"Something in the Water"

And this isn't even one quarter about Star Trek.

I submit that “Star Trek” was the largest part of a “culture of the strange” that had taken over America’s television sets, or was about to. The Different was In, and television producers thought they had “The Next Big Thing, if it was even a little off center.

If I were still a student doing a Phd of Popular Culture I would put the mid Sixties as a time when it would be profoundly clear that not only was the television audience chemically altered...the producers had obviously indulged in *something* mood altering before making buying decisions.

First, there was the harbinger that this Wasn't Going To Be Your Father's Television Decade:...The Twilight Zone that debuted in 1959 driven by that chain smoking production line storyteller Rod Serling. He was a most bipolar sort of scribe.. either Really Awful or Amazing and guesting...Billy Mumy...Burgess Mereidith...William Shatner...

Then, The Outer Limits...John DF Black...and Harlan Ellison's "Demon with A Glass Hand."

"Do not adjust your set. We control the Horizontal. We control the Vertical. "

All that was missing was the BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA at the end. And the stepchildren of these shows...all already well documented by Stephen King in his book."Danse Macabre."

Then there was that little show on CBS Heh. Written by Shimon Wincellburg or S-Bar David.

The show that caused CBS to turn down Trek because: We already have a space show...
I won't name it, but the JiffyPop Space suits, the precursor to Wesley the Wonderkund,the way-cool Robot and Smith the champion Malingering Spy....Blech...and...I hate to admit it...but.

(a really nifty muscial score by that guy...John Williams)

and no I am not even going to speak it’s *name here on this blog* That would be sacreligious.

Then there was that other show...a 1965 import that I *hate* and only saw for the first time last month....dull enough to make my teeth fall out.


Running hurriedly away from that,
Ahem… speaking of nifty musical scores...

The web niche for "Dark Shadows" can be found here: It's my third pop culture obsession, and it is celebrathing its 40th this year as well: Paradoxically I love "Trek" for when it hit its highest notes. I love DS because it is so unashamedly cobbled together, cheap, weird and low-budget. Except. The score by Bob Corbert *kicks **s.* It scared the **** out of me when I was a kid, and I still love it today.

But it doesn't fake out the viewer. It never tries to sell itself as something it isn't. Unlike a couple of big screen horror failures I could name. ("The Bride," *cough* *cough* Kenneth Brannagh's "Frankenstein" *choke* *cough*)

Dan Curtis stole horror classics and shoved them into a "five cliff hanger a week" soap weeper format with no apologies. It had strong women -- I defy anyone not to believe in Grayson Hall's Julia as the Compleat Cold Scientist, or that Lara Parker's Angelique (The actress has aged um, almost supernaturally well...age had barely touched her in an award show filmed in 1996) is the Mother of All Witches that will Truly Make You Regret Being Born if you **** with her. (while laughing hysterically as gravestones fall down, flies fly into the mouths of vampires [Hey, *that's* not in the script!] and bats fly on very visible wires.) Curtis seriously stumbled only with a story arc I'll call "The Thing In The Box..." No actual monster and it brainwashed everyone at Collinwood. HP Lovecraft meets the Stepford Wives...big misfire there.

It had unapoligetically promiscuous characters (and yet found itself in a quandry when one of its' main female players violated the "virginity clause" in her contract.)

It flips it's way merrily between eras and universes. ("The Parallel Time" story arc)


Another standout for it's musical score is the 1967 series of "Spider-Man" cartoons. (No valid linkage, but they are available at Amazon.)

Spidey’s an obvious cynic…in the first episodes he swerves dangerously close to delinquent and is never a winner, no matter how ably he dispatches a villain…all set to a nutty, jazzy, score that could only be about a hero in the Naked City. How can a colorful cartoon be a homage to comics and film noir at the same time??? This Spiderman did it well…and the kids got the usual jolt out of any costumed figure corralling the bad guys while the adolescents and some adults got a charge out of the sharper than a nail dialogue and the up to the minute music.

Spidey was also better than the TV ‘Batman’ of the time, because while the villains on that show were quite Clued in: Best example: Julie Newmar’s Emma Peel on catnip…or the completely crazed Frank Gorshin, the "heroes" were fence posts in costume.

We were supposed to buy that the leaden Bat and his perpetually shocked sidekick could *handle* these people?

I think NOT.

When one looks at TOS, I think it's important to know that it was simply the biggest best known, and best written of the wierd crop of stuff that hit the airwaves from 1959-1967

And for those of you upset that I haven't delved into Bond-mania and it's offspring (the coolest of which are the original "Johnny Quest" cartoons) its because *that* came from the politics of the day, not directly from the Weird side of the tracks.

And not *one* of the show's listed above would get past today's censors.

that makes me sad.