Saturday, January 21, 2006

SATURDAY MORNING CULT TV BLOGGING: Space Academy: "Monkey Business"

I've been blogging Space Academy (one episode a week) for a while now, and re-acquainting myself with this nearly thirty-year old Saturday morning, live action show. It's been an enjoyable experience for the most part, mainly because I watched the series as a child and feel tremendous nostalgia for those bygone days of the 1970s.

But, every now and then, an episode of this Filmation series is just not very good. "Monkey Business" is one of those. As if an explanation is in order, just let me state, the episode involves a chimpanzee named Jake. You see, Adrian is working on an experiment involving chimpanzee/human communications. At around the same time, there's a disaster on a nearby asteroid mirror array, and Tee Gar and Professor Bolt are trapped on a planetoid as it freezes. As the temperature drops, both men are reduced to cowering underneath what appear to be tarps. This is actually an improvement, because the professor had been wearing what looks like a gold velour jogging outfit.

Anyway, Chris Gentry and Paul set out in a Seeker to help, but Loki and Jake the ape have stowed away in the ship's rear compartment. Loki stows away every week, I've noticed. I'm serious. Jeez.

Anyway, in attempting to repair the array, Chris must climb the scaffolding of a tower to reach a malfunctioning circuit board. But then he falls, and can't get up. So guess who has to fix the machinery? Yep, it's Jake the monkey, who just happens to be there on that mission. Exactly when he's needed. With Adrian's experiment and Laura's psychic abilities, the monkey does good.

Afterwards, Loki gets grounded for two weeks. His punishment should have been watching this episode again...

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