The Five People You Don’t Want to Get Lost in Space With…

In the cult television Valhalla, viewers have encountered several lost or wayward space travelers: human men and women isolated in the void of outer space, and seeking a new home (Space: 1999, Lost in Space), a way back to Earth (Star Trek: Voyager, SGU) or even a mere respite from pursuit (Battlestar Galactica).

In virtually every well-known TV tale of “lost” space travelers, however, the human community struggling to survive has been forced to contend not just with externals dangers such as strange space phenomena or hostile aliens…but with threats from within their very group.  These internal dangers – these treacherous characters — are perhaps the trickiest to manage, and these menaces often cause tremendous discontent and strife.

So without further introduction, here are the five characters you’d least like to be lost in space with.

5. Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle) on SGU (2009 – 2011).  Admittedly, Dr. Rush is not flat-out evil, like at least a few of the names you’ll note on this list, but he’s certainly…difficult.  

A genius and a dedicated scientist, Dr. Rush finds himself trapped aboard the Ancient starship Destiny, a vessel flying out of control and headed beyond the confines of our galaxy.  Although we learn in the episode “Human” about the tragic death of Rush’s wife, Gloria (Louise Lombard), that personal background detail hardly excuses Rush’s secrecy, his arrogance, or his schemes to see life on Destiny unfold by his agenda.  Early on in the first season, Rush frames the ship’s leader, Colonel Young (Louis Ferrara) for murder, so that he can continue to study Ancient technology unimpeded.  After Young exiles Rush on a desolate planet, Rush manages a return (thanks to a little alien abduction…) and returns to Destiny.  Once there, he agrees to cooperate fully with Young for the well-being of the crew, but in the very next episode, sets about trapping Young aboard a shuttle, and seizing control of the Destiny for a faction of civilians. 

In short, Rush is a valuable asset in terms of his intelligence and knowledge, but absolutely unreliable in terms of loyalty or team-work.    

4. Seska (Martha Hackett) on Star Trek: Voyager (1995 – 2001).  Seska is a member of Commander Chakotay’s (Rorbert Beltran) Maquis crew when she joins Voyager in the Delta Quadrant in the series pilot “Caretaker.”   Introduced in the second episode, “Parallax,” Seska quickly proves that she isn’t exactly Starfleet timbre.  She constantly second-guesses attempts to integrate the two disparate crews, and deliberately goes against Captain Janeway’s orders of non-interference in the episode “Prime Factors,” opting to steal alien technology that could provide a short-cut home.

Of course, the kicker with Seska is that she is incredibly deceptive.  She is not the Bajoran she appears to be, but rather a Cardassian spy! When Janeway’s command style proves to her intense disliking, Seska reveals her true colors and begins secretly working with a villainous Kazon sect that hopes to seize Voyager.  Finally — making her the intergalactic equivalent of Fatal Attraction’s Alex Forrest — Seska impregnates herself with Chakotay’s DNA and then uses Chakotay’s child as bait to entrap Chakotay and the Voyager crew.

On the plus side, Seska is apparently the only person in history to find Chakotay interesting…

3. Commissioner Simmonds (Roy Dotrice) on Space: 1999 (1975 – 1977).  When the moon is blasted out of Earth’s orbit, Moonbase Alpha is manned by 311 dedicated scientists and astronauts. 

Plus, there’s one politician tagalong…Gerald Simmonds. 

In the first episode, “Breakaway,” Simmonds is revealed to be your typical political animal, a man who would do and say anything to avoid making a tough call, and at the same time maintain his position of power authority.  He’s a weasel and a bureaucrat, one who would easily let Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) take the fall for a difficult decision.

But in his second appearance in “Earthbound,” Commissioner Simmonds proves rather more malicious than his behavior in “Breakaway” suggests.  When visiting aliens called Kaldorians arrive on Moonbase Alpha, Simmonds contrives to take any action necessary – including blackmail – to assure that he gets a seat (or stasis tube…)on their spacecraft, which is headed to Earth.  Specifically, he threatens Alpha’s life support unit, and holds several technicians at gunpoint.

Cruel, imperious, and eminently capable of violence, Simmonds is a “superior” officer, but an inferior human being.  As his actions in “Earthbound” make plain, Simmonds puts his own well-being ahead of the lives of everyone on Alpha.  As Captain Zantor (Christopher Lee) notes of Simmonds, he is a “diseased” individual.  And as Paul Morrow (Prentis Hancock) observes, Alpha is “well rid of him.”

2.    Count Baltar (John Colicos) on Battlestar Galactica (1978 – 1979).  In the first episode of the original Glen Larson series, Baltar betrays the entire human race to the genocidal Cylons. He does it with a smile, which makes it worse.

The Cylons spare Baltar’s life only so that he may pursue the fleeing rag-tag fleet and destroy the Galactica.  But Baltar, strangely, seems to switch loyalties…again.  In “Lost Planet of the Gods,” he meets Adama (Lorne Greene) on the sacred planet of Kobol and presents a plan to attack the Cylons, even releasing Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) from captivity to prove his sincerity.  Adama doesn’t believe him, and Baltar is left to die on the planet surface

In a later episode, “War of the Gods,” Baltar is back.  This time, he’s fearful of the Ship of Lights and visits Galactica to propose a universal truce.  Instead, he is immediately imprisoned and taken to the Prison Barge, where he attempts escape (“Baltar’s Escape”). 

And finally, in “The Hand of God,” Baltar again navigates the narrow line between friend and foe, promising the Colonials critical information about the lay-out of a Cylon base-star if only they grant him his freedom and maroon him on a habitable planet. 

The problem with Baltar, of course, is that betraying and exterminating nine-tenths of the human race is an offense that’s tough to walk back from.  But that doesn’t stop him from trying.  Why propose a truce?  Why propose teaming-up?  No one can guess what really motivates Baltar, besides his own lust for power. 

1. Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris) on Lost in Space (1965 – 1968). If Dr. Smith is near, you have plenty to fear, to turn around a popular character catchphrase.

This “reluctant stowaway” aboard the Jupiter 2 in Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space started out as a saboteur and villain, and then became – for three years – a constant irritant to the heroic Robinson family of space pioneers.  Cowardly, manipulative, and insulting (especially to the robot), Smith managed to land himself and usually the Robinsons too into all kinds of trouble over the years.   In “My Friend, Mr. Nobody,” he nearly killed a peaceful alien so as to possess a cache of diamonds.  In “The Oasis,” Smith used-up the last of the family’s precious water…for a shower.

Smith causes accidents (“Wish Upon a Star”), sabotages spacecraft (“The Raft), covets alien items (“The Magic Mirror”), requires constant rescue (“His Majesty Smith”), is transformed into a stalk of celery (“The Great Vegetable Rebellion”), and even attempts to sell the family robot as spare parts (“Junkyard in Space.”)   In short, he makes life miserable for the Robinsons. 

It has often been suggested that Dr. Smith be shown the way to the nearest airlock on the Jupiter 2, and booted into space.  It’s a testament to the Robinson family’s good-nature (and the family friendly atmosphere of the series…), that this never occurred.  But Smith surely represents all the worst in humanity, from greed to treachery to disloyalty.  It would be miserable to be lost in space with this guy.

In fact, just imagine being lost in space with a crew consisting of Dr. Rush, Seska, Commissioner Simmonds, Baltar and Dr. Smith.

Which of ’em would get kicked out the airlock first?

Before Prometheus: Five Reasons Alien (1979) Endures

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus opens tomorrow and my review of the new film will appear here on the blog the morning of Tuesday, June 19^th (so go see it before then so we can talk about it…). 

But given the arrival of a 2012 movie that connects explicitly to the Alien (1979) mythos, I realized that today represents the proper time to go back and gaze at the reasons why the original film is so terrific and influential.

Here are my five reasons why the originalAlien endures more than thirty years after its release.

1. Revolutionary production and art design, translated into revolutionary sets, costumes and miniatures.

Alien truly pushed the science-fiction “space” film forward into a new realm of imagination.  Director Ridley Scott’s movie eschewed the stream-lined modernism and “neat,” minimalist future-look of such films as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969) as well as TV programs like UFO(1970) or Space: 1999 (1975 – 1977).

The film offered instead a world that was grungy, messy and recognizable…both lived-in and dirty.  It’s true that Star Wars (1977) represents a crucial step in this direction, having created a universe that – in terms of visuals – suggests a rich and storied past.  But Alienwent whole hog into a world where coffee mugs rested on computer consoles, where pornographic pin-ups were hung up beside work stations, and where characters wore sneakers and ball caps when not asleep in cryo-tubes (or “freezers” in the vernacular of the film).

This visual aesthetic has famously been termed “space truckers,” and it’s indeed a crucial element of Alien’s mystique and appeal.  In director Ridley Scott’s capable hands, outer space was not some glorious final frontier.  Rather, it was just your monotonous, unglamorous day-job.  In this future, the average blue collar space traveler still worked for the Man (Weyland-Yutani), and was still trying to get his fair share of corporate wealth and make a living wage. And he still made it through the day on coffee, cussing and swearing when things break down.

Alien, which features a great and very believable monster, would not have succeeded if the elements of the film that involved “futuristic” mankind – his ships, his clothes, his environs – did not reflect a reality the audience could understand and readily identify with.  The recognizable world of the main characters, in fact, makes the alien world all the more disturbing and frightening.

2. The alien itself.

Perhaps this aspect of the film is the one that is actually most difficult to reckon with today because we’ve seen the Alien xenomorph in so many settings and films since the first film came along.  We’ve had three direct sequels, plus two AVP movies, plus toys and comics involving the alien.

The notion of a monster attacking a spaceship crew was not new, of course when Alien, written by the great Dan O’Bannon, was produced.  By that point — as history-minded film reviewers are certain to remind us — we’d seen It! The Terror from Beyond Space(1958), Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965) plus episodes of The Outer Limits (“The Invisible Enemy”) and Space: 1999 (“Dragon’s Domain”) that explored the trope, in many cases quite brilliantly.

But Alien represented a new horizon for “monsters” because of the bio-organic designs of Swiss sculptor and painter H.R. Giger.  This artist’s style had never been captured in mainstream film before, and his work expressed a total (and perverse) blend of human flesh and hard-edged machinery.  In short, the monster in Alien looked like nothing audiences had ever before reckoned with, a fusion of distinctly unlike elements.

There’s more to it than that too. 

Today we take this for granted, but Alien proved so horrifying a film because the monster’s shape and appearance were different every time we encountered it.  We now know the alien life cycle by rote: egg, face-hugger, chest-burster, and adult.  But when audiences first reckoned with Scott’s movie in the last year of the 1970s, none of this information was known. We had no idea what was coming, or how the alien was taking shape.  It seemed to be in a constant state of flux…of becoming. 

Again, all the stages of the lifecycle are familiar today, but in 1979, the alien seemed like the cinema’s first legitimate extra-terrestrial: a thing that changed and evolved into something ever-more hideous each time we saw it.  The title “Alien” expresses this idea beautifully.  Watching the film for the first time, we really felt we had encountered something not human, and not of this Earth.  Today, we’ve seen so many aliens and so many shape-shifters that we’re inured to the concept.  But Aliengot it right, in revolutionary fashion.

3. Implications unexplored but suggested.  This is the very reason why we are getting Prometheus now.  It’s because Alien dramatized a complete and satisfying story of survival, but more than that, brilliantly implieda larger universe outside the context of the Nostromo’s last days.

Let’s gaze at the derelict ship that the Nostromo finds on LV-426, which has become an important part of Prometheus’sstory-line.  When we encounter it in Alien,it is emitting a distress call (or actually, a warning: stay away).  The characters Dallas, Lambert and Kane investigate the ship and they see the dead pilot, the “space jockey” with a torn-open chest. They also find a giant lower chamber, which must be a cargo hold, given its dimensions and relative lack of instrumentation, furniture, etc.   This hold is filled with alien eggs. The eggs are ensconced underneath a level of fog which “reacts” when broken.  What is this level of fog?  Is it some kind of technology keeping the eggs in stasis?  Was it a safeguard to keep the alien eggs dormant and the (odd) equivalent of the freezers we see on the Nostromo? Who was meant to control it?

And then, of course, other questions are raised.  Who were these aliens transporting the eggs? Why were they transporting alien eggs in the first place? What became of the ship’s crew?   Where were they taking the eggs?  And for what purpose were they transporting this odd – and wholly dangerous – cargo?

One big questioned unanswered: if a chest-burster broke out of the space jockey’s chest, where was the adult alien when Dallas and the others arrived to investigate?  A possible answer is that it had died out already, since in Scott’s original conception the alien was to be like something akin to a butterfly, a “perfect” creature that only could live for a few days

See how this film from 1979 is loaded with implications and questions above-and-beyond the “ten little Indians” template of an alien that kills astronauts on a spaceship? The deeper you delve, the more interesting Alien becomes.

And again, this reflects our reality as human beings, an important aspect of horror films.  We are not privy to all the answers in life.  We don’t always know why things happen, or what fate has in store for us.   Some aspects of nature seem a mystery to us, even with advanced science.  The crew of Nostromo likewise encounters a terrible mystery on LV-426, but that mystery is largely left unexplored as the battle of survival begins.   

4.  It’s all about sex.

Alien is cherished and remembered by horror fans for the gory chest-burster sequence featuring John Hurt.  But the film also features one of the creepiest off-screen deaths of all time, and a discarded idea (or hidden implication) in the franchise. When last we see Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), the xenomorph’s tail is seen winding its nefarious way…up between her legs. Then, the film cuts suddenly to Ripley running down a dark corridor, but we still hear Lambert panting and suffering and some…inhuman moaning. 

So what the hell is going on here? What is the alien doing to Lambert? Does it — by its very “perfect” nature — boast some other form of reproductive ability that it is practicing on her? Is it fulfilling some kind of sexual desire? 

Alienpossesses this queasy, uneasy sub-text involving our human sexuality. On the immediately-apparent surface level, the film concerns a creature that can pervert our reproductive cycle for its own ends. But underneath – if we peel back the layers – there are moments in Scott’s original that appear to involve homosexuality, sexual repression, sexual stereotypes and more.

Consider that John Hurt’s character Kane becomes the first recipient of the alien’s reproductive advances. Whisper-thin, British, and sexually ambiguous, Kane is depicted – at one point in the film – wearing an undergarment that appears to be a girdle; something that is distinctly “feminizing” to his appearance.

Also, Kane lives the most dangerous (or is it promiscuous?) life-style of anyone amongst the crew. He is the first to awake from cryo-sleep, the first to suggest a walk to the derelict, and the only man who goes down into the derelict’s egg chamber. He is well-acquainted with danger as (stereotypically…) one might expect of a homosexual man circa 1979. (Note: I said “stereotypically.” The best horror movies are about shattering decorum and transgressing against good taste and Alien fits that bill.)

Soon in the film, it is Kane who is made unwillingly receptive to an oral penetration: the insertion of the face-hugger’s “tube” down his throat…where it lays the chest-buster. What emerges from this encounter is “Kane’s son” (in Ash’s terminology). But essentially, the alien forces poor Kane – possibly a homosexual male symbol — to act in the role he may be familiar with; that of being receptive to penetration.

Consider Ash and this character’s sexual underpinnings. He is actually a robot – a creature presumably incapable of having sex — and the film’s subtext suggests that this inability, this repression of the sexual urge, has made him a monster too. When Ash attacks Ripley late in the film, he rolls up a pornographic magazine (surrounded by other examples of pornography) and attempts to jam it down the woman’s throat…it’s his penis surrogate.  The implication of this particular act is that he can’t do the same thing with his penis, so Ash must use the magazine in its stead.

Later, Ash admits to the fact that he “envies” the alien (penis envy?) and one has to wonder if it is because the alien can sexually dominate others in a way that the disliked, often dismissed Ash cannot manage.

Also note that when Ash is unable to satisfy his repressed sexual desire for Ripley, the pressure literally causes him to explode.  The android blood is a milky white, semen-like fluid. And it spurts everywhere, a catastrophic ejaculation of monumental proportions. Ash, when confronted with his own sexuality and inability to express it…can’t hold his wad.

The most hyper-masculinized (again, stereotypically-so) character in Alien is Parker (Yaphet Kotto), a black man who brazenly discusses “eating pussy” during the scene leading up to the chest-burster moment. He boasts an antagonistic, adversarial relationship with Ripley, and is the character most often-seen carrying a weapon (a flame thrower), a possible phallic symbol.

In another type of film, Parker might be our hero.  But here he dies because of the stereotypical quality of male chivalry or machismo. Specifically, he won’t turn the flame thrower on the alien while a woman (Lambert) is in the line of fire. The alien dispatches Parker quickly (mano e mano), perhaps realizing he will never co-opt an alpha male like Parker to be his “bitch;” at least not the way Kane was used.

As for Lambert, the most-traditionally (and – bear with me – stereotypically) female character in the film — she gets raped by the alien as I noted above, presumably by the xenomorph’s phallic tail. Again, the alien has exploited a character’s biological/reproductive nature and used it to meets its own destructive, perverse needs.

Which brings me to Ripley. Ripley is a character written for a man but played by a woman (Sigourney Weaver). She is the only survivor (along with Jones the Cat), of the alien’s rampage on the Nostromo, and there’s a case that can be made that the alien cannot so easily “tag” Ripley as either male or female, and that’s why she survives. She is perfect, like the alien is, a blend of all “human” qualities.

Kane is fey (possibly gay), Ash is a robot (and hence not able to express sexuality in a “normal” way), Parker is all macho man, and Lambert is a helpless damsel-in-distres…but Ripley is a tall glass of water (practically an Amazon), and an authority figure (third in command). She is also the only character who successfully balances common sense, heroism, and competence.

Given this uncommon mix of stereotypically male and female qualities, the alien is not quite sure how to either “read” or “use” Ripley. In the final moments of the film, it does make a decision. It recognizes Ripley – the best of humanity whether male or female – as kindred; a survivor. So it rides in secret with her aboard the shuttle Narcissus as they escape the exploding Nostromo.

Note that the alien could likely kill Ripley any time during that escape flight…but does not choose to do so. It knows it is in safe hands with her, at least for the time being. It uses her “competence,” her skill (qualities of itself it recognizes in her?) to escape destruction…again establishing its perfection.

Here, perfection might be measured by how well it understands the enemy, the prey.

So, underneath the scares and underneath the great design, what we get in Ridley Scott’s Alien is the story of a monster that exploits our 1970s views of biology and psychology; causing us (as viewers) to re-examine — perhaps even subconsciously — the sexual stereotypes of the day. The homosexual man is endangered first, the alpha males (Dallas and Parker) are ineffective, the traditional “screaming” female gets exploited (not rescued…), and the most “evolved” human, Ripley (along with another perfect creature – a cat) survives to fight another day.

The strange, spiky and sexual nature of Alien lurks just beneath the surface of the film, and is noticeable even in the set design. Just take a long look at the “opening” of the alien derelict.  Without being too graphic about this, it is pretty clearly a vagina.

And the chest-burster is pretty clearly phallus-shaped. Ask yourself why. Sex, and — sometimes discomfort with sex —  lurks at the heart of this horror film.  This factor makes the film endlessly interesting and worthy of a re-watch or debate.

5. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley.  Ripley is indisputably one of the cinema’s greatest hero-warriors, but she’s more than that.  She represents a critical change in how women were conceived and written in horror and science fiction films. 

Ripley is simultaneously part of the “Final Girl” tradition and a crucial evolution of the archetype.   Ripley survives in the film because she is smart and because she possesses insights the others do not.  She understands why regulations are important, doesn’t succumb to emotion (regarding Dallas’s order to let Kane back aboard the Nostromo), and she is extremely competent on the job.  She takes command with authority, and is able to understand the ramifications of her actions.  She is tough, but never so much that we lose a sense of her humanity.  Male or female, we all wish we could possess Ripley’s qualities.

Ripley was Sigourney Weaver’s break-out role because the actress brought incredible commitment and intensity to the role.  Ripley herself showed that the Final Girl did not need others (particularly men) to rescue her, and that she could combat and even destroy the villain, not merely survive to another day.

So, Prometheusopens tomorrow…and we already know that it will delve deep into the implications of the Alien world. 

I wonder: will it create a monster as memorable as we first encountered in 1978?  Will it feature a character as forward-thinking as Ripley was? Will it boast visual canvas as revolutionary as that which we saw in Scott’s horror film?  Will it carry a subtext beyond the surface story of “space horror?”

That’s a pretty tall order, but I suspect that Prometheus will rise or fall not on the new ground it breaks, but how well it subverts and plays with the expectations we carry into the theater with us.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait…

The Fungus Among Us: Cult TV’s Most Memorable Eukaryotes.

Mushrooms, yeasts, and molds…oh my. 

Eukaryotic life forms – fungi – are non-vascular organisms that reproduce by means of spores.  Unlike bacteria, fungi always possess a nucleus and are made of thin threads known as “hyphae,” or all together, in networks, “mycelium.”

Typically fungi are not motile (meaning capable of motion), but in cult-television history that’s not always the case.   Additionally, many fungi are saprophytic, meaning that they release digestive enzymes and then absorb the digested food.  Many fungi in the real world are also mutualists (lichens, for example), but some (especially in genre television) are decidedly parasitic in nature.

Over the decades, monstrous (and sometimes helpful…) fungi have appeared in many popular science fiction programs.  Thus today, I offer a list of some of the most memorable TV fungi, both friendly and hostile.

7.         Blake’s 7: “The Web” (January 30, 1978). In this early episode of Blake’s 7 by creator Terry Nation, the Liberator is ensnared in space in an organic, fungal web.  The web is a tool of an immortal creature called Saymon (Richard Beale), a corporate life form.  On the planet below the web, Saymon has genetically engineered creatures called Decimas that Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) attempts to free from enslavement.  Meanwhile, Saymon – one of the legendary Auron “Lost” — desires the Liberator’s power cells.  Unless he gets them, the Liberator will be permanently ensnared in the gossamer filaments of the space fungus.

6.         Lost in Space: “Welcome Stranger” (October 20, 1965.) In this sixth episode of Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space written by Peter Packer, an astronaut from Earth named Jimmy Hapgood (Warren Oates) lands near the Robinson encampment, unaware that the tiny fungal life-forms on his capsule are evolving in the friendly atmosphere and rapidly becoming giant, tentacled monsters..  When he offers to take Penny and Will back with him on his shape, he has no idea that the area is overrun these frightening monsters.

5.         Space: 1999: “The Last Sunset” and “Journey to Where.”  In “The Last Sunset” by Christopher Penfold, aliens from the planet Ariel gift Moonbase Alpha with a breathable lunar atmosphere.  Dr. Helena Russell (Barbara Bain) leads a team to judge the possibility of reclaiming the surface of the moon, but her Eagle crashes in a wind storm.  

While attempting to get word to Alpha, a member of her exploratory team, controller Paul Morrow (Prentis Hancock) discovers mushrooms growing in the new atmosphere.  He samples one, and soon turns psychotic, imagining the moon’s surface as a future Garden of Eden, made into a paradise by the mushrooms, by so-called “manna from heaven.”  Eventually, Helena and her team are rescued, and it is learned that the mushrooms actually possessed dangerous hallucinogenic elements…

           

In the second season episode “Journey to Where,” Helena falls ill from “viral pneumonia” after a time travel trip to Earth in the year 1339.  Captured by people of that era, Helena, Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) and pilot Alan Carter (Nick Tate) are imprisoned in a cave, where Helen sees fungus growing on the cave walls.  She notes that “fungoids” are the basis for the only drugs known to cure viral pneumonia.  She asks Koenig to pick some off the wall to treat her, and creates herself a remedy.

Incidentally, this particular scene between Koenig and Helena is repeated, almost note for note in the first season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Arsenal of Freedom.”  Only there it took place in another cave, and between another commanding officer and CMO: Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher.

4.         SGU: “Cloverdale.” (October 26, 2010). In this second season episode of Stargate Universe, the crew of Destiny is menaced on a lush alien planet by a dangerous fungus creature.  Matthew Scott (Brian J. Smith) is infected by it, and the fungus begins to grow, out-of-control, on his arm.  As the fungus rapidly spreads towards Scott’s trunk, Dr. Rush (Robert Carlyle) suggests amputation (with bone saw, no less…), but reverses course when he learns the fungus is already in Scott’s blood stream.  While unconscious and infected by the alien fungus, Matthew imagines an elaborate fantasy in which he returns to the picturesque home-town called “Cloverdale” and awaits his wedding day with Chloe (Elyse Levesque).  Meanwhile, walking plant creatures that resemble triffids could hold the key to reversing Matthew’s rapidly-spreading infection.

3.         The X-Files: “Field Trip” (May 19, 1999).  In this sixth-season episode of The X-Files by John Shiban and Vince Gilligan, F.B.I. agents Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny) visit my neck of the woods, North Carolina, to investigate the death of two hikers in the woods.  They soon run afoul of a hungry, giant, subterranean mushroom that begins to slowly absorb and digest them.  During this lengthy process, Mulder and Scully both hallucinate that they have returned home to their lives.  In Scully’s case, she imagines Mulder’s death and wake.  In his case, Mulder tracks a story of alien abduction.  The duo awake just in time, and with Skinner’s (Mitch Pileggi) help escape from the cave of the giant ravenous mushrooms…

2.         Primeval: Season 3. Episode 5 (April 25, 2009).  In this episode of the BBC time incursion series, an anomaly opens up in a millionaire’s apartment.  It leads to Earth’s distant future, where an assistant soon inhales the spores of a giant fungus.  He returns to the presents and spreads the spores to his heartless boss, Richard Bentley (William Scott-Mason), who begins to transform into a terrifying fungus-man.  

Meanwhile, at the ARC (Anomaly Research Center) one of Christine Johnson’s (Belinda Stewart-Wilson) men is also exposed to the fast-growing fungus, and evolves into one of the mushroom monsters as well. Trapped in a lab with the rapidly-growing fungi, Connor Temple (Andrew-Lee Potts) realizes that extreme cold holds the key to halting the spread of the avaricious fungus from the future.

           

Connor’s discovery comes not a moment too soon, as team leader Jenny Lewis (Lucy Brown) is imperiled by the Fungus Man, and exposed to the toxic material…

1.         One Step Beyond: “The Sacred Mushroom” (January 24, 1961).  This is perhaps the strangest episode of the paranormal anthology One Step Beyond, and, in fact, one of the strangest of all episodes in cult TV history.  Whereas most episodes are fictionalized accounts of paranormal events, this episode is a documentary and travelogue.  

Series director and narrator John Newland hosts a trip to a remote village in Mexico to determine along with experts Dr. Puharich, Dr. Barbara Brown, spiritual guru David Grey and Stanford professor Jeffrey Smith, if a special mushroom with hallucinogenic properties (called “X”) is capable of enhancing extra sensory perception in humans.  In one scene, we watch as the members of the team sample peyote before our eyes.

Then, upon returning to America, Newland himself also consumes the special mushroom in Dr. Puharich’s Palo Alto laboratory and is tested for an increase in psychic power and ESP.   Although the late John Newland reported to me that he experienced flashbacks for months after sampling the mushroom, he never did feel any kind of psychic awareness.  

Still, this episode has become legend because it is likely the only time in prime time history that a series host – and Golden Age Hollywood star – tripped before our eyes on American network television.  

Thus John Newland went where Boris Karloff, Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchock and Truman Bradley never did (at least publicly)…straight into America’s burgeoning drug culture.

The Best and Worst Moms in Cult-TV History

Cult-television has a thing or two to say about moms, and as Mother’s Day approaches this weekend, it seems a good time to recall the best and the worst of the pantheon. 

In terms of figuring out which is which, we can define a good mother as one who brings up her children with care and attention, who loves unconditionally, and who places highly in her life the needs and desires of her sons or daughters. She does so with a careful eye that the child grow up neither selfish nor indulged, but rather healthy, and a productive, a contributing member of society.

The Worst:

6. Lwaxana Troi (Star Trek: The Next Generation[1987 – 1994]).  The late Majel Barrett Roddenberry often called the ebullient Lwaxana “Auntie Mame” in space, and unlike many other moms on this list, the Betazoid Ambassador to the Federation isn’t actually evil.  But man, she sure is difficult to deal with. 

Every time Lwaxana boards the Enterprise, she flirts openly, aggressively, and embarrassingly with Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart)…her daughter Deanna’s boss, essentially.  Worse, Mrs. Troi is personally hurtful to Deanna (Marina Sirtis), diminishing her adult daughter as “Little One” and constantly blaming her for not having a husband, or for ruining things with Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes).   

Lwaxana Troi is also egotistical and elitist, constantly referring to her noble heritage as “Holder of the Scared Chalice of Rixx,” and “heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed”   In Star Trek’s enlightened future, she is also cavalierly thoughtless to her put-upon servant, Mr. Homm.  Troi even thinks that speaking (rather than communicating telepathically…) is for lower life forms, including humans.

Sure, Lwaxana isn’t evil, but she absolutely makes her daughter’s life miserable every time she sets foot aboard ship, either arranging an unwanted marriage (“Haven”) for Troi or demanding adherence to (annoying…) Betazoid customs.   Lwaxana is a domineering and annoying mother.   You may love her, but being around her is hell.  Certainly, Counselor Troi turned out well, but seeing her mother, you wonder how, precisely, that happened…

5. Endora (Bewitched [1964 – 1972]). Endora (Agnes Moorehead) is a mother-in-law who is, literally, a witch.  Furious that her beloved daughter Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) has married a mere mortal, Darrin (Dick  York/Dick Sergeant), Endora constantly second-guesses and criticizes her adult daughter’s choices.  Like Lwaxana Troi, she can’t quite see her child as an adult.

Endora always refuses to acknowledge Darrin by name, and mocks him with cruel nick-names all the time, such as “Durwood.”  Endora also casts cruel spells on her son-and-law, and hates all mortals, reveling in their humiliation at her hands.  

Again, the mighty witch Endora might not, technically, be evil, but she clearly doesn’t respect or support her daughter’s ability to make her own choices, or find her own way to happiness.  For Endora, it’s her way or the highway.

4. Henrietta Walker (The Twilight Zone [1959 – 1964). In the memorable episode “Young Man’s Fancy,” a mama’s boy named Alex Walker (Alex Nicol) has just married a beautiful long-suffering woman, Virginia (Phyllis Thaxter) after twelve years of making her wait for him. On their honeymoon, he takes her to…his dead mother’s house to reminiscence about the good old days with dear old mum, Henriettea (Helen Brown).  Virginia wants to sell the house and get started on a new life…not to mention get busy with her new husband, but Alex just can’t stop thinking about how great his Mother was.  

In no time, Henrietta – from beyond the grave – stakes a claim on her adult son’s life.  Instead of allowing him to move on and have a life and family of his own, Henrietta tightens her maniacal grip and actively competes with Virginia for the man’s affections.  By episode’s end, Alex has physically reverted to his twelve year-old self, and his new wife abandons the house at a run, never to return.  Momma Henrietta is victorious, and her son is now permanently infantilized.  As a mother, she cares more about control and dominating her child then ensuring that he is happy.  How selfish.

3. Eleanor Dupres (V [1983]).  Mike Donovan’s (Marc Singer) mom, Eleanor (Neva Patterson) is a real barracuda.  In both V and V: The Final Battle (1984), she proves her infinite flexibility by always switching to the top dog at the right moment, whether that top dog is wealthy industrial Arthur Dupres, or Steven, a fascist lizard from outer space.  


A happy collaborator, Eleanor is concerned primarily with her status among the 1 percent.  She is rich and powerful and wishes to stay rich and powerful.  To achieve that goal, Eleanor would turn in her grandson, Sean, to the Visitors and even attempt to shoot her own son, Mike. 

Eleanor gets her comeuppance when her shift in loyalties comes too fast, and the Visitor Steven witnesses her selling him out to the resistance.  He kills this evil, collaborating, lizard-loving Mom, and it’s a fair bet that her son won’t miss her one bit.

2. Xhalax Sun (Farscape [1999 – 2004]).  Aeryn Sun’s (Claudia Black) mother, Xhalax Sun (Linda Cropper) once showed her young daughter an inkling of kindness by going to the child by night and confessing to her that she was conceived out of love, not by Peacekeeper edict.  But when Xhalax’s act of decency was discovered, the officer was given an unenviable choice: kill her lover, or kill her child. Xhalax killed her lover and soon became an expert assassin.  From that day forward, she grew cruel, bitter and devoid of warmth.

In Farscape, Xhalax tracks her fugitive daughter across the Uncharted Territories as part of a retrieval squad sent to capture Talyn, Moya’s child.  When Xhalax learns that Aeryn named the baby leviathan after her dead father, the officer chides her daughter for displaying sentimentality and weakness.

Throughout her appearances on Farscape, Xhalax shows a complete disregard for Aeryn’s well-being or happiness.  Xhalax views Aeryn as a “traitor” and tells her that she has not “wasted one microt” thinking of her.  A mother who has gotten used to doing what expedient, not what is right, it is clear that Xhalax would kill her own child to perform her given tasks.  Although Xhalax and Aeryn have a sort of final reckoning that clears the air, it happens right as Xhalax is about to die, and therefore she has nothing to lose in showing warmth to her only child.

1. Irina Derevko (Alias [2001 – 2005]). Lena Olin portrayed the deliciously and horribly evil Irina Derevko, mother of spy Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) throughout Alias’s run, starting in the second season.   Irina faked her own death while Sydney was six, so she could return home to the Soviet Union.  Years later, she pretended to be Sydney’s ally, playing on the young woman’s need to emotional “know” something about her mother, formerly known as Laura Bristow.  In truth, however, Irina was manipulating her daughter, and secretly working with Arvin Sloane and Sark to retrieve Rambaldi artifacts around the globe. 

Late in Alias’srun, Irina actually hired a hit man to killer her daughter, and in “Maternal Instinct” told Sydney that she only had a child with Jack Bristow because the KGB ordered her to do so.  In the series finale, Sydney and Irina engaged in brutal fisticuffs over the last Rambaldi artifact.  Irina chose the artifact over her own daughter, and died for that choice when a glass roof collapsed and she fell to her doom.   And yes, any mother who would choose a material thing over her own child is a pretty terrible one indeed.

The Best:

5. Amanda Grayson (Star Trek [1966 – 1969]).  Mr. Spock’s mother, Amanda (Jane Wyatt), was a school teacher on Earth, and faced the unenviable task of raising her half-human son on cold, logical Vulcan.  There, Spock was teased relentlessly for his human heritage, but Amanda, despite Vulcan edict, was able to show her son love, and in the process reveal what it means to be human.  

To be a good mother (or father), in part, is to sacrifice, and Amanda knowingly permitted her son to grow up as a Vulcan, even though he could never tell her he loved her, or otherwise outwardly return her emotional devotion.  Imagine raising a child and never hearing those words, “I love you.”  And then remember that it is for your son’s own good as he attempts to determine and cement his own identity in a world that does not accept him.  Amanda puts her son’s well-being first, and at considerable cost to herself.

4. Devon Adair (Earth 2 [1994 – 1995]  Devon Adair’s  (Deborah Farentino) son Ulysses (Joey Zimmerman) is dying of a fatal disease called “The Syndrome” as Earth 2 commences.  He is eight years old, and those who suffer from the rare disease don’t live, generally, past nine.  Accordingly, Devon leaves behind her life, Earth itself, and the comforts of civilization and technology to get her son to a planet, G889, some 22 light years away.  There, in a natural environment, Ulysses can thrive and beat the “Syndrome,” but it means living a pioneer life-style on an entirely alien and often inhospitable world.

Again, an important quality evidenced by a good mother is sacrifice.  Devon changes her entire life to assure that her son has a shot to live his.  Devon Adair is a strong leader, a brilliant woman, and a great mother to boot. 

3. Joyce Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer[1997 – 2003]).   Perhaps the hardest thing to do as a mother (or father) is to love your child unconditionally, even if they don’t turn out how you had hoped.  But a good parent can put aside personal hopes and expectations, and accept a child, unconditionally, for who he or she is.  

That is the battle that Joyce Summers (Kristine Sutherland) fights and eventually wins in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  She learns that her daughter is “The Chosen One,” a slayer, and doomed, essentially, to a short life, and one of constant mortal danger.  Joyce is good-intentioned but in denial about her daughter throughout the first two seasons of the program.  She doesn’t want to “see” what Buffy really is, at least until, in “Becoming,” when Buffy tells her to open her eyes.

After that — and to her everlasting credit — Joyce adapts and attempts to accept Buffy for who she is and what she does.  Joyce doesn’t always succeed, as is the case wherein she creates M.O.O. (Mothers Opposed to the Occult), but she nonetheless boasts a critical capacity of any parent: the ability to adapt as per “conditions on the ground,” so-to-speak.  In short order, Joyce becomes a force of stability in Buffy’s life, until her untimely passing.  She supports Buffy and attempts to give Buffy as normal a life as possible, and that’s night easy since the family lives on the Hellmouth.

2.Martha Kent (Smallville [2001 – 2011]). Martha (Annette O’Toole) is the kind, warm and loving mother of Clark Kent (Tom Welling), her adopted son from Krypton.  Early in Smallville Martha bites the bullet keeps the Kent family afloat financially — when the farm can no longer support it – by working extra jobs.  Later, after Jonathan’s death, Martha continues to protect her son by running for and being elected the junior senator from Kansas.  In the halls of the Senate, Martha helps to quash the fascist VRA (Vigilante Registration Act) and even adopts her own alias, as the mysterious “Red Queen,” to further protect her imperiled son from the powerful forces allied against him.

Martha is the perfect example of a mother who changes her approach as her child’s needs change.  She is a warm and loving care-giver when he is a child, but as he grows into an adult, she assumes different roles in his life to help see that he achieve his destiny as Superman. 

1.Sarah Connor (The Sarah Connor Chronicles[2008 – 2009]). Imagine that, as a mother, you have just a few years – not even two decades – to train and prepare your son for his destined role as the savior of the human race.  This job makes you not only the mother of a child, but the mother of the future human race in a way.

And then, on top of your role as mentor to your son, imagine you must protect his existence every day in the face of time-traveling, indestructible, relentless cyborgs.  Now you, yourself, must become a warrior, to see that your son achieves his fate.  As a single mom, there’s no father to share the burden.

If all that’s not enough, consider what it would be like to undertake these critical tasks while grappling with the possibility that you may be dying of cancer, and that you might not live long enough to impart to your child all the knowledge and wisdom he needs to become that savior.

Welcome to Sarah Connor’s (Lena Headey) world.  Sometimes Sarah is as harsh, and as relentless as the terminators she faces so frequently, but there is no better fighter to have at your side than this committed (and heavily-armed…) mom.

The (Cult-TV) War on Men: Seven Female-Dominated Societies that Have it in for Males

In the national discourse there’s been a lot of talk about the War on Women lately.  

For instance, not long ago, Congress held a committee meeting about birth control and no women were present. Then, a Republican candidate for President, Rick Santorum, made the claim that women are “too emotional” for combat assignments in the military.  Then Virginia considered passing a law that would – literally — force non-medically-necessary “trans-vaginal” penetration upon women seeking to have an abortion.  

Finally, when asked if he supported equal pay for women in the form of the Lily Ledbetter Act, Presidential nominee-to-be Mitt Romney whiffed because he needed more time to interface with the vast, remote computer bank storing all of his previously-held positions on the issue.  Accessing…Accessing…

While this war on women continues, no end in sight, into Election 2012, cult television history reminds us precisely where this kind of talk could be headed.  Unless we’re very, very careful, women will strike back and wage a War on Men.

And men will lose that war…badly.

In the sincere hope of preventing such an unfortunate eventuality and brokering a truce in this ongoing battle between the sexes, I thus offer up a tour of the “War on Men:” seven of the most memorable Matriarchies in cult-television history. 

You’ll note that many of these female-dominated cultures — oddly — play rather distinctly as kinky male fantasies rather than as legitimate, consistent visions of female rule. 

Or didn’t you realize that the first order of the day when women rule the planet is the imposition of a new dress code?

Cat-suits and whips for all!

1. “The Confederacy of Ruth” (Planet Earth [1974]). In this post-apocalyptic pilot/TV-movie from Star Trekcreator Gene Roddenberry, Dylan Hunt (John Saxon) attempts to rescue a PAX doctor from “The Confederacy of Ruth,” a female dominated society. 

The culture is ruled by the dictatorial Marg (Diana Muldaur), and all men are considered property, and called “Dinks.”  The men are also routinely drugged by their women to make them compliant and untroubled by their status as slaves.  Once Dylan kicks off the effects of the drug, he turns on his manly charm and teaches Marg a thing or two about…dinks.

Planet Earth asked the memorable question: “women’s lib? Or women’s lib gone mad?!”

2. “Medusa” (Star Maidens [1975]).  In this short-lived German/British series created by Eric Paice, the planet Medusa drifts in space, and its inhabitants dwell in an underground metropolis.  There, women rule, and men serve as domestic servants.  Two slaves, Shem (Gareth Thomas) and Adam (Pierre Brice) decide they are tired of being taken for granted (“who takes care of the kids?!”) and make a beeline for nearby Earth. 

Their female masters pursue, but are troubled by the fact that Earth is ruled by men (!).  Indeed, the Medusan mistresses claim such a set-up is in “violation of all common sense.”  Considering the Earth a “great disappointment,” the Medusan Matriarchy sets out to retrieve Shem and Adam.  If they fail, a new, illegal “men’s liberation movement” could take hold on Medusa, overturning the apple cart.

3. Entra” (Space: 1999: “Devil’s Planet” [1976]).  In this second season episode of Gerry Anderson’s Space: 1999, Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) is captured by Elizia (Hildegard Neil), the warden, governor and absolute ruler of the prison colony of Entra.  The prisoners incarcerated there are all men — political dissidents who spoke against female rule, apparently — and are now guarded by cat-suited Amazon women who viciously wield whips.  

The prisoners’ only opportunity to escape this hellish life is to survive sadistic Elizia’s vicious game, “The Hunt.”  If a prisoner does survive being hunted by Elizia and her women on the inhospitable moon’s forest surface — being both outnumbered and out-equipped — he can be transported back to the home world, his sentence is commuted.  

The only problem: a plague has decimated the home world, Ellna, killing all living beings.  So when Elizia beams the victorious political dissidents back home, she’s actually issuing the troublesome men a death sentence.  

4.”Turnabout” (The Fantastic Journey [1977]).  In this episode of the short-lived TV series set in the Bermuda Triangle, Queen Hayalana (Joan Collins) finally tires of her brutish husband and his stupid men, and with the help of a powerful computer called “The Complex,” zaps all the males of the province away to a null zone, or pocket universe.  

Promising “an end to male domination,” Hayalana then captures the series’ heroes, Varian (Jared Martin), Dr. Willaway (Roddy McDowall), Scott Jordan (Ike Eisenmann) and Dr. Fred Walters (Carl Franklin), and plans to keep them as “breeding stock.”  To convince these visiting men to remain docile and cooperative, this cold-hearted queen then poisons their food, and tells the men they will only receive the antidote only if they comply with her wishes. 

Hayalana’s plans come crashing down however, when none of the women in the province are capable of controlling “The Complex,” a computer built by…you guessed it, a man.

5. “Xantia” (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century [1979]: “Planet of the Amazon Women.”) Buck (Gil Gerard) is captured by gorgeous slave traders and auctioned off to the highest bidder in this first season episode of Buck Rogers in the 25^thCentury.  You see, all the men of Xantia have either been killed in one of their incessant wars, or are being held prisoner by the planet’s enemy: the Ruathans.  Thus the women of Xantia need some *ahem* company, not to mention some men to do all the physical labor. 

Watch as Buck is stripped down to his chest, and the women “bidders” at his auction coo and gasp over his manly physique!

6. “Adore” (Otherworld[1985]: “I am Woman, Hear Me Roar.”)  In this episode of the 1985 cult series, Otherworld, a militantly female society rules the roost in the province of “Adore,” founded by a female Zone Trooper commandment, Livia.  

The men in “Adore” do not even know how to read, and the “gender stratification” laws discourage marriage.  A “gender patrol” walks the streets, maintaining order, and girls ogle slave men in the popular magazine, “Available Hunk.” 

And, of course, there’s the Gender Arcade, the marketplace where men are greased up, stripped down, and sold to the highest bidder. 

When the patriarch of the Sterling family, Hal (Sam Groom), objects to the status of males as second-class citizens, a woman in power reminds him to: “keep in mind that this is a conservative part of town and will resist compromise.”  When Hal’s wife, June (Gretchen Corbett) sticks up for him, the same women sneers: “Oh…I understand…you’re progressives.” 

7. “Angel One.” (Star Trek: The Next Generation [1987]:”Angel One.”) In this first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Enterprise D visits the Matriarchy of “Angel One” in hopes of finding out if survivors of a freighter, the Odin, landed there.  They find out that a group of men did survive, and are making trouble for the female leadership. 

Mistress Baeta (Karen Montgomery) – or “the elected one” – pronounces the death sentence for the survivors of the Odin and any women unwise enough to attempt to alter the peace of Angel One’s female-dominated society.   Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) steps in to argue against the death penalty.  Ultimately, he is persuasive…perhaps because Mistress Baeta still remembers the space stud in his colorful, open-chest blouse and earrings…

Finally, besides Star Maidens, another series also featured female-dominated world as its setting: Norman Lear’s All that Glitters (1977), starring Linda Gray and Greg Evigan.  I’ve never seen it, but would love to get my hands on a few episodes.

The Eight Most Disgusting Cult-TV Parasites

A parasite is defined as the dominant partner in an unwelcome relationship of different organisms.  In other words, the parasite is a life form that benefits from an involuntary partnership, while the other creature in the relationship…does not.

Throughout cult-tv history, we’ve encountered many memorable and monstrous parasites, a fact which probably arises from the popularity of the 1951 alien invasion novel The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein.  By some definitions, Star Trek’s the Borg might themselves be considered parasites, since, with their assimilation nanites, they transform and co-opt organic beings into Borg.  But for this post, I’m going to concentrate on some memorable and gruesome biological parasites, rather than mechanical ones.

What’s the fear of parasites?  In short, it’s the idea that our bodies can be used and abused by an intelligence not our own; that our bodies could be viewed as a resource or even food by some other creature.  Many of the creatures on this list assume control of our physical selves, and replace our intelligence with theirs.  Others see us, alarmingly, as just meat.

So here are eight truly horrific, incredibly disgusting cult-tv parasites.  These are the monkeys you most definitely don’t want on your back…or anywhere else inside you for that matter.

8. Prehistoric tape worm.  This revolting creature appeared in the fourth episode of Primeval, which aired in March of 2007 in the UK.  


Here, a flock of adorable dodos  waddle through one of the series’ colorful time anomalies into modern England, but a few of these extinct, flightless birds are carrying a parasite that can temporarily seize control of the host and act aggressively to assure reproduction.  One of Connor’s (Andrew-Lee Potts) friends, Tom (Jake Curran), is infected with the organism after a dodo bite on his arm.  He soon suffers debilitating headaches, massive pain and increased paranoia as the worm inside him…grows.  At one point in the episode, we see a high-resolution scan of Tom’s skull, and this large, lively worm wriggling about inside it.  

7. The Hellgramite.  This parasite appeared in the third season of the first Twilight Zone remake (1985 – 1989) called “The Hellgramite Method.”  In this tale by William Selby, an alcoholic named Miley Judson (Timothy Bottoms) realizes he risks losing his family if he doesn’t get off the booze permanently. Accordingly, he answers an ad for a cure for alcoholism and meets with Dr. Murrich (Leslie Yeo).  The doctor, — who lost his own family to a drunk driver — gives Judson a red pill to swallow.  Inside that pill, the drinker later learns, is a parasite called a Hellgramite: an unusual brand of tape worm that survives and thrives on alcohol. The more Judson drinks, the more the worm feeds and the bigger it grows.  Now, Judson doesn’t even get the buzz of feeling drunk, no matter how much liquor he consumes!  Eventually, if he keeps drinking, the Hellgramite will kill Miley, so the traumatized alcoholic must either starve the tapeworm and stop drinking for good, or let the thing kill him…

In this case, the cult-tv parasite, while quite horrible, is actually put to good use: curing alcoholism.  At episode’s end, the Hellgramite Method works, and Miley Judson is a new man.  As the voice-over reminds us, what this drinker needed “was something a little extra,” something that could only be found…in The Twilight Zone.

6. The Selminth.  This parasitic creature appeared in the fifth and last season of Angel (1999 – 2005), in an episode entitled “Soul Purpose,” written by Brent Fletcher and directed by David Boreanaz.  


In this entry, Angel becomes trapped in a vegetative state while under the influence of a slimy worm-like creature called a Selminth Parasite.  This creature causes hallucinations in its host, and in the episode, Angel dreams that Spike has replaced him as the champion of the Shansu Prophecy.  Here, the worm is used as a weapon by a sinister agent (Eve), and alters the very mind-state of the host.  Angel must wake up and remove the parasite from his chest, or live in a a nightmare for the remainder of his days…

5. “Conspiracy.”  In “Conspiracy,” a late first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is warned by a friend, Captain Walker (Jonathan Farwell) that some kind of sinister agenda is afoot in Starfleet Command.  


After Walker’s ship, The Horatio explodes in an apparent accident, Picard fears there might be some truth behind his friend’s paranoia.  He orders the Enterprise back to Earth, and there discovers that the Admiralty itself has been infiltrated by parasitic aliens bent on conquering the Federation from within.  These small, crab-like aliens enter human beings through the mouth, and then completely control all higher mental functions.  The small parasites also report to a much-larger, dinosaur-like “mother” being that has found a home inside Commander Remmick (Robert Schenkkan).  The parasites die without this mother being in close proximity.

These creepy alien parasites (revealed in Star Trek novels to be related to the Trill…) can be detected by a sort of breathing gill that extends from the back of the host’s neck.  In the episode, Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) rigs one for Riker (Jonathan Frakes) so that he will appear compromised, but can actually rescue Captain Picard from danger.

I must admit, I absolutely love this episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  It has a more sinister, diabolical vibe than most episodes.  In fact, it’s downright scary at times, especially the unresolved ending, which suggests the parasites could return one day, and have sent a message to their brethren out in space.   I also love the visual of Picard and Riker frying the alien mother organism with their phasers.  So much for respect and tolerance for all alien life forms!   I’ve always found it ironic that Gene Roddenberry so vociferously complained about Admiral Kirk’s treatment of another parasite, the Ceti Eel in The Wrath of Khan (1982) — how dare he shoot it! it’s a life-form — but then Picard and Riker reacted exactly the same way in this TNG episode, with revulsion and phasers firing.

4. The Ganglions.  These skittering, slimy, multi-tentacled parasites appeared in the short-lived alien invasion series Dark Skies (1996 – 1997).  The ganglions were first seen in the pilot episode, “The Awakening,” written by Brent Friedman and Bryce Zabel and directed by horror legend Tobe Hooper. 

The Ganglions enter the human head through either the nose, ear or mouth, and the assimilation process is slow and incredibly painful.  First, possession by the parasite causes a nervous breakdown, but eventually the host mind is erased completely, and the Ganglion is in total control of his human steed.  We learn in the course of the series that the Ganglions took over the Greys’ planet, much in the same way that they intend to take over the human race.

In “Awakening,” cult-television gets one of its most gruesome and effectively shot scenes as the scientists of Majestic attempt to remove a ganglion from its human host, a farmer.  The results aren’t pretty.   The ganglion escapes, attempts to attach to another unlucky soul, and then is deposited in a jar by John Loengard, using very long tongs.  This scene remains harrowing, even today, and is splendidly shot by Hooper.

3. “Roadrunners.”  An eighth season X-Files episode, Roadrunners,” by Vince Gilligan, introduces a parasitic creature that may or may not be of this Earth.


Here, Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson), sans partner, visits Utah to investigate a strange death.  She soon runs afoul, instead, of a weird cult that believes a worm parasite represents the second coming of Jesus Christ on Earth. 

These committed cult members attempt to get the worm inside Scully – who is pregnant at this point – by allowing it to burrow underneath her flesh, inside her back.  This episode successfully gets under your skin too, by forging an atmosphere of extreme isolation and vulnerability.  In The X-Files, we are used to Mulder always having Scully’s back during a crisis.  But here, Mulder is gone, abducted by aliens, and we don’t quite trust Agent Doggett (Robert Patrick) yet.  Here, Scully is the most alone we’ve ever seen her, in real physical danger, contending with villains who can’t be reasoned with.  And she faces, clearly, a fate worse than death with that wriggling, monstrous worm in her back. In a truly upsetting scene, Scully is tied to a bed on her stomach, as the creature makes its subcutaneous approach.

A group of vocal folks like to complain about the last two, largely Mulder-less years of The X-Files, but episodes such as “Roadrunners” certainly  prove the series was effective as ever in generating authentic, deep-down scares.  I also appreciate the conceit that this particular parasite is never explained.  We don’t know what it is, where it came from, or why it is here.  Creepy.

2. The Invisibles. In a classic first season Outer Limits episode written by Joseph Stefano and directed by Conrad Hall, an undercover GIA agent, Spain (Don Gordon) attempts to infiltrate a secret and subversive society called the Invisibles.  


Once inside the secret community, Spain learns that the strange group is led by hideous alien invaders: horrible crab-like creatures that attach themselves to the human spine and totally control minds.  If the joining process goes wrong, humans are rendered deformed and nearly lobotomized.

Gordon attempts to warn government officials about the alien invasion in the offing, but the Invisibles are already onto him, and just waiting to absorb him into their ranks.  In an absolutely tense and suspenseful scene near the episode’s climax, a wounded, prone, Spain is unable to escape as a skittering, multi-legged Invisible dashes towards him, attempting to join with him.   He pulls himself along, screaming for help, as the thing, in the background, looms ever nearer.  The feeling of vulnerability, entrapment and terror generated in that image, and throughout “The Invisibles,” remains incredibly potent almost fifty years later.  Being joined with these huge, inhuman things is indeed a fate worse than death… 

1. Earwig.  We never actually see the parasite in the classic episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery entitled “The Caterpillar,” but we certainly learn all about it.

Here, a nasty civil servant, Stephen Macy (Laurence Harvey) covets a co-worker’s wife (Joanna Pettet) and attempts to off her husband with a parasite called an earwig.  The murder scheme goes horribly wrong, however, when Stephen himself is exposed to the wee bug.

The earwig, you see, possesses a “decided liking” for the human ear. Once inside the ear canal, the odds of an earwig evacuating it are a thousand-to-one. They can’t turn around, and so instead keep plowing endlessly forward...burrowing into the brain and feeding on grey matter as they seek an escape route. The pain caused by these “stealthy chaps” is agonizing and horrible, and death is nearly always the result. Here, Macy undergoes agonizing pain as the earwig digs in. In fact, his hands must be bound to his bed-posts so he doesn’t claw his face apart in an attempt to get rid of the bug chewing a path through his brain.

By some miracle, Macy survives the ordeal, which he describes as an “agonizing, driving, itching pain,” and the earwig exits his ear.  Unfortunately, those two weeks are only the beginning of Hell for Mr. Macy.  He learns that the earwig was female and laid eggs inside his brain.  The larvae will hatch soon, and find a ready source of food: his brain,  Despite its lack of overt horrific visuals, “The Caterpillar” proves utterly disgusting and macabre in its suggestion of a fate worse than death: a perpetual itch you just can’t scratch.  

The Five Most Savage Episodes in Cult-TV History

As I wrote in my book, Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), I’m a committed proponent of the early-to-mid 1970s “Savage Cinema,” a span which gave the world such films as Straw Dogs (1971), Deliverance (1972), The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and later The Hills Have Eyes (1977).  I connect with these movies so deeply and thoroughly, I suspect, because the filmmakers took the so-called “New Freedom” of the epoch (in terms of screen standards) and then systematically disconnected the horror genre from its exotic roots.  The films I name-checked above don’t take place in Transylvanian castles, upon the misty moors, or in the pyramids of Egypt.  They don’t take occur on the Amazon River, in the Arctic, or in other foreign locales.  Instead, the savage horror films of the 1970s dramatically re-positioned horror as something that could happen in the here and now, in our time, in our place.  It was terror…brought home.

The Savage Cinema of the 1970s also showcased for audiences absolutely horrible human behavior.  Gone were the familiar but supernatural monsters like Dracula, the Werewolf, the Mummy or Frankenstein’s creation.  Instead, “mad” men — all mortals — were presented as brutal, violent, uncontrollable dangers in the efforts of Craven, Hooper, Peckinpah and Boorman, among others.  It was an entirely new paradigm, and one that changed the trajectory of horror cinema. The Savage Cinema eschewed romance, tragedy and other artificial or theatrical qualities too.  It shattered existing Hollywood conventions and decorum.  In short, the Savage Cinema showcased the full ugliness of man at point-blank range, with not only cut-throat bluntness, but with a total understanding of how film grammar could be manipulated to impact audiences on an almost subconscious level.

As unlikely as it seems given that TV is widely “homogenized” to appeal to all people all the time, some genre TV programs have really gone all out — guns blazing — to create the barbarous, fierce atmosphere we might commonly associate with The Savage Cinema.   The following five episode titles represent my list for the most “savage episodes” in cult-TV history, although I readily admit that these selections are personal ones, and that people of good conscience can disagree, or provide alternate titles of comparable value.  

But the first time I watched each of the following programs, I was rocked back on my heels at the violence portrayed, and more than that, by the brutal vision of humanity showcased by the various programs.  These are the five titles guaranteed to trouble your peaceful slumber.

The programs are listed in ascending order, from #5 to #1.

5. The Evil Touch: “The Trial.”

Airing on local stations in 1973 and 1974, The Evil Touch was an Australian-made anthology of limited means, namely an extremely low-budget.  Accordingly, each week the series, hosted by Anthony Quayle, felt like a jewel-in-the-rough and a “discovered” horror movie.  Many episodes generate fear an a nearly primal level, but none more so than “The Trial,” first aired in New York City on February 3, 1974.  Written by Michael Fisher and directed by Mende Brown, the episode involved a nasty millionaire, Lon Zachary (Ray Walston) who had for twenty years scorned the friends — carnies — who took him in and had raised him from childhood.

Now, Lon intends to destroy the carnival fairgrounds (to make room for condominiums), but his carnie peers put him on trial for his misdeeds, and concoct a punishment that will bring Lon — formerly Elmo the Geek — back into the fold.  The group’s tattoo artist, you see, was once a brain surgeon…

I don’t want to reveal more than necessary here, especially because the series is not yet available on DVD, but the episode’s final moments generate a throat-tightening sense of panic as Ray Walston’s character realizes that there is no escape, and that he is bound for a grisly, life-altering fate.  A hard-hitting, just desserts story, “The Trial” is one savage humdinger of a half-hour.

4. Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: “The Other Way Out.”

This remarkably effective third season entry from Rod Serling’s second TV anthology is similar, in some fashion to “The Trial.”  Written and directed by Gene Kearney, this tale originally aired on November 19, 1972.  “The Other Way Out involves Bradley Meredith (Ross Martin), a man who believes he can get away scot-free with the murder of a go-go girl.   However, a blackmailer soon contacts Meredith and gives him instructions for a drop off of 10,000 dollars at an isolated location.  In a twist worthy of The Virgin Spring (the basis for Last House on the Left), Meredith ends up at the rural home of his blackmailer, a creepy, cold-blooded Burl Ives.

The Ives character goes on and on recounting to Meredith about how he’ll receive his comeuppance for murder from his grandson, “Sonny.”  These stories provoke such fear in Meredith that he attempts to escape the house and is attacked by murderous dogs.  He returns to the house, and learns from Ives that there is one “other way” out of the house.  Meredith believes he finds it too: a passageway behind a fireplace in the living room, and then a hatchway down deep into the Earth…

Frenetic and frantic, “The Other Way Out” culminates with a surprise revelation about “Sonny,” and then another twist about Meredith’s “other way out.”   Again, I don’t want to reveal the episode’s startling finale, but it’s bleak as hell, and a statement about man’s cruelty to his fellow man.  It all comes down to how you define a way “out,” I suppose. 

The element most recognizable from the Savage Cinema in “The Other Way Out” is the culture clash.  Here a slick businessman — a creature of the city — encounters a country, redneck family.  Meredith believes he can buy his way out of trouble, perhaps because money has always solved his problems in the past.  But the Burl Ives character is having none of it, and decides to hold Meredith accountable to HIS version of God’s law.

3. Torchwood: “Countrycide”

I reviewed this startling, grotesque 2006 episode of the British sci-fi series last week.   But in “Countrycide” by Chris Chibnall and directed by Andy Goddard,  a top-secret British agency investigating aliens learns that all existentialist threats don’t come from the heavens above.  In fact, man himself is, perhaps, the ultimate “monster.”  This idea would become a common theme as the series wore on, especially in season three’s “Children of Earth.”  In “Countrycide,” however Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and the other team members run afoul of vicious cannibals in the English countryside.  One team member realizes — after gazing into a refrigerator filled with body parts — that they are to be “food.”

Harrowing, bloody and gory as hell, “Countrycide” works as Savage Cinema in part because of its philosophically provocative ending, which finds Gwen interrogating the leader of the cannibals.  She demands answers.  Why has he done this?  Why has he treated people like this, as…food?  She needs answers, so she can preserve her view of the world and carry on as moral crusader.  But the cannibal’s answer to her interrogative was and remains chilling.  To hurt other human beings — to treat them as nothing but ingredients — makes the killer “happy.”  It’s a chilling response, and one that sends Gwen into a moral tailspin. 

This ties in to the reckoning seen quite often in Craven films: that man can be roused to bloody violence (Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes) but that after the veneer of civilization is  ripped off, it’s difficult to put the pieces back together.

2. Millennium: “The Fourth Horseman”

The episodes featured on this list thus far have involved vengeance/punishment (“The Trial” and “The Other Way Out”) and the sometimes inexplicable depths of human hatred and inhumanity (“Countrycide”).  Millennium’s (1996 – 1999) “The Fourth Horseman” is a somewhat different animal.   Written by Glen Morgan and James Wong and directed by Dwight Little, this second season episode of Millennium saw Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) contending with a new, man-made disease that was to be intentionally unleashed upon America.

That doesn’t sound like Savage Cinema in terms of premise, but certainly the presentation fits the bill.  In one of the most horrifying scenes I’ve ever witnessed on American broadcast television, an average, WASP-y American family is utterly and grotesquely destroyed before our eyes.  The occasion is middle-class family’s Sunday dinner (Mother’s Day, if memory serves.)  The family members don’t realize it, but they are actually eating chicken contaminated with the fatal disease.

After first showcasing trademark images of “Americana” (a backyard grill and the ubiquitous football game on the TV), the scene turns sour rather dramatically.  The mother grows ill first, and blood starts to pour from her neck.  Then, blood-filled lesions begin to form on the other family members, and they cough and bleed out — they literally sweat out blood — in a matter of seconds.  In one especially horrific shot, a family member reaches for the telephone to dial 911, but as a finger hits the dial blood explodes from the digit and splatters the device.

What should be sacrosanct — the safe, secure, American middle-class hearth — is instead corrupted and destroyed in “The Fourth Horseman.”  If that isn’t indicative of a savage, tradition-shattering modus operandi, I don’t know what is.  And once more, horror is brought home to us in a palpable, graphic way, and nobody is spared.  Not even the kids.

and finally…

1. The X-Files: “Home.”

This notorious X-Files episode, also written by Glen Morgan and James Wong, was directed by Kim Manners and aired only once in prime time  — on October 11, 1996 — before Fox banned it.   Here, Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny investigate the quiet town of Home, PA, where a dead baby has been unearthed in a baseball field near the Peacock home.

The Peacocks are no ordinary American family, however.  The three adults brothers are horribly deformed, and their crazy old mother — a quadruple amputee — lives under her bed on a little, make-shift scooter.  The boys pull her out occasionally, chew her food for her, and even — yikes — impregnate her to add numbers to the disfigured brood.

After the Peacocks murder Home’s Sheriff Andy Taylor and his wife with baseball bats, Mulder and Scully lay siege to the homestead, only to be faced with a vile interior lined with deadly booby traps…

Okay, I love “Home.”  I absolutely love it.  Along with “Bad Blood”  and “The Host,” I consider it one of the best episodes of the long-lived Chris Carter series.  In  terms of setting, the Peacock’s wrecked farmhouse recalls Leatherface’s house in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the savage family’s finely-honed survival instincts plays like something from The Hills Have Eyes (1977).  What makes the episode so remarkable, and the quality that lands the episode into the heralded savage cinematic territory of social critique (like Last House on the Left), however,  is the manner in which the story sets up the main conflict, a dueling views of “civilization.”  The police and “normal” people of Home live by one code, and the Peacocks — as we learn in bloody fashion — live by another code.    Yet the Peacocks clearly cherish family, right?  And they “stand their ground” when attacked by the government on their own land.  How different from us are they, really?  

One of the most terrifying sequences I’ve ever seen on television arrives in this episode of The X-Files.  The Taylors realize they have left their front door unlocked, and the Peacocks pull up to their house...for bloody vengeance.  Sheriff Taylor’s wife cowers under the bed as her husband is bludgeoned to death nearby, and then — boom — she is up for the same treatment next.  It’s a blood bath that plays on the universal fear of home invasion.

I’d wager that anybody who saw “Home” in 1996 — in prime time, no less — never forgot this particular episode, a grotesque exercise in sheer horror, and in my estimation the most savage episode in cult-TV history.  

>Hell’s Bells: The Ten Greatest Weddings in Cult-TV History

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It’s that time of year again.  Spring has sprung, flowers are in bloom, and lovers of all ages are busily preparing to tie the knot.   The months of May and June are traditionally amongst the most popular for nuptials, and so I figured this is a good time to survey the most famous (and infamous…) weddings in cult-television history.    

Before we get to my top ten selections, I should note that there are other contenders for “greatest cult-tv wedding” beyond those featured in the countdown.   These episodes, while entertaining, are bridesmaids but never brides, you might conclude.

Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1992-1996), for instance, saw Clark Kent’s (Dean Cain) wedding day spoiled when bride Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) was replaced at the altar by a frog-eating clone.  The real wedding took place a season later and was not only uneventful, but sort of an anti-climax.

On Star Trek: Voyager’s   (1995 – 2001) “Course: Oblivion,” Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) and B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson)were married in the Delta Quadrant, but the ceremony viewers witnessed turned out to be that of a duplicate or “alternate” crew that was fated to die.   Because of this plot twist, the wedding felt like just another gimmick in an already gimmicky narrative.

Weddings have been a staple of other genre programs too.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “The Prom” teased an Angel/Buffy wedding day that quickly became a nightmare, and The Greatest American Hero’s (1981-1983) “Newlywed Game” saw Ralph (William Katt) and Pam (Connie Sellecca) tie the knot under some less-than-ideal circumstances.

As much as I enjoy all of these series, I suppose you could say I have “cold feet” about including them in this particular wedding party. So without further ado, here are — from ten to one — my selections for the best cult-tv wedding days in history.

The Ten Greatest Weddings in Cult-TV History

10. Star Trek: “Balance of Terror” (1966)

Two young crew-members aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, Angela Martine and Robert Tomlinson, celebrate their joyous wedding day aboard ship.  Scotty (James Doohan) gives away the blushing bride, and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) officiates at the ceremony,  Yeoman Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) at his side. 

Kirk’s opening words: “Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all ship masters have had one happy privilege: that of uniting two people in the bonds of matrimony.”

Unfortunately, Kirk’s happy duty is interrupted by a crisis in the Neutral Zone that separates the United Federation of Planets from the Romulan Star Empire.  A “ghost” ship is destroying Federation outposts one by one, leaving carnage in its wake.  The ship is really a Romulan Bird of Prey, armed with a devastating cloaking device and a new plasma weapon.   What ensues is a battle between two equally-matched opponents and commanders.  Kirk is victorious in the space battle but, as always, there is a price for such conflict.  The young groom, Tomlinson, is killed in the final battle, leaving a heartbroken fiancee, Angela, behind.

“Balance of Terror” reminds us that even in victory, there is often loss; that every time war is the solution to a political problem, the cost comes in human lives.  The ship’s teaser involving the wedding is a perfect reminder of this fact.  In this case, a couple’s dream of future happiness is the victim of the Romulan/Federation conflict. 

And for noble Captain Kirk, he must reckon with the fact that though he handily completed his mission (destroying the Romulan vessel and her weapons), it was by no means a painless or easy campaign.  As he knows too well, a Captain is responsible for his crew, and here he loses two young people who should have been destined for happiness.  Weddings are universally about the future, about bringing together promising tomorrows.  In “Balance of Terror,” the wedding only precedes a terrible ripping asunder.

09. Buck Rogers: “Escape from Wedded Bliss” (1980)

The Draconian Princess, Ardala (Pamela Hensley) returns to Earth with an orbital doomsday weapon and demands that Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard) marry her, lest she destroy the world.  The Earth Defense Directorate surrenders Buck to the Princess aboard her flagship, the Draconia. 

There, Buck learns the rules of Draconian courtship and marriage.  In short, he must battle Tigerman in the arena to prove he is worthy of a Draconian princess.  Then, in the final stages of the wedding ceremony, Buck is to wear not a traditional wedding ring, but rather a wedding collar which constricts and tightens around his neck when he displeases his new bride.  This “shotgun wedding” is averted at the last instant, and Buck destroys the doomsday weapon, leaving a jilted Ardala at the altar.

“Escape from Wedded Bliss” is a primal male fantasy.  A gorgeous, powerful and sexy princess will destroy the world unless you and only you agree to make her your bride?  What red-blooded American guy wouldn’t be in favor of that arrangement?  Then again, there’s the wedding collar to think about…

But all kidding aside, this episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century does a pretty fine job of revealing how sad and lonely a figure Princess Ardala truly is.  As a member of Draco’s royal family, Ardala feels isolated and alone, and suspects that Buck — because of his “out-of-time” nature — might feel those emotions too. 

Joining up makes sense, at least from Ardala’s perspective.  Forcing Buck Rogers to marry her isn’t the answer, but this is one Bridezilla who you can really feel compassion and even admiration for.  Ardala knows what she believes will make her happy, and goes for it, doomsday weapon, wedding collar, combat-to-the-death and all.  In short, “Escape from Wedded Bliss” humanizes one of the series’ recurring villains in a very sympathetic way.  It also reminds the viewer that marriage is best left for people who are truly and irrevocably in love.  And as Buck reminds Ardala (with surprising tenderness) in “Escape from Wedded Bliss,” he just doesn’t love her.

08. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: “You Are Cordially Invited” (1997)

Pour the blood wine. Serve the steaming hot g’agh. It’s Dax’s Big Fat Klingon Wedding.

On Deep Space Nine — in the midst of the galactic war with the Dominion — Worf (Michael Dorn) and Lt. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) plan to wed in a traditional Klingon ceremony.

There’s only one hitch in this plan: the mistress of the House of Martok, Sirella, isn’t exactly keen on having a non-Klingon such as Dax as a family member. Dax refuses to humble herself for the proud Sirella, and it looks like the wedding won’t come off unless she changes her mind.

Klingon bachelor parties aside, this episode of Deep Space Nine gazes at the underlying meaning of marriage: the total combination of two lives and the total dedication of one life to another. Dax shouldn’t exactly be surprised that her hubby-to-be, Worf, so deeply desires a traditional Klingon wedding, and she shouldn’t be surprised that she must jump through some hoops to win over her future “in-laws,” given Klingon pride and xenophobia.

With a little help from Captain Sisko, Dax realizes that she must give her soul-mate the wedding he wants, and that it is actually only her own pride standing in the way.  There are plenty of times in marriage when the only way to get over a problem is to tuck away the ego and make a sacrifice for the spouse, and this episode understands that fact.  If Dax is going to be part of the family, she has to respect family tradition, and again, that’s something that all prospective brides and grooms realize.  It would have been interesting, however, to see Worf doing some compromising too, however.  Would he have done anything for Dax to experience a traditional Trill wedding, I wonder?

07. Battlestar Galactica: “Lost Planet of the Gods” (1979)

While the rag-tag, fugitive fleet faces two problems, a deadly plague and a strange “void” in space, Captain Apollo (Richard Hatch) and former news-woman, Serina (Jane Seymour) select a date for their “joining” ceremony, to be officiated by Commander Adama (Lorne Greene).

Apollo and Serina’s “sealing” ceremony is celebrated in a candle-lit chamber beneath the darkness of the starless void, but at the height of the nuptials, a star appears to guide the Galactica and her wards to a planet called Kobol, the very world from which all Colonial life sprang.

Apollo and Serina explore the planet with Adama and encounter Baltar — and tragedy — on the planet surface.

“Lost Planet of the Gods,” like so much of Battlestar Galactica’s canon, concerns a Manichean universe of light and dark; a theme made all the more explicit by the episode’s plot element of the starless void. But even in a universe of moral absolutes (rather than the moral relativity of the recent re-imagination…), the Gods may yet be fickle. The “joining” of Apollo and Serina seems pre-ordained and sanctified by the sudden, almost divine appearance of Kobol’s star.  But what the Gods give, they can also take away.

In the last act, when Serina dies from Cylon attack, there’s not any talk of signs or portents. There are no bright stars guiding anyone to happiness.  Instead, it’s a very human tragedy, and the last scene in the episode — Apollo and Serina’s son, Boxey (Noah Hathaway) saying goodbye to the beautiful wife and mother — never ceases to affect on a human level.

A lot of people claim Battlestar Galactica was just a Star Wars rip-off and the characters were only carbon copies of Star Wars characters. A lot of people were  wrong. 

“Lost Planet of the God’s” tragic ending proves that rather conclusively.  I often liken Battlestar Galactica to Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons in Space: every week a family tragedy, and a family overcoming that tragedy together.   The last shot of “Lost Planet of the Gods” is heart-wrenching, but also a testament to the strength of family bonds: Adama, Tigh, Starbuck and Apollo’s other friends all stand outside Serina’s door, waiting for him, and silently supporting him and Boxy through their difficult loss.

06. V: The Series: “The Rescue” (1985):

The bride wears scales.  The priest is a lizard in cardinal hat.  And the wedding banquet consists of gerbils, spiders and rats.  The bride, Diana (Jane Badler) and groom, Charles (Duncan Regher) share not a delicious wedding cake, but rather “a ceremonial mouse” at the lovely reception.

Yep, it’s just another day aboard the Visitor mothership in V: The Series. 

Here, Diana is manipulated into marriage by her rivals Lydia (June Chadwick) and Charles.  Surprisingly, however, Diana and Charles actually seem to fall in love, or at least in lust.  This development outrages Lydia, who then plots to kill Diana with “cat poison.”  The murder attempt goes wrong, however, and it is Charles who ends up dead on his wedding night.

From start to finish, “The Rescue” is utterly outrageous.  It’s high camp and V: The Series knew it.  Why?  Well, consider that on July 29, 1981, a very different Charles and Diana were wed at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London before a global TV audience of one billion people.  “The Rescue’s” Charles/Diana nuptials were not viewed by nearly so many, but it was worth a try, wasn’t it? 

The fun of this episode (and of V: The Series in general) was in watching the wicked, wicked machinations and tactics of Lydia and Diana as they forever sought to one-up each other, all while devouring small rodents and other terrestrial creatures.

 “Peel you another goldfish?”

05. Dexter: “Do You Take Dexter Morgan?” (2008)

In the finale of season three, sociopath, serial killer and blood spatter expert Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) finally marries Rita (Julie Benz), but only after tying up some serious loose ends regarding his “Dark Passenger.” 

These loose ends involve the final disposition of Miguel (Jimmy Smits) and Ramon  Prado (Jason Olazabal), two men who had learned his secret.

Dexter Morgan remains one of the truly great characters in modern television history, and “Do You Take Dexter Morgan” asks many important questions about Dexter’s nature. Is he capable of love? Is he capable of participating in an honest and open relationship with anyone given his murderous nightlife?

Surprisingly, the answers to both those questions seem to be yes, at least with a few caveats. In the course of the story, Dexter learns that Rita is keeping secrets too. She has been married twice before, not once before, as he believed. But Dexter decides not to confront Rita about her lie when he realizes the truth of the marriage’s circumstances.

Already then, Dexter has taken a critical step towards compassion and mercy. One thing about marriage: you have to permit your spouse a few secrets and a few fantasies. After all, Dexter’s hiding a few things too, right?  Marriage is not just about romance, but about acceptance and forgiveness.  If a sociopath can learn that simple lesson, we all can.

04. Smallville: “Promise” (2007)

In the spring of its sixth season, Smallville reached a pinnacle of darkness.  Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) had accepted Lex Luthor’s (Michael Rosenbaum’s) marriage proposal and rejected Clark Kent (Tom Welling) over his penchant for secrecy.

“Promise” takes viewers through the Lex/Lana wedding day with a surfeit of surprises and heartbreaking twists.  

Lana finally learns Clark’s secret and has serious second thoughts about marrying Lex.  Meanwhile, Lex’s secret about Lana’s pregnancy threatens to come to light, and leads him to commit bloody murder…in the chapel.  Clark makes a last minute play for Lana and considers proposing to her.  Finally, Lionel Luthor (John Glover) steps in and blackmails Lana into marrying his son.  Trapped in a loveless relationship, Lana leaves Clark abandoned and rejected on a particularly sad wedding day.

In the first seven seasons, Smallville was both the epic heroic journey of Clark Kent and the tragic fall of Lex Luthor.  Thus Clark and Lex were deliberate mirror images; a reminder in some fashion that parenting can make all the difference in the path a child takes towards adulthood.  Showered with love and nourished on bedrock Kansas family values, Clark grew up feeling loved…and so could become a hero.  Lex, on the other hand, had every monetary advantage anyone could possible get, but his father never loved him, and this absence of love sent him down the dark path.

In “Promise,” the wrong man clearly wins Lana’s hand.  Through manipulation, exploitation and ultimately murder, Lex takes away from Clark the woman he loves.  On the other hand, it’s not a great victory for Lex, either.  Lex must resort to brutal murder with his bare hands to keep his wife-to-be, bloodying his white tuxedo shirt on his wedding day.  Their marriage is also predicated on a lie of his making, regarding her unusual pregnancy.

And then the kicker: even after murder, the love of Lana is not assured for the young billionaire.  In the end, Lana only remains with Lex because of Lionel’s blackmail.  Lex Luthor may be on the ascent in “Promise,” but he is  an authentically tragic figure, doomed to always be alone because of his suspicion and controlling personality.

But “The Promise” thrives because it demonstrates how lack of trust can scuttle a marriage from the get-go, from the words “I do.”  Lana and Lex’s wedding night is certainly bound to be uncomfortable, given that Lex is a murderer and Lanais staying in the relationship only to protect Clark’s life…

03. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Hell’s Bells” (2002)

In the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xander (Nicholas Brendon) is finally about to marry former wish-demon Anya (Emma Caulfield) when he encounters a mysterious future version of himself. 

This old, hunched, “Future Xander,” shows his younger self  disturbing visions of an unhappy married life, and Xander gets really cold feet.

In truth, Future Xander is a demon seeking revenge against Anya, but his real identity is beside the point.  Rattled, Xander leaves a heart-broken Anya at the altar, leading her to resume her career as a demonic destroyer of men.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s season six was all about real life as the “Big Bad.”  Buffy had to take a job at a fast food restaurant to support her family, Giles left for England, Willow developed an addiction (to magic), and Xander and Anya went through the “Hell’s Bells” marriage disaster. 

The point is that making big life choices — even without the involvement of the demonic or supernatural — always has unintended repercussions.  And weddings, of course, have repercussions too.  Xander has the proverbial “cold feet” in “Hell’s Bells,” but he lets his fear sway him, and breaks the heart of a woman who loves him dearly. 

This one act of betrayal leads Anya back into the demon fold, and promises more trouble for Xander and the scoobies.  But again, this is real life.  You don’t leave a person at the altar without creating some serious bad blood.  How often have we seen that amongst former spouses, now estranged or divorced? Someone you loved so passionately becomes someone you hate more than anyone else in the world. Love and hate, not so far apart?

02. Star Trek: “Amok Time” (1967)

“The Trouble with Tribbles” may be funnier.  “City on the Edge of Forever” may be more tragic. 

But Theodore Sturgeon’s “Amok Time” is nonetheless one of Star Trek’s finest and most memorable hours.

In “Amok Time,” Spock experiences Pon Farr, the Vulcan urge to mate.  This biological drive is so strong that Spock (Leonard Nimoy) will die if it is not fulfilled.  Acting as a friend and disobeying orders, Captain Kirk takes the Enterprise to Vulcan. so Spock can marry…and mate.

Spock asks Kirk and McCoy (De Forest Kelly) to attend the wedding ceremony on Vulcan’s surface, officiated by the great T’Pau (Celia Lovsky).  There, the Enterprise triumvirate also meet Spock’s intended, the lovely T’Pring (Arlene Martel). Unfortunately, T’Pring has no desire to marry Spock, and in an ancient ritual, forces Spock to fight for her hand in marriage.  Her chosen champion?  Captain Kirk…

It’s funny that the logical Mr. Spock should be carried off to the altar, essentially, in a swirl of irrational, uncontrollable emotions.  But that happens to men and women on Earth too.   And if so many of the episodes on this list indeed detail the passionate emotions that swirl around weddings and marriage, “Amok Time” is a nice reminder that not all marriages emerge from feelings of love.  T’Pring has no desire for Spock, no desire to be the wife “of a legend,” and would rather see him die in a ritual than spend her life with him.  She is a cool, cruel, callous “thinker” who believes she has found a “no lose” scenario for herself.  And in the end, she’s absolutely right; she is victorious. 

The callous T’Pring is strongly contrasted in “Amok Time” with the dedicated friendship of Kirk/Spock/McCoy.  While T’Pring thinks only of herself, the Enterprise trio are a textbook case of one for all/all for one.  This is a reminder, perhaps, that there are other kinds of real love besides romantic/sexual love.

and finally…

01. Smallville: “Bride” (2009)

It’s the day of Chloe Sullivan’s (Allison Mack) long-awaited wedding to cub reporter Jimmy Olsen (Aaron Ashmore).  The location of the nuptials: the Kent farm in Smallville, Kansas. 

While an anxious Lois Lane (Erica Durance) organizes the event, Chloe receives distressing voice mails from Davis Bloome (Sam Witer), who has only recently acknowledged his love for Sullivan.

At the wedding reception — and caught on digital video — an inhuman beast called Doomsday lays siege to the barn and abducts Chloe, leaving Jimmy bleeding to death.

Bride” arrived at a time of  tremendous dramatic resurgence for Smallville. The episode moves at light-speed, yet still finds the time to develop the burgeoning Lois-Clark (Clois?) relationship.  It balances this new love with  a story of love rejected, in the case the love for Chloe of the “monster,” Doomsday.   Additionally, “Bride” often adopts the first person perspective of wedding video footage (think Cloverfield [2008]) as the monster arrives to take his bride. 

Given the narrative details (and title), this episode of Smallville is also rife with allusions to monster movies such as Bride of Frankenstein (1935).  The visual of the monstrous Doomsday carrying Chloe in her wedding gown to the Brainiac-infected Fortress of Solitude is one straight out the genre’s golden age, and enormously resonant in this context.  Doomsday sets Chloe down on a bed of black ice, and her eyes glitter…not with love; but with the inhuman glare of Brainiac.

Besides the powerful imagery, technique and characterizations, “The Bride” somehow still finds time to re-introduce Lana Lang to Smallville (thus setting back Clark and Lois six months or so…) and  then ends with the revelation that Lex Luthor is alive, and bent on vengeance.  Clark and Lana?  Clark and Lois? Jimmy’s Dead? Doomsday? Brainiac? Lex Luthor?   “Bride” is a prime reason why Smallville’s fans are still so die hard.  When the show hits on all thrusters, it’s like a Kryptonite kick to Superman’s gut.

“Bride” is truly apocalyptic, a wedding day gone straight to Hell.  And the episode is so dramatic, so fast-paced you won’t be able to catch your breath until the end credits roll. If marriage is about being swept away by love, “Bride” sweeps you away in love gone horribly wrong.

So that’s the top ten cult-tv wedding list.  Speak about it now, or forever hold your peace…

>The Five Most De-Humanizing Rituals in 1970s Dystopian Cinema

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I’ve been devoting considerable space here lately to science fiction cinema’s unforgettable dystopias; those dark worlds of the imagination in which mankind takes a wrong turn on the road to a better future.  

These memorable and often haunting films dwell on such matters as overpopulation, food shortages, eugenics, and collectivist societies that snuff out all individuality and even humanity.

We’ve had great dystopian movies with us now for many decades.  In the 1960s we saw The Tenth Victim (1965) and Fahrenheit 451 (1966).  In the 1980s we saw Blade Runner (1982) and The Running Man (1987).  And recent decades have brought us such fare as Gattaca (1997), Minority Report (2002), Gamer (2009) and Surrogates (2009).

But the Great Age of Film Dystopias is unquestionably the 1970s; our nation’s very own “crisis of confidence” decade.  The Energy Crisis, Watergate, the Vietnam War,  the Manson Family, Three Mile Island, Roe vs. Wade and the Iran hostage situation all became part of our national dialogue in what I often term the disco-decade. 

In terms of film history, those years between 1970 and 1979 also gave the world THX-1138 (1971), Z.P.G. Zero Population Growth (1972), Soylent Green (1973), Zardoz (1974), Death Race 2000 (1975), Logan’s Run (1976) and many other examples of the genre.

In the days ahead, I hope to lay my hands on such harder-to-find dystopian efforts such as The Last Child (A 1970s TV movie), Amerika (a 1987 TV miniseries about a Soviet-takeover of the United States) and the grand-daddy of such dystopian imaginings, the not-currently-available-on-DVD  1984 (1984), an adaptation of Orwell’s seminal literary work.

But before we get to such movie reviews, I wanted to pause here and acknowledge some of the qualities that make these cinematic speculations about our future so intriguing, and often so frightening. 

I looked back across my postings and saw that almost every 1970s film about dystopian futures shares one element in common.  All these films feature governments or other systems of control that turn human against human; man against his brother.  And they each do so, universally, utilizing some kind of futuristic technology or futuristic application of technology.

These films might thus be viewed as speculative endeavors and also as warnings about the shape of things to come; of future science or technology “run amok.”  In all these future societies listed below, the government has created a new social “ritual” (a continental race, a form of legally-sanctioned punishment, a religious service, a public service, etc.) that actually runs counter to all that moral human beings currently hold dear.

So without further description, here are The Five Most De-Humanizing Rituals of 1970s Dystopian Cinema, by my assessment.

5.  THX Visits A Unichapel in THX-1138 (1971).  

In the future world of THX-1138, the act of going to Church and sharing worship with a community has been deliberately subverted by the government. 

Single-serving Unichapel kiosks instead service the worship needs of a vast subterranean city’s population.  Although decorated with images of Jesus Christ, these unichapels offer platitudes and “Blessings of the Masses” rather than legitimate spiritual guidance. 

In fact, the Unichapels serve as a surveillance tool for the State because here citizens can unload all of their secrets, and thus Big Brother learns of them.  Off your drugs?  Falling in love with your roommate?  Now the State knows it all.

The Unichapel confession is so upsetting and de-humanizing a ritual, in my opinion, because it turns the focus of religion away from the needs and aspiration of a community (and doing good deeds) to a more selfish plateau.  The Unichapel sits just one.  There’s no room for the community in it.  Worse, in adopting the “confessional” approach, the Unichapel actively turns penitents into informants.  And worst, those informants may actually be testifying against themselves.

4.) Make Thy Neighbor Suffer: ZPG Zero Population Growth (1972). 

Happen to know anyone in the neighborhood who may be in violation of the World Deliberation Council’s Zero Birth Edict? 

Well, if so, just telephone the police force and it’ll send a futuristic helicopter over to drop an air-tight inflatable tent over the violators (usually a Mother, father and infant)! 

Trapped in the death tent, these nasty law-breakers will expire of asphyxiation over the next 24 hours, and you get to see it close-up since the tent is transparent!    Another bonus: for doing your civic duty, the State provides you extra food rations. 

Again, the idea here is of a neighbor being turned into a “rat” to squeal on his or her neighbors.  The State not only encourages such spying and informing, it provides incentive in the form of rations. Perhaps even more disturbing is the notion that an (illegal) child or infant could be punished for his very existence.  Like many dystopian ovelords, the State in ZPG wants people numb to the idea of killing for a so-called “common good.” 

Once more, something immoral (the murder of families…) is ritualized; part of the legal law-enforcement process; and a duty of every citizen.

3.) The Trans-continental race: Death Race 2000 (1975). 

In the year 2000, in the United Provinces of America, the President decrees that the trans-continental race is “the American way of life,” “no-holds barred.” 

But drivers in this race compete to become the new American champion by running down innocent pedestrians.  They do so explicitly for points.  A female pedestrian is worth 10 points, a teenager is worth 40 points, children under 12 are worth 70, and senior citizens carry a whopping 100 points.

So, around the country, TV viewers watch with blood-thirsty glee as their fellow citizens are run down by the death racers.  This set-up is no doubt meant by the filmmakers as the equivalent of gladiatorial games and Roman bread and circuses.  While the President luxuriates in foreign palaces and the American economy stumbles after the “Crash of 79,” the public is distacted by bloody road games.    The Running Man is a variation on this theme as well. 

But think about it: a favorite weekly TV show is nothing if not a “ritual,” and the bloody ritual of the cross-continent “death” race is essentially murder as entertainment; as must-see TV. Life is supposed to be precious, but viewers of the race are meant to cheer when their race runs over a team of doctors, or an old lady.  How de-humanizing is that?

2.) “Going Home:” Soylent Green (1973). 

In the overpopulated, undernourished city of New York in 2020 (where 20 million people are unemployed), you can have privacy and anything else you desire…but you have to die to get it. 

In particular, government centers (called sleep shops in the literary version of the material) euthanize the citizenry. 

But hey — before you die, you can live like a king, able to enjoy you favorite music and a montage of lovely images.  It’s like Sarah Palin’s Death Panels meets an IMAX theater.  Who wouldn’t want to enjoy that?  At least once…

Again, in order to solve desperate problems (food shortages and overpopulation), the State has devoted itself to the death of its very citizenry.  It’s highly disturbing to think that the only way to enjoy life’s pleasures in this future world is to embrace death.  And death by sleep shop is a sanctioned ritual of this future world.

1.) “Carousel:” Logan’s Run (1975).

In the shopping-mall, sex-on-demand, plastic-surgery-on-demand 23rd century of Logan’s Run, you can have anything your heart desires…except your thirtieth birthday. 

On your “LastDay,” by order of the computer that runs the City of Domes, all would-be-30-year olds must report for “Carousel.” 

And what is Carousel?  On the surface, it appears to be a joyous religious ritual in which the old folks compete for re-birth or “renewal” by floating to the top of the heap in a weird gravity pool with glowing lights.  In reality, the assembled citizenry of the city watch and cheer in the stadium as Last Day participants are disintegrated by ceiling-mounted laser devices.

Again, Carousel represents the most hideous and de-humanizing idea of this dystopia.  It is state-mandated murder (or population control), but Carousel is even more immoral than the sleep shops of Soylent Green, because it masquerades as a mystical, religious tradition.  Thus citizens are uninformed, and believed they are witnessing re-incarnation, not disintegration.  Here, it’s the deception that is so ugly.  The State has made a religious ritual out of population control, and the people are so ignorant that they cheer for death. 

Of course, in the case of Logan’s Run, at least there’s the Love Shop (and lots and lots of sex…) before you have to die young.

Your mileage may vary on these cinematic dystopias, but which of these 1970s worlds do you believe offers the most de-humanizing ritual, and why?

The Ten Greatest Cult TV Endings in History

Television series are designed, pretty much, with the hope that they last forever. 

No one involved with the production of a TV series wants to ponder too much or too deeply about how a given program might end because the name of the game in Hollywood is to run for years and years….or at least 100 episodes, for syndication purposes.

And yet, across the long years, cult television has nonetheless provided the audience some utterly remarkable endings, or final episodes.  Some of these goodbyes have made dedicated viewers weep; other endings have proven terrifying…and inescapably dark.

Not that long ago, cult TV series usually shuffled off the air without any kind of definitive ending or closing punctuation whatsoever. 

We never saw the Robinsons get home in Lost in Space.  We don’t know how the five year mission of The Enterprise finally ended, on Star Trek.  We never found Sanctuary with Logan, or Evoland with Varian and his friends in the Bermuda Triangle.  The Alphans never discovered that elusive new planet to call home on Space:1999, and we don’t know if Buck Rogers ever found those “lost tribes” of Earth.

Still, in some senses, those older programs that ended without any narrative closure are really the lucky ones.  Lately, the series finales of popular serialized programs such as Battlestar Galactica, Alias, and Lost have only ended up polarizing viewers and creating schisms, at least to to some degree, in fan affection. 

When there’s the promise of a “plan” at the beginning of a journey and that promise is repeated week-in and week-out for years, audiences do expect a pay off; and they expect it to be one that plays fair, and make sense.  I think expectations are pretty high for serialized programs, and they are generally difficult to meet.

After gazing across some fifty years of cult television initiatives, the titles listed below are my choices for the “ten greatest series endings” in history.  Some of these selections were not meant to be final chapters at all; they were but cliff-hangers to be resolved…but the resolution never came. 

Contrarily, some of my choices were indeed designed as last chapters, and function ably (and emotionally) as such.  Closure comes, and it satisfies.

Another selection below is merely ambiguous.  That doesn’t make it a hedge; it just makes it delightfully opaque, in the tradition of the preceding series.

My ten choices are based on several criteria: how well the endings represent the nature of the series; whether they challenge perceptions, if they are inventive (but consistent), and how artfully they are executed.

Now, given that this is a list involving endings of TV series, many, many spoilers are discussed below.  Please be aware of that fact going forward…and read accordingly.

10.  V: The Series: “The Return” (1985)

In 1985, the NBC series V battled the CBS powerhouse Dallas in the ratings on Friday nights.  It was a losing proposition, and the sci-fi series about reptilian alien visitors invading Earth faced an uncertain future (and eventual cancellation).

But for the season’s final — and series-ending — nineteenth episode, writers David Abramowitz and Donald R. Boyle threw what amounted to a remarkable Hail Mary Pass.  The Leader (of the Visitors) came to Earth to declare an abrupt end to inter species hostilities and to marry the Star Child, Elizabeth. 

So “The Return’s” final scene witnessed a mesmerized Elizabeth — in wedding gown — stepping aboard the unseen Leader’s shuttle, while the evil Diana (Jane Badler) informed Lt. James (Judson Scott) that she had secretly placed a time bomb aboard. 

Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s human lover, Kyle (Jeff Yagher) stowed away on the self-same shuttle, hoping to be reunited with Elizabeth, the love of his life. 

“The Return” and V: The Series ended on that crazy, cliffhanging note, with the camera majestically retracting, up, up and away — forever — from the series leads. 


What did the Leader really look like behind that glowing light on the shuttle?  What were his true motives in coming to Earth?  Would Diana’s violent plan succeed (killing the Leader, Elizabeth and Kyle?)  And what about true love?  Would it triumph over the desperate need for interplanetary peace?

You can’t get much more epic than that.

To this day, the breathless cliffhanger ending of V has never been resolved. Yet “The Return” understood something vital about V that other installments of the one-season wonder failed to capitalize on: it was a soap opera played out on a grand level, with only modest sci-fi trappings.  The best episodes all played on soap opera plotting and characterization, not on hard science concepts.

And by ending the program on that exaggerated, over-dramatic, gut-busting soap opera note, V reached an apex of storytelling audacity and drama that — for most of its run — eluded it.

9. Surface: “Episode 15” (2006)

“It’s a new world,” a stunned scientist, Laura Daughtery (Lake Bell) declared during the explosive denouement of NBC’s one-season cult-TV show, Surface in 2006.

This pronouncement was voiced from atop a church steeple as a dramatic CGI pullback revealed that Wilmington, North Carolina — and indeed the whole South East sea board — had been devastated and flooded  in a “tele”-tsunami caused by the series’ giant, man-created sea monsters.

It was a portentous moment. The Earth had changed…forever (and yes, this change was clearly meant as a metaphor for global climate change).

By culminating on a catastrophic and apocalyptic note, Surface ultimately proved to have the courage of its nutty convictions. It would have been tempting to end on an easier, less-expensive note, one that wouldn’t turn the Earth’s surface upside down.

But instead, the writers and creators of this inventive short-lived series (The Pate brothers) chose the hard way, and followed-through with a narrative about the price of continuing damage to our environment.

Thus the series — in the grand tradition of the best science fiction — serves as a precautionary tale about ambitious scientists, corporate interests, and government agendas pushing ahead of personal responsibility.

The big loser, suggests Surface‘s ending…is the Earth herself.

And after the BP Oil Spill last year, who can really doubt that’s a true observation?

8. Mystery Science Theater 3000: “Diabolik” (1999)

In the final scene of Mystery Science Theater 3000’s last episode, Mike Nelson takes his place between ‘bots Crow and Servo…on a couch, in a tiny apartment. 

Though finally free of the Forresters (Clayton and Pearl) forever — not to mention TV’s Frank, Bobo and Brain Guy — these former-denizens of the Satellite of Love nonetheless find themselves taking up old habits, namely skewering an old movie.  They wanted to escape this fate for so long and yet, here they are. Doing the same thing; just in a new way.

In this case, that old movie being skewered is The Crawling Eye, the first movie that Joel, Crow and Servo riffed on when the series transitioned to Comedy Central a decade earlier.  So the ending in “Diabolik” is both full-circle — back to the beginning — and also an acknowledgment that the experience of riffing on bad movies is universal. 

You don’t need to be part of some mad scientist’s experiment to do it.  You just need a sofa, two buddies, and a TV set.

This ending is funny because also — at least subtly — it playfully acknowledges there are better uses for your time. Mike and the Bots seem to be living on the edge of poverty here, barely scraping by. By comparison, the bot Gypsy — who ran the Satellite of Love and took care of everyone there — has become a multi-millionaire founder of a company, ConGypsCo.  Sometimes actually making something, actually building something, is better than mocking the efforts of others.

So you have everything here — in these final moments — that made Mystery Science Theater 3000 special to so many people.  There’s a tribute to how it all started; an ending that suggests the task of calling out bad movies is universal and will thus continue unabated, and even an embedded critique of the very process through which the show achieved such cult popularity.

7. Millennium: “Goodbye to All That” (1999)

Back in 1999, you probably couldn’t find many Millennium fans who were entirely satisfied with the way the series ended after three fantastic seasons. 

And, at face value, the conclusion of the 67th episode is, in a sense, maddening.  The Millennium Group has not been stopped or even outed, and Emma Hollis (Klea Scott) betrays her beloved mentor, Frank Black (Lance Henriksen).

Given this situation — plus the apparent murder of Peter Watts (Terry O’Quinn) — Frank takes his gifted and imperiled young daughter, Jordan (Brittany Tiplady) and hits the road…not to be seen again until an appearance on The X-Files.

And yet “Goodbye to All That” indisputably culminates with one of the most beautiful, expressive and artistic compositions I’ve ever seen on television. 

It’s a picturesque view (pictured above) of Frank and Jordan fleeing for hopefully greener pastures.  In Frank’s SUV, they are on a long road which symbolizes the road to the future.  There are storm clouds roiling overhead, representing the terror of the approaching Millennium (and Y2K!), but also — importantly — sunlight is starting to break through one patch of clouds. 

The sunlight, naturally, is representative of hope; the hope that people like Jordan (“we’re all shepherds,”) can construct a better world than the conspirators of the Millennium Group did.

Are all your questions about the Millennium Group and its nefarious plans answered here, in “Goodbye to all That?”  Not in the slightest. 

But this beautiful image, of a man and his daughter facing the open road, and a future of  sunlight or storms (or likely both), is evocative of something telling about the human condition.  We don’t always get all the answers we seek.  Sometimes, we just have to look forward to better days; sometimes we just have to hope for sunshine. 

By ending in vague, but visually gorgeous fashion, Millennium once again shares that important idea with its audience.  We can’t tell you what’s going to happen folks; or even why things are like this.  We’re just going to go out with this message; that tomorrow brings new possibilities.  Good or bad.  It’s up to you, and children like Jordan to determine the specifics.

6. Twin Peaks: “Episode 29”

David Lynch’s TV masterpiece Twin Peaks ends in the most horrifying, nihilistic fashion imaginable.  I still get goosebumps thinking about it, actually. That bright beacon of goodness and integrity, Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) enters the sinister Black Lodge…and loses himself to Bob, the murderous spirit who killed Laura Palmer.

Much like the Millennium ending, Twin Peaks ends without much narrative closure and opts instead for a powerful, resonant image; though in this case it is one devoid of hope.  After losing himself in the labyrinth of the Black Lodge, Bob-as-Cooper comes back to our world and bloodies his head against a mirror. 

The mirror is seen cracked in spider-web formation; and the Bob Spirit form is seen in the twisted, broken reflection.  This is order overturned; Evil triumphant.  Bob-as-Cooper snickers and laughs, undiscovered.  The Evil is loose in the world once more. 

This is nightmare fodder, pure and simple, and it reflects one of Twin Peaks’ dark central themes.  The program is all about a descent into total chaos and madness from which there is no escape and no reprieve.  This evil — this chaos — gets inside of you (like it did Laura’s father; like it does Cooper) and it changes you.  It destroys you from within and exposes you to madness, paralysis, loss of reason, stabilitiy and everything else that makes you human.

Knowing David Lynch’s thematic predilections, we could rightly expect nothing else but a dark ending for Twin Peaks.  But this — Cooper lost, replaced by a monster — is just about the darkest ending conceivable.

 

5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Chosen” (2003)

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s final episode, Spike (James Marsters) sacrifices his life to save the world, the “First” Evil and his army of super-vampires are defeated, the Hellmouth is destroyed, and the mystical powers of the Slayer are passed from one individual — Buffy — to hundreds of young women the globe around.

For the moment, forget about Spike’s long-deserved redemption and tragic goodbye (an achievement soon undone by Angel, Season Five), “Chosen” is a deeply affirmative message of individual and collective “girl power,” always a strong subtext of the series anyway, but a magnificent note to go out on.

It isn’t just Buffy who has the power to defeat Evil…but all womanhood too, or so this episode informs us.   When a woman somewhere is beaten or teased, the episode reveals in emotional montage, she may summon that “Slayer” strength within…and fight back.

This is also an appropriate place to end the personal and heroic journey of Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar). For seven seasons, she has carried the “weight of the world” on her shoulders as The Slayer, and longed to lead a normal life. Now, finally, she has the opportunity to…live. “Just get to be like a person. How does that feel?” Faith asks her.

To Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s everlasting credit — since words would never do —  Buffy doesn’t answer in dialogue. Instead, the camera pushes in for a lovely close-up of this iconic hero, and her forehead uncreases…the pressure finally slipping away, finally receding.  Her lips curve upwards into the smallest, most gorgeous, most innocent smile.

Cut to black and it’s all over.

This hero has completed her journey, and Buffy’s reward is that she gets to finally rejoin the human race…and “Chosen” reminds us how precious that gift is.

4. The X-Files: “The Truth” (2002)

Those who endlessly repeat the myth that The X-Files somehow got tired and old in its last two seasons, obviously weren’t watching it during that spell to speak truthfully about it. 

Case in point, the final episode of the series: “The Truth.” It not only featured a terrific demise for the most iconic villain of 1990s television, The Cigarette-Smoking Man, the episode also brilliantly summarized a decade’s worth of conspiracy clues into one  relatively concise and clear-cut “courtroom” trial, as Mulder was prosecuted by the F.B.I..

But if you take away the brilliant narrative structure, what really makes “The Truth” sparkle so much is the final, intimate scene between partners and friends Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson). 

Importantly, it takes place in a motel room, which Mulder notes is the same locale where he first tried to convince his new, inexperienced partner, about  he world of aliens and government conspiracies.  So, much like the MST3K denouement, there’s a “we’ve come full circle” aspect to this final episode.  The end brings us back to the beginning.

But the importance of the final scene, finally, comes in what Mulder “wants to believe.”  He speaks to Scully in earnest, beautiful, thoroughly human terms:

“I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us,” he says.  “That they speak to us as part of something greater than us; greater than any alien force.  And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what’s speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.”

This beautifully-worded, passionately-delivered monologue is the heart and soul of The X-Files: the universal human yearning to believe in something greater than what we see and hear around us everyday.  

The truth is not out there, it’s in here…in the hearts of Mulder and Scully, and in the love they share for each other.  That too tells us something important.

When you can’t believe for sure in Ultimate Knowledge; it helps to have someone you love very much who believes in you, and vice-versa.  That’s the note that we leave this wonderful series on: that if Scully and Mulder can’t believe in UFOs, aliens, or even God, they can take solace that they believe in each other. 

3. Sapphire and Steel: “Episode VI” (1981)

Sapphire & Steel shares with audiences another dark ending, and truly, those are the ones that often seem to resonate the most deeply.  When a movie features an unhappy ending, it’s sad, of course, but there’s not truly the same level of investment involved (unless, it’s a series of movies, I would qualify). 

But a TV series is something you live with week-in and week-out — that you invite into your very living room — and when it takes all of your built-up affection, admiration and enjoyment and then goes dark…

…well, the results can be incredibly powerful. 

Sapphire and Steel is surely an example of that.  This series concerns two alien investigators, Sapphire (Joanna Lumley) and Steel (David McCallum) as they attempt to repair breaches in the fabric of time and space.  Dark, monstrous things seem to dwell outside this fabric, always trying to break in.  Our titular characters, these enigmatic, human-appearing “Elements,” are reality’s last line of defense.

In the final serial, Sapphire and Steel arrive at a small cafe and gas station isolated in what seems to be a pocket universe; in outer space itself.  They attempt to help the strange denizens trapped there, only slowly learning that unseen “Transient Beings” are operating against them.

Using her skills, Sapphire sees into the future and can see only desolate outer space.  “Hours will become days and months.  And years will become thousands of years.  There is nothing but space.”

Later, Sapphire realizes she was seeing her own future with Steel.  This strange “box” is their eternal prison.  “This is the trap.  This place is nowhere, and forever” explains an enemy.

The last shot of the episode — and thus the series — finds Steel and Sapphire gazing out a window onto infinity…their view forever here after.  When the eerie theme music kicks in — and you realize this is the end — you’ll get a terminal case of the shivers. 

Sapphire and Steel were so concerned with accomplishing their mission, with helping others, they could not see that they had walked into a trap…an eternal trap.  They were someone else’s mission all along.  And that is amazingly creepy.

2. The Prisoner: “Fall Out” (1968)

This final installment of The Prisoner is one of the strangest hours of science fiction television ever produced, and also one of the finest. 

Our hero, Number Six (Patrick McGoohan) has been held in a mysterious Village for months, unable to escape.  He has been interrogated, tortured and prodded by a series of men — always tagged “Number Two,” — but without success.  He never breaks, and  every one of his nemeses wants to know the reason behind his resignation from the British secret service. He…will…not…tell.

In “Fall Out,” The Prisoner ingeniously moves from the realm of the literal-minded to the metaphorical.  The Prisoner survives an ordeal and finally meets Number One.  Who is Number One?  Himself, only wearing a monkey mask!  The Prisoner then escapes from the Village and returns to London, a free man.  Or so it appears.

Instead, however, the finale of The Prisoner visually suggests that Number Six remains imprisoned — as we all are — in a much larger “village:” the 20th century technological society of social security numbers, credit cards numbers and advanced data-gathering.

To get across this point, the word “Prisoner” even appears over an aerial image of London, as Number Six returns to his home, in his car.  Make no mistake, this is not a simple title card.  This is a “label.”  The people who live here, like Number Six, are prisoners of the incipient Information Age.

In the closing shots of The Prisoner’s final episode, Number Six is depicted again in a familiar pose, racing his sporty car down an endless road.  This is the self-same image that started the program some seventeen episodes earlier.  The inference is that though he now sees himself as free, he is still a prisoner in a society that makes him a number in a computer, rather than a man. 

The opening interrogation of The Prisoner, played each and every week during the opening credits becomes clear and newly meaningful with the advent of this finale, “Fall Out,” as well.  When Number Six angrily asks “Who is Number One?” a voice responds “You are Number Six.” 

This was thought by viewers to be an evasion, an establishment of McGoohan’s identity as Number Six. 

To the contrary, after “Fall Out,” the answer to Number Six’s Question “Who is Number One,” is, simply, “You Are, Number Six.”  Number Six is Number One.  He’s imprisoning himself.  He is both master and slave; both prisoner and jailer.

This is a perfect ending to a quirky series, and one that asks those of us who are supposedly “free” to question the level and depth of that freedom.  Are we just numbers?  If we aren’t free, who are our jailers?

and

1. Blake’s 7: “Blake” (1981)

The final episode of Blake’s 7 begins with Avon (Paul Darrow) and his group of space-age rebels on the run. Their only base has been destroyed, and so they take their ship, The Scorpio, in search of their lost leader, Blake to the lawless world of Gauda Prime.

The Scorpio is badly damaged in a space battle and it crashes on the frontier world, leaving Avon’s avengers without even modest transportation. They find Blake – scarred and battle-weary – but Avon fears that his old friend has sold him out to the Federation Security forces. Blake and Avon endure a final confrontation, and only one man survives.

Then, the Federation troops arrive to put down the insurrection once and for all, and there is a devastating shoot-out between Federation shocktroopers and the survivors of Avon’s squad

This fiery, violent finale takes the conclusion of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid one step further. There’s no polite freeze-frame here. No sir; not in this unsentimental, caustic (and brilliant) series. Instead, there’s a slow-motion shoot-out and the dramatis-personae you have grown to care for over the course of four years….go down hard.

And that’s after the stunning confrontation between Avon and Blake.

Basically, this is the Blake’s 7 episode where your hopes come crashing down. All throughout the series, audiences have followed Blake on his “impossible” dream to topple a space-spanning Federation. At times, you might have actually believed that Blake – the idealist and hero – can accomplish this. Even though it seems an impossible task.

The final episode “Blake,” makes you right your expectations. You were deluded, buddy.  There’s no way this thing is going to have a happy ending.

In fact, the strange smile that forms on Avon’s face just before the end of the episode may well be his final understanding of this fact. His bemused recognition that he too — the ultimate cynic — bought into a futile dream. You don’t fight City Hall and win. You might disrupt it for a while, but you’re just not going to beat a Galactic Federation. 

Blake’s 7 remains true to its story line by expressing this idea with “Blake,” a ballsy, gut-wrenching, truly apocalyptic finale. The series was always unromantic, and so the final episode lives up to that tradition.  It is cosmically unromantic.

Some fans hate the ending of Blake’s 7, and I can understand why.

As fans, we always want to believe that “the adventure continues.”  We want to believe that our heroes survive to fight another day. But that’s really — if you examine the program closely — not ever what this program was really about.

Blake’s 7 concerns desperate men fighting a desperate battle, and on this day – and in their last adventure – the law catches up with them. 

Again, a perfect ending to a brilliant series.  With all due deference to Shakespeare, sometimes all’s well that doesn’t end well (for the characters, that is.)