Wednesday, September 26, 2007

1977-Fantastic Journey


Continuing the late 70s fantasy era of television, The Fantastic Journey (not to be confused with Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 film) was sci-fi adventure about a group of university scientists whose boat is lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Finding themselves on an uncharted island, they meet other characters from different places and times.
Varian (Jared Martin) was a telepath from the 23rd century (popular century it seems) who wielded a tuning fork at bad guys. He would later use the tuning fork as a memory tool years later in War of the Worlds.
Liana (Katie Saylor) was the daughter of an Atlantean and a space alien!
Scott (Ike Eisenmann) was a 13 year old boy from the present with his father, Dr. Paul Jordan.
If you needed a teenage boy character in the 70s, it was played by either Ike Eisenmann or Lance Kerwin, it seemed. Eisenmann was in no less than 27 tv shows and movies in the 1970s alone.
Roddy McDowall completed the cast as a renegade scientist from the 60s.
Episodes would deal with their encounters with different creatures and civilizations and quickly took on a Star Trek-type plot formula. The group encounter a culture that has been subverted in some way, and they must either defeat the bad guy or show the misguided soul the error of their ways. Lasting only 10 episodes, it was canceled by NBC in April of 1977.

1 comment:

TBE said...

Thanks for remembering this Fantastic show!!! Please, unite with us to get the DVD released. You can sign the petition at http://petitiononline.com/TFJDVD/ Check out the TFJ blog for more info.