Feature Category: Article

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

1976-77

For some reason – the US’s failure in Vietnam is often blamed – the American public could not get enough of the rock ‘n’ roll era in the 1970s, a point never more heavily underlined than with the success of Grease in 1978. It started before that, of course, with George Lucas’s American Graffiti giving birth to the Fonz on TV. It was almost as if the whole country wanted to forget the last decade or so and that Happy Days was the number one show for 1976-77 is no surprise. That spin-off Laverne & Shirley is number two is perhaps a little more surprising, but there’s Korean War comedy M*A*S*H at number four to ram things home. Outside this yearning for the past but also making headway in the TV ratings were telefantastic Jiggle TV mainstays Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman, as well as The Six Million Dollar Man, Baretta, and Hawaii Five-O; if there was somewhere the US TV viewing audience wanted to be in 1976 it was not the 1976 outside their door.

Several big shows bade their farewells this season with The Streets of San Francisco finally running out of road, the departure of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Phyllis setting women’s emancipation back a few years, and Sanford and Son a victim of America’s disposable Capitalism. Coming in to take their places were interfering coroner Quincy, bear-worrier Grizzly Adams, and Roots, the first of the blockbuster mini-series that gave schoolchildren everywhere license to say Kunta Kinte. But those were all hit shows – what about those shows that didn’t hang around, that didn’t make much of an impact on the 1976 public? This is the story of four more failed TV shows…

Sugar Time! (ABC): Barbie Klein became an overnight star at the age of eighteen when, as part of the ensemble cast of Playboy After Dark (an attempt to portray an “authentic” party at Hugh Hefner’s place), she caught Hefner’s eye. They embarked on a relationship which saw Klein – now calling herself Barbi Benton at Hefner’s request – put front and centre of the Playboy empire, appearing as a centrefold on four occasions and given an enlarged role on After Dark. It was Benton who discovered the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles and encouraged Hefner to buy it, and the two were together from 1969 to 1976.

Alongside her Playboy duties, Benton also appeared in films – 1970’s How Did a Nice Girl Like You Get into This Business? ­– and on TV as part of the cast of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and Hee Haw, as well as guesting on the likes of The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. In 1977, she was cast as Maxx Douglas, a nightclub hatcheck girl looking to make it big as a rock star with her band, Sugar Time! A three-piece, the band also included dental hygienist Maggie and dance instructor Diane, with the cast also including Wynn Irwin (who’d appeared alongside Dom De Luise in On the Buses remake Lotsa Luck) as Al Marks, the owner of a club which allowed the girls to perform… for free.

Sugar Time! was created by James Komack, who’d also created The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and guided Welcome Back, Kotter to the screen, as well as last week’s Mr T & Tina, and he had high hopes for his trio of unknowns to strike a (sorry) chord with American audiences. Maxx, Maggie, and Diane – or Benton, Marianne Black, and Didi Carr – sang the theme tune, “Girls, Girls, Girls,” written by Paul “We’ve Only Just Begun” Simpson, but the series sat on the shelf until August 1977 when it was put out on Saturday nights in a slot vacated by Wonder Woman.

Four episodes aired before Sugar Time! was shunted by the arrival of season two of Fish, with episode five randomly popping up on a Monday night in November. It was clear that the network saw Komack’s show as nothing but a space filler, which is a shame because the single surviving episode on YouTube reveals a sweet, good-natured comedy with some likeable leads. Episode six then had to wait until April 1978, when it began a run of six episodes that ended in late May, leaving the last two episodes unaired.

By that point, Komack’s follow-up series Roller Girls had also failed to find an audience and he had one foot out of the business, although he did direct Porky’s Revenge in 1985. Barbi Benton kept acting for a few more years, most notably appearing in schlock horror classic X-Ray in 1982 but retired after the birth of her first child in 1986 and went into real estate, putting that Playboy Mansion-spotting talent to good use at last.

Gemini Man (NBC): David McCallum starred in the 1975 TV version of The Invisible Man, loosely inspired by HG Wells 1897 novel, as Daniel Westin, a scientist who accidentally turns himself invisible while trying to discover the secret of teleportation. The series was a huge flop for NBC, who cancelled the show after just thirteen episodes had aired, ultimately leading to McCallum returning to the UK and gifting us Sapphire & Steel.

NBC, though, had not had their fill of the concept and producer Harve Bennett engaged The Outer Limits creator Leslie Stephens to retool the basic Invisible Man idea in a way that would use the special effects they developed for the McCallum show but in a much cheaper way. Stephens came up with Gemini Man, the story of Sam Casey, a hip, motorcycle-riding, denim-clad secret agent who is exposed to a huge dose of radiation while trying to retrieve a downed Soviet satellite. Rather than kill him, the radiation turns Casey invisible, a process reversed with the use of a special wristwatch that stabilises his DNA. Using the watch, Casey can turn himself invisible at will, but only for fifteen minutes a day. Any more and he will die and so Casey must “NEVER EXCEED!”

Starring as Casey was Ben Murphy, three years after finishing the role that made his name, “Kid” Curry in Alias Smith and Jones. His follow-up show, Griff with Lorne Greene, had lasted for just thirteen episodes before being cancelled, though, and he must have hoped that Gemini Man – where he was backed by Katherine Crawford and William Sylvester – would turn a once promising career around. A pilot was shot from Stephens’s script and did well enough when it aired in May 1976 that NBC took the show to series for the new Fall season.

Unfortunately, despite a writing crew that featured Robert “Psycho“ Bloch, future Arnie wrangler Stephen E de Souza, and Steven Bochco, audiences just weren’t interested in stories featuring Casey fighting robots, tangling with doppelgangers, and guarding a women’s swimming team in enough numbers to justify the budget. Given the low ratings the first few episodes garnered, NBC made the decision to pull the plug after just five episodes had aired, although the rest of the eleven finished adventures were later shown on BBC1 in the UK, where it became enough of a hit to earn a soundtrack album and an annual from Brown Watson.

Blansky’s Beauties (ABC): Ah, there’s nothing quite like the 1976 ABC approach to spin-off shows, which doesn’t waste precious time on such trivial matters as waiting for audiences to get to like a character enough to warrant their own show. Instead, ABC would introduce a character in one of their most popular shows and immediately launch their own programme, safe in the knowledge that anyone who appears in as little as a single episode of Welcome Back, Kotter was sure to be able to convince that show’s audience to follow them across the schedules.

Happy Days was the king of the spin-off, of course. To be fair, Laverne and Shirley appeared in three episodes of that show before they got their own, and Joanie and Chachi’s love affair would play out across five seasons of the parent show before their own, doomed spin-off, but Blanksy’s Beauties was another thing altogether. Later, Mork from Orson would also appear in just a single episode before getting his own show but they at least waited to see viewer feedback before greenlighting it (and rewriting the Happy Days episode he appeared in to make it possible).

Nancy Blansky was introduced in a third anniversary celebration episode of Happy Days on February 4^th 1977. Howard Cunningham’s cousin, she was visiting from Las Vegas, where she owned an apartment complex, but eight days later had transformed into a den mother for showbiz girls, having apparently enjoyed a long career as a dancer herself. And, despite Nancy Walker looking no older than her earlier appearance, there was definitely room for that because Blansky’s Beauties was set in 1977, even featuring Laverne & Shirley’s Eddie Mekka as the younger cousin of his character on that show!

The ties to the Happy Days universe didn’t end there, with Fonzie’s ex Pinky Tuscadero appearing in the first episode and Pat Morita reprising the role of Arnold after the failure of Mr T & Tina (see last week’s The Telephemera Years for that story), as well as a few mentions of a clumsy girl called Laverne. Joining Walker and Mekka in the cast were future Happy Days regulars Lynda Goodfriend and Scott Baio (a proto-Chachi as the lecherous twelve-year-old Anthony), as well as Caren Kaye and Johnny Desmond, with the whole shebang overseen by Happy Days’ Bob Brunner, Garry Marshall, and Arthur Silver.

Unlike Laverne & Shirley – which ran for eight seasons – the Fonzie magic didn’t rub off on Blansky’s Beauties and the show – a midseason replacement for Holmes and Yoyo – did not return for a second season. Walker stayed on Rhoda (which she made simultaneously with this show, as did Mekka with Laverne & Shirley), while Baio, Goodfriend, and – eventually – Morita returned to Happy Days.

Delvecchio (CBS): Judd Hirsch was still two years away from his breakthrough role as Alex in Taxi when he was cast as Sergeant Dominick Delvecchio, a tough Italian American who had graduated law school but chose to become a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. Hirsch was picked to play Delvecchio by producer William Sackheim, who’d used him as a complete unknown in The Law two years earlier. Sackheim was also responsible for 1954’s The Human Jungle, about a police captain who qualifies as a lawyer but sticks around to helm a tough precinct.

Delvecchio was created by Sam Rolfe (the man behind The Man from UNCLE) and Joseph Gunn, very much in the spirit of the time; as such, Delvecchio’s nickname on the force was “Delwop,” his fellow detective Paul Shonski “The Fat Polish Sausage.” The man responsible for much of the feel of the show, however, was producer Steven Bochco, eight years into a career that would see him create Hill Street Blues, LA Law, and Cop Rock. Bochco wrote eight of the twenty-two episodes that made up Delvecchio’s first season and many of his later flourishes were evident even at this early stage.

The show made its debut opposite The Streets of San Francisco, then in its final season and very much on the wane, slipping from twenty-sixth to fifty-second in the ratings. Sackheim hoped that the first episode would make an impact against weak programming before moving Delvecchio from Thursdays to Sundays two weeks later, where its opposition came from movies on both ABC and NBC. In his first few weeks on air alone, Delvecchio had to deal with unethical cops, desperate informants, traumatised rape victims, and loan sharks, setting the scene for an uncompromising season of hard to crack cases.

Unfortunately, despite Sackheim’s careful planning and some clever writing from Bochco, Michael Kozoll, and Michael Rhodes, and solid performances from Hirsch, Charles Haid, and Michael Conrad (the latter two later following Bochco and Kozoll to Hill Street Blues), Delvecchio never set the ratings on fire, finishing the season down in seventy-ninth place, well below its so-called weak opposition The Streets of San Francisco.

Dog and Cat (ABC): In 1976, male and female detective partnerships were rare enough in the LAPD that “dog and cat” was used to describe them in police slang, borrowed for the title of this show by creator Walter Hill. Having scripted a number of flicks including The Getaway, The Thief Who Came to Dinner, and The Drowning Pool, Hill had just directed his first feature – bare-knuckle boxing yarn Hard Times, featuring Charles Bronson – when a young ABC executive named Brandon Tartikoff made it his one of his first projects for the network.

Hill scripted the pilot (which apparently influenced Shane Black when he was creating Lethal Weapon) but was otherwise busy working on The Driver, leaving much of the work on Dog and Cat to executive producer Lawrence Gordon and future Supernatural showrunner Robert Singer. It was Singer who oversaw the casting of Lou Antonio and Kim Basinger, a former model who had just turned to acting and had a handful of small parts under her belt, including Charlie’s Angels (which she reportedly turned down a regular role on to take this part).

Hill’s pilot saw Jack Ramsey (Antonio) reluctantly accept the slightly oddball JZ Kane (Basinger) as his new partner when his old one is shot in the line of duty. Together, and completely platonically, they work undercover to ferret out some of the LAPD’s most wanted. After a promising start, and with Starsky and Hutch as a lead-in, the show hit a hiccup in week two when the planned episode, “Live Bait,” was pushed back a week due to its controversial subject matter – a serial rapist – and replaced with a jewel heist yarn.

The episode did air the next week but it was clear that the network weren’t completely behind the show, despite some positive reviews for both the concept and Basinger’s performance. There was a two-week gap between episodes three and four, by which point a decision seemed to have been made to cancel the show. Just seven episodes were completed, the last of which trickled out in mid-May 1977 after another three-week break, Ramsey and Kane’s beat-up old Volkswagen Beetle never to be seen around the streets of LA again.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: 1976’s unsold pilots, with witches, detectives, and a proto-Lost!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telphemera Years: 1976 (part 1)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1978 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1981 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1983 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1989 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1998 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1999 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2002 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2006 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: O Canada! (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: DIC (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Sid & Marty Krofft

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Ruby-Spears

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

1999-2000

As US TV moved into the twenty-first century, the schedule was full of comings and goings. Sure, old reliables like ER, Friends, Frasier, and Touched by an Angel could be relied upon to bring in millions of viewers for NBC and CBS, but everyone was talking about the new kids on the block. ABC took the top three slots in the ratings with the thrice-weekly Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, while CBS jumped into the reality market with two feet, debuting both Big Brother and Survivor to an America hungry for average Joes. Also arriving on the network schedules was Judging Amy, Malcolm in the Middle, Law & Order: SVU, and The West Wing, while HBO debuted The Sopranos.

For genre fans, Buffy spin-off Angel premiered on The WB, as did UFO drama Roswell, and Relic Hunter, The Lost World, and Beastmaster are began syndicated runs. This made up for the loss of Sliders and Poltergeist: The Legacy, both of which were entering their final seasons, along with Boy Meets World, Chicago Hope, Beverly Hills 90210, Party of Five, and Veronica’s Closet. That’s what the grown-ups were watching, at least, but what about their kids? This is the story of some of 1999’s more intriguing cartoon debuts…

The Avengers: United They Stand (Fox): It might seem difficult to imagine now, after a decade and a half of the MCU and the Avengers Initiative, but there was a time when The Avengers were deeply unfashionable. Despite some solid storytelling from Roger Stern and John Buscema in the mid-1980s, the team had lapsed into a mostly second-rate affair by the start of the 1990s, with Captain American, Iron Man, and Thor occasionally joining the team but rarely together, even after Kurt Busiek’s celebrated reboot in 1998.

It’s not surprising, then, that the efforts of Marvel Studios were directed more towards the X-Men and Spider-Man throughout the 1990s, with occasional diversions into other properties never seeming to include the Avengers. That changed in 1997 when Roland Poindexter, the head of Fox Kids, asked ­X-Men: The Animated Series writers Robert N Skir and Marty Isenberg to work up a treatment for an Avengers cartoon. That was soon set aside for a proposed Captain America solo series but in the end neither happened due to Marvel Comics’ oncoming bankruptcy.

A year later, and with things more settled at Marvel, Poindexter decided to revisit the Avengers idea and gave the series bible created by Skir and Isenberg to another former X-Men staffer, Eric Lewald¸ who polished the concept for a series that, like the comic books of the time, wouldn’t feature any of the big three. Instead, Avengers: United They Stand was more loosely based on the West Coast Avengers comic book of the late 1980s and early 1990s, with Falcon, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Tigra, Vision, Wasp, and Wonder Man joining a team led by Ant-Man.

The series got off to a strong start with perennial Avengers villain Ultron threatening the world and went on to feature threats from such Avengers regulars as Kang the Conqueror and the Masters of Evil, with guest appearances from Captain America, Iron Man, and the Sub-Mariner. To capitalise on the success of Batman Beyond, a late decision was made to set the series twenty-five-years into the future, although without ageing the characters, and the Avengers were often given armoured costumes, presumably to make them more toyetic (and new Marvel owners Toy Biz did, indeed, release a line of action figures based on the show).

A first season of thirteen episodes was produced and plans were underway for a second season – which would have explored the origins of the characters – but Fox cancelled the show before work began on that extension. It would be 2010 before the Avengers got their own show again as Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes ramped up the excitement for their 2012 feature film debut. Notably that series had the big three along for the ride, as well as Hulk and Black Panther, as lessons had obviously been learned…

The Weekenders (ABC): Although it gets much, much worse in adulthood, that feeling of the weekend slipping away from you, with Monday morning fast approaching, is keenly felt by schoolchildren the world over. What better premise, then, than the adventures of a gang of middle school children over a weekend, with a ticking clock counting down until the end of their precious free time…

The Weekenders was created by Doug Langdale, a veteran animation staffer with credits such as Earthworm Jim, Pinky and the Brain, and Darkwing Duck on his résumé. His show revolved around four diverse character – friendly Italian American Tino Tonitini, the hyperactive Lor MacQuarrie, Haitian immigrant Carver Rene Descartes, and Tish Katsufrakis, a whipsmart Jewish girl whose relatives come from “the Old Country.”

Each episode begins on Friday afternoon as school gets out (although, tellingly, their school life plays little part in the show), setting up the adventure for Saturday and Sunday, all behind a theme tune – “Livin’ For The Weekend” – by Whose Line Is It Anyway? Regular Wayne Brady. The first season, which aired as part of Disney’s Saturday morning block on ABC alongside Recess and Pepper Ann in February 2000, saw the gang deal with unrequited love, immaturity, and makeovers, all wrapped up in a neat package of exploring what their friendships mean in the face of adversity.

The Weekenders was popular enough – it knocked the previously unassailable Pokémon off the top spot – that it was renewed for a second season in September 2000. A third – this time on UPN – arrived a year later and a final season of five episodes brought the total number of episodes for the gang to thirty-nine, although all but five of the episodes featured two adventures per half-hour. The final episode ended with Tino seeing his dad for the first time in eight years, a fitting way for a show which wore its heart firmly on its sleeve to go out.

Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (Fox): Frank Miller rose to prominence with a celebrated run on Daredevil for Marvel Comics, much of which continues to be mined by both comic book and TV stories featuring the blind crimefighter. Miller cemented his reputation with The Dark Knight Returns, his gritty exploration of an ageing Batman, and by the end of the 1980s was preparing to work only on creator-owned projects, published through Dark Horse Comics.

The first of these was Hard Boiled, a collaboration with French artist Geof Darrow, a protégé of the legendary Mœbius. Hard Boiled was ultraviolence personified, illustrated beautifully in Darrow’s ultra-detailed style which made each panel look like a still from an explosion. Miller followed Hard Boiled with Give Me Liberty with Dave Gibbons, and with his own Sin City project, but also returned to Marvel to produce Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, a retelling of the hero’s earliest days. This set Darrow on a path to do a superhero story with Miller and the pair initially worked on an Iron Man treatment, which Marvel passed on.

Miller and Darrow retooled their pitch into Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, with Big Guy making his debut in two issues of Mike Allred’s Madman series, also published by Dark Horse. Two oversized issues followed in the summer of 1995, telling the story of Rusty, an Atom Boy-like Japanese defender of liberty, and Big Guy, his American counterpart, standing several stories high and perfect to combat the threat of alien kaiju.

In 1999, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot came to TV, courtesy of Fox Kids, who tasked animation veterans Richard Raynis, Duane Capizzi, and Jeff Kline – who had worked together on Extreme Ghostbusters ­– with adapting the comic for the screen. In the show, which debuted in September 1999, Rusty was the replacement for Big Guy, a more advanced robot capable of saving Earth on his own, but his inexperience leads to Big Guy being recommissioned to act as his guide. In reality, Big Guy is not actually a robot but has to be piloted by Lieutenant Dwayne Hunter, a weakness which the enemy are always striving to discover.

The thirteen-episode first season saw the character’s introduced and given depth, with Rusty in particular wondering what it means to be an artificial boy. In fact, the TV show was by degrees more mature and rounded than the comics that inspired it, which were – fun as they are – little more than excuses for Darrow to stretch his considerable artistic talents. A second season, also of thirteen episodes, appeared a year later but, despite the series ending with a B-movie-style question mark, there would be no third. Big Guy made one final comic book appearance – a cameo in Sin City: Hell and Back, but otherwise the pair have been absent from any media since the end of the show, hopefully still prepared to defend Earth should they be called upon.

NASCAR Racers (Fox): The received wisdom that NASCAR – the USA’s most enduring form of car racing – is only popular in the American South was briefly threatened in 1999 by the arrival of NASCAR Racers, an attempt to sell the concept to kids nationwide through an animated show on Fox Kids. Produced by Saban Entertainment using a mixture of traditional and computer-generated animation, the series debuted in November 1999 on Saturday mornings, sandwiched between Digimon and Transformers: Beast Machines.

Unlike the real-life NASCAR, which currently has twenty-three teams competing for the NASCAR Cup, NASCAR Racers has just two teams fighting for supremacy, Team Fastex and Team Rexcor. Fastex are the good guys, led by Mark “Charger” McCutchen, a second-generation racer who has a crush on teammate Megan “Spitfire” Fassler, the daughter of the team’s owner. Facing them are the ruthless Lyle “The Collector” Owens and his mean-spirited Rexcor bunch, including the spooky Specter and former model Zorina.

Another difference from the real-life NASCAR racing, which mostly takes place on large ovals, is in the tracks, which encompass a wide range of styles and terrains, making a lie out of the real sport for any fans tempted to tune in by the cartoon. The races were drama- and incident-filled, and the introduction of an android programmed to win races for Rexcor and destroy Team Fastex upped the ante towards the end of season one.

Season two saw independent drivers enter the equation, goading the Fastex and Rexcor racers into accepting their challenges, the most successful of them – “Redline” O’Rourke – even winning a race, as well as competing with Charger for Spitfire’s attentions. There were plans for a third season which, alongside Saban’s sale to Disney, were abandoned after the real-life death of beloved NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt during the Daytona 500 in February 2001. Whether Rexcor’s android was responsible is still to be confirmed.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: We’re back in the time machine and off to 1976, where future cops, rabbis, and invisible men await!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1978 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1981 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1983 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1989 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1998 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1999 (part 1, 2, 3)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2002 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2006 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: O Canada! (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: DIC (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Sid & Marty Krofft

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Ruby-Spears

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. They hit the schedules alongside established shows, hoping for a long run, but it’s not always to be, and for every Street Hawk there’s two Manimals. But here at STARBURST we celebrate their existence and mourn their departure, drilling down into the new season’s entertainment with equal opportunities square eyes… these are The Telephemera Years!

1999-2000

As US TV moved into the twenty-first century, the schedule was full of comings and goings. Sure, old reliables like ER, Friends, Frasier, and Touched by an Angel could be relied upon to bring in millions of viewers for NBC and CBS, but everyone was talking about the new kids on the block. ABC took the top three slots in the ratings with the thrice-weekly Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, while CBS jumped into the reality market with two feet, debuting both Big Brother and Survivor to an America hungry for average Joes. Also arriving on the network schedules was Judging Amy, Malcolm in the Middle, Law & Order: SVU, and The West Wing, while HBO debuted The Sopranos.

For genre fans, Buffy spin-off Angel premiered on The WB, as did UFO drama Roswell, and Relic Hunter, The Lost World, and Beastmaster are began syndicated runs. This made up for the loss of Sliders and Poltergeist: The Legacy, both of which were entering their final seasons, along with Boy Meets World, Chicago Hope, Beverly Hills 90210, Party of Five, and Veronica’s Closet. At least those shows made it to screen in a crowded market where many fell before the first hurdle: this is the story of 1999’s unsold pilots…

Manchester Prep (Fox): Riding high on the insane popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar was very much in demand in the late-1990s and in 1999 she led a group of attractive young things in Cruel Intentions, a sexy, school-based adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses that upped the taboo ante by including some step-incest. Ryan Philippe, Reece Witherspoon, and recently wrong-headed Selma Blair completed a cast that brought in seven times the movie’s budget at the box office, enough of a success that a direct-to-video sequel appeared a year later.

That wasn’t always the plan, though, and the sequel’s origins lie in a proposed TV series for Fox. Entitled Manchester Prep for the hoity-toity school attended by the movie’s young ingenues, it was the brainchild of writer-director Roger Kumble, an award-winning playwright who’d shepherded the original to the screen. Kumble was the only returnee from the movie, Fox’s TV budget unable to stretch to Gellar, Philippe, Witherspoon, or even Blair, and their parts were given to a new array of teen hopefuls, intending to repeat the successful formula of the year before.

A prequel set as Sebastian Valmont (with Robin Dunne of gender-swapped Canadian show Little Men replacing Philippe) is introduced to his new school and his wicked stepsister, Kathryn (newcomer Amy Adams), Kumble’s pitch included a number of new characters to further the intrigues of the blended Valmont-Merteuil siblings. Kathryn is clearly the villain of the piece once more, this time aiming her bile at new student Cherie (Keri Lynn Pratt) and the headmaster’s daughter, Danielle, also the object of Sebastian’s desire, again played by a newcomer in the shape of Sarah Thompson.

Quite how Kumble would have stretched the premise over a full series (and presumably beyond) is anyone’s guess, but you might take clues from how Gossip Girl, also set amongst the privileged Upper Manhattan school set, turned out. Regardless, Fox passed on a series and the pilot was rushed out as a DTV prequel to the original even as that movie was hitting rental stores. Kumble returned with Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, and – yes- Selma Blair in 2002’s The Sweetest Thing and has made quirky romcoms his stock in trade ever since.

Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming: Galactica 1980, the Earthbound sequel to the original Battlestar Galactica TV series has its fans, despite its second-rate cast and continuity shattering setting, but Richard Hatch – Apollo in the original run – clearly wasn’t one of them. In the late 1990s, Hatch decided it was time to get the band back together and pitch a sequel to Universal, one that took up exactly where the original left off some twenty years before, making the events of Galactica 1980 non-canon.

Although Lorne Greene had died in 1987, Maren Jensen had long retired, and Dirk Benedict presumably wasn’t returning Hatch’s calls, Hatch managed to get much of the original cast back on board, with John Colicos’s Baltar and Terry Carter’s Colonel Tigh – now President of the Council of Twelve – lending some heavyweight fan appeal to the project. Hatch, of course, returned as Apollo but the role of Starbuck was not recast in Benedict’s absence, instead being retooled as Starbuck’s feisty daughter (and presumable love interest for a grown-up Boxey).

Hatch’s script, written with French producer (and then paramour) Sophie LaPorte, saw a new breed of Cylons emerge to fight a civil war with the originals, with the remnants of mankind caught in the middle of their battle. A thirty-minute short film was shot, of which only a four-minute trailer has been seen publicly, and the proposed series would have dealt with the new threat and featured a search for the missing Starbuck, Hatch obviously hopeful that his friend would pick up the phone if a series was greenlit.

Hatch toured the trailer around sci-fi conventions in 1999, hoping to catch Universal’s eye with the positive reactions he was eliciting, but Universal already ad their own plans for Battlestar Galactica underway in association with Fox and director Bryan Singer. When that project dissolved due to Fox withdrawing and Singer’s involvement in X-Men, their attention turned to Ronald D Moore, who delivered his darker reboot in 2003. Hatch eventually turned up in that series, as traitor Tom Zarek, and passed away in 2017.

Heat Vision and Jack (Fox): Wisconsin native Rob Schrab exploded onto the comic book scene with the self-published Scud the Disposable Assassin in 1994, soon earning rave reviews in the likes of Wizard magazine and catching the attention of Oliver Stone, who optioned Scud for a live-action movie in 1997. That project ultimately came to nothing and Schrab continued Scud until 1998, ending the series when he moved to Los Angeles with writing partner Dan Harmon – they were both members of Milwaukee sketch troop The Dead Alewives – in the hopes of breaking into TV.

Their spec script for BAM! (or Big Ant Movie) caught the attention of Robert Zemeckis, who signed them to a two-movie deal, although only Monster House ended up getting made, in retooled form in 2005. Such was their buzz that ABC TV also signed them to a deal, one which they found wasn’t to their liking; in order to scare the network into cancelling their agreement (or get to work on something amazing), the pair concocted their idea of the best TV show ever, which the network – predictably – passed on.

Ben Stiller, however, was impressed by their concept and talked Fox into ordering a pilot for Heat Vision and Jack, the story of a former astronaut who is exposed to dangerous amounts of solar energy, granting him super-intelligence whenever it is daylight. Heat Vision is his partner, a talking motorcycle inhabited by the spirit of Jack’s former roommate Doug, who was shot by an experimental ray gun while cleaning his bike.

Jack Black, who had yet to break through in High Fidelity, was cast as Jack, with Owen Wilson providing the voice of Heat Vision, and the cast was rounded out by Christine Taylor, Vincent Schiavelli, and Ron Silver as himself, albeit a Ron Silver who works for NASA and is impervious to harm, the villain of the piece. Heat Vision and Jack wasn’t picked up for a series, but the thirty-minute pilot has become something of a cult classic and can be freely seen on YouTube. Schrab and Harmon moved on to create Channel 101, a monthly pilot festival which gave birth to Yacht Rock, The Lonely Island, and more, a subject worthy of its own entry one day…

The Unbelievables: Ed Solomon began his writing career while still at college, selling a number of scripts to ABC for the final season of Laverne & Shirley and earning himself a place as the youngest member of the Writers Guild of America. It took a little longer for his next opportunity to arrive, hired to the writing staff of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, during which time he met Chris Matheson and began collaborating on what would become Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

The success of Bill & Ted (and its sequel) upped Solomon’s cache and he was entrusted with the script for Super Mario Bros in 1993, a setback which took a number of years to recover from, only bouncing back with the screenplay for comic book adaptation Men in Black in 1997. In 1999, Solomon began work on a script for an alternate take on the superhero genre, focussed on retired hero Action Armstrong and his superpowered family, living a quiet life in surburbia.

Predating Pixar’s The Incredibles by five years, The Unbelievables was being written at the same time as Mystery Men, but it was an otherwise fallow time for superhero movies, offbeat or not. Men in Black’s production company Columbia/TriStar liked the idea enough to order a pilot for the Fox network, and a twenty-three-minute introductory episode was shot with Corbin Bernsen as Armstrong, Ryan Gosling as son Josh, and Tim Curry as his former archenemy Vaudevillain, now running a bookstore.

The pilot also starred a pre-fame Steve Carrell as Vaudevillain’s sidekick Hershel, alongside Clancy Brown and Annette O’Toole as Armstrong’s ex-wife Qupid, and there’s a warmth to the show that owes as much to the charisma of it’s a-list cast as Solomon’s script. Sadly, Fox declined the show and Solomon moved on the work-for-hire of scripting McG’s Charlie’s Angels, although a low quality upload of the pilot on Dailymotion is a reminder of what could have been.

The Wonder Cabinet (Fox): Created by Glen Morgan and James Wong, The Wonder Cabinet starred Canadian actor Kim Coates as the mysterious Alvin Swissky, head of Der Wunderkammeren, a Philadelphia institute dedicated to investigating medical and biological anomalies. Back in the Age of Enlightenment, wunderkammeren were kept by wealthy men, filled with real and concocted examples of nature gone wrong, and Swissky’s institute is a modern equivalent, fearing that the likes of Ebola and AIDS may be a sign of nature fighting back.

Swissky recruits three maverick medics – heart surgeon Gordon Wayne (Space: Above and Beyond‘s James Morrison), student Sarah Coleman (Poppy Montgomery from Relativity), and unethical neurosurgeon Kevin Spitz (Currie Graham) – to join his team. Their first case is a man sharing his body with an evil conjoined twin (in the shape of a second head), the team forced to decide which one has more right to survive an operation to remove one of the heads.

The Wonder Cabinet was Morgan and Wong’s fourth attempt to parlay their success on The X-Files into a production line of their own. Space: Above and Beyond had lasted for a single season on Fox, the same network had passed on The Notorious 7, and CBS had opted not to progress bail-enforcement drama Skip Chasers to series, but there were high hopes for their latest effort, the gfreak of the week approach that had been so successful on The X- Files easily transferrable to The Wonder Cabinet’s premise.

However, despite an engaging cast and an intriguing set-up, the execution on The Wonder Cabinet left a little to be desired and Fox decided against funding a full series. Morgan and Wong were reportedly given the news during shooting of what became Final Destination, a story originally pitched as an episode of The X-Files that led to a successful career in the movies.

Next time on The Telephemera Years: Kids were still watching TV in 1999, safe from the rise of YouTube for another few years… But what were they watching?

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1977 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1978 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1980 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1981 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1983 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1984 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1986 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1987 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1989 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1990 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1992 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1995 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1997 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1998 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1999 (part 1, 2)

The Telephemera Years: 2000 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2002 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2003 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2005 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2006 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 2008 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: O Canada! (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Irwin Allen

Titans of Telephemera: Stephen J Cannell (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: DIC (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Hanna-Barbera (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Titans of Telephemera: Kenneth Johnson

Titans of Telephemera: Sid & Marty Krofft

Titans of Telephemera: Glen A Larson (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

Titans of Telephemera: Quinn Martin (part 1, 2)

Titans of Telephemera: Ruby-Spears

 

Making a movie is a drawn-out, multi-step process called “film production,” which sometimes takes years. The process of making a movie has five primary stages. The development stage is the first phase of film production, during which all the preliminary aspects are worked out before pre-production, which is primarily concerned with location scouting, casting, and research, begins.

Once pre-production is finished, filming can start. The duration of the production process will depend on the kind of film you’re making (short or feature-length), as shooting times vary throughout projects Eventually post-production phase later commences where cutting, commentary and sound are mixed which make the movie memorable and then the distribution phase.

So, what are the secrets of successful film production? Read on to find out.

Pre-Production Puzzle

The pre-production stage lays the groundwork for the movie before the cameras roll. In this stage, complex logistical plans are made, storyboards are created, and scripts are polished. To realize the director’s vision, casting, location scouting, costume design, and set construction are all carefully planned.

Cinematic Language

Visual storytelling and a distinct language of shots, angles, and motions are essential to film production. Cinematographers and directors collaborate extensively to create a visual aesthetic that supports the story. The lenses, camera angles, and lighting design shape every scene’s mood, tone, and emotional impact.

The Craft of Editing

Film editing is sometimes referred to as the “invisible art.” Film editors carefully assemble uncut material into a coherent story, influencing the movie’s rhythm, tempo, and emotional impact. Editors create a smooth and captivating visual experience with exact cuts, transitions, and visual effects.

Soundscapes and Music

In filmmaking, sound is essential because it improves storytelling and draws viewers into the fictional world. While composers create original music like those on online casino that amplify emotions and enhance the cinematic experience, sound designers develop complex soundscapes that give the environment depth and reality.

Special Effects Wizardry

Fantastical environments, animals, and explosions come to life using visual and practical effects (VFX). Behind the scenes, VFX artists attempt to seamlessly incorporate these aspects into the movie, frequently fusing digital magic with actual footage. Physical stunts, props, and makeup are all part of practical effects, which need a combination of technical expertise and artistic vision.

Hidden Cameos and Easter Eggs

To connect many films within a cinematic universe or to give fans a nod, filmmakers frequently tuck in inside jokes, hidden references, or cameos. For viewers paying attention, these hidden jewels can give an additional layer of engagement through subtly placed objects or subtle visual hints.

Challenges and Problem-Solving

There are many obstacles in the film industry, including erratic weather patterns and equipment failures. A critical competency for the production team is the capacity for quick adaptation and problem-solving. These difficulties frequently inspire original ideas that improve the movie’s authenticity.

The Role of Collaboration

The value of teamwork is one of the biggest secrets in the filmmaking process. A seamless collaboration across multiple departments, each lending specialized knowledge to the finished product, yields a good film. The collaborative efforts of writers, cinematographers, costume designers, makeup artists, and others enable the director’s vision to be realized.

A Glimpse into Imagination

Featurettes and behind-the-scenes documentaries provide an insight into the complex world of film production. They demonstrate the commitment, ardor, and ceaseless labor that go into making stories come to life. Through these glances, viewers can better understand the detailed artistry and teamwork that go into creating a cinematic voyage.

The Bottom Line 

The mysterious workings of the film industry combine to provide the unforgettable cinematic experiences we love. Every process step, from meticulous pre-production planning to magical post-production work, goes into creating the finished masterpiece. Filmmaking is a true marvel that enthralls and inspires people worldwide. Behind the scenes, a tapestry of talents, creativity, and collaboration is stitched together.