DEPARTMENT S - Season 01, Episode 01 - "6 Days" (1969)

Tonight's Way-Out Wednesday Feature is from the 1969 British TV series called "Department S!"

 "Department S" was on the air for two years, and Peter Wyngarde's character Jason King was popular enough to have his own "Jason King" spinoff show for another two seasons after "Department S" went off the air!

 Joel Fabiani has the same birthday as me, Spetember 28, and among other interesting things, he was married to Katherine (Stepford Wives) Ross for two years in the early 60's! Joel wasn't British! He was born in California, and after "Department S" he returned to America and has acted on TV for many, many years!

The third member of this team is Rosemary Nicols as the adorable Annabelle Hurst!

It's interesting how many different roles Rosemary has had with names that are different variations on Ann like: Ann, Anne, Diana, Annabelle, Anna, and Angela, and the name of a TV show where her name was Sheila was called "The Animal Hotel!"

"6 Days" was the first episode of the first season of "Department S."

 It's called "6 Days" because a routine flight from Karachi to London which should have only taken a couple of hours has taken six days, and nobody on board realizes how much time has passed for some reason! Seems like it's going to be a "Twilight Zone" episode, but it's not!

 As far as the passengers are concerned, they just had a nice nap!!

 How would you like to land only to read this headline about yourself?

WTF!?

 Now for a word from our sponsor!!

 Well, that's odd, all the passengers and crew now have a strange bruise on their arms!

Jobs like this deserve special attention! Time to call out the top guns, 

"Department S!"

 I don't think that's a real plane, but I think it's a cool shot!

 You've got this kind of action going on from both sides!

 Annabelle gets busted snooping around in this weirdo's room, so she uses this interesting ruse to get herself out of it! She puts on a blonde wig and strips down to her undies, and pretends to be a girlfriend/hooker as it were, and waltzes on out of the building!

"Department S" is a fascinating show that Lord Litter turned me on to, and then, he even went one better, and found this episode on YouTube, so you can watch it too ! Enjoy!

Now I'm just waiting to find some "Jason King" episodes somewhere that don't cost a small fortune!!

The composer of the music for "Department S" was the Maestro Edwin Astley, who we've mentioned here many times for all his tremendous scores for scores of movies we dig, like "Womaneater," "Devil Girl From Mars," the 1962 version of "Phantom Of The Opera," "The Giant Behemoth," etc. etc.
Edwin's work on "Department S" swings, and here's a short sequence from the ending credits to give you the idea!
I really need to get myself a copy of this soundtrack! 

I'll bet it's delicious!

SPACE: 1999 - 'Space Brain' / Season 1 Episode 21 - 1976

Here we go with another week at The Dungeon. This time we'll take a look at this episode from that great TV series back in the day. The story goes... Alien gyphs appear on all of Alpha's screens, so, Commander Koenig sends an Eagle to investigate. The Eagle is lost and the pilot's mind is taken over by a huge alien Space Brain, using him as a channel to make the Alphans do its bidding.

When an Eagle goes out to investigate a disturbance near their Moon Base, it encounters a giant Space Brain! Then, the Eagle is covered by some weird foam and crashes back on the Moon Base.

Professor Bergman scans a strange fragment found at the crash site for clues as to what it is.

Here's the pilot whose mind has been taken over by the Brain, he ends up causing lots of problems until he's stunned while trying to reprogram the main computer!

I wonder if the message is clear enough here?!

Here are Koenig and Bergman inspecting the alien foam sample they have, shades of CALTIKI and SPACE MASTER X-7...

Commander Koenig tries to use an Eagle to stop the foam invasion, but, ends up crashing his ship into the Moon dust!

The Space Brain closes in on Moon Base Alpha as the Alphans prepare for the foam invasion.

As the Brain gets close, all Hell breaks loose and the rooms are filled with the foam that looks a lot like laundry detergent!

Okay, wow, who has the number for the Maytag Service Man?!!

It looks like the Alphans are losing their battle with the bubbles, until...

The Space Brain finally passes by the Moon, and...

The foam starts disappearing and everyone gives a big sigh of relief, phew! There you go, now, check in again Wednesday for more, from... The Dungeon!!

THE TRIPODS - Season One, Episode One - BBC (1984)

"The Tripods" was a series of books written by John Christopher in the 60's. In 1984, the BBC made it into a 30 minute TV series. Although available now on DVD, I don't think it ever aired on American TV, or if it did, I sure as Hell didn't know about it, but then there was a lot I didn't know, after all, it was 1984!
From the looks of it so far, it seems like George Orwell was off by about 33 years, but that's a different story!

Welcome to another Saturday Night Special in the The Dungeon! Our short feature tonight is Season one, Episode one of  "The Tripods!"

Something is definitely not right here! Instead of 100 years into the future, it looks like 100 years into the past! So this is what the future is going to look like, nice and serene!

"But now the time has come, and there's no place to run, time has come today!" - The Chambers Brothers.
 High noon is when the party starts in this village!

It's Jack's turn, he just turned 16, and he's more than happy to make the needed modifications!

Here they come!!!

"The Tripods" are the product of some very early CGI work, and are quite impressive!

Jack is hoisted up into the giant robot! I guess "The Tripods" weren't advanced enough to have beams!

And while "The Tripods" do their business on Jack, the rest of the village has a picnic until Jack is returned a new man!

Jack has been capped and will never be capable of free thinking again, because as "The Tripods," and we all know, thinking just causes problems and gets people in trouble! 

Life is much simpler and better this way!

Let the party begin!!
The music in "The Tripods" was written by Mr. Ken Freeman who has kept very busy over the last 31 years with just two popular British hospital TV dramas, working as composer, and in the music department of 450 episodes of "Casualty," and another 608 episodes of "Holby City!" Wow!!

I like this shot!

Cousins Henry and Will Parker are not too sure if they go along with this whole capping thing, especially since their time is coming up soon!  Henry on the left was played by Jim Baker who stopped acting after this show, and John Shackley as Will on the right who acted a bit more and eventually quit the biz and moved to Chile.

The outcasts of this society, the uncapped vagrants are always trying to cause problems! They don't understand that Tripod Lobotomies are a good thing!

In a nutshell, after much deliberation, the boys decide to run away from the village and find the White Mountains the vagrants have told them about, where people still think freely without fear of retort!

But it's not going to be an easy journey because The Tripods are always watching!

I'd love to have a copy of this 7" single by Ken Freeman, but they are a minimum of  20 bucks or more when you can find one.

The cover illustration of this German version of the book is really cool, which reminds me, once again, I'd like to say Danke to our buddy in Berlin, Lord Litter, who has been doing a lot of work in the background, helping me find material lately! If you've got some time, and you want to hear some different music, then do yourself a favor and head on over and check it out!

"The Tripods" was on for two seasons, but the story was a trilogy, so it never had a proper ending! Finishing the series would be a good project for somebody to take on. It would be a moneymaker no doubt for somebody with lots of money and no ideas!!! I'd like to see it anyway!