THE LAST STARLOST!

Then came The Starlost. I sat on the floor cross-legged with my friend Dennis. We watched. I seem to remember that we enjoyed the experience. Maybe it was a 'fix' for two little geeks. There were some "dumb" things to be sure, such as our intrepid characters, once they broke out of Cypress Corners (their world's dome) and into the Ark, stepping on a green mat and 'flying' down the super-long corridors, courtesy of some fringey chroma-key video effects. Dennis' mom: "This is so God damned stupid!" We both ignored her. What did she know? At a leisurely pace -- Star Trek by this point, and Dennis and I were both fans, especially after I turned him onto both the show and the James Blish novelizations, would have had an action scene or two, some funny lines and some great orchestral musical flourishes of brass and tympani, not to forget an absorbing plot -- Devon, Rachel, and Garth (Keir Dullea, Gay Rowan, and Robin Ward) explored the sterile-looking spaceship interiors. They came across what looked like a 'Tourist' help centre computer. Devon sat in the chair and an image of a hunched William Osler came on. After the computer-man noticed that someone was sitting in the chair, he would ask, "may I be of... assistance?". He wore heavy-framed glasses and flickered his eyelids a lot, especially when he was answering Devon's seemingly stupid questions. (Hey, wouldn't you ask certain questions if you came from a dome-enclosed Amish-like community headed by a semi-sober Sterling Hayden, only to break out and into a radically different environment, one without trees or inhabitants of any kind?) On one such occasion when Osler blinked in machine gun fashion, Dennis' mom exhorted, "this is God damned ridiculous!" (Her comments came across as a sort of negative laugh track.) "It is kind of silly", I'm sure I started to think at this pivotal moment. And I think a little bit of disappointment started to creep in. Dennis and I were not little kiddies... we had fully functioning 11-year-old brains. And we knew what was good; Star Trek had set the bar. (The animated Star Trek series had premiered that same year -- I know that we looked forward to that every week, and probably more than the 'video-taped show'.) When the first show finished and that freaky theme music closed off, I'm sure Dennis and I both liked it, overall. I know that I watched most, if not all, of The Starlost's sixteen episodes. There was the one with the big bees: "Those are big bees!" The week after this one premiered, my social studies teacher, Mr. Brown, said, "did you guys see The Starlost on the weekend... the one with the bees?" I remember he smiled as he said this. Wouldn't you? Mister Chekov played a character named "Oro" in another installment... he was probably named after Oro township up near Barrie, Ontario; as I would figure out a few years later. I liked the episode "with the kids", a lot of them were about the same age I was at the time; bet you if I watched now, they look like 'babies'. I did like the twist ending of this one. One interesting element of the show was the theme music (as I mentioned briefly above). It favoured a synthesiser and, as a melody goes, was quite memorable... very catchy and easy to mock-hum with a vocal synth sound: I'm doing it right now. See what I mean? A glass of wine just killed that. Or did the wine start it? Over and above the theme tune, the back-ground music was unique, but pedestrian. There is one piece I recall which was basically the theme but played very slowly, and with what sounded like a recorder. (A recorder has a very 'breathy' quality.) To be honest, though, the back-ground music often irritated in its droning manner. In fact, some of these back-ground cues 'showed up' on the Canadian television series, Swiss Family Robinson. The music was provided by Score Productions, a company out of New York City that wrote music -- at least its staff composers did -- for various television events, game shows, etc. It was run by a man by the name of Bob Israel, who wrote music himself along with his staff musicians. (I remember TV Guide doing an article on Israel, and his company, a couple of years later.) No doubt, the producers of The Starlost got a 'package deal' for the music. (This is very common practice in television today as it is cheap to do... just a guy and his synthesiser, and no musicians on the floor to be paid.) The visual effects shots of the Ark were sometimes video, other times, film. The filmed versions looked as though the crew had immersed the model in a murky swimming pool and some guy was hired to swim around with a camera in hand. Due to video camera limitations at the time, there was not a lot that could be done to make miniatures look as big as what they were supposed to represent. They often looked static with perhaps a zoom done to mimic flight; this would be chroma-keyed over a fat-star background. The Science aspect of The Starlost was sloppy or almost non existent. In the premiere, the computer-man said, "a class G solar star". Harlan Ellison says, "(it makes no sense), it's like saying, 'a big house home'." Over the years The Starlost would occasionally play on CTV in repeats. It didn't help syndication matters that there were only sixteen episodes produced. If the show were to be 'stripped' Monday to Friday, then the whole series would be done in three weeks! What did happen, however, is that several compilation films were made. Each one would be made up of two episodes. Even then, I don't recall seeing it a lot. This is probably a good thing. When The Starlost finally hits stores on DVD, I might be tempted to revisit and relive a moment from my childhood; and imagine Dennis' mom's running commentary. And just what the heck was that Toronto Star 'television' reviewer smoking?!