12 - SPACE: 1999 with John Hodgman, Nerd King of Space Orgies

John Hodgman joins Sean and Andy to discuss the cult Sci-Fi, Space: 1999. You can watch the 1976 pilot here on Youtube (Link)

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Transcript

Andy: 0:00

we're going to leave the podcast episode with that information. This is exactly where John Hodgman lives.

John: 0:05

Every time I go on tour, I tell the entire audience what hotel I'm staying at. And what room never been a problem. No one cares. They're all like, uh, can I get home by nine? They don't care. They're not the best level of celebrity. That's exactly right. I always wanted to have radio level celebrity and I got it boys.

Sean: 0:27

Hey everybody, welcome to Co Pilots. I am Sean Conroy and I'm Andy Secunda. On this podcast, we talk about TV pilots, the first episodes of television shows. Sometimes pilots become long running series. Others don't make it past that first episode.

Andy: 0:43

We're going to talk about all of them. The great pilots, the bad pilots, weird pilots, the forgotten pilots. We are TV writers, but it should be noted that we are the dumbest TV writers, you know, so all of these are just our dumb opinions. So dumb.

John: 0:59

So, look, we're talking about Space 1999.

Andy: 1:02

Thank you. I was about to make the transition, but you, a professional podcaster that you are, made the transition first.

John: 1:08

Yeah.

Andy: 1:09

I heard you talking about, uh, Space 1999. And, Sean and I happen to be doing this show. Sean was like, great, let's do Space 1999. Which is, was a surprise to me. Because even though we're all of the same age, roughly, roughly, I am more of the nerd than Sean. Uh, John, you might be thought of as a, as a king nerd, possibly. I don't know. Uh, a nerd royalty of some kind,

John: 1:34

like a rat king,

Andy: 1:36

boss nerd,

John: 1:38

boss level nerd. Sure.

Andy: 1:40

and yet, while I, you know, has been, you know, as a child of all manner of, you know, uh, space related properties, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica. you know, uh, name, um, space in 1999, never Held me. It was always weird. My only experience with it was where the toys in my, my, uh, wealthy upstairs neighbor's apartment, uh, he, uh, toys.

John: 2:08

You're upstairs. Wealthy neighbor. So what'd you say? Yes,

Andy: 2:11

he had the, he had the toys. I grew up in Manhattan, so he had, he had all the toys. He had the big death star. He had the weird ones, like micronauts. Maybe they weren't weird at the time. Were micronauts big at the time? I mean, I had some

John: 2:26

Micronauts.

Sean: 2:26

They were, they were very small, actually. It's written in the name.

John: 2:29

They were in the mix. They were in the mix.

Andy: 2:31

Shogun Warriors were big, but, uh, Micronauts

John: 2:35

were also small.

Andy: 2:36

So, I remember there being, in retrospect, I didn't know what they were. It must have been a Martin Landau figure. And it must Koenig. Correct. And then the, there must have been the eagle. And I was like, that's not the Galactica, so what is that? Right.

John: 2:52

Right.

Andy: 2:53

Um, and when I was one of men,

John: 2:55

one of many janky eagles.

Andy: 2:58

Yes.

John: 2:58

That they had on that show. Here's my question. Go ahead. First, I have two questions. Sure. Regarding

Andy: 3:03

your wealthy upstairs neighbor. Please, feel free. His name was J. G.

John: 3:07

Well, that answers one. I was going to be, is he named Francis, like Pee wee's neighbor in Pee wee's Big Adventure? Well, J. G.

Andy: 3:13

did stand for James Girard, so it's not that far off. Whoa.

John: 3:18

I just want to, I don't know whether I want a novel about your relationship growing up underneath the J. G.'s Penthouse or like, uh, I think like a young adult book about a kid living in Manhattan directly below the wealthy penthouse. Particularly like in the, in the 70s, 80s, that would be really funny to me.

Sean: 3:37

Please, JG, may I play with your micronauts? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Andy: 3:44

I want to know if JG had Geography, you're talking about?

John: 3:49

Yeah, you were for some reason when you were growing up in manhattan you had sort of like, uh, You had a cockney accent an urban waifs cockney accent

Andy: 3:57

and I had an apartment, but I was an orphan somehow i'm, not sure

John: 4:01

you've got to steal an eagle or two Because there were a lot of eagles

Sean: 4:07

It was right downstairs from a beautiful penthouse, but it was somehow a filthy hovel. Yeah, yeah,

John: 4:15

absolutely. you were in like a boot blacking factory on the penultimate floor. You were raised in that orphanage right on the Upper West Side that was just directly below the penthouse of the only murders in the building building. That's right.

Sean: 4:32

Time to lay down on my bed made of straw and dirty socks.

Andy: 4:37

it was half in England, in Victorian England, it was half in seventies New York.

John: 4:43

Yeah. Yeah. The second question I have was, did your rich upstairs neighbor have. the space 1999 laser gun.

Andy: 4:51

No, I do not. Well, if he did, I did not certainly did not identify that as part of the property. Did

John: 4:57

they

Andy: 4:57

have those?

John: 4:58

Yeah. And it shows up for, I only know this because it shows up for a fleeting millisecond in this episode in the pilot. And it reminded me that I had this dumb thing. Oh, wow. it was a very non militaristic as was the ethos of the show. The fact that they even had a laser gun. Kind of felt like a directive from above like you got to have a laser gun. You guys you can't just be You can't just be walking around with white briefcases all the time, which is all they seem to do I

Andy: 5:27

couldn't tell if that was if it was protocol That every time they enter a room, they have to hand the remote to the other person who just entered the room. Like you were choosing to close the door behind you.

John: 5:46

That's space etiquette. Would you like to close the door with my incredibly bulky mini television?

Sean: 5:52

We had to develop our own customs here on the moon and this was the first one we got into. So

John: 5:58

but I had that toy and you know, I'll be honest with you. I'm sure to my friends, I was in Francis territory, like,'cause I had all, I had all the toys and even I as a young, weird only child was looking at this space 1999 thing, like, how did I even get this now? This is pointless. This is stupid. And Unfun, thank Evans. I don't have an eagle. Yeah. Even as a, even as like a 10 year old, I'm like, why would there be toys associated with this boring TV show?

Andy: 6:29

Oh, okay. So this, this addresses my question. Yeah. As a kid, because I thought you guys were both on board. You both seemed excited about it, but maybe I misinterpreted the energy for me as a kid. I'm definitely all, all in on space adventure. Give me everything Star Trek. I, I sort of learned to appreciate a few years later, right? But, um, but 1999 should have been in the right zone. And I was surprised. And when I watched it, I was just like, this seems, Quiet and upsetting and British and sort of 70s tinged in a way that made me uncomfortable. and it just seems like people got together in every episode from the few that I saw and something upsetting would happen and then it would be over.

John: 7:19

Yeah. I mean, I think that the disappointment you felt was that you were expecting space adventure. Right. Instead of space collegial conference meetings.

Andy: 7:31

And so, was that your take as a kid, is my question.

John: 7:34

Well, first of all, I was never a child. That seems logical. That's

Andy: 7:37

right. I was born,

John: 7:39

I'm currently 52. I was born at the age of 48. I was born a middle aged, sexless bachelor. And, uh, and as an only child, I also. You know, I was an Anglophile and a science fictionophile, so definitely space 1999 was on my space radar, so to speak.

Andy: 8:05

Sure.

John: 8:05

But I remember it being dull and also unnerving because You did? Okay. Yes. I didn't remember until I, I mean, this is the first time I've watched any element of the show since then, right? Watching this pilot. So I didn't remember how boring it was until I watched this pilot. I think that I got over the, the fact that it was a space show made up for the boringness a little bit because it has some very arresting visuals and is fairly, I mean, it looks pretty beautiful and it's got those bananas costumes that were created by Rudy Gernreich, the inventor of the thong. Um, is that true? You, I didn't see

Andy: 8:52

that in the Hey. Amen. Yeah.

John: 8:54

Oh, in the, in the credits it says Moon City Costumes by Rudy Gerri. So, you know, I'm gonna be googling that. The Moon City costumes.

Sean: 9:02

Of course. So he went from one extreme to the other.

John: 9:05

Yeah. Cover nothing to cover all, but

Sean: 9:07

Yeah.

John: 9:08

But unisex. So Rudy Gerri, it turns out he designed the costumes. Is a very famous austrian born avant garde futuristic costume designer austrian

Andy: 9:19

born immediately explains a lot

John: 9:21

Yeah, right But the idea was that he was gonna these costumes were going to be there was going to be no differentiation between gender And he also was famous for using weird materials like the zippers on the side of the like imagine taking that shirt off and on by Zipping up the sleeve that way, you know, you have to unzip from your neck to your wrist and then pull it off sideways weird and also the plastic like the Plastic belts they all wear which is not very flattering Plastic belt not very flattering to middle aged british character actors

Andy: 10:00

This is, this is pre get to the gym years. Yeah.

Sean: 10:05

It definitely felt like, let's make all these people look as lumpy as possible.

John: 10:10

Yeah, no, totally. I mean, I was like watching and going like, so these costumes are all unisex, meaning that, um, We get to see everyone's boobs, like the men as well as like, That's right. Like

Andy: 10:21

equal, equal opportunity. Everybody gets to look just as unappealing.

John: 10:26

Yeah. But I mean, it was visual, it's visually very arresting, which I, which I remember distinctly from the time, but the thing that unnerved me more than that's boring now, I know it was boring, but the thing that unnerved me more than that was that they all used each other's first names. There was no. They were, and I was just like, I feel like, from from Star Trek. I was used to everyone having a hierarchical rank, you know, so doctor, captain, Mr. Blah, blah, blah, last names, nicknames, whatever. And then in Star Wars, they all had names, but they were goofy made up names, right? Like, you know, all the names in Star Wars. Man, chewy, whatever the, you know, they're all made up names, right? They're not earth names. Grand

Andy: 11:14

Mo.

John: 11:15

Thank you. That was a title. That was a title. Luke. Luke was the only one. Luke, you know, Luke got in there. That was a normal name, but the rest of them were kind of lay, I guess.

Andy: 11:27

People around captain solo. They didn't really, they're around Luke's rank. Did he ever, I don't think he

John: 11:32

was ever mustered in to the Alliance in that way. I think captain solo got captain simply because he owned a spaceship. So they had to call him captain. Like, I don't think he was part of a. But the, but the fact that this was a non militaristic environment, which I didn't even like, even that didn't track for me. I'm like, well, they're on a spaceship. So there's gotta be, there's a commander. But the fact that they were all using each other's first names and that they were all earth names made it feel like I was at a dinner party that my parents were holding.

Andy: 12:02

Well, the names were also names like Paul, they weren't like the motive, the actresses names is Xenia. And I'm like, why aren't you using Xenia?

John: 12:11

Yeah. Xenia is a cool name.

Andy: 12:12

Yeah.

John: 12:13

The fact that the commander's name is John.

Andy: 12:16

Yeah.

John: 12:16

Like as a John, I'm like, well, I know that I have a boring name. Like you can come up with something better than John, John.

Andy: 12:24

For sure. They took Xenia's first name and they made it, made it Sondra.

John: 12:30

I mean, the, the names were all normcore before there was normcore, right? It was just like Helena Russell. It just like truly, truly. And I think that this is part of the Gerry Anderson tradition of just coming up with like, like weird, boring names that seemed really, really plausible in a fantastic environment. It was just unnerving to me. Yeah. And it felt like my dad, like when, when John Koenig would say to Dr. Victor, or whatever his name was, just call him Victor. I just felt like I was listening in on my dad's business conversations, not feel very well. There was no kid point of view character either, right? Because in Star Wars, like Luke is a kind of a kid, but then also you got an R2D2 out there who's like, hooray. And then Battlestar Galactica understood you needed to have a chimp pretending to be a robot dog.

Andy: 13:24

Right.

John: 13:24

That was the pet of a child, so there was a, so children could get into this stuff.

Andy: 13:29

Right, right. Daggett, was that the name of the, or was that the, the, the The breed was Daggett, the name was Muffet. Muffet, I know, just didn't mean to, didn't mean to. I mean, we're pretty, we're gonna get pretty deep. Well, just, just in defense of the There's no hiding the nerd roots now.

Sean: 13:43

In defense of the names thing, I mean, I get that it's annoying to not have exotic names, But thinking back to 1999, if I remember correctly, people still, the, the names were all still like that. So they kind of accurately predicted the future, you know, one of the

John: 13:59

many, one of the many accurate predictions of what 1999 would be like,

Andy: 14:04

remember when we had a moon guys?

John: 14:07

That was incredible when we lost the moon in 1999.

Andy: 14:12

So just to talk through some of the, just the overview of, uh, this show, Space 1999, which were for, if you're, if you're catching up, um, it was, uh, it ran from 1975 to 1977. It was made the British television giants, uh, Jerry and Sylvia Anderson. uh, it was the most expensive series produced, uh, for British television up at that time. Uh, made by ITC Entertainment, uh, the giant. and basically it was continuing. First, uh, he had, they had made, you know, Thunderbirds and, um, uh, you know, All Men Are Supercar. Fireball

John: 14:52

XL5.

Andy: 14:53

I haven't watched some of the others. The only one I really knew was, uh, was Thunderbirds. Were you familiar with the other ones?

John: 15:00

I don't know how Thunderbirds had gotten into my head. I'd seen them. My mom was an Anglophile, and there were a couple of times when I was young, when we went over to London, my dad had some business trips, and I just watched British television, and there was a lot of Thunderbirds and Fireball XL5.

Andy: 15:17

Oh, for sure. Yeah, they're all over the place.

John: 15:20

Um, and they had a very similar, shall we say, stately pace to their adventure.

Andy: 15:27

A lot of the things that Jerry Anderson does are things that I was a stop motion head as a kid and I was obsessed with effects and so I don't know how the other children were watching it but like the thing that that Bonds uh shows like that he did like Thunderbirds which were all marionettes and and such and this show was that he would take a lot of time on just the hardware like the yeah the transportation tubes yes and Things ejecting from larger, you know, machinery and, and I was just, I could watch that, that crap all day long. It was a

John: 16:06

lot of technical procedural porn,

Andy: 16:09

basically. Yes. Which was my kink, even as a child. It

John: 16:15

looks great. I mean, I think the Eagles look janky as hell, but a lot of the other, the sets and everything.

Andy: 16:21

Now, what is it that bumps you about their army of eagles? Just so many. I keep thinking like, Oh no, they lost their eagle. They're like, no, no, we got

John: 16:31

to get a prep eagle 95 on the pad.

Sean: 16:35

At one point he says, do we have any more? Do we have another? Like, he doesn't even know how many there are.

Andy: 16:43

Yeah. And I, and they had, what would they show like a fleet? Then there's like, all right, well, we got to fix this thing. So there's like four or five in the air in space.

John: 16:55

I think what I didn't like about them was that there were so many of them.

Andy: 16:58

Well, that's reasonable.

John: 17:00

You know, like it, and this was part of the realistic, I'm making major air quotes here, but like the realistic space science fiction, hard science fiction element of the show. obviously it was not particularly scientifically accurate, given that they blew the moon out of orbit and then it was self propelled to other planets. you know, we

Andy: 17:22

know that can't happen.

John: 17:25

You know what? We'll find out. You know, in a space show, you want the ship, the ship has to be a character. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, the enterprise is the enterprise and the Galactica is Galactica and like the millennium Falcon, that's where they live. That's their house, you know? Like, so the idea that while it would probably be accurate that a space station would have multiple identical, highly functional looking modular spaceships, we don't even have names either than Eagle one, two, three, four, and by the way, don't look like Eagles at all. Like that's really, I

Andy: 18:01

guess that's it. That's the best point of all.

John: 18:03

Yeah, that's realistic, I guess, but it's just not fun or special like their spaceship has no, they had no character, which is exactly, exactly right. They were modular and functional.

Andy: 18:16

The Klingons learned from that. They were like, we got to make the bird of prey look like a thing. What do we do here?

Sean: 18:23

And the enterprise arguably looks like an enterprise

Andy: 18:26

that's true. That's true. It's like an enterprise rent a car.

John: 18:29

Mm

Andy: 18:30

well I'm of two minds on this And I think the show is two minds because I think some things in the show Are there, you know, as is appropriate. It was 1975. It's, you know, it's before even Star Wars, changed the landscape of which I was

Sean: 18:45

surprised that in my memory, it was not that much of a, no, because

John: 18:50

I think that it was shown in syndication after Star Wars and people, because I don't think that they, I don't know it, it, it was produced in England. With the idea that they would sell it to America. That's why they had Lou grade. The producer insisted that you get Martin Landau and Barbara Dane to be the stars, big stars because they were, they were American actors who were on mission impossible. And I guess we're available so that was the design to break the American market, but they never did. Until Star Wars came out, and then Channel 56 in Boston, and all these UHF, you know, local stations just bought as much space stuff as they could get, including Space 1999, so that's when I saw it.

Andy: 19:39

And that's probably, you know, and I only saw it a little bit, but that's probably when I saw it too, and it was something about watching it on, you know, catching shows like this on PBS or UHF. That really, to me, almost added to the mystery. So it should have, it should have hooked me. Like that's how I discovered the prisoner and became obsessed with it.

Sean: 20:00

But,

Andy: 20:00

um, but this show just, I found off putting, and one thing that is. of, uh, of note is that I later saw UFO, which was the precursor to this, and I was interested in that. And I was like, Ooh, it's kind of like a 60s ish kind of, you know, uh, a secret agency that's fighting aliens, which was also made by Jerry Anderson and was the precursor to this. And they had made a bunch of sets and props for this. Uh, with the understanding, the whole origin story of Space 1999 is that, uh, that they made it with the understanding that this, this was going to be another season of UFO that takes place on the moon because Lou Gray, giant, you know, producing giant from ITC, had basically said, look, all of your episodes on the moon test better. So why don't we just, you know, It forget about the earth and make it on the moon. And then they built all this stuff. And then the ratings dropped and he's like, we're not doing any of it anymore. And then Jerry Anderson's, ah, but what if we make it an entirely new show, just set with the stuff we already have, they had all the moon sets.

John: 21:13

So, you know, I, I had forgotten about UFO. that was the Jerry and Sylvia Anderson. Is that right?

Andy: 21:20

Correct.

John: 21:21

Yeah, that was their show right before this. And their first without marionettes, right?

Andy: 21:26

Yes, this was their big bout to, you know, exactly the same show with all the same long, uh, mechanical porn, except with live people.

John: 21:39

And they, and the, and, and what made their show like the transition. So first of all, UFO was about this underground, secret government organization fighting a secret space alien invasion. That's cool. Right? So cool. Now I rewatched the credits for the, for this show. cause I hadn't seen in a long time. The credits are about 40 minutes long because the credits introduce all of the different teams. So you had, you had a moon based team. Sure. Then you, then you had an underwater team

Andy: 22:14

for the underwater. Yeah. They

John: 22:15

had a special, they had a special sci fi sub for underwater aliens. Then you had the ground based team and they, they rode around in little tractors And then you had supreme headquarters anti alien defense organization shadow, which is in the basement underneath a movie studio.

Andy: 22:34

He's basically, he's making toys before the toy market had even broken out.

John: 22:39

Absolutely. But like for him, and this is like total Thunderbirds thing too, right? They're like, there are nine different teams. Each team has like seven members and you know, some of them have eye patches or whatever. Like he had a very expansive view of how to tell a story. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and Lou Grade was not wrong. It's like, why don't we just do the moon one? That's the cool one. Right. And that was what Space 99 ended up developing out of.

Andy: 23:04

By the way, just as a, as a side note, Lou Grade, how many people, I think Kevin Feige is probably in this category, but how many people on that level? Of running the whole organization, have that kind of intuitive, you know, awareness to make a move like that.

John: 23:22

Right.

Andy: 23:23

And also a creative decision like that. So smart.

John: 23:26

And to produce The Muppets. The Muppet Show was a Lou Gray joint.

Andy: 23:30

That's right. so yeah, I'm, and just on the toy note, I assume he had no, he had no, uh, deal. He didn't have the foresight that George didn't have like the George

John: 23:39

Lucas points on the, on the merch.

Andy: 23:41

No, because it's like he, if they're just thinking about like, I have a friend that, that, uh, makes toys for Marvel and it's always, as you might imagine, like, all right, we're doing another Spider Man movie, but it's gotta be something different, like this time he has a black stripe, so you have to buy another figure. Can you imagine the amount of money if this was a big, any of these things were big properties? Oh my goodness. We definitely,

Sean: 24:06

we definitely had the Space 1999 stuff and were very excited to have that. You and your brothers.

John: 24:16

So what are your memories, Sean, of seeing this show?

Sean: 24:19

Well, I think I come at it from a little bit of a different perspective. Um, and first of all, I will say one of my younger brothers, uh, was so young that he called the show Uh, space 90 90 90. So that's what it's always been known as in my in my house. Um, Not that terrible title, but but we uh, yeah, he was three so tell him that um, we were only allowed I I was not a big td watcher as a kid. My parents wouldn't let us watch TV, so we had to choose at the beginning of the week, which two hours of television we wanted to watch that week. We had to look at the TV guide and say, we're going to watch this and we're going to watch this. And I have four younger brothers. So we all had to agree on what we were going to watch. And that's why I was surprised to see that this came out before star Wars, but I'm assuming You're right, John, that we watched it after Star Wars, so it was just like, what's the fucking space thing we can watch because I was a huge Star Trek fan as a kid, and then Star Wars was obviously Star Wars, so it was like anything space I was hungry for, and you know, I was a huge, uh, Barbara Bain fan. So I, so I really wanted to, but I had, I had no, I mean, I remember very little about the show. I remember, what I thought of as the Vulcan being a bigger part of it, which she wasn't even in it until season two. And I remember an episode where there was some kind of monster that put tentacles on people and sucked all the salt out of them or something like that. Oh, that was a Star Trek. Oh, it was a Star Trek, uh. And the Vulcan

Andy: 26:00

is also a Star Trek. Unless there was another Vulcan in space 1999. No, no, no,

Sean: 26:05

I'm saying the character was basically I see. The Vulcan character. You don't remember

John: 26:10

Maia, the metamorph?

Sean: 26:12

Yeah. Yeah. Is this? Was this? She even had physical similarities to, to the Vulcans. She was a

John: 26:19

Mr. Spock rip off. Right. That they introduced in the second series, in the second

Andy: 26:23

year. I would hope so. So they must have loosened up a bit from the pilot. Oh. But I was, I was

Sean: 26:28

shocked at what a slug the pilot was.

John: 26:31

Well here's the thing that I, I realized. So if you had asked me, what was this pilot about it without rewatching it? I would guess that what happened in the pilot was that, they're all on this moon base, accident happens, it blows the moon out of the orbit of Earth, the end. And that's basically the plot. And then for those who don't know, Space 1999 follows these 311, uh, men and women and other on this moon base as the moon hurtles through the galaxy, conveniently inter intercepting planets. But not going into orbit around them. I don't know. The moon becomes a spaceship, whatever. And that is The only light of this plot. That's the story of space 1990. Oh, and also it happens in 1999. Specifically September 13th, 1999. that's when they blow orbit or whatever.

Andy: 27:22

It would be amazing if 1999 was just a, some scientific number that they use in the show. It's not related to the year. No, right. Exactly.

John: 27:29

Now, if, if you had asked me, what was this ripping off? I would have said Star Trek or Star Wars because that is, as you say, Sean, like when we and when we encountered it, right. And part of the reason I think that I found it so unsettling as a kid was it was actually ripping off something I hadn't seen, right, which was 2001. And, watching this pilot again, I realized now Oh, this is just A direct rip off of the mood of 2001, a space odyssey.

Andy: 27:55

I was shocked. I, I was not aware of that either. It was just this weird other British reality that I, it was just like, I don't know. It's just some other alternate, but so clearly the space suits the, I mean, he's even on a, uh, transport ship going to the moon base and there's a stewardess serving him with a tray of space food.

John: 28:16

Yeah.

Andy: 28:17

He's talking, they're talking to people on the little screens, which Jerry Anderson in one of the interviews makes a big deal about how it used to have the roll bar when you would shoot. Film video on film. Right. And he was like, we invented the, you know, you, you could not have the roll bar because we synced the screen or whatever it goes across. Now it doesn't matter. Now they can just do it. This huge thing, this huge advancement. I love that. I love

John: 28:41

how many of the screens that they interact with. Yeah. The video screens where they're talking to other people through the video screen. How many of them are in black and white? Like it's 1999, you can put, you can put not just a man on the moon, but 311 human beings on the moon. You can't get color on your door. Remote screen.

Andy: 29:04

Cause they're not all in, they're not all black and white. No. So is the idea that they were like, yeah, but we want to communicate in this moment. That this is more analog and primitive because they're farther out? Like, is that an aesthetic choice?

John: 29:20

I have no idea. I have no idea why they did it. I think black and white screens were much more common then. I mean, I had a black and white TV at that time.

Andy: 29:29

Right.

John: 29:30

You know, it wasn't unknown.

Andy: 29:32

Come on, these people are, they're not like, you know, wealthy, you know, uh, child John Hodgman, they're, they're, you know, these people can't afford to have colored screens.

Sean: 29:41

But, but, but I bet if you, I bet if you tracked it through the episode, you're right, Andy, that there is a specific reason of like, Well, this is where that first settled on the moon. And then this is where area one became a storage space for atomic waste. And this is, you know, the timeout zone.

Andy: 30:00

Yeah, it's sort of hard to figure out. And your point about the, um, the, the science is another element is that I think they do a good job of feeling. Kind of authentic and serious and like, and, but then there are these weird swings that are just like, what, what's going on. So it's very, it's, I don't know. It's a lot of mixed tones and I wonder if that's just, yeah, go ahead. Here's what

John: 30:28

I didn't remember at all. Like I would have said, okay, it's about an accident that happens on a moon base that blows it out of orbit. I would not have realized that that was only the last three minutes of the show. And that the entire 47 minutes before that. Was going to be this go nowhere medical detective story, trying to determine the origin of a weird space virus that causes your left eye to turn opaque and make you go bananas and, and they're trying to cover up the space virus so that they can launch. A space probe to a planet that's coming nearby because planets travel through the space like spaceships or something. And then there's a government official who's trying to get the noble commander to sweep it under the rug so they can launch the metaprobe in time. And there's all this political machinations and who believes the Dr. Barbara Bain or whatever. And that all of this goes on until a nuclear waste field explodes, they blow it out of, they're blown out of orbit, and then the space virus disappears. And nothing is solved.

Sean: 31:35

And by the way, your pitch made it sound a hundred times more interesting than the episode actually was.

John: 31:41

Well, there are five or six plots in this one pilot. Any one of them could have been resolved, you know, at all. I was trying to find an adverb there, you know, satisfactorily, but like At all any of them could have been resolved at all, but none of them are

Andy: 31:57

Right.

John: 31:57

It's wild

Andy: 31:58

the uh The effects this is the thing I sort of wanted to ask you guys because we're talking about like the jankiness of the eagles And to me, a lot of the effects kind of because they're scribbling so completely from 2001 with the, the, uh, the space suits and the space vehicles on the, you know, on the surface and just the vibe and everything. They got a special effects director, Brian Johnson, who had worked, he worked ironically, both on Thunderbirds and 2001. So he, he was sort of a company man that knew the, the Kubrick tech. I kind of feel like some of the things are fully crappy 70s effects. I feel like some of the things almost have more weight and reality to them. Then even if you go forward to a Star Trek next generation, it's like it kind of, a lot of that stuff kind of feels. Almost CG, before CG, kind of very, kind of low grade, um, you know. But in Star

John: 33:01

Trek TNG?

Andy: 33:03

Yeah. Well, they were using

John: 33:04

CG before CG was very good.

Andy: 33:07

Right. And I think you can feel the difference, like anything you're using a model for, you might not, it might feel a little bit like a miniature, but it has weight and reality to

John: 33:17

it. Right.

Andy: 33:17

In a way that no CG will. Up until modern day. So when I

John: 33:22

say that the Eagles are janky, I just mean, I don't like the design of them.

Andy: 33:26

They're very boring.

John: 33:28

They're very boring looking, but overall the visual effects, they, they, they hold up visually. The whole thing is very arresting. The whole thing fucking slaps. It looks great. I love all of it. There's this one scene where, uh, Martin Landau is sitting in his office and then he just opens a wall and you see the whole team there. I mean, that was literally cool. Like I almost stood up and applauded at that one. Like that was, I kind of

Andy: 33:53

feel like that it was Jerry Anderson's genius. Maybe it was just the style. And even the logo is just so awesome. Right. The whole, all the whole credit sequence. And I think the music

Sean: 34:05

for the credit sequence is amazing.

Andy: 34:07

Yes. I a hundred percent agree, Sean. And this was part of like where I'm coming at it in a weird place, because as a child, I thought you guys loved it as children, I didn't realize. Well, you know, we're no, no, no, I

Sean: 34:18

definitely loved it, but I think it was more about this was just the one moment of the week where I was like, we get to watch TV. It's amazing. You know, it didn't matter what it was close to the truth,

John: 34:37

but Sean Conroy, you had, you could choose anything you had. You know, there are many hours in the week and you're going to choose two.

Sean: 34:43

But it had to be at a certain time as well. No, no, no. It had to be like between the hours of 8 and 10 p. m. on Friday and Saturday. So it was like, you know, very limited choices.

John: 34:55

Got it. Got it. Yeah. Then you're definitely going to watch, what was it? Space 90, 90, 90 on the Sunset Strip. Yeah,

Andy: 35:04

I can see that.

John: 35:06

point out something else that I remembered in my little trip down, you know, memory road, trying to think of a space version of memory road, memory space tube, travel tube. That's what, that's what they called those little subway cars that they rode around in on moon base alpha, right? The travel tubes. And my trip time memory travel tube. Yeah. I also was looking for that fake o Spock, Maya, the metamorph.

Sean: 35:33

She was such a significant portion of the show that I, that I was surprised she didn't even show up until season two.

John: 35:39

So, if you have a chance. To compare and contrast episode one of season one, this pilot that we're talking about. Yeah. Versus episode one of season two. It's bananas. How much they retooled this show. Like everything has changed. Thinking

Andy: 35:54

about we've been sort of early in our, in our, uh, gestation, uh, for this podcast. So one of the things we have been thinking. Should we skipped it to the first season of episode two, as you're saying in future episodes?

John: 36:07

Well, it almost, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if it's, if it fits into your podcast scheme, but like after the first season came and went and it didn't do so hot, people were like, Oh, I guess, I guess the world isn't clamoring for a half baked 2001, a space odyssey. Everyone wants. A fun space adventure and so season two, episode one, they get rid of a bunch of characters. They redesign all the sets. The costumes are all redesigned. They, they look a lot less like cult uniforms. Now they look a lot more like Star Trek or cool, cool uniforms. They have different jackets and stuff. They bring in this phony, phony Spock character and like the austerity they

Andy: 36:51

picked up along the way.

John: 36:52

Episode one. Of season two, they immediately land on a planet and are confronted. With Brian Blessed, the moon, the moon approaches a planet and it's a planet they think is uninhabited, but it's, it's the planet Sycon and it has, and Brian Blessed is on their, their, um, view screens. And one of those notoriously scenery, like would chew through any scenery that was put in front of him, British character actors. One of the biggest actors in the world wearing ridiculous clown makeup going, I am mentor. Please stay away from my planet. And over here is my lion who is also my daughter because she's a shape shifter. It was, it's so tonally on its head. All of the austerity has gone and it's now just a wacky science fiction show. Um, it's very, very, very different.

Andy: 37:48

Jerry Anderson didn't stand that ceremony. He was like, look, whatever works, I'll follow. I guess

John: 37:52

that's true.

Andy: 37:54

I'm happy to not have, have actors with strings on their hands. I'll do whatever, whatever needs to be done.

John: 38:02

But the costumes as weird as the costumes are, cause it really does have the vibe. These future costumes, these unisex costumes that have no collars and they're very clingy white, it feels like you're, you're in a cult. You're in some kind of like 76 cult. That's also part small college, uh, English department, very collegial, like by the time they get to season two, they're in full on like science fiction mode and they're all wearing these incredible sweaters. And it's funny,

Sean: 38:33

it's funny that you said that about the cult. Cause that was how I felt about commissioner Simmons as well. Like he was a cult leader. That's how that guy comes across to me.

John: 38:41

So, well, he's got that cult leader, little beard.

Sean: 38:44

Yeah, and his weird hairdo, which I don't know if that was a wig or what, but it was, it was kind of insane.

John: 38:50

That actor is Roy Dotrice. I don't know,

Andy: 38:53

what, what is more sci fi in the show than, uh, Barry Morse, who plays, uh, Professor Victor Bergman's sideburns? Those are, I couldn't figure out, it's like, is this a 70s thing? Or is it, were they like, Look at these crazy future sideburns! They're so long and pointy!

Sean: 39:10

I felt like he was like a 19th century presidential candidate. You

John: 39:16

Yeah, a little, a little Martin Van Buren. He has a little Martin Van Buren in him for sure. For sure.

Andy: 39:21

Yeah. And then the other guy. Koenig takes over for, and had kind of a Caesar haircut. Commander Gorski. Right, Anton Gorski. Who I think is

John: 39:32

supposed to be Russian.

Andy: 39:35

Okay, that's what it's supposed to be, sort of intimidating.

John: 39:39

Well, I mean, also I think that they're trying to establish, like, This is 1999, you know, borders don't exist anymore, there's a one world government, uh, we don't have militaries, we have a scientific base on the moon that is populated by people from all nationalities, they're all different ethnicities and all different races and, you know, we're now partners, like that was sort of the future aspect of it. To take that Star Trek inclusiveness. And go and push it even further to like more of the Russians aren't our enemies anymore,

Andy: 40:13

which, you know, I mean, however,

John: 40:15

Gorski was an asshole. Clearly the subject

Andy: 40:18

clearly, one thing I really enjoy is that moment. Of just like, they run into Gorski, Gorski's clearly set up as some version of an antagonist, he walks away, and, and Koenig and, and, uh, Bergman are just sort of, just like, no, this fucking guy, he's just like, ugh, Gorski. He's like, yeah, he'll

Sean: 40:36

be, he'll be fine, he'll be fine, and I was like, oh, this is gonna come back at some point. Nope. I don't think it even does in the whole story. Series, much less than that episode. Well,

Andy: 40:46

he's back on earth. So, right. He's not on the ship. So,

John: 40:50

well, there I, I, I read that the original director, whose name I can't remember, delivered a two hour version of this episode and that there's lots of deleted scenes that explain. How Gorski was an asshole and why and how Gorski had made romantic advances upon Barbara Bain and she rebuffed him and that's why he wouldn't take her research into space virus seriously and blah, blah, blah. There was a lot left on the cutting nine

Andy: 41:20

people have died. I don't care. She was mean to me.

John: 41:25

She was. She was mean. Yeah, one of the reasons that this director got fired so hard was it was supposed to be a 10 day shoot. It was ended up being a 25 day shoot because he would shoot, the way he would do coverage was he would run the whole scene with all the cast over and over and over and over again from multiple angles. He would he would not do proper coverage. He would just run the scene. The full scene over and over and over and over again,

Andy: 41:53

right? And I think that it shows

John: 41:55

like, yeah, I mean, it's, it's ridiculous, but I mean, like they brought in someone to finish it and everything else, but the footage they have, there is a naturalism to this that is very unusual for television. Well, you're touching on a lot

Andy: 42:08

of things I wanted to sort of address, and one of his, I think it was Lee H Katzen, who was the original director. And, and that is, that is the telling from many different angles was that it was the way you're saying, uh, Jerry Anderson's and I think slightly true, slightly slanted take is basically what you're saying. And then he, he, and then they delivered an edit. To the network that was 2 hours and they were like, what the hell this is insane. What are you doing? And he's like, I told you so because they foisted cats and on as an American. There's a lot of hostility and a lot of the. The materials about, like, the Americans were foisting American perspectives and the director on us because they figured then it would play more to America. and Anderson was like, I told you so and then he went. And he cut it down and he did reshoots that he directed himself, according to him. and then, it was this thing that tested well and everybody was amazed by it and loved it. and I'm sure there's truth in all of that. The only thing that is slightly suspect to someone who understands the process is if you're the showrunner, you're overseeing the edit. So you're delivering that two hour cut to this. in the first place. So it seems like you're kind of stacking it against Katzen.

John: 43:28

Right.

Andy: 43:28

And a lot of this stuff, in my opinion, as you're, as you're saying, has a really interesting quality and kind of looks great. And yeah, it's like you couldn't have reshot all of it. So, you know, maybe it was mostly, you know, largely a mess and too long, but I think that I'm able to step in there. I

John: 43:46

mean, maybe cause I've, Maybe, maybe cause I've seen 2001 and also because I'm a grown, I'm a grownup now who has a collegial relationship with my peers and I call them by their first name and like, I'm, I'm more attuned to grownup spaces. I'm much more comfortable in this world now.

Sean: 44:05

I love

Andy: 44:05

that as a kid, the thing that bothered

Sean: 44:06

you is you're not calling anybody by their

John: 44:08

names. They're all, there are no kids there. There's no, you know, like. Why aren't they properly respectful? It's all, it's all a bunch of dads and moms and there's all, and the other thing about this thing is they're all wearing these outfits, right? Yeah, and it's space and it's like you can just tell they're all fucking you know what I mean like

Andy: 44:32

You're not wrong there's a weird vibe on that station

John: 44:36

It's like the 70s and they're all wearing like these disco outfits

Andy: 44:41

They got bell bottoms for sure and they've got bell

John: 44:43

bottoms and it's obviously the costuming And the, the casting, it's all designed to subtly reinforce, like, we're in a future society now where mores are different. And to me as a, as a sexless only child, I was like, they're fucking. That just means that they're all fucking. And I make anybody

Sean: 45:03

wearing a belted tunic is two seconds away from stripping that thing.

John: 45:08

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's like, again, those zippers on the arms of the shirts. Those are hard to get. I mean, or maybe now that I think about it, it's like you never are pulling a shirt over your head, right? Because you unzip the arm and you, and it's like a breakaway pants. Like maybe those, that's the, those tunics are built for fucking right. And I just like, it was a very adult space.

Sean: 45:34

Yeah, and they're also none of them are like people that you're like, Oh my God, they're so beautiful. They must, you know, it's like, they're just regular people who, who fuck, you know,

Andy: 45:44

they have, I'll have a seventies orgy vibe in terms of just like, you're not that excited about anybody that showed up.

John: 45:50

Yeah, I mean, Paul, all with his little porn mustache.

Andy: 45:56

Right.

John: 45:57

Like you wouldn't guess that he was, and it turns out he was the second in command of the whole station.

Andy: 46:03

The fact that his name is Paul really undermines him right from the top. Save us all.

John: 46:12

And of course, Alan, Alan Carter. Sexy Australian man, one of the only cast members they brought back because he was a big breakout star of space 1999 apparently. I thought of that guy as a

Sean: 46:23

young Paul Hogan.

John: 46:24

Yeah, oh for sure. Very handsome dude, a lot of charisma. I mean, the fact that his character, I guess they refer to him as Carter more often, but his name is Alan. You know, like, like you see that space show, Alan really killed it. Alan is such an incredible space hero. I don't know, I loved it.

Andy: 46:44

Um, so we're kind of, uh, uh, I think we're, Sean, we're fully detaching from the, from the, uh, going through it. And, uh, I think just everybody shout out whatever, whatever aspects, uh, I'm sorry, I feel like I've been doing

John: 46:57

that the whole time. There was a way you wanted to structure this. No, no,

Andy: 47:00

we, we, we often like go sort of beat by beat, but I feel like we said so much already. We should just, you know, say whatever we like.

John: 47:08

I would do that if there were beats.

Sean: 47:10

Right. That's the problem I had when I was writing up my notes. I took notes going through the episode, and when I was writing them up, I, I was confused as to what happened when, because nothing The whole time it was just like, is this a virus? Is it radiation? It's radiation. Maybe it's a virus. We should do something. Let's do something.

John: 47:31

Here's how we know. Here's how we know it wasn't radiation. They checked the radiation field and it didn't have radiation. Hmm. I'm going to go check it again.

Andy: 47:41

It was like, it was utterly rhythm going back to variations of, and it's so irritating that like You know, you can't, you can't necessarily, well, I don't know. I guess you can, because Star Trek was, I was going to say, you can't hold it against it if it's not Star Trek, but it's like whenever they introduce a technology. In one sci fi show that you become familiar with, like transporters, whatever, or scanners that seem to be able to scan a planet from afar. And then it's like, well, we have to figure out if there's radiations. We have to get a ship, we have to launch a ship, bring it to the other side of the moon, and then find out. It's just like, oh, Jesus, what a slob. And

John: 48:18

who's going to pilot the ship? Uh, who's going to go on this mission? The commander who just arrived? Of course. By himself. Right.

Andy: 48:25

This is the thing that drove me the most crazy. And I don't know that I even, maybe it's sexism. To me, mostly, it just seems like for writing, is that Russell is, seems like she's 100 percent right and reasonable the entire time. And, uh, and even in the first conversation, she's not saying that they, it was radiation poisoning. She's, she's sort of saying that some things sort of point to radiation. Right. And, and he keeps sort of asking her. Like, you know, he, she just said there's immediate, there's immediate disorientation that is classic and radiation attacks. And he keeps sort of saying, Oh, so you're saying it's radiation. And like later he's like, you were right, doctor. It was radiation, magnetic radiation. And she looks at him and I almost feel like she's looking at him. Like I didn't say it was right.

John: 49:25

You know, I think that it's fair to say that Barbara Bain's performance is at least inscrutable. If not that's fair's fair. Marionette, like in its wildness. She

Sean: 49:36

was, she was underutilized in the pilot.

John: 49:39

I, uh, I, I don't know whether it gets better. Mm-Hmm. for her, her character, her performance. But I, I did go through to reread the Wikipedia synopsis of of the plot. Yeah. Which is a lot of, then they did the same thing again, and then they did the same thing again.

Kevin: 49:54

Right.

John: 49:54

this line in the Wikipedia synopsis really got me. Uh, Bergman suggests that Koenig meet with H Helena Russell, head of the medical section. The next morning, Koenig meets with Helena in her office. As both try to ignore the obvious attraction between them, Helena delivers her report. I was like, look, okay, absolutely, Paul is fucking everyone in this station, no doubt. Like, uh, Sandra is hot as hell. All of the support staff are absolutely doing like everybody is, has big moon fuck energy. But those two together in that office. Martin Balsam, no, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain have nothing. There is nothing going on.

Andy: 50:39

Martin Balsam, sexual chemistry. And Martin Balsam,

John: 50:42

there we go. You know what, you know what we need on the moon? Someone with some earthy gravitas, you

Sean: 50:47

know, I, I also feel like the chemistry between them was something they really tried to push in a couple of sequences that felt to me very much like the Soap opera sequences where they kept cutting back and forth between their faces without them saying anything was like close up on this person's face, close up on this person's face. Something's going on between them. It's very significant. There was just a lot of eye contact.

Andy: 51:18

There was just nothing there. It probably didn't bump, uh, Jerry Anderson when he was putting it together because he's used to dealing with just, you know, Marionette faces that have no expressions. This is what a love scene is. That's right. Had this wooden

John: 51:32

puppet stare unblinkingly at this wooden puppet for a minute. The audience understands

Andy: 51:38

that's it, because there's something serious going on. Which to be honest with you, that is my memory of Thunderbirds. It was, I won't say it's a problem because it's what Thunderbirds was, but they would have long sequences of the PO of the marionettes just sort of looking at each other and they have dun, dun, dun. It's kinda like, yeah. Oh, I guess. Sort of Eisenstein wise, we're supposed to Intuit that this is this has some weight. Yeah, but to Sean's point, um, after he does the thing you were talking about, John and he's just like, all right, well, this is clearly a dangerous area. We've got to find out more. I, the commander of this station. I'm going to launch myself over there and find out what's going on and then immediately have exactly the same problem. And, and Russell's mad at him. it's like a hundred percent right. It's just like, you knew about the other pilot and astronauts. And, and you just flew right out there. And Bane's like, we're looking for answers, commander, not heroes, which I think is a great line.

John: 52:38

That's a hotline.

Andy: 52:39

And, and his response. That feels like it's trying to be a Han Solo and Princess Leia thing. I think he said, I'm

John: 52:46

Martin Landau, bitch. This is what I do. This is how I win. Famous, famous man of action. Martin Landau.

Andy: 52:57

I found it really bold that they would have him break, uh, break the character in such a meta way. Just like, I'm Martin Landau, I'm bigger than this character. That's right. But he says, I didn't know you, I didn't know you cared. And it's like, again, like you're saying. Does she? Have we seen that? And

Sean: 53:16

does that even, does that even come off what she's saying?

Andy: 53:21

It doesn't respond to what she said, you're just ignoring her ironclad logic to make it a flirty moment based on energy that doesn't exist. And also, If there are two things that I associate You weren't being a cowboy, you were just being

John: 53:34

an idiot. Yeah. If there's one, if there's one thing I asso Look, Martin Landau's an incredible actor. For sure. I know. Is he still alive? Good question.

Sean: 53:43

If he is, he's, he's, he's getting up there.

John: 53:46

If he is, I smell reboot. He's ace

Andy: 53:49

2090, 90, 90,

Sean: 53:52

90.

Andy: 53:54

He died at, unfortunately, 89 and not 90, uh, in 2017.

John: 54:00

Okay. Well, Martin Landau is an incredible actor, and I understand that they wanted to cast an American actor that Americans would recognize from Mission Impossible, which I guess was a popular show. Right. But the whole thing, that whole sequence that you were just describing, Andy, it's like, if there's one thing I associate with Martin Landau's performances, aside from being an inveterate rule breaker. And man of action who takes everything into his own hands. It's also, it's also his, uh, his rakish charm with the ladies.

Sean: 54:37

He's just an absolute sexual presence in everything he does.

Andy: 54:42

It's very strange because they did have Star Trek to go by the energy, the compared contrast of the energies between, and obviously you're right. They were going for 2001. They weren't going for Star Trek. But it is a, an example to look to of going like, oh, well this was a long running, I guess it was three years, so it wasn't that long running, but it was, it was a success. Well, yeah, but by the time show,

John: 55:06

by the seventies, it was like

Sean: 55:07

60 episodes a season though, right?

Andy: 55:10

Star Trek? Yeah. It

Sean: 55:11

was, no, no, no. Uh uh, 1999. I mean, there was a lot of episodes that they made in those few seasons.

John: 55:17

They made 48 total episodes.

Sean: 55:19

Mm hmm. Yeah, 24.

Andy: 55:21

Yeah.

John: 55:21

But by the, by the mid 70s, Star Trek was, you know, the fan community of Star Trek was already advocating for it coming back. We were maybe three years, they were probably already developing Phase 2, which became Star Trek The Motion Picture. It was a real cultural phenomenon. Everyone knew who Captain Kirk was.

Andy: 55:39

So my point was exactly what it was going to be well pick a dynamic charismatic star and I guess it's just like maybe their thought was look, we just got to grab who we can get and Martin Lando is a star. Yeah, that was how

John: 55:50

I vibed. And by the way, Martin Land, the character, most of the characters portrayal is as a calm, respectful boss of a technology company in outside of Ohio or something. That's what it feels like, you know, like outside of Cleveland or whatever. Like, He's a, he's a very good, calm, thoughtful boss, mostly when they try to make him into a rule breaker or a man of action or a Lothario. It's really weird and you can tell that Martin Lando is just not into it.

Andy: 56:21

And I wonder if that changes over time, because even when the other guy, and I thought actually this was a, this was a scene of, of, uh, of real tension when the other astronaut goes crazy and tries to bash his way out of the space station, um, which is really just like, Ooh, that's going to be crazy. Hey, that one cloud, that one,

John: 56:42

that one cloudy eye, that's scary.

Andy: 56:45

Yeah, that's a really scary image. Yeah, that's right. Um, but when he does that, Lando seems just barely physically able to contain him. he's not like the, compare that to any scene with William Shatner in Star Trek. He's not like, I'll take him down. Right. He's just like, yeah, I can't, I can't contain this one person. Us two men can't contain this one guy.

Sean: 57:10

My gown ish clothing is getting in the way.

Andy: 57:13

This plastic belt is too big. It's frustrating

John: 57:16

me. The polyester, it snags.

Andy: 57:20

Oh no, it's coming off me. I hope he doesn't misinterpret and think we're going into another one of our orgies. Stop

Sean: 57:26

it, stop it, stop it.

John: 57:29

Yeah, these two, these two middle aged onchy men do not seem like the Adonises we're going to take down the space virus infected macho man who, by the way, is able to Basically smash the space window with his helmet on one blow. Crazy. I guess maybe space virus makes you strong, but on the other hand, like reinforce your windows, moon base. Like that's not good if you can just crack it with one blow. It's

Andy: 57:56

really true.

John: 57:57

you know, I was alive in 1999. I know that we had. Uh, Pella insulated windows there that you couldn't break with a bat and that was at a house,

Andy: 58:05

an earth house. Maybe it's an issue with the contractors. Maybe they use cheap material and didn't tell them. There's also

Sean: 58:11

different pressure on the outside of the window from what there is on the inside. So it's sort of already loaded pushing outwards. So hey,

John: 58:21

I appreciate that. But Sean, you're building a space station. Interior pressure is baked into the equation. That's why you put in strong windows.

Andy: 58:31

Sean's always trying to hit. Sure. Easy to say that

John: 58:34

maybe they hired you, Sean Conroy as a space contractor.

Andy: 58:39

Sean, are you defending

Sean: 58:40

your own work? I cut costs. I'll admit it. You know, that's what contractors do,

Andy: 58:46

right? uh, we were talking about the, uh, the video calls, there was one moment where, Lando's talking to commissioner Simmons.

John: 58:54

I know what

Andy: 58:54

you're talking about. And they both do the same thing in the scene where the, the screen comes on and they're standing by their desk and then they walk to wherever the camera is and they both do it. One does it and he walks all the way to the camera and then they cut to Lando and Lando also walks. And it looks like they both like wanted to go like, no, when this video call starts, I want to look like I'm in the middle of, you know, just doing my work. I want to seem busy. And then, oh, well, we're talking now, well, now I'll come to the screen.

John: 59:23

That weird pillar in the middle of Koenig's office that has screens on every corner and he walks around the pillar. Yeah! Such a weird, weird set design thing.

Sean: 59:34

Was, was this the call where they talked about the International Lunar Finance Committee? And them possibly not being involved. The ILC involved?

John: 59:42

Yeah. Yeah.

Andy: 59:44

And were you like, if I was a kid and I had one thing to choose to watch, that was my, that's what I was jam.

Sean: 59:49

Yeah. Yeah.

Andy: 59:51

international Lunar Finance Committee. Guys, I know you

Sean: 59:54

wanna watch chips, but can we watch the show where they have the International Lunar Finance Committee,

Andy: 1:00:01

was just going to talk also about, it really did strike me, and I think this is a, this is a, uh, what's his name, Katzen. This is a Bruce Katzen, whatever, whoever the original director was, this is a move by him definitely. But like that weird move where he's going and talking to the commissioner and he's sort of around the corner, almost hiding from the screen, like what, where, what is the logic? Where is the camera? I'm confused.

John: 1:00:29

Yes, it was not.

Andy: 1:00:31

John?

John: 1:00:31

like, I can't remember why Commissioner Simmonds came up to the moon base ultimately.

Andy: 1:00:39

Yeah,

John: 1:00:40

and then got trapped there with them He wanted to push for the exploration. He wanted to launch the metaprobe

Andy: 1:00:48

I feel like this is a little bit of a throw forward to I'm trying to think if it existed and it was more aliens than alien right where it's the corporation is heavily like basically You know, in the Paul Reiser characters trying to, you know, put money above and the, and the research above human life, you can argue that a lot of, there are a lot of aspects of this for all of our, our being salty about it, it's clearly a full rip off of, uh, uh, 2001, you know, But it really projected a lot of things. Like to me, Battlestar Galactica, which came out a few years later is fully taking the housing of this show of like humans. They're on a long journey. The eagles kind of look in some primitive form like the Galactica and just these people on this long journey. It kind of feels sort of similar, except they just made it exciting and took out all the conference rooms. Yeah, they were

Sean: 1:01:48

It's space 1999 meets Jesus Christ Church of Latter day Saints. Where does that go?

Andy: 1:01:56

Nobody knew the audience they were playing to.

John: 1:01:57

Yeah, I mean, the Battlestar Galactica difference is that the vehicle they're on for this pilgrimage, trying to find a new home has a method of propulsion, which I think is important. If you're on a journey,

Andy: 1:02:11

not just one nuclear waste explosion that points you in a direction.

John: 1:02:16

Yeah. Not just kind of floating. Just, you know, on momentum for a while in the vastness of space. I mean, Martin Landau had two incredible lines that I mean, I don't think you're going to see again in any science fiction franchise or any adventure franchise. One is we're sitting on the biggest bomb in history. Like you can't write that into a script, the terrible thing to say in your pilot and the other, but that's just sort of meta, so to speak. Then the other part is when the computer does this analysis. It was like, we cannot evacuate back to earth or we don't know if we can evacuate back to earth. Yeah. I, the computer cannot determine only a human can make that decision. And

Sean: 1:03:02

it says it so significantly, like it, it lists these things like, uh, the moon is on an unknown trajectory. Constantly changing G forces, make it impossible to anticipate, insufficient data to complete flight plan. And then the, and then the computer goes, Human decision required, basically. Like, fuck you, Landau. Yeah. You know?

John: 1:03:26

Yeah, totally. Like, uh, yeah, I don't want to make this decision. You do it. I love that. And then he gets, Then he shows up, And then Landau's like, Let me, let me make sure I'm on all the black and white screens all throughout the moon base, because I'm going to make a major announcement. This is the big hero moment and I'm going to announce that we're in a bad position and we don't know if we can get back to Earth. And therefore we're not going to try Literally the end of the speech is we're not going to try

Sean: 1:03:55

the episode ends in utter defeat

John: 1:03:59

And I really do I appreciate that that might have to be the decision Do you know what I mean? But the fact that that's couched in the hero speech

Andy: 1:04:07

Right,

John: 1:04:07

it's so jarring. It's like, yeah, we're, um, we have an option. It's very, I mean, look, you know how it is in the movies. We have an option. It's a, it's a very, it's a long shot. I'm not sure that we're going to be able to make it, but it is our absolute only path to possible survival because the fact is that we're on it. A space station on a moon drifting in endless space with limited resources. So we can either choose to try to evacuate and go home or not. And I'm here to tell you, we're not going to try. Let's just see what happens. It was his, it was his late

Sean: 1:04:46

93 moment. And he chose not to act.

Andy: 1:04:50

There's also in every other version of that speech, it's usually like. some version where it's like, I'm gonna put myself at risk, but you don't all have to come with me, but we have to sacrifice. I have to sacrifice myself. Right. And then everyone else is like, we're with you, sir. Yeah. And they choose to and he is just saying, there's a big decision. We're all screwed and I'm gonna choose to do nothing. I'm gonna choose to do nothing For

John: 1:05:14

all of

Andy: 1:05:14

you. For all of you. Yeah. None of you were have a say. That's right. And, uh, I'm a man of inaction.

John: 1:05:20

Not you, Paul. Not you, Linda. Not you, David. Not you, Alan. Not you. You need

Sean: 1:05:26

heroes, not a bunch of loser bullshit.

Andy: 1:05:30

I also, when you were talking about that, we're sitting on the biggest bomb in, uh, in history, it did make me think of that other line. He says, when the astronaut comes back and he goes, he failed, this is a failed pilot. Sorry. I'm going to go back to my own hilarious joke. Um, it's embarrassing that I laughed at myself. I thought that was funny. Um,

John: 1:05:56

and then they get hope, they get hope from an oscilloscope or something. Right. What, what, what, what makes it, I

Sean: 1:06:02

felt like they were always watching Pong. Like it was such a seventies video effect to me when they were looking at the screen. But I think that's supposed to be a signal from the planet meta, like meta is out there and there's something going on there.

John: 1:06:17

Right. So the original idea for Moonbase Alpha. Is among other things, it's going to be a staging ground to launch a rocket that will take humans to land on a newly discovered planet called Meta, which

Kevin: 1:06:31

has an

John: 1:06:32

atmosphere and they're getting signals from it that suggest that there's intelligent life on Meta, right? And that all gets, that all gets sidelined because of the space virus. Confuses people for a while and then nuclear waste area one and two blow up and blow the moon out of orbit and it's not anybody's fault. It just happens, right? Nothing triggers. No action triggers.

Andy: 1:06:56

Well, you could argue that it's the folly of of mankind that they put their nuclear waste on the moon. But, uh, no, yeah,

Sean: 1:07:03

I mean, that was the deal that he made with the commissioner was stop sending atomic waste to the moon. And I will figure out what's going on and make sure the metal launch happens. And then, uh, commissioner Simmons was like, that is one of the biggest problems that humanity faces right now is how to dispose of, of atomic waste. So I've got an idea.

John: 1:07:25

Put it on a rocket and send it into space. Like, well, sure

Sean: 1:07:29

you, you, you, you, you say that. Yeah. That's actually a good idea. We'll take it. Why,

John: 1:07:34

why it was like, well, we don't have any more. It's too dangerous to bury on earth. So we're going to put it on a rocket. Instead of just sending it off into space, which as far as we know, is an endless garbage field. Mm-Hmm. We're going to spend the money to send it to the moon where we'll bury it on the moon, invest a lot of technology to make sure it's safely buried on the moon rather than just fucking, it reminds me of to some degree. I was just on the Jonathan Colton cruise, which is a very fun time. One time I was on this Jonathan Colton cruise. My friend Jonathan Colton has a cruise. He's a musician for nerds. And another ship in the Caribbean, Lost power a carnival ship lost power. Mm hmm and Because and you may have heard coverage of this was private ten years ago because it became known I know

Sean: 1:08:26

what yeah, I know where this is going became

John: 1:08:27

known as the poop cruise

Sean: 1:08:28

Yeah,

John: 1:08:29

because they lost power so they had no air conditioning and it quickly turned into a post apocalyptic environment where people are sleeping on the deck because they had no AC and then people like Uh, the, the toilets wouldn't flush anymore, so the toilets were overflowing, and feces was flowing out into the, uh, hallways, and the corridors and stuff. And what I couldn't understand was like, alright, you don't have any power anymore, and people are pooping on the deck. You're aware you're surrounded by the ocean. The biggest toilet in the world, like throw your poop overboard. Don't bury it on the moon and cause the moon to explode. Anyway, that's my thought. But I,

Sean: 1:09:06

but I feel like the, I feel like the reason to keep it on the, the re the reason to keep it on the moon is like, they're kind of like my dad, where they're like, you never know if they figure something out, we might be able to use it later, you

John: 1:09:16

know, might come in handy. You're

Andy: 1:09:18

not going to need these adapters anymore, pop. How do you know?

John: 1:09:25

So the whole premise is that there might be this intelligent life out there and they're going to find it, but then, then they accidentally knock the moon out of orbit, which blows up the meta spaceship or the spaceship that's supposed to go to meta,

Andy: 1:09:39

right?

John: 1:09:40

And now they're kind of going to meta and that's the hope that they're going to reach this planet.

Andy: 1:09:45

Right, and they're going to say this matter or is it just it's just mad at this. That's right. It's just yeah. Um, yeah I'm sure this will be part of his plans at some point the video the other thing that's that's fascinating from a writing perspective Is that's like the C or D plot, the meta thing,

Sean: 1:10:09

right?

Andy: 1:10:10

It's like you got the moon base. He has to take over. You got the nuclear waste issue, the radiation poisoning and the meta thing, which was the original reason that he's up there and what he's obsessed with at the beginning is totally a side juncture that at the end, as with a lot of the other things that happened in this pilot, just by chance, the moon is sort of heading toward meta.

John: 1:10:32

Right. And. You know, if I were Paul, second in command,

Andy: 1:10:38

sure, the hero, the protagonist,

Sean: 1:10:42

the guy who's fucking everybody.

John: 1:10:45

Yeah, that's right.

Sean: 1:10:46

Yeah.

John: 1:10:46

If I were Paul, he

Andy: 1:10:47

has two zippers on his outfit

John: 1:10:49

and my, and my, and my boss commander, John just gave a speech saying. I'm going to, I'm going to fucking doom us all to slow death on this fucking rock rather than try to get back to earth. I'd be a little annoyed. And while I'm processing that I'm going to watch captain commander John or whatever tune in this little, I don't know what it was like this, small signal from maybe another planet that goes wee wee wee wee wee wee. And then commander John goes, there's our hope right there. I would just like, I would just stab him in the chest and say, fuck this, we're turning this around. Uh, sir, that looks inspiring.

Sean: 1:11:32

That looks like a screensaver. Are you sure that's not a

John: 1:11:37

Look, I found this screensaver, it's gonna save all of our lives. Good job for me. Commander John gets a pat on the back.

Andy: 1:11:45

Uh,

John: 1:11:46

Paul, I would think, would lead a mutiny at this point.

Andy: 1:11:48

It's not a very satisfying

John: 1:11:49

end to the pilot, is what I'm saying. It's not like I get to the pilot, I'm like, I cannot wait to see what's next. And if I did want to see what's next, too bad for me, because I don't think Meta comes up ever again in the series. Really? Yeah, I don't think it really comes up. Spoiler

Andy: 1:12:03

alert, but that is crazy. But I guess it makes sense because that's the equivalent of Galactica heading for Earth. You like, that's the end of the series, theoretically.

John: 1:12:12

Yeah, but at least in Galactica, they keep talking about it. I don't think it comes, I don't think it's mentioned. Oh, you don't

Andy: 1:12:18

even, it doesn't even come up again.

John: 1:12:20

I don't think it's a storyline. Based on what I scanned on Wikipedia.

Sean: 1:12:25

There, there are a lot of episodes where they go, I, I feel like we're forgetting something. And then they go on with the plot of that episode.

Andy: 1:12:34

What is it? What is it? Sir,

Sean: 1:12:36

can we address the matter at hand and stop thinking about what we've forgotten about? Nope.

John: 1:12:43

yeah, I think it very quickly becomes just like an episode of the week. We're traveling through the stars show that is not necessarily preoccupied with how do we not run out of food, water, and air.

Andy: 1:12:55

It's just about survival, which is kind of, I don't even think it's about that.

John: 1:12:58

I think it's just a given that they're just out there. Can't they

Sean: 1:13:02

just grow potatoes or is that only on, on Mars? Mars. It's

John: 1:13:06

only on Mars. You need a Martian habitat to grow potatoes.

Andy: 1:13:09

I'm, I'm of two minds because this was the thing I was going to say to me, I love the aesthetics and the, the tone, a lot of things that we've been watching that I would have expected to hate In the wake of the world and media becoming so crammed and fast paced, uh, when things have a weird, like, too slow, just talky scenes, particularly in genre media, I'm always sort of like, very, like, drawn to it and interested. It's one of the reasons that I, like, Barbara Payne's performance is so fascinating to me. Because she's practically whispering the entire time and like never seems to like, all the reaction is very subtextual and it's really like impressive in a way. Um, but, but the aesthetics, like the title and like the exciting music at the beginning and, you know, the, the ships and the slow burn on a lot of the problems and the eeriness. A lot of it started to work for me right. In a way that it didn't as a kid. And so when it lands at the end on the, on the, that they're on the moon and the first of all, the earth has lost the moon. And so there's the one newscaster, uh, who by the way is one of the CIA guys in Raiders of Lost Ark at the beginning.

John: 1:14:30

Oh wow.

Andy: 1:14:31

Don Fellows. But whatever the case, uh, at the end that his thing is like, Who would have thought us losing the moon? It's really caused the problems on earth, but it's sort of seems like it's like, it's not that much of a problem. Um, but the fact that they're hurtling through space on a moon base on the moon. I am kind of like, I'm curious where they're gonna go next. I assume it's gonna be sort of slow and then figuring it out for six to ten episodes. Like what the show is

John: 1:15:02

it's going to be even slower because it's going to be 24 episodes

Andy: 1:15:06

Season two they'll have an alien and start to turn it into an adventure show and is it to your memory? Does it become an exciting adventure show or it's always sort of a drab affair?

John: 1:15:16

No, it was much more exciting in the second series. Okay, I

Sean: 1:15:20

think one of the problems is I mean, obviously everybody knows this, but this is like a classic premise pilot where it's like, how did we get to what's actually happening in the show? And I think that those kind of pilots are really difficult because we don't care about anything that happens in this episode. What we care about is what happens as the moon blasts forward into space. So, it feels like you could do a version of this where that all happens in the first five minutes of the episode, and then where does it go after that? That feels way more interesting to me.

John: 1:16:00

I think that, that's, I'm with you, Sean. That's, I think that should be the story. They, it blows out. Someone makes a mistake, someone cuts a corner, some functionary forces something to happen and it shouldn't, and then there's a disaster, and they're stuck with that guy. I mean, that's the Simmons character, right? Right. The guy who is, like, put, like, irresponsibly pushing them to do something they shouldn't do, and they do it, and then the moon is blown off, and then, They have to figure out a way to survive and then they get a measure of hope at the end that is real hope not just a weird oscillating like vector like a game of tempest arcade game of tempest or whatever

Andy: 1:16:38

it would have been great to have that character and I thought this is where they were going with that character to have him be kind of like a dr smith on lost in space always right sort of maneuvering of course them and would have been great you disappeared He's

John: 1:16:52

only in one other episode in the whole first season.

Andy: 1:16:54

I mean, I think they were thinking a spinoff for that character, and that's why they wanted to establish him so firmly.

Sean: 1:16:59

We need to get back in touch with the International Lunar Finance Fund.

Andy: 1:17:08

The, uh, the, and I agree with you guys. It's certainly storytelling wise. You want to get to that thing faster. And it is interesting in big premise pilots like this. that you can, I find that a lot of pilots and series fall into sort of one of two areas, which is Either they nail it and they grab you immediately

John: 1:17:32

and

Andy: 1:17:32

you're like, Oh, my God, I'm in and then the last pilot, which I'm going to refer to a lot over the course of this podcast, just like the greatest beginning ever. And then they're trying to spend the rest of the series trying to live up to the beginning. Right? and I think, uh, Walking dead. Uh, even though I, you know, they, they write it, their self themselves. Eventually, spoiler alert, it opens with the guy waking up in the zombie world and then him trying to, you know, we're figuring it out as he's figuring it out. And so it's just so gripping and amazing. And then I found, like in that first season, it's just like, well, now they're just sitting there and there's not that much happening. It's my, my experience of it. Mm-Hmm. So, it's interesting. It took me,

Sean: 1:18:11

it took me seven seasons to figure that out, by the way.

Andy: 1:18:15

Did you do that the whole time?

Sean: 1:18:17

Yeah.

Andy: 1:18:18

Um, I quit after the first season, but I wish I

Sean: 1:18:21

had.

Andy: 1:18:21

but this is sort of interesting at this slow build. I think part of the reason it's a, such a slow bill. Tell me if you guys disagree. Is that to Jerry Anderson and Sylvia, they are thinking, I wonder if they split up because of creative differences, by the way. I think, do you think they're thinking, well, we don't need to establish, you know, this moon thing immediately. That doesn't have to start with that kind of action because people are going to be so gripped. By this, the space environments and just like these outfits and the

Sean: 1:18:57

steam between Martin Landau and Barbara Bane.

Andy: 1:19:02

That was where they were putting their money. Yeah. Look at how long these singles on them are staring at each other. I mean, that's heat.

Sean: 1:19:12

Smoldering doesn't even come close to describing it.

Andy: 1:19:18

That one shot is 25 seconds long of, uh, you know, she was just looking at a wall. He wasn't even there for the coverage.

Sean: 1:19:26

By the way, that's, that's funny that you're talking about this as, as being so slow, because remember that this is the one that they cut everything out of to make it move faster, which is sort of astonishing. Imagine how

John: 1:19:36

slow it could

Andy: 1:19:37

have been. Love to kind of see that.

Sean: 1:19:41

Well, here's the, here's the, here's the hypothetical also, which is, is there a version of this? Cause I, I have conversations with people all the time who are like, well, this is about a group of people who, uh, what, like are working together at a, you know, At a tire plant, but we need to know how they all ended up there. So the pilot is each of them, you know, deciding to get a job there or having already been working there or whatever. And I'm like, nobody, nobody gives a shit about that. Is there a version of this pilot where we can just start with them already out in the moon, you know, out in the stars headed for Meta. And we don't even need to see how they got there.

John: 1:20:22

I just want to go back and say, I really wanna see that tire plant pilot now

Sean: 1:20:26

believe me, I'm pitching it to the networks. We'll see what happens.

John: 1:20:30

Tire plant you that there fast, Sean. Deep like, yeah. I mean that's like lost, but it's in a tire plant, right? Yes. How did all these people get here? What are their back? It's a mystery

Sean: 1:20:39

box in a tire plant sold.

John: 1:20:43

I think that it's very much in line with British Sci-Fi of. The time including Thunderbirds, but also including Dr. Who at the time. Well, that was the original thing you've asked me to really, really slow burn stuff, like really, like, the goal is to use up as much videotape as possible without things happening. Um, also Quatermass was this way, like it's, it's all like half a story being told over five episodes and it's developing mood, you know, there's no question that there's mood here. Um, but the mood is also kind of inconsistent. The British sci fi really overlapped with horror in a way that I don't think was a part of American science fiction tradition. American science fiction tradition was mostly like about exploration and optimism and adventure and daring do and British science fiction was, was a lot more like there's a guy with one green opaque eye who turns into a monster or a guy with a green opaque eye who like attacks you out of nowhere and then falls down and stares like the whole opening sequence is very horror, not science fiction where the two guys are in the In the radiation field fighting with each other because one of them has gone berserk. Mm hmm. And I don't know what that says. I don't understand. I don't know what that says about the, the, you know, mid to late 20th century British relationship with science fiction versus the American. I mean, we were, we were in ascendant power at that time. So science fiction exploration were like, And maybe British science fiction was like, let's be careful about what we're unleashing for some reason or another. It's usually about like, we discovered an ancient alien civilization that has put bombs in the, in the tube 5, 000 years ago. Let's spend five hours deciding how we're going to remove this unexploded alien bomb. And can we get Landau? Yeah. And turns until someone turns into a skeleton that glows for no reason. And then that's the end of the show. Like it's just, it's very much of a piece with that. Just like untied. elements of horror Untied up plot lines just kind of very loose probably a lot of marijuana as well. I imagine went into this

Andy: 1:22:59

Oh, that's an interesting question. I think did marijuana play more into british television than american television but the that's that's a fascinating kind of compare contrast in terms of the tone of american television, um, Uh, and and that kind of adventurous spirit You And a certain amount of optimism, because you're totally right, this reads, and, and Dr. Who, and most of, most of these British television shows do feel like they are derived from horror, which is probably also what me being the wuss that I was as a kid, what I found more disturbing was that it was creepier inherently. Yeah, um, and it's so it's fascinating to think like, was it just sort of a cautiousness of this was a fallen world power and they're like, well, let's not stick our heads too far out of the sand. You never know what's going to happen. Um, we thought we were on top of the world and look at us now, whereas Americans are still like, right. Hey,

John: 1:23:58

let's, hey, let's start an empire.

Andy: 1:24:00

Um, I would love to know if that was it because. You're right. Most of them, most of them have that. One of the, one of the shows, the other space shows that was one of my favorites, uh, was Buck Rogers. I don't know if that was, uh, To a simpler, that was on your radar. Another show that

John: 1:24:21

had a wild retool between seasons.

Andy: 1:24:24

That's why I was going to bring it up is they kind of turned it into a Galactica space 1999 show that I hated. I mean, they added Hawkman and I was fine with him, but it was just like they were suddenly on this ship and I'm like, What, what the, what is this? It's about Buck Rogers being James Bond in space. Why are you giving me this?

John: 1:24:44

Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, having a spaceship that moves under its own steam is a pretty, it's established in science fiction for a reason. It's a good generator of stories. It's tough to get

Sean: 1:24:57

those steamships going in space though.

John: 1:24:59

Yeah, that's true.

Andy: 1:25:01

It's also one of those scenes with them shoveling coal into the warp engine. Uh, I just don't, I was, I was so infuriated because I was just like, watch Buck Rogers fly in his own ship, not a ship with a bunch of other people, to a planet, make out with a lady, an alien lady, and watch a couple of guys. I don't need this other crap.

John: 1:25:24

He's going to go to the casino in space. Then he's going to go to the nightclub, the space nightclub, and then the space space club. The space playboy club, whatever it is.

Andy: 1:25:33

Yeah, he's going to dance to space disco because he's at school.

John: 1:25:36

Just go. Yeah. Did you like

Andy: 1:25:39

Buck Rogers when you were a kid, John?

John: 1:25:41

I remember watching it. I mean, yeah. I mean,

Sean: 1:25:45

that's a non answer as far as I'm concerned. I,

John: 1:25:49

I, you know, uh, the

Andy: 1:25:51

computer, what is the computer thing?

John: 1:25:54

I was, uh, as a child, I'll say this. As a child, I was very excited that, um, uh, I'm trying to, who was it who played Wilma Deering?

Andy: 1:26:08

Uh, Aaron Gray.

John: 1:26:09

Aaron Gray. I'll say this, that as a child, as a child. I, I supported Buck Rogers and was excited that it was doing well, because it starred my wife, Erin Gray, as woman hearing. And, uh, You don't even

Andy: 1:26:23

know your wife's name that well.

John: 1:26:28

We were, we were, I don't, I'm not sure that Erin Gray knew at the time that she was married to a 10 year old, but I was definitely very much in love and married. And we had some very romantic, uh, Uh, anniversaries, but anyway,

Andy: 1:26:43

used it sat in his spandex, uh, very much to his advantage.

John: 1:26:47

I had no quarrel with Buck Rogers season one. I didn't, I didn't think it was particularly great, but you know, and, and, uh, but when season two came around and they put them on a fake, a fake enterprise and they started doing fake Star Trek. I was like, nah, not for me.

Andy: 1:27:03

Yeah, he didn't even seem, I think part of the problem, and it ties back to the Martin Linando aspect, he didn't even seem like he was in charge anymore. He was sort of along for the ride in an ensemble way, in a way that really took the power and compelling aspects away from him.

John: 1:27:22

From Gil Gerard?

Andy: 1:27:23

From Gil Gerard, yes. Yeah,

John: 1:27:24

no, he wasn't the captain of that ship.

Andy: 1:27:26

Yeah.

John: 1:27:27

He was just a guy who went on assignment. Now, obviously

Andy: 1:27:30

just buy a ship and then by default, like captain solo, be a captain.

John: 1:27:36

Right. Obviously. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, in, in the first season of Buck Rogers, he was, he was definitely under the thumb of Dr. Cure and that weird, uh, disco medallion that Tweaky wore around, but he was, he was, everyone knew that he was Buck Rogers from the, from the 20th century. Like he was, he was a superstar. He could do whatever he wanted. No one was right. No one's going to buck buck. Buck was going to fuck and no one was going to buck him.

Andy: 1:28:03

I love the Mike Waite film. Buck Rogers fucking Buck. uh, that's for three people. Um, I got one of them. Hey, it's

John: 1:28:13

us. You're all here. We're the problem. It's us. I don't know whether you when, when you wanna do this, but do yourselves a favor and watch episode one, season two of space 1999. It is a wild tonal shift.

Andy: 1:28:30

I'm really interested.

John: 1:28:31

It's really, really different.

Andy: 1:28:33

We like to, at the end of the show. I feel like we're falling into a zone where we sort of establish. One, how successful it was to us, as a, just an episode of television. Oh yeah. And two, as an episode of like a pilot that like, something's going to make you watch another episode. And, uh, I kind of feel like for me, I am like, it ends on the hook. So I am interested in seeing episode two and seeing like, how are these, People on a moon base and a moon hurtling through space. Are they going to make that into a show? So part of me is like, I kind of do feel like it's successful as a pilot. I don't know if I feel like it's successful as an episode of television. How do you guys feel?

John: 1:29:20

I'll say this. It's not a great episode of television. It isn't now. It wasn't then. It's flawed, boring, unresolved. And clunky and the acting is all over the place, but it is all those things in ways that to me personally, even beyond the veil of nostalgia, make it interesting. Like, it's so strange, the mood is so off and weird, the storytelling is so, idiosyncratic and elliptical, and most importantly, the visual elements of this show are so arresting that it nonetheless becomes sort of hypnotic. And you know that I'm going to be watching more episodes of it now. I am fascinated and refascinated with it. I, I don't I understand why this became the mini phenomenon that it did. I don't think that it worked for anybody hands down, but it was compelling. Like, I don't think anyone like watched that and go, holy swear word. That was a hundred percent good. I think that Jerry has

Sean: 1:30:26

done it again.

John: 1:30:28

I think that for most people, it was like, that was weird. I, I need to figure this out. And I want to see some more of it. And I think that happened exactly, I think 48 times. And then finally people were like, yeah, I got it.

Andy: 1:30:45

I think you're right. And I think that is in some ways the genius of Jerry Anderson. Is the aesthetic and the tone is so successful outside of the slowness? Uh, yeah. In spite of,

John: 1:30:57

uh, all storytelling rules, it is utterly compelling. It's like people just keep looking at that stuff.

Andy: 1:31:02

It's weird, it's eerie. it's, it's beautifully designed. In terms of visuals, and for those reasons, it really did hold me. I forgot to, um, give, my number of my ranking. So I would give it as a, as a pilot, I would give it six and a half. And as a episode of television, I might give it a. four, I'm going to give it a four

John: 1:31:25

out of, out of a scale of 10 escaped moons Yeah, that I would say as, as intrinsically as a piece of television, or as a pilot,

Andy: 1:31:38

I don't know whether it's as a

John: 1:31:39

TV show or as a pilot, that it is more successful. It does make me want to watch the next thing. So that,

Andy: 1:31:46

that to me would be a successful pilot to successful

John: 1:31:49

pilot. So I'll give it an eight as a pilot and a four as a TV show.

Sean: 1:31:55

yeah, I don't have a lot to add to what you guys have already said, except that I was watching it from the perspective of now looking back at myself then and going, the fuck was wrong with me that I was into this show, but I'm assuming. That where we caught onto the show was more the season two version that John is talking about than this version of the show, you know, because why, when I was eight or nine years old, would I have been like, Oh my God, this is amazing. I want to watch more of this. Um, I would say for me as a, as a pilot, I would give this. I mean, I felt like I came away from this not knowing who any of these characters were like, I get that they have a journey that they're on, but I'm not like, Oh, I like this guy. And I don't like that guy because of this reason. And that reason, they just seemed sort of undefined to me. Um, so I feel like I would give it, you know, maybe a 4. 795 as a pilot. And, uh, as an episode of television, uh, maybe like a 3. 14.

John: 1:33:04

Like pie. Yeah, I got it. I guess, I guess that is pie.

Sean: 1:33:08

Yeah. I

John: 1:33:08

got it. Yeah.

Andy: 1:33:09

well, there you go. Uh, you've already mentioned it before, but, John, uh, we should check out Dick town, which is your television show on Hulu. Were you saying it's still available? I

John: 1:33:18

will say that it's on Hulu. Yes. He's going to say

Andy: 1:33:21

he's going to, he's going to go ahead and affirm

John: 1:33:24

that that's true. Dick town.

Andy: 1:33:25

Um. And if you want to hear us talk with John a little bit further uh, about his experiences co creating Dicktown and other pilots, uh, go over and check out some of the bonus content on our Patreon And, uh, you had a book you mentioned, uh, you wanted to plug.

John: 1:33:42

I wrote a book called vacation land. My most recent book is called medallion status. There are other books that I do. I have the judge. I'm the cohost of the judge John Hodgman podcast every week on the maximum fun network. and that is a, listener supported creator owned and employee owned cooperative network. And, You can check out the show at maximumfund. org slash join.

Andy: 1:34:05

well, thank you so much. so much. I'm going to, you know, John, I'm going to elevate your, your title to commander nerd. that's what I was. It should be commissioner, commissioner, nerd, probably.

John: 1:34:15

Please just call me John. Here, here in Nerd Moon Base, we're all on a first name basis.

Andy: 1:34:21

we sure are all of our bland names. Thank you all for, uh, joining us. Uh, please check out copilots tv.com for all of your information. Uh, join the Patreon, uh, for bonus content. and please rate, review, subscribe on all your local sources. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, the eagle has landed.

John: 1:34:42

Which one though? The

Sean: 1:34:44

Nazis are here.

Andy: 1:34:45

One of the many eagles, one of the many janky eagles. So many

John: 1:34:50

janky eagles.