Rob Pincombe is a prolific television writer, recovering comedian and sometime comic artist/storyboard artist who just wasn't satisfied with a single blog.
He writes about sci-fi and fandom at rebelalert.com, Canadian comics at comicanuck.com, and shares thoughts and insights on writing at starkravingadventure.com
Though our first stop on our Sci-Fi World Tour, Australia's Phoenix 5, has yet to be collected on DVD, you can check a small review of ithereatBlack Hole DVD Reviews. They also have areviewof the long-awaited DVD release of a show created in the next stop of our tour, Germany! Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol), the fantastic adventures of the Spaceship Orion is a show I was turned on to a year or two ago. Now this is a series with production value and truly happening sixties design!
What seems like a fairy tale today may be reality tomorrow.Here we have a fairy tale of the day after tomorrow.There are no more national states, only mankind and her colonies in outer space.We settle on stars far-off, the bottom of the sea is developed as living place.With what are today unimaginable speeds, the starships of tomorrow transverse the Milky Way.One of this starships is the ORION,a little piece in the giant security system which protects the Earth from outer space threats.Let's accompany the ORION and her crew at their patrols-service on the edge of infinity...
If you're anything at all like me you're wiping up drool with your sleeve right now. Sadly, all that production value came at too steep a cost and only seven adventures were ever filmed. But that makes these few episodes that did get made all the more precious!If you're seeing spans of black on this post, its because my embedded Youtube vids are taking a while to load lately. Rest assured, patience will be rewarded.
A terrific taste of this amazing looking series is contained in this Youtube Remix of the music.
Did you catch the futuristic dancing? Want more? How could you not? It's too awesome to waste words on. We can thank Youtube once again for this little piece of future joy.
Oh the dancing! That's how people thought dance clubs of the future would look. Prophetic, huh? It turns out they were right! Here's a quick tour of Orion, a German club based on the series.
Starlight Casino, the extensive German home of Raumpatrouille fandom, has a page in English for the uninitiated. Click the banner below to visit. And yes, those are giant goldfish swimming above the club.
The German home page for the Starlight Casino ishere. You can also find more Raumpatrouille awesomenesshere, andhere, and you can buy the soundtrackhereor download ithere. Where Phoenix 5 was sunk by a low budget and being aired against adult sci-fi shows like Star Trek instead of the kid shows it was designed to compete with.
Leave it to the Germans to out-cool the Aussies. Then again, they co-producedStar Maidens with Great Britain so perhaps we shouldn't give them a free just yet. So let's program our auto-controls for the European system and pay a little visit to an unlikely combination of English and German sensibilities.
An Imperial informant has broughtMicheal Pinto'sFanboy.com to our attention. This spy droid is proving to be a reliable, if extremely opinionated, source for dang funny and fascinating intel from the world of sci-fi and animation going back back decades. He writes well too and I suspect, can fluently make funny, snarky comments in over six million intergalactic languages.
Inspired by his recent intel on those sci-fi loving Australians, we have decided to start our Sci-Fi World Tour of unique sci-fi shows whether incredible and unfortunate.
Take three attractive Aussie actors, dress them up in psuedo-Star Trek uniforms, team them with a walking garbage can, stuff them onto a bridge set so tiny they have to face away from the camera and shuffle just to get by each other (The bridge doors opens up to reveal a long hall set. Why not just use the entire space for the bridge so they breathe?), toss in a jazzy, 70's theme with shots of our heroes running and jumping and then stop everything with a script so slow it creates it's own black hole event horizon, dragging all time in the episode to a slow crawl wherein every minutes feels like an eternity, and you've got...
...Phoenix Five!
The fatherly Captain Roke (that is, if your father was a dick who'd let you blithely walk into near-certain death because you've "got to learn!") presides over a crew consisting of the hot-headed and arrogant (but extremely polite) Ensign Adam Hargreaves, the lovely, sensible (and therefore generally ignored) Cadet Tina Kulbrick and a lumbering, robotic cross between a garbage can and a popcorn popper named Karl (Karl?!) who speaks like a tape recorder with dead batteries.
Truth is, the show seems rather charming, though the entertainment value is a little hard to spot from the episode Pinto found on Youtube and re-posted here. But the opening credits do rock in a groovy kind of way! I dare not to frug in your bell-bottoms on your shag carpet as they play! This definitely goes on my all-night dance party mix CD! If you see spans of black below it means the Youtube vids I've attached are taking their time loading. Give it a minute. It's worth it.
A terrific write-up on Phoenix 5 and its immediate predecessors, The Interpretaris and Vega 4 can be found hereatClassicAustralianTV.com. That's where I got all these pics. They have a list of episodes and synopsis'herealong with more photos.
Can we get a shout out for the all the Space Ladies in the house?!
While the budgetary restrictions are evident in the low-fi special effects they do seem to have had a great time with the costumes and make-up effects. Some real imagination is displayed in aliens like the gents below.
I dub thee, Mr. Aspar Gus, Artie Choke, and Dr. Blueberry.
Though Phoenix 5 has yet to be collected on DVD, you can check a small review of ithereatBlack Hole DVD Reviews.
This show should not be confused with Manny Coto's (Tales From The Crypt, Outer Limits, Star Trek Enterprise, 24) Odyssey 5series on Showtime starring Peter Weller. According to Sci-Fi Wireby way ofAkasha's Guide to Sci-Fi and Horroron the Net, it was Showtime's second highest rated series at the time and their number one show in the male demographic and with adults 25-54. Showtime was so excited buy the seriess performance it didn't bother renewing it for a second season.
There's something a sci-fi show that's so thoroughly a product of its time, budget and cricumstances that you can't help but fall in love with it despite the cheese factor. Phoenix 5 has officially inspired me to take a Round the World tour of unlikely sci-fi shows from across the Globe, with a healthy serving of the old fromage!
Round and round we'll go and where we'll stop not even our astromech droid knows!
Our rebel entertainment spies have the straight scoop on upcoming Holo Transmissions from the Imperial Networks.
It gets pretty cold out in space. Makes a Hutt want to curl up with his favourite, dancing, slave girl by a roaring, nuclear furnace and chillax a while. If you want to get your fetching, fettered thrall into the mood why not skip the will-dominating cocktails and Jedi mind tricks for the month and take advantage of Chick Flick Month, currently running on Oprah the Hutt's female-skewing Oxygenesis Holo Channnel?
Host Darth Vader welcomes his special prisoner... er, guest, Princess Leia Organa, whose extended interrogation reveals not only where she sent the plans to the Empire's new Death Star weapon, but also her personal, top choices for favourite cinema classics.
Every week night, the battling Skywalkers will be airing a beloved tear-jerker, a warm-hearted, laugh-because-it's true comedy, or a female-empowering, ball-busting personal manifesto with plucky female protagonists to help pass the stark, hopeless hours spent isolated in Cell 2187, Detention Block AA-23.
Last night they kicked things off with the ten-hankie Terms of Enslavement. The rest of the week serves up Sith Magnolias, Brief Close Encounter, The Devil Wears Blast Armor and Runaway Jedi.
Who could hate Monday's when next week's line-up kicks off with Breakfast at Tarkin's, Dune Sea Beaches, Under The Tatooine Sun, Bridgit Jones' Hologram, and a Friday double feature of All About Evil and Little Wookiees?
The following week brings us A Pod With a View, Educating Leia, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sithhood, Looking For Mr. Goodjedi and a special screening of the juggernaut, three-hour Gone With The Plans on Sunday evening.
Oxygenesis brings the month to a close with a final week of The Way We War, Fried Green Tauntaun, My Big, Fat Hutt Wedding, Four Sequels and a Funeral Pyre and finally, You've Got Sub-Space Chatter. Whew!
That's a lot of chick flick points you'll have accrued next time you're picking movies at the Cineplex. But don't watch too many with her or she'll think you actually dig movies where nothing explodes and nobody gets blasted.
Welcome to the rebellion. For your weekend viewing pleasure we have hacked into Imperial databases and retrieved this weekend's Pay-Per-Holo movie schedule. Enjoy.
RED CHANNEL: Home Box Holo
Friday
5:00pm Wag The Dianoga
7:00pm Pretty Wookie
8:30pm Team Empire: Space Police
10:00pm Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sithhood
Saturday
12:00am The Neverending Sequels
1:30am Rancor Dundee II
3:00am Pee Wee’s Big Empire
4:30am That Darn Sarlacc
6:00am Womprats In Paris
7:30am 101 Dianogas
9:00am My Cousin Dengar
10:30am Droid Story
12:00pm Imperial Pie III
1:30pm Peggy Sue Got Vaporized
3:30pm It’s A Wonderful Force
5:15pm Memoirs Of A Jedi
7:15pm Dennis The Phantom Menace
9:00pm Finding Wattoo
11:00pm Nightmare On Coruscant: Jek Porkin’s Revenge
Welcome to the rebellion. Once again, we can blameSpike TV'sendless Star Wars summer for my new insights into formerly unnoticed, dusty corners of the Star Wars universe. It's been a while since I've immersed myself so consistently in Lucas' on-screen universe.
I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that Darth Vader is not acreative thinker.
It's too bad too. We all had high hopes for the Emperor's protege. Darth's awe-inspiring first appearance in Star Wars introduced us to the ultimate control freak. The Vader of A New Hope feels like a malevolent force of darkness with absolute power over his troops; always one step ahead of his fearful followers. If only those pesky rebels were so easy to out-think.
Darth Vader's exchange with Admiral Motti, in which he warns the overconfident leader against the dangers of Death Star envy, reveals this dichotomy. It also clearly shows two individuals with more insight into each other than their own situations.
VADER: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
Boo-Ya! Vader disses his number one back talker.
MOTTI: "Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel's hidden fort..."
Ouch! Mottie scores. In your face Vader -- Gurk! Choke! Motti tries to continue but is strangled under Vader's mystical grip.
VADER: "I find your lack of faith disturbing."
Whoa! Darth shows he's executive material by cutting through the niceties and literally going for the throat. Chalk one up for the schoolyard bully in the black cape.
Vader's main problem in the first film (The first film? The fourth? Shall we split the difference with a representative integer? Math is hard.) seems to be a lack of worthy candidates to delegate his myriad duties to. Find those rebels... Keep track of the secret plans... Lead the fighter squadron... Interrogate a Princess. Darth my man, you are one busy cyborg. Don't feel bad that nothing gets done unless you do it yourself. That's a lot of jobs for even for the most organized of middle managers.And I'll bet none of those duties were in the job description when you got hired by Emperor Palpatine.
If only you hadn't slaughteredall those highly competent Jedi Knights. Perhaps you could have enslaved a few and kept them around. They could have at least cleared up your paperwork so you could let off some steam as lead pilot to your Tie Fighter squadrons without letting so many other things slide.
In the end, Darth Vader tries to do it all himself as the rebels attack. And like so many stressed out, multi-tasking martyrs, he ends up burned out and suffering a (mechanical) breakdown.
After one film, we assume Vader is brilliant. After all, even the smartest peopletake on too much. We accept that he's the Empire's number one badass. Vader was tough enough that when Grand Mof Tarken mentioned the Emperor, I first assumed he was a puppet ruler. It's not until the much anticipated sequel, the Empire Strikes Back, that we discover the Emperor is the one pulling Vader's strings.
And what does the mysterious Emperor want? An escalation of violence. The same, unoriginal weapons used by petty dictators across the universe. To be fair, this is the only time the Emperor fails to rely on the guile that carried him to his powerful position. When it fails to get him what he wants he will return to his more effective, devious ways.
Vader excels at fulfilling his master's straightforward plan for dealing with the growing rebel threat. He is a man of action, after all. We will see over the course of the movies that follow how prone to action without forethought the Sith Lord is.
Everything goes well when Darth Vader plays to his strengths. The rebels are routed on Hoth and their base is overrun. Flush from his victory, the Sith Lord shows his first hint of adaptability in his search to capture the heroes of the rebellion, Han Solo, Leia Organa and his own son, Luke Skywalker. (We won't even get into how counter-productive it was to "hide" the baby Luke from Vader yet still give him Vader'sfamily name. Not the most effective witness relocation program.)
Once again Vader delegates his search to others. But though he is failed by his own military industrial complex, Darth takes the extra step of hiring outside contractors: bounty hunters. Then Vader actually does some research and discovers Han and Lando Calrissian's on-again, off-again friendship. He makes ne'er-do-well Lando an offer he can't refuse and traps his rebels at last.
Filled with new-found managerial confidence, Vader proves that a good negotiator is also a man of his word, encasing Han Solo in carbonite, just as he threatened he would.
Perhaps it's true that working out stimulates the brain. Vader's just spent time in the bracing cold of an ice-planet kicking rebel butt... his version of a ski vacation. (He may have also added a vigorous work-out fighting off aWampa attackon his snowtroopers into the mix. A deleted Hoth scene showed an unusually clever move byC3PO. He removes a warning label from their cell in a cut scene.)
Sadly, The Empire Strikes Back is the last time we see anything close to creative problem solving from Darth Vader. Thanks to retired blog Infinite Galaxy Of Fun and Blueharvest.net for the Wampa attaack info.
Next: Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the first film, are doomed to repeat them... in sequel after sequel.
