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Posted: |
May 10, 2012 - 7:23 AM
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By: |
Rollin Hand
(Member)
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I am currently wallowing in nostalgia, watching the DVD set of the Logan's Run TV series. I have find memories as a youth watching it. I was ten when it was first broadcast in America (I'm in the UK so it was probably boradcast what, a couple of years after?). I was probably more familiar with this back in the day than the original film (which I love). Now an admission... watching Heather Menzies again (I recently found out she married Robert Urich), I get the same feeling Chris Reeve's character in Somewhere In Time did when he saw the photo of Jane Seymour's character and longed to be back in time with her**. Menzies is gorgeous and I also found some pics online as she posed in Playboy in 1973 - lovely! But she's not just eye candy, she played the Jessica role in Logan's Run very well. REM is obviously a Spock-like figure (as Data later was in ST:TNG) and Gregory's Harrison's Logan is very good also. I do like the smouldering performance Randy Powell gave as Francis, equally as good as the film version. I don't buy many TV series sets, especially if long-running but since Logan's Run was short-lived, it is manageable cost - and viewing time-wise! **The same feeling I also get when watching Sally Ann Howes in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! Hello Runner, I ordered and watched it too because I used to discover it back then and because I owned the soundtrack CD. The stock music is also very good: see some scenes in "Futurepast" or "Stargate". I enjoy it despite the fact it's outdated. There are good directors: Michael O'Herlihy and Paul Krasny. The prints are "not" restored because we see dust, debris and chromatic anomalies. Some episodes look better than others. Hopefully, we have the English subtitles. Francis
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Posted: |
May 10, 2012 - 2:32 PM
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By: |
Eric Paddon
(Member)
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I just got through this series on DVD and ultimately the biggest flaws come down to this: 1-This series was more a retread of the 1974 "Planet Of The Apes" TV series in which we have this fleeing from a large community ostensibly in search of some undefined goal that can help the protagonists reach permanent safety (in that case a way back home) but this flight always seemed to have them going in circles in the California desert. When you get down to it, the further you are from the pilot episode, you should be headed one way only and never looking back making it unlikely your pursuers are going to be able to keep this up. This is something that "Battlestar Galactica" dealt with more effectively because once they are established as leaving home in the first episode there's no turning back ever, and there's no detour back home and halfway through the run all of space becomes the great unknown from now on. 2-Related to this is that sooner or later, Francis can't remain a credible threat without a dramatic change. D.C. Fontana has said that long-term, the plan was to have Francis switch sides which would have shaken things up better. As it was, they were really on thin ice at the end with that haunted house episode which could have been done for *any* kind of TV show. 3-I also found it amusing how even though they're riding an obsolete 200 year old transport vehicle, whenever they get a chance to steal a faster and newer one from a pursuing Sandman they've just knocked out, they instead just sabotage their vehicle and move on in theirs. The obvious reason for this was so our renegade heroes could be in a different colored vehicle from the enemy pursuers, but dramatically it made no sense at all to me.
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I really want to watch this but haven't shelled out the cash yet. I have pleasant memories of it (and the CD is utterly FANTASTIC) but I'm scared of the show being just, basically, terrible. Similarly, I bought the Man From Atlantis sets based on my warm nostalgia, but I have yet to actually watch them for fear of crushing the nostalgia dead.
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I loved this show as a kid. We used to play Logan's Run at recess back in the day. I too hated the ground car, with the so obvious balsa wood doors that had to be hand opened, even though they dubbed a mechanical sound over it. It was always interesting to see Logan pounding through the desert in that thick, black outfit that never seemed to get dirty. At least they adapted the uniform to be a single layer, unlike the film, and replaced his feety PJ footwear with regulation sci-fi boots. The also opened up the sides of Jessica's outfit, giving us some glimpses of 70's side boob. Rem's clown outfit was awful, though. Still, he was the best character of the three. Lots of great cheap 70's sci-fi BS in there. Remember when they tired to make SF look impressive in the 60's? Somehow, everything looked cheaper in the 70's on US network TV (until BSG came along). Some of the civilizations Logan met were amazingly amusing. In one episode (which was a grat one, actually) they met some people who couldn't read. Logan told them when they learned to read, the world would open up. Guest Actor Mel Ferrer looks up and said, earnestly, "reading!" I was waiting for "…Is Fundamental! That's why we have R.I.F." To be fair, there were some really good episodes in there by DC Fontana, Harlan Ellison and David Gerrold. On the other hand, in 14 episodes, they returned to the city twice. How far had they actually had gone then? It really took away from the journey. It's like traveling cross-country, but you keep turning around because you forgot something. Eric is right, it was too much like Planet of the Apes a few years earlier. At least Logan had a car. The guys on Apes jogged across the landscape. Same kind of societies though, with the tattered rags for clothes and little leather slippers.
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I watched LOGAN'S RUN in first run, but barely remember it. What I know is the theme music, because I taped it with my cassette recorder and played it many times as a kid. Although I'm sure I saw at least a few episodes of FANTASTIC JOURNEY, my only memory of it is the promotional STARLOG article with photos. One featured Katie Saylor striking a heroic pose in a black minidress and boots, and another was of Roddy McDowall wearing a shirt-and-tie combo made of reflective gold fabric. Wow, she's hot. I'd have been all moony over her back in the day. Like I am now... Yes, she had a cat-like beauty. I just read that she died of cancer at age 39, which is extremely unfortunate.
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