Feature Category: articles

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!

2006-07

If you wanted to be an American Idol or go Dancing with the Stars, the top of the TV ratings for the 2006-07 season made pretty good reading, with the top five slots filled by these newfangled variety showcases. Underneath, crime and medical dramas thrived, but there was slightly more quirky available from Lost and new arrivals Heroes and Ugly Betty.

That wasn’t all as 2006 was FULL of new hits, whether it was The WB’s One Tree Hill, Smallville, and Supernatural, serial killer fun on Showcase with Dexter, or 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights on NBC. That slightly made up for the losses of The OC, Gilmore Girls, The Sopranos, Stargate SG-1, and Masters of Horror, all of which were taking their final laps this year. Those, of course, are the shows that managed to secure an audience but there were plenty that didn’t; this is the story of four missed opportunities…

Painkiller Jane (Sci-Fi): Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti created Painkiller Jane for their own Event Comics line in 1995, three years before they were hired to revamp some of Marvel Comics’ edgier properties under the Marvel Knights banner. The work they did on Painkiller Jane was a perfect taste of what they would later bring to Daredevil and other titles, the story of an undercover cop killed in the line of duty but resurrected with superhuman abilities to become a vigilante.

The Painkiller Jane TV show that debuted on The Sci-Fi Channel in April 1997 began with Jane Vasko changed to Jane Vasco and skewed her origin to have her working as an undercover DEA agent, removing the mysterious man who seemingly gave her the superpowers in favour of her just discovering she has them. She also joins a shadowy government agency who provide her with the neural treatments she needs to overcome the pain of any injuries she receives – she can’t be killed but she can be hurt.

Kristanna Lokeren’s Jane is nearer to the comic book than the one played by Emmanuelle Vaugier in the 2005 pilot movie, which changed the story completely but still got a good enough reception that the TV show was put into production. As part of the NICO team – which also includes Tropical Heat‘s Rob Stewart as Andre McBride and Noah Danby’s Connor King – she deals with problems created by genetically enhanced people called Neuros.

Twenty-two episodes were shown as part of the show’s first season, and it was reported that Quesada and Palmiotti were more than happy with the adaptation. Unfortunately, viewers were less satisfied, and ratings were not at the level that would lead to a second season. Quesada went on to become Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief in 2000, later becoming an Executive Vice-President, but his contract allowed him to do outside work. In 2006, Quesada and Palmiotti released a new Painkiller Jane series through Dynamite Entertainment, with Palmiotti continuining to work on the character afterwards, last releasing a graphic novel – Trust the Universe – in 2019.

Traveler (ABC): Inheriting a timeslot recently vacated by Lost was never going to be an easy job, especially as this was a Lost at its third season heights, but that was the task handed to Traveler when it debuted on May 10^th 2007 on Wednesday nights on ABC. Created by David DiGillo, a newcomer with just the Paul Walker Disney adventure flick Eight Below under his belt, Traveler told the story of two college students framed by their former roommate – Will Traveler – for a terrorist attack in New York.

Tru Calling‘s Matt Bomer and Logan Marshall-Green (recently of 24 and The OC) starred as the protagonists, on the run from the authorities as they try to piece together the life of the mysterious Traveler in the hopes of discovering his motives and clearing their names. Steven Culp’s FBI agent is the man task with bringing them to justice, sending agents Borges and Marlow (Anthony Ruivivar and Viola Davis) to hunt them down, although Marlow at least believes they are innocent.

While all this is going on, Traveler (X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand’s Aaron Stanford) – secretly an undercover agent for the Department of Homeland Security – is searching for answers of his own. Eventually, a conspiracy that may reach all the way to the White House is uncovered but by that point there were too few viewers to care, with ratings falling from 8.61 million to 3.55 million over the course of the series.

The final episode rebounded, adding more viewers, but by then the decision had been made to pull the show after just ten episodes. The story ended on a cliffhanger, as episode ten would have been a season finale anyway, with the three friends reuniting to find the evidence they need to expose the conspiracy, only for it – and the man they believed was actually responsible – to be blown up by a car bomb. You want answers? Back to Lost, then…

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (NBC): Part of a Monday night line-up on NBC that also included Deal or No Deal and the debuting Heroes, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a look behind the scenes of a fictional live sketch comedy show, similar to NBC’s own Saturday Night Live. It was a premise with plenty of promise and might have succeeded had it not been for 30 Rock, NBC’s Wednesday night look behind the scenes of a fictional live sketch comedy show, similar to NBC’s own Saturday Night Live.

The key difference between the shows was that 30 Rock was a sitcom, created from its inception to be a vehicle for former SNL head writer Tina Fey, and Studio 60 was a drama. A drama about a comedy needn’t be humourless, however, and a strong cast with a comedic background including Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Sarah Paulsen, and Nate Corddry ensured the jokes hit their beats when they came.

The show was created by Aaron Sorkin and he brought in his former West Wing star Bradley Whitford as Danny Tripp, the producer of the fictional show, playing on a past friendship between Tripp and Perry’s Matt Albie. Its prospects looked solid after NBC won a bidding war with CBS for the show and it was highly anticipated by both the media and the public ahead of its September 18^th debut.

Critics to rate Studio 60 highly throughout its run but viewers disagreed; ratings feel from a high of 13.4 million for the first episode to a low of 6.1 million for episode sixteen, although they generally hovered around the 7 million mark. The show went on hiatus after that record low and when it returned it was shifted to Thursdays in the hope that Scrubs might provide a bump as its lead-in. In reality, the decision to cancel the show had already been made, a further fall in ratings seeming to justify the decision. In 2011, Aaron Sorkin appeared on an episode of 30 Rock‘s fifth season as a producer looking for work, telling Fey’s Liz Lemon to shut up when she mentions Studio 60, the only one of his shows never to get a second season.

The Lost Room (Sci-Fi): At twenty past one (and forty-four seconds) on the afternoon of May 4^th 1961, room ten at the Sunshine Motel outside Gallup, New Mexico, slid out of existence. The motel fell into a state of disrepair but no-one ever remembered it having a room ten, except that – in the years after what became known as The Event – people began to access the room from all over the world, as long as you could find the key.

This was the premise of The Lost Room, a 2006 mini-series on The Sci-Fi Channel created by Laura Harkcom, Christopher Leone, and Paul Workman. Leone and Workman first developed the idea while at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and when Leone later worked with Harkcom (also a graduate of that school, although they were not contemporaries) on the short film K7, he realised a project they were developing could be melded with his earlier concept, giving birth to The Lost Room.

Six Feet Under’s Peter Krause was put in place as Joe Miller, a detective who stumbles into room ten while investigating a murder, only for his daughter to disappear while in inside. Joe must now discover the secrets of the room, the Event, the mysterious Occupant, and the one-hundred objects contained within. These objects are the kind of things an ordinary hotel room might have but all with the potential to change the world when employed by three cabals that have emerged in the intervening years – the Collectors, the Legion, and the Order of Reunification.

Over three ninety-minute episodes, The Lost Room unfolds its story, completing the narrative of Joe Miller but leaving things open for further stories set within its world. Unfortunately, that’s all we got as critics were mixed on the show, and a promised comic book continuation in 2010 from Red 5 Comics never materialised. Harkcom and Leone returned with Parallels in 2015 – originally a TV show pilot named The Building – and properties including Locke & Key, Warehouse 13, and the 2019 videogame Control all mine similar territory, but so far the key to room ten remains lost…

Next time on The Telephemera Years: more failed shows from 2006 as we open The Dresden Files and more!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (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: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

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

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: 1982 (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: 2000 (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: 2008 (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!

1978-79

The 1978-79 season was a time for goodbyes, with the final episodes of All in the Family, The Amazing Spider-Man, Good Times, Starsky & Hutch, Welcome Back Kotter, and Wonder Woman all making grown men cry. Still, ABC’s massive comedy line-up – they filled the top five slots in the ratings chart with their hit sitcoms – must have been some succour, with Mork & Mindy the number three show in its debut season.

Other new shows included Three’s Company spin-off The Ropers, a put-upon Judd Hirsch in Taxi, lessons in harmony with Diff’rent Strokes, and radio station fun with WKRP in Cincinnati. Fans of telefantasy were treated to The Dukes of Hazzard, BJ and the Bear, and space opera in Battlestar Galactica, alongside their regular doses of Charlie’s Angels and CHiPs. But those were the shows that adults watched in 1978 – what about the kids? This is the story of a 1978 Saturday morning…

Godzilla (NBC): You all know the story of Godzilla by now, right? Mankind’s stupidity and eagerness to destroy itself results in an ancient creature being awakened which cuts a swathe of radioactive revenge across a Japan only nine years removed from the atomic bomb atrocities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, eventually becoming the Earth’s defender against similar creatures from outer space, even though we don’t deserve him?

The big green lizard starred in fifteen Japanese films from the Toho studio between 1954 and 1975 when the series was halted following lacklustre box office receipts for Terror of Mechagodzilla, and most of these films found an American audience in dubbed versions shown in fleapits, drive-ins, and on late night TV. The lull in Japanese action meant the US was ripe for homegrown Godzilla fare and Marvel Comics were first out of the blocks with a comic book in 1977 that eventually ran for twenty-four issues.

 

Marvel was not the only company preparing fresh Godzilla for the American market, though, and Joseph Barbera of the Hanna-Barbera animation studio thought the character perfect for his own animated show, tasking Duane Poole and Dick Robbins with coming up with a structure that could showcase the might of the creature while keeping the light peril necessary for such a show. Poole and Robbins created the crew of the research ship Calico, led by Captain Carl Majors and scientist Quinn Darien (Darien’s nephew Pete acted as the audience identification figure).

A typical story would find the Calico stumbling into the kind of dangerous situation that only the intervention of Godzilla could solve, his signature tune ringing out as he emerged from the depths to save the day. Thirteen episodes of the show were ordered, partnered with Jana of the Jungle as The Godzilla Power Hour from September 9^th 1978, ultimately leading to a second season which featured the horror that was Godzooky. Toho resumed making Godzilla films in 1985 and there have been several big-screen blockbusters starring the fire-breathing behemoth but for a generation of kids, there’s only one song they hear when they think of Godzilla…

Jana of the Jungle (NBC): The other half of The Godzilla Power Hour was developed by Johnny Quest creator Doug Wildey but you didn’t have to look too far to discover Wildey’s inspiration for the show. Essentially a female Tarzan, Jana (BJ Ward in her first role) was rescued from a boating accident as a small child by Montaro, the last survivor of an ancient tribe who schools Jana in the way of his people (voiced by The Addams Family’s Lurch, Ted Cassidy).

Jana’s father was lost in the same accident, and she spends her time searching for him with the help of Dr Ben Cooper, a young wildlife scientist who took over her father’s reservation, and her animal friends, the white jaguar Ghost and comedy opossum Tico. As if this wasn’t enough, Jana also has to rescue miners from an exploding volcano, fight off poachers described as a film crew, avoid a war between the wolves and the pumas, and save Ben from a tribe of enormous women.

Jana was paired with Godzilla for the first two months of the season, thereafter welcoming re-runs of Johnny Quest to what became The Godzilla Super 90. In September 1979, Godzilla went it alone as Jana didn’t get the second season that may have eventually saw her find her father. As it was, the story ended without a denouement, meaning Jana is still out there somewhere searching for him, although she’d be in her sixties by now.

Interestingly, in 2007 a comic book called Jungle Girl was published by Dynamite Entertainment, created by Frank Cho and Doug Murray. Its protagonist was a young blonde woman named Jana, living in some kind of lost jungle world, but its creators maintain that is pure coincidence. Cho and Murray produced three series of Jungle Girl, which saw Jana up to the same kind of hijinks she enjoyed in the Hanna-Barbera series. It may not be cannon but it’ll do.

Bigfoot and Wildboy (ABC): The 1970s was a big time for Bigfoot. On the heels of the Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967, the hairy hominid was thrust into the public consciousness, with the 1970 film Bigfoot sensationalising the creature and leading to The Beat of Boggy Creek, Shriek of the Mutilated, and half a dozen more low-budget flicks. The real breakthrough, though, came when Andre the Giant portrayed the beast on a special two-part episode of The Six Million Dollar Man in February 1976. Even though the Bigfoot turned out to be – spoilers! – an alien robot, kids all over the world now added the missing link to their playground roll call.

That Bigfoot was now kid’s fodder was perfect for Sid and Marty Krofft. Since HR Pufnstuf in 1969, the brothers had made furry creatures their stock in trade and were given an hour-long showcase – The Krofft Supershow – in 1976 to bring more of their creations to the air. Working with Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, the Supershow featured three serials featuring Krofft creations – Dr Shrinker, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and Wonderbug – and when it returned for a second season in 1977, Electra Woman was replaced by a new story.

Bigfoot and Wildboy starred Joseph Butcher as Wildboy, an orphan lost in the wilderness and raised by Ray Young’s Bigfoot. Neither actor was new to the business, but this was the first starring role for both men (and really as good as it got for Butcher, who did just one episode of Knots Landing in 1980 before retiring from acting at just twenty-nine. The Krofft Supershow finished up in September 1978 but Bigfoot and Wildboy lived on, a second series of twelve-episodes given its own slot in June 1979.

Between them, the wild pair managed to see off evil tribes, sinister professors, a mummy, a vampire, and an evil bigfoot, all the while keeping an eye out for archaeology student Cindy who managed to stumble into more than her fair share of trouble. Along with The Krofft Superstar Hour’s Horror Hotel and The Lost Island, Bigfoot and Wildboy was the end of a run of Sid and Marty Krofft shows that became a staple of children’s programming throughout the 1970s. It was somehow fitting that their final show was about someone from an older world trying to guide the youth through a strange new one.

Yogi’s Space Race (NBC): Smarter than the average bruin, Yogi Bear made his debut in 1958 as part of Hanna-Barbera’s The Huckleberry Hound Show, graduating to his own show in 1961. The Yogi Bear Show ran for just thirty-three episodes which were then repeated in perpetuity, even after Yogi Bear and Friends arrived for a ninety-six-episode run in 1967. By 1973, even these 129 episodes were beginning to get stale in re-runs and so a new Yogi Bear show was commissioned, adding fifteen episodes of Yogi’s Gang to the mix.

The third Yogi Bear show – 1978’s Yogi’s Space Race – was a reworking of Wacky Races, with the various competitors replaced by familiar Hanna-Barbera characters and the setting shifted to outer space and alien planets, its logo parodying the then-current Star Wars. Huckleberry Hound, Jabberjaw, and Yogi – who had led a team in 1977’s Laff-A-Lympics, H-B’s previous all-star sports show – were the main racers, with guest appearances from Fred Flintstone, Quick Draw McGraw, Grape Ape, and others.

Alongside Space Race were three other features, expanding the show to ninety minutes. The first – Galaxy Goof-Ups – featured Yogi, Huckleberry Hound, and others as space patrolmen, Keystone Kopping their way to hilarity and disco dancing, and was eventually spun off into its own show after two months. It was very much part of the main event with Space Race, whereas The Buford Files – which starred a sleepy bloodhound who solved crimes with a pair of teens – and The Galloping Ghost – the spirit of an old miner looks after two teenage girls at a dude ranch – were the supporting acts.

After Galaxy Goof-Ups got its own show, Yogi’s Space Race was reduced to sixty minutes, becoming a half-hour show on its own in February 1979 when the other two segments were combined into their own standalone feature. Just thirteen episodes of each serial were made, again repeated liberally over the next few decades and, thanks to Cartoon Network, into the twenty-first century. Yogi had to wait until 1985’s Yogi’s Treasure Hunt for his next headline slot but that Top Cat inspired madness can wait for another day.

The New Fantastic Four (NBC): For two worlds so perfectly made for one another, the story of animated shows based on Marvel Comics characters took an awfully long time to get going. The barely-animated The Marvel Super Heroes show of 1966 was quickly followed by much better attempts at bringing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four to the screen, the former by nascent genius Ralph Bakshi.

The Fantastic Four show of 1967 was a Hanna-Barbera creation and largely succeeded in bringing the spirit of the Jack Kirby and Stan Lee comics to life on the screen. It should have been the start of a whole slew of Marvel cartoons but – while fans of rivals DC enjoyed seeing animated and live-action versions of Captain Marvel and the Super Friends – it was 1978 before Saturday mornings were graced once more by the House of Ideas. Once again, it was the Fantastic Four we got, but this was a very different Fantastic Four from that seen in the original cartoon or the pages of Marvel Comics.

Although the Fantastic Four had members outside its core quartet, it would be a brave man who developed a TV show without even one of them. This is what DePatie-Freleng were forced to do, however, when the rights for the Human Torch were tied up in a separate deal for a movie with Universal (that never got made). Understandable, then, that they would seek to replace the Torch with another member, even if the schoolyard talk was of fears that kids might imitate and immolate if he were featured.

Perhaps proving that Kirby was the ideas man all along, Lee pitched a cute robot as the new fourth member and Dave Cockrum was set to work creating its design. Famously, Cockrum hated the idea so much he walked off the job and was replaced by Kirby, back at Marvel after a spell with DC in the early 1970s, completing what would prove to be his final job for the company. The robot – H.E.R.B.I.E., backronymed to stand for Humanoid Experimental Robot B-Type Integrated Electronics – took his place alongside Mr Fantastic, The Invisible Girl, and The Thing, helping them see off the likes of Dr Doom, Magneto, The Mole Man, and The Skrulls but couldn’t prevent the show being cancelled after just one season.

Next on The Telephemera Years: Set the controls for 2006 where hedonism and pain await!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (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: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

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

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)

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

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (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: 2000 (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: 2008 (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

by Ben Bradley

Over the past decade or two, interactivity has become an important part of our entertainment. As such, some movies have tried to incorporate these elements into their historically rigid presentation.

Thanks to streaming services, with Netflix leading the charge, it’s more feasible to deliver interactive shows to people. Today we’re asking if these services can go interactive and how, with examples.

The Origins of Interactive Entertainment

Ignoring those old choose-your-own-adventure books, an early pioneer of interactivity in the digital age was the gaming and casino industries. On TV and now online, it’s possible to access live dealers and games that get played in real-time. It’s more social and builds trust, as the results of the game happen right in front of the audience. It’s effective with card games, naturally, but wheel games that could easily be automated still use live dealers, as seen with games like crazy time. These services understand that something is lost when there isn’t somebody to interact with and react to things that you do.

Some movies have come close to interactivity now and then. Mr Sardonicus used the idea in 1961 as a marketing gimmick while in 1985, Clue played a joke on its audiences by releasing multiple endings to different theatres. It’s close, but audiences didn’t know they were choosing a different ending when they bought tickets.

Source: Unsplash

The reason nobody committed to the idea was the expense. It’s expensive, especially in a movie environment, to film what is essentially multiple movies depending on choices the audience might make. Then there’d still be a favourite story path for audiences, making it seem like a futile endeavour. Cutting the movie together would have also been a mess with pre-digital filming and, for TV shows, they were written so fast-paced that stopping to run an audience competition would slow things down.

How Streaming Services Enable Interactive Stories

Now the processes of filming and editing are easier, and many of the costs are down, but that hasn’t stopped budgets from ballooning. An interactive movie was still a gamble but now we have companies rich enough to take the gamble, which is where Netflix stepped in.

Netflix has created several interactive experiences in the years since but it was Black Mirror: Bandersnatch that first caught a lot of attention. Black Mirror is critically acclaimed for its dystopian insight, so Charlie Brooker penned an interactive story that could only be told through a streaming service.

With streaming, individuals watch movies and shows at their own pace. This enabled Brooker and the Netflix production teams to gamify that, adding choices into Bandersnatch that you couldn’t pull off on cable television. In 2019 Netflix doubled down on this idea by working with Bear Grylls to produce You vs. Wild and its sequels.

The Future of Interactive Stories

As of right now, the slate looks clean where future interactive projects are concerned. Even if easier nowadays, it’s still labour intensive to create a choose-your-own-adventure film. While we don’t doubt that Netflix or a competitor will try it again, these projects often get more acclaim for trying out the concept rather than being praised on artistic merit.

Media is on a collision course with personalisation. The recent breakthroughs in generative AI and other mind-boggling technologies have shown that individuals may be able to conjure their own entertainment in the future. Does that count as interactivity if it’s something uniquely created for you?

If interactive movies and TV shows ever have their time in the sun, it’d be during this transitional phase where media can start from a shared point but then be personalised to the audience’s tastes. That way, we can still have water cooler conversations about the stories we create.

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!

1978-79

The 1978-79 season was a time for goodbyes, with the final episodes of All in the Family, The Amazing Spider-Man, Good Times, Starsky & Hutch, Welcome Back Kotter, and Wonder Woman all making grown men cry. Still, ABC’s massive comedy line-up – they filled the top five slots in the ratings chart with their hit sitcoms – must have been some succour, with Mork & Mindy the number three show in its debut season.

Other new shows included Three’s Company spin-off The Ropers, a put-upon Judd Hirsch in Taxi, lessons in harmony with Diff’rent Strokes, and radio station fun with WKRP in Cincinnati. Fans of telefantasy were treated to The Dukes of Hazzard, BJ and the Bear, and space opera in Battlestar Galactica, alongside their regular doses of Charlie’s Angels and CHiPs. But those were the shows that people remember from 1978 – what about those that didn’t even make it to series? This is the story of 1978’s failed pilots…

The Clone Master (NBC): Written by science fiction master Frederik Pohl, The Clone Master was Multiplicity years before Michael Keaton ever thought of cloning himself and with considerably less comical results. Pohl was engaged to write an anthology series based on his stories, only to find that the network was so enamoured by his first idea that they wanted to take it to series, abandoning the format the writer had agreed.

Pohl reluctantly agreed and a pilot was ordered, starring B-movie regular Art Hindle as Dr Simon Shane, a geneticist who develops a cloning process. When his mentor is kidnapped, Shane accelerates his research and tests the process on himself, producing a dozen clones who can communicate telepathically. Now he has to rescue Dr Louthin and evade capture by the shadow organisation that backed his research…

The script was developed from Pohl’s outline by John DF Black, a veteran screenwriter with a long list of credits including Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, Hawaii Five-O, and Wonder Woman. Black delivered a tight script with a neat twist, and the pilot was shown on Thursday September 14^th 1978, in the slot usually reserved for Quincy, MD.

Although reaction was generally favourable, it was decided against taking the show to series, possibly due to the difficulty of filming a story featuring thirteen identical protagonists or maybe because Pohl was thoroughly disengaged from the process. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Pohl’s work was rarely adapted for TV or film and only his 1959 short story “The Bitterest Pill” would make the screen after the failure of The Clone Master, as an episode of Tales of the Darkside in 1986.

Dr Strange (CBS): In 1972, Stan Lee left the day-to-day running of Marvel Comics to Roy Thomas in order to assume the position of Publisher. As part of his duties as general champion for the company and its properties, Lee signed a deal with CBS to develop television series based on some of Marvel’s most popular characters, the first fruits of which resulted in September 1977’s The Amazing Spider-Man. A pilot starring Nicholas Hammond as a very cautious wallcrawler, The Amazing Spider-Man was given a full series run in April 1978 and next up was The Incredible Hulk in November 1977.

Again, The Incredible Hulk scored well enough with its pilot to receive a full series order, and Dr Strange was moved into production. Unlike Spider-Man and The Hulk, Dr Strange was not a top tier Marvel character but it was thought that he was different enough from the other two that his eventual series would not mine similar ground.

 

CBS regular Philip DeGuere was given scripting and directing duties, adapting Steve Ditko’s original origin story to include a previous Sorceror Supreme, Thomas Lindmer. Lindmer, played with some gravitas by John Mills, seeks out young surgeon Stephen Strange to succeed him in the role, fighting as much against Strange’s own preconceptions of science over magic as the film’s big bad, Morgan Le Fay. Eventually and despite attempts by Le Fay to seduce him to the dark side, Strange takes Lindmer’s mantle and vows to defend the Earth from magical threats.

Peter Hooten, in his first starring role, is good value as Strange but the general feeling was that DeGuere’s script and direction were too slow, despite Lee’s positive opinion of the film. Dr Strange did not get good ratings when it was shown as a pilot film in September 1978 and there would be no subsequent series. Instead, the Marvel bandwagon moved on to 1979’s Captain America, which is a story for another day.

Mandrake (NBC): Mandrake the Magician was a syndicated newspaper comic strip created in 1934 by Lee Falk, a dependable part of the Kings Features Syndicate line-up until 2013. Falk handed Mandrake over to Phil Davis shortly afterwards, moving on to his most famous creation, The Phantom. Mandrake was the inspiration for many other comic strip and comic book magicians, and in 1939 was given the film treatment, with Warren Hull starring in the twelve-episode Columbia serial.

A radio series followed in 1942, with a unsold pilot for a TV show coming in 1954, but otherwise Mandrake remained firmly on the printed page, at least until producer Rick Husky was given the task of bringing the immaculately tailored magician and his African assistant Lothar to TV in 1978. Husky wrote a script which put Mandrake and Lothar up against a psychopath who is murdering the patrons of an amusement park, engaging Harry Falk – no relation – to direct and casting Anthony Herrera as Mandrake.

Falk was a veteran director of mostly TV comedies, including The Patty Duke Show (he married Duke in 1965) and Get Smart, but moved into action in the 1970s with Hawaii Five-O and The Streets of San Francisco. Herrera was best known as a cheating husband on The Young and the Restless but acquitted himself well enough, with Ji-Tu Cumbuka a decent Lothar.

Mandrake aired in January 1979 as part of NBC Wednesday Night at the Movies but nothing short of a blockbuster rating could save it from an early grave, with critics savaging Falk’s direction, a plodding approach which drained all life out of Husky’s script, which wasn’t exactly a picture of health in the first place. Herrera returned to the world of soap operas and Mandrake to the printed page, only reaching beyond the funny pages in 1986 when he was part of Defenders of the Earth alongside The Phantom and Flash Gordon.

The World Beyond (CBS): The World Beyond was the second of two pilots starring Granville van Deusen as Paul Taylor, a sportswriter who dies for two minutes and thirty-seven seconds on the operating table, only to find that he is able to see and hear ghosts when he is revived. Taylor becomes a conduit for the dead to contact the living, embroiling him in all manner of adventures, or at least the two featured in the two CBS pilots.

The World of Darkness aired in April 1977, with Taylor drawn to a New England town where the patriarch of the Sandford family has apparently just committed suicide. Nine months later, Taylor was on the road again, this time to a remote island off the coast of Maine, whose inhabitants are under siege from a creature apparently made of mud and sticks.

Created by Art Wallace, who had worked with Dan Curtis on what became Dark Shadows, although he turned down the role of producer. Wallace and Curtis wrote the series bible and first eight weeks’ worth of episodes, but Wallace preferred to vary his schedule with other writing jobs, turning out scripts for projects as diverse as Star Trek, The Bill Cosby Show, and Planet of the Apes.

The World of Darkness and The World Beyond were intriguing concepts that just didn’t land with the network or the majority of viewers at the time, although both films have a cult following and The World Beyond is available to watch on YouTube if you want a slice of occult detective drama. Sadly, Art Wallace did precious little work after Paul Taylor failed to land a series, with just a couple of scripts for Planet of the Apes TV movies, a run as story consultant on All My Children, and a single episode of the 1989 horror anthology series Nightmare Classics with The World… director Noel Black. He died in 1994.

Next on The Telephemera Years: Bigfoots, giant lizards, and female Tarzans all vie for the kids’ attention…

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (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: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

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

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)

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

The Telephemera Years: 1982 (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: 2000 (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: 2008 (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