Remember that DVD-on-demand service I mentioned a few months ago, the Warner Archive? You may recall that I was very stoked by the idea of made-to-order obscurities, and couldn’t wait to try it out. Well, as it happens, I apparently could wait, because I never got around to ordering anything from the Archive. The truth is, none of the titles made available to date have been “must-have” enough for me to pull the trigger. But that situation has finally changed. The TV Shows on DVD blog is reporting that Warner just added to the line-up three made-for-the-boob-tube movies from the early ’70s: Genesis II, Planet Earth, and Man from Atlantis.
The first two are failed pilots written and produced by Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame during the fallow years between that series’ cancellation in 1969 and its big-screen rebirth in 1979. Both are variants on the same familiar premise, in which a 20th-century man enters a state of suspended animation and awakens in a post-apocalyptic future where, had either of these pilots been picked up as a series, he would’ve spent each weekly episode exploring this “strange new world.” (TV Shows on DVD claims that the idea was reworked yet again for the late-90s syndicated space-opera that bore Roddenberry’s name, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, but honestly, I don’t see that much of a correlation beyond the basic idea of a man out of time, and the recurring name of the protagonist, Dylan Hunt. In my view, Genesis II and Planet Earth are really much more similar to the Planet of the Apes TV series from around the same time, or even to the Saturday-morning live-action children’s show Ark II. As I said, a familiar premise, at least for anyone who was a sci-fi-loving kid in the early ’70s.)
The third addition to the Warner Archive, Man from Atlantis, starred a pre-Dallas Patrick Duffy as a mysterious man with gills and webbed fingers but no memory of who he is or where he comes from. According to TV Shows on DVD, this was the first of four successful TV movies, which led to a short-lived weekly series.
(If I may digress for a moment, these “movie series” were fairly common in the ’70s. I know that Columbo and The Six Million Dollar Man both started as occasional movies-of-the-week before becoming one-hour weekly series, and that was the original intention for Battlestar Galactica as well. It’s no coincidence that the strongest episodes of the original BSG were the two-hour ones, because they were written well in advance of the show going into production, whereas the weaker hour-long episodes were essentially filler that was thrown together on the fly. The aborted Star Trek: Phase II was also planned as a cycle of movies that would’ve aired every couple of months; Phase II was shelved, of course, when the first of those tele-movies was repurposed to become Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Personally, I think it’d be kind of interesting to go back to this format. Certainly it’d be easier for me these days to keep up with the occasional TV movie instead of a weekly series!)
Of the three, I’ve seen the Roddenberry films the most recently; they used to turn up on late-night TV fairly often, and it seems like I remember catching them last when I was in college, or shortly thereafter. I don’t think I’ve seen Man from Atlantis since it originally aired; nevertheless, I have vivid memories of playing with an empty shampoo bottle in the bathtub, pretending it was the high-tech submersible that Duffy’s friends worked in.
Properties like these are exactly what I hoped would eventually turn up in the Warner Archive, half-remembered detritus of a near-forgotten epoch that has been bumping around in my subconscious for decades, some of them no more substantial to me than dreams, films and television I want to see again simply to prove to myself that I didn’t imagine the damn things. I intend to place my order tonight for Genesis II and Planet Earth (the Archive is currently running a special, both movies at a discounted price). I’ll report back on the quality and experience of the manufactured-on-demand discs after I receive them.
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I watched Andromeda for a while. I stopped at some point, since it was really Hercules The Legendary Journeys in space.
Yeah, Andromeda turned out to be a major disappointment. I thought it had some really great potential in the beginning, when it was about one man trying to rebuild a lost civilization, but then it all just frittered away on silly adventure-of-the-week stories…
A bit off topic, but this reminds me that I watched the new Star Trek movie on an airplane a few weeks ago. I probably missed a lot (knowing almost nothing about Star Trek), but I enjoyed the movie on its own terms. I can’t believe I didn’t mention this to you earlier, Jason.
Heh – well, we’ve had a lot to catch up on, what with Lithuania and all… 🙂
I’m glad you enjoyed the movie. You were actually more the target audience for it than I was, since the writers and director have made it clear that their goal was to make Star Trek accessible to the masses who knew nothing about the big sprawling mess that the franchise had become.
I seem to be in the minority, even among long-time Trek fans, for being unimpressed with it. I’ll admit, it was a fun summertime action ride, but not much more than that, in my opinion. There were too many plot holes and logic gaps, too many places where the established lore was referenced but not respected — better that the writers had simply not used certain things than include them but get them wrong — and the visual style frankly drove me crazy. I will be so happy when this f%#king shaky-cam fad dies out. And all the lens flares? Irritating as hell…
But then, I’m a grouchy old fart who resists change at all turns, so what do I know?
It was a good airplane movie, in any case. As for being part of the target audience . . . What’s an age difference of two decades?
I agree about it working as an airplane movie. I guess I just hoped that the filmmakers would’ve made more of an effort to get back to the philosophical and thematic heart of the original series, which was become increasingly watered down with each new iteration.
Or at least remember that Roddenberry’s original concept was “Hornblower in Space” and not made Kirk the ship’s captain after one lousy mission. I can’t believe any military structure in any time or culture would do that, and it really bugged me…
As for your remark about an age difference, however, the filmmakers weren’t aiming for the twentysomethings exclusively (mostly, perhaps, but not exclusively); they’ve said repeatedly they basically wanted to bring in non-Trek fans of all ages and show them that this is something they can like, too. I would say they succeeded in your case.