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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 12, 2020 7:53:14 GMT -5
Yeah, I know Far Out Space Nuts was a Krofft show without even having to look it up. There were also quite a few live-action Saturday morning shows that were neither Krofft nor Filmation productions - which often had a more serious tone and didn't have a fantasy, SF or superhero premise. Two that I recall are Westwind: Yep, that's what Britt Reid did after he retired from Green Horneting. Seriously, though, when I was a kid I thought it would be so cool to be in a family that lived on a yacht and sailed around the South Pacific having cool adventures. And Run, Joe, Run, which is basically The Fugitive but starring a dog accused of a crime he didn't commit: ...I know I watched a few of those, but I don't remember any specifics about it. I remember Run Joe, Run, though not specific episodes. We generally skipped it because it was kind of dull. The premise is pretty weak; a fugitive dog? It made no sense. There was also the imported UK show, Here Come the Double Deckers, about a gang of kids with a clubhouse in a derelict double-decker bus, in a junkyard. It was a mix of music, comedy and light adventure and one episode featured a dream of Alice in Wonderland, with a young Jane Seymour as a dancer. I do vaguely recall an episode with some supposed aliens, who had a hovercraft. One of the kids was Peter Firth, who, as an adult, appeared in Hunt for Red October (the murdered political officer) and starred in the tv series Spooks (MI-5, in the US). There were also a few attempts at variety shows, like the Hudson Brother's Razzle Dazzle Show, and the Harlem Globetrotters had a live one. There was something with competitions, that included trying to walk across a pool in inflated floats. The Curiosity Shop was a mixture of live action, puppetry and animation and it debuted Schoolhouse Rock. Uncle Croc's Bloc also mixed live action (Charles Nelson Riley as Uncle Croc, a kids' show host.) and animation segments (the cartoons he showed) and The Hardy Boys had a live segment (as did Fat Albert, with Bill Cosby doing intros and outros). There was also the CBS Children's Film Festival, which showed live action films from around the world (though a lot from Canada). ABC later had a Saturday version of the After-School specials, with various films and literary adaptations (I recall Ransom of Red Chief, with Jack Elam, and The Gold Bug). |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Sept 12, 2020 10:36:19 GMT -5
Yeah, I remember the Children's Film Festival; I watched a few of those, but none of them stick in my mind as very memorable. Usually, though, by the time that started, my mom usually got pretty annoyed with me for sitting in front of the TV set for 4-5 hours (I often got up at 7 on Saturdays...) and made me turn it off and find something else to do.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2020 11:15:18 GMT -5
This is the most fascinating discussion about POTA ever.  (No problem, by the way, I am a huge advocate of thread drift - and always have been) |
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 12, 2020 14:42:24 GMT -5
I would love to see that The Curiosity Shop show again! I've mostly been the only one who I've ever known to remember it. It was around the same time as Double Deckers and I think Chuck Jones had something to do with it. I'd like to see the PotA cartoon sometime as an adult, I used to see it more in passing though I would watch the Star Trek one. I had one '70s Marvel PotA comic but all I remember was it had statues of apes (The Lawgiver?). I wondered if there was a connection between the cartoon show and the comics? Heck, anything with an Ape riding a horse and carrying a rifle can't be all that bad.  Did you know about that Bigfoot And Wild Boy tv series @taxidriver1980? I thought you might like it, I saw at least one complete episode of it on youtube. It had a semi-Bionic Man effect for when when Bigfoot would jump. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2020 14:54:52 GMT -5
No, that’s new to me, but I shall certainly Google it.  |
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 12, 2020 18:18:01 GMT -5
Well to get back to your original thrust, I think you can look on Galen and Zaius as ancestors of Cornelius & Zira and Dr Zaius. Zaius' name could have easily been handed down through the centuries. Realistically, the tv was intended to be it's own thing; but, there was enough there if you were a fan of the movies. The films had been decreasing in budget and box office (though, if you ask me, it was cause and effect); so, a tv series was the logical next step, as the reshowings of the films led to the merchandise craze. There was a definite and loyal audience there, which might support a lower budget tv series, if not a film series. The tv series assumes you haven't seen the films; but, if you have, there are moments you will catch and I think that is probably why they set it in a different time period. There is also the practical aspect of an early time period allowing humans to be capable of speech, so Burke & Virdon could interact with humans, as well as ape characters and they wouldn't need as a big a make-up budget, as they wouldn't constantly need apes for them to talk to.
They edited the episodes together into films, to be sold in syndication, since they didn't have enough episodes for stripping (broadcasting M-F, in the same time slot). They featured Roddy McDowell in older age make-up, as Galen, introducing the film, as memories, and a conclusion reflecting on things. In it, Galen said that Burke and Virdon found another computer, in another city and found a way to leave. The films were:
Back to the POTA-made up of "Escape From Tomorrow" and "The Trap."
Forgotten City of the POTA-"Gladiators" and "Legacy."
Treachery and Greed on the POTA-"Horse Race: and "The Tyrant."
Life, Liberty and Pursuit on the POTA-"The Surgeon" and "The Interrogation."
Farewell to the POTA-"Tomorrow's Tide" and "Up Above the World So High."
There were also tie-in novels, which more or less match the episode pairings in the films, with some expanded material (mostly character stuff), by George Alec Effinger. The films all had novels, with the original Pierre Boulle novel, The Monkey Planet, retitled Planet of the Apes. All are pretty good if you find them. More recently Andrew Gaska wrote Death of the Planet of the Apes, which bridges the gaps between Beneath and Escape, filling in details about Dr Milo, what Cornelius and Zira were up to, how they met Milo and how they salvaged Taylor's ship. It also covered what happened to Taylor when he disappeared in the Forbidden Zone until he met up with Brent.
The animated series episodes also had book tie ins, mixing pairs of episodes and they are also quite good, with some extras.
There is an anthology, Tales from the Forbidden Zone, edited by Rich Handley and Jim Beard, with short stories set in different periods, using different characters fromt he films and the two tv series (live action and animated). It has stories from Dan Abnett, Kevin J Anderson, Nancy Collins, Greg Keyes, Jonathan Maberry, John Jackson Miller, Will Murray, Greg Cox and comic book vets Paul Kupperberg and Ty Templeton (who writes about Dr Milo). They also try to connect some dots, add background, or just play in the POTA sandbox.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 12, 2020 18:30:01 GMT -5
I would love to see that The Curiosity Shop show again! I've mostly been the only one who I've ever known to remember it. It was around the same time as Double Deckers and I think Chuck Jones had something to do with it. I'd like to see the PotA cartoon sometime as an adult, I used to see it more in passing though I would watch the Star Trek one. I had one '70s Marvel PotA comic but all I remember was it had statues of apes (The Lawgiver?). I wondered if there was a connection between the cartoon show and the comics? Heck, anything with an Ape riding a horse and carrying a rifle can't be all that bad. Did you know about that Bigfoot And Wild Boy tv series @taxidriver1980 ? I thought you might like it, I saw at least one complete episode of it on youtube. It had a semi-Bionic Man effect for when when Bigfoot would jump. Chuck Jones' company produced it and he was listed as Exec Producer. I have very vague memories of it; more of the name, than anything else. I don't even recall Schoolhouse Rock debuting on there; but, "Three is a Magic Number" was first shown on there, before they added the other Multiplication Rock cartoons and put them between shows. I loved the Return tot he POTA series, as a kid, especially for the story depth. I later acquired them on VHS, from a bootleg dealer, then bought the studio dvd release. That's where the voice work really stood out. The delivery is very flat, apart from a few, like Henry Corden, and it kind of slows things down. Definitely needed a better voice director, as the actors were good in live projects. Loved the episode with the P-40, as they replaced the tigershark mouth paint with an ape face.  The toys were awesome. Mego had the rights and produced action figures and terrific playsets, like the Treehouse.  I had a gorilla soldier and Dr Zaius. I got to pick out the gorilla soldier and there was also a human astronaut on display, but the gorilla was way cooler. Never had any of the playsets. A little later, we went to Florida, at Christmas time, for vacation of for a wedding anniversary celebration for my mother's aunt. We had Christmas in a motel room and I received the Evel Knieval Stunt Van (I had the stunt cycle and figure), which was a doll-sized van, with gear and a ramp, to allow you to jump the stunt cycle over the van (and other things). My mother, unbeknownst to me, brought my stunt cycle and hand crank; but, couldn't locate the Evel figure, in time, but grabbed my Dr Zaius. He couldn't grip the handlebars, so I never got to try out Dr Zaius, Simian Daredevil! |
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 12, 2020 18:38:36 GMT -5
Here is a 1971 promo for Saturday morning, with a brief clip of the Curiosity Shop...
Yes, the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds had cartoon shows and no, they did do their own voices.
Funky Phantom ruled!
Here is a segment from a doll-themed episode, with GI Joe dolls repurposed (check out the hands)...
The show opening...
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 12, 2020 18:51:57 GMT -5
Here Come the Double Deckers intro... For years, I though I had imagined this series. I had vague recollections of a show, where t a group of kids had a clubhouse with a secret drawbridge entrance, through a fence and something about people of a Double Decker Bus. No one else remembered anything like it. Then, in the early 00s, I was putting out some new books and we had gotten in a history of the Harlem Globetrotters. I was a fan, so I flipped through it. In a chapter about their cartoon show, it mentioned being up against something on NBC, called Here Come the Double Deckers. That was the first hint I might not have imagined things. I wrote down the name and checked the internet, when I got home, and found a fan site dedicated to it, as well as the imdb listing. Sure enough, I hadn't imagined it; it was the same show, both memories. The bus was the clubhouse and the secret entrance to the junkyard, where it resided, was through a section of fence that Brains had rigged up to lift up ike a drawbridge. Here is young Jane Seymour... A still from the "aliens" episode...  It turns out to be a publicity stunt carried out by a candy company. |
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 13, 2020 13:07:44 GMT -5
I had the Apes Treehouse as a hand-me-down toy a friend that was moving left me with. Just the basic structure plus one table, a line of brown hard plastic 'furniture' where one cabinet swivelled, and the little jail for humans. I tried to incorporate it with Micronauts and Star Wars stuff (although I only had R2-D2 and C-3P0 for a long time), probably even the china animals that came with the tea, and stuffies as horses. I had no Apes figures or any other ones that scale. My favorite show was probably Space: 1999... I never saw any toys for that other than a little metal Dinky Eagle.
I think what used to happen in the past is if someone liked an existing but disused or ended 'property' they would make their own version of it with a new name, kind of like how George Lucas started with a new telling of Flash Gordon and wound up with Luke Skywalker/Star Wars. If they had made an arrangement or paid they could have done one of these relaunch/retelling things which are so common now, but communications were more difficult, even to find who to approach was complicated and so maybe the trouble was less worth it back then? In a way the Our Gang franchise was continually relaunched with younger casts and they would repeat stories/plots a lot. It was around from the silent '20s into the early '40s (when the comic book was also launched starting Mickey, Buckwheat and Froggy, the last main line-up. Now because of the tv reruns people think Spanky, Alfalfa and Darla ran for years and were always the focus but they were pretty much forgotten by the last couple of MGM series. The Three Stooges in comics always had Curly and yet there were many years with Shemp or others, even The Robotic Stooges comics and cartoons always had Curly. I guess these comdeies didn't really have much if any continuity though.
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 13, 2020 13:10:41 GMT -5
I recognize those suits from the Moon Zero Two (1969) film...  Thanks for finding the Curiosity Shop clips! I had only seen the season advert on on there before.  |
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 13, 2020 20:16:15 GMT -5
Yep, that's where they got the suits.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2020 11:24:25 GMT -5
The first Planet of the Apes film was set in 3978 A.D. - and it featured (or maybe the sequel did) reference to the Forbidden Zone, a land plagued by nuclear fallout long after man destroyed the world via a nuclear war.
I don’t know what year the nuclear war occurred in the POTA universe. The first film was released in 1968, but I can’t remember if there was a reference to the date of a nuclear war. I checked something called Planet of the Apes Fandom, and Wiki, but I can’t find a date there, either.
I’m curious because given the first film’s date of 3978 A.D., I am wondering exactly how long nuclear fallout would last. Of course, without knowing the date of the nuclear war in the Apes timeline, it’s hard to make any sort of guess about anything. But, hey, let’s assume the nuclear war happened by about 2000 A.D., that would have meant 1,978 years would have passed between nuclear war and the first POTA film. Would radiation still have plagued the Forbidden Zone so many years later?
I know I could Google about fallout, but it’s much more personalised to just ask at times.
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Post by brutalis on Sept 14, 2020 12:09:41 GMT -5
In the end you can just say television went ape-shit (banana's) in monkeying around with the basics of the movie series in hope of keeping the POA franchise alive to eager and hungry for more fans. Fans who were all spending on Apes products as the movies now on television proved a ratings blockbuster while showing people wanted MORE...
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 14, 2020 20:03:23 GMT -5
In the end you can just say television went ape-shit (banana's) in monkeying around with the basics of the movie series in hope of keeping the POA franchise alive to eager and hungry for more fans. Fans who were all spending on Apes products as the movies now on television proved a ratings blockbuster while showing people wanted MORE... and the merchandise... "Get yer stuffie Cornel... er, I mean, get your stuffie Galen here!"  |
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