and Lefty enter the same haunted house in which Ginge vanished, only Lefty emerges; Stephen is dumped at sea and retrieved by an older man who has been watching all of this activity. Carol and John try to stop him from taking Stephen…only to watch him disappear.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Brian Finch and Roger Price
directed by Paul Bernard
music by Dudley Simpson

Tomorrow PeopleCast: Sammie Winmill (Carol), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Stephen Salmon (Kenny), Kenneth Farrington (Smithers), Michael Standing (Ginge), Derek Crewe (Lefty), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Kevin Stoney (Steen), John Woodnutt (Spidron), Nova Llewellyn (Joy), David Weston (No. 300), Bara Chambers (Control voice)

Notes: We find out that Ginge’s given name is Ginger Hardy.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 1 Tomorrow People

The Vanishing Earth – Part 3

Tomorrow PeopleJohn and Carol return to their base, and are stunned to find Stephen is there, in perfectly good health, but with no memory of how he got there. Even TIM can’t remember Stephen’s return. They jaunt back to the scene of the crime, discovering that the older man who carried Stephen out of the water is a galactic policeman hunting an alien criminal named Spidron…and that, thanks to the presence of the Tomorrow People, Earth’s status as a “closed planet” off-limits to aliens has been lifted, endangering the planet.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Brian Finch and Roger Price
directed by Paul Bernard
music by Dudley Simpson

Tomorrow PeopleCast: Sammie Winmill (Carol), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Stephen Salmon (Kenny), Kenneth Farrington (Smithers), Michael Standing (Ginge), Derek Crewe (Lefty), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Kevin Stoney (Steen), John Woodnutt (Spidron), Nova Llewellyn (Joy)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 1 Tomorrow People

The Vanishing Earth – Part 4

Tomorrow PeopleSpidron and Steen confront each other, though Spidron seems to make a quick getaway – if, indeed, he was ever there and not appearing in holographic form. John and the Tomorrow People ask Steen, a law enforcement officer for a galactic federation, for help in either saving Earth or evacuating some of its people to another suitable planet. Steen reveals that, with Earth’s primitive state of development, it’s not an important enough planet to merit such extraordinary measures. John, Carol and the others take it upon themselves to prove otherwise by trying to stop Spidron with all of the powers at their disposal.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Brian Finch and Roger Price
directed by Paul Bernard
music by Dudley Simpson

Tomorrow PeopleCast: Sammie Winmill (Carol), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Stephen Salmon (Kenny), Kenneth Farrington (Smithers), Michael Standing (Ginge), Derek Crewe (Lefty), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Kevin Stoney (Steen), John Woodnutt (Spidron), Nova Llewellyn (Joy)

Tomorrow PeopleNotes: This is the final appearance of either Carol or Kenny in the series; both actors elected to move on after the first season was produced, leaving no time for a formal farewell scene to be written. The first episode of the second season would provide an explanation for their departure while introducing new cast members.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Orson Welles' Great Mysteries

Unseen Alibi

Orson Welles' Great MysteriesInvited to London by a fashion model he only just met, American bachelor Jerry arrives at the appointed place, at the appointed time, opens the door of her apartment, and walks in. He a framed photo of a man, and then stumbles upon the corpse of the man in that photo, dead of a stab wound. In his panic, Jerry accidentally finds the murder weapon nearby, leaving his fingerprints on it. He panics and runs, only to be arrested by police waiting just outside the door of the apartment. Jerry is now the prime suspect in a murder, though he can produce no evidence or witnesses to exonerate himself. What he doesn’t know is that he’s walked innocently into an elaborate crime to be the decoy for the real killers.

Orson Welles' Great Mysteriesteleplay by Kenneth Jupp
based on a story by Bruce Graeme
directed by Mark Cullingham
theme music by John Barry

Cast: Dean Stockwell (Jerry Norton), Joss Ackland (Inspector Hud), Lewis Wilson (Police Sergeant), Raymond Skipp (Police Constable), James Ottaway (Hotel Porter), Gary Myers (Burford), Orson Welles (Narrator)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Season 1 Super Friends

The Power Pirate

Super FriendsPower failures wreak havoc around the world, and Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and superheroes-in-training Marvin and Wendy (and their faithful pet Wonder Dog) gather at the Hall of Justice to try to keep on top of all of the incidents. Everything from electrical power to steam power is likely to fail, and nearly everywhere any of the Justice League members go, the dapper Sir Cedric Cedric of Scotland Yard is already on the case, investigating the power problems for himself. Or is he? Is his presence at almost every incident a mere coincidence…and is he even who he claims to be?

story by Fred Freiberger, Bernie Kahn, Ken Rotcop, Art Weiss, Willie Gilbert, Henry Sharp, and Marshall Williams
Super Friendsdirected by Charles A. Nicholas
music by Hoyt Curtin

Cast: Sherry Alberoni (Wendy), Norman Alden (Aquaman), Danny Dark (Superman), Shannon Farnon (Wonder Woman), Casey Kasem (Robin), Ted Knight (Narrator), Olan Soule (Batman), John Stephenson (Sir Cedric Cedric / Alien), Frank Welker (Marvin / Wonder Dog)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Original Series (Animated) Season 01 Star Trek

Beyond The Farthest Star

Star Trek ClassicStardate 5221.3: Near the edge of the galaxy, a powerful gravitational force has seized the Enterprise. Sulu is able to alter the ship’s course just enough to go into orbit around the dead stellar core which is the source of the gravity, rather than crashing into it. Also in orbit is a vessel of organic origins, with a structure that indicates two things – the ship was built by insectoid beings, and those beings appear to have destroyed themselves. A log entry recorded by one of the aliens warns of the presence of a malevolent life form, prompting Kirk and his landing party to return to the Enterprise – only to discover that whatever attacked the insectoids has now beamed aboard with them.

Order the DVDswritten by Samuel A. Peeples
directed by Hal Sutherland
music by Yvette Blais & Jeff Michael

Cast: William Shatner (Captain Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy), James Doohan (Mr. Scott / Alien Voice / Insectoid Captain / Transporter Chief), George Takei (Lt. Sulu), Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), James Doohan (Lt. Arrex), Majel Barrett (Nurse Chapel)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Moonbase 3

Departure And Arrival

Moonbase 3After a psychologically unstable pilot’s condition is quietly ignored by the crew of Moonbase 3, he commits suicide during a spacewalk, leaving Dr. Ransome, the Moonbase administrator, with only minimal astronautics training to fly his shuttle. The shuttle is destroyed when Ransome tries to pull off a daring maneuver that any trained pilot would never have even considered. The incident places the future of Moonbase 3 – considered by Earthbound authorities to be a costly “extravagance” – in jeopardy.

Dr. David Caulder is appointed to succeed Ransome as the administrator in charge of Moonbase 3, and Michel Lebrun – who thought he was next in line for the job – prepares to resign in protest. Caulder seems affable enough and eager to learn about life on a permanent outpost on the moon, but just as the crew warms to him, he begins a no-nonsense investigation into Ransome’s death, catching them off guard. Blame is placed and fingers are pointed, and Caulder finally reads his verdict to the three ranking officials on Moonbase 3: he holds them all personally responsible for the deadly incident, and will personally escort all of them home to face formal charges. But after their shuttle lifts off from the Moonbase, it becomes clear that someone aboard has taken steps to ensure that its passengers – and Caulder’s damning report – will never reach Earth…

written by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts
directed by Ken Hannam
music by Dudley Simpson

Cast: Donald Houston (David Caulder), Ralph Bates (Michel Lebrun), Fiona Gaunt (Helen Smith), Barry Lowe (Tom Hill), Madhav Sharma (Rao), Michael Lees (Ransome), Michael Wisher (Sanders), Jonathan Sweet (Walters), Peter Bathurst (Director General), Robert La Brassiere (Bill Jackson), Patsy Trench (Jenny), Mary Ann Severne (Sandy), Christine Bradwell (Ingrid), Victor Beaumont (Franz Hauser), Elma Soiron (Madame Carnac), Peter Miles (Dr. Laubenthal)

Notes: Moonbase 3 (the fictional setting) is controlled by the “European Community,” lending Moonbase 3 (the show) an unusual bit of foresight in predicting the European Union. Moonbases 1 and 2 are controlled by, respectively, the United States and Russia (though not the Soviet Union, a body which most assuredly did exist at the time of Moonbase 3’s production – score another point for foresight), and Moonbase 4 is controlled by China. The series came about when BBC bosses asked Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts – the then-script editor and producer of Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who – if they’d like to do an original SF series of their own to air during Doctor Who’s “off-season.” Moonbase 3 was the result, though both Dicks and Letts have said that there are things they would change about the show if they were to do it again, not the least of which is the show’s grim tone (which, to be fair, seems to be present in a great many SF TV series in the early 1970s). Moonbase 3 was mounted as an international co-production produced by the BBC with financial backing from ABC and 20th Century Fox on the American end of things, but it didn’t make a splash in the ratings on either side of the Atlantic. Ironically, the fact that the series was shown in America is the only reason it still exists today: as with many BBC series made in the 1960s and early ’70s, including many a classic episode of Doctor Who, Moonbase 3 was “purged” from the BBC archives and was only recoverable by way of the American master tapes.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Original Series (Animated) Season 01 Star Trek

Yesteryear

Star Trek ClassicStardate 5373.4: A visit to the Guardian of Forever goes wrong somehow, erasing Spock from history. Though the Vulcan returns to the 23rd century along with Kirk, no one recognizes Spock, and an Andorian named Thalen is serving as the Enterprise’s first officer. Spock uses the Guardian to travel 30 years into his own past, at the point when the new timeline’s history says Spock died as a boy on Vulcan. Passing himself off as his own cousin, Spock watches as his younger self sneaks away in the night, scared to undergo a grueling rite of passage. The younger Spock is followed by I’Chiya, his aging pet sehlat, who sacrifices its life to save Spock from a predatory creature. Having saved his own life, the elder Spock now worries that the unexpected death of I’Chiya may change his future yet again.

Order the DVDswritten by D.C. Fontana
directed by Hal Sutherland
music by Yvette Blais & Jeff Michael

Star TrekCast: William Shatner (Captain Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy), James Doohan (Mr. Scott / Commander Thalen / Officer #1 / Officer #2 / Alien Historian / Vulcan Healer / Guardian of Forever), George Takei (Lt. Sulu), Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), James Doohan (Lt. Arrex), Majel Barrett (Nurse Chapel / Amanda Grayson / Historian), Mark Lenard (Sarek)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Moonbase 3

Behemoth

Moonbase 3The unexplained disappearance of two astronauts conducting a survey on the surface of the moon brings the prospect of further moonwalks to a halt. Caulder orders no further moonwalks in the survey area, which infuriates seismologist Dr. Heinz Laubenthal, whose studies have concentrated on that very area – though he refuses to say why he’s so interested in it. A mysterious accident depressurizes the seismology lab, exposing it to cold vacuum and killing Laubenthal; rumors begin to run rampant that his experiments on the moon’s surface may have awakened some previously undiscovered life form which is now seeking revenge. Other moonbases pick up on the rumor and a siege mentality quickly sets in. Caulder decides to lift his ban on exploration in Mare Frigoris and personally investigate what’s going on – but if something or someone evil is behind the disappearances, even he may not survive this mission.

written by John Brason
directed by Ken Hannam
music by Dudley Simpson

Cast: Donald Houston (David Caulder), Ralph Bates (Michel Lebrun), Fiona Gaunt (Helen Smith), Barry Lowe (Tom Hill), John Hallam (Peter Conway), Tom Kempinski (Stephen Partness), Peter Miles (Heinz Laubenthal), Garrick Hagon (Bruno Ponti), Dennis de Marne (Guido Mirandelli), Jurgen Anderson (Per Bengison), John Moreno (Alan Benavente), Derek Anders (Dr. Andrew Robertson), Robert La Bassiere (Bill Jackson), Anthony Chinn (Cheng), Christine Bradwell (Ingrid), Cy Town (Technician), Ken Haward (Foreman)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Original Series (Animated) Season 01 Star Trek

One Of Our Planets Is Missing

Star Trek ClassicStardate 5372.3: The Enterprise crew watches helplessly as an enormous cloud engulfs an entire planet, and discover that it is headed for the heavily populated planet Mantilles. The Enterprise, pursuing the cloud, is also swallowed by it. From inside the cloud, Spock determines that it is a living organism. Kirk decides that the organism must be destroyed, but Spock finds that this can only be accomplished by unleashing an enormous amount of energy which would also destroy the Enterprise. The only hope for the people of Mantilles is an unconventional mind-meld between Spock and the planet-consuming life form.

Order the DVDswritten by Marc Daniels
directed by Hal Sutherland
music by Yvette Blais & Jeff Michael

Cast: William Shatner (Captain Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy), James Doohan (Mr. Scott / Lt. Arrex / Governor Wesley), George Takei (Lt. Sulu), Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), Majel Barrett (Nurse Chapel / The Organism)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Starlost, The

Voyage Of Discovery

The StarlostAfter returning from exile as punishment for sacrelige, Devon returns to the rustic farming community of which he is a member, still bitter that he will not be permitted to marry a woman named Rachel. Devon demands a second opinion, and so the town’s preacher asks the computer system – a device which gives him direct access to his Creator, and which he refuses to question or second-guess – and it once again declares Devon an unfit genetic match for Rachel, regardless of her feelings for him. Devon refuses to stop his attempts to interrupt the impending marriage of Rachel and Garth, and is cast out from his community again. But when Devon learns that the “voice of the Creator” is actually programmed by the preacher himself, a new decree is issue: Devon must be purged from the gene pool. He ventures into a remote cave with a torch-and-pitchfork-toting mob hot on his heels – and a metallic hatch closes behind him. Devon discovers himself in an enormous chamber filled with technology the likes of which he has never seen. He stumbles across a talking console which reveals to him the truth about this place: his village is part of an agrarian biosphere, one of many biospheres clustered together to form an enormous spacefaring vessel called Earthship Ark. Constructed between the Earth and the moon and launched after a catastrophe in the year 2285, Earthship Ark’s sealed biospheres contained a representative sampling of Earth’s flora, fauna and cultures, carrying them away from their dead homeworld and seeking a solar system around a class G star, capable of supporting life.

But Devon doesn’t even know what space is, the people in his biosphere dome having reverted to a more primitive way of life (and yet one that acknowledges the prefabricated boundaries of the world, computer equipment, and other anachronisms). The machine tells him that 100 years into Earthship Ark’s multi-generational flight, an unspecified accident occurred, and the command module containing the Ark’s bridge, from which its flight was guided, was damaged; the bridge has not been heard from in over 400 years. Devon returns to his village with this knowledge, but he is branded a heretic and is sentenced to be stoned to death. Garth breaks Devon out of his prison cell on the condition that Devon should leave and not come back, but instead, Devon does the one thing that he knows will reveal the truth to the rest of his neighbors: he takes Rachel through the hatch into the Ark’s infrastructure. Only Garth is brave enough to step through, and he does so armed with a crossbow, intending to bring Rachel back by force if necessary. The three of them make their way to the bridge, finding it littered with the skeletons of the Ark’s crew. And blazing through the enormous windows in the distance ahead, they see a class G star – suitable for settling the Ark’s precious cargo of life if it has habitable planets – but there’s just one problem: the Ark is locked on a collision course for that star…and no one left alive knows how to alter that course.

Season 1 Regular Cast: Keir Dullea (Devon), Gay Rowan (Rachel), Robin Ward (Garth)

Get this season on DVDwritten by Cordwainer Bird (pseudonym for Harlan Ellison) and Norman Klenman
directed by Harvey Hart
music by Score Productions Ltd.

Guest Cast: Sterling Hayden (Jeremiah), George Sperdakos (Jubal), Gillie Fenwick (Old Abraham), William Osler (The Computer), Sean Sullivan (Rachel’s Father), Aileen Seaton (Rachel’s Mother), Jim Barron (Garth’s Father), Kay Hawtrey (Garth’s Mother), Scott Fisher (Small Boy)

Notes: The concept for The Starlost was credited to series creator “Cordwainer Bird”, a well-known pseudonym for renowned SF writer Harlan Ellison, who frequently used this nom de plume to signal to his fan following that his writing had been tampered with by producers. (At one point Ellison campaigned to have his famous Star Trek script, City On The Edge Of Forever, credited to Cordwainer Bird, and claims that Gene Roddenberry threatened to smear his name in Hollywood if he did so; afterward, Ellison included contractual provisions to have his work credited to Cordwainer Bird, and he triggered that clause on The Starlost.) The producers at Canada’s CTV network obviously had the relatively-recent 2001: a space odyssey on the brain, as Keir Dullea (2001‘s David Bowman) and 2001 special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull both worked on The Starlost.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green