That Was The Week That Was In SF

Did you remember these sci-fi anniversaries? (Of course not. That’s why we’re here to remind you!)

September 18, 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still premiered in New York.

September 17, 1928 Actor Roddy McDowall (Planet of the Apes) was born.

September 15, 1965 Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space premiered on television.

And even though That Was The Week That Was went off the air in 1963 its snappy theme song still echoes on YouTube. (The best snippet of the song runs from about 1:30-2:00.)

10 thoughts on “That Was The Week That Was In SF

  1. Why the Burnett/McDowell skit never received a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation (there not being a category for Best Comedic Presentation), I’ll never understand!

    Outstanding.

  2. That was aired in 1974. Think what might have happened if they’d had the help of YouTube to boost its candidacy.

  3. Jonathan Harris as Dr. Zachary Smith was added after the show was announced for the network schedule, his scenes in the revised pilot with the B-9 Environmental Control Robot originally filmed separately.

    It’s a shame the show lost it’s original serious quality, but at the beginning of the half-season, on January 12, 1966 Batman premiered in the same timeslot and the LiS went camp to match as it as a serious show became clobbered in the ratings.

    This, of course, is the show for which CBS used Gene Roddenberry’s suggestions for how to film it and keep costs down without paying him a consulting fee.

    Both Bill Mumy and Jonathan Harris later said if Harris hadn’t created the “Never fear, Smith is here!” characterization using some the elements he had used previously (“Oh, the pain!”) on The Bill Dana Show, the program would have become very dark, because either Smith was going to murder the Robinsons or they were going to have to kill Smith in self-defense.

    Mr. Harris was from the Bronx, and taught that accent to himself to lose his Bronx accent, his parents being Russian Jewish immigrants. (He legally changed his name from Charasuchin to Harris.) His college degree was in pharmacology, like Hubert Humphrey (and my dad).

    Those early, incredibly realistic scenes of the Jupiter 2 flying low over the planet’s surface (including an astounding shot of the ship flying into visibility straight in front of a glaring, near-the-horizon sun, not in this clip) were done by Howard Lydecker, who with his brother Theodore had done the first realistic filmed appearances of flying human beings with Captain Marvel then the three “atomic-powered rocket suit” (a perfect copy of which was re-created for Star Trek: Voyager) characters (Jeff King, Commando Cody, Larry Martin), all in their respective serials for Republic Pictures. They were experts in filming a ship or man-sized dummy flying by sliding along a wire too fine to be visible, with the camera tilted so you couldn’t see that the ship or man was sliding downward, merely pulled by gravity.

    Dave van Arnam and Ted White (under the name Ron Archer) wrote a very loosely adapted paperback novel based on the series.

    According to the Wikipedia article about Jonathan Harris:

    “In the actual 1965 television premiere of Lost in Space, the blast-off of the Jupiter 2 is set in the future on October 16, 1997. The Sci-Fi Channel began the Lost in Space marathon in real-time 32 years later on October 16, 1997.”

  4. Jonathan Harris as Dr. Zachary Smith was added to Lost in Space after the show was announced for the network schedule, his scenes in the revised pilot with the B-9 Robot originally filmed separately, after the main portion of filming.

    It’s a shame the show lost its original serious quality, but at the beginning of the half-season, on January 12, 1966, Batman premiered in the same timeslot and LiS went camp to match as it as a serious show became clobbered in the ratings.

    This, of course, is the show for which CBS used Gene Roddenberry’s suggestions for how to film it and keep costs down without paying him a consulting fee. Evidently they didn’t listen too well as the original Jupiter 2 set cost more than the original set for Star Trek, believe it or not.

    Both Bill Mumy and Jonathan Harris years later said if Harris hadn’t created the “Never fear, Smith is here!” characterization using some the elements he had used previously (“Oh, the pain!”) on The Bill Dana Show, the program would have become very dark, because either Smith was going to murder the Robinsons or they were going to have to kill Smith in self-defense. Harris’ last spoken filmed words were “Oh, the pain!” in the movie A Bug’s Life

    He was from the Bronx, and taught that pseudo-English accent to himself to lose his Bronx voice, his parents being Russian Jewish immigrants. (He legally changed his name from Charasuchin to Harris.) His college degree was in pharmacology, like Hubert Humphrey (and my dad), and he worked as a pharmacist before becoming a professional actor.

    Those early, incredibly realistic scenes of the Jupiter 2 flying low over the planet’s surface (including an astounding shot of the ship flying into visibility out of the glaring, just-above-the-horizon sun, not in this clip) were done by Howard Lydecker, who with his brother Theodore had done the first realistic filmed appearances of flying human beings with Captain Marvel, then the three “atomic-powered rocket suit”(*) serial characters (the best remembered of whom was Commando Cody) for Republic Pictures. They were experts in filming a ship or man-sized dummy flying by sliding it along a wire too fine to be visible, with the camera tilted so you couldn’t see that the ship or man was sliding downward, merely pulled by gravity.

    Dave van Arnam and Ted White (under the name Ron Archer) wrote a very loosely adapted paperback novel based on the series.

    According to the Wikipedia article about Jonathan Harris:

    “In the actual 1965 television premiere of Lost in Space, the blast-off of the Jupiter 2 is set in the future on October 16, 1997. The Sci-Fi Channel began the Lost in Space marathon in real-time 32 years later on October 16, 1997.”

    (*) A perfect copy of which was re-created for “The Adventures of Captain Proton” on Star Trek: Voyager, lacking only the bullet-shaped helmet.

  5. When Smallville was first announced for The WB Network I turned to my wife, Nila, and said “Dawson’s Creek with super-powers.”

    Damned if I wasn’t right.

    These are the five acts of the unsold pilot, The Robinsons — Lost in Space, or as it looked to me, “Dawson’s Creek in space with evil, ugly, chittering aliens.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAT4tjjzOCk

    The Robinsons should’ve realized something was wrong when music from Battlestar Galactica began playing on the soundtrack at the beginning of Act II.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTrUejIXYiM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgnJGk_UZ6Q

    Notice that the harness holding Will Robinson horizontally hasn’t been digitally removed at the ending of the danger scene at the beginning of Act IV.

    We knew one Evil Alien was immediately going to bite the vacuum the moment it made the mistake of beginning to attack Mama Robinson as she held baby Penny.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgnJGk_UZ6Q

    Black Hole as wormhole tunnel through space-time instead of ship and people killer cliche’:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AksT1IgNz0

    There’s even a musical riff reminiscent of Firefly at one point, as the Robinsons were going to a farming colony — I guess if they’d made it to Nova, there would have been horses.

    The invented new son was just there to have a bizarre, emotional confidant relationship with his rebellious sister (she sleeps around) and be male-chip-on-his-shoulder-rebellious to Dad-Robinson-who-can’t-say-I-love-you, and to get spacenapped to make a cliff-hanger.

    The evil ugly chittering aliens looked exactly like what they were, extras and stunt people in rubber suits. I’ve seen badly costumed Cybermen from pre-revival Doctor Who which nonetheless looked more alien and scary, and were less vulnerable to a punch in the jaw or a stylized karate kick.

    No Doctor Smith, and Don West was an obnoxious creep, first by dumping Judy the day after sleeping with her as soon as he found out who her Mom & Dad were, then by allowing his mind to be changed, abandoning his duty post and the squadron under his command because Judy pleaded with him to desert and Hold Her Hand instead while the rest of the colonists were defenselessly being killed in the battle which destroyed the colony ship — with no indication of how the Evil Space Aliens got aboard it before its destruction. Latched on and cut a hole in the hull? Forced open an airlock? Teleported? Never shown.

    The command deck control consoles were purchased by Battlestar Galactica and redressed into the CIC of the Battlestar Pegasus after this failed to sell.

    You can look at a pilot episode and see an immediate hit (Batman, The Mary Tyler Moore Show), see potential which the series will grow into if nurtured (Cheers, Hill Street Blues), and see failed potential and errors not correctable if it goes to series (this, the NBC-TV Wonder Woman reboot). It’s an art, not a science, and nobody is right all the time or wrong all the time, which is why there are so many complaints about how networks pick new shows, or time-slot them, or buy them, spend lots of money to pay for producing them, then deliberately dump them as fast as they can, in a horrid, sickening act of destruction and self-immolation (Firefly, Dark Skies).

  6. P. S.: Almost forgot — Will built the robot himself for protection from the bullies at school who hated him for his intellect. Even in 2097, jocks and punks still beat up geeks. This is justification for the cry of “Danger, Will Robinson!” which is said in two different acts just to remind us that this is in fact a reboot of Lost in Space.

  7. Anyone else remember the “Space Family Robinson” comic book? I don’t think I ever bought a copy, but I used to read it in my dentist’s waiting room. According to Wikipedia it predates “Lost in Space”.

  8. I read the Gold Key Space Family Robinson but supposedly both Irwin Allen and Ub Iwerks, had written their own separate treatments of The Swiss Family Robinsons in outer space, neither claiming to have been aware of each other’s television proposals or the comic book. When Lost in Space premiered I immediately thought it was an adaption for television of the comic book, and I was just barely ten years old. The legal tangle about who was first, and who may or may not have copied from whom was finally sorted out, although there are still people who disagreed with the various decisions.

    And what does it say about me that at age seven I was completely enamored of That Was the Week that Was, understanding about half the jokes but arguing to stay up late enough each week so that I wouldn’t miss it?

    That’s where I first heard Tom Lehrer’s “Pollution” and *that* I clearly understood, loving every second of the song.

  9. Of the US version, I remember the song, and part of one skit — a joke about the Army adopting psychological warfare. A solider on the battlefield is insulted by another and, stricken, responds by yelling, “Medic! Medic!”

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