 This is the SF Productions podcast network When a dollar went a long way and so did 24 hours The 60s in the 70s dwelling place of the lost generation We who grew up in this era had no real heroes our role models came from the imaginations of others Our meager lives were formed by and revolved around weekly installments of our favorite TV programs Welcome to a place that your parents didn't understand A place that exists somewhere between the forefront of Recollectible memory and the edge of everyday thought Welcome to the vast wasteland Welcome home. Welcome to another exciting episode of vast wasteland Yes, it's the show where we talk about 60s and 70s television and today We're in science fiction and not Star Trek basically We already have done our big Star Trek show So we're doing all science fiction in the 60s and 70s on television other than Star Trek But we've got just loads of stuff to hit for tonight. So let's do Well, if Wilbert can stop playing his little Terminator things Over to Wilbert with his first point for the evening Oh, that was just a bunch of TV a bunch of science fiction TV in the 60s in the 70s My goodness, there were so many shows. We can't Of course, well Star Trek was probably the biggest but hey before that we had shows like lost in space Well my favorite Martian, but we're gonna we're probably gonna cover him in another one actually even though I did science fiction That's good science fiction, too. We'll cover my favorite Martian in another show And why are we all talking like Ha ha ha and well, let's see now Okay, now lost in space was probably the other big one from the 60s. I mean big big big as far as Having a family and oh, we're gonna have this family and they're going to Alpha Centauri. That was there Yes, everybody wanted to go to Alpha Centauri it was just the favorite place to go But when they got up there and oh by golly, what happened an asteroid shower or something through them off balance with his extra Okay, he was a stowaway. Yeah ship was not built to accommodate stowaways If they were gonna bring anything back with them, they couldn't because the ship wasn't built to take extra weight So dr. Smith actually threw him off course his fault as with everything that happened Mm-hmm, cuz he thought I know it was robot supposed to go with them. Yeah, yeah, okay Yeah, that was an essential part of the robot. Mm-hmm. Yep robot. What a name What a movie or warning warning warning well Robinson warning The thing to do to do robot you put your In your sleeve And you put out two fingers like that and danger will Robinson warning warning danger danger That's another one of those shows were well not so much that one, but Shows that were based back on earth. Well, this one was well the robot had the voice the voice that was used for every alien that was ever on Lost um Voice at the bottom of the sea, which was another big another one of the big science fiction shows from the 60s Boys at the bottom of sea although that one was earth based more than being out in space It was still considered science fiction because you have your your nuclear powered submarine here Although I guess they well anyway got a nuclear powered submarine that had um, we could probably even show that nuclear powered submarine The sea view was the Visual aides down here though any any day now they'll get around to getting those but You'll see them somewhere before the show's over right and they had they had the flying sub which was an amazing little thing It was just it was a two-person sub yet. It was as probably bigger than any family car And it's a mm-hmm. It's bigger than probably most of two Person airplanes, but anyway did had the capability of flying Above above the water it could fly and it could also go underwater as a submarine and it was just an amazing An amazing thing there, of course version of bottom of sea was one of the many Irwin Allen science fiction Really irks me with his he has no proportion in The end of the giant But it's like then later shot they're sitting on the phone and yeah, and they're bigger than it is Mm-hmm And Jupiter to the thing that always got me about the Jupiter to when you saw it in space It's like it looks but when it landed it always seemed like it must landed in a hole in the ground right because it was like a One story They walked right out of it onto the ground right and so I was like what did it always land in a crater? Did it dig a little hole and then land you knew there are several stories because they kept using those tubes and going up And they had the elephant or how does it look like if they went inside it must be going down underground We figure look like space like you can see it's like Like what's the big yeah, so I think Irwin Allen needed to take That's the thing about the 60s the 60s were the time where you could just suspend disbelief or hope we we hope As which was which is why I'm when Star Trek did come out It was a lot of people really liked because it it did stay pretty much with the same parameters They didn't jump from one size to another or something like that or the things weren't all mixed up But where we've discussed that one so we're gonna talk about these that are just I guess you consider them bad TV now The voice at the bottom of the sea thing basically I don't think they actually had a Definite mission. They were just underwater all the time. It's a submarine So of course they're underwater only time they seem to come up above the water was when they were in the Arctic or the Antarctic Which didn't make sense to me, right? This would not be the place to come up with a submarine And yet that's the only place where you saw him break the surface so they could come up through all these ice flows and Everything and be up there for a while why I don't know Maybe there were some people that were up there discovering things and they'd gotten stranded or something So they had to come up. Anyway the flying sub usually whenever they had to make their for their Trips anyplace else they would use that and they'd fly to Washington or fly wherever else they had to go Had your character so you have Admiral Nelson Captain Crane Sharky sharky was always down there. What is sharky? I don't even remember what sharky did and then it was somebody else that was Like a lieutenant or somebody that was always on and then Kowalski Kowalski was always there. Kowalski was like the the the check off, right? Kowalski always got hurt, but yeah, Kowalski was always back around and come back again And sharky I guess sharky must have been the engineer and that just makes sense to me Irwin Allen's were the ones where we take this group of people unrelated And we throw them into a situation where they got well, I guess the Robinson family was related except for And of course then Don had the Robinson's beautiful tall daughter Judy chasing after him all the time And then of course it was the land of the Giants where nobody was really their poor little orphan kid and little dog and Dumb people on there Mr. Mr. Fitzhugh Fitzhugh Who was Was he like a Doctor Smith of the group because he was the he was the he was the real negative kind of person But I'm just trying to figure what was his real thing there He had all this money in that first show where he was trying to get away from somewhere He got out there and he lost it all what what they never really explained exactly what he had done Scared me and I didn't watch it for a long time Well it was little because they would come on and say land of the Giants So I would like go hide in my room until it was like So it's that's laying the Giants another one of the great Irwin Allen But there is basically the spin drift which was the little ship They were on it's like I guess there must have been bigger ships because this one was only like a six-person craft and not counting the The pilot the co-pilot and the stewardess Well the dog was in that in that total in that total basket It didn't see the dog until he jumped out of the basket, but anyway you've got what you got a movie star here on here It's like ginger from Gilligan's Island Trap somewhere they can't leave You got the little kid in the dog, which is you might as well say it's Dorothy and Toto And then you got Fitz you who's like the Dr. Smith of the show and then you got the pilot the co-pilot and you got the stewardess and what happens they're flying from where New York to London or something and They there it's an it's like the space shuttle That what they're planning to do with the space shuttle I guess eventually where it can fly from well not to say spatial so much the SST I suppose right except this one could go out of the atmosphere it just fly We just bailed up and wait till the earth orbited around come back down All these shows they're going into space. They're going somewhere else. Why did everyone speak English? Why did they run into aliens from? Wherever and it's like hi, Mr. Ellen. Hello, well Robinson And why can't they figure out? Everything was just like home Yeah Well, they did they did actually say I want show that it wasn't earth and so they believed them the guy could have been lying They go out they go out in the space they fly through the green clouds the mysterious green clouds They fly through that thing and oh, no, it's it's all the all the instruments And they come back down. They're supposed to be in London But yet they don't know where they are because they can't get any signals They can't get anything and then they land and they're looking around they're trying to find something They think they're poor They don't know if they're at the airport or not And they go wandering there's fog everywhere So it must be London and yet the first thing that they finally do see is like a giant cat I had a lot of cat house shoes And they were giant And the guy had a bark at him Oh yeah, he had a bark at him It's like at that time they're at that time they're only about this big yet later in the show They're they're probably this tall Yeah, they can pick up the pencil and dial a phone They capture them and put they capture them with forceps and put them into a mouse cave Oh, what a great show They just had a joke it was this whole perspective I guess was often so But Erwin Allen went on to do other he went on he finally he got off a TV after those and he went and did movies Well, I mean he was he was quoted he said I won't get this quote exactly correctly, but it says that Said a movie was it was our show was worthless if you couldn't blow up the world in the first 10 minutes Effects was everything and plot and and continuity and and characterization was like well if we get around to those we'll do them The big thing is we want the effect. So I guess that's basically what he was trying to do with the Robinsons It's like they're on a mission. Oh, but their mission gets blown up. So there's their often space somewhere and of the Giants They're got to go somewhere. Oh, but they can't get there because they go through that darn green cloud And so they're their whole world gets blown up and there someplace else where should the bottom of the sea It's like a nuclear submarine. It's um, I guess they're really in the Navy. Although they they They never really go on any well, I guess they did a few times do Actual war related kind of missions, but yet they're they're just going They're just underwater And yet they're running to aliens and things that all talk the same Rock creatures crab men all kinds of things and they all just talk the same Y'all had that same voice It's like uh Machines are lost in space because they were like real 60s machines. They would like you turn them on and there'd be like a spiral Through the spiral. It's like what's the purpose of that piece? We're in space, but the machinery and things that we find everywhere still have these huge gears with giant teeth And yet and yet they did these futuristic functions, but they had this they're using like industrial revolution equipment here to like it's a teleporter It wasn't you know those gears then Well, they just didn't have it down. They just have not the circuitry right and everything is I mean you look at you look at um, just gears together. You can pretty much make whatever that's right. Yeah, put all these gears together You can make a miniature Can mass produce dr. Smith Or turn people into vegetables I was like great The carrot man Oh, no, we've turned Will Robinson into a carrot. Oh, no Okay, this is something about space shows any of them. How do you age in space? I mean, how do you age? Okay, if you're traveling in light years or such, how do you age is how are these kids? They always had clothes too and lost in space these kids were growing But they always had clothes Fabricator in the back that we just like slap a lure fabrication It came out on Mars Get some lovely valour flashes And they'll they'll be they'll be similar but different like Like the fifth dimension, you know, they would always have similar clothes, but they would be different So the Robinson family has similar clothes, but they're different Well, he packed his own clothes And then the little monkey they had on there. Oh the poor little monkey the little monkey with the With the ears of the head Well, Judy had this monkey on there. Oh, that's right. Penny. The monkey's name was Judy. No, Judy was the older sister Oh, no, that's a monkey That's a monkey of another color Oh, where was Judy the monkey then? Oh, it's Judy the chimp. Well, I think it was the same I think it was the same monkey though and they just put those things on one monkey working Show businesses a dime What do we schedule the monkey This thing to that monkey's head Buck Rogers Well, buck Rogers, you gotta if you're going to buck Rogers in the 70s there, you got to go past Gold space 1999 and all the different Irwin Allen shows No, I mean not the spit Irwin out You got to go past the Irwin Allen You got to get into the Gary Anderson Gary and Sylvia Anderson Doing shows all through the 60s up to the 70s because um UFO was probably their first real Live action, I guess show because before then they did their their puppatoon shows We've got you've got supercar. You've got uh Fireball xl five You stingray Then there's several that didn't get here joe 90 um Captain scarlet and those those just never made it over here I guess and then you get back here to thunderbirds kind of got here Some were somewhere here somewhere and then from there you go right into UFO Which used the same All the same kind of props and things the same ships and all but yet it had live real real live people and that was just an interesting show because um basically UFO um shadow the supreme headquarters and alien Defense well supreme headquarters and defense organization. They were out to stop It was aliens from evil well all the aliens and UFO were evil Yeah, because they would come down and they'd mutilate cows and things and they'd find people and they'd cut pieces out of them and put them in little capsules and they'd want to take them back took all the um Urban folktales because I mean, you know when you're in school You hear all you have to hear about the UFO that landed and tore up all the cows And then they kind of took those and did UFO with yeah a lot of a lot of that so um But anyway, you've got um ed striker who's the head of shadow and he is actually a um He works in a tv station, but the under you go under the tv station And here we've got shadows headquarters on earth and so um from there you take their um their submarine And it could it had the capability had a ship on the front that could blast off into space Or um, you could just take a rocket and you'd fly up to the moon and up on the moon Is shadows real headquarters the shadows moon base the really neat vehicles Yes, okay like like the thunderbirds we saw sometime this year whatever it was um And and they were real meticulous about their miniatures. Well, that's the gary and something innocent You know, you could tell it was you know, you knew you were looking at a miniature, but it was so well done And it was so involved Let's take all these matchbox toys apart and put them back together differently and make something real neat with them But those were really that was really the thing that that made these shows the gary and sylvie anderson shows It was they they were effects oriented, right? That was really one of their big things. There's one of the thunderbird ships. Let me see if I can Show that I don't know Can we get the shot? Well, we'll get a shot sometime. Well, we got a long shot. Oh, no Well by golly, so um Oh, I think we're now ready for that exciting uh, uh still Okay, we don't have this still now, but it's still here This is very exciting for those of you at home, okay It's a black and white, but it's still nonetheless. There we go That's that well, we could that just kind of a camera in there too, but here's the ufo Okay, let's All right, it's this is um Um The uh the satellite that was out in space that kind of relayed stuff between earth and the moon and it was also like their first line of defense against Aliens it could tell when aliens were coming in through the solar system And so you've got commander ed streaker who is the leader of shadow curnaryl alec Freeman who is the second in command paul foster former test pilot for shadow A lot of other people here. I won't get all into them But basically these are more organization versus organization Exactly everyone had worked together team power go and from um shadow moon base shadow moon base Actually became a part of moon base alpha which they used in space 1999 So it all worked together. Yeah 99 was really bland to me. I didn't like it Well, they didn't know whether they wanted to be star trek or 2001 They were like, yeah, we'll do this we'll do this We have these things and lots of gadgets and it was like you could tell a lot of it was just like, well, let's see We could make this into a toy It would usually put me to sleep. That's the effect space 1999. It wasn't all that it was just kind of like Well, you got mark landow and barbara bane who had just who had left um Mission impossible in a huff or something because it's like when they left mission impossible littered new boy came in Oh, wasn't that interesting Well, well, we'll leave this spy show. We'll go to a science fiction show. He'll leave a science fiction show come to a spy show well, okay, but um Moon base alpha I mean space 1999 basically you've got the moon here. You've got this base on the moon Oh, we have a nuclear accident. Oh, no It doesn't fall off the moon. It just creates an enormous rocket like effect It catapults the moon out of orbit And that's like gary. That's like a nerwin allen kind of thing We'll blow up their whole world and make them put them into a situation So they fly out into space and meet all these interesting aliens who all have english accents by the way And they they look like interesting people like oh christopher lee or bryan bless it or David prowls made several appearances on there too all these people that have gone on to do other great things Exactly we we want to take over your world. You have the things that we need We'll we'll we'll capture some of your people and basically blow you up So it was it was just an interesting thing there um And then they had the second season of space 1999 where in which they really did a real interesting thing They went downstairs and they found new costumes That's about how they described it too. We went downstairs and we found these costumes. It's like half of the people Got went and um They took uh one of us a super eagle eagles were their main sources their main ships and they took Maybe a few of them and put them all together and they kind of blessed it off to try to find their way back to earth or something And the rest of the people still they're still wandering around here on the moon It's much more exciting when you tell the story Yeah, and then they got an they got an alien that actually joined the crew to Maya Who was a shape shifter kind of person turned into an animal just anything Anything any kind of animal or creature or whatever To help out and she had the hops for one of the guys on the on the on the moon base there and tony. Yeah Didn't tony have the still to not when tony to had to still it was another guy that hit or maybe it was Like well by There's some of course Okay, but you saw you saw an explosion In in television science fiction in the mid seventies when star wars came out that Everybody you know everybody was cranking out something a new space right and it was yeah in a way it was um You saw Within the space of a couple years you saw buck rogers and you saw galactica and battlestar galactica Well logan's run I guess was out actually a little bit before that because it had the great technology Right and it it actually explored the the story better than the movie did but um, it was still kind of weak Unfortunately because the basic thing that logan was running from well planted the apes. That's true that took off from but it was The show was not didn't have the Meaning or the spirit that the movies had yeah, because the um, you had you had your good apes and you had your bad Basically and that just uh We've got these apes over here. What a dissect you. We've got these apes over here that would be your friends And it's like they had more people in there that were working with the apes and so it was it kind of Yeah, it just went away from the whole idea Just didn't do well at all. Well then so you had galactica that uh, Was pretty galactic. It was it was very pretty. Oh, it was wonderfully pretty and it probably had the um The best um effects I would say of oh, yeah But of course once they had the effects, they just said okay. Well, we've got this effect Let's just show it over and over because you spent a lot of money on this effect You know like the uh the uh fighter coming out of the bay. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a standard shot It's like, okay. It's time to show all the fighters going out of the bay Shoo, there's another shoo, and it's like the same footage over and over because we Maybe we'll show two at a time coming out Now I don't know which came first this or Buck Rogers well galactica did come first galactica brought color nice color You know, it was where trek was so bland. It had the great stories, but no come It's like all space 1999 was all sterile with white with white Gray, oh, right, but they just had a budget for color Did well because somebody forgot to tell them over there space 1999. Yeah, they are doing television in color now I'm being told believe it or not. We're actually done with the half hour. Oh, are you serious? And we have yet to I We barely scratch the surface of this we may have to we may have to have we may have to actually have another part of this show No, possibly possibly or or not. We don't know we'll see if we can scrape together enough for another half hour If so, uh, we'll be seeing that next time and for all of us here at vast wasteland We'll see you later