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Invisible Man

Sight Unseen

The Invisible ManA wealthy man’s blind daughter is kidnapped and held for ransom, all because he was on the verge of divulging all of his ties to organized crime. Believing this assignment to be particularly dangerous, Dan and Kate are instructed to simply find out where the girl is being held, but are ordered not to rescue her themselves. When the girl’s kidnappers grow suspicious, however, Dan and Kate are left with no choice but to get directly involved, and for once, Dan finds himself helping someone to whom his invisibility doesn’t matter.

teleplay by Brian Rehak
story by Brian & Kandy Rehak
directed by Sigmund Neufeld, Jr.
music by Pete Rugolo

The Invisible ManCast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), Jamie Smith Jackson (Laurie Capas), David Opatoshu (Mr. Capas), Richard X. Slattery (Griggs), Harry Davis (Jimmy James), Rod Colbin (Agent Wells), Al Ruscio (Mannie Hallman), Brett Hadley (1st Agent), Jack Garner (Pedestrian), Ken Del Conte (Gate Guard), Tom Geas (3rd Guard), Richard Reed (1st Guard)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Invisible Man

Go Directly To Jail

The Invisible ManThe Klae Corporation’s cleaning lady begs the Westins for help: her son has been arrested in Texas on drug charges, despite never having had any prior offenses. Against Walter’s wishes, the Westins set out to see what they can find out, discovering that she’s telling the truth…as far as she knows it. Her son is a federal agent working undercover to bring down a heroin smuggling operation run from the prison warden’s office…and by going undercover (and invisible) to investigate, Daniel may blow the agent’s cover.

written by Steven Bochco
directed by Sigmund Neufeld, Jr.
music by Pete Rugolo

The Invisible ManCast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), James McEachin (Leland McCallister), Pat Harrington (Warden), John Crawford (Coner), Gregory Walcott (Police Officer), Pauline Myers (Mrs. McCallister), Eric Mason (Senor Robles), Ed Call (1st Prisoner), Gus Peters (2nd Prisoner), Tony B. Burton (3rd Prisoner), George “Buck” Flower (Bunker Guard), Nicholas Worth (Guard with shoes), Jason Johnson (Farmer)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Invisible Man

Stop When Red Lights Flash

The Invisible ManPassing through the small town of Docker Junction en route to an assignment, the Westins pull up behind a parked and apparently abandoned school bus whose red lights are nonetheless flashing. After confirming that no one is in or near the bus, Daniel drives around it, only to be given a ticket for doing so. Appearing in court that afternoon, Daniel balks at the exorbitant fine announced by the city judge, and grows suspicious when he discovers that the fine can be paid in cash only – no checks. Daniel doesn’t have that kind of cash on him, and he and Kate are promptly thrown in jail; he uses his one phone call to summon help from Walter Carlson at the Klae Institute. Worse yet, the police check the Westins’ vehicle for any signs of “contraband” that could result in an even higher fine, and they discover Daniel’s supply of faces and hands. Is the invisible man’s cover about to be blown by a small-town rigged court scam?

written by Seeleg Lester
directed by Gene Nelson
music by Pete Rugolo

The Invisible ManCast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), Roger C. Carmel (Judge Jones), Scott Brady (Sheriff Bentley), Frank Aletter (Charles Hooten), Eddie Firestone (Town Lush), Ted Hartley (Craig), Dean Santoro (Benoit), Kasey Rogers (Gert), Pearl Shear (Ethel), Harold Ayer (Jeb), John Furlong (Riley), Donald Elson (Compositor), Kristin Larkin (The Girl)

Notes: Roger C. Carmel is a face well known to Star Trek fans for repeatedly playing interplanetary con man Harry Mudd, a character who had the rare distinction of appearing in both the live action and animated versions of Star Trek.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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TV Movies

Alien Lover

StarstruckAfter becoming orphaned and spending three months in a mental institution, Susan arrives at her aunt and uncle’s home to move in with them. Her Uncle Mike is only too pleased to be receiving a slice of Susan’s inheritance to pay her expenses, and when Susan begins mentioning that she’s having conversations with someone named Marc through a television set, Mike sees an opportunity to have Susan committed and legally gain full access to that inheritance. Mike and Marian’s son, Jude, comes home from college with his roommate for a visit, and Susan learns that Jude has seen and spoken to Marc as well – and that he’s scared to death of the handsome man on the TV. Lonely and lovesick, Susan refuses to accept Jude’s disturbing warning that Marc is the leader of an alien invasion force…but if her crush finds a way to step out of the TV, it could be the beginning of humanity’s end.

written by George Lefferts
directed by Lela Swift
music by Robert Cobert

Alien LoverCast: Pernell Roberts (Mike), Susan Brown (Marian), Kate Mulgrew (Susan), Steven Earl Tanner (Jude), John Ventantonio (Marc), David Lewis (Dr. Steiner), Harry Moses (Richard), and Herman

Notes: This was Kate Mulgrew’s first television job, filmed sometime around her 20th birthday, though it was beaten to the punch by her debut in the series regular role of Mary on Ryan’s Hope (a daytime soap which went into production after Alien Lover). Just four years later, she was starring in her own series, Mrs. Alien LoverColumbo. She was later a series regular on the late ’80s hospital series Heartbeat, the short-lived early ’90s James Garner series Man Of The People, 2007’s The Black Donnellys, Cartoon Network’s live-action series NTSF:SD:SUV, and most recently was Red in the Netflix series Orange Is The New Black, though anyone reading this site likely knows her best from her seven-year stint as Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, a role she reprised (with a promotion) in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis. Alien Lover was a TV movie-of-the-week aired as part of the NBC Mystery Movie, an anthology series that ran from 1973 through 1978, usually leaning on crime/mystery stories, but occasionally dipping into – as was the case here – the paranormal.

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

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Invisible Man

Pin Money

The Invisible ManWalter’s aunt comes to the Klae Corporation headquarters for a rather disjointed visit, just as Walter is headed to Washington for an important meeting. The Westins offer to let her stay with them, only to discover that Aunt Margaret has an affinity to late night poker games…where she loses heavily. To cover her losses, she’s been “borrowing” money from the bank where she works, and this has been discovered by a man who works there and demands a cut of whatever money she takes illegally. Daniel is determined to help Aunt Margaret not only return the money, but clean up at the poker table to clear her name…and he just has to stage a bank robbery to do it. What could possibly go wrong?

written by James D. Parriott
directed by Alan J. Levi
music by Pete Rugolo

The Invisible ManCast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), Helen Kleeb (Aunt Margaret), John Zee (Arnold), James Blendick (Sanders), Wayne Grace (Baldy), Wayne Taylor (Big Nose), Thom Carney (Mersky), Larry French (Tex), Jim Mills (Lawyer), Ray Ballard (Poker Player), G.J. Mitchell (Carter), Arline Anderson (Teller), Karl Lukas (1st Truck Driver), Mickey Gatlin (2nd Truck Driver), Gene Borkan (Cabbie), James Whitworth (Bruiser)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Invisible Man

The Klae Dynasty

The Invisible ManNormal day-to-day operations at the Klae Corporation are turned upside-down when the three Klae siblings, the corporation’s founders and benefactors, want to host a summit meeting of great minds at the institute. At the top of their agenda is security, and they immediately want the “Klae resource” deployed without knowing what it is, only knowing that the Westins are somehow in charge of it. There is good reason to worry about security, too: as preparations are being made, Caroline Klae is kidnapped. In the chaos, Dan slips away to go invisible, trying to follow the kidnappers, only to discover that their getaway doesn’t add up: it’s a staged decoy, and Caroline must still be somewhere on the Klae Corporation grounds. In the meantime, a power play ensues between her two very different brothers regarding what becomes of her share of the family fortune.

written by Philip DeGuere, Jr.
directed by Alan J. Levi
music by Pete Rugolo

The Invisible ManCast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), Nancy Kovack Mehta (Caroline Klae), Farley Granger (Julian Klae), George Murdock (Captain Scopes), Peter Donat (Morgan Klae), Joe Maross (Ryan), Rayford Barnes (Pierce)

The Invisible ManNotes: George Murdock would go on to play the recurring role of the doctor aboard the 1970s incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, and would gain further sci-fi infamy as the face of “God” in 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, redeeming himself among Trek fans a year later as Admiral Hansen in the fan-favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter The Best Of Both Worlds. Peter Donat would resurface as the villain in another cult sci-fi classic, as recurring enemy Dr. Mordecai Sahmbi in the 1990s syndicated series Time Trax.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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TV Movies

Into Infinity (Gerry Anderson’s The Day After Tomorrow)

Into InfinityAt Space Station Delta, the starship Altares is preparing for an unprecedented mission: the first manned interstellar mission, utilizing a photonic drive that will create a time dilation effect relative to Earth; any messages the Altares crew sends back from Alpha Centauri will reach the descendants of the mission controllers who helped launch the ship. The Altares is crewed by two families, and even the children are fully trained in the technical and scientific aspects of the mission.

Activation of the photonic drive goes off without a hitch, but contact with Earth is now measured in years instead of minutes or hours. Altares’ visit to Alpha Centauri takes place on schedule, but an unexpected fault activates the photon drive again, throwing the ship off-course at nearly the speed of light and completely out of touch with Earth. With a star threatening to go supernova at any moment, and a black hole that might crush the Altares, the mission and the crew are in jeopardy.

Into Infinitywritten by Johnny Byrne
directed by Charles Crichton
music by Derek Wadsworth and Steve Coe

Cast:

Brian Blessed (Tom Bowen), Joanna Dunham (Anna Bowen), Nick Tate (Captain Harry Masters), Don Fellows (Jim Forbes), Katharine Levy (Jane Masters), Martin Lev (David Bowen), Ed Bishop (Narrator)

Notes: A pilot that never made it to series, Into Infinity first aired in the United States as part of NBC’s occasional “Special Treat” program, and then aired in the UK a year later under the title Gerry Anderson’s Day After Tomorrow). Devised by Gerry Anderson (of Supermarionation, UFO, and Space: 1999 fame) and Space: 1999 script editor Johnny Byrne (also responsible for a few episodes of Doctor Who, including Into InfinityThe Keeper Of Traken and the character of Nyssa), Into Infinity was made between the first and second seasons of Space: 1999. As the Altares plunges into the event horizon of the black hole toward the end of the show, a psychedelic sequence ensues which eerily anticipates – in great detail – the bizzaro ending of the 1979 Disney movie The Black Hole. The producers of the later movie were aiming for something cerebral, quasi-spiritual and ambiguous a la 2001: a space odyssey, but the similarities in the hallucinatory sequences near the end of Into Infinity and The Black Hole are striking.

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

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Invisible Man

Power Play

The Invisible ManA gunman dressed as a Klae Corporation security guard enters Walter’s office and pulls a gun on him, demanding to know the secret of the Klae Resource. The man, who identifies himself as Pike, is unusually well-informed, claiming to have gotten his information from Morgan Klae himself, but intends to control the world by using the Klae Resource for his own gain. Walter stalls for time, but Pike eventually forces his way into the Westins’ lab and holds them hostage until he learns the truth: one of the two men he’s holding at gunpoint is invisible. But which one? And how can Dan salvage the situation when he’s being watched by a nervous gunman?

written by Leslie Stevens
directed by Alan J. Levi
music by Pete Rugolo

Cast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), Monte Markham (Pike)

The Invisible ManNote: Airing over a month after the previous episode, Power Play features an unusual amount of continuity for an episode of a 1970s series: Pike learned of the Klae Resource from Morgan Klae, who was committed after his part in the attempted kidnapping depicted in The Klae Dynasty. (Considering that this is the second episode in a row in which Klae Corporation’s on-site security force has been compromised, one wonders if the Corporation does any kind of background checks.) With only one guest actor, and using only two standing sets, Power Play was an attempt to bring an episode of The Invisible Man in at a very low cost. Though this episode is not a clip show, brief excerpts from the pilot movie, Barnard Wants Out, and Stop When Red Lights Flash are seen on the “computer screens”.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Invisible Man

An Attempt To Save Face

The Invisible ManDan Westin’s old friend, Dr. Nick Maggio, was the man who gave him a new face after Dan became invisible…and now he is summoning Dan and Kate to a hospital in Chicago under mysterious circumstances. When the Westins arrive, Maggio explains that he has been brought in to perform a secret facelift on the chairman of an Eastern Bloc country, but that members of the chairman’s entourage have now sequestered Maggio’s would-be patient away…and are keeping Maggio under round-the-clock guard. Dan goes on an invisible intelligence-gathering mission, learning that there are two rival factions among the chairman’s entourage: one faction wants him returned home without the facelift, and the other wants to assassinate him and blame his death on American doctors. Short on time, a plan is devised to put Dan’s face mask on the chairman to get him out of harm’s way…but the longer it takes to put the plan into action, the more goes wrong with it.

teleplay by James D. Parriott and Leslie Stevens
story by Leslie Stevens
directed by Don Henderson
music by Pete Rugolo

The Invisible ManCast: David McCallum (Dr. Daniel Westin), Melinda Fee (Dr. Kate Westin), Craig Stevens (Walter Carlson), Charles Aidman (Dr. Nick Maggio), Terry Kiser (Petra Kolchak), Oscar Homolka (Chairman), Ina Balin (Katrina Storoff), Gene Dynarski (Vasil), Julie Rogers (Wendy), Sid McCoy (Anestheseologist), W.T. Zacha (Sergei), Karen Cobb (Nurse)

Note: Though there are broad (and somewhat stereotypical) hints that the chairman is the leader of the Soviet Union, the script remains vague, not narrowing things down any more than “the Eastern Bloc”. This was the final episode of The Invisible Man to be produced or aired, but was far from the final outing for the concept of an invisible spy. The following year, NBC premiered Gemini Man, a virtually identical series The Invisible Manstarring Ben Murphy, though the method of invisibility was retooled to utilized cheaper special effects. Craig Stevens (1918-2000) continued on to a steady string of guest starring roles through the late 1980s, though he remained best known for having been Peter Gunn. Melinda O. Fee remained active through the early 1990s, and David McCallum is, at the time of this writing, still Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard on NCIS, a role he has played since 2003; he has also appeared in Babylon 5, VR.5, and Jeremiah, and starred in the short-lived cult classic genre series Sapphire & Steel in the late 1970s. Far from being invisible, McCallum has been a fixture of the small screen on both sides of the Atlantic for more than 40 years.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Gemini Man

Gemini Man

Gemini ManSam Casey, a devil-may-care former military ordnance expert, is called into action when a Soviet satellite plummets through Earth’s atmosphere and hits the ocean more or less intact. With intelligence indicating that the satellite may be something more than a harmless weather satellite, Casey dons SCUBA gear to examine it up close, only to find a bomb attached to it. The satellite is destroyed, and Casey receives the full brunt of its nuclear power source, and his entire body is rendered invisible as a result.

Thanks to a portable stabilizer devised by the scientists at Intersect, Casey regains full visibility, but can go invisible for up to 15 minutes a day, giving him an edge in espionage. After discovering the limitations of his invisibility, Sam decides to listen in (invisibly) at the machinations behind the scenes of a military technology company whose crew was also present at the failed satellite retrieval mission. Someone planted the bomb that changed Sam’s life forever…and they may be planning to do something even more sinister for the future of the entire world.

written by Leslie Stevens
directed by Alan J. Levi
music by Billy Goldenberg

Gemini ManCast: Ben Murphy (Sam Casey), Katherine Crawford (Abby Lawrence), Richard A. Dysart (Leonard Driscoll), Dana Elcar (Schuyler), Paul Shenar (Charles Edward Royce), Quinn Redeker (Rogers), Gregory Walcott (Officer), Len Wayland (Captain Whelan), Cheryl Miller (Receptionist), Michael Lane (Guard), H.M. Wynant (Captain Ballard), Austin Stoker (Dive Officer), Dave Shelley (Mechanic), Robert Forward (Chief Controller), Jim Raymond (Dietz)

Gemini ManNotes: Devised by producer Harve Bennett as a replacement for NBC’s The Invisible Man, Gemini Man swaps out debonair David McCallum for the all-American aw-shucks of Ben Murphy, but more or less keeps the basic structure of the first series: an invisible man performing espionage tasks for a top-secret corporate entity with government connections, along with a female assistant and a male “boss” figure who gives the orders. Gemini Man replaces Dr. Kate Westin and Walter Carlson, and swaps out the Klae Corporation for Intersect. Much of the behind-the-scenes crew made the transition from The Invisible Man to Gemini Man as well. Bennett’s Invisible Man co-creator, Steven Bochco, sat out this round of invisible antics, moving on to the next stage of his own career in the wake of The Invisible Man’s cancellation.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Gemini Man

Smithereens

Gemini ManSam Casey reports to work at Intersect, only to have to rescue a man who is ambushed by two attackers on Intersect’s own grounds. The victim of the attack is Dr. Hale, inventor of a fuel additive known as tripolodene, capable of increasing gas mileage to 70 miles per gallon with no modifications to the vehicle in question. Hale believes that oil companies both foreign and domestic are trying to silence his invention, and needs Intersect’s help getting a sample of the tripolodene to safety so it can be patented. Sam, posing as a truck driver, will transport Hale and his tripololodene incognito, while a heavily armed military convoy will draw the attention of those who attacked Hale. Unless, of course, someone inside the operation has already blown Sam’s cover…

written by Frank Telford
directed by Alan J. Levi
music by Lee Holdridge

Gemini ManCast: Ben Murphy (Sam Casey), Katherine Crawford (Abby Lawrence), William Sylvester (Leonard Driscoll), Andrew Prine (Luther Stark), Alan Oppenheimer (Dr. Hale), Jim Stafford (Buffalo Bill), Lawrence Bame (Worker), Jeannie Wilson (Girl Guard), Gil Serna (Mechanic), Nicholas Lewis (1st Embassy Guard), Raymond O’Keefe (2nd Embassy Guard)

Gemini ManNotes: The first episode of Gemini Man as a weekly series, Smithereens is best known to post-1970s TV fans as one half of the syndicated TV movie Riding With Death, assembled by Universal from this episode and a later, unaired Gemini Man episode, Buffalo Bill Rides Again. That movie, in turn, was riffed by Mike and the ‘bots in a fan-favorite 1997 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This was the first acting role for country musician and comedian Jim Stafford, who had already hosted his own variety show in 1975. He went on to guest star on Fantasy Island and The Love Boat, among others, but in 1990 opened a theater in Branson, Missouri and began concentrating most of his time on that career.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Gemini Man

The Minotaur

Gemini ManA phone call from an urgent stranger summons Sam Casey to an abandoned building, which is then burned down by a bulky but apparently lethal robot. Sam reports the fire and then races to Intersect to meet with Leonard, who knows exactly who was at the other end of the call: a former Intersect technologist who was determined to turn his defensive weapons projects into offensive weapons, and spent millions of dollars of government money to do it. His weaponized robot, Minotaur, was his crowning achievement, and is almost certainly the robot seen by Sam. Now he is threatening to unleash the Minotaur upon the world unless his demands are met.

teleplay by Robert F. O’Neill and Frank Telford
story by Robert Bloch and Robert F. O’Neill
directed by Alan J. Levi
music by Lee Holdridge

Gemini ManCast: Ben Murphy (Sam Casey), Katherine Crawford (Abby Lawrence), William Sylvester (Leonard Driscoll), Ross Martin (Carl Victor), Deborah Winters (Nancy Victor), Cheryl Miller (Girl), William Boyett (1st Officer), Michael J. London (Guard), Robert Hackman (Clerk), Dale Johnson (Secretary), Loren James (Minotaur)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Gemini Man

Sam Casey, Sam Casey

Gemini ManSam almost misses going on vacation because he can’t find his wallet, which subsequently turns up in Intersect’s parking lot…but what he doesn’t know is that the wallet was stolen and bugged by an organization trying to infiltrate Intersect to assassinate Driscoll. On his vacation, Sam is drugged and left for dead; at Intersect, Sam appears, baffling Driscoll and Abby with his behavior. The real Sam escapes his predicament and places and emergency call to Driscoll, proving that the “Sam Casey” at Intersect is an impostor, surgically altered to look exactly like Sam. To get to the bottom of these events, Sam must impersonate his impersonator.

written by James D. Parriott
directed by Michael Caffey
music by Lee Holdridge & Mark Snow

Gemini ManCast: Ben Murphy (Sam Casey), Katherine Crawford (Abby Lawrence), William Sylvester (Leonard Driscoll), Nancy Malone (Armistead), Tony Young (Tanner), Jo Ann Pflug (Susi), Howard Stone (Robbins), Pamela Shoop (Barby), Mickey Morton (Alf), Leslie Moonves (Guard), Joan Crosby (Dora)

Notes: Abby refers to the health spa as a “fat farm”, a distinctly ’70s derogatory term for any health retreat specializing in weight loss. This episode of Gemini Man is one of the earliest scoring Gemini Manefforts by future X-Files composer Mark Snow. And yes, that’s Les Moonves, also early in his Hollywood career, in one of his few acting appearances before embarking on a very different career trajectory that would see him become the president of the CBS network. He also had minor acting roles in Barbary Coast and The Six Million Dollar Man.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Fantastic Journey, The

Vortex

The Fantastic Journey1945: A Navy fighter group heading for a landing at Ft. Lauderdale vanishes into thin air over open ocean. Their disappearance is never solved – yet another mystery blamed on the Bermuda Triangle.

1976: Professor Paul Jordan and his son Scott are part of an oceanic expedition aboard a boat chartered from veteran sea captain Ben Wallace. Their expedition into the Caribbean takes on a sinister turn with the sighting of roiling green clouds on the horizon, even though no storms are expected. Ben tries to steer the boat clear of the raging, unearthly storm, but to no avail – the ship is lost. The survivors make it to shore, but they can’t tell where they are, or when. A loincloth-clad man named Varian appears without any explanation, healing Ben’s broken arm and trying to lead them to safety, but Professor Jordan is cautious about following him. Varian finally confides in Jordan’s son instead: Varian is from Earth in the 23rd century, just another traveler stranded in the Bermuda Triangle, which is an unpredictable gateway in time as well as space. Ben, Fred and one of the women from the expedition find themselves trapped by salty British sailors who became stranded in the Triangle in the 1500s, whose captain will do anything to escape the island. Professor Jordan makes plans to free his fellow survivors, and asks for Varian’s help, but the man from the future insists that he is a pacifist, acting only as a guide. Even if Jordan can recover all the members of his party, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to return to their own place or time.

The Fantastic Journeyteleplay by Michael Michaelian & Katharyn Michaelian Powers and Merwin Gerard
story by Merwin Gerard
directed by Andrew V. McLaglen
music by Robert Prince

Cast: Scott Thomas (Paul Jordan), Susan Howard (Eve), Jared Martin (Varian), Carl Franklin (Fred Walters), Karen Somerville (Jill), Ike Eisenmann (Scott Jordan), Leif Erickson (Ben Wallace), Scott Brady (Carl), Don Knight (Paget), Ian McShane (Sir James), Gary Collins (Dar-L), Mary Ann Mobley (Rhea), Jason Evers (Atar), Lynn Borden (Enid), Jack Stauffer (Andy), Byron Chung (George), Tom McCorry (Scar), Mike Road (voice of the Source)

The Fantastic JourneyNotes: The city of Atlantium scenes in this and the following episode were filmed at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, which had only just been built at the time of filming. Though the series premise was written with travelers from the future and the past in mind, and NBC found the show promising enough to merit a series order, the pilot sees the only instance of adversaries from the past, and over half of the cast was eliminated after the pilot episode. Extra scenes were added prior to broadcast to try to smooth the transition into the series proper, which would focus only on Varian, Scott and Fred, and Star Trek veteran D.C. Fontana and the show’s other writers had barely a month to get episodes written and into production in time for the series’ premiere in February 1977.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Fantastic Journey, The

Atlantium

The Fantastic JourneyA woman named Rhea leads Scott, Varian and Fred to the city of Atlantium, where the three travelers are told that Professor Jordan and the female members of his expedition have returned to their own time, leaving Scott to fend for himself. Fred and Varian promise to look after Scott, but the Atlanteans have other plans for him: their disembodied leader, the Source, has chosen Scott as his new host body. Liana, a woman whose father was from Atlantis and whose mother was from another solar system, leads a resistance movement against the Source’s hunger for power; she warns Varian of the Source’s plans for Scott. Varian and Paul demand to see Scott after the Atlanteans take the boy under their wing, but there’s something wrong with Scott when he is returned. Varian eventually figures out that the Source has created a clone of Scott to keep the boy’s friends distracted while the real Scott is prepared for his new destiny. Liana helps Varian and Fred fight their way through Atlantium to rescue Scott, but the only guaranteed way home is through the use of the Source’s power; the man from the future and his 20th century friends are now stranded.

The Fantastic Journeyteleplay by Katharyn Michaelian Powers
story by Michael Michaelian and Katharyn Michaelian Powers
directed by Barry Crane
music by Robert Prince

Cast: Jared Martin (Varian), Carl Franklin (Fred Walters), Ike Eisenmann (Scott Jordan), Katie Saylor (Liana), Gary Collins (Dar-L), Albert Stratton (Il-Tar), Jason Evers (Atar), Mary Ann Mobley (Rhea), Ian Jon Tanza (Under), Lawrence Bame (Maron), Mike Road (voice of the Source), The Felix Team (Sil-L)

LogBook entry by Earl Green