Todd’s Serial Blog

I was surfing the web the other day and came upon a blog called alycatsclaws and she asked a very interesting question.  What movies did you enjoy enjoy watching growing up? That is a good question,  now being a serial fan the answer is pretty obvious of course.  Star Wars comes immediately to mind as it came out in the theaters during my grade school years and was a big film for me, and undoubtedly led to the old Flash Gordon serials to be shown on local TV out of Cleveland on Sundays.

But the Big Kahuna of movies was hands down Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Now there was a movie to warm the heart of any die hard serial fan.  Chock full of action, derring do, and suspense, Sean Connery’s James Bond quickly droppeddown one from from my top spot and Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones is still my favorite film hero. Released while I was in Junior High I saw it several times in the theater, and I still crack open the box set now and then to rewatch it.  Can’t wait for the new film coming out later this month.

If you want to join in on the discussion of favorite childhood films check out:

http://www.alycatsclaws.com/2008/05/movies-you-watched-over-and-over.html

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I was putzing around the internet the other week, checking out serial write ups on IMDB, and came across Blackhawk (1952), began reading the comments and was struck by a misconception one of the reviewers fostered.  In the serial, due to budgetary restraints, all of the villains’ various hideouts use the same set.  The reviewer, echoing many other serial fans online, states that this is never mentioned or explained.  I didn’t think that was correct.  I remembered that there were comments by cast members comments and an explanation.   So I went and checked the review I did back in ‘03 and saw that I pointed this out.  I then watched the serial to be sure and yes they did offer an explanation.  When prisoners are shuffled from one hideout to another, they comment on having never left the original hideout.  After several chapters Kirk Alyn’s Blackhawk postulates that the hideouts might be intentionally set up like that so  prisoners will never be able to tell where they really are.  It is  a simple and logical  theory that covers the low budget necessity of reusing the same set over and over again.  Mystery solved!

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Doctor Who starts it’s new season this Friday and I am excited.  SciFi fans can have their Star Trek, Star Gate, and Battlestar Galactica, but for me the greatest SciFi show was and still is Doctor Who.  I have been a fan since Junior High, and am glad that he is back on TV, David Tennant is the best Doctor since Tom Baker.  That being said I miss the old show.  Maybe it’s the serial fan in me, but despite the cheesy effects and cheap video tape quality of the show I loved the cliffhanger endings.  It was a staple of my Junior High and High School years to turn on PBS every week night at 7 PM and catch the latest episode to find out what happened (no I didn’t date a lot…or at all back then).   It was a sad day in the late eighties while at college when PBS stopped showing Doctor Who.  Luckily there is DVD to enjoy the old shows, though I wished they were priced a little more economically, plus some have been edited to make them one long episode instead of four to six episodes of one adventure (which kind of defeats the purpose of the original show).  Anyway,  despite being a regular hour long drama with the occasional two parter, I am still thrilled to have him back on the small screen and now my all time favorite companion Elizabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith has her own show too.  Which is a good thing because Torchwood is ending this week.  Yeah I know, I have a thing for English SciFi.

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