Recent viewings:

The Starlost: The Beginning.

Amish in Space!

With computers! And furry cowboy hats!

I recall years ago reading a book which I found in the library of my high school which satirically described the process by which a good idea for a science-fiction television program was turned into howlingly awful slop by the dictates of peabrained television producers. The book was The Starcrossed, by Ben Bova. This was the series that inspired the book... if "inspired" is the right word. Those who are curious can consult Wikipedia for a brief discussion of the history of the series.

The props and costumes are reminiscent of contemporary episodes of Doctor Who, but the good Doctor rarely had to deal with scripts this silly.

At one point I found myself muttering, "Okay. So now the Amish-in-space are holding a black mass... in front of their supercomputer... while wearing furry cowboy hats....." Hysterical giggling seemed the only appropriate response.

To be fair, the basic idea of the series had some promise. It's set on a generation starship, which is carrying hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of separate bio-spheres, or self-contained human cultures, toward a new planet. Our Heroes come from Cypress Corners, a biosphere which evidently contains descendents of the Amish culture.

No, the writers don't explain how Amish people came to be aboard a spaceship. Neither do they explain how the second male lead manages to keep his hair blowdried and moussed (or gelled, or whatever it is that made certain men's hair turn rigid and poofy in the 1970s). Or why the agrarian Amish seem blithely unconcerned that their rustic blacksmith shops and houses are made out of geometrically-patterned slabs and their fireplaces all seem to be gas-fueled.

After a silly plot involving a romantic triangle and an evil theocratic Amish preacher, Our Heroes discover the passageways which connect the different parts of the generation ship. Thus the stage is set for a continuing series of adventures in which they explore different futuristic human cultures while trying to discover what has gone wrong with the giant ship and its mission.

The first such isolated culture has no women. Thus its inhabitants have turned into The Culture of Really Annoying Gay Stereotypes, presided over by an oily hypermacho "governor" who wins and keeps his position through gladiatorial combat. The inhabitants, though produced through Brave New World-style in vitro methods, seem to have an instinctive knowledge of what "women" are, and immediately decide to worship the female lead as a goddess....

It's entertaining in the same way that MST3K is entertaining, but I can see why Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova wished to disavow it.