firefly
HERETIC!!!
Nah. Lost In Space actually had some babes in it.
As for Stargate what I really wanted to know while watching that turd was…who teh hell wrote all that stuff in the pyramid about the Alien Guy? How did their GOD’s life story end up on a wall…did his biographer go rogue or something?
-Joe
I.
Walter Farley, he of the Black Stallion series, also did a series about a horse named Flame who lived in the heart of a tiny island, and a kid who found and rode him. At a certain point, Farley decided he wanted to have the island stallion in a horse-race but he still wanted Flame to be this undiscovered horse running wild and free… what to do, what to do? Ooooh, how about if we have these space aliens come down and land on the island, and they take an interest in horse racing, you see, and then they manage to get Flame registered as an unknown entrant and they fly the horse and the kid to the races in the flying saucer, you see…
(The Island Stallion Races)
II. Jacqueline (“Valley of the Dolls” Susann does sci-fi. Manages to get snarfed up by the swashbuckling extraterrestrial known as The Yargo, with whom after a due turnaround time of a few chapters falls madly in bed with him…
Can we award an honorable mention to novelist Lin Carter? He wrote a lot of books, all of them (as far as I can tell) either (a) cheesy ripoffs of Robert Howard’s Conan, or (b) cheesy ripoffs of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars. He was the cheesy ripoff king. He also edited numerous fantasy anthologies for Dell and Daw, and he always included samples of his own immortal prose in his own anthologies, even those purporting to be “The Year’s Best.” Horrible, derivative, yet strangely entertaining crap.
Sample:
Oh, and I remember an episode of the Buck Rogers tv show in which some villain tried to *melt * our hero and heroine, by putting them in a hot place. They got all shiny. But then they were saved.
He also wrote middling ripoffs of H.P. Lovecraft - which is quite a feat since most Lovecraft ripoffs are either indistinguishable from Lovecraft or truly terrible.
Come on now…you got to see a slightly-undressed Erin Grey…that can’t be all bad.
Hey , no one has mentioned starlost yet
Declan
Oh my ghod. The Starlost. I liked that show when I was about 9, but only because of the cool spaceship/ark model. Remember the Librarian with the cokebottle glasses, whose image was displayed on the round-screened terminals, and who would respond to any inquiry with this weird singsong “Can I …hellp you”? And the bounce tubes between the arcologies…?
I wonder whether it’s available on DVD? 
I remember seeing Logan’s Run in the theatre when I was 13, and thinking it totally sucked. Then later that summer I saw a little ad for another SF movie, and thought the title sounded really cheesy, but I convinced my sister to take me anyways, and it turned out to totally awesome… [sub]the original Star Wars[/sub]
No, no, no. If we’re including books, there is one and only one clear choice: The “Mission Earth” series, by L. Ron Hubbard. I don’t have time now, but do a search and you’ll find many of my fine rants about this pile of dung that I’ve posted in the past.
I cannot see threads like this go past without putting in a plug for how awful these books are.
In which case I win, too. Although I don’t feel like a winner, nor would I call the people who took me with them ‘winners.’ I think I only see bad movies when friends talk me into it…
I remember that! I was old enough to be interested, but young enough to not quite realize how TV works, and I remember being freaken PISSED that they cut to commercial before those little bastards got her clothes off.
-lv
Yep, that’s the one. I distinctively remember that I was rolling my eyes by page 6, when he got into the “evolution” of “genders” among the robots, and wanted to shoot someone by page 9, when the faux robo-Italy popped up (so I got the wrong European country, big deal).
And thank you very much for reminding me of the title, though I’m sure I’ll regret it in less than six seconds.
There was a cheesy live-action Saturday morning sci-fi show (not Land of the Lost, so don’t go there) that made other cheesy Sat. morning shows look like gold by comparison. It was done in a ‘Flash Gordon’ style serial except that nothing ever happened.
The hero had a pet pocket robot that was essentially just a wind up toy. Every episode our hero would be caught and chained to the wall. The pocket robot would come out (never got confiscated) climb up the wall, foot over foot wind-up toy style, and then ‘zap’ the chains and free our hero.
Every.Single.Episode. had this happen. It seemed to be filmed in a cheesy cave. I think the baddies spaceship was a giant lump of coal.
All I remember is it being on late 70’s in the wake of Star Wars (get anything sci-fi on TV now!)
My favourite sci-fi book ever is Space Troopers.
I first read it when I was seventeen, and “talking with a soldier in his first leave after boot camp” was a prime social skill for a girl living 60 miles from a big military base. All-male compulsory military service, back then in Spain. Oh, and the military base is shared by them yankees, so “being able to understand what a yankee soldier on leave says before he tries to grab a piece of you that you don’t want grabbed” was a big skill, too.
The boot camp stories are SOOOO much like the ones told by those soldiers, I fell off the sofa. Twice. After the second time, I decided it would be safer to stay on the floor. So when I got to the part about wanting to get guard duty so you’ll have the chance to hear a female voice or even gaspsee a female member of the species, I didn’t fall off anything, but I rolled over so hard that I bumped against the closet and my parents came into the room to check if I was all right.
I absolutely.
Completely.
ForEVER and EVER amen and until a thousand years after the Second Coming
refuse to watch the filthy so-called-movie “starring” Ben Affleck which has been reported to me as having as its best moment the co-ed showers with displays of tits (I’m more into Affleck myself, although I still haven’t forgiven him for that so-called-movie)
The movie version of “a brave new world” did the nasty with goats, too. Book’s good, but I don’t recommend it if you’re already feeling down.
You’re talking about the made-for-TV version that starred Leonard Nimoy as Mustapha Mond, right? Yeah, I regret wasting two hours of my life on that atrocity, too.
That film was the second made-for-TV flick based on Huxley’s novel. There was another made back in the '70’s, though I seem to be the only person in the world who ever watched it. It stank, too.
Not as bad as Lost in Space, though.
Pikers, all of you.
Flash Gordon, the movie.
Smart old-gut scientist, woman reporter without a clue, and a professional football quarterback get into a rocket. Hilarity ensues. The entire Universe is saved.
But the worse part of this was how they were able to travel from planet to planet in Ming’s system without life support on open air cruise ships and jet sleds.
And, of course, Queen performing “The Wedding March.”
Nava writes:
> . . . the filthy so-called-movie “starring” Ben Affleck . . .
What are you talking about? Ben Affleck wasn’t in Starship Troopers.
For me, the Queen soundtrack was the only thing that made Flash Gordon worth sitting through.
Most of the contenders for Worst Ever have been chosen, but…
Despite a wonderful scene with a hot young Sherilyn Fenn practically bursting out of a tiny bikini, *The Wraith * with Charlie Sheen set new standards of suckiness in 1986 when it was released.
And let’s not forget *Masters of the Universe * with Dolph Lundgren.
Or *Timerider * with Fred Savage.
Hey, if you are going to quote from Mad Magazine, you have to credit it!
My nominee: David Lynch’s version of Dune (q984). Man! Did that ever REEK!!!
And I was never a big fan of the novel, either.