Starlost: The Deception is the result when Glen-Warren Productions takes two episodes of Starlost from 1973 and glues them together back-to-back. The orignal episodes are titled "Mr. Smith of Manchester" and "Gallery of Fear". In the former, Devon, Rachel and Garth spend time in a highly polluted over-industrialized dome dishing out CTV-Grade wisdom. In the latter, Our heroes encounter Magnus, a computer that causes them to see hallucinations of friends and family. Magnus also has a museum filled with CTV-grade art, and is up to no good.
2 Reviews
Does anyone know how to steer this thing?
junk-monkey23 July 2005
Warning: Spoilers
The Starlost: Deception is a stinkingly bad SF "movie" made by gluing two episodes of a 1973 TV series together and running away before anyone noticed.
The movie starts with a rolling written narration and a voice over telling us that the Earth has met a horrible, unspecified fate worse than death and the sole survivors of Mankind are in a space ship Ark "8,000 miles in character" which is unwittingly on a collision course with a "Class G solar star 5,000 miles in character" and thus "threatens the Destruction of All Mankind".
Apart from the weirdly jarring use of the word "character" where they obviously mean "diameter" the simple facts as stated mean: the space ship is bigger than the star it is about to collide with! and given that our Sun is 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) "in character" it's a bloody small Solar Star too. The truth is this is pseudo-SF written by SF illiterates who can't even do some quick fact checking.
The basic premise of the show was that, seeing the Vogon hyperspace bypass construction crew coming (or whatever unspecified fate befell the planet) the Leaders of Mankind shoved hundreds of different cultures from Earth in biospheres on a giant Space Ark and set it off across the Universe looking for a new home. (The words 'Eggs' and 'Basket' immediately spring to mind, but what the hey...) The spheres were sealed off from one another to maintain cultural diversity. But Something Went Wrong! (as it always does) and the ship is now out of control. Three wanderers from one of the spheres finds out the TRUTH and, unable to return to their own agrarian, culture wander the corridors of the ship looking for someone who knows how to steer it.
Starlost is Canada's second greatest contribution to crap SF TV (first place goes to William Shatner) and is one of those SF shows where the automatic sliding doors make more noise GBZZZZZZZZshup! - than the ray guns do. pew! The show only ran for 16 episodes before it was taken outside and shot (so this "movie" is 12.5% of the whole run) and with stunning dialogue like this (between a silver hot-panted Space Bimbo and Kier Dullea as "Devon" trying to hide behind his moustache) you can see why it was put out of its misery:
Space Bimbo:You've never tasted food like this before...
Devon: I've never seen statues that change before or people who appear and disappear before my eyes before either
Just try saying that out loud - it is unspeakably bad dialogue, and again in the same scene a few moment later:
Space Bimbo: Is the Ark in any immediate danger?
Devon: It could be, we just don't know when!
Maybe Canadian dictionaries of the 70s defined "immediate" differently than we do now but the writing in this thing is awful. Shot on video and using some heroic Colour-separation overlay work. (though they still hadn't figured out not to pan or zoom while using it. From time to time the backgrounds suddenly lurch or follow the actors around.) The music is annoyingly randomly placed Oeeeeoooo! pling! pling! Space Music. And why is it that in bad TV SF like this ALL strangers are instantly dragged before the Head of State? Imagine if that happened in the USA... every time a Texan border guard spotted someone where he shouldn't be it would be "Take him to the President, now!" It's cobblers.
As originally conceived the three protagonists were a couple who were in (forbidden) 'lurrrve' and the woman's betrothed who was sworn to kill them but was forced by necessity to help them in their quest. None of that back-story from the pilot show was in evidence here and the three wooden heroes just stood in a row and took turns to step forward and deliver their lines before trying to hide behind one another again.
Another great moment: Exploring the inner city setting in the first part of the "movie" Garth comes across a big red door marked "Exit Forbidden", thinks deeply for a moment then says "Exit Forbidden? I wonder if this could be the way out..."
No Garth, It's a fugging Bubble-Gum Machine! Of course it's the way out! that's what "Exit" means! Though maybe not in the dictionary the writers of this execrable space turkey were using.
Avoid.
The movie starts with a rolling written narration and a voice over telling us that the Earth has met a horrible, unspecified fate worse than death and the sole survivors of Mankind are in a space ship Ark "8,000 miles in character" which is unwittingly on a collision course with a "Class G solar star 5,000 miles in character" and thus "threatens the Destruction of All Mankind".
Apart from the weirdly jarring use of the word "character" where they obviously mean "diameter" the simple facts as stated mean: the space ship is bigger than the star it is about to collide with! and given that our Sun is 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) "in character" it's a bloody small Solar Star too. The truth is this is pseudo-SF written by SF illiterates who can't even do some quick fact checking.
The basic premise of the show was that, seeing the Vogon hyperspace bypass construction crew coming (or whatever unspecified fate befell the planet) the Leaders of Mankind shoved hundreds of different cultures from Earth in biospheres on a giant Space Ark and set it off across the Universe looking for a new home. (The words 'Eggs' and 'Basket' immediately spring to mind, but what the hey...) The spheres were sealed off from one another to maintain cultural diversity. But Something Went Wrong! (as it always does) and the ship is now out of control. Three wanderers from one of the spheres finds out the TRUTH and, unable to return to their own agrarian, culture wander the corridors of the ship looking for someone who knows how to steer it.
Starlost is Canada's second greatest contribution to crap SF TV (first place goes to William Shatner) and is one of those SF shows where the automatic sliding doors make more noise GBZZZZZZZZshup! - than the ray guns do. pew! The show only ran for 16 episodes before it was taken outside and shot (so this "movie" is 12.5% of the whole run) and with stunning dialogue like this (between a silver hot-panted Space Bimbo and Kier Dullea as "Devon" trying to hide behind his moustache) you can see why it was put out of its misery:
Space Bimbo:You've never tasted food like this before...
Devon: I've never seen statues that change before or people who appear and disappear before my eyes before either
Just try saying that out loud - it is unspeakably bad dialogue, and again in the same scene a few moment later:
Space Bimbo: Is the Ark in any immediate danger?
Devon: It could be, we just don't know when!
Maybe Canadian dictionaries of the 70s defined "immediate" differently than we do now but the writing in this thing is awful. Shot on video and using some heroic Colour-separation overlay work. (though they still hadn't figured out not to pan or zoom while using it. From time to time the backgrounds suddenly lurch or follow the actors around.) The music is annoyingly randomly placed Oeeeeoooo! pling! pling! Space Music. And why is it that in bad TV SF like this ALL strangers are instantly dragged before the Head of State? Imagine if that happened in the USA... every time a Texan border guard spotted someone where he shouldn't be it would be "Take him to the President, now!" It's cobblers.
As originally conceived the three protagonists were a couple who were in (forbidden) 'lurrrve' and the woman's betrothed who was sworn to kill them but was forced by necessity to help them in their quest. None of that back-story from the pilot show was in evidence here and the three wooden heroes just stood in a row and took turns to step forward and deliver their lines before trying to hide behind one another again.
Another great moment: Exploring the inner city setting in the first part of the "movie" Garth comes across a big red door marked "Exit Forbidden", thinks deeply for a moment then says "Exit Forbidden? I wonder if this could be the way out..."
No Garth, It's a fugging Bubble-Gum Machine! Of course it's the way out! that's what "Exit" means! Though maybe not in the dictionary the writers of this execrable space turkey were using.
Avoid.
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