A Very Bionic Birthday

Space: 1970 wishes The Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors, a very happy birthday today. America's favorite astronaut-turned-cyborg secret agent turns 73 this year.

Coming Attractions: OUTLAND (1981) Theatrical Trailer

And, for those who don't remember the movie very well, here's the theatrical trailer for Peter Hyam's Outland. Featuring a great cast - Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen - and a fine score by Jerry Goldsmith (Star Trek - The Motion Picture, Alien, Logan's Run, etc.), Outland is one of my personal favorites from the latter part of the Space: 1970 era. As noted yesterday, the movie will be receiving an HD Blu-ray release from Warner Home Entertainment in July.

News: OUTLAND (1981) Coming to Blu-ray in July

The 1981 space Western, Outland, directed by Peter Hyams and starring Sean Connery, Peter Boyle and Frances Sternhagen, is coming to Blu-ray disc in July, just in time for my birthday. Considering how crappy the 2007 DVD looked, I'm hoping for a full-fledged, HD remaster. Since Warner Home Video generally does a decent job on their catalog titles, I'm hopeful.

The plot is High Noon on Io, with Connery as a Marshall stationed at a mining colony, who finds himself pitted against both the corruption of the company running the colony, and hired assassins imported to kill him. Even though the story is familiar, I like the production design and miniature effects a great deal, and the cast does a solid, professional job with the material, bringing a lot of humanity and conviction to their stock roles.

You can preorder the Blu-ray (currently priced around $15) at Amazon: Outland [Blu-ray]

THE STARLOST (1973) That Never Was

I frequently embark on Google safaris, looking for cool stuff to post on the site or images to illustrate the posts I write. In a recent search for material relating to the 1973 television series The Starlost (a show that I still possess an inexplicable affection toward), the image above turned up. Now, I was pretty sure that there had been no Starlost TV novelizations, but that image looked friggin' authentic, so I dug deeper into the labyrinthine depths of the interwebs.

I still haven't determined exactly where this faux book cover originated, but it is definitely a hoax. Still, as a graphic designer myself, I have to give the unknown Photoshop artist his props. The fonts, layout and cover copy text are all delightfully true to the publishing styles of the Seventies. The careful "distressing" of the image works really well, too, adding to the illusion that this is a scan of a vintage paperback cover.

And it's because it is so well done that I decided to share it here. I like to think of it as a glimpse into an alternate universe, where The Starlost was a "runaway hit television series," instead of the creative and commercial disappointment that it turned out to be in this reality....

PLANET OF THE APES (1974) TV Guide Ad

When I was 9 years-old, I looked forward to nothing on television as much as I looked forward to the weekly, all-new, adventures on the Planet Of The Apes. (Well, maybe Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings...) I was a huge fan of fugitive chimpanzee Galen (Roddy McDowell), and 20th century astronauts Virdon (Ron Harper) and Burke (James Naughton). I doubt that my parents and my younger sister were quite as enthused when I commandeered the television set on September 13, 1974 for the premiere episode...

David Shleinkofer BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Gallery

The Young Warriors - and yes, that should be Starbuck instead of Apollo

As I wrote about here a few months ago, I've been filling in the holes in my collection of Berkley Books' Battlestar Galactica paperback novels, which were published until 1989. Between 1980 and '84, the primary cover artist for those paperbacks was David Shleinkofer. Here's a gallery of most of those cover paintings, sans obscuring logos and cover copy. Enjoy.

The Tombs Of Kobol

The Living Legend

The Long Patrol

Greetings From Earth

Experiment In Terra

Galactica Discovers Earth

INSIDE STAR TREK (1976)

Gene Roddenberry: "I think one fan comment we got quite often during the third year was; 'How come Captain Kirk gets a new girl every week?'"

William Shatner:  "Well, he uses up the old one!"  

This is another merchandising/audio oddity that demonstrates just how much of a phenomenon Star Trek reruns had become, almost ten years after it originally aired on network television. In '76, Trek creator Gene Roddenberry recorded an all-talk, long-playing album about the creation of the television series and its impact on both his life and on popular culture. It included interviews with William Shatner, DeForest Kelly and science fiction author Isaac Asimov, a discussion of the character of Spock, with input from Mark Lenard, in-character as Sarek, and was spiced-up with plenty of authentic sound effects from the show. It also featured one of the best recordings/arrangements of the Trek theme I've ever heard.

"I lost the argument. Questor did not get the girl. But I remember driving home that night, I was kind of happy. I was saying 'You know, in your whole writing career how many times will you get an opportunity to create a whole new area of intolerance?'"

Part of the album was made up of a recording of Roddenberry talking before a live audience. If I recall correctly, it may have been one of the college lectures that he was doing at the time. Aside from Star Trek, he also spoke about his then-recent efforts to launch a new sci-fi pilot, The Questor Tapes.

It's been many years since I've spun this record. I still have it buried somewhere with my other old LPs. I've read that it was released on CD in the late 90s with some additional tracks. I'll have to keep an eye out for that edition.