THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

It's extremely amusing that when Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) meets new romantic interest Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), she accuses of having a "practiced apathy." Apathy perfectly describes the third and last Christopher Nolan Bat-film. It's the work of a cynical filmmaker with no interest in the mythos he's exploiting for fame and glory, and when RISES is compared to either BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT, it's hard to imagine this weak effort being anyone's favorite Nolan-Batflick--not even Christopher Nolan's.

So we pick up some time after DARK KNIGHT. That film started out by positing that Batman had managed to whittle down the forces of Gotham's underworld. For RISES, Nolan simply flips the script. Now crime has been all but neutralized by the regular cops, thanks to a miraculous piece of legislation, "the Harvey Dent Act." Only Commissioner Gordon and an essentially retired Caped Crusader know that this popular idol had feet of clay, though the false idol of Harvey Dent empowered the cops so that a bat-vigilante was no longer needed. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) clearly has a guilty conscience for having helped perpetrated the Big Lie of Harvey Dent's sainthood. Wayne, though, seems content to molder around his mansion, much to the disapproval of Alfred (Michael Caine), who wants the retired superhero to pursue a life of marriage and baby-making. But Wayne's only passion, more or less redirected from crimefighting, has been to plunge all of his company's R&D money into a fusion-energy project, in part also sponsored by rich lady Miranda Tate. 

However, though one of Wayne's father-figures wants him to pursue the course of pipe-and-slippers, his other surrogate dad, Lucius Fox, encourages a return to crimefighter-mode. So does a proxy for a surrogate-son/Boy Wonder, a twenty-something cop named "Robin" Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who's figured out Wayne's deep dark secret. But as always, it's the bad guys who call forth the Batman.

Some forgotten film-reviewer of the 1970 DIRTY HARRY film made the incisive point that the regular cops were fine for dealing with regular criminals, but for super-criminals, the world needed a super-cop. Two super-crooks (not counting yet another piddling appearance by a road-company version of The Scarecrow) come to town not to duel with Batman but to ruin Bruce Wayne. (Alfred doesn't know the new villains' intentions when he castigates Wayne for returning to the superhero game, but the butler's ire mirrors the liberal director's pansy squeamishness toward vigilantes.) At any rate, a brand-new version of Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) steals Wayne's fingerprints, which are used to beggar the billionaire by none other than mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy). The latter fiend, equipped with a Darth Vader breathing-apparatus, resembles both the city-destroying Ra's Al Ghul (who was one of Bane's employers) and the Joker (in his cheerful desire to upend Gotham's financial structure). Oh, and there's a fourth villain in stealth guise, for Miranda Tate is really Talia Al Ghul, daughter of the assassin-lord who gave a wayward, guilty plutocrat the idea of becoming a bat. 

Since Ra's in the first film was a poor excuse for the comics-version, it's no surprise that the Demon's Daughter is similarly underwhelming. Bane in his original appearance was a stupid villain, but Tom Hardy's performance elevates the character slightly. However, the schtick from the comics, in which the villain breaks the hero's back, after which the latter just gets better later on-- is still lame. Nolan's mediocrity, though, knows no limits in his ruination of Catwoman. Hathaway gives her terrible character a game try, but a few decent fight-scenes don't make this Princess of Plunder anything but a wuss. Her only motive for robbery is to pursue a method of erasing her criminal past-- a redo of a similar trope from DARK KNIGHT-- and she betrays Batman to Bane with only minimal regrets. Nolan's Catwoman, as much as his Batman, is defined by what I previously called negative compensation: both are not pursuing positive ends but are fleeing the ghosts of their pasts. Not surprisingly, Nolan, after having given Bruce Wayne two previous drippy love-interests, can't even come close to getting the allure of Catwoman.

So it's another expensive Bat-fake, with carefully crafted (but empty) dialogue, some big FX-scenes at the climax, and a conclusion that does not show the Dark Knight "rising" in any way. i guess Nolan got what he wanted out the Bat-franchise, for he went on to a lot of big, bloated Hollywood projects, none of which I liked. I've accused Nolan of holding a Marxist sympathy for the criminals of his three Bat-films, but his investment in villainy may be more personal. His theft of the Bat-franchise certainly indicates that for him, crime did pay.   

      

                

BEASTMASTER, SEASON 2 (2000-01)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, metaphysical, sociological*

Compared to Season One, Two evinces more of an elegaic sense, a sense of changing realities and shifting allegiances. But one wonders if this was the original plan, before any shooting began, or if the writers were subconsciously reacting to the departures of some of the key supporting players, and the addition of new ones.

One major addition, which extends to Season Three as well, is the introduction of a potential romantic interest for Dar, who'd lost his lifemate at the end of Season One. Warrior-woman Arina (Marjean Holden) hails from another region-- maybe even another dimension-- but she like Dar has lost her people. Her purpose in her first couple of appearances remains vague, but after a time she becomes an employee of Season Two's "big bad." In due course, though, Arina is sufficiently inspired by the noble altruism of Dar and Tao to join them in more heroic endeavors.

Some of the early episodes of Two suggest that the previous season's main villain, King Zad, represents a fading approach to the acquisition of power: that of simply unleashing hordes of killers to scour the land. Zad's savages, the Terrons, get some substantial competition from a new band of warriors, the Nords, whose leader is supposedly more sophisticated than Zad.    

The more sophisticated tyrant is King Voden (David Paterson), who approaches conquest with a more deliberate, considered air. He's a master schemer rather than a warlord, and one of his big schemes involves taking over the city of Xinca, the home of Tao's Eiron people. Another plot is to suborn Dar's power, to make the Beastmaster turn his animal allies into Voden's shock troops. The episode "Rage" gives Voden something of a psychological backstory. He was one of two princes of the Nord people, but his brother Bakhtiar was the older son of Nord queen Margret, and thus first in line for kingship. Much like cunning Loki playing games with the forthright Thor, Voden taunts Bakhtiar so much that the prince becomes consumed with murderous tendencies. Bakhtiar's mother, wanting to save her favorite son, appeals to an old lover-- none other than the acidulous Ancient One-- to erase his memory and to enchant him so that he'll change into a beast, a puma, when stricken with the urge to murder. Naturally, Dar and Tao intervene to solve the problems of Bakhtiar and Margret. But since the showrunners didn't have any concern with those characters except to show Voden's treachery, both of them disappear.

The Ancient One has his own shakeup. He finally gets sick of "Sorceress #1" (Monika Schnarre) becoming invested in the drama of human lives, so he imprisons her in amber, and replaces her with Sorceress #2 (Dylan Bierk). However, #2 is just as much a human-booster, and she disappears at the end of Season Two also, while Sorceress #1 returns in that final season.

Season 2 also bids farewell to Dar's quixotic patron, the forest-demon Curupira (Emilie de Ravin), who seems to have picked up a mild fancy for her human servant. However, Dar becomes the unwitting target of a demoness chick-fight, for the water-demon Iara (Sam Healy) wants Dar as a lover. Iara wins the contest, exiling Curupira from the BEASTMASTER world, but by the end of Season Two, Iara also fades from said domain.      

All of this character-shuffling makes for pedestrian stories at first, and sometimes the writers work in mythological references that don't track well. "Golgotha" is the title of a jejune episode in which Dar breaks up a sacrificial cult. No person or place in the episode shares the name of the hill on which Christ was sacrificed. So apparently the writer just tossed in that reference because it sounded lofty and significant, even though the sacrifice of Christ, even to a non-believer, is functionally distinct from pagan sacrificial rituals. 

Then three scripts ascend into the realm of high-mythicity, all co-written by one Tony DiFranco-- and all three following one another in broadcast order-- almost as if once everything got sorted out, the writers got more venturesome. The 15th episode, "Centaurs." starts it off. Though BEASTMASTER is set in a world divorced from human history, it's still a mortal realm, and thus capable of being invaded by the denizens of more primeval realms. Two beings from such a realm, a male and female archer both mounted on horses, escape a cataclysm, and for once, they're the ones who pick a quarrel with humans. The archers Rax (female) and Sagitto (male, patently named after Sagittarius) start liberating horses from the warriors of King Voden, which naturally causes Voden to react badly. Dar and Tao seek to help the archers, who turn out to be bonded to their horses in such a way that they and their mounts can morph into centaur-forms. Voden, on learning the centaurs' secret, seeks to bring them under his control.

"Fifth Element"-- Dar and Tao accidentally release Annubis, a spirit of chaos (Bruce Spense), from the confinement placed upon him by the Ancient One in primeval times. Instantly the powerful deity wants to plunge the existing world into chaos, first by changing Tao into a dog-man (supposedly to make Tao resemble the god's former pet, Cerberus) and then causing torrential rains to pervade their world. Even serpent-woman Iara, now in charge of the natural world, can't stand against Annubis' mastery of the four elements, but Dar can, if he solves the riddle of "the fifth element." The mythological names are poorly chosen, but the trope of a deity who simply wants to eradicate the world to start over is mythically strong.

"A Terrible Silence"-- Iara abandons subtlety and seeks to make Dar her leman, but he refuses. Like frustrated Ishtar to Gilgamesh, Iara curses her servant. In this case, because Iara inherited all of Curupira's powers, Iara can strip Dar of his Doctor Doolittle powers. This, however, causes the entire natural world to fall into chaos, discommoding even the Ancient One and the second sorceress. Dar must complete a great task in order to regain his abilities.

But after those three tales, the show returns to relatively simple formulas-- even other episodes written by DiFranco. Arina returns after being absent for several stories but becomes more of a regular in the last season. And despite the Ancient One's prophecies, to the effect that Zad was doomed to fade away, he triumphs over King Voden, who brief reign as "big bad" comes to an untimely end--after which Zad takes on a new role in the third season.   

       

       

HULK VS (2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Arguably, following the conclusion of MCU's Phase Three, the Hulk was treated even more shabbily than Thor. However, for whatever reason Marvel's animation division didn't stint on exploiting the Green Goliath's name value, and even relatively late projects like HULK: WHERE MONSTERS DWELL and the AGENTS OF SMASH series look much better than sad live-action bile like SHE-HULK. That said, of the two short features comprising HULK VS, appearing the year after the exemplary INCREDIBLE HULK movie, is all that impressive. 

In HULK VS. THOR, two of the Thunder God's perennial opponents, Loki and The Enchantress, whisk Bruce Banner to Asgard. There Loki separates the Hulk persona from Banner and sets the Green Goliath on Asgard, with Loki himself pulling the Hulk's strings. Meanwhile, the evil duo consigns Banner to the realm of the death-goddess Hela.

The big problem with this routine outing is that for the menace to Asgard to be credibe, Bannerless Hulk must be a juggernaut who's far beyond Thor's capacity to defeat-- and that means that the video has to downgrade Thor. We're not really watching "Hulk vs Thor," because in every encounter, Hulk kicks Thor's ass-- and where's the fun in that? The video might've been titled, "Hulk vs. Asgard," except that the supreme power in the realm, Mighty Odin, is conveniently sleeping the Odinsleep during the crisis.

Thor does win the contest in a sense, for he browbeats Loki into chasing down the spirit of Banner in Hel, and convincing Hela (who is Loki's daughter this time round) to merge Banner with Hulk. This returns a measure of sanity to the rampaging goliath, and he goes back home, while Loki gets to suffer his daughter's less-than-tender mercies for a time. Other items of interest: (1) warrior-woman Sif gets a solo attack on Greenie, and scores a few good blows, (2) Enchantress is in love with Thor and resents the hell out of Sif, though the witch-woman seems okay with the possibility of Thor getting killed thanks to Loki's scheme, and (3) as in the later TALES OF ASGARD video, Asgard looks pretty good here.

In contrast, though HULK VS WOLVERINE is no deeper in terms of symbolic discourse, it's a helluva lot more fun. 

According to the continuity mentioned in the commentary, this tale is Wolverine's first encounter with Old Jade-Jaws, preceding a second encounter chronicled in the series WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN. The feisty Canadian still works for his native government and barely knows anything about the Hulk, much less the never-mentioned X-Men. Hulk is suspected of destroying a Canadian town, so Wolverine, aka "Weapon X," is sent on a search-and-destroy mission. 

However, the real malfeasants are a team of four villains, three of whom are infamous Wolverine-foes. Lady Deathstrike, Saber-Tooth, and Deadpool are the infamous three, while the fourth is some low-grade X-thug, Omega Red, whom I do not know and who contributes next to nothing. The four super-fiends now work for the Weapon X facility, the same one that gave Wolverine his adamantium additions, and not only did they destroy the town, they're out to capture the Hulk. It seems their boss at the facility, the otherwise unnamed "Professor," wants to make more Hulks as part of an over-ambitious ordnance scheme.

The thing that makes this featurette so good is sharp dialogue and characterization. Wolverine is a testy hero, none too charitable with "weakling Banner," and the three good villains are also consistent with the traits of their comic-book originals. Deadpool's lines contribute most of the humor and are easily as clever as the best jokes from the live-action Fox films. It's practically one half-hour- long fight-scene and WOLVERINE'S take on the "Marvel heroes always fight each other" trope is one of the best I've ever seen in animation.

       

THOR: TALES OF ASGARD (2011)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

A few years after Marvel's THOR comic became a good seller for the company, creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby instituted a backup feature, "Tales of Asgard," which also lasted a year or two before the THOR feature took over the whole book. The backup gave artist Jack Kirby the chance to focus only upon Thor's hometown of Asgard, doing his best to convey Fosterian magic and grandeur within the space of seven pages an issue.

The MCU's live-action THOR series, which began the same year this DTV was issued, barely attempted pageantry in its depictions of the Norse wonder-world. TALES doesn't manage to come close to Kirby's passionate depiction of a universe governed by magic and martial prowess. However, TALES makes a sincere effort, and on the whole looks pretty good in terms of visuals.

Now, the 2011 live-action THOR largely rejects the Norse "don't die in your bed" ethos, TALES follows that same course in large part, pushing a pacifist message. However, because this DTV is depicting Thor as a young male god seeking to prove himself within a male culture, the script doesn't quite reject all aspects of masculinity. However, there remains an orientation toward a judgmental feminism, incarnated in this video's concept of the warrior-woman Sif-- though nothing as toxic as the MCU would later embrace.

Thor's support-cast members-- adoptive brother Loki, and the Scandinavian Three Musketeers known as Fandral, Hogun, and Volstaag-- are also younger and greener, and Loki at this point is a novice schemer, still on good terms with his boisterous brother. But none of them burn to prove themselves as Thor does. However, Daddy Odin's noble brow is perpetually bent with the weight of keeping Asgard's peace with their long-time enemies the Frost Giants, so he can't be bothered figuring out a rite of passage for the young Thunder God. But there is a sort of "impossible quest" that Asgardian males are allowed to undertake, in order to satisfy their desire for adventure. Odin's troubles start when his son takes on the quest and comes back with a dangerous prize.

There's a hard-to-follow backstory about how the Frost Giants almost wiped out the Dark Elves. Apparently the Elves were allied to Asgard, but Odin's warriors didn't come to the Elves' defense for whatever reasons. So the latter made a pact with the fire-demon Surtur, which risked the survival of all the Nine Worlds. The Frost Giants annihilated most of the Dark Elves anyway, and one of the survivors, Algrim, took a position as a court advisor to Odin. However, Algrim's position in Asgard is not unlike an emigre from South Vietnam taking shelter in the US: deep down, there's a sense of betrayal by an ally who didn't live up to his part of the bargain. Thor seeks to discover the lost Sword of Surtur, but his masculine bull-headedness imperils Asgard from both the covert menace of Algrim and the overt one of the war-happy Frost Giants. In the end, Thor learns humility, at least until it comes time for him to relearn a parallel lesson in the 2011 live-action flick.

While in the regular MCU movies Sif is just One of the Boys, here she has some sort of vague grudge against the males of Asgard, and she has an affiliation with a tribe of female warriors who live apart from Asgard proper. At least some of her testiness stems from having the hots for Young Thor and thus expecting him to be more than an entitled heir. This isn't much of a conflict, even for a B-plot. Still, there's nothing actively bad about TALES-- while all of the "live" THOR films suffer from major narrative problems.                           

V: THE FINAL BATTLE (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

At the end of my review of the original V miniseries, I described how Kenneth Johnson, creator of the V franchise, had contributed ideas to the 1984 three-part sequel. However, he parted ways with NBC and distanced himself from the project by letting his work be billed under the protest-pseudonym "Lillian Weezer." 

I also noted that it's impossible to know if Johnson's V-vision would have been better than what NBC put together with its own producers and their director of choice, Richard T. Heffron. Now, while I don't find in Heffron's repertoire as many famed accomplishments as I find in Johnson's, I did see a lot of the former's TV and theatrical works, and he certainly was no hack. I particularly admired a telefilm he directed regarding the Nez Perce tragedy, I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER.

One big advantage Heffron had was that Johnson's 1983 story supplied all the necessary setup for the Visitors' stealth invasion of Earth, thus eliminating much of the need for exposition in the sequel. But one great improvement is that Heffron's writing-staff pared down a lot of the extraneous characters from the '83 series. Additionally, whereas the main characters of Julie and Mike (Faye Grant, Marc Singer) proved a little banal in the first film, the addition of a third central character, Ham Tyler (Michael Ironside), provided a greater sense of conflict. Unlike civilians Julie and Mike, Ham joined the rebels as an experienced combat veteran, and he wasn't shy about expressing his opinions on how the resistance should be run, or even openly defying his "old pal" Mike. 

An equally strong parallel idea focused more upon the villainous head of the Visitor operations, Diana (Jane Badler). Technically in both serials, a male alien named John (Richard Herd) held the power of command over the mission, but Diana received much more attention in the '83 two-parter, and BATTLE found even more ways to play up the feminine fiend. In fact, she too had to deal with internecine troubles, since a superior officer, one Pamela (Sarah Douglas), comes to Earth to take over the project. However, Diana shows her propensity for super-villainy by simply assassinating her commander.

That's not to say BATTLE is perfect. Despite fewer characters, there are a lot of disposable subplots, giving the three segments a choppy feeling. However, the best subplot from the '83 serial-- that Earth-girl Robin giving birth to a hybrid-- receives strong execution. In fact, the Interplanetary Mama gives birth to two such hybrids, and Part 2 shows a particular moment of horror when Robin's birth of a human-looking girl infant, Elizabeth, is followed by a reptilian goblin springing from her uterus. However, Part 3 saves the heroes the difficulty of putting down the goblin-child, for it perishes by exposure to Earth-bacteria-- which development in turn gives the Earthlings the chance to show the Visitors that visiting-time is over.

There's also a decent arc for the quirky "good alien" Willie, played in a modest, self-effacing manner by the future Freddy Kruger. Compared to the Johnson narrative, BATTLE has much less pontificating about a return of fascism, and more visceral action. Even the Julie character, usually not seen in the field, gets to shoot down bad aliens with her laser pistol. Heffron and company also drop one of the plot-threads suggested in '83, that the Earthpeople might seek to summon some of the ETs who'd been enemies to the Visitors-- which was a terrible idea, even though it would have fit Johnson's labored WWII parallel. It's far more satisfying to see the Earthlings win the BATTLE on their own.

            

GARTER COLT (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*  

Along with 1967's LOLA COLT, the similarly named GARTER COLT stands as one of a very small handful of Euro-westerns starring tough female protagonists. Unfortunately, it also may be the worst of that small group.

The script shows traveling gambler Lulu "Garter" Colt (Nicoletta Machiavelli) as sharing the distanced manner of standard spaghetti male protagonists: emotionally reserved and super-competent. However, Lulu is never interesting, even when she shows off her skills with a pistol, routing stagecoach robbers or protecting a young maiden from rapine. Part of the problem may be that Lulu herself is never in real danger. Her projection of coolness is interrupted when she falls for a French soldier involved in the war between Emperor Maximillian and Juarez, but the lover is killed by a bandit named "Red" (Claudio Camaso).

Though most of the screenplay is filled with jokes and absurdities that go nowhere, the one thing the writers seem to be passionate about is the Red character, who is as "hot" as Lulu is "cold." For once a spaghetti villain has his own romantic arc, for throughout GARTER Red pursues a spicy young lass, Rosy, whom he may have already bedded. Rosy mostly resists Red in favor of a younger swain, but the movie's only real amusement inheres in her vacillations as to which lover to choose. Red tries to persuade her to choose him by tying Rosy above a boiling-hot, muddy spring. Also, he situates an innocent little boy upon her shoulders, so that the kid will die with Rosy if she falls in. The setup doesn't make much sense, but it's relatively original. Lulu comes along at the right minute and propels Red into the boiling spring, which kills the fiend on the spot.

Despite various ludicrous occurrences in the wandering narrative, the only thing that rises to the level of a "fallacious figment" concerns a talking parrot. After some byplay with the bird seeming only to imitate whatever human speech it hears, the creature gets caught between two gun-happy parties-- at which point the parrot cries out, "I'm neutral!"              

V; THE MINI-SERIES (1983)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Though I read IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, the Sinclair Lewis book that purportedly inspired Kenneth Johnson's two-part TV miniseries, I remember nothing about said novel. Johnson's V is more memorable than Lewis, thanks to those spiffy Visitor uniforms. Frankly, though, I think Johnson's main inspiration might have been those morale-boosting war movies of the early 1940s. Clearly, having the heroic rebels combat the tyrants by writing "V"-- as in "Victory"-- over the tyrants' posters was an explicit callback to Hollywood iconography.

That said, Johnson's story of a race of aliens who invade Earth using false promises and blandishments more than advanced weapons offers only a paper-thin critique of fascism. The Visitors also pose as human-like ETs clad in bright red outfits, but in due time the good guys learn that they're all lizard-like beings whose scaled bodies are concealed under plastic "human" skin-- a fairly clumsy gambit, though Johnson makes the most of various moments when someone tears away the false flesh. That the Visitors want to pirate Earth's water for the benefit of their dying homeworld is a standard enough SF-trope. However, Johnson really pours on the corn by claiming that these denizens of an alien environment just can't wait to chow down on homo sapiens. Not too many SF-authors would favor the idea that ETs from one world could even tolerate organic sustenance from another one. In addition, even though all of Earth is placed in the position of Europe under the sway of the Axis Powers during WWII, the most villainous member of the evil Visitors, deputy leader "Diana" (Jane Badler), is played by an American actress affecting a British accent.

Johnson introduces about twenty Earth-characters who respond in various ways to the wheedling impositions of the Visitors, though naturally most of them function as support-characters. The two who get the most attention are biologist Julie (Faye Grant) and reporter Mike (Marc Singer), who eventually uncover the awful truth about the aliens. Almost half of the mini-series consists of various sketched-out characters reacting to the Visitors' advent, and almost none of them are compelling as characters. I suppose I must acknowledge that one of those characters is a Jewish survivor of the WWII concentration camps, though this seems an indulgence on Johnson's part, given that the Visitors are not concerned with human racial or ethnic divisions. But one female teen, Robin (Blair Tefkin), has the misfortune to sleep with a handsome male visitor. This establishes a subplot about the first spawn of a human/Visitor mating, one that extends into the follow-up 1984 miniseries. In addition, a pre-Freddy Robert Englund shows up as one of a small number of Visitors who oppose the vicious plots of their kindred. These covert resisters eventually make common cause with the Earth-rebels, though again, not until the sequel series does their alliance become important. 

Though none of the actors are given the chance to work nuance into their performances, athletic Marc Singer, one year after his first turn as "The Beastmaster," keeps the action level high enough to counter the melodrama. The series was popular enough to generate a sequel the next year, on which Kenneth Johnson worked briefly before falling out with NBC executives. Thus whatever script-ideas Johnson contributed to the sequel were controlled by other authorities and not representative of his creative priorities. Johnson later authored a prose novel about how he felt the show should have progressed. As of this writing, though, it's impossible to say if his direction would have better or worse than what followed the original two-part series.