From March/ April 1992: The Irwin Allen-centric first issue of EPI-LOG JOURNAL MAGAZINE.
This companion to the main title focused on articles and analysis rather than the (occasionally annotated) episode guides that appeared in EPI-LOG itself.
Pre-internet (or, more accurately, before most people had access to it), these were both invaluable reference titles... especially when they covered shows that otherwise would remain overlooked.
There was something of a resurgence in Allen's work during this period thanks to repeats on Channel Four in the UK, the new LOST IN SPACE comic book from Innovation (which started out with a little bit too much T&A but soon settled down to be an enjoyable update) and even the odd VHS release (which never progressed very far).
There was something of a resurgence in Allen's work during this period thanks to repeats on Channel Four in the UK, the new LOST IN SPACE comic book from Innovation (which started out with a little bit too much T&A but soon settled down to be an enjoyable update) and even the odd VHS release (which never progressed very far).
bill anchors who published epi-log was a huge fan of the Irwin allen shows...he also published many books on lost in space, land of the giants, time tunnel and voyage to the bottom of the sea....naturally these were advertised in his startech catalogs just as you can see ads for startech in the epi-log mags...his editorials always made for entertaining reading whether he was dissing the networks for cancelling shows like THE FLASH ( now back on sky 1 in a new version) or just moaning about the usa economy.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate (or unfortunate maybe) to recently watch season 2 of lost in space on dvd.....although colourful and mildly amusing, it just recycled the same plot endlessly...more of a semi or quarter classic than a real one...the lost in space comic was quite garish at times....I still have the issues I ordered from startech plus some books on the show....its a more intresting tv series to read about than actually watch
The story of the UK Lost in Space video tapes release was quite odd. CIC's original Star Trek releases had done quite well and been completed by 1991, about six months before the first Lost in Space episodes were released on video, so I didn't think it would be a problem for Fox to replicate this strategy with Lost in Space.
ReplyDeleteThen after LiS Volume 3 came out...nothing. Evidentially Volumes 4 to 6 were originally solicited by Fox, but were never actually released - in the UK that is. I later discovered that the Lost in Space home video range, in pretty much exactly the same format as Fox Home Video's UK releases, had continued well beyond Volume 3 to cover the entirety of the rest of the series in Australia. At the time, I was a bit annoyed by that, as I had wanted to see the superior first season of the series again, since it was clear Channel 4 would never repeat the series.
I bought a lot of those trek tapes myself back in the day but it seems daft now when you can get an entire SEASON on a dvd boxset...one can only assume the uk sales figures didn't justify a continual release of lost in space videos...VHS releases were very haphazard back then, a notorious example being the martian chronicles which left out the final episode...!
ReplyDeletechannel 4 were always fairly useless when it came to repeating classic shows, screening them at all hours and on different days...even Babylon 5 was shabbily treated by them...
Its common knowledge that jonathan harris hijacked lost in space much to the chagrin of the cast and this led to the seriousness of season 1 being replaced with high camp antics...such wasted potential