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Adventures Of Superman Season 1

Superman On Earth

The Adventures Of SupermanJor-El, a member of the ruling council of the distant planet Krypton, warns his fellow councillors that Krypton’s end is near: the planet could break apart at any time. His peers laugh him out of the room, but that doesn’t change the planet’s fate. When Krypton begins to break apart just as Jor-El predicted, he and his wife place their only son in a small spacecraft and send it away to the planet Earth.

The vehicle crashes on Earth, bursting into flames. Farmer Eben Kent and his wife Sarah witness the crash and hear the cries of the infant inside; Eben manages to save the baby before the spacecraft explodes. They raise the child as their own, though young Clark Kent eventually has questions about the fact that he has abilities that no one else seems to have. On Clark’s 25th birthday – or at least the 25th anniversary of his arrival on Earth – Eben suffers a fatal heart attack. Clark eventually leaves his childhood home for the city of Metropolis, where he seeks a job as a report for the Daily Planet. Editor Perry White is less than enthusiastic about his new hire…until Clark somehow scoops the rest of the Planet’s staff, including ace reporter Lois Lane, turning in the first article about an airship crew member who would have fallen to his death if not for a flying man in a cape…

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Richard Fielding
directed by Tommy Carr
music by Leon Klatzkin

Adventures of SupermanCast: George Reeves (Clark Kent / Superman), Phyllis Coates (Lois Lane), Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen), John Hamilton (Perry White), Ross Elliott (Eben Kent), Robert Rockwell (Jor-El), Herbert Rawlinson (Ro-Zon), Stuart Randall (Gogan), Aline Towne (Lara), Frances Morris (Sarah Kent), Dani Nolan (Miss Bachrach)

Adventures of SupermanNotes: Superman’s origin story unfolds here much as it does in other media, though the name “Kal-El” is never spoken here. Sarah Kent is responsible for making Superman’s costume, having sewn it from the blanket in which he was wrapped as an infant on Krypton. (How this fabric can withstand bullets and burns, and yet can still be cut up and sewn, isn’t explained.) Beginning an unfortunate decades-long tradition, Superman’s creators, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, are not credited anywhere in this adaptation.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Quatermass

Contact Has Been Established

QuatermassThe first attempt to launch a manned rocket into space meets with serious problems; the three-man vehicle, rather than following a carefully-planned parabola to make a single orbit, veers hundreds of thousands of miles off course, losing all contact with Earth. As the rocket’s designer, Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group, tensely awaits word when the atomic-powered rocket finally approaches Earth again. With no contact from the astronauts themselves, the rocket returns to Earth under remote control from the ground, but the best that Quatermass and his team can manage is to bring it in for the least-damaging crash landing possible. Still intact, the rocket has slammed into a neighborhood near Wimbledon Commons, and astonishingly no one on the ground is hurt, though police evacuate residents from their homes. Quatermass and his team arrive to open the rocket, but inside they find only one astronaut remaining: engineer Victor Carroon, whose wife is a member of Quatermass’ ground control team. The other two men are missing without a trace, their spacesuits left empty in the rocket.

written by Nigel Kneale
directed by Rudolph Cartier
music not credited

Cast: Reginald Tate (Professor Bernard Quatermass), Isabel Dean (Judith Carroon), Duncan Lamont (Victor Carroon), Hugh Kelly (John Paterson), Moray Watson (Peter Marsh), W. Thorp Devereux (Blaker), Van Boolen (Len Matthews), Iris Ballard (Mr. Matthews), Eugene Leahy (Police Inspector), Neil Wilson (Policeman),Colyn Davies (Fireman), Katie Johnson (Miss Wilde), Oliver Johnston (News Editor), Paul Whitsun-Jones (James Fullalove), Patrick Westwood (First Reporter), Dominic LeFoe (Second Reporter), Nicholas Bruce (BBC Newsreader), Pat McGrath (BBC Interviewer), MacGregor Urquhart (Sandwichman), Denis Wyndham (Reveller)

The Quatermass ExperimentNotes: Broadcast in 1953 as a live play for television with one film insert (actual film from a camera mounted aboard a captured German V2 rocket launched from White Sands, New Mexico in 1946), The Quatermass Experiment was one of the earliest instances of the BBC making a “telerecording” (a film recording from a television screen showing the live broadcast) of a drama production rather than live coverage of a news event. This was also one of the final major productions staged at the BBC’s original television studios at Alexandra Palace, using some of the BBC’s original 1930s cameras, before the bulk of production was moved to the then-new Lime Grove studios (future home of the TARDIS).

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1954-75: Showa Series Godzilla

Gojira

GodzillaMariners on fishing vessel Eiko-Maru see a bright light and boiling water. The ship sinks, while a distress signal is sent out. At Southern Seas Steamship Company, family and friends of the doomed ship are gathering for news. A second ship, the Bingo-Maru, arrives at the last known location of the Eiko-Maru, but it explodes and sinks as well.

A fishing boat finds three survivors, but sinks while taking them to Odo Island. At Odo Island, natives also rescue a survivor, floating on a raft near the shore. Masaji, a resident of the island, briefly wakes and says a monster sank the ship. An elder speculates the legendary “Godzilla must have done it,” but is met with skepticism. Later that night, during a fierce storm, Masaji is terrified as he looks out the window. Much of the village is destroyed, including the home of Masaji, who is killed.

Representatives from Odo Island arrive in Tokyo to testify about the tragedy before a committee of the Japanese Diet. Paleontologist Professor Kyohei Yamane proposes a fact finding mission to the island. Among those accompanying Yamane are his daughter Emiko and Hideto Ogata, the man she loves. Dr. Serizawa, who is arranged to be married to Emiko, is in the farewell party onshore.

The investigative team surveys the damage on Odo Island, finding radiation in many of the water wells, a giant, radioactive footprint and a recently dead trilobite, a shell-like creature thought to be extinct for millions of years. Suddenly, a giant prehistoric creature rises above a mountain. When the beast leaves, the islanders climb to the mountain’s precipice, only to find more giant footprints below on the beach. Yamane testifies that the creature, called Godzilla by the islanders, likely originated during the Jurassic period. He speculates it survived by eating deep sea animals, but nuclear weapons disrupted its natural habitat.

More ships disappear, and the government forms a Counter-Godzilla Headquarters. A naval fleet is dispatched to drop depth charges on Godzilla. Yamane laments the efforts, believing the monster is a significant scientific find. Revelers on a cruise ship are the first to see Godzilla in Tokyo Bay, who swims off into the ocean. Serizawa shows Emiko the Oxygen Destroyer. He uses it to kill a tank full of fish, but pledges Emiko to secrecy because he does not want its terrible power to be used against mankind.

Godzilla returns to Tokyo Bay, but this time comes ashore. Terrified residents cower as the creature smashes through an industrial sector before returning to the sea. An electrified fence is built in pretty short order around the coastal border of Tokyo. Ogata plans to ask Yamane to allow him to marry Emiko, but instead argues with the scientist about Godzilla. Yamane wants to study Godzilla, while Ogata wants the monster destroyed.

Godzilla arises from Tokyo Bay, crashing through and destroying the ineffectual electrified fence. Despite the best efforts of the Japanese military, the beast continues his destructive path through the city before swimming away. Tokyo is left in ruins. The landscape is broken, twisted, and ashen. Hospitals are overrun with the thousands of people who are dead, dying, or severely injured. Many have radiation poisoning.

Ogata, who has been told the secret of the oxygen destroyer, confronts Serizawa about using it against Godzilla. Following a brawl in the lab, and viewing scenes of the awful devastation on TV, Serizawa agrees to use the oxygen destroyer against Godzilla.

At the bottom of Tokyo Bay, Ogata and Serizawa find a slumbering Godzilla. He awakens and moves toward the pair. Ogata rises to the surface as Serizawa activates the oxygen destroyer. The water’s oxygen creates a frothy mix as it bubbles to the surface. Once he is certain it will kill Godzilla, Serizawa cuts his line to the ship above, the secret to the oxygen destroyer dying with him. Godzilla rises above the surface briefly, but sinks again. The oxygen destroyer searing away his flesh, and then his bones, leaving nothing behind.

Ogata tells Emiko that Serizawa’s last words were that he “wanted us to be happy.” As others celebrate Godzilla’s death, Yamane remains concerned that continued nuclear testing might cause other Godzillas to appear…

screenplay by Takeo Murata and Ishiro Honda
story by Shigeru Kayama
directed by Ishiro Honda
music by Akira Ifukube

Human Cast: Akira Takarada (Hideto Ogata), Momoko Kochi (Emiko Yamane), Akihiko Hirata (Serizawa), Takashi Shimura (Prof. Yamane)

Monster Cast: Godzilla

Notes: This is the original Japanese language version of Godzilla. The English language version is Godzilla, King Of The Monsters!.

LogBook entry by Robert Parson

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Science Fiction Theatre Season 1

Beyond

Science Fiction TheatreHost Segment: Truman Bradley demonstrates forces that can conclusively be proven to exist, such as gravity, acceleration, sound and magnetism, without being seen.

Story: Test pilot Major Gunderson pushes a new experimental jet plane to unheard-of speeds, more than twice the speed of sound. But even more surprising is Gunderson’s awed report from the sky: something up there is overtaking him, a vehicle shaped nothing like a conventional aircraft. Gunderson’s controls go haywire and he’s forced to eject to survive. His superiors are alarmed when Gunderson begins talking about having encountered a flying saucer…

teleplay by Robert Smith and George Van Marter
story by Ivan L. Tors
directed by Herbert L. Strock
music not credited

Science Fiction TheatreCast: Truman Bradley (Host / Narrator), William Lundigan (Maj. Gunderson), Ellen Drew (Mrs. Gunderson), Bruce Bennett (Gen. Troy), Tom Drake (Dr. Everett), Basil Ruysdael (Prof. Carson), Douglas Kennedy (Col. Barton), Michael Fox (Radar Man), Robert Carson (Capt. Ferguson), Mark Lowell (Radio Operator)

Notes: To put this story in its historical context, the first Mach 2 jet flight had been flown by test pilot Scott Crossfield in late 1953, only to be exceeded by a Mach 2.44 flight flown by Chuck Yeager in December of that year, less than a year and a half before Science Fiction Theatre premiered in syndication Science Fiction Theatrewith this episode. Other elements, such as the notion of a military cover-up (albeit a quiet, non-threatening one) of a real UFO sighting, were very much ahead of their time.

Unusually for 1955, the first season of Science Fiction Theatre was filmed in color by Ziv Television Productions, a bit of future-proofing that Ziv could afford as its programming was in demand by television stations whose networks ran very limited programming of their own. While most of Ziv’s programs were either modern-day dramas and spy thrillers, westerns, or wartime dramas, this was one of only three science fiction shows Ziv produced; the short-lived World Of Giants anticipated elements of Irwin Allen’s 1960s series Land Of The Giants, while Men Into Space, picked up by CBS, speculated on and dramatized the future of real spaceflight.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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1960s Season 1 Twilight Zone

Where Is Everybody?

The Twilight ZoneA man awakens on the outskirts of the town of Oakwood, with no knowledge of how he got there – or even who he is. He can’t find another living creature anywhere in town – no policemen in the police station, no prisoners in the jail, no business owners in the shops. And yet he’s certain that he’s being watched by someone who has something to do with his present predicament. He pieces together clues that add up to an inescapable conclusion: someone else is in Oakwood with him. Whether he can figure out who it is before his sanity gives way is another question…

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Rod Serling
directed by Robert Stevens
music by Bernard Hermann

Cast: Earl Holliman (Mike Ferris), James Gregory (General), Paul Langton (Doctor), James McCallion (Reporter The Twilight Zone#1), John Conwell (Colonel), Jay Overholt (Reporter #2), Carter Mullally (Captain), Gary Walberg (Reporter #3), Jim Johnson (Staff Sergeant)

Notes: If Oakwood’s town square seems familiar, you’ve probably been time traveling with Doc Brown. The same outdoor set on the Universal Studios lot became the center of the town of Hill Valley in the Back To The Future movies.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Avengers, The Season 1

Hot Snow

The Avengers

This synopsis is based upon the Big Finish audio adaptation of the original television script. The original episode’s master tape is lost and presumed destroyed. This audio adaptation can be found in Volume 1 of Big Finish’s The Avengers: The Lost Episodes series.

Dr. David Keel, just days away from getting married, has his life thrown into chaos when his bride-to-be is the target of an organized crime hit. Feeling that Scotland Yard isn’t doing enough to solve the murder, Keel decides to take on some amateur sleuthing, but when he discovers that heroin is involved, he realizes this is bigger than him. A mysterious man in a bowler hat is waiting for Keel in his flat when he returns home, but not to kill him. Instead, the man offers to help Keel bring the killer to justice…but he needs Keel to act undercover and become part of the heroin trade. If Dr. Keel can’t bring himself to trust this stranger, he may never identify the murderer.

teleplay by Ray Rigby
story by Patrick Brawn
directed by Don Leaver
music by Johnny Dankworth
Big Finish audio adaptation written by John Dorney
Big Finish audio adaptation directed by Ken Bentley
Big Finish audio adaptation music by Toby Hrycek-Robinson

Original television cast: Ian Hendry (Dr. Keel), Patrick Macnee (John Steed), Philip Stone (Dr. Tredding), Katherine Woodville (Peggy), Alister Williamson (Superintendent Wilson), Godfrey Quigley (Spicer), Charles Wade (Johnson), The Avengers: The Lost EpisodesMurray Melvin (Charlie), Moira Redmond (Stella), June Monkhouse (Mrs. Simpson), Astor Sklair (Sergeant Rogers)

Big Finish audio cast: Anthony Howell (Dr. Keel), Julian Wadham (John Steed), Lucy Briggs-Owen (Carol Wilson), Colin Baker (Dr. Tredding), Camilla Power (Peggy), Tim Bentinck (Superintendent Wilson), Adrian Lukis (Spicer/Johnson), Phil Mulryne (Big Man), Blake Ritson (Charlie), Anjella Mackintosh (Stella/Mrs. Simpson), Kieran Bew (Sergeant Rogers)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Fireball XL5

Planet 46

Fireball XL5At World Space Patrol Headquarters in Space City, the alert is sounded when Colonel Zero’s long-range radar spots a massive atomic missile hurtling toward Earth. The ship closest to the missile’s course, Fireball XL5, is diverted from returning to Earth after a long exploratory mission to intercept the missile. Commander Steve Zodiac and his crew, Dr. Venus, Professor Matthew Matic, and trusty Robert the Robot, destroy the missile and trace its origins to Planet 46, discovering a secret lair and a stash of stolen diamonds. When Steve is captured trying to enter the hideout, Dr. Venus tries to return to Fireball, only to be captured herself. The alien creatures inhabiting Planet 46 have a backup missile with Earth’s name on it – and a diabolical plan to use Fireball XL5’s crew to deliver it…over Steve Zodiac’s dead body if necessary.

written by Gerry & Sylvia Anderson
directed by Gerry Anderson
music by Barry Gray / theme vocal by Don Spencer

Fireball XL5Cast: David Graham (Professor Matthew Matic / Lt. 90 / Subterrain 1 / Canaveral voice / Jodrell Bank voice), Sylvia Anderson (Doctor Venus), Paul Maxwell (Colonel Steve Zodiac / Okinawa Station voice), John Bluthal (Commander Zero / Subterrain Leader / Subterrain 2), Gerry Anderson (Robert the Robot)

Notes: This is the first episode of the last black & white Supermarionation series, introducing a new cast of puppet characters as well as concepts that would carry forward through many episodes of the series, including Fireball XL5“oxygen pills” that would enable un-space-suited life forms to breathe in the vacuum of space (and, amazingly, not succumb to the extreme cold and pressure loss of the void – amazing stuff, those oxygen pills). Gerry Anderson performed an uncredited function in every episode of the series, providing the buzzy voice of Robert the Robot using an electrical palate device that – ironically – fellow voice actor David Graham would utilize in later years to voice the early versions of the Cybermen in Doctor Who.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 1 Outer Limits

The Galaxy Being

The Outer LimitsRadio station engineer Alan Maxwell is bleeding power from his station’s own transmitter to conduct microwave experiments, and costing the station money as a result. But even when confronted about his unauthorized experiments, he refuses to halt them, certain that he has picked up microwave transmissions from an intelligence beyond Earth. Despite his co-workers’ skepticism, he persists with his experiments, and one night makes contact with a glowing being with whom he opens a dialogue. In the course of their conversation, it becomes apparent that both of them are breaking the rules of their respective worlds by conducting their experiments…and that the creatures whom Maxwell has contacted know nothing of death, war or famine. When Maxwell tells his new friend that Earth does know of death and the horrors of war, the alien declares the human race dangerous – but doesn’t berak contact. Maxwell is due to be honored by the mayor the next evening, and adjusts the transmitter power to make sure he can still contact the alien creature later, with a warning to the announcer on duty not to boost the power. But when listeners complain, the announcer does just that – giving Maxwell’s voice from the other side, a life form composed entirely of electromagnetic energy, the means to manifest itself physically on Earth.

Download this episode via Amazon's Unboxwritten by Leslie Stevens
directed by Leslie Stevens
music by Dominic Frontiere

Cast: Lee Phillips (Gene “Buddy” Maxwell), Jacqueline Scott (Carol Maxwell), Cliff Robertson (Alan Maxwell), Burt Metcalfe (Eddie Phillips), Allyson Ames (Gene’s date), Joseph Perry (Trooper), Don Harvey (National Guard Major), William Stevens (Policeman), Mavis Neal (Collins), Peter Madsen (Trooper), William I. Douglas (The Galaxy Being)

Original title: Please Stand By…

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Classic Season 01 Doctor Who

An Unearthly Child

Doctor WhoIn London, 1963, teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright discuss their most problematic student at Coal Hill School, one Susan Foreman. Susan’s knowledge vastly exceeds that of her instructors in science, but she has also been known to challenge long-standing historical facts…yet she also has some things completely wrong, including one occasion where she notes that British currency isn’t on the decimal system “yet.” Ian and Barbara follow Susan discreetly when she walks home one night, and the teachers are puzzled when home seems to be a junkyard. When they follow her into the junkyard, Susan has disappeared, and the only place she could have gone is a police call box which is emitting a strange hum. Moments later, an elderly man appears, apparently determined to enter the police box himself. Ian and Barbara force their way in, along with the old man, and find that the police box is actually a time-space vehicle, bigger on the inside than out. They also discover that neither Susan nor her grandfather, a mysterious and irritable man known only as the Doctor, are human beings. The Doctor, worried that Ian and Barbara will draw unwelcome mass attention to the presence of his ship (called the TARDIS), hastily sets it into motion over everyone’s protests, and when Ian and Barbara next step out of the doors of the TARDIS, they are no longer on Earth as they know it.

Season 1 Regular Cast: William Hartnell (The Doctor), William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman)

written by Anthony Coburn
directed by Waris Hussein
music by Norman Kay

Guest Cast: Derek Newark (Za), Althea Charlton (Hur), Jeremy Young (Kal), Howard Lang (Horg), Eileen Way (Old Mother)

Broadcast from November 23 through December 14, 1963

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Lost In Space Season 1

The Reluctant Stowaway

Lost In SpaceOctober 16, 1997: with Earth suffering from extreme depletion of resources, the race is on to colonize planets in nearby star systems, starting with a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. The Jupiter 2 is prepared for launch, to be crewed by the Robinson family – Dr. John Robinson, Dr. Maureen Robinson, and their children, Judy, Penny, and Will – and the pilot, Major Don West. With the stakes so high, sabotage is almost expected, and indeed a saboteur has snuck aboard the Jupiter 2, one Dr. Zachary Smith, who has programmed the robot to destroy the Jupiter 2 with all hands aboard at eight hours into the mission. But Smith is as inept as he is evil, and is stuck aboard the ship when it lifts off. While trying (and failing) to convincingly explain his presence to the Robinsons when the Jupiter 2 goes off course, Smith now has to undo his own act of sabotage…or become a victim of his own plot.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by S. Bar-David
directed by Tony Leader
music by Johnny Williams

Lost In SpaceCast: Guy Williams (Dr. John Robinson), June Lockhart (Maureen Robinson), Mark Goddard (Don West), Marta Kristen (Judy Robinson), Billy Mumy (Will Robinson), Angela Cartwright (Penny Robinson), Jonathan Harris (Dr. Zachary Smith), Hoke Howell (Security Guard), Tom Allen (Inspector), Fred Crane (Alpha Control Technician), Don Forbes (TV Commentator), Bob May (Robot), Brett Parker (Security Guard), Ford Rainey (President), Hal Torey (General), Dick Tufeld (Robot voice / Narrator), Paul Zastupnevich (Bearded Foreign Correspondent)

Lost In SpaceNotes: None of the guest stars, except for Jonathan Harris (who is credited in every episode of the series as a “special guest star”), are credited on screen. Don’t let “received wisdom” convince you that Lost In Space is a giant ball of interstellar cheese; the show is actually quite forward-looking in some areas, including John Robinson’s use of a multi-directional jet gun during his spacewalk, very much like the one recently used by U.S. astronaut Ed White during the first NASA spacewalk earlier in 1965.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Out Of The Unknown Season 1

No Place Like Earth

Out Of The UnknownEarth was destroyed 15 years ago, after the solar system had been colonized as far as the moons of Jupiter. Bert, one of the last people to leave Earth for Mars, became more or less stranded on Mars, traveling between Martian settlements and repairing things for the locals. When the call goes out for men to colonize Venus, Bert is torn between his peripatetic life on Mars, which affords him both a living and leisure time, and the urge to rebuild a new world in the image of Earth. But it is only when Bert arrives on Venus that he learns that all of human history will play out in the building of this new world – even the worst parts. And if he starts a revolution, he may not be long for this, or any other, world.

adapted by Stanley Miller
from a story by John Wyndham
directed by Peter Potter
music by Norman Kay

Out Of The UnknownCast: Terence Morgan (Bert), Jessica Dunning (Annika), Hannah Gordon (Zaylo), Joseph O’Conor (Freeman), Alan Tilvern (Blane), George Pastell (Major Khan), Jerry Stovin (Captain of Spaceship), Vernon Joyner (Carter), Bill Treacher (Harris), Geoffrey Palmer (Chief Officer), Roy Stewart (Security Guard)

Out Of The UnknownNotes: The works of writer John Wyndham would inspire many future genre productions, including the BBC’s adaptation of Day Of The Triffids and ITV’s Chocky series. Norman Kay also provided the incidental music for the first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child, in 1963.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Batman Season 1

Hi Diddle Riddle

BatmanAn exploding cake delivered to the Republic of Moldavia’s pavilion at the Gotham City World’s Fair signals the return of the Riddler, and the Gotham authorities call Batman into action. The Riddler leaves enough clues for the Dynamic Duo to find him at a prestigious art gallery, and when Batman and Robin arrive, they think they see the Riddler holding the gallery’s proprietor up at gunpoint. But it’s all a setup, and the Riddler sues Batman for assault and slander – but he’s not after the million dollars named in the lawsuit. The Riddler wants to force Batman to reveal his true identity to all. And just in case that part of his plan doesn’t work, the Riddler manages to drug Batman and kidnap Robin…

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Lorenzo Semple, Jr.
directed by Robert Butler
music by Nelson Riddle / Batman theme by Neal Hefti

BatmanCast: Adam West (Batman), Burt Ward (Robin), Alan Napier (Alfred), Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon), Stafford Repp (Chief O’Hara), Madge Blake (Mrs. Cooper), Jill St. John (Molly), Frank Gorshin (The Riddler), Allen Jaffe (Harry), Michael Fox (Inspector Basch), Damian O’Flynn (Gideon Peale), Ben Astar (The Moldavian Prime Minister), Jack Barry (Newscaster)

Notes: Though ’60s TV Batman tended not to dwell on the details of what happened to Bruce Wayne’s parents (as established in the comics), this episode makes a rare reference to Bruce’s parents being murdered, and states that this is his motivation to fight crime. Robert Butler had, over a year prior to Batman’s premiere on ABC, directed the rejected pilot episode of a series which would return to challenge Batman’s popularity in the fall of 1966.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Original Series Season 01 Star Trek

The Man Trap

Star Trek ClassicStardate 1531.1: Visiting Professor Crater and his wife (who, before marrying Crater, had a close relationship with McCoy), an Enterprise landing party starts to fall prey to an unknown assailant that seems to drain its victims of salt. Kirk is suspicious – and McCoy alarmed – when the Craters refuse, in spite of the threat, to evacuate their planet. The landing party returns to the Enterprise with an extra passenger – a shape shifter who can assume the shapes of Enterprise crewmembers and who has been living with Professor Crater in the guise of his late wife, whom the creature killed. The creature, in search of salt, sees the Enterprise as a promising hunting ground.

Order this episode on DVDDownload this episode via Amazon's Unboxwritten by George Clayton Johnson
directed by Marc Daniels
music by Alexander Courage

Cast: William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), Jeanne Bal (Nancy Crater), Alfred Ryder (Professor Robert Crater), DeForest Star TrekKelley (Dr. Leonard McCoy), Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Janice Rand), George Takei (Sulu), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), Bruce Watson (Green), Michael Zaslow (Darnell), Vince Howard (Crewman), Francine Pyne (Nancy III)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Green Hornet

The Silent Gun

The Green HornetAfter informing police that he knows something about his father’s death, a young man is murdered in plain sight before the eyes of 20 people, shot at point-blank range…and yet no one around him heard the shot fired or saw a muzzle flash. This catches the attention of Daily Sentinel publisher Britt Reid, who spends his off hours fighting crime in the guise of the Green Hornet, his faithful butler and martial arts expert Kato at his side. When another murder is committed, the Green Hornet and Kato begin closing in on likely suspects, including rival organized crime bosses. They both want a gun that can kill without being heard or seen…but only one of them has it. And they both have it in for the Green Hornet.

written by Ken Pettus
directed by Leslie H. Martinson
music by Billy May

Green HornetCast: Van Williams (The Green Hornet), Bruce Lee (Kato), Wende Wagner (Lenore Case), Lloyd Gough (Mike Axford), Walter Brooke (District Attorney Frank Scanlon), Lloyd Bochner (Dan Carley), Kelly Jean Peters (Jackie Cameron), Ed McCready (Detective Olson), Al McGranary (Minister), Breland Rice (Policeman), Charles Francisco (Al Trump)

Notes: Not so much a spinoff of Batman as a new show taking place in what may or may not be the same “universe”, The Green Hornet – based on a 1930s radio serial – was made by many of the same personnel as Batman, and was intended to be a bit more gritty and less campy than its superhero stablemate. If The Green Hornet is a spinoff of anything, it’s actually a spinoff of a fellow radio show, The Lone Ranger, as both were created by George W. Trendle, whose original radio scripts specified that Britt Reid is the son of Dan Reid, the Lone Ranger’s nephew.

Green HornetThis TV adaptation was also the western audience’s introduction to rising martial arts star Bruce Lee, who performed his own stunts (and, by many accounts, inadvertently but repeatedly injured stuntmen in fight scenes). By the end of the show’s single season on the air, the popularity of Lee and his character threatened to eclipse the show’s nominal star. Despite that popularity, since ABC scheduled it on Friday nights against the more established series The Wild Wild West, The Green Hornet was cancelled early in 1967.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Time Tunnel

Rendezvous With Yesterday

The Time TunnelSenator Clark arrives to take stock of the top secret Project Tic-Toc, a staggeringly expensive, vast underground complex built around an experimental time travel device known simply as the Time Tunnel. The civilian manager of Project Tic-Toc, Doug Phillips, gives Senator Clark the guided tour, but Clark’s presence unnerves project scientst Dr. Tony Newman, who has poured his entire life into the project. Determined to prove that it does work, Newman appoints himself the first human time traveler and sends himself back into the past. Radiation imparted by the use of the Time Tunnel allows Project Tic-Toc technicians to track him back into the past, where they can see and hear that he has arrived on the ocean liner Titanic…mere hours before its destruction. Doug volunteers to travel back in time to help Tony escape, but the only way off the Titanic for the two men is a further trip via the Time Tunnel to a time and place they can’t predict.

Download this episode via Amazonteleplay by Harold Jack Bloom and Shimon Wincelberg
story by Irwin Allen, Shimon Wincelberg and Harold Jack Bloom
directed by Irwin Allen
music by Johnny Williams

The Time TunnelCast: James Darren (Tony Newman), Robert Colbert (Doug Phillips), Michael Rennie (Capt. Malcolm Smith), Susan Hampshire (Althea Hall), Gary Merrill (Senator Leroy Clark), Lee Meriwether (Dr. Ann McGregor), Wesley Lau (Master Sgt. Jiggs), John Zaremba (Dr. Raymond Swain), Whit Bissell (General Heywood Kirk), Don Knight (Grainger), Gerald Michenaud (Marcel), John Winston (The Guard), Brett Parker (Countdown Technician)

Notes: The latest of Irwin Allen’s 1960s science fiction series, The Time Tunnel premiered on ABC one day after the broadcast premiere of Star Trek on rival network NBC; it ran concurrently with the final seasons of Lost In Space and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. Though Allen’s big screen work is often synonymous with epic disaster scenarios, his treatment of the sinking of the Titanic is relatively tame, primarily for budgetary reasons; building the cavernous, The Time Tunnel$130,000 Time Tunnel set (or is it a giant prop?) consumed much of the pilot episode’s budget, forcing Allen to fall back on reusing footage from the 1939 film Titanic (which, handily enough, was also produced by 20th Century Fox). Ironically, co-star James Darren would, decades after his trips through the Time Tunnel ended, return to SF TV in another iteration of the Star Trek franchise, as holosuite Rat Pack crooner Vic Fontaine in the later seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; Darren also co-starred with William Shatner in T.J. Hooker at a point in his career where his focus was switching from acting to directing.

LogBook entry by Earl Green