David Warner: 1941 to 2022

Prolific character actor David Warner passed away on July 24th, just five days shy of his 81st birthday.  I think that my fellow blogger A Middle Aged Geek summed up Warner’s appeal on his own retrospective:

“The actor’s range was his shield from typecasting, and he could play deeply sympathetic characters just as he could play the very embodiment of evil–all with complete believability.”

Warner was born in Manchester, England on 29 July, 1941. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and in 1962 joined the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company. Warner’s stage work brought him acclaim, but due to a case of stage fright in the early 1970s he made the decision to shift his career to movies & television, where he would work regularly for the next four and a half decades.

David Warner in Nightwing (1979)

Warner is one of the first actors who I became aware of, as he was regularly appearing in movies that I saw in the theater and on television when I was a kid in the early 1980s.

Acting opposite Malcolm McDowell as novelist H.G. Wells, Warner played John Stevenson aka Jack the Ripper in Time After Time (1979) directed by Nicholas Meyer. His identity as the infamous serial killer uncovered in Victorian England, Stevenson flees to then-modern day San Francisco via Wells’ time machine, with the author pursuing him in the present in an effort to finally bring the Ripper’s killing spree to an end.

Warner played the physical embodiment of Evil in Terry Gilliam’s fantasy adventure Time Bandits (1981). A year later he appeared in the triple role of Ed Dillinger / Sark / the voice of the Master Control Program in the groundbreaking sci-fi virtual reality movie Tron.

Also around this time, in the 1979 horror movie Nightwing, Warner was cast in the somewhat more sympathetic role of scientist Philip Payne, who assists Nick Mancuso as Native American police officer Youngman Duran in fighting a swarm of vampire bats infected with the bubonic plague.

David Warner in Tron (1982)

Having seen Warner in all of these, I was subsequently very pleased whenever he would turn up in a particular movie or television show.

Warner was cast as the human diplomat St. John Talbot in the underwhelming Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and as such he was quite surprised when he was then asked to appear as a different character in Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country (1991) by Nicholas Meyer, who had previously directed him 12 years earlier in Time After Time.

Years later Warner would jokingly suggest that everyone had simply forgotten he was in Star Trek V when they asked him to appear in the next one, and truthfully I barely recall him from it. In contrast, his performance as Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI, who Meyer conceived as a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Mikhail Gorbachev, was incredibly memorable. Warner brought genuine dignity & compassion to the role of Gorkon. As a result, it carried a real impact when the Chancellor was assassinated, and with his dying breath begged Captain Kirk not to let the peace negotiations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire die with him.

David Warner in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered County (1991)

Warner made one last Star Trek appearance a year later when he played sadistic Cardassian interrogator Gul Madred in the two part Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Chain of Command.” Warner made Madred a figure of quiet menace. It was such a powerful, sinister performance, and it was surprising to learn that Warner had only been cast shortly before filming began when another actor dropped out at the last minute. As he explained to The A.V. Club in 2017:

“So I took over with three days notice. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but there was a lot of dialogue in it. And I said, “Look, I’ll do it, but I’ve got three days, and I can’t learn that kind of dialogue in three days.” So they wrote it all up on boards for me to read. So if you ever see it again, you won’t see my eyes moving, but I read every single line that I spoke, because I just couldn’t learn it in time.”

Also around this time Warner appeared in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze as Professor Jordan Perry, the scientist who was indirectly responsible for the Turtles mutating. Now, I was a huge fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books at the time, but even so I’ll readily admit The Secret of the Ooze was quite a silly movie. I feel Warner brought a touch of class to the proceedings. He apparently enjoyed working on it, as he told The A.V. Club:

“It was just great fun being in a movie like that. You know, for kids. I didn’t often do kids pictures… it was just great fun to be on the side of the good guys!”

David Warner voiced Ra’s al Ghul on Batman: The Animated Series (1992 to 1995)

From 1992 to 1995 Warner voiced Batman’s immortal adversary Ra’s al Ghul on Batman: The Animated Series, reprising the role on Superman: The Animated Series in 1999 and Batman Beyond in 2000. Voice director Andrea Romano made some brilliant casting decisions on Batman: The Animated Series, and Warner as Ra’s al Ghul was absolutely one of them. The first time I saw an episode with Ra’s and heard him speak I knew that Warner, with his rich, theatrical voice, was the perfect casting. To this day whenever I read a comic book in which Ra’s al Ghul appears I “hear” Warner’s voice in my head whenever I read the character’s dialogue.

Another solid performance by Warner was archeologist Aldous Gajic on the Babylon 5 episode “Grail” (1994). Gajic comes to the B5 space station in search of the Holy Grail, which he believes to be alien in origin.

In his later years Warner became associated with the British science fiction series Doctor Who. He acted in several of the Big Finish audio plays, including two, “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Masters of War,” where he played an alternate-reality incarnation of the Third Doctor who, instead of being exiled to Earth in 1970, arrives in 1997, where in his absence events have taken a definite turn for the worse. Warner also voiced the villainous Lord Azlok on the Doctor Who animated serial “Dreamland” in 2009.

Warner at last had the opportunity to appear in a live action episode of Doctor Who in 2013, guest starring in “Cold War” as the lovably eccentric, pop music obsessed Soviet scientist Professor Grisenko. “Cold War” was definitely one of the best episodes from Matt Smith’s tenure as the Doctor, and I feel that’s at least partially due to Warner’s presence. Grisenko and Clara had some good scenes together, with Warner and Jenna Coleman playing off each other very well.

David Warner in Doctor Who “Cold War” (2013)

All of this is only just a small portion of Warner’s career. Following has passing earlier this week, his career was covered in a number of retrospectives, and on several occasions while reading them my reaction was literally “Oh, I forgot he was in that one!” The IMDB lists 228 acting credits for him.

Warner leaves behind an impressive body of work. He will definitely be missed by his many fans.

Nehemiah Persoff: 1919 to 2022

On April 5th prolific character actor Nehemiah Persoff passed away at the age of 102. Given his lengthy career and his long life, I wanted to share a few highlights about the man and his work.

Persoff, who was Jewish, was born on August 2, 1919 in Jerusalem, in what was then known as the British Mandate of Palestine. When he was 10 years old Persoff immigrated to the United States with the rest of his family.

Persoff initially trained as an electrician at the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York City, from which he graduated in 1937. However he was possessed of a love of acting, and when drafted into the United States Army during World War II he was part of an acting company that entertained soldiers overseas.  In 1947 Persoff was accepted into the Actors Studio in Manhattan, and a year later he began his professional career.

Nehemiah Persoff in The Twilight Zone episode “Judgment Night” (1959)

As with many foreign-born actors in the American movie and television industry in the mid 20th Century, Persoff was cast as a wide variety of ethnicities & nationalities, and frequently portrayed villainous roles.  Most notably, between 1959 and 1962 Persoff guest starred in six episodes of the Prohibition era crime drama The Untouchables, three of those featuring him as Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, financial advisor and bagman to Chicago mob boss Al Capone.

Another of Persoff’s memorable television appearances was The Twilight Zone episode “Judgment Night” written by Rod Serling and broadcast in December 1959. He played Carl Lanser, a ruthless Nazi U-boat captain who is now doomed to spend all of eternity trapped on the British cargo liner he ordered destroyed in 1942.

Among the other genre roles Persoff was cast in were brilliant South American scientist Professor Moreno in the Wonder Woman episode “Formula 407” (1977), the supreme leader of the totalitarian Eastern Alliance in the Battlestar Galactica episode “Experiment in Terra” (1979) and Palor Toff, a very odd-looking alien merchant & collector of rare items in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Most Toys” (1990).

Nehemiah Persoff in the Wonder Woman episode “Formula 407” (1977)

As he grew older, Persoff was afforded more opportunities to portray sympathetic roles, and was often cast as characters who shared his own real-life Jewish heritage, something that was of great personal importance to him. He played a Jewish refugee fleeing from Nazi oppression in the 1976 historical drama Voyage of the Damned and portrayed Rebbe Mendel, the father to Barbara Streisand’s character in the 1983 musical Yentl. Persoff later gave voice to another Jewish patriarch, Papa Mousekewitz, in the 1986 animated movie An American Tail and its three sequels.

Persoff’s acting career lasted thru 1999. After suffering from a stroke he retired, but he then took up watercolor painting, on which he spent the next two decades. He also wrote an autobiography, The Many Faces of Nehemiah, which was published in 2021.

Persoff met his future wife Thia during a visit to Israel in 1951. They married later that year and remained together until her own passing in 2021.

Interviewed in 2008 by James Rosin for Films of the Golden Age, Persoff reflected on his lengthy acting career and his continued creative endeavors as a painter:

“It was a wonderful sixty years, but at this time in my life, I love solving problems on the canvas; trying to find the beauty and essence of a subject. It’s a fascinating, challenging, yet calming and most fulfilling process, finding colors that like each other, not only the basic colors, but the infiinite variations, starting with a fresh canvas and suddenly seeing it come alive. That gives one a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. I feel very fortunate in being able to continue my creative life; but this time without the tension, frustration and conflicts of an acting career.”

Peter Bowles: 1936 to 2022

British actor Peter Bowles passed away today at the age of 85. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Bowles had a career that spanned from 1956 to 2019, during which he appeared in a diverse selection of television shows, movies, and theatrical productions.

Danger Man “Fish on the Hook” (1964)

Depending upon your own particular interests, you may recall Bowles from one thing or another. To the general public in Britain he is probably best-known for his starring roles in the sitcoms To The Manor Born on BBC1 from 1979 to 1981 and Only When I Laugh on ITV from 1979 to 1982. Offhand I don’t recall having ever watched either of those shows. However I was very familiar with Bowles from his numerous appearances in British genre television over the years.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Bowles guest starred on such shows as Danger Man, The Saint, The Prisoner, Department S, The Avengers, The Protectors and Special Branch, often playing villains. In 1975 Bowles appeared in “The Fourth Horseman,” the first episode of the post-apocalyptic drama Survivors created by Terry Nation. Bowles played David Grant, the husband of lead character Abby Grant, portrayed by Carolyn Seymour; by episode’s end David, along with 99% of the human race, had been wiped out by a virulent pandemic, setting the stage for the rest of series.

Space 1999 “End of Eternity” (1975)

Another of Bowles notable genre roles was in the Space 1999 episode “End of Eternity,” written by Johnny Byrne and directed by Ray Austin, broadcast in November 1975. Space 1999 was an ambitious sci-fi / space opera which often transcended its low budget and primitive special effects via an effective combination of quality writing & acting, resulting in a number of memorably disturbing episodes. “End of Eternity” is definitely among those. Bowles played Baylor, an immortal alien who the actor subsequently described as “the most evil man in the universe.” The combination of an absolutely chilling performance by Bowles and effective direction & staging from Austin succeeds in making Baylor a genuinely terrifying presence.

It absolutely speaks to Bowles’ skills as an actor and to his versatility that throughout his career he was able to so very successfully transition back & forth between drama and comedy, between playing the sinister villain and the normal, likable everyman.

Doctor Who writer Bob Baker: 1939 to 2021

Longtime British television & film scriptwriter Bob Baker passed away on November 3rd. He was 82 years old.

Baker, often paired up with creative partner Dave Martin, wrote for a number British television series throughout the 1970s, including the long-running science fiction series Doctor Who.

Baker & Martin’s first contribution to Doctor Who was the four-part serial “The Claws of Axos,” broadcast in 1971. A memorable story featuring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, it saw the shape-shifting vampiric entity Axos attempt to drain the Earth dry of its life energy. Their second contribution to the series was the six-part “The Mutants” broadcast in 1972. Containing strong anti-imperialist and anti-apartheid sentiments, it is one of the Doctor Who’s most overtly political stories.

Baker & Martin co-wrote a total of eight serials for Doctor Who between 1971 and 1979, with Baker working solo on a ninth story, “Nightmare of Eden,” which was broadcast in late 1979.

Among Baker & Martin’s contributions to the Doctor Who universe, they created the beloved robot dog K-9, who was introduced in their 1977 serial “The Invisible Enemy” during Tom Baker’s tenure as the Doctor. At the end of the story K-9 joined the Doctor on his travels, and the mechanical dog was a regular presence in the TARDIS for the next several seasons.

Although K-9 was written out of Doctor Who in 1981, the mechanical mutt has periodically returned over the years, and was paired up with fan-favorite companion Sarah Jane Smith, played by actress Elisabeth Sladen. Baker himself contributed to the K-9 spin-off series that ran for 26 episodes between October 2009 and November 2010 on Network Ten in Australia and on Channel 5 in the UK.

Among the other television series Baker contributed to was the police procedural Z-Cars (1974), the police action series Target (1977-8), the crime drama Bergerac (1981, 1983), and the children’s dark fantasy series King of the Castle (1977) and Into the Labyrinth (1981-2).

Beginning in 1993 Baker became associated with another iconic British dog. Created by Nick Park, the stop motion animation series Wallace & Gromit features the absent-minded inventor Wallace and his silent yet intelligent anthropomorphic beagle Gromit. Baker began co-writing the Wallace & Gromit series with the second animated short The Wrong Trousers in 1993. This was followed by A Close Shave in 1995, the feature-length animated film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005, and the short A Matter of Loaf and Death in 2008. Baker also worked on the six episode television series Wallace and Gromit’s World of Invention broadcast on BBC One in November 2010.

Notably, A Matter of Loaf and Death saw Baker, in a bit of dark humor, write in his own death via the demise of “Baker Bob,” one of the victims of a serial killer who is murdering British bakers.

Baker wrote an autobiography entitled K-9 Stole My Trousers! which was published in 2013. He co-wrote with Paul M. Tam the 2015 anthology The Essential Book of K-9. Another short story collection, K-9: Megabytes, was released in 2020.

Baker’s contributions to Doctor Who and Wallace & Gromit made him a beloved figure of genre fandom. He will certainly be missed.

Stuart Damon: 1937 to 2021

Actor Stuart Damon passed away on June 29th at the age of 84. I was surprised that not much mention had been made of his death as he was well-known by both fans of British telefantasy and American soap operas. So I thought it worth putting together a short remembrance.

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Stuart Damon was born in Brooklyn NY on February 5, 1937. He attended Brandeis University, from which he graduated in 1958. Damon’s career began in 1962 as a theater actor on Broadway, and this led to him being cast in the 1965 television production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella alongside Lesley Ann Warren. Broadcast on CBS on February 22, 1965, Cinderella was for several decades the highest-rated non-sports special to air on that network, and it provided Damon with a huge career boost.

Damon moved to Britain later that year, and over the next decade he appeared in a number of television and theater productions in the UK. Most notably, Damon co-starred with Alexandra Bastedo and William Gaunt on the spy-fi series The Champions that aired for 30 episodes on ITV between September 1968 and April 1969.

In the pilot episode of The Champions secret agents Craig Stirling (Damon), Sharon Macready (Bastedo) and Richard Barrett (Gaunt) infiltrate a bioweapons laboratory in Communist China. Fleeing by airplane, they crash in the Himalayas, and nearly die, but are rescued by an advanced hidden civilization. The super-science that is used to save the three agents also endows them with a variety of paranormal abilities such as enhanced strength, ultra-fast reflexes and ESP. Returning to Geneva, the three agents use these abilities protect the world from a variety of fascist and terrorist menaces, all the while striving to keep those powers hidden from their superiors.

Although it was filmed on a shoestring budget, The Champions was well-written, and the three leads did a good job carrying the fantastical premise. All these years later it is still well-regarded.

Interviewed in 2011 about his time on the series, Damon stated:

“My character grew because I grew as an actor. I’ve always taken my work very, very seriously. In all the years I’ve been an actor I’ve never worked one day on anything without being excited to be there and determined to do the best job I could. So I was just always trying to improve and to be creative and as imaginative as possible when playing Craig Stirling. Like anything else, the more time you spend acting the better you get at it.”

During his time in the UK Damon also guest-starred twice on the science fiction series Space 1999. In the November 1975 episode “Matter of Life and Death” Damon brielfly appeared as Eagle pilot Parks. Then, in the two-part story “The Bringers of Wonder” broadcast in April 1977 Damon plays Guido Verdeschi, the brother of Moonbase Alpha’s security chief Tony Verdeschi (Tony Anholt)… although Guido, along with all of the other members of the supposed rescue expedition from Earth, turn out to be blobby one-eyed telepathic radiation-consuming aliens!

After returning to the States in 1977 Damon was cast as Dr. Alan Quartermaine on the soap opera General Hospital. Damon would play the role for 31 years. The morally ambiguous Quatermaine, a kindly, benevolent doctor who in his off-time attempted to murder his wife on several occasions and who did actually succeed in bumping off a couple of other characters, as well as committing sundry other crimes, was very popular with viewers.

Damon finally departed General Hospital in February 2007 when his character was killed off. Damon would later reprise Quartermaine in several episodes, alternately, in a dream sequence, as a ghost, and as a hallucination. (Soap operas are, I think, only slightly less ridiculous than superhero comic books!)

Damon was nominated for a Daytime Emmy on several occasions for his performance as Alan Quartermaine. He finally won the award for Best Supporting Actor in 1999 due to a storyline in which Quartermaine, following surgery, became addicted to painkillers.

I have to confess, offhand I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single episode of General Hospital from start to finish. That said, it strikes me that appearing as a regular on a television series for three decades straight is one heck of an achievement.

Damon himself seemed very fond of the role. In a 2010 interview he explained his approach to playing Quartermaine:

“What I tried to do as an actor is I tried to make the character as complete as possible. I wanted to make sure that this character had an edge, that he wasn’t Mr. Good Guy or Mr. Bad Guy — he wasn’t back or white, he was gray. I wanted to make him someone you didn’t mess with.”

Five (or so) episodes of The Twilight Zone for Halloween

This month is the 60th anniversary of The Twilight Zone, the eerie anthology series created by Rod Serling, which made its debut on October 2, 1959 with the episode “Where Is Everybody?”  With Halloween right around the corner, this felt like a good opportunity to briefly look at some of my favorite horror-themed episodes of the show.

Keep in mind, The Twilight Zone was not a horror series.  Serling was a writer who was very interested in addressing political & social injustice in his works.  He endured a significant amount of pushback and censorship from the conservative television networks of the 1950s.  Serling hit upon the idea of creating a sci-fi / supernatural anthology as a vehicle for addressing social issues through allegory.  It was a remarkably successful experiment.

If there was a regular type of horror present throughout the series’ five seasons, it was an unnerving sense of existential horror, of how sanity & existence & identity were often all-too-fleeting concepts.  Nevertheless, on occasion Serling and the writers working with him did delve into full-throttled horror, producing several episodes that were genuinely terrifying.

This is not any kind of “best of list” on my part. There are several episodes of The Twilight Zone that I like a lot more than some of these.  This is merely my list of five(ish) episodes of the series that I found spooky.

I am going to try to avoid spoilers.  Yes, I know, a lot of these episodes have been rerun endlessly in syndication.  But I’m sure that at least a few people haven’t seen them, and I want to try to preserve some of the surprises.

1) Perchance to Dream – Adapted by Charles Beaumont from his own short story, and directed by Robert Florey, this episode was broadcast on November 27, 1959.

Richard Conte plays Edward Hall, a man with a weak heart who dreams in sequence.  His latest series of dreams have taken place in an eerie, twisted carnival, where he meets the mysterious, seductive Maya, played by Suzanne Lloyd.  The beautiful Maya lures Edward onto the roller coaster, a ride that in his real, waking life he would never dare board.  Edward is now terrified of falling asleep again, because right before he awoke Maya was attempting to push him off the moving rollercoaster.  Edward believes that if he goes to sleep his dream will resume from that point, and because of his weak heart the shock of falling in the dream will kill him in real life.

I remember watching a rerun of this on television when I was a kid.  It really did scare the hell out of me.  The direction by Florey imbues the dream carnival with a twisted, ominous air, a palpable atmosphere of fear.  Lloyd’s performance of Maya oozes with equal parts sexuality and menace.  The twist ending is genuinely clever.

2) Mirror Image – Written by Rod Serling and directed by John Brahm, it first aired on February 26, 1960.

Vera Miles portrays Millicent Barnes, a young secretary waiting at a bus depot on a dark rainy night for an overdue bus to Cortland.  Millicent is unsettled when the employees at the depot act as if they have seen her before, when she knows she has never set foot on the premises until a few minutes before.  She spots a suitcase behind luggage check-in that looks just like hers, and is further disturbed when her own suitcase disappears. Retiring to the washroom to try to clear her head, Millicent is shocked to see in the bathroom mirror the image of a woman identical to her sitting out in the bus depot.  Millicent begins to suspect that she is being stalked by a malevolent doppelganger.

Serling’s script and the direction by Brahm combine to create an atmosphere of tense fear & suspense.  The scene with the double in the mirror is expertly executed by Brahm.

Miles does a fine job of portraying Millicent, an unnerved woman who at first begins to doubt her sanity, and who once she seemingly confirms the existence of her double is nearly overwhelmed by the horror of her situation.  Of course everyone else believes Millicent is off her rocker… at least until the episode’s final striking sequence.

3) Twenty-Two – Adapted by Rod Serling from a short story from the 1944 anthology Famous Ghost Stories, this was directed by Jack Smight, and broadcast on February 10, 1961.

Liz Powell, a young dancer played by Barbara Nichols with a Noo Yawk accent that would make Harley Quinn proud, has been hospitalized for exhaustion & nervous fatigue.  Each night Liz has the same nightmare, wherein she is compelled to leave her bed and take the elevator down to the hospital basement, to walk to Room 22, the hospital morgue. And each night the doors of the morgue swing open, and a coldly beautiful nurse emerges to menacingly tell her “Room for one more, honey.”  A pre-Lost In Space Jonathan Harris plays a doctor who very much needs to brush up on his bedside manner, as he condescendingly writes off Liz’s dreams as simple hysteria.  Of course, we then get to the twist ending, and everything shockingly, horrifyingly falls into place.

“Twenty-Two” was one of a handful of episodes from the second season that were recorded on videotape in an attempt by CBS to curb costs.  Unfortunately the episodes shot on video ended up looking cheap, and the actual savings were negligible, so CBS quickly ended the practice and went back to film.  Regrettably all these decades later “Twenty-Two” and the five other videotaped shows have a very poor visual quality.  That’s a shame, because Smight does a superb job at directing this episode.  Even on videotape there is a mood of fear & tension.  The sinister morgue nurse is effectively portrayed by Arlene Martel, who with just one short line of dialogue and a sinister expression creates a palpable presence of menace.

Yes, it’s another episode involving dreams.  And, yes, on subsequent viewings it does seem that Serling had to pad out the story to reach the required runtime.  But, honestly, the first time I saw this one it really creeped me out, and the ending felt like a genuine gut punch.

4) Death Ship – Adapted by Richard Matheson from his own short story, this was directed by Don Medford. It was broadcast on February 7, 1963.

During the fourth season, the network mandated hour-long episodes, much to Serling’s chagrin as he believed, probably quite rightly, that the half hour format was the ideal length.  Indeed, most of the season four episodes contain a significant amount of padding.  Watching several of them, you get the feeling that these could have been really good, strong 25 minute episodes, but at 50 minutes there’s nowhere enough material to carry the stories.

“Death Ship” is probably the most notable exception.  Matheson utilized the longer runtime to expand upon his short story, effectively fleshing out both the characters and themes.

In the far-off future year of, ahem, 1997 the Earth spaceship E-89 is searching for inhabitable planets for humanity to colonize.  Orbiting an unexplored world, the three man crew glimpses something metallic on the surface.  Landing, they are horrified to discover the wreck of their own spaceship, their dead bodies within.  The bullheaded Captain Ross, played by Jack Klugman, insists there must be a perfectly logical explanation.  Perhaps they have somehow slipped forward in time and glimpsed a possible future in which they crash & die?  Or perhaps this is an elaborate hallucination created by aliens to drive them off?  Or perhaps…

This is another episode that really unnerved me as a kid.  There are some eerie scenes in this one.  The ending, as we realize exactly what is going on, is genuinely horrifying.

5) Nightmare at 20,000 Feet – Richard Matheson adapted his short story of the same name.  The episode was directed by Richard Donner, then only 33 years old. It was broadcast on October 11, 1963.

Now this is the one everybody remembers.  Even if you’ve never seen it, you’ve undoubtedly heard of it.  It’s been remade twice, and has been referenced and parodied numerous times in popular culture.  Someone once opined that most of the really great episodes of The Twilight Zone are the ones that you can describe in a single short sentence.  Well, this is “the one with the monster on the airplane wing.”  And, setting aside all the hype, it really is a good, solid, scary episode.

A young William Shatner plays Robert Wilson, a man with a severe fear of flying who is recovering from a nervous breakdown.  While flying home from the sanitarium with his wife aboard a commercial airliner, Robert sees a creature on the wing of the airplane.  As a horrified Robert watches, the creature, a gremlin (a pre-Joe Dante incarnation, of course), pulls up the panels on the wing and begins mucking about with the wiring.  Robert, realizing that if the gremlin isn’t stopped the plane will crash, desperately tries to get both his wife and the flight crew to believe him, but because of his recent mental illness they all think he is hallucinating.  And the gremlin, grasping what is going on, begins to taunt Robert, each time gliding out of sight before anyone else can spot it.

As I previously wrote when discussing the work of Richard Matheson, I read the short story “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” a few years before I saw the episode.  Visualizing the gremlin in my mind, I imagined something horrifically twisted & evil.  The imagination is unbound by any budgetary considerations.  The Twilight Zone, however, was a television series made in the early 1960s, so between a small budget and primitive special effects there was only so much that could be done.  Nevertheless, even though the gremlin has a more-than-passing resemblance to a panda bear, it was still rather effective.  The moment where Shatner yanks back the curtains to find the gremlin’s face pressed against the window leering at him is genuinely chilling.  Shatner’s frantic performance, Donner’s solid direction, a very realistic airplane set, and very believable rain & wind effects all come together to create one of the most frightening television episodes ever created.

Honorable Mention: The Arrival – Written by Rod Serling and directed by Boris Sagal, this episode was broadcast on September 22, 1961.

During its five season run, The Twilight Zone recycled more than a few concepts, plots and themes.  The show had only a small pool of regular writers, with Serling himself writing or co-writing 92 of the show’s 152 episodes.  Given such an insane workload, it’s not surprising that from time to time Serling revisited old material.

“The Arrival” was the second episode of the third season, and some people regard it as the point where the show first began to blatantly recycle itself.  Serling’s script contains elements from a few episodes from the first two seasons.  It also has at least one significant plot hole.  Nevertheless, “The Arrival” is in my estimation an eerie, atmospheric episode.

As the episode opens, a Douglas DC-3 passenger plane, Flight 107 from Buffalo, touches down in New York.  The landing is perfect.  However once the plane taxis down the runway and comes to a stop, the ground crew is shocked to discover that the plane is empty: no pilot or co-pilot, no crew, no passengers, no luggage.  How could a plane that departed normally from Buffalo a few hours before arrive completely empty?  How could everyone aboard have vanished into thin air?

FAA Inspector Grant Sheckly, played by Harold J. Stone, is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery.  Touting his flawless 22 year record of closing cases, Sheckly is certain there must be an answer.  At last he hits on a wild, incredible theory, one he is convinced must be the answer.  Indeed, it appears that he is correct… until a moment later when the episode completely pulls the rug out from underneath him.

In spite of its flaws, I really like “The Arrival.”  It is legitimately unsettling, and I totally did not see the twist ending coming.  What really sells it is Stone’s devastating performance.  During the episode’s 25 minute runtime we witness Sheckly believably, and tragically, go from a supremely confident figure of authority to a broken shell of a human being.  Serling once again taps into that existential terror, the horror that at any moment all that we know & believe in might collapse around us.

There are many examples of television from the mid 20th Century that have aged very poorly, that have not stood the test of time.  The Twilight Zone is not one of these.  There are a number of episodes that are just as relevant in 2019 as they were in the early 1960s, if not more so.

Serling was one of those writers who tapped into the nature of the human condition, who wanted to understand what made us who we are, what drives us to do what we do, good and bad.  His plots often held a universal appeal, one that transcended culture and decade.  He also possessed a genuine talent for dialogue, for the use of words, for the crafting of intelligent & insightful scripts.  And finally, as these episodes demonstrate, he had a gift for tapping into human fears, and scarring the hell out of his audience.

David Hedison: 1927 to 2019

Prolific actor David Hedison passed away on July 18th at the age of 92. I always enjoyed seeing him appear on numerous television shows and movies throughout the years. He acted in several memorable productions.

Albert David Hedison Jr. was born on May 20, 1927 in Providence, RI.  Hedison first became involved in acting when he appeared in a school play in Junior High School.  He attended Brown University in Providence, where he majored in English.  Hedison subsequently studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio in New York City.

Under the name “Al Hedison” he appeared in various stage productions throughout the 1950s, including the 1956 Broadway production of A Month in the Country directed by Michael Redgrave.  This brought him to the attention of 20th Century Fox, who signed him to a contract.  His first job for the studio was a supporting role in the 1957 movie The War Below starring Robert Mitchum.

Hedison’s next role was in The Fly (1958).  Directed by Kurt Neumann, The Fly was adapted from the short story by George Langelaan.  Several actors passed on the role of scientist André Delambre, since the character would spend much of the movie with his face hidden beneath a mask.  Hendison, however, was very taken with the screenplay by James Clavell and enthusiastically signed up.  The Fly was an incredibly well produced movie, one of the classic sci-fi / horror films, and it featured a very moving & tragic performance by Hedison.  It would become one of the most memorable entries in his lengthy career.

In 1960 Hedison was cast in the Cold War adventure series Five Fingers on NBC.  Probably the most noteworthy aspect of this short-lived show was that NBC insisted Hedison change his name, as they apparently felt “Al” was not distinctive enough.  Hedison decided to go with his middle name, and for the rest of his career he was billed as “David Hedison.”

From 1964 to 1968 Hedison starred as Captain Lee Crane in the sci-fi / adventure TV show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Despite repeated entreaties by series creator Irwin Allen, Hedison was initially uninterested, but he was finally won over when he learned Richard Basehart would be his co-star, portraying Admiral Harriman Nelson.  As Hedison recounted in a 2013 interview with Classic Film & TV Café:

“I had never met him, but I admired Richard’s work very much. I got his number from the studio. I called him up, and we agreed to meet at his house. He liked my enthusiasm, we hit it off and we worked really well together. We made the show work. Richard and I had real chemistry. He taught me so much about being camera ready when I needed to be. Television filming is so very fast, we always had to keep moving on. Voyage shot in six days–we filmed at a very fast pace.”

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was very much a product of its time, and of Allen’s production style.  It was totally story-driven, with stand-alone episodes and no real character development.  The first season, shot in black & white, was fairly serious, with a lot of gritty Cold War-type plotlines and a fair amount of location work. Once the show transitioned to color with season two, it started to become over-the-top and silly, with most of the episodes featuring a monster of the week, and pretty much everything being shot in the studio. The show also started reusing a lot of props from Lost in Space and other Allen productions.

Despite these drawbacks, Voyage is a fondly remembered series.  Hedison and Basehart’s performances definitely played a large part in that, and they often helped to carry some of the more far-out episodes.

Among Hedison’s other memorable roles were his two appearances in the James Bond movie franchise.  He played CIA agent Felix Leiter in Live and Let Die (1973) with Roger Moore as Bond.  Hedison becoming the first actor to play Leiter twice when he reprised the role 16 years later in License to Kill (1989), this time with Timothy Dalton as Bond.

I’ve always felt that having Hedison return as Leiter in License to Kill was a smart move.  In the original Ian Fleming novels Leiter was a close ally of Bond, but this never really carried across to the movies, because each time Leiter showed up he was played by a different actor.  The plot of License to Kill involves Bond going rogue and seeking vengeance against the South American drug lord who nearly kills Leiter.  This becomes much more believable if you have Leiter played by someone who has previously appeared in the role, someone who the audience has an existing connection to.  Even though Bond was now played by Dalton, having Hedison return as Leiter really helped sell the idea that these two men were longtime friends, and that Bond would go to hell & back to avenge him.

Hedison also found work in television soap operas.  Throughout the 1990s he was a regular on Another World, and in 2004 had a recurring role on the soap opera The Young and the Restless.

Although Hedison seldom received starring roles later in his career, he nevertheless worked regularly through the decades.  According to the New York Times, Hedison appeared in more than 100 movie and television roles during his lengthy career.

Among Hedison’s noteworthy television guest roles, he appeared in a January 1964 episode of The Saint.  Also guest starring the lovely Suzanne Lloyd, “Luella” has Hedison playing a newly-married friend of Simon Templar’s whose wandering eye & overactive libido gets him ensnared in a blackmail scheme.  This was definitely one of the most humorous episodes of The Saint, and Hedison really threw himself into it with an energetic performance.  This was Hedison’s first time working with Roger Moore, and the two became good friends.

Another memorable turn for Hedison was “The Queen and the Thief,” an October 1977 episode of the Wonder Woman series starring Lynda Carter.  Hedison portrayed suave international jewel thief Evan Robley.  The episode guest starred Juliet Mills and John Colicos.  It’s certainly one of the more low-key episodes of Wonder Woman, but Hedison definitely sells it with his portrayal of the smooth, charismatic master criminal.

Interviewed in 1992, Hedison stated:

“I think I do comedy best. I think I’m very good at comedy. I’ve done a few comedy things in stock and whatever, and I’m very good at that. You wouldn’t know that from Another World because I’m so grim and serious, as I was as well in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, but I do like comedy. I would love to do a comedy, and I’m sure I will someday.”

Given his fondness for comedy, I’m sure Hedison appreciated his guest roles on The Saint and Wonder Woman, as they enabled him show a much more humorous side than usual.

Hedison also possessed a great love for theater.  He appeared in numerous stage productions throughout his career.  In the 1990s and early 2000s he was a regular presence in regional theater throughout the New England area.

Hedison was married Bridget Mori.  They met in Positano, Italy in 1967, and were married in London a year later.  They had two daughters, Alexandra and Serena Hedison.  David and Bridget were together until her death from breast cancer in 2016.  I’ve always thought that was very romantic & sweet, that they were married for nearly five decades.

I was fortunate enough to meet David Hedison once, at a comic book convention in New York City in September 2009.  I got an autographed photo of him as Felix Leiter from License to Kill.  He appeared to me to be a very warm, friendly individual.  At the time I also thought he looked much younger than 82 years old.

Due to his appearances in so many popular movies & series, Hedison was a frequent interview subject.  In October 2007 he penned a humorous foreword to the informative non-fiction book The Fly at Fifty: The Creation and Legacy of a Classic Science Fiction Film by Diane Kachmar & David Goudsward.  Hedison always came across as lively and enthusiastic, possessing a wry sense of humor.  Even when he was in his 80s he still brought a lot of energy to his interviews & appearances.

David Hedison will certainly be missed by his many fans.  He had a good, long life, working in a career he loved.  We should all be so fortunate.

Ten thoughts about Stranger Things 3

Last year Michele started watching the first season of the horror series Stranger Things on Netflix.  I was on my own laptop, doing something else, but from time to time I would turn to her and ask “What are you watching?” and “What’s it about?” and “What’s happening in it?” and “What’s happening now?”

Michele finally got fed up with this and shouted “Just come over here and watch the damn thing with me!!!”  Not wanting to argue, I did, jumping in as she was watching episode six.  I quickly caught up on what has taking place, and I really enjoyed the rest of it.  I nicknamed it “John Carpenter’s The Goonies,” and was not at all surprised to learn that both that director and that movie had been influences on the Duffer Brothers.

Immediately after that we watched Stranger Things 2, which we both liked.  So when season three came out on Netflix this month, we also watched it.

Here are some thoughts on the latest installment of the Duffer Brothers weird magnum opus…

1) The 1980s Sucked

Nostalgia can be a very dangerous thing. I grew up in the 1980s. I was nine years old in 1985, which is when Stranger Things 3 is set, so I would have been a few years younger than most of the characters in the show.  Honestly, I hated the eighties.  I’m certainly not the only one.  All of the faux machismo of the Reagan years and the worship of unbridled greed was anathema to me.  I was a geek who read a lot of books and comics, and I had very few friends.  I guess I probably would have fit in with Mike and Dustin and the rest of those guys, except…

2) Puberty Strikes!

The younger characters are now in their early teens, and it shows.  Actors Finn Wolfhard and Noah Schnapp both experienced serious growth spurts between seasons!  Millie Bobby Brown also looks older.  Character-wise, all of the boys have discovered girls, except for Will, and he’s understandably frustrated that his pals are now off hanging out with their girlfriends instead of playing Dungeons & Dragons with him.

I can certainly relate.  I was definitely a late bloomer emotionally.  When most of my classmates in high school were dating and hanging out and socializing, I was usually at home with my nose buried in a comic book.  Now that I’m older, I understand why Mike and Lucas are busy trying to mend things with Eleven and Max, and why Dustin is trying to get in touch with Suzie, but I also totally relate to Will’s frustrations at feeling left out.

This is our “Attempting to look perfectly innocent and failing utterly at it” expression. How are we doing?

3) Slow the Plot Down

Strangers Things 3 had a lot of characters and plotlines.  I think it was a bit overloaded.  The plot concerning the Mind Flayer returning and turning the inhabitants of Hawkins, Indiana into a giant monster to kill Eleven never really intersected with the plot of the Russians building a secret base under the Starcourt Mall to re-open the gate to the Upside Down, other than the fact that the Russians’ experiments are what enabled the Mind Flayer to return in the first place.

There were also new characters being introduced, primarily Maya Hawke as Robin, adding to an already-large ensemble. All of the characters had their own subplots, especially the volatile romantic tension between Joyce and Hopper that lasted the entire season.

All of this resulted in the first three episodes of Stranger Things 3 moving at a glacial place as the Duffer Brothers had to take the time to introduce and position every element of the season.  I was getting bored, wondering when something was going to actually happen.  Each time something did occur, and it looked like things were finally picking up, there would then be a switch to another group of characters, accompanied by an almost-audible sound of someone slamming on the brakes.

Once episode four began events almost immediately rocketed into high gear, and didn’t let up for the rest of the series.  But those first three episodes were a drag.  I really think that all of that could have been condensed into two episodes.  There was so much padding that I started singing the song “Slow the Plot Down” from Mystery Science Theater 3000 to myself.

4) Assholes R Us

There are a lot of assholes in Hawkins.  The mayor, the entire staff of the town newspaper, the lifeguards at the town pool, random yuppie assholes who are passing through… so many assholes!  Even the stoic, curmudgeonly Sherriff Jim Hopper, portrayed so wonderfully by David Harbour in the first two seasons, descended into full asshole-dom.  The AV Club announced “Stranger Things season 3 ruined Hopper” although there is a lot of insightful back & forth in the comments section that does shed light on why Hopper’s actions are actually all-too-realistic.

Looking back from the perspective of 2019, if one re-examines the mindset of the Baby Boomer generation, it is definitely possible to perceive the deeply pervasive presence of toxic masculinity.  That was unfortunately the norm back then, the idea that men had to be tough and ambitious and in-charge and stoic, not showing any feelings except anger.  Even a basically decent person like Hopper falls into that trap, because that’s how he was raised.

Of course, there are two characters who illustrate this even more clearly…

Hide your kids, hide your wife…

5) Helloooo, Ladies!

Steve and Billy are opposite sides of the same coin.

Back in season one Steve was the arrogant school jock, the alpha male you loved to hate.  But along the way Steve actually began to grow up.  He helped Nancy and Jonathan fight the Mind Flayer at the end of season one.

In the second year of the show, Steve became like a big brother to the socially awkward Dustin.  When Nancy broke up with him, Steve was able to recognize that he hadn’t been a very good boyfriend to her.  Now in season three he tells Robin that he wishes he hadn’t spent so much time in high school worrying about unimportant things, with impressing other people, and that his priorities were messed up.  Steve is able to recognize his past mistakes, and is working to try to be a better, more mature person.

In contrast we have Billy, the current town asshole.  He is a bully and a womanizer.  In season two he was shown to be abusive to his stepsister Max, as well as racist.  He spends his summer days as a lifeguard at the town pool, strutting about, seducing bored, horny housewives.

We previously learned that the apple did not fall far from the tree.  In season two we briefly met Billy’s father, who was emotionally and physically abusive towards his son.  This is further explored in season three. When Eleven uses her psychic powers to delve into Billy’s mind in order to search for the Mind Flayer’s location, she sees from Billy’s memories that he used to be a really sweet kid, but that his father’s abuse, his attempts to “toughen up” Billy, drove away his loving mother and warped him into a monster.  It’s only at the end, when Eleven reminds Billy of his happier childhood days before his mother left, that he tries to be a better person, and he sacrifices himself to save Eleven from the Mind Flayer.

Joe Keery does good work playing Steve. As for Dacre Montgomery as Billy… wow, I was genuinely surprised to find out that in real life he’s an Australian who writes poetry. He does such a convincing job playing an American white trash douchebag. Now that is acting!

6) Russian Dressing

Michele and I both wondered if the plotline with the Russians was a commentary on contemporary American politics.  In Stranger Things 3 the Russians are able to infiltrate America, build a secret underground headquarters, and cause a catastrophic crisis in large part due to their collaborating with a greedy, arrogant, loud-mouthed politician with weird hair who sells them a bunch or real estate.   Yeah, that does sound more than a bit familiar.

7) Wait A Minute… That Was Who?!?

I don’t think I even noticed until at least a couple of episodes into the second season that Joyce Byers was played by Winona Ryder.  Yes, she’s quite a bit older than she used to be.  But Joyce is also the most un-Winona Ryder-ish part I have ever seen her play.  She does really good work portraying a working class single mother who has to cope with all sorts of tragedy and weirdness over the course of three seasons.  Ryder also has good chemistry with David Harbour, making the scenes between Joyce and Hopper both poignant and entertaining… well usually.  Occasionally the “will they or won’t they” antics do get a bit tiresome.

No, Jim, I am NOT going to start singing the theme song from Moonlighting!

8) Turn Around, Look At What You See

I’ve always liked the movie The NeverEnding Story, and I think the theme song by Limahl is cute and catchy.  So it was sort of fun to have Dustin and Suzie sing it… except the timing was oh so horribly wrong!

You see, Hopper wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t been singing that damn song! If Suzie had just given Dustin the number for Planck’s constant right away, Hopper and Joyce would have gotten the keys out of the safe two minutes sooner and been able to shut down the gate to the Upside Down before Grigori the Russian Terminator arrived.  Others also came to the same conclusion.  Thanks for nothing, Suzie!

9) R.I.P. Hopper???

A lot of people, Michele and myself included, are wondering if Hopper is really dead, and if David Harbour is going to return for Stranger Things 4.  We never actually see Hopper die on-screen.  No body usually means no actual death.

And then there is the mid-credits epilogue, where we find out that the Russians have an American prisoner looked up in a Siberian base.  That could be Hopper… but I’ve also heard it suggested that it might be Brenner.  Yes, he was attacked by the Demogorgon in the final episode of Season One, but again we never saw a body, and it was hinted in the second year that he might still be alive.

Even if that is not Hopper in the Russian prison, it’s been suggested that he might have jumped through the portal into the Upside Down before the gate exploded, hoping to find another way out.  That’s what happened to Eleven after the first season.  I guess we will have to wait and see.  When is Stranger Things 4 coming out, anyway?!?

What do you mean, my character dies? Oh, well, at least I still have the Hellboy movie franchise to fall back on. Right?

10) To Be Continued

There is definitely going to be at least one more season of Stranger Things.  I am looking forward to it.  In addition to Hopper’s fate, I also what to see if Eleven and Mike stay together, and if Eleven ever regains her powers.  Plus it would be nice to see Sam Owens return.  At least Paul Reiser got a cameo in the final episode of this season.

Nevertheless, I really do hope the Duffer Brothers and Netflix will wrap up Stranger Things after the fourth installment.  While I definitely enjoyed the third season, it was not without its problems: too many characters, too many plotlines, three really slow opening episodes.  Also, each season the Duffer Brothers keep upping the threat levels.  They keep going too much longer and they are going to end up with some sort of giant monster trying to eat the entire planet.

Oh, well, we’re still at the point where the show’s strengths still outweigh its weaknesses.  Fingers crossed!

Peter Wyngarde: 1927 to 2018

Well-regarded British actor Peter Wyngarde, whose career spanned half a century, passed away on January 15th. He was 90 years old.

There is some dispute regarding early details of Wyngarde’s life. It is known that his father was a British diplomat stationed in Asia before World War II.  When Shanghai was invaded by the Japanese in 1941, the fourteen year old Wyngarde was sent to an internment camp along with hundreds of other British citizens.  The next four years were brutal ones.  Wyngarde suffered from malnutrition, and at one point his feet were broken by his Japanese captors.  One of the few concessions the Japanese accorded their prisoners was allowing them to stage plays in the canteen.  This was the beginning of Wyngarde’s lifelong love of acting.

When the war ended Wyngarde was able to return to Britain. It took him some time to recuperate from his harsh ordeal, but afterwards he was determined to make a living as an actor.  He began appearing in theatrical roles in 1946, starting with bit parts and as an understudy, gradually working his way up to more significant roles over the next decade.  Beginning in the mid-1950s he also worked in television.  His breakthrough role was playing Sidney Carton in the BBC’s 1957 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

Continuing his theater work, and occasionally acting in movies, Wyngarde also made several noteworthy guest appearances on British television. He twice played villains on The Avengers starring Patrick Macnee & Diana Rigg.  In the memorable 1966 episode entitled “A Touch of Brimstone,” Wyngarde portrayed the sadistic Sir John Cartney, the head of the kinky, hedonistic Hellfire Club, who were plotting an overthrow of the British government.  A year later he returned to the series in the episode “Epic.” This time he played Stewart Kirby, a washed-up Hollywood star involved in an audacious plot to film the murder of Emma Peel.  The role involved numerous costume & make-up changes for Wyngarde, and he approached it with over-the-top gusto.

In 1967 Wyngarde guest starred on The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan’s cult classic psychological spy drama. He assumed the role of the Village’s sinister Number Two in the episode “Checkmate.”

Wyngarde best-known role was the suave, womanizing Interpol investigator turned novelist Jason King. He originated the part in the ITV series Department S, which ran for 28 episodes between 1969 and 1970.  The character of Jason King proved very popular with viewers, and was spun off into his own series, which aired from 1971 to 1972.

Wyngarde was gifted with a deep, smooth voice and a striking presence. Portraying the sophisticated, charismatic Jason King, he was often clad in fashionable, impeccably-tailored suits.  All together this resulted in Wyngarde becoming both a sex symbol and a style icon in the early 1970s.

In a 1993 interview Wyngarde explained that he put a great deal of himself into the character…

“I decided Jason King was going to be an extension of me. I was not going to have a superimposed personality. I was inclined to be a bit of a dandy, used to go to the tailor with my designs. And my hair was long because I had been in this Chekhov play, The Duel, at the Duke of York’s.

“Jason King had champagne and strawberries for breakfast, just as I did myself. I drank myself to a standstill. When I think about it now, I am amazed I’m still here.”

Although Department S and Jason King had made Wyngarde famous, he subsequently chose to return to his first love, the theater. In 1973 he co-starred with Sally Ann Howes in a production of The King and I that ran for 260 performances.  This was followed by a number of other stage roles.

In 1980, in the campy Dino De Laurentiis-produced Flash Gordon movie, Wyngarde played Klytus, the gold-masked henchman to Ming the Merciless. Wyngarde also appeared in the Doctor Who serial “Planet of Fire” in 1984, turning in a subtle, memorable performance.  The late 1980s and the 90s saw further work on the stage, as well as occasional television guest roles.

It is a testament to how iconic a figure Wyngarde was that his likeness was immortalized in print in the early 1980s in the pages of the X-Men comic book series by the creative team of Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin.  The Avengers television episode “A Touch of Brimstone” inspired Claremont & Byrne to introduce their own version of the Hellfire Club, a cabal of ruthless mutant industrialists manipulating politics and the economy to their benefit, in the now-classic X-Men storyline “The Dark Phoenix Saga.”  One of the members of this Hellfire Club was the X-Men’s old adversary Mastermind, now in the guise of the evil, seductive “Jason Wyngarde,” modeled, off course, on Peter Wyngarde’s performance as Jason King.

As a younger viewer I was passing familiar with Wyngarde from Flash Gordon and Doctor Who. However, it was in the 1990s via the internet that I first learned of how Claremont & Byrne had paid homage to the actor in their X-Men run.  The full Jason King series was finally released on DVD in 2007 here in the States, and I enjoyed it tremendously.  I subsequently viewed episodes of Department S, which was also an enjoyable show.

I was definitely a fan of Wyngarde’s work; he had such a wonderful presence on screen, and a rich, memorable voice.

Peter Wyngarde as the suave sleuth Jason King, side-by-side with X-Men villain Mastermind in his guise as “Jason Wyngarde” as rendered by John Byrne & Terry Austin in “The Dark Phoenix Saga”

Following Wyngarde’s passing last week his agent and manager Thomas Bowington declared:

“He was one of the most unique, original and creative actors that I have ever seen. As a man, there were few things in life he didn’t know.”

Wyngarde was a private man, and wary of the press. He seldom gave interviews.  Last year he spoke at length to Tina Hopkins for The Official Peter Wyngarde Appreciation Society blog.  It is an informative and insightful piece that goes into the details of Wyngarde’s life & career.

Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman

Andy Mangels is quite possibly the world’s biggest Wonder Woman fan.  He is also a prolific author, having written prose fiction, non-fiction articles & books, and comic books for numerous publishers, among them DC, Marvel, Dark Horse and Image.  However, until now Mangels has never actually written any Wonder Woman stories.  At long last he can finally cross that off his bucket list with the publication of Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, a six issue miniseries co-published by Dynamite Entertainment and DC Comics.

The second half of the 1970s was a bit of a watershed moment for women in telefantasy, with two high profile series featuring female leads airing.  Wonder Woman starring the amazing Lynda Carter is rightfully regarded as one of the all time best adaptations of a comic book series for television.  The Bionic Woman may have been a spin-off of The Six Million Dollar Man, but Jaime Sommers, portrayed by Lindsay Wagner, immediately established herself to be as brave and competent as her male counterpart.

Over the past two years DC has been publishing Wonder Woman ’77, which is set within the television continuity.  Dynamite, meanwhile, has released several Bionic Woman miniseries since 2012.  In retrospect, it was a natural fit to do a comic book series teaming up these two television heroines.

Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, initially issued as a six issue miniseries, is now collected in trade paperback.  Joining writer Andy Mangels are interior artist Judit Tondora, colorist Roland Pilcz, letterers Tom Orzechowski, Lois Buhalis & Kathryn S. Renta, and cover artist Cat Staggs.  The collected edition features a painted cover by the ever-amazing Alex Ross.

Set in 1977, Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman opens with the government agencies the Inter-Agency Defense Command and the Office of Scientific Intelligence meeting to discuss a new terrorist threat, a sinister cabal known as Castra.  Of course, with the IADC and OSI working together, their two top agents, Diana Prince and Jaime Sommers, are soon paired up.  Jaime very quickly deduces Diana’s secret identity, and before long Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman are fighting side-by-side against the forces of Castra.

It is eventually revealed that Castra is headed up by some of Diana and Jaime’s old enemies, who have pooled their resources to have another go at the world domination thing.  It’s been a few years since I watched the Wonder Woman show on DVD, and even longer since I saw reruns of The Bionic Woman on TV, so at first I was having some trouble recalling most of the rogues gallery making up Castra’s hierarchy.  Fortunately in issue #3 Mangels has the various ne’er-do-wells recounting their past exploits to one another, complete with footnotes referencing the original television episodes, which helped bring me up to speed.

Mangels clearly possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Wonder Woman.  He includes a great many references to the TV show, as well as working in nods to various characters & concepts from the rich mythology of the comic books.  He does the same for the Bionic Woman, somewhat obliquely referencing a number of episodes from the series.  You can pretty much understand the majority of Mangels’ story without needing to know what he’s specifically referencing.  Having said that, while I was reading went back & forth between Google and Wikipedia in an effort to figure out a number of them.  I later found out that Comic Book Resources had compiled a fairly comprehensive list of the miniseries’ Easter Eggs.

Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman is an enjoyable story.  I will admit, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the first two chapters, which felt overly heavy with exposition, and numerous different characters were introduced at a rapid succession.  Beginning with issue #3, though, Mangels seems to have found his groove, and the rest of the miniseries a really fun, exciting romp.

One of the things to keep in mind about genre television 40 years ago is that the technology really didn’t exist to be able to bring super-powered villains to life with any believability.  Instead both Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman faced a succession of Nazis, mad scientists, killer robots, spies, terrorists and mobsters, along with the occasional low-rent alien invasion.

Mangels sticks with this relatively grounded ethos for the Castra conspiracy in Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, albeit with the approach that he’s not bound by a television budget.  Instead of half a dozen thugs or a handful of android assassins, Mangels has Diana and Jaime teaming up with the Amazons of Paradise Island to fight an entire army of bad guys.

I also appreciated the quieter character moments in the miniseries.  Mangels did a nice job establishing the friendship between Diana and Jaime, as well as developing a number of the inhabitants of Paradise Island.  We seldom saw the Amazons on the TV series, so it was nice to have them get fleshed out here.  This is where I felt the callbacks to past episodes were most effective, because they helped to illustrate Diana’s passionate beliefs in both sisterhood and the possibility of redemption.

Additionally, I was happy that Max the Bionic Dog made an appearance.  I loved Max on TV.  He was adorable and funny.  I would always laugh when he would use his bionically-enhanced jaws to bite through chains and other stuff, complete with the iconic “Deeneeneeneenee” sound effect.  I tell ya, with that set of chompers, the OSI must have needed to give Max steel-plated bones to gnaw on!

The artwork by Judit Tondora is, for the most part, very nicely rendered.  She does a good job laying out the action sequences, as well as depicting the quiet conversational moments.  There is a real beautiful quality to Tondora’s work on this miniseries.

I imagine one of the more difficult aspects of drawing Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman would have been the likenesses.  These can be tricky.  Sometimes when an artist is working on a licensed property, the trick is not to draw a point-on photorealistic rendering of the actors, but to instead capture the personalities of their characters.  Of course, depending upon the owner of the property, the artist may be required to draw as photorealistic a depiction as possible, which isn’t always the best way to go.  Tondora clearly had her work cut out for her, since practically every character in this miniseries previously appeared on television.

The quality of Tondora’s likenesses on this miniseries is of a somewhat variable quality.  The two best depictions she does are of Lynda Carter as Diana and Lindsay Wagner as Jaime, which is very fortunate, since they are the main characters.

I felt that perhaps some of Tondora’s efforts on the supporting characters and villains were a bit less effective.  While she does a fair enough job at capturing the likenesses of Lyle Waggoner, Richard Anderson, Martin E. Brooks, Fritz William Weaver and John Saxon, the amount of detailed required to render them and the others in panel after panel often causes them to stand out a bit awkwardly amidst the action.  I am of the opinion that photorealistic depictions are sometimes more suited to cover artwork than interior sequential illustration.  I suppose it really depends upon the specific artist.

Really, my only major criticism of the artwork is that it was printed from Tondora’s uninked pencils.  This is a regular issue I have with Dynamite, as well as a few other publishers.  Some artists, no matter how detailed & finished their pencils are, really do need to be inked.  Unfortunately publishers who are looking to cut costs have opted to jettison the inking stage, often to the detriment of their published books.  As good as Tondora’s work is on this miniseries, I feel it could have been even better if she or a compatible artist had been allowed to ink it.

The cover artwork by Cat Staggs was quite good.  My two favorites were issue #1 and #6.  The others were nice, although I the coloring on them was somewhat overwhelming.  Sometimes I feel Staggs’ artwork is more suited to black & white or grey tones than full color.

Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, like most other Dynamite series, was released with a number of variant covers.  The nice thing about “waiting for the trade” is that you get all of those variants collected together.  In addition to the Alex Ross variant which is used for the TPB cover, there are also some nice alterative cover images by Andrew Pepoy, J Bone, Aaron Lopresti, Bill Sienkiewicz and Phil Jimenez.

While I did have some criticisms concerning Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, on the whole I found the miniseries to be an enjoyable read with good artwork.  Mangels does leave a couple of his subplots unresolved at the end, setting the stage for a possible sequel.  Hopefully he and Tondora will have the opportunity to reunite on a follow-up miniseries in the near future.