Monty's Marathon Diary: '70s Fashion Was Scary

[Primetimer]

Wonder Woman has to deal with fake mustaches, robot dogs, and the biggest lapels on television.

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[cstad]

Hell yeah, Gary Burghoff! You knew you were in for a good episode if he was a guest star. Same with Dick van Patton (RIP, good sir.)<br /><br />Wasn't there a robot dog or something similar on "Buck Rogers" as well? The late 70's were filled with robot-animal sidekicks.<br /><br />My family has a photo of my brothers, ages 5 and 3 at the time (photographed at Sears or someplace similar,) wearing matching powder blue leisure suits with HUMONGOUS lapels. Truly, the late 70's had some epic fashion fails.

[Monty]

It didn't even occur to me to check the date of Battlestar Galactica's robot dog (which was created by putting a chimpanzee in a robot suit!), but it made its debut in September 1978. I can't remember a robot dog on Buck Rogers, but Twiki is basically the same thing.

[Snookums]

"For me, a beautiful woman can mean only...pleasure."

Ugh, even as a wee tot watching this I was "Something's wrong with that guy. Blech."

[Maverick]

 There was Max, the bionic dog on The Bionic Woman.

[madhacker]

I as recall from my childhood Buck Rodgers had a lame robot named Twiki (btw, in my opinion Buck was a pathetic ripoff of same period Battlestar Galactica right down to the same lame space battles. Oh God, now I have to rewatch the new and much improved Battlestar remake to clease the memories from my fragile little mind).

[ratgirlagogo]

K9 on Doctor Who.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-9_(Doctor_Who)

[legaleagle53]

I as recall from my childhood Buck Rodgers had a lame robot named Twiki (btw, in my opinion Buck was a pathetic ripoff of same period Battlestar Galactica right down to the same lame space battles. Oh God, now I have to rewatch the new and much improved Battlestar remake to clease the memories from my fragile little mind).

 

Not really. Buck Rogers actually had been around since 1928, long before Battlestar Galactica.  The show you and I watched was simply a reboot of the original 1939 movie serial that was based upon the comic-strip character

 

But I digress.  The fashions of the 70s were only some of the abominations that Wonder Woman had to contend with in the 70s (although Diana herself was always pretty well put together, as I can recall).

[DeathQuaker]

Every vaguely science fiction television show in 1978 had cute robots because of Star Wars, which came out in 1977. Why it was often in the form of a robot dog, I don't know, but I think it was combining with an older trope of dogs appealing to kids.

 

Talking of crossovers... the thief-turned-secretary in "Death in Disguise" is played by Jennifer Darling, who also played actual secretary (who sometimes ended up posing as a secret agent) Peggy Callahan in "The Bionic Woman." Which, incidentally, is also totally needing PTV recaps. Come on guys, it has an episode called "Fembots in Las Vegas."

 

The hacker episode is kind of mind blowing in one respect--the writers realize in 1978, when computer systems were JUST starting to get networked together, that if a hacker could successfully access one computer by hacking one networked to it, they could potentially eventually do things like steal government secrets and shut down the power grid, etc. The mind blowing part is that we're still basically under threat of this all the time--there are most definitely defenses, but the potential scariness of cyberterrorism is a biggie. So in a way, it's surprisingly forward thinking. All of this in the episode is counterbalanced of course by how impressed the characters are by blinking lights and punch cards.

 

(And since I brought up the Bionic Woman, they also do a hacker episode, but it involves someone stealing money from the government, and then hiding the cash in hamburger buns. I love 70s action TV.)

 

BTW, I didn't get a chance to post on the prior recap set, but the shift in tone (or further ambiguity in tone) is because back when they changed the opening credit sequence, is when they changed producers. I'm too lazy to look up his name, but blame him for the inferior opening and the thematic shifts.

Edited June 29, 2015 by DeathQuaker

[MarkHB]

The new producer was Bruce Lansbury, Angela's brother.  And indeed, when he took over as "Supervising Producer" and Douglas S. Cramer was apparently reduced to a figurehead was when the titles changed and the show became, IMHO, more blasé.

[DeathQuaker]

That was it! Bruce Lansbury.

 

Although we are yet to see Wonder Woman singing pop and skateboarding and fighting with a brain in a jar, so there are bright spots to come.

[Ubiquitous]

I must have missed "Flight To Oblivion" in the original run b/c I didn't recognize it when it played last night. Would it be going out on a limb to conclude that "Hull City Howlers" was a riff on "Bay City Rollers", although they seemed more like a proto punk band than a pop rock one. I laughed at the man who could heepnotize people by ringing a bell three times and doing it so thoroughly that they were impervious to WW's golden lasso.