Sunday Fun: U.S. Fantasy TV — Opening Titles

Project: U.F.O.

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.

Sunday Fun?