The 1970 - 1971 television season was exciting for this then child: Gerry and Silvia Anderson's first live-action series, UFO,was the flagship.
The CTV (Canadian Television) network ran the series here in Canada, and the network's flagship station, CFTO, in Toronto, was where the dial turned to on our Zenith colour television set. My parents watched, too. It was what we would now refer to as "appointment television".
UFO was what now would be considered to be very adult material for that time. For some reason the Brits were ahead of us in some departments on this side of the pond. They would not be afraid to address matters such as a death in the family, or family dysfunction (like a marriage falling apart). Wait a minute... it's called "UFO". There was the space stuff, of course, and the show's premise of a hostile alien force attacking us could be exciting, but the best episodes were not space-based — believe it or not. "Sub-Smash", "A Question of Priorities", and "Confetti Check A-O.K." are standouts. A few years ago I watched those three episodes, along with a few others, for the first time in decades, and was convinced.
Unfortunately for the fans, UFO lasted just one season; totaling 26 stories.
Things went downhill after that for the Andersons as a husband and wife production team. Their later interstellar effort, Space: 1999 (1975 - 1977), was a big step down — mainly in the characterization, acting, and scripting departments — from what they had achieved with UFO. (With Space, somehow, any sense of fun had been left outside the airlock.)
The good news is the couple survived as separate producing entities: Gerry, after the 'stigma' of Space: 1999 and a few years of barely getting by financially — over the years he had pumped much British pound sterling into the family home but the real estate market crashed in England and he owed a lot of money in alimony — he eventually teamed up with German producer Christopher Burr, thereby relaunching a television production career; Sylvia enjoyed a long career, three decades worth, as a London-based talent scout for HBO.
Doctor Who(Jon Pertwee's first opening title version, 1970-73)
OECA (Ontario Educational Communications Authority), now referred to as TV Ontario, ran adverts in the summer of 1976 announcing their Fall scheduling of a British programme from my childhood, Doctor Who — which at that point had not yet stopped production, eventually wrapping in 1989; a twenty-six year BBC production run.
As a very young child living at RCAF Station Greenwood, Nova Scotia, I saw the first "Dalek" story; its affect on me was profound enough that I never forgot kneeling in front of the Admiral monochrome television set and being: scared!... by the BBC via the CBC. (Those panning eyestalk cameras lining the Dalek city's hallways gave me the creeps.)
Back to OECA.
Starting that September I was there in front of the tube every Saturday evening. That was my introduction to the third doctor, Jon Pertwee, and because of the network's two-year Who run featuring the time and space "dandy", he was, and remains, my favourite of all the actors to play and interpret "the Doctor". (In September of 1978, OECA switched to the Tom Baker DoctorWho stories, which had begun running four years earlier on the show's home network.)
Of special note is the classic theme tune composed by Ron Grainer; what must be noted is Dalia Derbyshire's "arrangement", an electronic transcription, really, from the composer's score paper. This theme burns into one's electronics.
While the original Doctor Who's production crews lacked today's wonderful technologies, they somehow managed to tell some terrifically entertaining stories. (So you know, dear reader, you are not imagining my cynicism.)
Every Saturday at 6pm, this then young geek, sat in front of the living room's 10-inch B&W Sony, glowing along in phase with the set's cathode ray tube. During the following week's run of high school I lost the glow but regained it again on the following Saturday. A friend told me a few years ago that he too felt somewhat despondent as a given week's Doctor Who episode's title cards came to a close. "I had to wait a whole week for the next one."
You really had to be there and then to understand.
A couple of weeks ago an old friend of mine was visiting Toronto, and as we walked westward on the north side of Bloor Street, towards Avenue Road, my buddy pointed across my bow and laughed. I turned to see what was running by my right shoulder.
Saint Laurent
Very good! That wall art must have been erected fairly recently.
Chris popped out his smart phone and did the right thing, with no prompting from moi.
Years ago, a friend of mine, an 'Interior Design' college student at the time, said to me: "You're so lucky to have that name. How did you get it?"
"I was kinda born with it."
With all this "Saint Laurent" talk I'm trying to remember if I've ever worn any apparel so marked. (Looking at this picture now I realize I'm wearing all Uniqlo.) This morning I might just visit 110 Bloor Street West. It's just a quick walk.
On this day in 2021, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) uploaded the above video, a then 60th anniversary celebration of astronaut Alan B. Shepard's spaceflight — America's first. It was a great technical success, paving the way for the moon landings: with Shepard commanding Apollo 14, the third such mission to succeed.
Mercury-Redstone 3 "Freedom 7" launched 64 years ago today and its success was celebrated the world over, partly because the mission was broadcast/televised live, and not done in secrecy. (Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight a few weeks earlier was kept under lock and key — as per the Soviet way — till the Cosmonaut was safely back on mother Earth).
When I was a little one of five or six years of age my mother told me the story of an important event from just a few years earlier. It was the United States of America's first manned spaceflight, and the astronaut's name was Alan Shepard. Everyone had gathered around the television to witness an important part of human history.
This was the first time they were able to see a manned rocket launch. The Soviets had not broadcast to the world, or even its own citizens, the lift-off of Vostok 1 three weeks earlier, and only after Yuri Gagarin returned safely to Earth from his orbital flight did they announce this stellar and humanity-changing feat. The name of the hero cosmonaut then travelled around the globe.
Citizens of the Earth could not be made to feel as participants in a great adventure until the National Aeronautics and Space Administration got to show its stuff.
Mercury-Redstone 3 ("Freedom 7") was to be a suborbital mission: Shepard's spacecraft would follow a planned ballistic trajectory. A big arc. The Mercury capsule would be shot into space, then float at high speed for some time before Earth's gravity initiated its re-entry.
One interesting element of the mission was that, unlike Gagarin's trip, which was fully automated, Shepard would take some control of his spacecraft. While up there, free from our planet's atmosphere, he manually operated the attitude control system in order to test Freedom 7's pitch, roll, and yaw capabilities, proving them to be properly functional.
The fifteen-minute voyage was a great technical success: The capsule went 101 miles up and flew 263 miles "downrange". The splashdown took place in the Atlantic Ocean. Shepard and Freedom 7 were recovered by waiting U.S. Navy vessels. (John Glenn's orbital flight would not happen for ten more months. Two cosmonauts will have already orbited the Earth by that time.)
Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr was chosen to pilot MR-3 some months earlier by Project Mercury head Robert Gilruth. Competition was fierce amongst the program's seven astronauts. Not only were these men skilled test pilots ― as were all U.S. astronauts in the earliest days of space flight ― but they were equipped with the latest in personality types: Gus Grissom, for instance, who would become the second American in space, did not say much minute-to-minute during training, but when he made it known he was about to whisper something to his fellow astronauts they would shut up, lean forward, and wait for the expected words of profundity.
Shepard, on the other hand, was more gregarious by nature. He not only spoke a more regular beat, when he had something important to relate you'd better be listening, and if you didn't take your work seriously or were at any time sloppy in your training, at least from his perspective, you were sure to hear about it.
They were of a special breed: Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper, and Deke Slayton (who was grounded for medical reasons).
I know way too much about this whole subject. Before I go on any further I'm going to execute a deorbit burn. (See?)
But first:
On May 5th, 1961, sixty-four years ago today, NASA's star astronaut, Alan B. Shepard, became a trailblazer. The world watched as his Redstone rocket sat on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral:
"... It's called Star Wars. One set alone cost twelve million dollars."
That is how I first heard of Star Wars. It was the spring of 1977. I had the Grundig stereo on in the living room and as I walked from the kitchen into the dining room I heard an on-air host from Toronto radio station CKFM say the magic words. My reaction to the announced set cost must have been one of awe ― I later learned that the movie cost about ten million dollars to make ― but it was the name of this mysterious new flick that really intrigued me.
Star Wars not only hit the marketplace, but entered our culture....
That could have been the opening crawl to my two-part series recounting my introduction to Star Wars. It all started for me when I heard that radio piece. But everyone has a different story. And already I've read a few online; interesting stories, all.
In the pre-Internet age, it was a different game.
After learning of a new and anticipated movie going into production, one had to sometimes dig to learn more than what was readily available from the mainstream media outlets. For most pictures the wait was, more often than not, off our radars.
However, do not think for a moment that pre-release or pre-production hype used by the major film studios is a recently developed tool. Films from the 1970s were following an old model but with new tricks. Promotional featurettes, shot on 16mm film, were taken to a refined state during those years. Major studio productions like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and King Kong were promoted heavily while they were still in production. In the case of Kong the casting of the new beauty was covered in local and national newscasts. I remember watching Buffalo television station WKBW late one evening and seeing newsfilm of Jessica Lange on stage holding a bouquet of flowers (it was a press conference).
Who could forget watching the excellent and dynamic promotional film showing the production crew of The Towering Inferno doing their magic? Irwin Allen directing over John Guillerman's head by using a megaphone was exciting and memorable. ("Mister Newman!") Accompanied by an authoritative but not staid voice over, bulldozers dug down into a sound stage floor in order to give the already voluminous space even more fly. These promotional shorts were nothing less than recruitment films. "I want to do that!"
By the time big pictures such as Poseidon, Inferno, Kong, Earthquake, and The Hindenburg hit the screens, an educated, of sorts, audience was awaiting. And I was an enthusiastic young member of that audience, in all five examples.
There was none of that for Star Wars. It just sneaked up on us....
The forty-eighth anniversary of the original release of Star Warsis coming on the 25th of this month, and for us older folks, the question sometimes comes up: "How many times did you see Star Wars when it first came out?"
The movie made a lot of money because it was what's called "a repeater". Young people, especially, went back to the movie theatres over and over to see what was then a new thing; a high-quality comic book on the big screen.
Perhaps due to my age at the time, sixteen, I saw Star Wars, enjoyed it, and did not rush back to see it again. This was not helped by the fact that it left town after just three weeks. No doubt it was 'bicycled' to another theatre waiting for such a precious print. (King Kong had played for a full month across the street at the Big House.) Once was enough for me, however, as there were other movies to see and I was interested in many other things.
In September of 1977 I became friends with a guy at my high school who was a huge fan of the film. He was a couple of years younger — it was through a school club that we first met. Two or three weeks later, Star Wars reappeared in Barrie, Ontario, this time at one of the exciting Bayfield Mall's two screens, and my fan friend and I, with colourful umbrellas in hand, trotted off one rainy night to see again the silver screen's smash hit of '77.
I saw Star Wars two times that year: First, in July at the "Imperial 2" in beautiful downtown Barrie; then it was a tinny movie house in stunning uptown Barrie.
My favourite film in 1977 was Annie Hall. I saw it once.
This atheist must keep an open mind, always. Right now I'm reading Toronto-based author Michael Coren's The Rebel Christ (2021). I actually bought the book last October, and read its "Introduction", but my reading queue is always pages long ― meaning it had to wait in line. The Rebel Christ is more than good, even at just a couple of chapters in....
The writer quotes G.K. Chesterton: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
As readers here may have heard, members of the Christian right have been going barmy over the Reverend Coren's work. I doubt they've even read The Rebel Christ, or perhaps some have but find its reaffirmation of Christ's message of peace and love to be rebarbative.
Before I go back to coffee and reading, I must add: The author maintains a good sense of humour as he addresses certain concerns. This sent me funny....
"Personally, I prefer a nice card, a box of chocolates, and some roses."
Well folks, I have to say that The Rebel Christ is "required reading at the Academy".
So you know where I stand on Christianity and religion in general, I am a card-carrying atheist. As a matter of fact, I have the hard-to-acquire "Platinum Card". As I wrote in April of 2017, I rejected 'faith' very early in my life. "From a Dependent Brat: The Church of Me" goes into a little detail as to when and how this happened. I've not wavered since then.
Now that you have an IMF (Impossible Missions Force) dossier on me, here I go....
Non-believers and believers would have much to glean from Michael Coren's effort to set the record straight on a few matters; matters that have been hijacked and distorted by those who wrap themselves in the bible, even if they've never actually read it, to reaffirm what they believe were Christ's teachings. As Mr Coren states assuredly more than a few times in his work, Jesus never actually addressed certain issues, and if he did, it was ever so slightly. Too often his teachings have been perverted beyond all recognition: an interpretation of an interpretation, scrubbed of any chromatic scaling to fit one's already dichotomous thinking.
I would agree that Jesus preached love and forgiveness above all. (What's so hard to understand?)
This atheist has adopted a certain phrase, one heard a lot these days from non-believers such as myself: "Even I'm more Christian than many of these so-called Christians."
Final note: Travelling on Twitter/X, especially, introduces one to a lot of far-right anger, anger all too often suggesting violence. Check out a given bio and see "Loves Jesus".
Yeah, buddy, I believe you.
But I do believe Michael Coren. The Rebel Christ is outstanding, and highly recommended... take it from this "card-carrying atheist".
"Please believe me when I say that Jesus would not hurt or abuse,
I came home one day last week to find a card on my door, a two-colour card from the Communist Party of Canada. Fine, as Canada was in election mode political parties were promoting themselves and their policies... or lack of same.
This student of history, with a focus on those former "Eastern Bloc" states such as the Soviet Union (USSR) and East Germany, especially East Germany, has something of an opinion here....
The Conservative Party of Canada and its brethren have enjoyed four consecutive losses: losses made more potent when one considers that the Liberal Party of Canada was considered to be vulnerable in the federal elections of 2019 and 2021, and was running far far behind in many polling samples run over the last two years, though that changed soon after Mark Carney was elected last month by his own party to replace Justin Trudeau, who stepped down as Liberal leader in January. Yesterday's election was a grand turnaround, to put it mildly. Conservative Party Leader, and resident bigmouth, Pierre Poilievre plummeted in the polling, and effectively lost at the polls. The final tally wrote a minority, albeit a healthy minority, in all three cases.
What gives? Well, for starters, the CPC giveth away and the LPC taketh away.
Much has been made in some quarters about the fact, and it is an incontrovertible fact, that the Conservatives won more votes in the 2021 election. (The 2025 election's final numbers are not in as of yet.) In regards to the issue of this 'popular vote', which Canada's Parliamentary system of government does not have, I make much of the fact, and it is a dirty little fact, that Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals won many many more votes in total than did Joe Clark and his Progressive Conservatives in the 1979 federal election.
A "mid-season replacement" series, Project U.F.O. satiated those viewers who were into tales of Earth visitors from outer space. The NBC series premiered in February of 1978 to some fanfare, and I was there. So too were other family members.
Project U.F.O. was a Jack Webb production, and to make sure there was no mistake who was behind this series, the man himself narrated the opening titles with his trademarked voice and authoritative, and dry toast, diction.
A typical episode featured stars William Jordan and Caskey Swaim (or the second season's Edward Winter) investigating a UFO sighting. Over the television hour the U.S. Air Force's intrepid special team would interview each individual, who in turn, would recount their story of the event; in Rashomon-like fashion, but without outright contradiction (they did witness something not of this Earth, after all), we'd see essentially the same sequence but with variations based on that person's particular and unique perspective.
Now that I think about it, the show could be dull at times, even if stories of Unidentified Flying Objects were "in" back then. Keep in mind that Steven Spielberg's overrated feature film Close Encounters of the Third Kind had been released just a few months before our subject series hit the airwaves — the electronic take trying, hoping, to catch the interstellar wave. In October of 1977, the Canadian-produced feature film Starship Invasions had drawn some of us to the ticket wicket. Now that flying saucer action, man, was real. Like, far out!
The final episode of Project U.F.O. landed in July of 1979.
The Flash (1990)
In September of 1990, soon after arriving back in Canada after spending a few weeks in England, I heard chatter about a television series that had premiered while I was away: The Flash
Back then it was possible to have a series sneak up on you undetected. Given that I left dramatic television programs in my past, not being up to speed just compounded the surprise for me. (My forward scanner had long needed a replacement vacuum tube; and I had long abandoned reading Starlog Magazine, which was a source of vital information for any geek.)
I took in a few episodes and was impressed with the show's scope and its apparent healthy budget. (The new Flash series looks exactly like what it is: a low budget television series, but with lots of CGI — the CGI package deal so prevalent in television production today.)
The opening titles, complete with Danny Elfman's Batmanish theme music, are pretty propulsive. At the time I felt the "starring" bits were a little goofy. Oh, yes... Amanda Pays. I had almost forgotten about that attraction. She had helped draw me three years earlier to Max Headroom. Good series.
The Flash has its fans, but, unfortunately for fans at the time, the series came and went in a flashcube flash — lasting just 22 episodes. It's a shame, really, as series star John Wesley Shipp was pertectly fine inside and outside his special suit, and Mark Hamill was great as the Trickster, a guest shot in two shots, but memorable ones, and one effectively-evil character future-ready.
Having written the above, I remembered that I have the DVD set, The Flash: Complete Series.
While walking with a friend yesterday who was visiting from out of town, we took in a view, way up.
Toronto's intersection of Yonge and Bloor has changed so much in the last few years. Whether this 'progress' is good or not, there certainly are opportunities for one to kink his or her neck to get that special perspective not so abundant in that area till recently. As I fumbled with my Canon EOS mirrorless, friend Chris held my coffee. I joked with him about the steady stream of passers by — it was noon hour. "These folk see me and are probably thinking I'm visiting the big city for the first time." Being a longtime resident of this great city before moving away a couple of years ago, he laughed at my observation. Though I planted myself here in the 1980s, no doubt the look on my face read as: "Wow. Look at that tall building! I gotta take a snap for the kinfolk back home."
Suck it up, sunshine. They're goin' up everywhere, like mushrooms after a bout of acid rain. There's something about condos I don't like, certainly a surfeit of out-of-control condominium construction.
Nice view, eh?
Postscript: Behind us is the shuttered "Yonge & Bloor" Hudson's Bay store. It closed its doors three years ago. As announced earlier this week, "The Bay", as a whole, is now in liquidation. But those shiny-new condos sure are nice! "Yee-haw!"
A friend was visiting from out of town. This morning I met him at his hotel, the W Toronto, which is on the north side of Bloor Street, just east of Yonge.
He took me up to his suite.
The door opened.
Wow. I was impressed. I'd be happy with a cot in a room ten feet square and a past-its-prime 'tube' television displaying snow.
The hotel staff was well trained, greeting me when I got to the lobby as though I was royalty. I really like this place. I live just two subway stops from the W Toronto, but it may be worth checking in; first I should check to see what the rates are....
Postscript: That Tim Hortons coffee cup on the cabinet is mine. I didn't leave it there.
