People who actually like this series

Ben

In preparation for viewing the episode "Imp" as part of the podcast, I went to IMDB.com to do a little bit of research when I found myself on their forums and read a whole discussion area on the merits of Man From Atlantis.

While everyone who commented generally liked the series a lot (I truly fail to see the reason why), I decided to respond only to the first posting as I deemed it being the one that "opened the floodgates."

A user who goes by the name "ascringle" wrote:

people seem to forget that this was the 70`s, they did not have the filming techniques of today nor did they have the budget, whilst i agree the writers were a bit lax the premise was good, duffy was plausible as was the research sub, the balance was upheld by a worthy nemesis and lats face it, it was a kids programme after all, so lets not judge t.m.f.a too harshly.

Now I should point out that this person wrote that comment back in 2006 and had probably not revisited the series like Eugene and I have. Nonetheless, I felt compelled to write:

I will take ENORMOUS exception to the idea of it being a children's show and that we should forgive it given that it was from the 70's.

First, this was NOT a children's show. It was a prime time network show on NBC. I'm old enough (50 years old) to remember this show being on at that time. It may have ended up becoming a children's show in syndication, but on its original network run it was a prime time TV show.

Second, the show runner was Herb Solow. This man WORKED on classic Star Trek which is why I find it so incredibly hard for him to have turned around and worked on something which eventually became nothing more than trash. All one has to do is watch the pilot (which did show some potential in spite of a number of its glaring scientific flaws) and then see how the series absolutely degenerated into something which is BENEATH the quality of a children's show with such episodes as Imp, C.W. Hyde, and The Naked Montague.

No, I cannot agree. This TV series is absolute garbage. It could have been something really good (even Patrick Duffy seems to think so), but in the end fell WAY short of other mediocre TV sci-fi shows such as Fantastic Journey or Logan's Run (which as a TV series ended up being an insult to the theatrical film, but that's a discussion for another time).

Does anyone else have any thoughts about this series and that maybe, just maybe, I'm being too hard on it???

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

Tagged