 |
|
|||
|
|
||||||
| ACTION
TV ONLINE EPISODE GUIDE | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Script : Art Wallace Director : Don Weiss Notes : The NASA astronauts were approaching Alpha Centauri when they ran into radioactive turbulence and eventually crash landed. The third member of their crew was killed on landing. The ship's chronometer gives the date as being March 21st 3085. In a continuity blunder, the title sequence shows their date of arrival to be June 14th 3085. It also shows the date they travelled from as August 19th 1980. According to Doctor Zaius another ship had landed more than ten years earlier but the astronauts were killed before they could be questioned.
Script : Art Wallace Director : Don McDougall Notes : Guest star Marc Singer is perhaps best known for his roles in V, as resistance leader Mike Donovan, and as Dar in the Beastmaster movies. He has also appeared in Dallas as emerald miner Matt Cantrell during the season that didn't exist (!) and has made guest appearances in Highlander (Mountain Men) and The Twilight Zone (Extra Innings). More recently he has made guest appearances in the Beastmaster TV series, although not as Dar.
Script : Edward Lasko Director : Arnold Laven Notes : Besides his role as Alan Virdon, Ron Harper also played Jack Marshall in season three of the seventies time-warp series Land of the Lost. He also appeared as Lt Craig Garrison in Garrison's Gorillas. More recently he has had guest roles in The West Wing and Walker, Texas Ranger.
Script : Robert W Lenski Director : Don Weiss Notes : Like his co-star Ron Harper, James Naughton has had a relatively undistinguished television career although in recent years he has made guest appearances in Ally McBeal and in the early eighties appeared in a season three episode of The Fall Guy (Trauma). He may not have a distinguished television career but he scored big time as a singing lawyer in the huge revival of the Bob Fosse musical Chicago.
Script : Robert Hamner Director : Bernard McEveety Notes : By the time he came to work on the Planet of the Apes TV series, Don Weis had already been directing television for over twenty years with credits ranging from Alfred Hitchcock Presents through to Ironside. Telefantasy series he worked on include Batman (The Joker is Wild / Batman is Riled / Hot off the Griddle / The Cat and the Fiddle), The Immortal (Man on a Punched Card / Paradise Bay), Kolchak: The Night Stalker (The Vampire / Fire Fall / The Trevi Collection / Demon in Lace), Beyond Westworld (Takeover) and Freddy's Nightmares (Memory Overload). He also worked on many action/adventure shows like CHiPs, Starsky and Hutch and Charlie's Angels. He died in 2000 aged 78.
Script : Robert W Lenski Director : Don McDougall Notes : Five TV Movies edited together from episodes of the series are currently in circulation. Back to the Planet of the Apes (Escape from Tomorrow / The Trap), Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes (The Gladiators / The Legacy), Life, Liberty and Pursuit on the Planet of the Apes (The Surgeon / The Interrogation) which is sometimes advertised as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness on the Planet of the Apes, Farewell to the Planet of the Apes (Tomorrow's Tide / Up Above the World So High)Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes (The Horse Race / The Tyrant).
Script : Barry Oringer Director : Arnold Laven Notes : Roddy McDowall's first encounter with The Planet of the Apes occurred in 1968 when he played the part of Cornelius in the original movie. He returned to the role in the sequels Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) before playing Cornelius' son Caesar in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). His other TV appearances of note include parts in The Twilight Zone (People Are Alike All Over), Batman (as The Bookworm), The Invaders (The Experiment), Night Gallery, The Fantastic Journey (as Dr Jonathan Willoway), Wonder Woman, The Martian Chronicles, Tales of the Gold Monkey (as Bon Chance Louie) and Quantum Leap (A Leap for Lisa). A prolific actor, he also appeared in numerous films including Cleopatra (1963), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972). He died of cancer in 1998.
Script : Anthony Lawrence Director : Don McDougall Notes : Don McDougall's directing credits are extensive, taking in episodes of Star Trek (The Squire of Gothos), The Man From U.N.C.L.E, The Immortal (Sylvia), Ghost Story/Circle of Fear(At the Cradle Foot / Elegy for a Vampire / The Graveyard Shift / The Ghost of Potter's Field), The Six Million Dollar Man (Rollback / Just a Matter of Time / The Moving Mountain), Kolchak: The Night Stalker (Legacy of Terror / The Youth Killer), The Bionic Woman (Max / The Antidote), Wonder Woman, The Gemini Man (Buffalo Bill Rides Again) and The Amazing Spider-Man. Action shows he has directed for include Ironside and The Dukes of Hazard, and in the 1950's he directed for many of the popular western series including Rawhide and Bonanza.
Script : David P Lewis and Booker Bradshaw Director : Jack Starrett Notes : In 1975 an animated series, Return to the Planet of the Apes, was broadcast on America's NBC network. Produced by cartoon veterans David DePatie and Friz Freleng, it ran for thirteen 30 minute episodes and yet again featured a group of NASA astronauts crash-landing in the future.
Script : Richard Collins Director : Alf Kjellin Notes : Marc Lenard appeared in numerous cult series including Mission: Impossible (Wheels, Nitro / Rebel), The Incredible Hulk (Captive Night), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (Journey to Oasis) and Otherworld (The Zone Troopers Build Men), but he is best known for his performance as Spock's father, Ambassador Sarek, in Star Trek (Journey to Babel) a role which he returned to for Yesteryear, an episode of the animated series. He subsequently appeared as Sarek in three of the Star Trek movies (III, IV and VI) and in two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (Sarek and Unification, Part I). He also appeared in Star Trek as a Romulan Commander in the first season episode Balance of Terror and as a Klingon Captain in Star Trek The Motion Picture. He died in 1996.
Script : William Black Director : Ralph Senensky Notes : Four novelisations based on TV episodes were released, although rather strangely for a tie-in series, the first episode wasn't one of them. All four were released by Award and written by George Alec Effinger. For the record, the titles were #1: Man the Fugitive (The Cure / The Good Seeds), #2: Escape to Tomorrow (The Surgeon / The Deception), #3: Journey into Terror (The Legacy / The Horse Race) and #4: Lord of the Apes (The Tyrant / The Gladiators).
Script : Edward J Lasko Director : Alf Kjellin Notes : The story consultants on the show were Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, best known for their work on cartoons such as Fangface, Heathcliff and Mr T.
Script : Howard Dimsdale Director : Arnold Laven Notes : The theme music was composed by Lalo Shifrin, perhaps best known for the theme to Mission: Impossible. Other television programmes he has worked on include The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Earth II (1974 TV movie) and Starsky and Hutch. He has also worked extensively for the movies and amongst others has written the scores for Dirty Harry (1971), Enter the Dragon (1973) and The Amityville Horror (1979).
Script : Arthur Browne, Jr Director : John Meredyth Lucas Notes : John Meredyth Lucas has a number of genre directing credits under his belt including Star Trek (The Ultimate Computer / The Enterprise Incident / Elaan of Troyius), The Invaders (The Betrayed), Night Gallery (The Housekeeper / The Hand of Borgus Weems / The Different Ones / The Funeral) and The Six Million Dollar Man (H+2+0=Death). As a writer he produced scripts for The Fugitive, Star Trek (The Changeling / Patterns of Force / Elaan of Troyius / That Which Survives) and The Six Million Dollar Man (H+2+0=Death / Dark Side of the Moon, part 1 / Dark Side of the Moon, part 2). |
 Based on the novel Monkey Planet by Pierre Boulle, The Planet of the Apes became an international success when it was filmed by Twentieth Century Fox in 1968. It went on to spawn no less than four sequels and in 1974 a TV version made it's debut on CBS. Starring Ron Harper, James Naughton and Roddy McDowall, Planet of the Apes stuck to the successful formula that had been established in the films, with a NASA spacecraft travelling through a time-warp and crashing back to Earth a thousand years in the future, where apes were now the dominant species. With the astronauts and their chimpanzee companion Galen constantly on the run from General Urko's gorillas, Planet of the Apes was essentially a sci-fi variant of The Fugitive, with them arriving at a different place each week and encountering a problem. Initially commissioned for a run of twenty-four episodes, Planet of the Apes made it's debut in September 1974 but was unable to find a large enough audience and was cancelled after just fourteen weeks. In the UK the series performed well in the ratings for ITV and in the 1990s was shown on Channel 4, Bravo and the Sci-Fi Channel. All fourteen episodes are available on region 1 and region 2 DVD's.
Text © Kieran Seymour, 2003. |