Day: May 14, 1973

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Classic Season 1 Tomorrow People

Slaves Of Jedikiah – Part 3

Tomorrow PeopleCarol and John discover that something has happened to their base: TIM is offline, which means that their longer-distance ability to “jaunt”, or teleport, is not available. When they arrive at their base, they discover that Jedikiah and his minions lie in wait for them; an attempt to jaunt to safety leaves them trapped in hyperspace. Now only Kenny remains to fend off the invasion of the Tomorrow People’s base.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Brian Finch and Roger Price
directed by Paul Bernard
music by Dudley Simpson

Tomorrow PeopleCast: Sammie Winmill (Carol), Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen), Stephen Salmon (Kenny), Francis de Wolff (Jedikiah), Michael Standing (Ginge), Derek Crewe (Lefty), Philip Gilbert (TIM), Robert Bridges (Cyclops)

Notes: It is revealed that the Tomorrow People have jaunted to other planets and met non-human forms of life, none of which are meant to visit Earth because it is a “closed” planet.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Original Series 1 Survivors

Gone To The Angels

Survivors (1970s series)Greg finally breaks down and tries to convince Abby that not only is her search for her son unlikely to produce the result she wants, but it’s preventing her from moving on to her role as a natural leader to rebuild society. But she refuses to give up the search, which takes her back to Peter’s school – where there are both surprising signs of life and signs that things have gotten worse for anyone who stayed behind. Greg and Jenny meet a pair of children who are desperately trying to scrape by, but they’ve met another boy – possibly from Peter’s nearby school – and talk about other children who have “gone to the angels.” Reunited with Abby, they try to find where any survivors from the school could have gone, but instead they discover an unnerved man who’s seen evidence that Arthur Wormley’s movement is gaining momentum.

written by Jack Ronder
directed by Gerald Blake
music by Anthony Isaac

Cast: Carolyn Seymour (Abby Grant), Ian McCulloch (Greg Preston), Lucy Fleming (Jenny Richards), Peter Miles (Lincoln), Frederick Hall (Jack), Kenneth Caswell (Robert), Nickolas Grace (Matthew), Stephen Dudley (John), Tanya Ronder (Lizzie)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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KTMA Season Mystery Science Theater 3000

Experiment K19: Hangar 18

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The KTMA SeasonMST3K Story: The movie starts after an extremely brief introduction. When Joel tries to work out the trajectory of an incoming meteor shower, Crow just acts like a petulant child until an aggravated Joel makes him “get the belt”. For his calculations, Joel needs to access some of Crow’s memory, so the crew looks over his memory banks and dumps useless information like the King Family Specials, Mario Andretti STP commercials and tons of infomercials. (Crow apparently fell asleep watching KTMA late one night.) Finally having gained access, Joel shows Crow’s first memory. In the flashback it’s shown that CROW stands for “Cybernetic Remotely Operated Woman”. Crow takes it far too seriously until Joel admits it was all a needlessly complicated practical joke. After the movie, Joel is pleased to announce that the Mystery Science Theater Fan Club has almost 1,000 members. Servo announces that the thousandth member will win a Demon Dog, his or her name mentioned on the air and self satisfaction.

Hangar 18 Story: While on an otherwise routine satellite launching mission, three astronauts encounter a flying saucer. Accidental contact leads to the death of one of the astronauts and to the saucer crash-landing on Earth. NASA recovers the alien craft for study and stows it in a secret location: Hangar 18. Meanwhile, one of the President’s aides proceeds with a cover-up of the whole situation, hoping that it can be kept quiet until after the upcoming election. When the two surviving pilots, Steve Bancroft and Lew Price, escape their captivity, an all-out manhunt begins. After Price is killed, Bancroft is able to make it to Hangar 18 where he finally sees and boards the alien spacecraft. An attempt to destroy the space ship and everyone involved by crashing a plane into Hangar 18 is thwarted when the alien ship’s hull proves invulnerable to the massive explosion. Bancroft and most of the NASA scientists survive and all is revealed.

MST3K segments written by Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Josh Weinstein, Jim Mallon & Kevin Murphy (and most likely additional writing by Brian Funk)
MST3K segments director unknown
Hangar 18 written by Thomas C. Chapman (as Tom Chapman), James L. Conway, Steven Thornley & Stephen Lord
Hangar 18 directed by James L. Conway
Hangar 18 music by John Cacavas

MST3K Guest Cast: none.

Hangar 18 Cast: Darren McGavin (Harry Forbes), Robert Vaughn (Gordon Cain), Gary Collins (Steve Bancroft), James Hampton (Lew Price), Philip Abbott (Frank Morrison), Pamela Bellwood (Sarah Michaels), Tom Hallick (Phil Cameron), Steven Keats (Paul Bannister), Cliff Osmond (Sheriff Barlow), Joseph Campanella (Frank Lafferty), William Schallert (Professor Mills)

LogBook entry by Philip R. Frey

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Season 03 Star Trek The Next Generation

Sarek

Star Trek: The Next GenerationStardate 43917.4: Famed Vulcan Ambassador Sarek, father of Spock, beams aboard the Enterprise to be transported to his final diplomatic duty. But he is suffering the initial symptoms of a mind-deteriorating Vulcan disease and his Vulcan telepathic skills inadvertantly project violent, irrational impulses in the crew’s minds. Picard decides to risk a mind-meld to stabilize Sarek for the negotiations, but the captain risks his own sanity.

Order the DVDstelevision story and teleplay by Peter S. Beagle
from an unpublished story by Marc Cushman & Jake Jacobs
directed by Les Landau
music by Dennis McCarthy

Guest Cast: Mark Lenard (Ambassador Sarek), Joanna Miles (Perrin), William Denis (Kiv Mendrossen), Rocco Sisto (Sakkath), Colm Meaney (Chief O’Brien), John H. Francis (Science Crewman)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Series TV Movie Doctor Who

Doctor Who (1996 TV Movie)

Doctor WhoBefore he is executed by the Daleks for crimes against them, the Master asks that his remains be given to the Doctor for transport to Gallifrey. En route in the Doctor’s TARDIS, the Master’s remains break free of their container, still pulsating with malevolent life. The Master sabotages the TARDIS, forcing an emergency landing in San Francisco on December 30, 1999. The moment he steps out of the TARDIS, the Doctor is caught in the middle of a gang shooting. One young survivor of the shootout, Chang Lee, calls an ambulance for the Doctor, unwittingly providing an escape for the Master as well. Cardiologist Grace Holloway ignores the X-rays which show the Doctor’s two hearts and tries to operate on him. The operation and the anasthetics end the Doctor’s seventh life. The Doctor regenerates in the morgue as the Master takes over the body of a paramedic. Grace resigns after losing her patient, but the newly reborn Doctor, suffering from amnesia, escapes the hospital and follows her home. After convincing Grace of his alien nature and regaining his memory, the Doctor discovers that his future regenerations are the Master’s targets. Aided by Chang Lee and a hypnotized Grace, the Master captures the Doctor and tries to use the TARDIS’ Eye of Harmony to transfer the Doctor’s life energy into the paramedic’s decaying body, but opening the Eye on Earth will destroy the planet at midnight on December 31. When Chang Lee rebels against the Master’s dominance, the Master kills him and releases Grace to help him. Grace escapes and sets the TARDIS into motion, freeing Earth from danger. The Master’s scheme fails, but he kills Grace after she releases the Doctor. The Master falls into the Eye of Harmony and vanishes from existence, while the TARDIS restores Grace and Chang Lee to full health. The Doctor brings his passengers back to Earth just after the dawn of the year 2000. Grace turns down the Doctor’s offer to accompany him on his travels, and the Doctor departs in the TARDIS.

written by Matthew Jacobs
directed by Geoffrey Sax
music by John Debney, John Sponsler and Louis Febre

Doctor WhoCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Eric Roberts (The Master), Daphne Ashbrook (Dr. Grace Halloway), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Yee Jee Tso (Chang Lee), John Novak (Salinger), Michael David Simms (Dr. Swift), Eliza Roberts (Miranda), Gordon Tipple (The Old Master), Dave Hurtubise (Professor Wagg), Jeremy Badick (Gareth), Dolores Drake (Curtis), Catherine Lough (Wheeler), William Sasso (Pete), Joel Wirkkunen (Ted), Mi-Jung Lee (TV Anchor), Joanna Piros (TV Anchor), Bill Croft (Cop), Ron James (Motorbike Cop/Driver), Dee Jay Jackson (Security Guy), Darryl Avon (Gangster), Byron Lawson (Gangster), Paul Wu (Gangster), Johnny Mam (Gangster), Michael Ching (Chang Lee’s Friend), Dean Choe (Chang Lee’s Friend), Danny Groesclose (Driver)

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Season 03 Star Trek Voyager

Worst Case Scenario

Star Trek: VoyagerStardate 50953.4: Chakotay startles B’Elanna by recruiting her for a Maquis mutiny, and then proceeds to carry it out. Things get even stranger when Seska turns up as one of the mutineers. Suddenly Paris walks into the scene, revealing the fact that Torres is playing a holo-novel. The experience was designed by Tuvok as a training exercise shortly after the joining of the two crews when the security officer felt that a mutiny was a real possibility. The fresh literary material is so intriguing to the crew that many of them begin surreptitiously playing the program and Janeway instructs Tuvok to write an ending and make it more than a training exercise. But Seska had discovered the program before she defected to the Kazon and she rewrote the subroutines to take her revenge on Tuvok for having betrayed the Maquis back when they were still in the Alpha Quadrant.

Order the DVDswritten by Kenneth Biller
directed by Alex Singer
music by Jay Chattaway

Guest Cast: Martha Hackett (Seska), Majel Barrett (Computer Voice)

LogBook entry by Paul Campbell

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Season 6 Xena: Warrior Princess

Many Happy Returns

Xena: Warrior PrincessXena and Gabrielle are on a mission to deliver the helmet of Hermes to Thebes, when they come across zealots about to sacrifice a young woman. They fight the zealots, but unfortunately the rope that is linked to the chute the woman is laying on has come free from the base. She is sent over the cliff to the sea below. Xena leaps over the cliff after her, and using the helmet, she catches the girl and flies her to safety. The young woman believes that a god has just saved her and thanks Xena. When the warrior explains that she isn’t a god, the girl is angry that Xena ruined her sacrifice. The warrior and the bard are surprised by her reaction. Gabrielle thinks that maybe the way to get through to Genia is to introduce her to Aphrodite.

Order the DVDswritten by Liz Friedman and Vanessa Place
directed by Mark Beesley
music by Joseph LoDuca

Guest Cast: Alexandra Tydings (Aphrodite), Katie Stuart (Genia), Hori Ahipene (Ferragus), Taungaroa Emile (Frankus), Lathan Gaines (Zarat), Ross Duncan (Lagot)

LogBook entry by Mary Terrell

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Enterprise Season 02 Star Trek

First Flight

Star Trek: EnterpriseA call from Admiral Forrest leaves Archer distraught – his old friend, A.G. Robinson, the first human to break the warp 2 barrier, has died in a mountain-climbing accident. Robinson’s first test flight ended in disaster, as his attempts to pass warp 2 result in the destruction of the NX-Alpha at Jupiter – and a narrow escape for its pilot. After the near-disastrous test flight, the NX program was nearly canned, with the Vulcans advising that Starfleet slow down its space program, until Archer and Robinson – with the help of a bright young engineer named “Trip” Tucker – decided to launch a second and entirely unauthorized test flight. The flight was a success in terms of proving stable spaceflight faster than warp 2, but it would propel one of its two pilots into a career as Starfleet’s first starship captain…and would see the other leave the fleet altogether.

Order DVDswritten by John Shiban & Chris Black
directed by LeVar Burton
music by Paul Baillargeon

Guest Cast: Keith Carradine (Robinson), Michael Canavan (Vulcan), Vaughn Armstrong (Forrest), Victor Bevine (Flight Controller), Brigid Brannagh (Ruby), John B. Moody (Security Officer)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Enterprise Season 02 Star Trek

Bounty

Star Trek: EnterpriseThe Enterprise makes first contact with the Tellarites, a race that T’Pol has occasionally mentioned as a confrontational one. The meeting with Tellarite Captain Skalaar seems pleasant enough at first, until he stuns Trip and abducts Captain Archer. Skalaar is a bounty hunter, commissioned by the Klingons to bring Archer back to their homeworld to face punishment for escaping his life imprisonment on Rura Penthe. But when the Klingon captain dispatched to collect Archer begins double-crossing Skalaar, Archer sees an opportunity to convince his captor that they’re on the same side. Meanwhile, T’Pol isn’t commanding a mission to rescue the captain; she’s on an entirely different hunt as a recent planetary visit has exposed her to a microbe that prematurely triggers her Vulcan mating cycle.

Order DVDsDownload this episode via Amazon's Unboxteleplay by Hans Tobeason and Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong
story by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
directed by Roxann Dawson
music by Jay Chattaway

Guest Cast: Jordan Lund (Skalaar), Michael Garvey (Captain Goroth), Ed O’Ross (Gaavrin), Robert O’Reilly (Kago-Darr)

Notes: Robert O’Reilly is a Trek mainstay, having played the role of Gowron, former leader of the Klingon Empire, from the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation through the final season of Deep Space Nine. He had also appeared in the Next Generation episode Manhunt in the second season, before taking on Gowron.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Doctor Who New Series Season 01

Father’s Day

Doctor WhoRose persuades the Doctor to take her back to 1987 to witness her father’s death; disturbed by stories that her father died alone, she wants to be with him, even if he doesn’t know who she is. But when the time comes, she’s paralyzed with emotion, and asks the Doctor to take her back again – only now, not only does she only have one more shot at being with her father when he dies, she has to avoid being seen by the versions of herself and the Doctor from mere moments ago. But instead of comforting her father as he dies, this time Rose leaps out and pulls him out of the ray of an oncoming car, saving his life and completely changing the timeline. The changes in time ripple forward, turning the TARDIS into nothing more than an empty Police Box and gradually decimating the population in the surrounding area. Enormous black dragon-like creatures – reapers – appear, consuming people one by one, beginning with the oldest they can find. The Doctor races to the church where Rose’s feuding parents were attending a friend’s wedding, where Rose’s father was supposed to have died, and hustles everyone inside, hoping the old church will be at least a temporary safe haven. Outside the church’s doors, the reapers destroy everything, attempting to rectify the divergent timeline that Rose has created. Only one reminder of the outside world remains – the car that should have hit Rose’s father still circles the church at high speed, its driver still reacting to an unseen obstacle, an obvious clue as to what must happen to set time right.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Paul Cornell
directed by Joe Ahearne
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler), Shaun Dingwall (Pete Tyler), Robert Barton (Registrar), Julia Joyce (young Rose), Christopher Llewellyn (Stuart), Frank Rozelaar-Green (Sonny), Natalie Jones (Sarah), Eirlys Bellin (Bev), Rhian James (Suzie), Casey Dyer (young Mickey)

Reviews by Philip R. Frey & Earl Green
LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 06

The Doctor’s Wife

Doctor WhoA telepathic distress call-in-a-box – a technology used only by the Time Lords – tracks down the Doctor’s TARDIS in deep space. Eager to find out if the sender of the distress call is still alive, the Doctor follows the call to its point of origin: an asteroid that exists outside the boundaries of the universe in its own “bubble universe”. But upon making the trip, the TARDIS’ energy – and, according to the Doctor, its soul – is drained, leaving the ship immobile. A very strange couple of humanoids, with a green-eyed Ood servant they refer to as “Nephew”, occupy the living asteroid, while a woman named Idris exhibits wildly unusual behavior near the Doctor. The Doctor sends Amy and Rory back to the TARDIS for their own safety, and soon enough discovers that he’s walked into a trap: the couple inhabiting the asteroid have several Time Lord distress call boxes stowed away, which they’ve used to lure many Gallifreyans to their deaths. The Doctor also finds that Idris’ body is inhabited by another life form: his own TARDIS. The mind of the living asteroid is taking her place as the controlling force in his TARDIS, while the timeship’s actual living essence is trapped in a human body never meant to hold it. Now his companions are trapped in the TARDIS with a malevolent entity, and time is running out to return the TARDIS’ own energy to it.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Neil Gaiman
directed by Richard Clark
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory), Suranne Jones (Idris), Michael Sheen (voice of House), Paul Kasey (Nephew), Adrian Schiller (Uncle), Elizabeth Berrington (Auntie)

The TARDISNotes: The Time Lord telepathic distress call boxes haven’t been seen since the Doctor himself summoned the Time Lords with one in 1969’s The War Games. This is the first new series episode to show areas of the TARDIS other than the console room or the wardrobe glimpsed in The Christmas Invasion. The “junk TARDIS” console, like the Abzorbaloff before it, was designed by a young Blue Peter competition winner. The Doctor’s Wife was a title that the late producer John Nathan-Turner kept poster on a bulletin board in the Doctor Who production office in the 1980s, credited to writer Robert Holmes. There was never any such story in the planning: it was a ploy to try to discover the identity of a mole in the production office who was leaking advance information to fanzines. The Doctor’s Wife won the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, Hugo Award in 2012, beating out two other episodes from this season (The Girl Who Waited and A Good Man Goes To War).

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green