GIGANTOR!! FINAL CONFLICT!! THIRTYSOMETHING!! LOST!! SUPER FRIENDS!! PERRIN!! LEGAL!! HercVault!!

I am – Hercules!!

“Earth: Final Conflict” was a surprise. Six years after “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry died, his actress-widow Majel sells Canadian network CTV a handful of Roddenberry’s notes for a sci-fi series he was never able to sell titled “Battleground: Earth.” The definition of “unpromising.” But the first season, at least, was terrific. Retitled “Earth: Final Conflict” to avoid confusion with the L. Ron Hubbard novel “Battlefield: Earth,” it was set three years after an alien race called the Taelons made contact with humans. It originally focused on cop William Boone, who reluctantly came to sign on as an alien liaison’s bodyguard. Like many Earthlings, Boone had presumably seen the “Twilight Zone” episode “To Serve Man,” and was suspicious of the secretive aliens despite the fact that their gifts of technology had wiped out famine and poverty on Earth. Following the suspicious death of Boone’s wife, he winds up working as a double agent for a billionaire’s human resistance movement, protecting the genderless Taelon liaison Da’an even as he spies on him/her. (Young Canadian actresses, their voices electronically lowered an octave or two, donned bald caps and platform shoes to play the Taelons.) The series’ watchability was greatly enhanced by supercute Canadian actress Lisa Howard, who played an ex-marine trained to pilot the Taelons’ interstellar spacecraft. The actress hasn’t done much since, so this season-set offers an excellent opportunity to get another look at her. Malin Akerman, who would eventually play a Watchman, plays an avatar in episode two, her first-ever screen role. Commentaries on the new set: 1.1 “Decision”: Series technical advisor Rod Roddenberry and writer-producers David Kirshner and Paul Gertz. 1.2 “Truth”: Roddenberry and actors Lisa Howard and Von Flores. 1.6 “Float Like A Butterfly”: Roddenberry, Howard and Flores. 1.12 “Sandoval’s Run”: Roddenberry and Flores. 1.21 “Infection”: Roddenberry and Gertz. 1.22 “The Joining”: Roddenberry, Kirshner and Gertz. Other extras on the new set include: * “Season one introduction with Eugene ‘Rod’ Roddenberry” (1:04; disc one). Learn that son Rod, who served as “technical consultant” on the series, regards season one as his fave. * “Earth: Final Conflict Genesis: A Retrospective” (18:01; disc four). Learn that the series was sold with a 2-minute trailer cobbled together entirely from movies that had nothing to do with the series. Learn that Kevin Kilner recommended Lisa Howard for the role of Lily Marquette and coached her for her audition. Learn that Von Flores never saw his character, murderous Taelon toady Ron Sandoval, as a bad guy. Learn that actress Leni Howard was a pretty hot girl beneath all that alien makeup. * “The Roddenberry Philosophy” (6:11; disc five) Learn that Gene Roddenberry opposed racism, believed diversity should not just be tolerated but embraced, and believed in bettering the world. Kevin Kilner, who played Boone but does not contribute to the commentaries on this set, appears in new interviews for both “Philosophy” and “Retrospective.”

“Gigantor” was actually the 1963 Fuji TV series “Tesujin 28-go” (“Ironman #28”) dubbed and repackaged for Anglophone audiences in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. In the Japanese version, Ironman was a three-story-tall superweapon designed to crush Allied forces during World War II. The Japanese came up with 27 failed giant-robot prototypes before the Americans decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs. The 28th Ironman worked but arrived too late to get into the war to destroy London, New York, Los Angeles, et al, and was repurposed instead as a pleasant civilian robot. 12-year-old Shotaro Kaneda, son of the iron giant’s inventor, was given remote control of the deadly metallic leviathan to fight crime. In the American version, Tesujin became Gigantor, Shotaro Kaneda became Jimmy Sparks, Dr. Shikishima became Dr. Bob Brilliant, Inspector Otsuka became Inspector Ignatz J. Blooper, etc. etc. The unpleasant World War II backstory was discarded and the American series was set in the far-future year 2000. The new set contains the first 26 of the 83 episodes produced between 1963 and 1965. Extras include: * Audio commentary by Fred Land on all three episodes comprising the Captain Spider plotline. * Issues one through six of the 2000 Gigantor funnybook series (accessible via DVD-ROM drives). * An interview with series Americanizer Fred Ladd (34:12), who also Americanized what became “Astro Boy” and “Kimba.” Learn that Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme” was an inspiration for the “Gigantor” theme song. Learn that Trans-Lux told Ladd he could get a 25-percent bigger license fee if “Gigantor” was in color, and Ladd did colorization tests for the series before abandoning the idea. * An interview with anime historian Fred Pattern (28:45). Learn that there’s a LOT of confusion about what the word “anime” means. Learn that to the Japanese, anything animated is considered “anime,” including “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty.” Learn that characters in Japanese manga and anime often have Western facial features because of one very influential artist who was a big fan of the way the Disney characters were drawn. Learn that “Kimba” was inspired by “Bambi.” Learn that “Astro Boy,” “Gigantor,” “Kimba” and “Speed Racer” were the most popular of the Japanese cartoon imports of the 1960s.

“The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin,” originally broadcast between 1977 and 1979 on the BBC, followed a middle-aged senior sales executive (with the Sunshine Desserts Co.) who finds himself slowly driven to madness and alternate identities and new careers by the monotony of his life. I confess I found the farting chairs funnier when I was a teenager, but I’m still admiring of the central performance of the great Leonard Rossiter (“2001,” “Barry Lyndon”) and the muscular episode-to-episode continuity, a rarity in those days. The new set includes all three seasons of the show, as well as two bonus features: * “Reginald Perrin: The Funny Side of Christmas” (5:03) Reggie’s family members, co-workers and tramp pop by unexpectedly to disrupt his peaceful Christmas morning. * “The Very Best of Leonard Rossiter” (52:00) A documentary about Rossiter’s life and career. Learn that Rossiter hated his first career as an insurance salesman. Learn that he was a working actor for 25 years before he became a household name. Learn that “Rising Damp,” Rossiter’s earlier series, was spun off from a stage play called “The Banana Box.” Learn that he starred opposite Joan Collins as a clumsy lush in a series of Cinzano commercials. Learn that Rossiter played a professional farter in a movie.

So laughably derivative of “The DaVinci Code” (and more than a half-dozen other recent big-screen blockbusters), NBC’s new miniseries “The Last Templar” turns out to be more like The Last Template. A four-hour affair from veteran syndicated TV director Paulo Barzman (“Queen of Swords,” “Relic Hunter”) and Lifetime TV-movie writer Suzette Couture (“The Mermaid Chair,” “The House Next Door”), “Templar” is a dopier, blander, budget hybrid of “DaVinci,” “Tomb Raider,” “National Treasure,” “Romancing The Stone,” “The Perfect Storm” and the Indiana Jones franchise. It was produced by the two Robert Halmis, who had no fewer than 18 new projects on TV last year, among them SciFi’s famously awful update of “Flash Gordon.” “Templar,” based on the popular 2005 novel by Raymond Khoury, tells the tale of archaeologist Tess Chaykin (Mira Sorvino) as she races sinister Vatican forces to recover a manuscript reputed to reveal that the Bible is a giant pack of lies. Scott Foley (“Felicity,” “The Unit”) plays the religious FBI agent who, while investigating a horseback heist tied to the manuscript’s retrieval, teams with Chaykin on an adventure that takes them from Manhattan to the Mediterranean. The teleplay doesn’t engender much rooting interest in its characters, and you’d expect a reputable archeologist and an FBI agent to be a whole lot brainier than “Templar’s” protagonists. The one thing the project has going for it is always-dishy Oscar-winner Sorvino, who’s 41 and still fetching as she cavorts in khakis and cocktail dresses. Somebody should set Sorvino up in an ongoing series fast - but, please, not one from the folks behind “Templar.” Stick with pay-cable’s “Big Love” and “United States of Tara” on Sunday and “24” on Monday. USA Today says:

… NBC might have at least encouraged the folks behind this pulp-novel transfer to do something, anything, we haven't seen before, if only to throw us off the Da Vinci/National Treasure trail. … done in by being both too late and too long. At two hours it might have worked (see TNT's Librarian films). But you can't stretch a story this thin and absurd over two nights, especially when it's slow to start and slower to finish. You're just giving us too much time to consider what we've seen last and predict what we'll see next. …

The New York Times says:

… possesses the true Halmi signature: despite the fact that it’s packed like a sausage with banter and jokes both verbal and visual, it doesn’t contain a single genuinely funny moment. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

… Once you start mucking about with the Grail or anything remotely connected to the actual life of the man called Jesus, you can get into choppy waters. And unfortunately those waters swamp "The Last Templar." The action is too sword-and-sandal, the relationship between Tess and Daley far too adorably argumentative for the writers (Khoury and Suzette Couture) to decide, at the relatively last minute, to make "The Last Templar" a sanctimonious treatise on the nature of Christ and the importance of religious faith. …

The Washington Post says:

… a hackneyed, muddled mess that so wants to be "The Da Vinci Code" or "National Treasure" or any of the Indiana Jones movies and fails spectacularly all the way around. …

The Boston Globe says:

… a four-hour exercise in generic nonsense that wants to remind us of "The Da Vinci Code," when it's not mimicking "Romancing the Stone." But watching Sorvino and trying to reconcile her presence in this genre is perversely stimulating and, when her character, Tess, breaks a pair of Manolo Blahniks in a chase scene, curiously entertaining. Alas, the writers never give Sorvino a handy action-hero catchphrase; that would have been the cherry on this kooky sundae. … With two hours of air sucked out of it, the story - which also flashes back to medieval times - might have been fast-paced enough to distract us from all the plot glitches. But at four hours, you are left with far too much time to ponder the feebleness of the endeavor. …

Variety says:

… a mess of biblical proportions … Sitting through both nights will qualify not just as an act of faith but one that may approach self-flagellation. … Early on it's pretty clear the four hours won't contain a single original thought, down to gauzy flashbacks of the 13th century knights and dialogue that dictates that when Tess exclaims "Rats!," sure enough, her feet are surrounded by them.

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… after about an hour of jumbled storytelling and bizarre juxtapositions between the 13th century Latin Kingdom and 21st century New York, the prediction is you'll be less intrigued by the legend of the medieval Knights Templar than you will the prospect of catching up on your reading. …

A 13-hour international production adapting the seminal and acclaimed 1719 Daniel Defoe novel "The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, where in all the Men perished but Himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates)," NBC’s “Crusoe” comes from veteran TV writer Stephen Gallagher, who wrote on the 20th century version of “Doctor Who” and created the original British version of “Eleventh Hour.” “Crusoe” is a very silly show, poorly plotted, inconsistent in tone and packed with lame quips, underwritten characters and dull flashbacks starring the show’s most recognizable actors, Sean Bean and Sam Neill. One senses it was pitched as “Pirates of the Caribbean” meets “Lost,” but it’s far more evocative of “Xena” or the old “Beastmaster” series. Steer yourself far from it, or find your attention span scuttled.
USA Today says:

This season, it's viewers who have been left stranded. Nowhere is that more true than at NBC, which, pound for pound, has produced the worst new fall slate since those heady days of Manimal and Mr. Smith. Only in a year in which the network has already given us Knight Rider, Kath & Kim and My Own Worst Enemy could Crusoe be said to exceed expectations. It's bad, but it's not that bad. … considering the talent involved and the money spent, it's best to ratchet back your comparison points to syndicated fantasies like Hercules. … you may find yourself tiring of plot holes you can steer a galleon through and the second-rate nature of much of the cast, and wondering how you make a series out of two people trapped on a deserted island. Which is why the big question isn't how Crusoe gets off this island, but whether you'll come back. …

The New York Times says:

… Crusoe jovially makes Friday promise he’ll stay away from that silly cannibalism. The two are Crockett and Tubbs. There would be no crime in any of this if “Crusoe” didn’t feel like such a drag. “Lost” requires a vague familiarity with names that turn up on the syllabus for an introductory political theory class, but “Crusoe” just demands caffeine. It sedates, and its fabricated sentimentality does not save it. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

… Some of what happens happens just to make things colorful or keep them moving. … demanding absolute sense or ironclad consistency from a show like this is like wanting a butterfly to fly a straighter line, not only pointless but somehow unnatural. … The plot is . . . just a plot. …

The Chicago Tribune says:

… Anyone older than 10 will likely cringe at the way "Crusoe" liberally borrows from both "Lost" and "Gilligan's Island," and wonder why, exactly, it is necessary for Robinson Crusoe to remove his shirt for long periods of time. As Crusoe, Philip Winchester manages to hold on to a couple of shreds of dignity despite the script's creakier aspects. …

The Washington Post says:

… For all its shortcomings and flat flourishes, "Crusoe" has one very significant thing going for it, a virtue that can be summarized in four reassuring words: At Least It's Different. …

The San Francisco Chronicle says:

… The real trouble with "Crusoe," which is less an adaptation than a way to use elements of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Lost," is that it's so clumsy. Hokey and poorly paced with unfathomably lame flashbacks, it's like a relentlessly mediocre movie of the week that still has 11 more hours to go. …

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:

… a bit of a wreck itself. … bloated … The tone varies wildly from action-adventure to serious costume drama. …

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram says:

… it accomplishes a pretty astonishing feat: It manages to water down Defoe’s novel and the things it directly or indirectly inspired — Cast Away, Survivor, Lost — all at once, and the two-hour premiere manages to dilute Pirates of the Caribbean as well. …

Variety says:

… really a throwback to the cheerfully silly first-run syndicated hours ("Sinbad!" "Sheena!" "Conan!") … a respectable effort -- handsomely shot and offering old-fashioned end-of-the-week escapism … In a larger sense, "Crusoe" reflects the inconsistency in NBC's development approach this season, inasmuch as the show wants to be light, frothy family fun, while garnishing that with a nasty streak doubtless deemed necessary to satisfy today's jaded youth. …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… champions swashbuckling and scenery without grasping the significance of credibility and character development. … Frequent flashbacks piece together the story of how Crusoe got into this mess. Presumably, all the dots won't be connected until the 13th and final part of the series. Meanwhile, they are mostly speed bumps in this story of a brave but terribly bland marooned mariner.

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