As the decade of the ’80s progressed, TV action heroes began to evolve from detectives into characters we can call, for lack of a better word, “troubleshooters.” These guys were less concerned with figuring out whodunnit mysteries than with helping the downtrodden find justice. Like the private dicks they descended from, these characters were mavericks and renegades who operated outside the law, occasionally working for shadowy organizations whose exact nature was never disclosed, but just as often functioning as “indepedent contractors.” The good-hearted mercenaries who composed The A-Team are one example of these troubleshooter characters; the world’s ultimate tinkerer MacGyver is another. But the ones I really grooved on — naturally — were the ones that threw some science-fiction hardware into the mix. Knight Rider is probably the best known of these. Personally, I much preferred heavily armed, supersonic-capable, computerized stealth helicopters to silly talking cars:
I hear this theme music in my head everytime I see a helicopter, especially if it’s just in the process of powering up and lifting off. Of course, the fact that our local AirMed choppers are the same Bell 222 model used to protray the Airwolf probably has something to do with that…
Today’s title sequence is actually a suggestion sent along by Chenopup; it’s the opening from another of those early ’80s detective shows we all loved so much, a Stephen J. Cannell series called Riptide. I’ve got to be honest, I don’t remember this one very well. I know I watched it, and I seem to recall that the three leads had all served together in Vietnam (not that there’s anything unique about that; all the early-80s TV detectives were ‘Nam vets). I believe at least one of them lived on the boat that gave the show its name, too, but I’m not sure and the Wikipedia entry for the show is unclear on this point. In any event, it’s an enjoyable title sequence and another good Mike Post/Pete Carpenter theme song (although it loses a couple of points in my book for sounding so much like the Simon & Simon theme):
I mentioned Magnum, PI in the the previous entry and, as best I can recall, it aired on the same night as Simon & Simon (I think it was Thursday, Magnum first, then S&S… and yes, it frightens me that I remember that!), so why don’t we have a look at the opening for Tom Selleck’s best-known work?
I don’t know about you, but that got my heart pounding. I think this opening, along with the one from Miami Vice, are probably the best title sequences of the ’80s, brilliant pairings of exciting, memorable music with the perfect visuals.
Oddly, though, this was not Magnum‘s original opening. For roughly half of the first season, the show had completely different theme music, and a somewhat different montage of visuals beneath it. Have a look:
As I’m sure you can imagine with the news about my dog and all, I’ve been in kind of a funk the last few days. And where do I turn when I’m feeling down? Where else but to that wondrous opiate of the modern masses, television! Or, as Homer Simpson once called it, “Teacher, mother, secret lover.” So, in that spirit, let’s take a look at yet another TV title sequence that I’ve always thought was tres cool, or at the very least, entertaining:
I don’t know if anyone else is enjoying this TV Title Sequence thing I’ve been doing, but I am sure am having fun hunting down this stuff, some of which I haven’t seen or thought about in years. Today’s selection is from one of my Saturday-morning faves when I was a kid, a 1960s-vintage cartoon that continued running (I believe) well into the 1980s: Jonny Quest. If you don’t recall the show, Jonny Quest was just about the perfect series ever created for ten-year-old boys (and a whole lot of girls!). It followed the adventures of the titular character, who is, not surprisingly, about ten or twelve years old, as he travels the world with his father, globally renowned scientist and inventor, Dr. Benton Quest. Along for the ride are Jonny’s friend Hadji (who can be read through a modern lens as an unfortunate stereotype, but in simpler, less-uptight times would’ve been just a damn cool kid to have as a buddy, what with his snake-charming powers and such), the obligatory yappy-dog Bandit for comic relief (which, admittedly, was never terribly funny, even when I was ten), and Dr. Quest’s assistant, driver, bodyguard, sidekick, and regular right-hand man, Race Bannon. (Modern-day po-mo ironists take note of the fact that there are no women in the series and speculate about the true nature of Race and Benton’s relationship, if you get my meaning. I suppose it’s possible they were lovers; I prefer to see them as brothers-in-arms who, in the words of Indiana Jones’ sidekick Short Round, have “no time for love.” The show is, after all, a ten-year-old boy’s vision of the world, as yet uncorrupted by such grown-up things as sexual chemistry.)
The title sequence for the show plays as a montage of greatest hits from previous episodes:
Yeah, that’s great stuff with the jazzy, brassy, jangly-guitary, mid-60s-style music and the whole Kennedy-era sense of derring-do and “science will conquer all” attitude. As you can see from the clip, Jonny Quest covered a lot of territory: fantasy (dinosaurs), horror (the mummy episode), high adventure (the jungle stuff), science fiction (the eyeball/spider robot — which always gave me a major case of The Willies — and the assorted ray-guns, lasers, and blasters), spy thriller, and just plain old two-fisted, rifle-shooting, manly-man action. I know there have been a couple of attempts to revive and update the show — one particularly oddball version in the mid-90s featured Jonny entering a CG virtual reality in every episode, as I recall — but none of them came close to the innocent, pulp-fiction fun of the original. This is one of the very few kiddie cartoons that I’d like to have on DVD…
Just in case anyone couldn’t be bothered to click that link in the previous entry, I thought I’d go ahead and post up the intro for one of my favorite childhood series, The Six Million Dollar Man. I haven’t seen the show in years, and I have half a hunch that it wouldn’t hold up to my adult scrutiny, but I think this opening is still insanely dramatic and exciting:
I love those animated “computer graphics.” My three Loyal Readers probably know what I’m going to say next: I still have my old Steve Austin doll. I’ve got his arch-enemy Maskatron, too, and the inflatable command base, “Bionic Mission Vehicle,” and the rocket ship that turns into a medical bay. I never did have the Bigfoot doll, though… I might have to go questing on eBay…
Evanier announced something interesting today: “Off and on… I’m going to link to videos of openings I liked for TV shows. In some cases, I didn’t like the show but I liked the opening.” This is an idea I’ve been toying with for quite a while, if for no other reason than to let me dig up YouTube clips of things I haven’t seen in a long, long time and wallow in a momentary glow of nostalgia for all the dreck that shaped me into the charming fellow I am today. Without further ado, here’s my first entry in this whole new category of blogging:
Tales of the Gold Monkey, which I mentioned in the previous entry, was another one-season-wonder of a television show that gouged a huge divot in my impressionable young brain. Curiously, it ran in the same 1982-83 television season as Voyagers! (back when network series still had discreet and contiguous seasons instead of only occasionally airing new episodes in between re-runs); there must’ve been something in the air that year that caused TV shows to lodge themselves so firmly in my memory. Hell, I still remember the actual time slots of the shows I loved: Voyagers! was on Sunday nights and Gold Monkey was Wednesdays. Yes, I did spend far too much time thinking about what was on the tube…
Be that as it may, Gold Monkey was a nifty show, a good old-fashioned pulp adventure set in the South Pacific of the 1930s. I think it failed largely because people compared it unfavorably to Raiders of the Lost Ark; both were set in the ’30s and featured an all-American leather-jacketed hero and dastardly Nazis, so of course one had to be a rip-off of the other. But I didn’t care about the similarities when I was a kid, and I’ve since decided that Gold Monkey was actually far more similar to the Bogart-Bacall classic To Have and Have Not than any of the Indiana Jones movies. Even in the ’80s, however, nobody bothered to watch the classics, so the rip-off accusation stuck, and by the start of the ’83-’84 season, Gold Monkey was only a memory. At least until somebody finally gets those DVDs into production!
While we wait for that boxed set of shiny silver discs, here’s the opening title sequence, featuring an appropriately jaunty theme song by uber-composer Mike Post. I miss opening title sequences…
Wow, here’s an announcement I never thought I’d read: the TV series Voyagers! will be released on DVD on July 17th.
What’s that? You say you’ve never heard of Voyagers!? Well, I’m not surprised. It lasted only a single season, but it made a huge impression on me. Aimed squarely at the 10-14 year old market, the show was about a handsome-but-lunkheaded time traveler who accidentally picks up a 10-year-old companion, then finds himself unable to return the kid to his own time. Not that the kid wants to go… you see, he’s a history buff and an orphan, so blazing through the past is far more appealing than growing up in a boring old foster home in 1982. And his knowledge of history comes in useful, because our grown-up Voyager lost his handy guidebook and doesn’t know crap about any of the events they keep finding themselves in the middle of.
It was all pretty silly and self-consciously educational in the way of early-80s kidvid, but I’m pretty sure this is one I’ll still enjoy. I’ve already earmarked my $49.98 for the set. Now, if only somebody would get to work on Tales of the Gold Monkey…
Here are the opening credits for Voyagers!, which should give you a taste of the show if you don’t remember it, or generate a nice nostalgic glow if you do:
