JARED MARTIN STARLOG MAGAZINE CARTOON

More Martin: STARLOG MAGAZINE'S Mike Fisher riffs on the underlying obligatory sexual tension wafting through WAR OF THE WORLDS season one.

JARED MARTIN INTERVIEW IN STARLOG MAGAZINE

From the STARLOG MAGAZINE vaults: Journeyman TV actor Jared Martin died last week so, to mark his passing, here is a Starlog interview conducted to promote the first season of Paramount's low(ish) budget SF-horror hybrid (and late-night ITV schedule filler) WAR OF THE WORLDS.

Martin, who's other credits included gone-in-a-mo Seventies SFer FANTASTIC JOURNEY and a stint on DALLAS, was one of those samm-screen mainstays who never seemed to shine but had plenty of work.  I've not seen him ina nything new for decades but I was still sad to note his passing.

WAR OF THE WORLDS (Marvel UK)

This came as a pleasent surprise at the weekend… whilst rummaging through a box of assorted Dealer Dross I found this genuine obscurity from the MARVEL UK vaults: an A4 softcover album format (by Proost) edition of the seventies (copyright 1976 according to the small print… the only date I could find anywhere herein which makes dating it difficult, although the publication address is Arundel House) adaptation of the original WAR OF THE WORLDS (by Wells, of course).

There's no credits anywhere (even on the strip itself - which looks gorgeous - which I'm not sure is true of the original or whether they've been deliberately removed from this edition.  A quick Google search reveals it to be Claremont, Kane and Cockrum) including this stunning cover which looks like a recreation of the original art used on MARVEL CLASSIC COMICS 14, where the material first appeared.

The back cover simply reproduces the covers of the four books in the series.  There are no supplementary notes, text pages or editorial inside.  

I would imagine these were published through the MARVEL BOOKS operation and intended for sale in book departments and stores rather than newsagents.  I've never seen copies of any before which, I imagine, makes them amongst the rarer M-UK fare.

And it cost me a £1.  Hurrah.  

1989: JOHN COLICOS IN STARLOG MAGAZINE

STAR TREK. Tick. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Tick.  WAR OF THE WORLDS.  Tick.  It must be John Colicos.  This is a 1988 interview with the late actor, published in STARLOG MAGAZINE issue 138, cover-dated January 1989.

1995: GALACTIC SCI-FI TELEVISION SERIES REVISITED (Book)

There's been several pretty decent BATTLESTAR GALACTICA reference works over the last couple of decades* (I wish someone would do something similar for shows like "V" and BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY) but this 1995 tome was the first... and still amongst the best (which is why my copy looks so battered!).

GALACTIC SCI-FI TELEVISION SERIES REVISITED (yuck: clunky title!) is actually a fan-produced (Alpha Control Press) compilation of articles and features that had first appeared across various issues of EPI-LOG and EPI-LOG JOURNAL during the early nineties. 

As the basic cover design suggests, this is a pretty lo-fi effort.  The interior pages are printed on newsprint grade paper (ironically, EPI-LOG itself had progressed to a rather nice square-bound magazine, with better paper stock, by this point) which does the photos no favours.  But it's the text that makes this worth tracking down even today.

It covers the original series and GALACTICA 1980 (including a pulls-no-punches interview with the latter's former Story Editors) in considerable detail.  There's still room for the definitive behind-the-scenes book on the show(s), but this comes as close as any.

BG and G80 dominate but there's also substantial coverage of THE INVADERS, THE FANTASTIC JOURNEY and WAR OF THE WORLDS.  It's a slightly eccentric mix but I reckon, thanks to the dearth of detailed analysis of any of those shows, this should be a must-have for fans of any one of them.

* I've got them all!

1988: WAR OF THE WORLDS: THE SERIES on VHS

CIC was the video label, jointly run by Paramount and Universal, responsible for releasing their productions on home video in the UK.

CIC had already done well with a series of rental-only STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION tapes assembled from the first season, so it made sense that they would try to replicate that success with syndicated companion show WAR OF THE WORLDS.

This is the sleeve for the first release: the feature-length first episode that establishes the (shaky) premise of the show and - as the title suggests - resurrects the long-dorment Martian menace (albeit now with TV budget-friendly abilities to adopt human form).

It's a competent effort, undermined by a ludicrous premise: turns out Earth was indeed invaded - as shown with various effects shots lifted directly from the original movie (and blatantly reused a few years earlier in cash-strapped V: THE SERIES) - decades earlier and, despite the wholesale destruction, almost everyone (including top military decision makers) has forgotten all about it.  This allows the show to adopt a low-key conspiracy tone (years before THE X-FILES) but is too bonkers to be believable.

The alien 'corpses' left over from the failed invasion have been haphazardly placed into storage, unfortunately adjacent to some equally shoddily stored nuclear waste.  When the two are accidentally mixed, by some ill-fated terrorists of indeterminate nationalities, the invasion is on again.

CIC released a few more of these tapes before abandoning the range.  None of the tapes were ever re-issued for the (much cheaper) sell-through market (unlike ST:TNG which saw the whole seven seasons released... and then re-released in assorted collections, edits and box sets).

1988: WAR OF THE WORLDS TV SERIES - Part Two

Here's the second-part of Jonathan Blum's account of the making of the Paramount TV series WAR OF THE WORLDS, published in TV ZONE magazine.

The indifferent ratings for WOTW season one led to some drastic retooling for year two including changes to the cast and a whole new (post-apocolyptic) setting.  However, the drastic surgery did nothing to booster the show's ratings (surely not helped by Year One's more horrific elements which forced many local stations to bury it out-of-peak in late-night slots) and cancelation cometh.

ISSUE 192

1988: WAR OF THE WORLDS TV SERIES - Part One

With all this talk of mankind exploring Mars, it got me thinking about when, back in the eighties, Martians were wandering around Canada causing all sorts of post-watershed mischief.

So I resurrected this fascinating two-part article, by Jonathan Blum, from TV ZONE magazine on Paramount TV's horror/ science fiction hybrid WAR OF THE WORLDS.  It appeared at the point in the now-defunct magazine's history where they finally ran detailed, word-heavy articles rather than their usual trick of lots of pretty photos and under-utilised space.

The Flashback feature began as little more than a detailed synopsis of a particular episode with a paragraph-or-two tacked onto the end with minimal behind-the-scenes information.  It evolved into a far more detailed behind-the-scenes account of the making of various shows (and not just shows that obviously fitted TVZ's SF-TV remit), even boasting contributions from ace telly historian Andrew Pixley for a time.

WOTW first appeared in the UK as a series of rental-only VHS tapes from CIC Video (following the same business model they'd already used on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION season one).  The show made its UK TV debut on B-Sky-B's THE MOVIE CHANNEL with an airing of the pilot episode before becoming a regular fixture of ITV's region-by-region overnight schedules.

Both seasons are now available on DVD.

- TO BE CONTINUED - 

ISSUE 191