<\/p>\n
{mosimage}Paramount
\nrecently released the box set DVD’s which I clutch to my chest every night when
\nI go to sleep.<\/p>\n
Planet of the Apes? Ain’t that the Marky Mark movie? Listen, monkeypants, it’s What a cool idea. Let’s get Charlton Heston (because he’s in his sci-fi phase) The 1968 Planet of the Apes<\/strong> is a classic. I don’t want to hear anyone Then, of course, there was the TV show. Fourteen episodes, a little over half a Roddy McDowell plays two-bit ape politician Galen (Cornelius and Zera are, \n <\/p>\n {mosimage}Harper and Naughton crash on Earth circa 3085 AD. By some miracle, their ship Harper, the commanding officer, decides to retrieve the magneto mini super Right, the apes are the top of the food chain and the masters of the world…and In a rare television moment, the writers show solidarity with the viewing \n {mosimage}Like in the novel, but unlike in the original films, the humans live under the Top off the story arc with the actual discovery of a computer and the hint of Sounds great, eh? Too bad, the show was cancelled shortly after the discovery Honestly, though, you just can’t throw this series in the toilet. The makeup is The look and sound of the disks is lovingly cleaned up, so you don’t have to \n {mosimage}Here’s your episode list:<\/p>\n Escape From Tomorrow<\/em>: Earth: 3085! Dude!<\/p>\n The Gladiators<\/em>: You’re captured by a child-loving prefect who likes to The Trap<\/em>: Buried alive in the San The Good Seeds<\/em>: Don’t worry, peasants won’t get in trouble for harboring The Legacy<\/em>: The discovery of the first vault! It’s a rockin’ episode. I Tomorrow’s Tide:<\/em> Behold, the shark is the god of the sea. Behold, god The Surgeon<\/em>: Oh, Ron Harper got shot. Bummer!<\/p>\n The Deception<\/em>: Humans are bad! Let’s form a secret society and lynch The Horse Race<\/em>: Urko takes a holiday… Woops, those crazy clowns from the The Interrogation<\/em>: Gotcha! I’ve been studying these Human books on how The Tyrant<\/em>: Nobody likes the grain tax! Down with the grain tax! Ah, The Cure<\/em>: The famous “invisible mosquitoes” episode. Unintentional comic The Liberator<\/em>: Never shown on TV! The lost episode! It’s like a weird Up Above The World So High<\/em>: The final episode pits the discovery of Nacho’s Drunken New Year’s Rating: Dear God! Did I just watch 14 hours of SHOOT THEM!!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,352],"tags":[403,353],"class_list":["post-2552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2881,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions\/2881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\na franchise to beat all the others. Pierre Boulle writing, he was a post-war
\nFrench freakout author who brought us Bridge on the River Kwai<\/strong>, among
\nother blockbuster novels. The original story is about a spaceman who crashes on
\nthe Planet of the Apes, gets some pussy, then returns to Earth with pussy in
\ntow…only to discover that, in his absence, hundreds of years have passed and
\nthe Earth has been taken over by…da-da-dum! Apes! End of book, good night,
\nplease do not visit the 1950’s again.<\/p>\n
\nand make a movie about it. A movie that isn’t at all like the book because,
\nhonestly, who cares about the Frogs? Let’s make it a parable about nuclear war
\nand the social divisions present in the 60’s. Let’s make it an anti Vietnam movie!
\nRock on.<\/p>\n
\nsay any differently. Out of that glorious creature of sci-fi came a rasher of
\nsequels – Beneath, Escape From, Conquest of and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. There was
\na cartoon series in the mid-70’s that ran for one year, put together by the man
\nwho created the original Johnny Quest. There were a series of pulpy novels to
\nhelp pass the time between 42nd
\nStreet station and…the nuclear apocalypse!<\/p>\n
\nseason, running in the year of my birth – violin please — 1974. That places it
\nright after the fifth and final ape film. The TV series, however, is set
\nroughly a decade after Beneath the Planet of the Apes<\/strong> (the second film).
\nThat’s odd since everybody dies and the entire Earth is destroyed at the end of
\nthat movie. Equally odd is that Dr. Zaius and Urko talk about the events in the
\nfirst two movies, but our stranded astronauts don’t know about Charlton Heston
\nand James Franciscus, even though their ship launched only a few years after
\nHeston’s ship and the rescue mission was launched. Oh, and… Wait! Nevermind!
\nI’m sure it all makes sense in the end! Tra-la-la!<\/p>\n
\nmysteriously, absent), Ron Harper and James Naughton play the two unfortunate
\nastronauts (you’ve seen them in bit parts all over the place). Booth Colman and
\nStar Trek’s Mark Lenard take on the roles of Dr. Zaius and the militant Urko
\nfrom the first two films.<\/p>\n
\nsurvives a crash landing in the San Francisco Bay Area and they’re none the
\nworse for wear. In the franchise’s greatest “Oh my God, this is home!” moment
\nHarper and Naughton are rescued by a lunatic forest dweller and, while idly
\npaging through his “picture books” find a photo of New York – 2150. Oh, dude!
\nDude, what’s this, man?! Dude!<\/p>\n
\nduper disk from their spaceship which recorded the entire flight. He figures
\nthat if he can find a computer and replay the tape, they’ll be able to sort out
\nhow to get back to their own time (that’s an oh so futuristic 1980).<\/p>\n
\nthey live in clay huts and fire single shot rifles. So, a computer? Even the
\ninsane forest dweller goes “Hmmm…”<\/p>\n
\naudience by having all the main characters admit that the computer quest is
\ninsane. But, explains Harper, we gotta do something. I mean, apes, man. Come
\non. Let’s at least head west and look for guns and women. The computer quest
\ndoes become the driving force behind the series…and an excellent excuse to go
\nmucking about in the blasted ruins of Oakland
\nand other cities.<\/p>\n
\napes as serfs, only dimly aware of their potential in an ape world modeled
\nroughly after the Roman Empire. The old rules apply – Mankind destroyed the
\nworld and they’ll destroy us as well if we give them an inch. Education,
\nhistory, culture and medicine are denied. Dr. Zaius knows the drill and he damn
\nwell isn’t going to have another Charlton Heston running loose, so he sends
\nUrko out to pursue our heroes. This gives us the chance to get deeply into the
\nUrko character over the 14 episode run – motivations, fears, desires. Even
\nbetter than that, we get a healthy scoop of how the ape society and military
\nfunction. The movies lead us to believe there’s a whole world of apes, but we
\nonly ever see Ape
\nCity and, apparently,
\nthey aren’t allowed to be seen in groups of more than four. In the TV series,
\nit really is a world of Apes. No way out, friends… So Harper’s kooky plan to
\nfind a computer starts to sound like a really good option, what with the ape
\nspecial forces breathing down your neck and nowhere to run.<\/p>\n
\nsurviving technologically evolved humans (we met them in Beneath the Planet
\nof the Apes<\/strong>) and you’re aces when it comes to storylines. Harper finds his
\ncomputer only to have it destroyed by Zaius and Urko at the last minute… But
\nour heroes get a big clue – the techie humans, whether or not they still
\nsurvive, left a repository of all of Mankind’s knowledge and power in eight
\ncomputer systems spread throughout the United States. Urko and Zaius blew up
\none…seven more to go. And Dr. Zaius knows it, too. The race is on and the
\nmission changes – find the other vaults before Zaius does and bring the
\nknowledge of the past to the humans living under the yoke of ape tyranny.<\/p>\n
\nof the first vault. Why was it cancelled? Because instead of focusing on the
\nstoryline I’ve just outlined, most of the episodes involved running through the
\nwoods, getting in trouble, hiding from Urko and helping a family of downtrodden
\nhumans Kung Fu\/Incredible Hulk style. For every one episode that advanced the
\nmain plot, we got four episodes of bungling, poorly written mayhem. Oh, no! Ron
\nHarper took a bullet! We have to convince Roddy McDowell’s former love interest
\nand a human woman branded as a witch to perform a – gasp! – blood transfusion.
\nImpossible! No, it’s not! Yes, it is! No, it’s not! It’s never been done! Yes,
\nit has! (break for commercial) No, it hasn’t! Yes, it has!<\/p>\n
\namazing (for 1974) and the undeveloped main storyline is so brilliant it makes
\nmy socks roll up and down.\u00a0 High production values, campy sci-fi,
\nstupid humans, a wonderful title sequence and Ape Law Number 387: The wily
\nhumans from the future will escape from every prison you put them in. You really
\ncan’t go wrong. If you love the films, if you love cheap sci-fi, then this
\nseries is ahead of it’s time and about 500 miles ahead of Tim Burton’s shameful
\nremake of the original film.<\/p>\n
\nput up with that weird 70’s television sound and feel. There are no extras,
\nwhich is annoying…but McDowell is dead and I can’t imagine Harper and Naughton
\nwant to own up to this moment in their careers. For a series like this, just
\ngetting it in a box set is thrilling enough…no need for some old fool to try
\nand explain what the hell they were thinking when they made some of the lamest
\njourneyman episodes on TV.<\/p>\n
\nsee blood, do you fight or do you convince everyone that fighting is bad?<\/p>\n
\nFrancisco subway with your arch-nemesis? No problem,
\nwe can become friends by working together! Yes, yes I see… SHOOT THEM!!<\/p>\n
\nfugitives. We just need to stay a few days… You don’t need to see our passes.
\nThese are not the droids you are looking for.<\/p>\n
\nam speaking from the past…you can find guns, grenades, supplies and nuclear
\nweapons in the room to your left. Good luck!<\/p>\n
\nlikes to eat human slaves!<\/p>\n
\nthem! But love transcends all bounds! Can an ape love a human? No, daughter,
\nyou must not say such things…<\/p>\n
\nfuture are staying at the same hotel!<\/p>\n
\nto rape young children and hurt everyone you love. Let’s see what I can do.<\/p>\n
\nyes, I see…very good, very good… SHOOT THEM!!<\/p>\n
\nbrilliance that’ll make your drunken marijuana evening 100 times better.<\/p>\n
\nStargate episode.<\/p>\n
\nflight against an evil ape scientist and ends the series with our heroes adrift
\nin the San Francisco Bay, joking about the water.<\/p>\n
\n70’s sci-fi and really get off on it? I’ll never know the touch of woman again!
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n