As Promised: Starlost Reviews

[james_davis_nicoll]

One immediate problem I noticed is that The Starlost is bad but not funny bad like 24 or Heroes. It's just kind of dull and the set design is ugly.

Episode One: Voyage of Discovery


This is set in Cyprus Corners, home of the meanest Amish farmers you will ever meet (Their patriarch has a great beard, though).

Devon's unsanctioned passion for Rachel, promised to blacksmith Garth, gets Devon into trouble with the authorities. Devon is forced to flee his home habitat, which leads him to discover that he is on a giant space ship, that nobody is flying the ship and that the ship is aimed in what I assume is a violation of SOP directly at a star. Deven heads back home and thanks to Garth, narrowly escapes being stoned to death.Devon repays Garth by running off with Rachel. Garth pursues the couple but gives up on the idea of dragging Rachel back. The trio contemplate the stars, especially the one big bright one that seems to be under an AU away.

Comments:

The computer consistantly gives the impression that if it could mutter "you ignorant sack of tainted water" under its breath, it would.

Garth spends a lot of time hammering on the same small irregularly shaped bit of metal. Well, nobody said he was a good blacksmith. He doesn't seem to be particularly attracted to Rachel and his primary reason for being annoyed when she leaves isn't frustrated romance but simple possessiveness. In fact, annoyance at the way the universe keeps him from beating on his small piece of metal seems to be his primary emotion. Oh, Garth. Devon may have Rachel but you will always have that nifty cross bow (Unless cannibals steal it from you).

The sets are beyond ugly. Cyprus Corners looks as though it's experiencing nuclear winter and apparently there was a sale on extruded plastic forms when the tunnels connecting the domes were constructed. I found myself concerned that the strips of lighting on the ceilings were crooked, as though they were installed on the cheap by lazy workers.

The pad for the bounce tube appears to be made of some sort of sponge rubber.

Devon has an odd smug smirk that suggests he somehow senses that the writers are on his side. He and Rachel seem oddly passionless as well, and I don't think this is entirely because this is a Canadian show. Devon and the others switch into and out of archaic speech patterns but they are always very formal by our standards. No doubt their pillow talk would be hilarious from a modern viewer's point of view but somehow I doubt the couple ever bump uglies unless it's specifically to procreate. It's just a cultural thing.

Rachel is more of a prize than an active participant in the plot. For large sections of the story, she could be replaced with a potted palm without significantly affecting the plot.

The plot is pretty much what it has to be to get the show going. Devon can't be happy at home so something has to force him out, either curiousity or an intolerable situation at home (Or both). He needs at least one companion to talk to and since the woman can't be expected to talk intelligently, that means a trio, with a perpetually frustrated second male who is never, ever, going to get any. The Disaster hundreds of years ago gives the trio something to struggle towards without giving them the choice each week of just settling down in whatever dome they are in.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

For a while I was convinced that the bounce-tube effect was the Worst Special Effect of All Time, but then I saw some worse ones.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I thought it was interesting that Devon's reaction to the bounce tubes was fear while Rachel seemed to be having fun flying down the tube.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

This site (http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/star.html) suggests that one model for the Ark was New York City:

Much like little street neighborhoods in New York, where someone who lives on West 82nd Street with its barber shop and market and shoe repair and local bar, will find himself in alien territory if he wanders over to 91st and Amsterdam.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

I have read this in novel form somewhere. I will have to dig it up.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Found it! Phoenix without Ashes by Edward Bryant and Harlan Ellison.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Which IIRC won an award.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Not according to my copy, Which is apparently a first printing, first run.

[andrewducker]

Won awards, apparently. It was supposed to be the pilot, but Fox decided to dumb things down. Harlan had his name taken off.

[drpaisley.livejournal.com]

The original script won a Writers Guild Award for Best Dramatic Script (one of several HE's work has acquired, always for the original script, rather than the filmed version [see "City at the Edge of Foreve"]).

[daev.livejournal.com]

That was a pretty good book.

Ed Bryant was supposed to be The Next Big Thing in SF back in the '70s. Seems like that never happened.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Worse than that, actually: Over the last few years, Ed has fallen on hard times due to financial complications from his heart bypass surgery in 2004, a limited income stream, and predatory actions by individuals who took advantage of Ed's kindness. (http://www.friendsofed.org/)

[daev.livejournal.com]

Oh no! Thank you for telling me about this. I will donate what I can.

[mrbankies.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. Bad 1970's sci-fi. Now I'm really curious - or shouldn't I be?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

No. Really, no. Even my famously high threshold for bad TV SF (at least according to Mrs Daveon) couldn't cope with more than a couple of episodes.

[jkahane.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting the review of the first episode of The Starlost, and I do hope that you keep going with these reviews.

To be honest, I was in my early and mid-20s when the series first came out, and I have to say that I enjoyed it at the time, even with some of the poor special effects and scenery and design, not to mention the 1-D characters and all. I still do enjoy it for what it was, but your review just points out that it was a poor Canadian attempt at an sf show that had an interesting basic premise (the Ark, the accident, not the characters of Devon, Rachel, and Garth), but screwed it up in the execution.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I cannot see a reason why some company that wanted to do a BSG-style reimagining of an old show couldn't find great success by redoing The Starlost. There's nothing inherently wrong with the ideas behind the show, just the execution.

Huh. I never thought about the timing before but Bova's third Exiles book, which has a rather Orphans of the Sky/The Starlost situation, post-dates his brief involvement with The Starlost. I wonder if it was his way of getting the taste of The Starlost out of his mouth (Along with writing The Starcrossed).

[gareth-wilson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if the basic idea would succeed on TV today. I can only think of two English-language live-action shows that are currently running and involve space travel of any kind, now that Dr Who is in hiatus. And those two are low-rated cable series.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Battlestar Galactica and ?

[gareth-wilson.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of Stargate Atlantis, but I see that the final episode aired last month. I'm not sure why space travel is so unfashionable on TV these days. There actually is a network TV show set on a starship that's scheduled to air this year in the US. But the show will mostly take place inside their equivalent of the holodeck.

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

I wonder if part of the reason might not be that space travel is still indelibly linked to Star Trek and Firefly. The motif may have the stink of certain franchise demise to it (BSG aside). Plus, studios can't get away with wierd lighting on a bowl of oatmeal and calling it a planet anymore.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

The new Stargate series is set on a starship and will be coming out presently.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Technically Dr Who isn't on hiatus, just they've altered the format of stories for 2009 to fit in with David Tennent's theatre schedule. There will be 4 stories broadcast this year starting this month.

[jkahane.livejournal.com]

I think you're right that The Starlost could easily go the route of BSG (though I don't watch the series myself), as the ideas were quite good for the time, and could be easily reimagined for a modern audience.

And I suspect you're right about the Bova business.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Ah, forgot one detail:

The evil partiarch explains to Devon that he is an unsuitable match for Rachel because Devon is an orphan thanks to an accident that killed his parents, was raised as a ward of the community and has no estate, which means his genes are bad.

Granted, who knows what the patriarch thinks genes are.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I think I'd grant the show a bye for that one, as I seem to remember it being pretty clear that society in Cyprus Corners has lost a lot of understanding during their long isolation. The link between land ownership and "good bloodstock" is far from rare.

-- Steve's trying to remember how much the Elders knew about what lay outside the dome, but it's been decades since he saw the episode and it's blurring with similar stories encountered later.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

There's one old geezer who found the keys to the front door but who was never brave enough to open it to see what was there. I think it's quite possible the Elders have no idea about the world outside their dome.

We don't need another hero?

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

So one of the repeated themes of this series was sort of like what happened with Sliders, where this episodes Universe Next Door has some human culture represented by one overriding "crazy principle?"

It's the dome where people wear hats on their feet and gloves on their heads! It's the Dickensian Steampunk Dome! Surprise Nazi Analoguedome! Thunderdome!

Re: We don't need another hero?

[catherineomega.livejournal.com]

Dome dome! Two domes enter! One dome leaves!

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Oh, another thing: the manner in which scenes cut to ads (not included, which makes me sad) is oddly random, almost as though the show was designed without taking into account that there would be ads.

Speaking of ads, the episode is 50 minutes long. We had to put up with fewer ads back then but I guess more ads were needed to defeat international communism.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

If memory serves the old length of a BBC show also used to be 50 or 52 minutes. There's probably a reason for the timing.

[liadra.livejournal.com]

I used to watch this all the time when I was younger. I used to love the computer and thought the men were cute. Those were the days. LOL

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Thank you for throwing yourself on this dud grenade of pop culture.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Let us know if Garth ever actually uses his crossbow.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Garth spends a lot of time hammering on the same small irregularly shaped bit of metal.

He probably doesn't have access to a lot of workable metal, let alone smeltable ore.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Good point. One assumes that dismantling and working what the ship is made of might be quite hard with their level of tech... one wonders what the forge is burning...

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

He could use charcoal with a bellows or air pump.

But he doesn't. He's got some kind of gas burner (you can see the burner surface), bright yellow flames dancing around with a height of about half a metre, hence not much pressure and nowhere near enough oxygen to give a hot flame. This may be another reason why he spends so much time working that one piece.

[avram]

That must be it: He's a ritual blacksmith! The actual art of metal-working has been lost along with the other tech. Garth's job is to stand around all day performing the metal-whacking ritual which is all they remember.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like that idea.

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing this. I adored this show when it was first out, but I was a teenager, and it mostly conflicted with my piano lessons, so I didn't get to see very much of it.

[rinconjohn.livejournal.com]

"The pad for the bounce tube appears to be made of some sort of sponge rubber."

In fact it's eggcrate foam, popular for deadening recording studios and as a comfy mattress pad. Watch Episode 2 carefully and you will see it reappear as a wall covering.