ALL SCI-FI

[Dr Acula]

This is a series I can only remember vaguely, but I hope that it gets released (or escapes) onto DVD so I can see it again. It appears to have some of my fave sci-fi tropes in display.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqKEENAGSBo

[Bud Brewster]

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Wow, you did it again, Doc! How did I miss this one?




I love the premise — at least the way it's described on Wikipedia. Here's what I found.
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The series concerns a family and their associates who charter a boat out into the Caribbean for a scientific expedition.

After an encounter in the area of the Bermuda Triangle with an unnatural green cloud, the group find themselves shipwrecked on a mysterious uncharted island from which they are unable to escape.

They encounter Varian (Jared Martin), initially disguised as an Arawak native, who is later revealed to be from the year 2230. A 23rd-century pacifist, musician and healer, Varian explains to the travelers that, like he and many before them, they have been caught in a space/time continuum where people from the past, present, future and from other worlds are trapped, co-existing on the island in a series of timezones.

The only way home can be found in a place called "Evoland", which lies "far to the rising sun". (It was indicated in interviews of the time that Evoland was also the name of the island.) The only way to travel between timezones is via invisible gateways that instantaneously transport individuals or groups from one zone to another.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Dr Acula]

I remember it being really cool at the time, but then again I was 8 years old!

[Bud Brewster]

[johnnybear]

I loved this show and was sad that it only lasted for ten episodes and one of them was never shown here in the UK by the BBC! Wish there had been more about how they could have escaped from that island in the Bermuda Triangle and how it might have affected their lives and ours as they all came from different times and places?
JB

[Bud Brewster]

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YouTube has several of the episodes at the link below, including the pilot.
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_____________ Fantastic Journey - full episodes


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[johnnybear]

Yes, the wife downloaded them onto blank DVDs for me last year but they are of varian quality! Notice how I wrote the name of the main character as played by Jared Martin there?
JB

[Pow]

TV Guide Review by Gerry Nadel.

The series is set on an island somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, that mysterious patch of ocean where ships have been disappearing at least since the time of Columbus. The disappearances have never been fully explained, but The Fantastic Journey proposes an "answer": there's a time warp, see, the island is right in the middle of it, and so, on the island, every time that ever was exists side by side with every time that will be.

Carl franklin, who plays a marine biologist, and youngster Ike Eisenmann are shipwrecked on an uncharted island and meet Willoway, an eccentric scientist stranded since the 1960s (played to the hilt by Roddy McDowall, who seems grateful to be out of his Planet of the Apes monkey suit), and also Varian (Jared Martin), a 23rd-century Futureman, with a "thought-focuser" (it looks like a transistorized tuning fork) which hypnotizes evildoers or immobilizes them but never so much as musses their hair.

Rounding out the cast is Leana (Katie Saylor), the requisite Lady in Distress to be rescued each week from bad guys.

And there's quite a range of bad guys, given all those time zones rubbed together. One week they're pirates, stuck on the island since the buccaneer days of the Spanish Main; the next week they're a tyrannical Super Society of the future.

The Fantastic Journey offers a little painless history, some easy science and a lot to dream upon. It's the stuff that kids can build fantasies on, they can learn a little while
they're at it.

Note from me: The reviewer for TV Guide liked this show. I did not. The stories were cliched science fiction tales we'd seen done much better. The show was more fantasy than science fiction; the kind of series Irwin Allen did in his career. The only thing I can agree with the reviewer is that the kids might like it. The adults will groan and roll their eyes if they have any taste.