Any good anthology series out there? (1 Viewer)

[Michael Alden]

I didn't mean to imply that VTTBOTS and Time Tunnel are anywhere near as bad as Brady Bunch. Few shows are that inane and weak, certainly few successful shows anyway. But, to site one of your favorites, they are nowhere near the quality of The Invaders either. I happen to be a big fan of Time Tunnel but having recently watched them all again on Encore, while there are some very good episodes, overall it's not a GREAT show. There are also some very good Voyage episodes but considering the 110 episode count, not that high a percentage, especially when you take out first season, which is a very different show. It seems that when Irwin Allen discovered color, he lost it with his programs.

Overall ratings based on 4 stars system:

Brady Bunch - 1/2 *
Voyage - **1/2
Time Tunnel - ***

For a show to be great it should be **** and sorry Jeff, but these are not four star shows no matter how much you love them. Hey, I love Ben Casey but its not a four star show either.

 

[Jeff#]

I don't know how a topic thread about anthology series turned into an Irwin Allen topic, but what I'm going to say here about his shows is along the same lines I've said elsewhere about another series: The Avengers.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea switching to color (during Lost in Space's first season) and Lost in Space going color a year later have nothing to do with Irwin Allen and his writers losing their edge.

Why? Because Lost in Space started going a little crazy even while it was still in black & white, such as the episode in which Dr. Smith eats some an alien fruit and he becomes a giant.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was more espionage than alien oriented during its first year, but even they did a story in which Nelson & crew go to an island inhabited by dinosaurs. Footage from Allen's movie "The Lost World" was used.

Those series going to color film was a major step in the right direction in terms of what they could do that was not visually possible in black & white. The problems, however, came from a very low budget, cheap sets, and the plots got more outlandish because that was the trend on television and in movies around 1966. Fantasy was BIG and both Voyage and Lost went more that route instead of the more serious sci-fi they began with. Also consider that ratings weren't as high as they had been early on, and they wanted to appeal to a larger, family audience.

Lost in Space went TOO far over the top, because the writers were running out of fresh ideas. It was easier for them to steal older ideas (a pirate in space played by Albert Salmi, a hotel in space, Dr. Smith becomes a gunslinger on Mars, etc.).

With Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the name of the series made it difficult for them to have too many episodes off the sub. Men who spend most of their time on a submarine can get boring fast. So to have them battling aliens, monsters, mad scientists, and any other intruders gave the writers more to work with. How about Vincent Price, as an insane magician who turns the men into puppets? It was campy but in its own way fun and kept the show going a few more years! The problem there is that many of them were the same writers who worked on Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel, so they were spreading themselves too thin.

 

[Dean C]

i'd say Wrestlemania and royal rumble anthology sets.