Logan's Run (1977–1978)
7/10
70's sci-fi
5 September 2011
The one thing this show had going for it was that it predated the Star Wars craze that wracked TV and movies alike. Similarly it was missing a certain something to make it a complete TV rendition of the feature film.

The foibles with this show are sundry, but more technical than truly artistic. The props and sets were tweaked and manipulated about as far as the budget would take them to create an imaginary dystopic future, complete with gun wielding bandits and robots gone haywire.

Shot on a shoe string budget the shots and stories look like they were cranked out in record time. Ditto with some of the plots. But the actual stories, however oddly executed, seemed to have a real heart to them. Which is all the more shameful, for had this series just waited perhaps another eight months, then the powers that brought it into being could've drawn some very good lessons from Star Wars, and infuse some real production values into a series coasting off the diminishing wave of its feature film predecessor.

Instead we have a TV translation of a major motion picture, that, like a lot of TV series based off of major theatrical releases, really doesn't hold up to well. And this is from a man who saw the 1980s revamp of Buck Rogers, and liked it.

TV's "Logan's Run" is what it is; an attempt to bring some G-rated adventure from source material is firmly in R-territory. As such the anti-debauchery message is lost, and we have a sort of fugitive sci-fi theme running amok on the screen. I purchased and DL'd the season premier from Amazon, and the only real height I could take away from this effort was Donald Moffat's thesping. Otherwise I'm sorry to say the series hasn't aged too well.

Still, it's light hearted adventure that actually does entertain, though does become a bit pondersome at segments. I enjoyed it, and perhaps that's all that really matters.

If you've got a hankering for retro-TV, then scope out the nearly forgotten "Logan's Run" TV series.
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