John Kenneth Muir's Blog, page 899

The Fungus Among Us: Cult TV’s Most Memorable Eukaryotes.

Mushrooms,
yeasts, and molds…oh my. 




Eukaryotic
life forms – fungi – are non-vascular
organisms that reproduce by means of spores.  Unlike bacteria, fungi always possess a
nucleus and are made of thin threads known as “hyphae,” or all together, in
networks, “mycelium.”




Typically
fungi are not motile (meaning capable of motion), but in cult-television
history that’s not always the case.   Additionally, many fungi are saprophytic, meaning that they release
digestive enzymes and then absorb the digested food.  Many fungi in the real world are also mutualists (lichens, for example), but
some (especially in genre television) are decidedly parasitic in nature.




Over
the decades, monstrous (and sometimes helpful…) fungi have appeared in many
popular science fiction programs.  Thus today,
I offer a list of some of the most memorable TV fungi, both friendly and hostile.






7.         Blake’s 7: “The Web” (January 30,
1978). In this early episode of Blake’s 7 by creator Terry Nation,
the Liberator is ensnared in space in an
organic, fungal web.  The web is a
tool of an immortal creature called Saymon (Richard Beale), a corporate life
form.  On the planet below the web,
Saymon has genetically engineered creatures called Decimas that Roj Blake (Gareth
Thomas) attempts to free from enslavement.  Meanwhile,
Saymon – one of the legendary Auron “Lost” -- desires the Liberator’s power
cells.  Unless he gets them, the Liberator
will be permanently ensnared in the gossamer filaments of the space fungus.









6.         Lost in Space : “Welcome Stranger”
(October 20, 1965.) In this sixth episode of Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space written
by Peter Packer, an astronaut from Earth named Jimmy Hapgood (Warren Oates) lands near the
Robinson encampment, unaware that the tiny fungal life-forms on his capsule are
evolving in the friendly atmosphere and rapidly becoming giant, tentacled monsters..  When he offers to take Penny and Will back with him on his shape, he has no idea that the area is overrun these frightening monsters.












5.         Space: 1999 : “The Last Sunset” and “Journey
to Where.”  In “The Last Sunset” by
Christopher Penfold, aliens from the planet Ariel gift Moonbase Alpha with a breathable lunar atmosphere.  Dr. Helena Russell
(Barbara Bain) leads a team to judge the possibility of reclaiming the surface
of the moon, but her Eagle crashes in a wind storm.  




While attempting to get word to Alpha, a
member of her exploratory team, controller Paul Morrow (Prentis Hancock) discovers mushrooms growing in the new atmosphere. 
He samples one, and soon turns psychotic, imagining the moon's surface as a future
Garden of Eden, made into a paradise by the mushrooms, by so-called “manna from
heaven.”  Eventually, Helena and her team
are rescued, and it is learned that the mushrooms actually possessed dangerous
hallucinogenic elements…

           



In the second season episode “Journey
to Where,” Helena falls ill from “viral pneumonia” after a time travel trip to
Earth in the year 1339.  Captured by
people of that era, Helena, Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) and pilot Alan Carter (Nick Tate)
are imprisoned in a cave, where Helen sees fungus growing on the cave walls.  She notes that “fungoids” are the basis for
the only drugs known to cure viral pneumonia. 
She asks Koenig to pick some off the wall to treat her, and creates herself a remedy.




Incidentally, this particular scene
between Koenig and Helena is repeated, almost note for note in the first
season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Arsenal of Freedom.”  Only there it took place in another cave, and between another
commanding officer and CMO: Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher.









4.         SGU: “Cloverdale.” (October 26, 2010). In this second season episode of
Stargate Universe , the crew of Destiny is menaced on a lush alien planet by a
dangerous fungus creature.  Matthew Scott
(Brian J. Smith) is infected by it, and the fungus begins to grow, out-of-control, on his arm.  As the fungus rapidly spreads towards Scott's trunk, Dr. Rush
(Robert Carlyle) suggests amputation (with bone saw, no less...), but reverses course when he learns the
fungus is already in Scott’s blood stream. 
While unconscious and infected by the alien fungus, Matthew imagines an elaborate fantasy in
which he returns to the picturesque home-town called “Cloverdale” and awaits
his wedding day with Chloe (Elyse Levesque).  Meanwhile,
walking plant creatures that resemble triffids could hold the key to reversing
Matthew’s rapidly-spreading infection.









3.         The X-Files: “Field Trip” (May 19,
1999).  In this sixth-season episode of
The X-Files by John Shiban and Vince Gilligan, F.B.I. agents Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny) visit my neck of the woods, North Carolina, to
investigate the death of two hikers in the woods.  They soon run afoul of a hungry, giant, subterranean mushroom
that begins to slowly absorb and digest them. 
During this lengthy process, Mulder and Scully both hallucinate that
they have returned home to their lives.  In Scully’s
case, she imagines Mulder’s death and wake. 
In his case, Mulder tracks a story of alien abduction.  The duo awake just in time, and with Skinner’s (Mitch Pileggi) help escape from the cave of the giant ravenous mushrooms…









2.         Primeval: Season 3. Episode 5 (April
25, 2009).  In this episode of the BBC
time incursion series, an anomaly opens up in a millionaire's apartment.  It leads to Earth's distant future, where an assistant soon inhales the spores of a giant fungus.  He returns to the presents and spreads the
spores to his heartless boss, Richard Bentley (William Scott-Mason), who begins to
transform into a terrifying fungus-man.  




Meanwhile, at the ARC (Anomaly Research Center) one of Christine Johnson’s (Belinda
Stewart-Wilson) men is also exposed to the fast-growing fungus, and evolves
into one of the mushroom monsters as well. Trapped in a lab with the rapidly-growing fungi, Connor Temple (Andrew-Lee
Potts) realizes that extreme cold holds the key to halting the spread of the avaricious fungus from the future.

           

Connor's discovery comes not a moment too
soon, as team leader Jenny Lewis (Lucy Brown) is imperiled by the Fungus Man, and exposed
to the toxic material…









1.         One Step Beyond : “The Sacred
Mushroom” (January 24, 1961).  This is
perhaps the strangest episode of the paranormal anthology One Step Beyond, and, in fact, one
of the strangest of all episodes in cult TV history.  Whereas most episodes are fictionalized accounts of paranormal events, this episode is a documentary and travelogue.  




Series director and narrator John Newland
hosts a trip to a remote village in Mexico to determine along with experts Dr.
Puharich, Dr. Barbara Brown, spiritual guru David Grey and Stanford professor
Jeffrey Smith, if a special mushroom with hallucinogenic properties (called “X”)
is capable of enhancing extra sensory perception in humans.  In one scene, we watch as the members of the team sample
peyote before our eyes.




Then, upon returning to America, Newland
himself also consumes the special mushroom in Dr. Puharich’s Palo Alto laboratory
and is tested for an increase in psychic power and ESP.   Although the late John Newland reported to me that he experienced flashbacks for months after sampling the mushroom, he never did feel any
kind of psychic awareness.  




Still, this
episode has become legend because it is likely the only time in prime time
history that a series host – and Golden
Age Hollywood star – tripped before our eyes on American network television.  




Thus John Newland went where Boris Karloff,
Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchock and Truman Bradley never did (at least publicly)…straight
into America’s burgeoning drug culture.

Collectible of the Week Update: Interplanetary Star Fortress (Sears; 1979)

Back
on November 30, 2011, I wrote here about one of my favorite StarWars knock-off toys, the fantastic “Interplanetary Star Fortress”
manufactured and sold exclusively by Sears, and made to fit Kenner Star
Wars figures, as well as Mego’s The Black Hole and Buck
Rogers figures of the 1970s.   The playset is a quasi-cylindrical
carrying-case that folds out to become an expansive asteroid surface and
landing pad.




My
own version of this disco-decade toy was missing several critical features,
including a shuttle pod and plastic gun turret that could stand atop the
cylinder.  My version was also missing
the carrying strap and the box.




Well,
via the wonders of E-Bay, I finally got my hands on a mint-in-box Sears Star
Fortress that features all the elements I had been missing.  I only had a few of the base installations
previously, but this version came with the “solar reactor building,” “headquarters,”
“personnel quarters,” “1 particle accelerator tank” and “1 hydrogen storage
tank.” 




Joel
and I actually got to fold the light cardboard "buildings" into shape, and connect
them together with tabs, which was fun.




This
knock-off is a much more interesting toy with the missing shuttle pod and
turret intact, as well as the previously missing base structures.  The shuttle pad actually has a door that
opens, and snaps shut, and is fully decorated inside with high-tech (for the
1970s) imagery and detail.




Yesterday,
Joel and I used the newly up-fitted Interplanetary Star Fortress to stage a
battle between Ben Tennyson and Ghost Freak (plus minions BenWolf and BenMummy). 
Not exactly the scenario I would have imagined at that age, but still a
hell of a lot of fun. 

Memory Bank: Vectrex (1982)

The first video game console wars are long behind us, now.  But thirty years ago -- way back in 1982 -- Milton Bradley produced a unique alternative to the Atari 2600 and Intellivision.  That alternative was called the Vectrex, a game console with a built-in "arcade-style" monitor which meant, in short, that you didn't have to connect it to your television antenna with a box.




The built-in monitor wasn't Vectrex's only distinction.  The "revolutionary" design featured "line graphics" for "laser sharp visual effects" rather than the standard pixels we associate with other game systems.  In other words, the games looked a great deal like the arcade version of Battlezone : Green lines against a deep black background.










Selling for about wo-hundred dollars at the time, the Vectrex came complete with a "panel controller" (rather than the traditional joystick) and  a consumer could also purchase peripherals including a light pen and a 3-D imager.  The latter looked a lot like an early 1990s-style virtual reality helmet.




A great number of games were released for Vectrex, including the popular MineStorm, which pitted the player (in a spaceship) against floating mines, magnetic mines, fireball mines and the like.  Other games included Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Berzerk, Cosmic Chasm, Pole Position, Starhawk, and CubeQuest.  I never had the Star Trek game, but it certainly looks awesome.  Your mission was to travel through the "nine sectors" of space and "seek out and destroy the Klingon mothership."




Vectrex barely survived the Great Video Game Crash of 1983, but the system was discontinued in 1984.  I remember owning one of these toys and, during my amateur movie-making high-school days, featuring the Vectrex as a background "space monitor" in one of my productions, called The Solaris Enigma .



The Vectrex?  It "stands alone."  Or it did...for awhile, anyway.

Collectible of the Week: Wizard of Oz Emerald City Playset (Mego; 1975)

In the year 1975, Mego acquired the license from MGM to create playsets and action figures from the classic fantasy movie The Wizard of Oz (1939).



Accordingly, Mego released an impressive and varied line of Oz figures including Dorothy (w/Toto), the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, Glinda, The Wicked Witch, and the Wizard.



Even a few munchkins, including the Mayor, were included in the roll-out.




In terms of playsets, Mego manufactured a witch's castle (which I've never seen, anywhere...), the mostly-movie-accurate Munchkinland and the piece de resistance, the Emerald City Playset.






This huge, 42-inch playset could open up to reveal various chambers in th city, and came complete with a throne chair, a Wizard's curtain, a removable/fold-able yellow brick road, and an 8-inch poseable Wizard figure.  



There was even a peep-hole in the door, where a sentinel could ask "who goes there?"  




On the interior, you could see the booth where the Wizard worked his magic, and one window in the main chamber overlooked the poppy field.




When I was a kid, The Wizard of Oz was a perennial, in terms of television reruns, and also had an unmatched reputation for scaring the little ones.  I'm still terrified thinking of those talking trees, or the flying monkeys.






I do own this playset and a few of the   Wizard of Oz figures, though neither is in great condition.  Dorothy can't quite stand-up anymore (no Judy Garfield jokes, please...), and the Scarecrow seems to have lost his hat, if not his brain.  Also, my Emerald City is missing all its equipment, my pretties.




This toy reminds me a lot of the Mego Star Trek U.S.S. Entertprise Action Playset from the same era.  It's made of hard laminated cardboard and vinyl, and isn't especially accurate in terms of detail.  But it's fun to play with, and I suppose that the appeal today is mostly one of nostalgia.  If you like this kind of Mego set, you're sure to love the Emerald City Playset.




Below is a commercial from Mego, announcing the Wizard of Oz toy collection.  It's a blast from the past.

Cloned from a Mutual Zygote: Darth Sardor

The Horror Lexicon #14: Through the Looking Glass

Mirror,
mirror on the wall...




Horror
movies frequently serve as a mirror to our world, a reflection of our deepest
fears as individuals and as a culture. Given this notion, it’s no surprise that
the mirror remains one of the most
important and oft-used symbols featured in the genre.  The looking glass, simply stated, reveals a
picture of us.




In
many instances throughout the horror genre, the mirror represents a peek into
another world, a dimension in view, but often beyond touch.  In films such as The Boogeyman (1980), the
mirror contains a terrible evil, a repository for a terrible childhood memory,
for instance.  In this case, we see
ourselves in the mirror and remember the pain we’ve suffered, the pain visible
to us, but not to others.




In
John
Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness (1987), the mirror is utilized to
represent the “other world,” one where evil dwells, our “opposite.”  This film is exceptionally clever, creating a
dynamic of God/anti-God, matter/anti-matter, and deploying the mirror as the visual
cue to that similar but opposing realm.




Poltergeist
III (1988)
treads similar territory, revealing that the world of the supernatural lives as malevolent reflections in all our mirrors.  The idea
is interesting, if not consistent with previous Poltergeist lore.




Mirrors
in horror movies are also used to say something about how we face fear.  






In films such as Candyman (1992) and Paranormal
Activity 3 (2011), characters face the mirror, and quote a name (like “Candyman”
or “Bloody Mary”) three times in a row to summon a force of darkness.  In these situations, people are facing
themselves and their own fears, and looking for some sign that our “belief” can
re-shape reality itself.  We look in the mirror at our own expressions, our terror growing...




There’s
an old saying that evil cannot gaze upon itself, and so a mirror has proven a
weapon against evil in horror films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street IV: The Dream
Master (1987).  




On a more frequent basis,
mirrors are utilized in vampire films such as Fright Night (1985), because
vampires don’t cast a reflection.  The
mirror shows only empty space where Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) or other “monsters” should
be.  In other words, a mirror reflects
life, but not the undead.






The
mirror has proven a potent symbolic and visual device in non-supernatural
horror films too.  In Brian De Palma’s Dressed
to Kill (1980), for instance, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine) hides a terrible
secret about himself, a fracturing of his very psyche.  Virtually each time his alternate identity,
Bobbi, is mentioned even in passing, De Palma cuts to a view of Elliott looking
in the mirror, an important visual cue of the psychiatrist’s schizophrenic
nature. 




Single
White Female
(1992) treads a similar path.  The film
involves a psychotic woman, Hedra (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who has never escaped
her need for her twin…a girl who died years earlier.  Now, Hedra attempts to complete herself by
making Allie (Bridget Fonda) a kind of twin-surrogate.  The film’s director, Barbet Schroeder
features numerous shots of Hedra and Allie together in a mirror, a visual attempt to
re-capture the film’s opening composition of Hedra and her twin sister.






On a very basic level, the mirror is also a useful device for generating jolts or jump scares.  A character runs into a room, slams the door...and something evil is reflected on the mirror hanging there.  We've seen this kind of surprise jolt in films such as Phantasm (1979) and even, to a degree, in Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), wherein we witness The Shape illuminated by lightning....in a mirror.  




One of my all-time favorite mirror shots appears in this film as well. The Shape lifts his knife, mirror behind him on both sides, and we see an endless lines of stalking Boogeymen in the frame.  This was a perfect visual representation of the film, which featured on more than one occasion "false" or "multiple" Michaels to confuse the authorities (and audiences).






The
mirror is featured in (but not limited to…) such horror as: Phantasm (1979),  The
Boogeyman (1980), Dressed to Kill (1980), The
Sender (1982), The Entity (1983), One
Dark Night (1983), The Initiation (1984), Fright
Night (1985), Cassandra (1986), Evil
Dead 2 (1987), Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II
(1987), A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (1987), J ohn
Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness (1987), Halloween IV (1988),  Night of the Demons (1988), A
Nightmare on Elm Street IV: The Dream Master (1988), Poltergeist
III (1988), The Church (1989), Single White Female (1992),
Candyman (1992), Paranormal Activity 3 (2011), Dark
Shadows (2012).

Cult Movie Review: Dark Shadows (2012)

The
feature film remake of Dark Shadows has arrived in theaters and Tim Burton fans are faced with his least-satisfying genre comedy since Mars Attacks ( 1996).




While
I don’t feel that Dark Shadows is a Planet of the Apes (2001)-sized creative
debacle, it’s probably a close call.  This is one
wildly uneven, incredibly incoherent movie. 
Those who will feel most abused by Burton’s Dark Shadows re-imagination
are likely the long-term fans of the afternoon soap opera, which ran on TV from
1966 – 1971.  




And
that’s because this is a jokey and campy update of the serious Gothic material
presented there.  The themes, tropes and
situations of the much-cherished series have been spun to support an entirely
Burton-esque fish-out-of-water comedy, but one lacking the heart and
emotionality of Big Fish (2002) or Edward Scissorhands (1992).  Barnabas -- the great Byronic vampire who came before Anne Rice’s Lestat, Forever Knight’s Nick Knight, Joss
Whedon’s Angel and Stephanie Meyers’ Edward Cullen – is now a confused
misfit tilting at lava lamps and other fads of the 1970s.




And
I’m afraid that’s the good news...




Dark
Shadows
recounts the tragic life of noble Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp).  Born in Liverpool, he traveled to America
with his family in the late 18th century and watched as his father
created a fishing and cannery empire. 
Unfortunately, as he became a man, Collins caught the eye of a lustful family
servant, Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). 
Barnabas rejected her romantic 

advances, and she cursed him for it. 




First,
Angelique killed the love of his life, Josette (Bella Heathcote), and then she
used black magic to turn Barnabas into a vampire.  Angelique then turned the ungrateful people
of Collinsport against him, and Barnabas was buried in the woods…for eternity.




But
in the year 1972, Barnabas is freed from captivity, and sets out to restore his
family business and reputation, and find love in the person of young Victoria
Winters (Heathcote).  The bad news is
that Angelique is still nearby, and still carrying a torch for Barnabas…literally.




Tim
Burton’s Dark Shadows works best – for
a short while, anyway -- as a comedy of manners in which a 200-year old
vampire struggles to understand life and etiquette in the year 1972.  He mistakes McDonalds for Mephistopheles, rock
star Alice Cooper for the world’s “ugliest woman,” and judges sexy women by the
size and shape of their “birthing” hips.  He doesn’t know about cars, roads, television,
female doctors, psychiatry, or even Erich Segal’s Love Story (1970). 




While
John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972) plays at a local theater, Barnabas hopes to
be delivered from his eternal curse of vampirism.  But what he really suffers from is permanent
befuddlement at a world that has passed him by.




I
can’t lie about this fact: some of this fish-out-of-water material is quite funny.
The film’s jokes work more often than not, especially in Depp’s capable,
deadpan hands.  One exceptionally funny
bit involves Barnabas’s introduction to the Collins family at the breakfast
table, wherein he comments on how, specifically, he knows the family silver
utensils have been replaced.  Another
funny – if decidedly low-brow –
moment involves Barnabas’s description of “balls” (meaning a celebratory gathering,
not testicles), and the ensuing double-entendres and innuendo on the topic.




Burton
also does a tremendous amount of heavy lifting – probably a little too much -- with the abundant 1970s era soundtrack,
which is utilized as biting contrast to Collins’s serious but antiquarian proclamations
of purpose and nobility. 




Accordingly,
before the movie is over, we are treated to Superfly, My
First, My Last, My Everything by Barry White, and the Carpenters’ Top of the World. These songs work
splendidly in context of the film’s fish-out-of-water humor, and so for a while
Dark
Shadows is actually pretty damn entertaining.  The first half-hour or forty-five minutes
rollicks along with good humor, grace, and Burton’s trademark visual ingenuity.




Yet
my sense of conflict and ambivalence about the film emerges from the
inescapable fact that the sturdy premise is played entirely for laughs. In no
sense is the subject matter respected or vetted in a faithful manner.  This Barnabas is not a tortured, tragic,
Byronic figure, and his relations with the Collins family are mined for humor
but not pathos or even intrigue.  The
film’s sense of reality is thus paper thin and easily crumpled.




The
upshot of this lampoon-style approach is that by Dark Shadow’s third act
we’ve lost all sense of concern about this universe, and so don’t really care at
all what becomes of the characters. 
Spectacular special effects inform the film’s fiery finale -- with Angelique starting to crack and crumble
like a porcelain doll -- but you can’t move yourself to care about who wins
or who loses the conflict.




Long
story short: Burton can’t ask us to laugh at Barnabas’s reality for most of the
film, and then suddenly attempt to turn Dark Shadows into a serious and
consequential battle between good and evil. 
For one thing, the movie never quite squares the fact that Barnabas is
indeed the protagonist, but that he wantonly murders innocent people too.  Thus the movie never decides what Barnabas
should be as a character, except a non-stop joke-producing machine.  It reminds me of the 1998 Godzilla .   There, no effort was made to determine whether
we should love the monster, consider him just an animal, or consider him an
evil terror.   Similarly, in Dark
Shadows we are never sure to how to categorize Barnabas.  He’s funny and likable, but he’s also weird
and murderous.  We might want him to find
love and happiness, but he should also be held accountable for his blood shed.




What
can Dark
Shadows fans hold onto here? 




Since
this is a Burton film, many of the visuals dazzle.   That’s a claim you can’t really make of the
original TV soap opera, which was constrained by low budgets and cardboard interior
sets.  The prologue of Burton’s film is
breath-taking in terms of landscape, camera movement and special effects.  I’ll go out on a limb and even state that the
world of Dark Shadows – from the
town of Collinsport to the Collinswood Estate – has never appeared in such
epic or impressive terms.  The sweeping,
majestic prologue, which is Gothic Extreme (literally, with a double cliff
diving stunt…), is very impressive. 




By
the same token, Burton’s Dark Shadows’ benefits from the fact
that it knows the full “story” of Barnabas from beginning to end. The soap
opera was often painfully slow, and moved along in fits and starts.  As I recall, Barnabas did not even appear
until sometime early into the run.  And
Angelique appeared even later than that. 
This Dark Shadows gets to dramatize the whole epic, century-spanning
story, and without daily soap opera distractions.  And yet – again
– it does so entirely with tongue-in-cheek, and with little coherence or point.




Watching
Dark
Shadows I felt firmly that it was more a Burton fantasy than a
legitimate adaptation of Dan Curtis’s beloved series.  Here, we get an allusion to Martin Landau’s
Bela Lugosi (from Ed Wood ) in Barnabas’s hypnosis-by-hand.  We also get the outsider attempting to build
a family for himself while facing the scorn of the community ( Edward
Scissorhands ).  We get the tragic
back story of a child, like we saw in Sleepy Hollow (1999).  And like Beetlejuice , the supernatural world
is portrayed here as half-crazed and half-frightening. 




But
the script is hopelessly incoherent, with long periods of narrative inertia and
dullness. Victoria Winters – the love of
Barnabas’s life – disappears from the action for long stretches of the film
with no explanation.  And the opening and
closing narrations are trite, meaningless book-end bromides about “blood” being
thicker than water.  Yet the ending quote
shows no development and no knowledge learned since the opening quote.  Everything between these book ends is just
episodic hemming and hawing.




Sure,
Burton can forge lyrical, unforgettable imagery.  Here, that imagery includes the ghost of
Josette clinging to a luminescent chandelier, or a death-defying plunge from
the Sleepy
Hollow -esque Widow’s Hill.  And I
love the idea of the brittle Angelique cracking like a porcelain doll, hollowed
out inside because of her centuries of consuming hatred.  In almost rapturous moments such as these,
Burton summons meaningful visuals from the depths of his twisted imagination.  But there’s no compelling hook on which to
hang them, and so they are interesting momentarily but without larger resonance
in the body of the film.




If
you’re a fan of Dark Shadows , I recommend you stay away from this remake and
continue to enjoy the series for what it was.  And if you’re a devoted fan of Tim Burton, you
may get a kick out of the film’s first half, if not much more




Just
try to imagine Burton and Depp – to quote
Elizabeth Collins (Michelle Pfeiffer) -- “on a better day.”

Movie Trailer: Dark Shadows (2012)

Theme Song of the Week: Captain Nice (1967)

Cult-TV Theme Watch: Games

In
the early Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Hide and Q,” the
omnipotent Q (John De Lancie) suggested that “nothing reveals humanity so well as the games it plays.”  He later modifies the quote to suggest that “how” we play may be even more important
than what we play.




In
cult television history, there have been a lot of games, and thus much
revealing of humanity. 




Star
Trek (1966 –
1969) introduced the world to 3-D chess, for instance.  In the very first episode featuring Captain
Kirk (William Shatner), “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” we see Kirk and Spock
(Leonard Nimoy) locked in a chess game, with Spock showing “irritation” at Kirk’s
impulsive, unpredictable playing.  If you
think about it, this scene sets up much of the core character dynamic of the
series. 
Is it better to play chess emotionally, impulsively, riskily?  Or coolly, logically and analytically? 




Not
coincidentally, those are the very qualities these two heroes possess.  Because they are allies, Kirk and Spock
combine their capacities – at war in chess
– to better their universe in life.  I
always wondered: what if Spock and Kirk were pitted against each other as
enemies in battle?  Who would win that “chess”
match?  I know that Shatner actually
proposed that idea for Star Trek VI , but it didn’t go
anywhere.  Perhaps if the Mirror Universe
had been involved…




Chess,
also of the 3-D variety, appeared in Gerry Anderson’s UFO (1970) in the pilots’
chamber on moonbase and in the Filmation series Ark II (1976).  Non-3-D chess
appeared in episodes of the same creator’s Space: 1999 (1975-1977).  In “Dragon’s Domain,” for instance, Koenig
(Martin Landau) and David Kano (Clifton Jones) play a game of chess in Main
Mission, during the wee hours of the morning. 
Interestingly, Kano possesses something of Spock’s “computer-like” mind,
and clearly boasts an affinity for logic.  
By comparison, Koenig is a bit less rakish and impulsive than Kirk is on
Star
Trek , though he did, in one episode (“Missing Link”) note that it was
more important to “feel” than to “think.” 
 




Once more, we’re seeing a dynamic
play out not just involving a game, but the personalities behind the game.




In
some series, as in the aforementioned “Hide and Q,” aliens use a game to better
understand humanity. In Deep Space Nine’s early “Move Along
Home,” the Wadi -- the first “official”
alien delegation to visit the Alpha Quadrant from the Gamma Quadrant --
introduces the station crew to a game in which they actually become board
pieces in a three dimension game “reality.” 
The game is baffling, and the episode is not particularly well-remembered
today. Still, the idea of a game as a first contact tactic is intriguing to
me.  If we play an alien game, we learn
about their idea of fun, rules, strategy and gamesmanship.  And the aliens learn how we adapt and
interpret their symbols and world view.




In
Star
Trek: The Next Generation’s “The Game,” a Ktarian woman, Etana Jol
(Katherine Moffat) uses a game with…physical
side-effects (*ahem*) to seduce the crew of the Enterprise and assume control
of the ship.  Again, I don’t think this
is a very popular episode of The Next Generation, but I rather like it, in part
because it shows the crew’s imperfections. 
Picard, Crusher, Riker and others all get “hooked” on the game, and
there’s something very human about that. 
We can’t all be perfect every hour of every day, and I liked the idea of
a stealth attack on the ship that the crew didn’t puzzle out instantly.




In
much more generic terms, games of chance like Pyramid ( Battlestar Galactica ),
ten and eleven ( Buck Rogers in the 25th Century : “Vegas in Space”)
and Dabo and darts on Deep Space Nine reveal how the
characters interact with others in off-duty capacities. We know Starbuck is an
incurable gambler, for instance, and that reveals something about his/her
nature.  Miles and Dr. Bashir bond over darts,
a friendly but fierce competition, and Buck Rogers is the only one in the 25th
century who sees through the computerized games of chance on the satellite of
Sinoloa.  In all these circumstances we understand that games are part of the human equation.