Step right up, you won't believe your eyes

[austin_dern]

I'm a bit curious that except on rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc I haven't seen mention of Bob Denver's other great role, or at least the role that comes up ... second, anyway ... when I think of him. Yeah, I watched a lot of Gilligan's Island growing up and don't mind it yet, but I really got fascinated early on by the Sid and Marty Krofft shows. At least the more science fiction shows, Land of the Lost and Far-Out Space Nuts. Bob Denver was in the latter, admittedly rather comic-by-intention show, but still ... guys in a spaceship, going around to different planets. Of course I'd love this show.

Although ... it really bugged me, when I was six, that Bob Denver as Junior, and Chuck McCann as Barney, were flying around in a Lunar Module. I knew quite well that it couldn't land on a planet with an atmosphere, and wouldn't have enough fuel to land on a planet with gravity like Earth's, and it couldn't -- as depicted -- take off again. Not with the descent stage attached. Plus, with the rocket capacities available flying from one star system to another would take tens of thousands of years. And the module interior was far too big. Plus there was the careless mixing of Saturn V and Saturn I-B footage of liftoff (a weirdly chronic problem; it even plagued HBO's From the Earth To The Moon, for crying out loud).

I also noticed one episode where (for reasons too intricate to explain) they're riding in their off-model lunar rover, following computer-voice directions that got stuck in a loop, telling them to turn 45 degrees right ... which they do ... and turn 45 degrees right ... which they do ... and turn 45 degrees right ... which they do ... and so on; after six times of this Barney notices they've made a complete circle. I noticed that wasn't so, and while I accepted it for the sake of the plot point/joke, I noted that as something else they got wrong. More irritating to me was -- I believe that same episode -- Barney and Junior's Lunar Module was stolen, but they had access to a device that could make a duplicate of anything, and they have a picture of the spaceship on hand, so give it to the duplicating device and say they want a big one. They got a giant picture of the Lunar Module, to their dismay. I wondered what the characters thought they were going to get from it.

So really, that would have to mark the beginnings of my technical fandom, watching a show lovingly and yet tearing it to pieces over factual errors and plot holes. And Bob Denver and Chuck McCann taught me an important lesson, that I was smarter than at least some of the people on TV. And, well, thanks, Bob. It was a lot of fun.

Trivia: On 26 May 1978 John F Yardley, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Transportation Systems, recommended the name Enterprise be given also to Orbiter Vehicle 105, if it were ever built, carrying on the name given OV-101 which would not fly into space. Source: Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System: The First 100 Missions, Dennis R Jenkins.

Currently Reading: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W Tuchman.

Comments

[dellway.livejournal.com]

For a second there, I thought you were going to say Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis.

And many a man would kill for a goatee like that.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Nope ... though while I didn't grow up watching it, I did like it when I actually saw episodes. Maynard was pretty cool.

[reptilemammal.livejournal.com]

Yes goodbye little buddy, overall reading the articles on him it seemed like he was pretty content at the end of his life, so that seemed nice to know.
I don't recall the S&MK with him, but I am not surprised. He really wasn't much of dimunitive man though other stars were typically taller than him. I imagine that why he got the Little Buddy and Junior references.

Anyway best of travels to wherver you may be BD!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

He did seem, to the limited extent I saw him out of character, to be pretty cheerful and rather happy with being, if typecast, at least typecast as someone everybody recognized and more or less likes. That's a good feeling to have.

[xydexx.livejournal.com]

The best part of that show was the big fluffy critter named Honk. -=)

[xydexx.livejournal.com]

(Well, that's why I watched it at least. I had no idea Bob Denver was in it. The only folks I think I recognize from the S&MK shows were Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors starring as those androids who had wacky space adventures.)

[xydexx.livejournal.com]

Ah, here it is: The Lost Saucer (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072536/). Had a big fluffy character named Dorse; half-dog, half-horse. Hee. If I only knew then what I do now.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

There you go. The Lost Saucer ran on the Krofft Supershow rarely enough I never get into it, although I sure tried the rare times I could see it to watch anything that had a spaceship, robot, or other science fictional trapping on it.

I don't remember Dorse at all, I'm afraid, but then I barely remembered the honky beast from Far-Out Space Nuts, and forgot much about Bleep from Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. Why this happens in a brain that remembers plot holes from shows I last watched 25 years ago, I don't know. It's not my conscious doing.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with Tintin's two-parter "Destination Moon" and "Explorers on the Moon"? You'll notice the craft there was strongly Nazi inspired - the archetypical rocket with fins, which, to Hergé's credit, noted had to be swung around for landing at either end of the trip, though the matter of heat dissipation wasn't overemphasised, given the strips were drawn around 1955. (There was another celestial body incident I'll overlook, considering the state of his artistic license)

I've seen almost nothing of Gilligan's Island, I admit, so my first recollections are of Galaxy Quest. "Those poor people.."

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I have not, actually -- perhaps oddly -- although T-shirts of both are very popular accessories here. I keep thinking of picking up Tintin things, since the ingredients labels suggest I should enjoy it, but you know how it is picking up new hobbies.

I'm curious what your thoughts of Gilligan's Island are in that case. I know at least some of why I like it is the nostalgic thrill of remembering when I was eight and watching this stuff on the channel we could barely get in from Philadelphia and seeing Gilligan's brain being put into a gorilla's body or whatever else they were up to that day.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

There's Fifine (http://fifine.purrsia.com/Fifine01.html) as well.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I've seen that now and then, but it never quite grabbed me. Web-based comics seem hard for me to develop habits of reading.

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

o/` At what those Far Out Space Nuts find! o/`

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It was great for playing with the (crudely assembled, I realize looking at the model now) Lunar Module kit I had, too. No room for people, but they're not really the point of a technological fandom, you know.

you knew that at age 6 ?

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

wowsers ^v^

...but all they needed really was to put more helium on board :D

Re: you knew that at age 6 ?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, now, no, you see, that would just make landing more difficult and make the ship harder to control in any sort of cross-breeze, plus it's extremely hard to keep helium from leaking out of even solid structures, since helium atoms are tiny even compared to the ordinary gaps between molecules and ... oh.

Humor. yes. It is a difficult concept.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Gilligan's Island was one of the most excellent sitcoms in construction.. in the way that Green Acres was, and that Perfect Strangers aspired to be. As it was described byt the producer, "We reduced these characters down, reduced the setting, and focused not in the least on reality, but only on making things funnier." And that's true, every character in gilligan's island has their own funny nature, and moreover, any character talkign to any other character can be funny. Especially Gilligan.

I enjoyed Dobie Gillis as well, what I've seen of it on TV Land.

In honor of Bob Denver, I'm wearing a Gilligan hat this week on Second Life., where, I should note, Austin- there's already a "SpinDizzy members" group formed.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I think you've got something there -- at least, sitcoms have kind of lost the 1960s notion that they should be set in situations that are absurd or at least easily open to absurdity (``Genie lives with astronaut!'' ``Gemini astronauts in the Stone Age!'' ``Whatever the heck was going on with Green Acres'' -- there's something subtler there than a fish-out-of-water scenario, but I'm not sure precisely what). While there's a couple sitcoms based on strong and plausible characters that hold up, the best do seem to be with the most exaggeratedly absurd personalities (Night Court, NewsRadio, even The Mary Tyler Moore Show features characters rather exaggerated compared to realism).

I wasn't aware of that group happening on Second Life, although I might've suspected it, the way I see it cropping up on my Friends List these days ...