11) STARLOST EPISODE GUIDE

Following on our March virtual meeting’s article about the creation of the ignominious, early-’70s, Canadian-made sci-fi program The Starlost, we offer this afternoon a brief episode guide! Star SF writer Harlan Ellison created the series but famously walked off the show before the first episode had even aired, unhappy with budget cuts, the niggling and nonsensical changes made by producers to his pilot script, and what he characterized as the dumbing down of his concept. The resulting series was not well received and quickly tanked, earning from TV critics and fans alike an “honoured” place in the pantheon of truly bad sci-fi TV shows!

Join us, as well, on our Zoom for discussion and video clips!

Title: Voyage of Discovery (Pilot Episode)

Written by Cordwainer Bird; Directed by Harvey Hart; Original Airdate, September 22, 1973

Devon is a young man who questions much about his small world, an Amish-like agrarian community called Cypress Corners. He loves Rachel, and she him, but according to the Elders, the “Creator” has ordained that she marry his friend Garth. Devon refuses to accept this, is accused of blasphemy, and later discovers that the “Creator” is, in fact, one of the Elder’s speaking through a voice machine. Devon realizes that the strict laws under which his people live are not those of the Creator at all, but simply the wishes of the deceitful Elders. He attempts to expose this truth but is chased into the hills and escapes capture through a mysterious door on which is marked “Beyond is Death!”

On the other side of the door Devon finds that Cypress Corners is but one of many “biospheres,” modules attached to a giant spaceship carrying the survivors of the dead planet Earth to a new home among the distant stars. However, some kind of accident has thrown this galactic Noah’s Ark off course and set the vessel on a fatal collision course with a “Class G solar star.” Yes, a solar star!

And so is set up the premise of the series.

Devon returns to Cypress Corners to tell of what he has discovered, but is silenced by the Elders and condemned to death. With a sympathetic Garth’s help, he escapes his holding cell. Garth implores him to run away, and to just leave Rachel alone, but Devon steals away into the night to fetch Rachel, and the couple escape through the door together, where Devon begins showing Rachel the astounding wonders of the ship. Meanwhile, Garth volunteers to follow after them and bring Rachel back home. He soon finds his quarry, but Rachel refuses to return with him to Cypress Corners. Garth reluctantly decides to join Devon and Rachel in their strange adventure.

These three form the heroic group that will explore the Ark every week, travelling from biosphere to biosphere, adventure to adventure, searching for a way to save the great ship.

Norman Klenman’s rewrite of Harlan Ellison’s original “Phoenix Without Ashes” teleplay was the shooting script used for this series opening episode. An unhappy Ellison had obliged producers to scrub his name from the credits as writer and substitute his notorious Cordwainer Bird pseudonym, which he employed whenever he was acutely chagrined at someone having severely messed with his work. This mocking pen name was used as Ellison’s series-creator credit, too, appearing boldly onscreen at the beginning of every episode, much to the displeasure of producers.

Title: Lazarus From the Mist (Episode 2)

Written by Douglas Hall and Don Wallace; Directed by Leo Orenstein; Original Airdate, September 29, 1973

Our trio locate a medical center and while Garth attempts to hold off a band of scruffy ruffians who live in the access tubes outside the facility, Devon and Rachel enter to bring one of the Ark’s designers and engineers out of cryonic suspension in hopes that he might know how to save the ship. These specialists of indispensable skill were preserved so that they could be brought back in future when needed. But the man they revive happens to be a communication’s specialist, not an engineer or pilot, and in any case was placed in cryonic sleep because he’d been afflicted with a deadly “radiation virus” that will kill him within a couple of hours now that he’s been awakened. They put him back in deep-freeze, never thinking, apparently, of trying to revive another of the individuals frozen there who might be better able to help them save the Ark.

Title: The Goddess Calabra (Episode 3)

Written by Martin Lager from a story by Ursula K. Le Guin; Directed by Harvey Hart; Original Airdate, October 6, 1973

Our heroes enter the Omicron biosphere, where they believe can be found information that will help them save the Ark, and are quickly intercepted by a squadron of guards whose attire suggests an amalgam of Roman centurion and glam rock cover band! Awestruck at the sight of Rachel, they kneel in adoration, believing her to be their Goddess, Calabra. Taken to Omicron’s governor, Rachel and her companions learn that this is a martial, all-male society. And the governor has designs on Rachel!

Title: The Pisces (Episode 4)

Written by Norman Klenman; Directed by Leo Orenstein; Original Airdate, October 13, 1973

The small scout ship Pisces returns to the Ark after completing a ten-year mission searching for habitable planets. But time displacement is at play, here; the Pisces has been away for over 400 years, Ark-time, and the commander and his crew are beginning to feel the effects of space senility!

Title: Children of Methuselah (Episode 5)

Written by Jonah Royston and George Ghent from a story by Jonah Royston; Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan; Original Airdate, October 20, 1973

Devon, Rachel, and Garth may have found the Ark’s back-up bridge! But they discover, instead, a crew on children manning a flight simulator. Problem is, the youngsters don’t realize this, believe they’ve actually been navigating the Ark, and dismiss Devon’s claim that the ship is damaged and off course!

Title: And Only Man is Vile (Episode 6)

Written by Shimon Wincelberg; Directed by Ed Richardson; Original Airdate, October 27, 1973

Entering bucolic “Leisure Village,” our Cypress Corners nomads are unaware that they have walked into a scientist’s cruel experiments regarding human behaviour! Garth falls for the scientist’s assistant, who has been manipulating him and the others for the purposes of the experiment.

Title: The Alien Oro (Episode 7)

Written by Mort Forer and Marion Waldman; Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan; Original Airdate, November 3, 1973

Star Trek’s Walter “Ensign Chekov” Koenig guest stars as the titular alien in this episode, an explorer from the planet Xar whose flying saucer crashes into the much larger Ark, stranding him aboard.

Devon, Rachel, and Garth discover that Oro has been cannibalizing the Ark for parts to rebuild his ship, and plans to take with him on his return to Xar the woman with whom Garth has fallen in love!

Title: Curcuit of Death (Episode 8)
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Written by Norman Klenman; Directed by Peter Levin; Original Airdate, November 10, 1973

Riffing on the popular film Fantastic Voyage (1966), Devon and Garth are miniaturized and join a scientist inside a critical microcircuit that must be repaired in order to prevent the Ark from blowing up!

Title: Gallery of Fear (Episode 9)

Written by Alfred Harris and George Ghent from a story by Alfred Harris; Directed by Ed Richardson and an uncredited Joseph L. Scanlan; Original Airdate, November 17, 1973

Keir Dullea returns to familiar territory in this episode, his Devon character compelled to pull the plug on a powerful A.I. which has created weird illusions, including a strange art gallery and its beautiful curator!

Title: Mr. Smith of Manchester (Episode 10)

Written by Arthur Heinemann and Norman Klenman from a story by Arthur Heinemann; Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan and an uncredited Ed Richardson; Original Airdate, November 24, 1973

Our heroes are brought in chains before Mr. Smith, president of the heavily industrialized, militaristic biosphere Manchester, who suspects them to be enemy infiltrators or saboteurs. Our heroes must contend with a mad, paranoid, harsh, industry-über-alles, gun-happy society of savage atrocities, lies, deception, betrayal, threats, murder, a Monty Pythonesque method of dealing with the dead, and even a gun fight and gas warfare before they are able to slip safely out of this nightmarish dome unseen.

Title: Astro-Medics (Episode 11)

Written by Paul Schnieder and Martin Lager; Directed by George McCowan; Original Airdate, December 1, 1973

Devon is seriously injured pulling Garth out of a dangerous situation and an orbiting medical ship is dispatched to render aid. But the lead doctor seems more interested in lending assistance to a stricken alien vessel nearby than he is in saving Devon, until Garth, feeling responsible for having carelessly endangered his friend, takes drastic action!

Title: The Implant People (Episode 12)

Written by Helen French and Martin Lager; Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan; Original Airdate, December 8, 1973

A monarch’s power-hungry servant plots to rule their biosphere, in which the poor starve and the elites are forced to suffer implants that inflict pain! When he takes Rachel and Garth hostage, will the elites find the courage to step up?

Title: The Return of Oro (Episode 13)

Written by Alex C. James; Directed by Francis Chapman; Original Airdate, December 15, 1973

Oro returns, offering to repair the Ark’s faulty systems and fly the great ship to Xar, where he proposes to settle all of the Ark’s people, claiming the planet is much as Earth was. But Devon discovers he is lying and must engage Oro in a robot-monitored debate to the death!

Title: Farthing’s Comet (Episode 14)

Written by Douglas Hall; Directed by Ed Richardson; Original Airdate, December 22, 1973

The Ark’s chief astronomer had changed the ship’s course to closer inspect a comet, but now, with cometary debris pummeling the vessel, Devon must make an EVA to repair the thrusters that can move the Ark to safety!

Title: The Beehive (Episode 15)

Written by Norman Klenman; Directed by Bill Davis and an uncredited George McCowan; Original Airdate, December 29, 1973

Giant bees! Okay, I’ll give you a little more information than that! A dome dedicated to a tropical garden and lab cultivates millions of bees to pollinate the plants on humanity’s eventual new home world, but the head scientist is breeding giant, mutant bees with the ability to take over human minds!

Title: Space Precinct (Episode 16)

Written by Martin Lager; Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan; Original Airdate, January 5, 1974

Garth decides to go back home and says goodbye to his companions, only to find himself recruited by the Ark’s police force, who are working with police from an alien system to avert an interplanetary war. Their efforts, however, are being thwarted from within!

This seemed to me like a storyline that might lead to a spin-off series featuring Garth as a space cop, but it proved the last episode to be broadcast before the show was unceremoniously cancelled.

Two more episodes were in the pipeline at the time, “God That Died” and “People in the Dark,” but of course, where never produced.

The Starlost is on YouTube! View all 16 Starlost episodes here: Starlost Playlist

And, listen to episodes of the Fusion Patrol Podcast to hear co-hosts Ben and Eugene scoff at the show, review and ridicule each and every Starlost episode, and in general chortle derisively at the series: Fusion Control Podcast, Starlost

Explore the rest of the Fusion Patrol site for more entertaining critiques of science fiction television and film from Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 to The Questor Tapes and Forbidden Planet to Man from Atlantis and the original Battlestar: Galactica: fusionpatrol.com