End of Sleestak Golden Age

[Fleur de lis]

OK, it's been 20 years and I don't have episodes on video, so bear with me I'm working on sheer memory (which these days is a precious commodity.)

Was it ever explained or shown in the series exactly what caused the downfall of the glorious Sleestak civilization? I remember that Enik (the advanced guy) was not from the future but the past, right? And the beasty guys were actually the survivors of Armageddon in Enik's future.

[Crawford]

We never did find out where and when the Altrusian civilization crumbles and became the Sleestak. It was obviously far in Enik's future but seing as nothing changed thoughout the show's history Enik never changed the course of time. Probably it was fated or something like that. The episode "The Pylon Express" offered a brief but tantalizing glimpse of the Lost City in its pre-Sleestak appearance. Holly even thought she saw Enik strolling along where Big Alice usually was patrolling. It would make for an intersting tale to tell of the fall of the Altrusions and their evolution into Sleestak.

[Robert]

Yes. Enik stated that his races inability to
keep their emotions in check led to the
downfall of their civilization. He didn't
say specifically what happened.

The whole episode, "The Stranger", has a kind
of anti-war theme. Will and Holly fight and
act agressively to each other and Enik. They
end up destroying the magetti in the process.
Then, when Enik tries to retaliate against
the Marshalls, Rick convinces Enik that it
was his uncaring, negative emotions that
caused the downfall of his people and that he
had to learn these skills and take them back
to his people and teach them so that they
didn't destroy themselves.

For what it's worth...

Robert

[GrumpyBrian]

This would make an excellent theme for LOTL fanfic, I think.

[Fleur de lis]

Aha! The emotion thing sounds familiar, probably from the D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold connection to Gene Roddenberry's world view.

[emwhy]

This would be a really cool fanfic idea. I think it's easy to say that they never would have done an episode around this, it probably would have been too expensive (this is/was Saturday morning TV afterall) If you've ever seen "The Hole" from season 1 they shed a little bit more light on what might have happened.

[GrumpyBrian]

Fleur de lis -

There's even more of a Trek connection than the David Gerrold one you mention. "The Stranger" was written by Walter Koenig aka Ensign Checkov. I always thought, by the way, that Enik's character was heavily modeled on Spock.

[Fleur de lis]

Walter Koenig wrote that episode, huh? Aha, see what you learn on the message forum.... Yeah, that whole Spock thing really left an imprint. I'm not sure if it's a good one, either. Is the inability to control your emotions so bad, or is it the detachment from and the devaluing of emotion that's really the cause of a lot of pathology? Hmmmm.

[emwhy]

You guys want to talk Trek connections, check the end credits some time. You'll see the names Herman Zimmerman and Mike Westmore. Both these guys worked on all the new Star Trek projects from Next Generation, DS9, Voyager, and even the last three films. Zimmerman as a an art director, and Westmore as a make-up artist.

[Fleur de lis]

After Star Trek got cancelled, they didn't just go home, did they? Good for them!

[SkylonPilot]

I had read that Walter Koenig wrote an episode of LOTL, and I thought Herman Zimmerman had been a production designer on one of the Krofft shows, but it was "Far-Out Space Nuts" I remembered seeing his name on. Does anyone know which other Krofft shows he, or other "Trek" alumni, might've worked on, besides LOTL and FOSN?

[SkylonPilot]

I guess I actually should've asked that in a separate topic...

[SkylonPilot]

Also, about the Sleestak Golden Age, has anyone ever read a book called "A Barnstormer in Oz", by Phillip Jose Farmer? It deals with a science fictional explanation for Oz, which occupies another dimension; a pocket universe. A large section of the book is about an alien civilization that had once lived there, and created a great deal of the creatures that existed in Oz. The civilization reminded me a lot of the Sleestaks, and Farmer did what the LOTL writers could've done about other dimensions if they'd just been given more time...

[SkylonPilot]

Hey! Why didn't anyone answer my questions? I care about LOTL as much as anyone else! Please, talk back to me!!!

[GrumpyBrian]

Skylon Pilot - Walter Koenig wrote episode number 6 of the first season, "The Stranger", the episode that introduced Enik. I think it's got to be more than a coincidence that Enik bears more than a passing resemblence to Spock, personality-wise.

I never read the Phillip Jose Farmer book you're talking about, it sounds good. Considering the limitations of Saturday morning programming, I think the LOTL writers did an amazing job in exloring as many challenging science fiction ideas as they did in the show, including alternate dimensions and such.

A lot of Trek alumni worked on LOTL for its first season, but I think this was because former Trek contributor David Gerrold was script editor. After he left at the end of the season, none of the other ex-Trek contributors ever wrote a script again. And I don't know of any who wrote for other Kroft shows. Again, I think it was because of Gerrold and what he was attempting with LOTL that Trek alumni were attracted to the show, *not* the Kroft connection.

Besides Gerrold and Koenig, Trek contributors who wrote for LOTL were Dorothy Fontana (who was Star Trek's script editor as well as writer), and Norman Spinrad.

Other SF luminaries who wrote for the show included Ben Bova and Larry Niven. They never wrote any scripts after Gerrold left either.

~Brian

[SkylonPilot]

GrumpyBrian,
Thank you for answering my questions! Wow, I didn't know that Walter Koening had mad such a big contribution to LOTL. It has been a LONG time since I've seen many of the episodes. I would love to know where I could find out more about the creation and production history of the show. How did the writers come about the decision of creating Enik? I wouldn't think that Koeing holds sole credit for that, but considering he wrote the script, I would say there was definitely more than a little influence on the character from a certain Vulcan, from what I recall of him. But, I agree that the writers did a stupendous job on the ideas of dimensional travel, at a time when such things weren't really being dealt with in TV or film sci-fi. I only wish that David Gerrold had stayed on, and that the show had lasted long enough to deal more deeply with some of the intriguing concepts it had originated. I thought the pylons were the coolest part of the show!

[emwhy]

Actually I read an interview with Gerrold where he said that Koenig originally wanted to cal Enik "Eneg" which is Gene spelled backwards...obviously a tip-of-the hat to Roddenberry. I've also heard rumors that NBC stepped in after season 1 and wanted things toned down a bit. The Sleestak must have scared a lot of kids, cause the 2nd season doesn't feature them that much at all. Overall I like season 2, not as much as 1. Let's not even get into season 3.

[Fleur de lis]

I wonder if there was competition at the time with Roddenberry's "Genesis" series of tv-movies? He kept trying to sell this as a pilot, I think, a post-Armageddon Buck Rogers type of thing. It shows sometimes late at night with John Saxon waking up in a post-World War III America where those who survived in the bomb shelters have the cool technology and everyone else is running around outside in badly sewn animal skin outfits. A lot of the same themes show up: war and aggression destroyed us, and after the final conflict civilization dissolves into a bunch of club-wielding barbarians. Remember this is before Mad Max or any of that!

It is a coup for LOTL that they kept their series running when Roddenberry couldn't sell his pilot. *gleam*

[emwhy]

I think "Genesis" was at least 2 years ahead of LOTL. And, here's one for ya, John Saxon was not the original actor to play the part of Dylan Hunt (I think that was his name). There were actually two attempts at a Genesis pilot and Saxon was in the second one. Mariet Hartley was also in the first one I beleive, before all those tacky Polaroid commercials with James Garner. Getting back to Walter Koening, I watched "The Stranger" last night and that whole scene where Rick Marshall gives Enik the whole compassion speech could've been done by Dr. McCoy to Spock...same type of emotion on Rick's part.

[emwhy]

Oh and one other thing Fleur de lis, I enjoyed the fanfic. It's not easy to put the Marshalls and the Porters together.

[GrumpyBrian]

Echoing your sentiments, emwhy, on Fleur de lis' fanfic "Refrain". In addition to tying both the Marshalls and Porters together, I thought it did a nice job of giving us an intriguing peek at Altrusian civilization during its golden age, and of offering an alternative theory about how that civilization might have fallen.

~Brian

[Fleur de lis]

Aw, thanks for the positive feedback!

[edejong]

This site is very interesting. I forgot so much of this show - now its all comming back!