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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 4:21 pm 
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If you weren't a child in the 1970s, you may have a hard time appreciating the sheer...distinctiveness of Sid and Marty Krofft's productions. Krofft was almost the only outfit of the time that specialized in live-action Saturday morning/syndicated shows for younger viewers (Cartoon studio Filmation also had a line of live-action shows around that time). They were the sort of thing you just had to see to believe.

The 1974 series "Land of the Lost" was the most ambitious of their Saturday-morning offerings. It told the story of a father and his teenage son and preteen daughter who were caught in an earthquake while out white-water rafting, somehow survived a plunge down a waterfall (The opening theme's lyrics say it was a thousand feet), and found themselves in a world inhabited by dinosaurs, friendly hirsute hominids, decidedly less friendly lizard people, and all sorts of bizarre super artifacts. All this was done on a budget comparable to what a studio-bound 1970s sitcom would have had to work with. The show ran for three seasons.

Like many children I went through a dinosaur-loving stage (But didn't become a dino-geek like some. My oldest niece, for example. She could spell "velociraptor" in first grade. While other girls were holding doll tea parties, she had velociraptors for imaginary friends). Naturally I liked "Land of the Lost" for the dinosaurs. Evidently the rest of the science-fiction concepts went over my head. I don't remember all that much of the show. I was only six when it came out, plus I was already more into cartoons on Saturday mornings.

Anyway, I've now had the chance to watch "Land of the Lost's" second season on DVD. Let's see what it's like....

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 4:44 pm 
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I revisited this with my kids when they were about 6 and 8. I remembered it being much deeper as a small child. :lol: The effects weren't even good for the time, so that part didn't bother me much when rewatching. I still think there's a really good young adult movie series or TV show in the concept. Too bad it was ruined by Will Ferrell for modern generations.


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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 4:50 pm 
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Tar Pit

In the first season our heroes sort of adopted a long-necked juvenile dinosaur whom they named Dopey. He was supposed to be a Brontosaur (Nowadays he'd probably be called an Apatosaur. But my generation of dinosaur fan kids knew the type as Brontosaur. Since the question of whether they are the same genus or separate remains under debate, I'm going to keep saying Brontosaur). Dopey celebrated the beginning of the second season by stumbling into a tar pit. His human and hominid friends spend the episode trying to lasso him and pull him out. One would think that trying to pull his heavy body out of sticky tar by the neck would be a good way to strangle or decapitate the poor thing. Evidently Brontosaurs have awfully strong necks.

The dinosaur effects are much on display in this episode. In those days stop-motion animation was still the only really convincing way to animate dinosaurs for live action productions. It's remarkable to see a studio trying to use that inherently expensive and time-consuming technique with a Saturday-morning TV budget. The "Land of the Lost" dinosaur models aren't as elaborate and detailed as the best stop-motion out there. But they work quite well on the small screen. If you pay careful attention to the credits, you'll notice that the dinosaurs' designs are credited to Wah Chang, one of the special effects wizards behind "The Outer Limits." The world of old-fashioned, hand-crafted special effects was a small one.

They had to balance the books by spending as little as they could on their other visuals. The prehistoric jungle environment is a very obvious set, shot on cheap-looking 1970s videotape. Shots of the actors in front of process screens showing the dinosaurs have wonky perspective. The full-size Dopey head-and-neck puppet is silly-looking. It isn't even the same color as the stop-motion model!

The most embarrassingly cheesy-looking set of effects comes in the opening sequence that appears at the beginning of each episode. As originally storyboarded it must have looked like a real rip-roaring action sequence. While the trio is out rafting down a canyon an immense mass of rock falls behind them, sealing off the canyon. The rapids get worse. They fall hundreds of feet down a waterfall. Then they are chased by a T-Rex.

Sadly, as taped--and it's obviously NOT film--the whole river sequence was shot by splicing a shot of the actors in their raft into a miniature set that appears to have been no larger than a kitchen sink. When they come to at the base of the waterfall they look none the worse for wear--they aren't even wet! I remember even as a child noticing that the miniatures didn't look at all convincing.

At least the T-Rex looks good. A 1970s child viewer could forgive the whole sequence's shortcomings based on that alone. The final shot, where the carnosaur turns its head and growls directly into the camera, is the one thing about the whole show I recall the best. I suspect I'm not alone in that.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 4:55 pm 
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Jeff wrote:
I revisited this with my kids when they were about 6 and 8. I remembered it being much deeper as a small child. :lol: The effects weren't even good for the time, so that part didn't bother me much when rewatching. I still think there's a really good young adult movie series or TV show in the concept. Too bad it was ruined by Will Ferrell for modern generations.

I know what you mean. I made the mistake of watching some of that "Land of the Lost" movie. What a waste of a good idea! Now I understand how fans of Judge Dredd must feel after the 1995 movie.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 5:18 pm 
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Jeff wrote:
I remembered it being much deeper as a small child. :lol:

The scripts were really good. Many of the writers were established SF writers who had written for Star Trek or other things out there like that.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 5:30 pm 
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That meddlin kid wrote:
When they come to at the base of the waterfall they look none the worse for wear--they aren't even wet!

IIRC, there's an explanation for that later in the season.
Well at least I considered it an acceptable explanation at the time (Yeah I got hung up on the fact they weren't wet as well).


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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 6:01 pm 
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I remember liking the pillars/obelisks, and the reveal about the evolution of the Sleetak.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 9:42 pm 
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Beachy wrote:
and the reveal about the evolution of the Sleetak.

That one is a biggie -- a major hook of the first season. And Enik was created by Walter Koenig (Chekov). Star Trek writer David Gerrold was the overall story editor, and he was the one with the idea that Enik would turn out to be from the past and not the future.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 11:54 pm 
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Now I kind of wanna watch these again. Dare I pick them up?

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 12:01 am 
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The pylons were such an interesting feature that I stole the idea for a short story I wrote in high school, figuring my English teacher probably never saw the show.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 12:08 am 
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Heh.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 12:29 am 
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It was a fine show until they had to help their Uncle Jack off a dinosaur.


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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 12:50 am 
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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 1:57 am 
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Finally, there is some closure to the series.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 2:20 am 
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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 7:25 am 
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Beachy wrote:
Now I kind of wanna watch these again. Dare I pick them up?

I have them on DVD, and found them to be a worthwhile trip down memory lane. Because all the flaws they had were so obvious we detected them as 6 year olds. But the stories were good enough that we underappreciated them as 6 year olds.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 9:40 am 
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The Zarn

While investigating an eerie part of the valley (less than a mile from where they've been living for months now), Rick and Will find a bizarre structure that they take to be some sort of crashed spacecraft. Inside they find a woman named Sharon who claims to have been abducted from Indianapolis--from the very neighborhood Rick came from, in fact. The guys take her back to camp. Rick's glad to have another adult--and a woman at that!--around. Will is still creeped out by the weirdness of it all. And Holly is jealous of this newcomer who seems to be taking her father's affections. Meanwhile this sparkly-looking alien who was also on the ship is following them back to camp....

Jay's observation above--that watching "Land of the Lost" as an adult enables one to appreciate things about the stories that went over one's head as a child--is right on the money. There's a good deal going on here that a younger viewer might not have picked up on. As an adult you can understand how desperately glad Rick would be to have a potential new modern human companion after months in the lost world--so much so that his judgment could be clouded. Children also would have had a hard time understanding the significance of the voiceovers at the conclusion. The conclusion, though undermined by sorry effects, is effectively creepy.

Then there's the alien Zarn. Like a good "Outer Limits" alien, he doesn't look like your regular guy in a rubber suit. He's got one of the most interesting alien voices I've ever heard. It's a very nice-sounding stentorian human voice, with odd emphases that make him sound foreign despite his ability to speak idiomatic English. He's also very opinionated about humans! This is one alien with lots of personality. Albeit a highly disagreeable personality.

The DVD has two separate commentaries on this episode. The first, by Wesley Eure and Kathy Coleman (Will and Holly), contained disappointingly little insight. The former child stars make few observations about what it was like to work on the show. Mostly they go back and forth needling each other, almost like a real brother and sister. They don't either of them sound like they've grown up a lot over the years. She also makes a potentially defamatory statement about one of the episode's co-stars.

The other commentary, by Brooke Bundy (Sharon) and the actor who played the Zarn's body, is a good deal more informative. They talk some about what it was like to do blue screen effects shots, and what it was like to appear on the show. They have only good to say about the kids they worked with, in stark contrast to the mean things Kathy Coleman has to say about Brooke Bundy. The Zarn's body actor (his voice was by Marvin Miller, a longtime radio actor) had trouble walking because he had to be so heavily lit up while being taped that he pretty much couldn't see where he was going. He also observed that the foam used to build many of the sets on the show was highly flammable. He was nearly burned up while working on another Krofft show when the sets caught fire.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Mon Jul 10, 2017 1:42 pm 
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Fair Trade
Rick is caught by a Sleestack trap, leaving Will and Holly to find a way to get him out.

Ah, the Sleestack! They are the degenerate descendants of the original dominant race of the Land of the Lost, which they call Altrusia. They're bug-eyed lizard people who avoid the sunlight, hatch from eggs, and pen up living creatures with their eggs so that their hatchlings will have something to eat. They also communicate with hissing sounds, although at least some of them can speak English (Or maybe it's a telepathic translation thing?). And they have a library that consists of eerily glowing skulls of their ancestors, with which they can sometimes hold conversations. They either have no females, keep their females well out of sight, or simply lack sufficient sexual dimorphism for anybody who's not a Sleestack to be able to tell the difference.

All and all, the Sleestack are some awfully creepy folks. They're not strictly speaking portrayed as evil--at least they don't seem to want to conquer or destroy others. But they're not good neighbors, and they're dangerous to mess with. Best given a wide berth. Then again, it's not like Rick wanted to fall into their pig trap. I must have missed most of the episodes with the Sleestack when I was a kid. They would have freaked me out if I'd seen very much of them.


One of Our Pylons is Missing
While surveying the Land of the Lost's Pylon network, the gang encounters a treacherous hole that starts swallowing people.

The "Pylons" are mysterious structures scattered around the Land at intervals. Each contains a stone table studded with colorful gems. They seem to be control centers for the powerful, ancient machinery that regulates the Land's environment. It is NEVER a good idea to go into a Pylon and start messing with the controls.

Having made a hole-in-the-ground set for the previous episode, the producers apparently decided that they needed to get some more use out of it. This time the hole swallows Holly, Rick, their little hairy friend Cha-Ka, and an unfortunate coelophysis dinosaur named Spot. Instead of landing in a cave, they find themselves floating through a void, orbiting a vast, glowing...something that Rick hypothesizes might be the Land's power source. You've just got to see how he manages to get himself, Holly, and Cha-Ka (Poor Spot is not so lucky) out! One hopes for their sake that the mysterious, glowing power source was not radioactive....

The special effects are not hugely convincing. Those early video blue-screen effects seldom were. Still, one has to be impressed at what an ambitious effects sequence this was for a low-budget Saturday morning series. They weren't afraid to tackle big science fiction concepts. You can't fault the producers' and writers' ambition.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2017 10:50 am 
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The Test
Cha-Ka must undergo a Pakuni rite of passage--by stealing the egg of an Allosaur.

One can't blame Will for describing Cha-Ka's assignment as tantamount to suicide. He has to sneak into the ruined city where "Alice" the Allosaur nests and roll an egg that's bigger then he is out into the jungle and back to wherever it is that he calls home. He certainly wouldn't have made it without Will and Holly's help. The fact that the egg hatches in the midst of the attempted heist only complicates things. At least "Junior" is a cute, harmless sort of dinosaur. Fortunately bringing home an egg SHELL is considered sufficient to pass the test. In fact, one wonders whether that might not have been the original assignment, and Cha-Ka either misunderstood or got too ambitious.

One has to feel for Alice. Here she is, minding her own business, waiting for her precious egg--one that, judging from its size, must have been awfully painful to lay--to hatch, and these annoying little bipeds keep trying to make off with it. You can almost hear her sigh with exasperation when she bends low and starts rolling the egg back to the nest after the first theft attempt.

This episode has a DVD commentary with Phillip Paley, who played Cha-Ka. A pre-teen at the time, his voice had not yet changed. He has quite a nice grown-up voice. According to Paley, he and his fellow Pakuni spent about an hour and a half in make-up each morning. That gave them time to rehearse their Pakuni dialog. He also says that he got to take home the spear prop that Cha-Ka is seen handling in the episode, but unfortunately does not still have it. He gives the impression that working on "Land of the Lost" as a furry hominid wasn't a bad experience, all things considered.

That language the Pakuni speak is an actual invented language, prepared by a linguist tasked with making it sound like a credible lingo. It had a vocabulary of a couple hundred words, and some firm grammatical rules. While scenes of the Marshall family holding occasional palavers with their Pakuni friends can get a bit tedious, they do add verisimilitude. They even show members of both ethnicities occasionally adopting words from each other's language, and showing evidence of understanding more than they actually speak.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2017 11:08 am 
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Some thoughts on "Land of the Lost's" dinosaurs.

We see several species--flying pterasaurs, juvenile and grown Brontosaurs, a Triceratops, a Coelophysis, a T. Rex, and juvenile and grown Allosaurs. We never see a daddy Brontosaur or Allosaur. Presumably there are more adult examples out there somewhere. Either that, or they reproduce through "Jurassic Park"-style parthenogenesis.

We have to assume that there are a lot of dinosaurs in the jungle, to have enough game to support two gigantic apex predators. In real life, Allosaurus never co-existed with T. Rex. Allosaurus preceded by T. Rex by close to as many million years as T. Rex preceded us. Seeing the two portrayed together so anachronistically must drive serious dinosaur fans crazy. But the show's creators have a good excuse. The Land of the Lost isn't supposed to be our planet's past--it's an alternate world that keeps sucking up random samples of creatures from different ages.

When I was a teenager I got a nicely-illustrated book on special effects--which I still have at home--published in the early 1980s. It was part of a series about movies produced by "Starlog" magazine (Anybody else remember them?). The chapter on stop-motion creations includes some production stills from "Land of the Lost." One of them shows how they lassoed Dopey in the "Tar Pit" episode. They made a stiff "lasso" out of a length of thin wire. For each frame they shot, the animator had to meticulously re-bend the wire AND measure it with gauges to make sure it was positioned precisely so.

Other stills show the creation of Junior Allosaurus. This was my first-ever glimpse of the elaborately joined skeletal armatures on which stop-motion models are based. A tape measure in the photo shows that Junior was about six inches long. The captions noted that the models on "Land of the Lost" were far less detailed and elaborate than those used for some features. I've since seen a documentary on the making of the original "King Kong" that gives an idea of just how elaborate they could get. Even so, it's clear that a LOT of work went into making even these relatively simple made-for-TV dinosaurs. There's just something unique about hand-crafted stop-motion effects.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2017 12:49 pm 
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I loved Land of the Lost as a kid. I had a ritual where I would hide under the kitchen table as Grumpy roared out the opening credits.

A couple years ago I attended a Land of the Lost panel at LosCon, Los Angeles Oldest Science Fiction Festival™. Will and Holly were there. The only thing I remember from the panel was Will used the apparently verboten expression, "Sci-fi" and was loudly corrected from the audience, and the whole room briefly degenerated into arguing like before order was restored, because the comparatively ancient sci-fi demographic who attend LosCon cares about that sort of thing.

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 Post subject: Land of the Lost--Original Series
PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2017 5:22 pm 
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Dave Miller wrote:
Will used the apparently verboten expression, "Sci-fi" and was loudly corrected from the audience, and the whole room briefly degenerated into arguing like before order was restored

Oh good God... :facepalm: :roll:


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