Battle for the
\nPlanet of the Apes<\/span><\/a>,<\/span><\/em> where the newly formed civilization
\nwonders about the future and the statue of Roddy McDowell cries.\u00a0 Yeah, that’s the way to end a franchise.\u00a0 Jesus…
\nThe populace in the domes is, overall, passive.\u00a0 They’re kept in line by the computer, which
\ngives them everything they could possibly desire, as well as the fully licensed
\nto kill squad of Sandmen.\u00a0 A Sandman’s
\nusual task is to track down runners – those who don’t want to give up their
\nlives, doubt the computer, or are just freaking out.<\/p>\nIt’s Logan’s
\nbad luck that he kills a runner who was part of a secret society opposed to the
\ncomputer.\u00a0 Taking an Ankh necklace from
\nthe runner, he tosses it in evidence control and gets called to the magical
\ncomputer chair where the supercomputer gives him a mission – find the place
\ncalled Sanctuary and track down over a thousand runners who have gone
\nmissing.\u00a0 Oh, and we have to age you four
\nyears.\u00a0 Sorry.<\/p>\n
Logan becomes a runner, infiltrating the secret society,
\nfalling in love with Jenny Agutter, pursued by his old best friend and, after a
\nrace through abandoned sections of the city, escaping to the pristine,
\nunpopulated outside world.\u00a0 There, he
\nmeets Peter Ustinov in the ruins of Washington,
\nD.C.<\/p>\n
It’s always a thrill for a DC native to see those
\nruins.\u00a0 The city has reverted to a swamp,
\nthe rowhouses overgrown and an ivy-covered Lincoln looks out at the reeds and muck.\u00a0 It’s that sort of attention to historical
\ndetail that makes Logan’s Run<\/em> move
\nfrom a bad movie to an okay movie with extraordinarily bad special effects and
\ngiant plot holes and the jaw-grinding presence of Michael York.<\/p>\nIn a rushed ending, Logan
\ngoes back, destroys the city and frees the populace.\u00a0 That’s all done in about 10 minutes and,
\nmainly, is achieved by telling the supercomputer the truth.\u00a0 Usually you have to lie to destroy these
\nfuturistic computers, but Logan
\nisn’t that clever.\u00a0 He tells it a few
\nfacts about the outside (which, since the computer is drawing resources from
\nthe outside, it should know) and it freaks out by dramatically blowing up the
\ncity.<\/p>\n
You know, when you’re making a computer designed to control
\nall of humanity, you’d think you’d set it up to deal with people a little
\nbetter.<\/p>\n
Too bad the movie took such a heavy-handed and
\noverly-simplified attitude to the finale.
\nIt’s what ruined the franchise.
\nSee what Planet of the Apes did?
\nThey all but included the prologue to the next movie there at the
\nend.\u00a0 If Logan’s Run<\/em> had followed the books, they could have stretched it
\nout.<\/p>\nThe books feature the same sort of idea:\u00a0 Logan
\nis assigned by the computer to find and destroy Sanctuary, falls in love along
\nthe way, and turns rogue.\u00a0 He manages to
\nbreak some people out and forms a little tribe of goofballs, then sets out to
\ndestroy the computer.\u00a0 What’s the
\nproblem?\u00a0 He soon learns that his city is
\none of thousands spread across the globe and all controlled by a
\nmega-super-duper-computer built under the Crazy
\nHorse Monument
\nin South Dakota.\u00a0 This computer not only knows how to deal with
\npeople, it’s also insane.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Logan loses but discovers
\nthat, after so many hundreds of years, the computer is starting to lose control
\nof certain sections.\u00a0 He decides to
\nattack it from the blind spots – city by city.
\nBut then the books spin off to weird stories of exploring the outside,
\ndealing with mutated people who had been living on a space ark, and so on. \u00a0Also, the books had you die at 18 instead of
\n30, so you get the whole growing up together thing.<\/p>\n
One nod the movie did make was the decay within in the
\ncities.\u00a0 Places where the computer had
\nlost control.\u00a0 For the urban explorer in
\nyou, Logan’s Run<\/em> has fine moments of
\ncrawling around sets that are supposed to be old breeding grounds and power
\nrooms that the city has abandoned – as well as everyone’s favorite meat processing
\nplant run by the lunatic robot called Box.
\n“Fish!\u00a0 Plankton!\u00a0 Proteins from the sea!”<\/p>\nThe TV series, then, started off on a good foot.\u00a0 It was brutally destroyed by bad writers and
\nweird network rules against violence.
\nIt’s tough to avoid violence when you’re a heavily armed refugee pursued
\nby police forces ordered to kill you and you’re in a world populated by tribal
\npost-apocalypse monsters and blood-thirsty robots.<\/p>\n
Somehow, the series does avoid killing people on screen.\u00a0 This is, as you can tell shortly into the
\nfirst episode, because it was all written by a five year old.<\/p>\n
However, the series did the right thing.\u00a0 It borrowed from the movie and from the books
\nand then created its own little mythos.
\nThis time, Logan
\nis given the mission, falls in love, runs through the abandoned parts of the
\ncity, defeats Box, steals a fancy sci-fi truck and takes off.<\/p>\n
Francis 7, Logan’s
\nold buddy, is then called in by the computer and given the low-down.\u00a0 Logan went
\nrogue during a mission, so now it’s up to Francis to destroy Sanctuary, destroy
\nthe runners, and kill Logan.\u00a0 He can pick five other Sandmen and they’re
\nall going outside, but no one can learn of outside, but they will, so it’s, and
\nthe…with the…You know, just kill him.<\/p>\n
Now, here’s where the series gets nice.\u00a0 Francis is told to walk through a door beside
\nthe big computer screen.\u00a0 He does, and
\nhe’s in Oz.\u00a0 The men behind the curtain –
\na council of elders who have been secretly controlling both the computer and
\nthe city.\u00a0 Now Francis knows the truth
\nand, instead of freaking out and going rogue, he accepts everything these old
\nmen say and rides out to his death.
\nOverall, he’s pretty calm for someone who’s never seen anyone over 30
\nand has dedicated his professional life to killing people when they hit
\n30.\u00a0 (Not to mention learning that there’s
\nan outside and that everything in the city is a sham run by the Freemasons.)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the outside world is populated by folks who
\ndidn’t make it into the city back during the “catastrophe.”\u00a0 Unlike the movie (but like in the books) the
\nunexplained “catastrophe” came at a time far in our own future.\u00a0 So there are plenty of little toys and hidden
\nbases and forgotten vaults with nifty sci-fi crap in them.\u00a0 Logan and Jessica’s first adventure is at a
\nrobot vacation land where, after hundreds of years, the robots have gone
\ncrazy.\u00a0 Destroying it, they’re joined by
\nthe lovable android REM, who sort of fills the role of Peter Ustinov.\u00a0 Then it’s off – Logan, Jessica and REM
\npursued by Francis and his squad of Sandmen.
\nThey battle tribal freaks, highly advanced brains with eyestalks (the
\nsci-fi staple), and even meet angry time travelers and confused people from the
\n1970’s who had been cryogenically preserved.
\nIt’s classic journeyman sci-fi.
\nFrancis is always one step behind, every episode ends with a laugh, and
\nyou know that every problem has an easy solution in the last 15 minutes.\u00a0 (Dear Francis:\u00a0 Just
\nshoot them!<\/em>)<\/p>\nOnce every couple of episodes, Francis catches up and either
\nhe and Logan must join forces to survive, or some clever trick leaves Francis
\nstumbling over his own bootlaces and Logan,
\nlaughing, runs away.<\/p>\n
The series is bone-deep painful at every turn.\u00a0 The saving grace is the post-apocalyptic
\njourneyman aspect combined with extensive exploration of urban ruins.\u00a0 You kind of have to watch it.\u00a0 It’s the ultimate “what could have been” 70’s
\nsci-fi series.\u00a0 Space: 1999<\/em> started out amazing, then got fucked.\u00a0 Clear.
\nBattlestar Galactica<\/em>, now, has
\nbeen vindicated.\u00a0 Planet of the Apes: The Series<\/em>, was always falsely accused of being
\nbad, I think.\u00a0 I loved it, and I say it
\nsuffered from overexposure.\u00a0 Logan<\/em>‘s Run<\/em> – it was bad from the beginning,
\nand it didn’t have to be.\u00a0 It had the
\npotential to be an Earth-bound Blake’s 7<\/em>.\u00a0 What operated against it was the movie, the
\nnetworks, and the worst team of writers this side of reality.<\/p>\nHowever, the series featured a few points that may be
\nfamiliar.\u00a0 REM is the innocent, loving
\nandroid who seeks to become more human.
\nRing a bell?\u00a0 In the final
\nepisode, all-powerful aliens journey to Earth via a…Stargate.\u00a0 Hmmm. And, hey, I should be kind to the
\nseries.\u00a0 The episode with the
\ncryogenically frozen folks is stand-out sci-fi, all the way through. Penned by
\nHarlan Ellison, it sort of removes Logan and crew from the formula and tells
\nthe tale of a group of people from the past – one of whom is a serial
\nkiller.\u00a0 Who is the killer?\u00a0 They’re all trapped together until the
\nmystery is solved.\u00a0 Ellison always delivers.<\/p>\n
Fortunately (maybe), for the Logan’s Run<\/em> legacy, the series was forgotten almost as soon as it
\nended.\u00a0 The books, of course, have also
\nfaded away.\u00a0 Now it’s just the movie,
\nawaiting some shit-swilling Hollywood
\nremake.\u00a0 Even though there is no way to
\nsuspend noticing the piss-poor special effects and the ridiculous finale, the
\nmovie continues to stick like bad oatmeal.
\nMe?\u00a0 I’d like to have the whole
\nmovie be about exploring the unused parts of the city.\u00a0 That and the ruins of DC have become the only
\nreason that I watch it again and again.
\nOh, and Jenny Agutter.\u00a0 Have I
\nmentioned Jenny Agutter?\u00a0 Jenny Agutter.\u00a0 Get it in you, before the remake magically
\nappears and causes emotional harm.<\/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":[403,353,104],"class_list":["post-2562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562","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=2562"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2780,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions\/2780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}