Shock Treatment : 25th Anniversary Edition (1981) - Directed by Jim SharmanThe Starlost : The Movie Collection (1973) - created by Harlan Ellison
Tremors (1990) - Directed by Ron Underwood
The Future was FAB : The Art of Mike Trim (2006) By Anthony Taylor with Mike Trim. Forewords by Richard Taylor and Dave Tremont of Weta Workshop
Sci-Fi and Fantasy Modeller : Issue 3 (2006)
I'd heard about the Canadian TV series The Starlost a long time ago in magazines like Starlog that I bought as a kid. Always wanted to see it, used to read letters from Adults who grew up watching it and had fond memories of it. This collection takes all the original 16 Episodes and edits them into 5 TV movies, this was done some time in the early 80's. As a show it comes across as all the cheapest bits of Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and The Tomorrow People only 10 times cheaper, it's Visual FX make Button Moon look like they were done by ILM.
There's an idea in this show, it's just nobody had any real talent to pull it off. Harlan Ellison the shows creator had his named removed, and what Douglas Trumbull (FX genius of 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Bladerunner etc...) had to do with the final show is beyond me. For a bit of early 1970's Sci-Fi it's worth seeing just to say you've seen it, but I'm glad I didn't pay more than £11.99 for this set.
Here's a link to a Starlost site with lots of Episode and Production info http://tinyurl.com/ja78b
The Future was FAB : The Art of Mike Trim on the other hand was worth every penny, lots of great pics and concepts of the crafts from the Gerry Anderson shows and the Jeff Wayne War of the Worlds album. Even Mike's recent concepts have a great look to them, I'm suprised people aren't using his design more.
3 comments:
I guess I must be of the same generation as I used to read Starlog as a kid and remember the Starlost stuff. Had a look at the site, it sounded promising and the main colony ship was amazing, its got Trumbull written all over it. Pity it was made for 14p and was screwed by the studio. I may get a copy to check it out.
I noticed that there was a TV movie made in 1980 based on the original series, The Starlost: Deception. Wonder if it was up against Buck Rogers?
There was talk that there was going to be a feature made of Starlost based on the orignal idea,David Goyer was involved at one point ! The idea has been done plenty of times in books like Ringworld,Non Stop,Orbitsville etc...
From what I read on the Starlost site the idea sounds pretty good. If a dodgy old bunch of bollocks like Galactica can come back maybe a rival network will pick it up and develop it.
May turn into Logan's Run or Fantastic Journey very quickly though. Oh yes, I remember them ok. Oooh, a robot made entirely from fibre optics! Liked the Logan guns though.
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