Category: News

It’s a holiday weekend, and you know what that means… new Doctor Who!

Okay, it’s an American holiday, not a British one… but that’s okay, we’ve got an American in it. Take look…

As the 1970s dawned, I was 12 and no longer as interested in Saturday morning fare. There was Little League which was either in the morning or afternoon and I found myself drifting more towards the [[[Bowery Boys]]] shorts that ran on channel 5 after the cartoons wore themselves out.  My younger siblings watched, but not with the same passion I had shown just a few years earlier.

For me, the Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1970s Vol. 1
, coming tomorrow from Warner Home Video, was more introductory than revisiting my childhood. Having just finished the 1960s volume, it was startling to see how rapidly things had changed. Spies and super-heroes were rapidly supplanted by large gaggles of people either playing music or solving mysteries or both. The disc opens with a cheat, an episode of [[[The Jetsons]]], which may have run in the 1970s for the umpteenth time, but was emblematic of an earlier era, stealing time from something more current.

The success of [[[The Partridge Family]]] in prime time and [[[The Archies]]] on Saturday mornings certainly explained by there was so much music, without a single top 40 tune to emerge from any of these groups.

The mysteries could be ascribed to the wildfire success of [[[Scooby Doo]]], the series that straddled the decades by being introduced in fall 1969 and becoming the most imitated series of the 1970s.

The stories were also vastly different. By 1970, concerns over violence seemed to have begun taming the stories so the level of danger was different. The villains tended to be stupider and more bumbling, prone to slapstick ways of taking themselves out than being subdued by the crime fighters.  Groups of teens were proving to find mysteries, stumbling across problems and then fumbling their way through the investigation until the culprit was exposed and then apprehended as much through dumb luck than effective law enforcement.

Scooby Doo, a series I never warmed to through the years, is represented here in an episode from The New Scooby-Doo Movies that guest-starred the Harlem Globetrotters, which had their series so it was a nice but of cross-promotion. The Globetrotters were at the height of their fame around this time and this was a fun brand extension even if none of the players actually did their own voices, leaving that to the likes of Scatman Crothers. In this case, there are too many people caught up in a fairly mediocre story concluding with the guest stars strutting their stuff on the court, doing things that only work in animation. That it needed a laugh track, cueing kids when to laugh speaks volumes of how unfunny this could get.

We are shown just how many imitators there were with episodes from [[[Goober and the Ghost Chasers]]] and [[[Funky Phantom]]] that also featured groups of teens and their pets solving cases. One thing that was never clear, even after watching these, is why these people were friends. Look at Fred and Daphne, the homecoming King and Queen, who in the real world would have nothing to do with Shaggy or Velma. We’re just presented them as an ensemble and the stories move forward. Goober and Funky Phantom are pale imitations with stock stories, stock characters and even overly familiar voice artists doing variations on their characters, especially the great Daws Butler recycling his Snagglepuss for the Phantom.

Other imitators were [[[Josie and the Pussycats]]] which came in 1970, just two years after The Archies. The music was certainly incidental to the story and this one had a vile Captain Nemo who played an organ coming to hate the pop stars and their music.

The one variation that was weird was [[[Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan]]] which was more a “how done it” than “who done it”. In a nice special feature, actor Jamie Farr talked about the series where he wrote three episodes and explained how the network insisted the Clan each had a distinct personality all had to have something to do and each case featured a song from the children’s band. Oddly entertaining with nice voice work from Keye Luke as the famed Chan.  It’s also interesting to note that a show with a predominantly Asian cast made it to Saturdays before any African-American series.

The Asian influence was also seen with [[[Hong Kong Phooey]]], where a dog working as a janitor at the local police station was also the feared martial arts pooch – reflecting the then hot genre of martial arts films. The animation is among the weakest offerings but had its moments.

An oddity was [[[Yogi’s Gang]]], a show that collected all of the Hanna-Barbera characters from the previous decade and put them on a flying ark. Each episode used different collections of characters, by Yogi, and had adventures. Based on the episode here, the story seems designed to shine the spotlight on each character to say their favorite line or do a character bit. The story, though, had a nifty twist ending which made it satisfying, especially compared with the rest of the stories collected here.

Perhaps the most original series on the two-disc set is [[[Roman Holidays]]] that tried to replicate [[[The Flintstones]]] formula in a Roman era setting. It was about a nuclear family and their exploits – it didn’t look like any of the competition and had some of the best writing, so it’s sad that it lasted a mere 13 episodes.

By the latter part of the decade, Scooby’s imitators were fading fast and CBS was ready to try heroes once more. While ABC was still running[[[Super Friends]]], there hadn’t been much in the way of heroic adventure but in 1977 they hired Filmation to bring back [[[Batman]]] and try their hand at [[[Tarzan]]]. The former featured Adam West and Burt Ward reprising their prime time roles and both needed better direction because they over-emphasized the phrases or sounded constipated rather than dramatic. With cartoon violence even further de-emphasized by this point, actually fighting the criminals was out so the cases were contrived so the Dynamic Duo could triumph over the likes of the Joker with their wits and equipment. They added Bat-Mite for comic relief and it didn’t work at all. Filmation’s animation recycled much of their earlier Bat-efforts and there isn’t much entertainment to be found. Tarzan, with nice design work from Bob Kline, tried to make Edgar Rice Burroughs’ world palatable to kids and it largely worked.

The final extra on the set is a short piece looking at how odd Funky Phantom was with modern day animation folk such as Paul Dini trying to figure out how and more importantly, why it got made.

Here’s a quick preview… enjoy!

Back in the days after the dinosaurs died out, Saturday mornings meant all three networks would run children’s programming from as early as 7:30 until noon or so. Every fall, as we started a new school year, we eagerly anticipated what new animated fare there might be and were mesmerized by the cartoon antics of anthropomorphic animals, adventurous humans and some downright silly-looking monsters. The baby boomers born at the end of the generation were raised on this diet animated diet as it proved cheaper to produce than live-action fare.

Warner Home Video has collected a wonderful sampling of those shows in Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1960s Vol. 1
, going on sale Tuesday. There are 12 different series presented on two discs, providing me with five hours or reliving my childhood.

Back in the day, with few channels to pick from, we would watch these shows endlessly, repeated throughout the year and then when they went into syndication packages, watch them again. I certainly did with my younger siblings and it was frightening how many of these episodes felt familiar and recognizable.

Wisely, the collection heavily features Hanna-Barbera offerings since they effectively ruled Saturday morning animation. Upstarts such as Filmation, didn’t arrive until 1966 so maybe we’ll see some of those shows in subsequent volumes. Instead, we begin with the enduring figures from The Jetsons to Quick-Draw McGraw.

The earliest offering is The Flintstones, H-B’s biggest hit which actually first aired in prime time and then got recycled on Saturdays beginning in the 1960-1961 season. A year later, Top Cat, another prime time series, moved to Saturdays. Lesser known than Fred and Barney the series used cats led by a finagler, T.C., styled after Phil Silvers. It’s pretty interesting to see Silvers, who immortalized the wheeler-dealer character with his Sgt. Bilko, became the template for more than a few of the characters in these H-B series.

The vocal casts were limited and you began to recognize Don Messick, Mel Blanc, June Foray, Ted Cassidy, and others are they voiced multiple characters throughout the decade. Similarly, H-B’s cartoony style varied little so you got to see stock characters repeated, modified by the addition of a mustache or change in hair color. When the adventure characters come into the spotlight, Alex Toth’s strong design sense comes through again and again.

The shows are not organized in any order but you do get to see pop
culture trends infiltrate the shows, modified for their youthful
audiences. Secret agents followed by super-heroes slowly edged out the
animal exploits so Quick-Draw gave way to Space Ghost.
And with the wild success of Batman on ABC’s prime time schedule, the
latter half of the 1960s featured many a masked hero. Oddly, the
robotic Frankenstein Jr. wore a mask as if a 30-foot tall robot needed
an alter ego. The Herculoids is the latest series in the collection,
debuting in fall 1967 so the social trends that were reflected in
animation will have to wait for volume 2.

Each series is
included as a complete 30-minute installment so the secondary features
that were commonplace back then, are included. For example, 1965’s Atom Ant also had The Hillbilly Bears and Precious Pup, two features with entirely unconnected themes and casts of characters. Heck, I forgot about Precious until I watched.

The episodes selected are certainly some of the strongest offerings from each series such as the introduction of Rosie on The Jetsons or a confrontation with Zorak on Space Ghost. 
Watching these, you could feel the writers sometimes struggle to make
their simple stories stretch to fill the time allotted. Back then, each
30-minute show ran close to 25 minutes with just a few commercial
breaks. As a result, rather the plot twists or characterization, the
chase scenes got extended or you had long panning shots of space
vehicles or landscapes (such as The Herculoids). The stories
all had beginnings, middles, and ends, and while they may not have been
the strongest stories, at least made some sense.

The oddity in the set was the inclusion of Marine Boy,
a Japanese series, that aired there starting in 1966 and came to
America a few years later but never on Saturday mornings; instead, it
ran in syndication and played weekday afternoons in New York. The
series is a nice touch but the weakest in the bunch given its overly
simplistic story and animation. The classical music soundtrack really
doesn’t fit the series’ look and the character seems entirely
over-dependent on his boomerang (which shouldn’t even work underwater).

I
admit it; these were comfort shows at the advanced age of 50. I see
their flaws today but also recognize that H-B created an enduring set
of players that were unique and fresh and have reason to still be
revived in one form or another today. The two-disc set has several fun
features including bonus episodes of Quick-Draw McGraw and Snooper and
Blabber Mouse. Mini-documentaries celebrate Quick-Draw and the
Herculoids with Paul Dini, Mark Evanier, and Jerry Beck holding forth
with great delight.

The silliest aspect of the set is that, like
the Fleischer Superman cartoons, is labeled “intended for the Adult
Collector and is Not Suitable for Children”. To which I say, hogwash.
Yes, there’s violence – over-the-top, impossible to repeat bits of
business but find this reactionary warning a sad sign of how some
things have not changed for the better.

Here’s a quick preview:

Here’s what CBS is adding:

Mondays: Accidentally
On Purpose (Jenna Elfman sitcom, surrounded by the usual sitcoms)

Tuesdays: NCIS: Los
Angeles, (following NCIS and
starring LL Cool J), The Good Wife.

Wednesdays: Same old stuff – The New Adventures of Old Christine, Gary Unmarried, Criminal Minds and CSI: NY.

Thursdays: More of the same – Survivor, CSI and The
Mentalist.

Fridays: Medium
(picking up what NBC no longer wants) will be between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs.

Saturdays: Nothing new here.

Sundays: Three
Rivers (organ transplant donors).

May 18, 1939… (Cue the John Williams theme.)

(Hat tip: Mark Waid.)

What? How could you forget that the third Monday in May is Miracle Monday? Elliot will be very disappointed in you…

If you have no idea what I’m talking about (Ma nishtana ha-laila ha-zeh mi-kol ha-leilot) Miracle Monday is the third Monday in May. It’s from a Superman novel of the same name written by Elliot S! Maggin and published in 1981. I highly recommend reading it, if you haven’t read it before– and luckily, some folks have put it online.

On Miracle Monday the spirit of humanity soared free.  This

Miracle Monday, like the first Miracle Monday, came in the spring of

Metropolis, and for the occasion spring weather was arranged wherever

the dominion of humanity extended.  On Uranus’s satellites where the

natives held an annual fog-gliding rally through the planetary rings,

private contributions even made it possible to position orbiting

fields of gravitation for spectators in free space.  On Titan, oxygen

bubbles were loosed in complicated patterns to burst into flame with

the methane atmosphere and make fireworks that were visible as far as

the surface of saturn.  At Nix Olympica, the eight-kilometer-high

Martian volcano, underground pressures that the Olympica Resort

Corporation had artificially accumulated during the preceding year

were unleashed in a spectacular display of molten fury for tourists

who walked around the erupting crater wearing pressurized energy

shields.  At Armstrong City in the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility there was

a holographic reenactment of the founding of the city in the year

2019, when on the fiftieth anniversary of his giant leap for mankind

the first man on the Moon returned, aged and venerable, to what was

then called Tranquility Base Protectorate, carrying a state charter

signed by the President of the United States.  The prices of ski lift

tickets on Neptune inflated for the holiday.  Teleport routes to

beaches and mountains on Earth crowded up unbelievably. 

Interplanetary wilderness preserves became nearly as crowded with

people as Earth cities.  Aboard the slow-moving orbital ships that

carried ores and fossil materials on slowly decaying loops toward the

sun from the asteroids, teamsters partied until they couldn’t see.  On

worlds without names scattered throughout this corner of the Galaxy,

where Earth’s missionaries, pioneers and speculators carried their own

particular quests, it was a day for friends, family, recreation and –

if it brought happiness—reflection.

Go read the whole thing.

This is the week where the Final Fate of many TV shows is dealt out – and there’s actually good news – in fact a LOT of it! Plus something green is singing and dancing on Broadway, and it isn’t Shreck and STAR TREK blasts forward for another big BO weekend.

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