Sci-Why? F.U.: Misfits of Science (Re-Download, if Possible)

A superhero team that rides in an ice cream truck?  Courtney Cox?? The Predator??? sounds like a joke until you actually watch it. We go deep on Misfits of Science, the short-lived 1985 NBC sci-fi superhero series that later found a second life on early Sci-Fi Channel lineups and then quietly vanished, shrouded in tragedy.

Transcript

Cold Open And Banter

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Sai Why? A few gentlemen.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Let's rob another must.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

I'm being the proper approach for today. Negative.

unknown 0:21

Charge the lightning.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

I am glad you came up with the name of this series. We were struggling for a while. We talked off mic for quite a while about what we were gonna call this. Can't think of a better one. Welcome

Welcome To Dispatch Ajax

SPEAKER_01 0:36

back to Dispatch Ajax. I'm Skip. I am Jake. That is true. And we're declarative statements. I could just have an AI or a spell side at this point if you're gonna do that. Or continuing our coverage. Why would you do that? Well, the cow says we are continuing our coverage of the sci-fi channel. Now that you have some background, we're diving programming that made the sci-fi channel when it first came out. We're gonna talk about some of the really cooler stuff that we love, and trust me, we had a whole long list that we had to whittle down to get to this. But we're gonna talk about some of the really thought about what we were gonna talk about for an hour and a half. Yeah, our whole thing is that we have a vast we have a vast vault of knowledge locked up in these cranium, but we do also like to do research and we're right, not just going off of vibes or impressions. We often have jam sessions where we talk about what we're gonna say and what we're gonna cover, I think to the benefit of the show, but we did talk for about two hours about what we're gonna talk about in this series right before we even recorded it. Don't worry, this is all thoughtful. This is definitely not AI chance. This is all definitely stuff that we passionately says is accurate and correct.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Affirmative. Yeah, no, we wanted to choose a variety of programming. A lot of it that one or either of us wasn't as well-versed with, yeah, but that had something interesting about them, that maybe they were ahead of their time, they had a an interesting history, perhaps they were influential to something coming down the pike later on, or that we were really interested in and really liked, or a combination of all those factors. So in our continuing mission of discussing programming from the sci-fi channel, from its inception, decline, and it's not dead, it's in the old folks' home.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

It's in hospice right now.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

It's an ongoing, unwinnable disease that will end up taking its life.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

It's true. It's not doing well, it's not what we remember and what we think its function be. Sci-fi channel should just be the sci-fi channel. It has purchase, it definitely would work today. I don't know why gone the way it has. But before we get to our analysis solution of all that, we'd like to dive into programming joy on both sides. Or didn't enjoy, or didn't enjoy, but would like to know more about and dive in. In our experience with our interactions with the sci-fi. In this episode, we're gonna go we're gonna go a little obscure. I think more

Choosing An Obscure Sci Fi Show

SPEAKER_01 2:55

people that now that get it more readily on things like YouTube, platforms, but uh a show that very few people saw when it came out, and this day very few people have seen called Misfits of Science. Weird

Music Rights And Why It Vanished

SPEAKER_01 4:29

science. And the pilot, wasn't that the song that you're the pilot? Yeah. That is bizarre.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

One of the reasons that you haven't seen the show is that there were a lot of instances of using popular music to obtain the rights for that music nowadays. It's cost prohibitive. That's why it's not on any streaming channel. There's there hasn't been US release that I'm aware of, essentially just on YouTube. Even though I think with other shows use popular music, they have gone in and put in other music. So if you were to watch, say, 90210 nowadays, you're not gonna hear most of the original music that was on that show is replaced by in-house music or music that is similar enough, they thought, to the original music was much cheaper. But because it's such a big show and it's worth so much, they are willing to spend that meager amount to get it on the air so that be it either in syndication or on streaming platforms, DVDs or whatnot. But for something like the misfits of science, honestly, it's just too much of a misfit is not worth the time, money, and effort to put it out there in its original form. I do think there was like a Germany Yes, so there's a lot of stuff that is out there. I think the actual versions we have on YouTube, I believe it's a rips from the German DVD. Also a DVD that came out in France. But I don't believe there's ever been an American No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

And YouTube is the better way to watch it, honestly. And there are various quality uploads on YouTube of it, but there is one that is upscale to higher resolution that is it. I don't think it has the case, but it at least has the first episode. Pilot that's uh essentially two episodes they turned into a 90-minute like feature-length pilot episode. Yeah, and it's and it is upscale to a pretty high resolution, and it does look a lot better. But then there are also the ones that you can look at if you look into them. There are a lot of them that are like just like they're cut off to I guess supposed to be 16x9, but that all they did cut off the top and bottom of the four by three. It's not really don't bother. But you can definitely see this show, it's available is a recent thing. This is an extremely underground, unseen show for the a very long time because quite frankly, it failed on network television.

NBC Origins And Superhero Ambitions

SPEAKER_01 6:42

So Misfits of Science was created by James Perriot and appeared on NBA starting in October of 1985 and February 28th of 1986. This was a this was an ambitious take on bringing the superhero genre to mainstream network television. In an era when that did not happen. You had the incredible Hulk and you had things like that, but they were a little This was supposed to be during the era in which NB considered and also ran network, where they would bring superhero, superhero concept without the tights and capes, mainstream audience. Think of it as uh heroes, but way earlier, and there are ties to heroes that we will talk about later.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

This no, go on.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Yeah, James Perriot, he was hired by Brandon Tardikoff, who is the head of development at NBC at this time. He's really like the main guy who came up with the idea. He wanted a show about a team of people with special powers. Not necessarily superheroes necessarily if you give someone if you give someone superpowers and put them in a team and maybe give them the same attire, do they not become superheroes? That's an existential question for you guys to debate internally.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Though we're gonna talk about it. Yeah, in fact, the name, just the title of the show, Misfits of Science, and other concepts were gestated in the Yaley mind of then president Brandon Tardikov. A little background for Tardikov is known for developing and greenlighting shows like Hill Street Blues, LA Law, Law and Order, Alf. We'll talk about it again at some point soon in this episode. Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Seinfeld, The Golden Girls, Wings, Miami Vice, Night Rider, The A Team, Saved by the Bell, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Saint Elsewhere, which I love, Night Court, and something we should probably talk about on the show at some point. V. Didn't we talk about V? We've never done an episode on V. I'd do an episode on V? No, no, no. We've talked about it. I we've never done an episode. Huh. I'd love to. I think it'd be really cool.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

He was ahead of Creative at NBC in a time that really pushed it past being one of those other three channels into like the leading channel on the dial when he left with Seinfeld and whatnot. And he accomplished all of that in just 48 years because he died of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which he battled most of his life. Which is like really impressive. Get all of that done in such a short period of time.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

And it was sad too, because I when doing research for this weeks ago, I went down this unfortunate rabbit hole where I thought I remembered when he died, I thought I remembered somebody talking about how he had paid Carly Simon an obscene amount of money to have her whisper in his s who to whom the song You're So Vain refers to. But I was wrong, I was thinking ever. So that's a different story. That's a that was a wasted huge amount of research that I went down. That's not the case. But Tardikov was instrumental in bringing NBC back in legitimacy prime time slot because NBC was considered, yeah, like I said, and also ran during that. But he, I mean, he did a lot of amazing shows, and he really was instrumental in creating a lot of stuff that we remember today. Another small example, 1984's Punky Brewster, which he named after a girl that he had a crush on in high school. And funny enough, and we're not gonna get into all of this today, but he was also one of the driving factors that got Deep Space Nine the year. A show interesting. Yeah, a show that is still, we maintain, the best of Star Trek, but probably wouldn't have happened without Tardikov's insist. And this is all full circle because, like we said, the sci-fi channel brought on Gene Roddenberry as its sort of like in-road the Hollywood sphere. And also, I think not coincidentally, Tardikov when he left NPC would go on to of Paramount. So that there's a lot there. There are a lot of moving parts here that make a lot of sense. We'll probably get into that stuff at some later date. So his whole idea was when interviewed, Tardikov explained his I his want for Misfits of Science as a show and his sort of like motivation behind it. He said,

Tartikoff Influence And Ghostbusters DNA

SPEAKER_01 10:53

quote, we'll rely on the National Inquirer for story ideas. Yeah. It's loosely inspired by the den dynamics we saw in Ghostbusters. Okay. Uh a kickback, Friday type of show. And you can see where he's going there.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yeah. No, he had this, he thought that Ghostbusters had just come out. It was a huge hit. I really loved it. So it was like, if we do like strange powers stuff on the checkout rack at the grocery store with Bat Boy, and I guess at this point, like Ronald Reagan's Alien Love Child, that kind of vein of wacky. But let's get a group of people together with special powers and they can go out and save the day. And so he had this idea and he approached Stephen J. Connell with it, turned him down. Now he had been working on the greatest American hero, and at that point he just he'd had enough of telling that kind of story, and so he didn't want to do it. There was the VP of development at Universal, Carrie McCluggage, who suggested, what about Parriot? Now Parriot was a little apprehensive at first because he had already been doing this kind of thing before. He had been working on the Bionic Woman and the Incredible Hulk, we mentioned before, and he was trying to get away from doing this kind of show. He didn't want to get pigeonholed into doing that one kind of superpower, superhero, adventure of the week kind of scenario. But he thought about it and it was like, uh, what the hell? Just how he got brought onto it. He said, I'm not gonna do this straight. We can't do it straight. We gotta have our tongue in our cheek a little bit. So that's how we did it. One question whether that was probably the best idea, or whether that might have led to its flopping.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Here's a quote from James Perriot. The original idea was just a high concept notion about a bunch of originally there was even a flying dog. That was Brandon's idea. I told him I would do the show as long as I could have fun with it and not play it straight. We want to be hip and funny. Yeah. James Perriot, yes, had done The Bionic Woman and The Incredible Hulk, but let's not forget, one of his other credits was a show we're gonna tackle later in this series called Voyagers and exclamation marks.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Yes, yeah. So maybe this is a good chance to jump into what the show is about.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Sure. Just a little bit more background. The executive

Creative Team And Production Choices

SPEAKER_01 13:09

producer was Dean Devlin, a former actor, gradually began writing scripts. First main play was sold alongside Roland Emmerich, and even appeared in Emric's film Mid 4. They together co-wrote and Stargate, which was, by the way, weird geek fact, to have a website. Then he, of course, would go on to write and Godzilla the Emmerich and directorial debut Geostorm. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so basically, yeah, you're right. Apparriot, he got a call from Brandon Tardikoff about developing thing, Misfits of Science, which was a concept bouncing around. He said Misfits of Science was a kick. It was Brandon's idea. He didn't know precisely what he wanted, but he said, okay, I want to do this show about all these superpowers which hip or a huge hit or a big flop, but we decided to take a chance on it. Directing the pilot was a hoot. The entire cast was really fun to work with. This very much parallels the origin of how Lost started, where it was like a random executive or producer or creative throws out this nebulous idea of what they want, and then everyone else has to figure it out. And so to do this, because Perriot at this point was a veteran in the industry, he put together a superhero team of his own to help him make the show. Par Exam. A number of episodes were directed by Bert Bickerhoff, who had been nominated three times for Emmys, directing Lou Grant, the spinoff of the Mary Tyler Moore show, and then went on to direct numerous episodes of Remington Steel from a conversation we had before we started recording. The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Matlock, and Seventh Heaven, before he retired in the mid-2000s. The composer for the show was Basil Oreus. Bolideris, my favorite of all time. An absolute genius who, of course, did the Conan movies, and then the Hunt for Hunt for Red October. Yep. The director of photography, Frank Thackeray, went on to do the cinematography for Matlock, Diagnosis Murder, later Perry Mason made for and my favorite part, this whole thing, the production designer, maybe some of you have heard of, named Matt Jeffries. His real name is John Jeffries, but for some reason he went by Matt. He, of course, worked on Mattlock, the hero. Most famous, Star Trek the original. So everything that you see designed in Star Trek is done by Matt Jeffries. In fact, the Jeffries tube way. Yes, the crawl spaces, the workspaces that they work through that run throughout the guts of a starship in Star Trek are Jeffries. And they are named after Matt Jeffries. He in fact designed the Anterpron.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

And the phase My partner has like literally asked me the Jeffries tubes.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

How do they get their name? Brilliant. Okay, so do you want to get it?

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Well, you don't necessarily see that in the in this show.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

No, not at all. In fact, I don't see where you see it at all. Except maybe for Bob Violet, maybe the cryogenic stuff.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Maybe maybe it's the difference between one studio getting behind a show and apportioning some money for it, and the other one being like, what if we just do this thing? Cobbled together.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Especially in this show, since most of it's set in Southern California, outdoors. Like 80% of the action happens just on the beach. I was watching an episode earlier today where they're watching TV to set up the narrative of the episode sitting outside on the beach with a television. Like, why would you do that? I don't really understand. So the production Because it's cheap. Yeah. In more ways than one. So, like you said, let's dive into what the show's

Humanodyne Setup And Pilot Tone

SPEAKER_01 16:47

about. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Yeah. Your basic concept for the show, and this is all laid out in the pilot, is that there is a research group of scientists at a place called the Humanodyne Institute.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Okay. One of my favorite dynes.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Essentially, what it's up there with second? Cyberdyne is obviously number one.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Cyberdyne, yo-yo dine. It's one of our favorite dynes. It's in the top three. In the top five.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Drivers dyne's. Dynes. Anyway. So you have this group of scientists. They're all working in this think tank that is working outside the government but can contracts with the government. The Baxter Instabone. The Fantastic Four, anybody? But unlike the Fantastic Four, which again, if you wrote comics the way that it would actually work, the government's giving them all this money, results, and they're gonna take their hover car or their AI robot, whatever. That's what kind of happens in this show.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

With a liaison to the government, specifically the military. This is them this is them and this isn't unrealistic. This is actually something that the government does through DARPA and things like that, is that they outsource this kind of R2 private organization. It used to be Lockheed Martin and companies like that, but sometimes they would do these with high concept scientific think tanks. But this is a very much a more comic book on it.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

That there are these super scientific the technology, everything that we are making this podcast from, transmitting it to everyone from, and listening with, all of those are functioning because of government grants, government contracts. That's how this all works, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

It was the opposite of what the Soviet Union did, did they created their space program, their technology programs, and everything under the umbrella of the government. But the United States, being the capitalist hellscape that it is, outsourced, instead of building infrastructure to be able to do themselves, they outsourced this sort of RD to private, often for-profit companies, which of course ended up costing way more than it would have been to do it in-house, and throwing everything at the wall and saying it sticks. That's how you get, and sadly to this day, things like Blackwater to a certain extent, this idea of outsourcing design research and development to to someone else spends all that time and already has that interest. That's how the internet was the DARPANET was a project of the Defense Department's research development branch. And so that's what this is. But in the fun comic book sort of Baxter quote unquote institute sense, not the Josh Schenk version. Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

But yeah. I think maybe to give a little context, also like at the beginning of this particular the pilot episode, they definitely want to set up feeling that fun and that distinctly Ghostbusters aesthetic. You have a couple of like warehouse workers, uh, and like abandoned warehouses dark, they're like looking around, they stumble upon a scary-looking thing that ends up having cryogenic chamber, and a a ghostly man comes out of this chamber scaring them, just like at the beginning of a Ghostbusters film, and then you literally have the same type of car as Ecta 1, this ambulance flying down the highway, flanked by uh military and whatnot, transporting individual and his accoutrement. So it's giving them Oh, this is like that the funny wisecracking, spooky Ghostbusters. Look, we got the Ghostbusters car. Do you get it? This is gonna be like Ghostbusters, a little d overdone, but essentially we they get to God, and now I want to say all the other dynes, humana dyne, not Yu-Gi-NE. They get to the research facility, and this is where we meet at least the beginning of our cast of characters. Dr.

Dean Paul Martin And Lead Problems

SPEAKER_02 20:39

Billy Hayes, the the head scientist, played by Dean Paul Martin. Who is the son of Dean Martin. Yes. Interesting character in and of himself, which we get to in the totality of this episode, of course.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Funny, funny side note, Dean Paul Martin, who, like I mentioned, is the son of the Dean Martin, when he was a teenager, started a band with other sort of Nepo babies. Desi Arnez Jr. called Dino, Desi, and Billy. And they did a whole they had a whole like thing where we're a Nepo baby band. In his like teenage fuck you's father. And apparently they had a couple of moderate hits, and he apparently was extremely athletic. He played in the juniors at Wimbledon on the US Junior Circuit, and then was eventually for Golden Globe for players about tennis. Uh, and was brief married Olympic skating star Dorothy, no relation to Mark Hamill.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

That's interesting. It is interesting.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Yeah, he's an interesting character in drawing.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Also, he was like a fighter pilot, which will come up later. Yeah, yeah, sadly. Yeah. He's just uh kind of a an attra a generally conventionally attractive guy. Uh has some charisma there.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Wasn't a dream boat, but I think, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Which bothers me, by the way, in this episode, especially in the way they cast him. It bothers me the way that they do this because. They have this guy, okay, who is nick comes from a famous family, has a very famous father, and they cast him to be head of this, the sort of like professor X or whatever of this ragtag group of superheroes. And yet they don't seem to know how to play him because they try and make him seem like the wormy, nerdy guy half the time, and then the other half the time try to make him seem like the Jim Kirk, James Bond womanizer type, but he doesn't seem good enough for either role for those to make sense, and also they butt head, the the contradiction.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Before I looked, because I just started I watched the pilot before I looked anything because I want to get a feel for what the show was, and what he came off to me was a poor man's Dirk Bentley. Gently?

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Are you talking about the are you talking about the Clive Cluster? Clive customer. No, no, no, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Let me re- let me re- replay that. When I watch it, he came off as a poor man's Dirk Benedict. Dirk Benedict. Okay, yes. I can see it. Where you know, oh, he's not quite as sexy. He's smarmy, but not as charismatic. He thinks he knows all the things supposed to be smarter, but he doesn't really come across. He almost never uses science in any of the episodes I saw.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Even though that's his shtick, you know what he is? He's be they're trying to ha they're trying to have Peter Wakeman and Egon Spangler at the same time. And it doesn't make sense. Uh-huh. Because they're writing him both ways. They're not finding a middle ground and then using that middle ground to write a real character. He's just doing weird snippets of both, and it doesn't really work. It really doesn't work. No, it doesn't. You can't really have it both ways. That's why you have to have Egon and Peter. And then an in and in in at least one intermediary. My brain should stop working. Oh my god. Uh you need Ray. Yeah, you have to.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

I mean, Ray's like your You have to have Ray. Schlubby comedy. They don't really have that other than And Ray's the true believer. Yeah. A lot of the dynamics are off characters of the show.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

They're trying to do Ghostbusters s uh vi via Justice League, but they don't understand the dynamics that go into either of them. Because you have to have you have to have your pure science spot, not necessarily skeptic, but objective objective analys analysis guy. And then you have to have your charismatic guy who can help you do all of the things you need to do in a capitalist system to get this stuff done. And then you have to have Ray the true believer. And then you also have to have your everyman with Winston. You have to have you have to that dynamic works in a in such a brilliant way that that makes that movie work. And just like with Justice League, you have to have your Superman, you have to have your Wonder Woman, you have to have your Batman, who also fill those kinds of roles. But this show doesn't seem to understand how the dynamics but we'll get into that.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Yeah, it's a little off. But we should probably get a little more into the who these other people are.

The Misfits Powers And Casting Standouts

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Dr. Billy Hayes, he's uh he's the head, and then his right-hand man is Dr. Elvin Lincoln, or L, played by Kevin Peter Hall. Hell yes! Now this is Kevin Peter Hall is awesome. And apparently through all stories I read, the sweetest, nicest guy, which he got from college playing basketball because he was a legit seven foot four big dude. Super tall dude, and you've actually seen him and a ton of stuff. You just might not have known it because Kevin Peter Hall was the Predator in the Predator, both Predator One and Predator 2. He was Harry from Harry and the Henderson's.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Yep, and it had mazes and monsters. I believe it had Tom Hanks in it. Okay, so is that the one that's the satanic panic Dungeons and Dragons? Okay, yeah. That was the mainstream pseudo-propagandistic PSA about the satanic nature of Dungeons and Dragons.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Yes. Isn't that too? If you think about it, the world's just gone downhill since DD was created.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Oh, I wonder whose fault.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Let's put one plus two and get 79. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Obviously, Ronald Reagan has nothing to do with that. I don't even know who that is. But Kevin Peter Hall, he plays the straight man.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

He's the gentle giant. 100%. And he Billy likes to play basketball, and he's trying to get Elle to play basketball, but he hates it. He doesn't want to be a basketball player just because he's super tall, which is funny because I don't think he actually wanted to be a basketball player in real life. That was playing into stuff that he had to done because he was so tall.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

This weird dynamic is why the show is both relatively compelling and interesting, but also doesn't work. I do like the L character because he's super tall but nerdy, and everybody assumes I can play basketball and I should play basketball because I'm so tall. But then at the same time, they contradict it later by saying I only became a scientist because I couldn't play basketball. Take a lane. It's one or the other. One of those is an interesting character. The other one is an absolute two-dimensional bullshit character, but then at the same time, Billy Hayes, the Paul Dean Martin character, is the guy that's super into basketball and is like athletic and wants to play basketball. But he's supposed to be the nerdy guy behind the whole thing. There are ways to write that to make it work, and they find the worst ways to do that. They find the path of most resistance.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Which I think ultimately dooms the show. And then you've of course but Elle is introduced the first person that later on in the episode we find out actually has superpowers, which we'll get to once we get through the layout, at least of these characters. Beef. And I'm not going to talk about too much because he he's only in this one pilot episode. He is a guy who froze in the 30s.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Yeah. Right? He's basically Mr. Freeze.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Yes. Yeah. He's frozen. He is then discovered. And but if his temperature drops below freezing, then he'll die. Science. Really knows. There's a total Mr. Freeze parallel with that character. It is said like he wasn't supposed to be the person who was frozen. I think there might have been a wife angle, but all he says is Amelia, because he maybe he loved Amelia Earhart at the time of Amelia Earhart. That's right, it was Amelia Earhart, yes. They never find out, but he's just looking for Amelia. So he just says Amelia. That's his only dialogue throughout the fucking In the way that Pikachu just says Pika? Yes, that's exactly right. Amelia. That's so stupid. Uh it's thankfully it doesn't last long. But I I love the idea because the group ends up in the refrigeration unit, and they have that refrigeration unit in their ice cream truck, which is where the group, like that's their misfits of science vehicle. It's their F1. But since he never shows up in the rest of the show, I like the idea that he's just in the freezer the whole time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Throughout the series, and they just don't let him out. Absolutely brilliant. Yeah, this of course is played by Mickey Jones, who you've seen in a ton of stuff. A character actor is like a biker in almost everything he's in. Yeah, he's the second, probably the second actor in the entire show. Yeah, that's most likely. And don't forget, we can't sleep on the fact that the name of the ice cream truck is The Fun Day Sunday. Though I will push back on that didn't even garner a chuckle. That's fine, because it is dumb. But the second biggest actor is actually probably Max Wright, the character Dick Stettmeier. He's the government liaison type, the Max Lord, not Max Lord in the movies.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

I think he'd be number three. Really? I think Mickey James has had a bigger career than Max Wright. Yeah, I you're probably right.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

That's because you're in it's Alf. It's Alf. What else are you thinking of? Yeah, that's it. Max Wright was in five seasons of Alf, yes. And he did a few other things, but not much.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

He does plenty of movies in big movies. It was all that jazz, Reds, Once in a Lifetime, Never to Be Made Again Soul Man.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Oh, God, with Dan Aykroyd? Wow, that's another full circle, isn't it? Jeez. Dan Aykroyd and Soul Man. Oh no, he was in a TV show called Soul Man. Oh, Soul Man. No, this is the C. Thomas Howe where he's in blackface the whole time. Oh, good stuff. That's good stuff. I do remember Max Wright in a few roles that stick out in my head, but just as a bit actor. Most people would know him for him he's the dad and elf. Yeah. For five years.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

Let's be honest. Fighting for two and three of actors in Misfits of Science. It's a distant second or third compared to number one, which obviously we'll get to.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Yeah, it's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

I mean, so before we get to the rest of the Misfits, let's follow through this pilot episode.

Neutron Laser Plot And Military Satire

SPEAKER_02 30:36

So they've got Beef. Beef is causing havoc all over. Eventually, Billy, the head guy, he's able to assuage him and keep him under control, but not before he makes a mess of things when the military come to see what they've accomplished. What do they have to come to production? What can they bring to bear for the army? So then Billy has to go save the day. He's got to go up to the briefing room, I guess, because the military leaders are having a briefing room with senators and whatnot, showing them all the slides of stuff they have that's going to be in production. Billy bullshits his way. Oh, they have stuff that you don't want to shut us down because we have XYZ. And oh, you can't let everybody know about the little thing we're making, the thing that we're not supposed to talk about. McGuffin of the episode. But it's really talking about what is it? It's neutron laser, I think. Do you remember?

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Yeah, it's undefined. It is a riff on neutron bomb, which if I remember right was bluffed by Jimmy Carter. It was this non-existing bomb or whatever. But so they use that language and they create the Neutron Beam weapon wildcard that will change the balance of power during the arms race. And the Senator who comes in to oversee the project or whatever is played by the great Kenneth Mars, who was in a bunch of Mel Brooks projects. Uh he was the he parodies and reprises the role of the constable from I think it's uh Bride of Frankenstein. Also famously in Star Trek later, uh, and you've seen him in a ton of stuff. He was also a voice actor on the Focus on the Family Christian radio drama adventures and Odyssey. Basically just a classic character actor that you would have seen on any 70s drama, maybe sitcom, and movie. Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

I don't think he shows up in the rest of the series, though, but he's just in this this episode.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

No, I don't think he does either.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

So the military, they still end up firing the team, the science team, and they take beef away because, oh, they can use his cold powers to wage war. Uh it's really ill-defined, but you know, just bad military stuff. Really, really. I have lots of questions that are never answered. There are so many questions. I mean, really, there's a lot of questions in this whole thing. But Billy and L, like, oh, they're down on their luck. What are we gonna do? Billy wants to start a basketball team. He's got all these shirts he made up with misfits of science on them. Which I totally want for the basketball team. They have jackets too. Uh uh later on. They have jackets that say the same thing, yeah. He wasted a bunch of money on this uh basketball team, or that he decided to make a team before he could even convince his, I guess, best friend and co-worker to join the team. To compete in what league? Again. I I have I have no idea. Maybe they're gonna play the Harlem Globeshrotters? Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

I don't know. Is this like like an and one three-on-three league? Where I I don't understand. Like, what are they I don't know what they're it's Billy L and Hot Sauce and they are uh and Eddie House, and they're all and they're all just kind of balling it up on the streets. They've got to take Earl the the Manicoat uh Earl the Goat Manicoat on. Uh Stefan Marberry is their is their sponsor or whatever. I don't I just don't understand. And it's so weird too that they yeah, so they get fired by the government. They were already a private organization, they weren't a government organization that when they lost their funding, okay, sure, they maybe they shut down or whatever. But they act like they were just fired from the government or like they were just ousted like the A-Team. They're like, well, now we have to go out and do it ourselves. You were already doing it yourselves.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Skip, don't think about it. Don't think about it too hard.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

You can't because it doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Uh just move on.

The Shrinking Scientist Twist

SPEAKER_02 34:36

Um, so this is when L uh reveals that he had been experimenting on himself. Hmm. He hated being super tall. He hated being 7'4 and 320 pounds, and he wanted to be normal. That's all he ever really wanted. And so he used experimental gene therapy serums or whatnot, and experiment on himself, and he is now able by pressing on the back of his neck to shrink down to like 11 inches or something. It's 11 inches, yes. Yeah, essentially fits in your hand. He can like stay that way for like an hour at a time, and he can do it only so many times, you know, in a certain period, you know, whatever basic limitations, but he's super shrinks, and this doesn't freak Billy out. He's just like, oh wow, you shouldn't experiment on yourself like that. But huh, okay. I still you know, you're still my buddy.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

I guess we can market this. It's such an 80s thing, too. Yeah. It's really bizarre. Yeah, he pinches a nerve on the back of his neck that apparently he he had worked, because then he shows like he had created these rabbits that were enormous size in his experiments, and yada yada yada. For what reason? Couldn't tell you. And if the reason is because he hates being tall, what a terrible motivation for a character in general. You became a brilliant geneticist because you weren't good at basketball and you don't like being tall. Okay. And the idea that he doesn't know what else to do with his life because he's 7'4 and 320 pounds. Pretty sure Shaq's had a pretty good career after basketball, so I don't know. Well You could star in steel.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

The basketball was the reason that Shaq was able to uh sell insurance with the general or whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

He came from Watts and he can't play basketball, so he became a scientist. Already real suspect. Uh, but then the actor himself made a pretty fucking good career out of being 7, 4, and 320 pounds by being the predator. I'm pretty sure this character probably could have done that. Because they never say that he was like good at science when he was a kid. They never say he was a genius aptitude. They just said he only went into science because he didn't like being so tall. Okay. You could have done anything else and been pretty fucking successful. You could have been the predator. And it is also funny that Kevin Peterhall replaced Kevin Peterhall being 7'4, replaced Jean-Claude Van Damme as the predator in Predator. A guy who's famous in like 5'4. Uh uh, Jean-Claude, we're going in a different direction. The exact opposite direction. You were a white Belgian dude who's 5'4 and has a background in dance. Jean-Claude, it's not you, it's me.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Okay. And by me, I mean it's you. No more orange crab people. Uh completely off that track. Oh yeah, that's a that's a fun rabbit hole. So they are out, and then they are again, I've I've watched a few of these episodes, so I've kind of lost track. Something, something about their old boss uh getting experimented on and getting word out that they need to come back to the Institute to save him or something. Don't quite remember. But to do that, they need to go track some more super people down.

Recruiting Johnny B And Courtney Cox

SPEAKER_02 38:08

And so they know other super people like Johnny Johnny B. Bukowski, who was a rock and roll musician, but was uh had this electric shock on stage that would normally kill other people, but it just gave him uh super electric powers, man. Which also in strangely includes super speed. Super speed, yeah, you know, because why not?

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Because it doesn't make sense at all. Because lightning, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Sure. Essentially, what Johnny B can do is he mostly just shoots lightning out of his hands and he has lightning eyes. He can't be around water, so he usually is out in the desert. Um, and he's power his battery drains whenever he uses it.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

But he can also charge it from like the electrostatic energy in the air if he's in like a more populous area, like if there's places where there are TVs and computers and stuff, he absorbs the ambient electrostatic energy from the atmosphere, I guess. I mean they hint at that. There's a moment where they first recruit him and then they pull up to some place and he's like, Oh yeah, I can feel my batteries recharging or whatever. Also, why can you run fast? I don't really I don't really get it. I mean, it it's almost like they were like somebody was just like, explain the flash to me, and they were like, Well, there's lightning and he can run fast. Okay, got it. New character. Stop stop drilling, you got oil. That's not really how that works, but okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Yeah. Johnny B, he was played by Mark Thomas Miller, who at the time when he was brought onto the cast, it's kind of seen as, you know, an attractive, future leading man, you know, kind of guy, someone who they'd really saw a future for in the industry. Kind of like in the days of David Hasselhoff kind of role.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

You know, or somebody on like on Miami Vice. Uh, unfortunately for Mark, it didn't really turn out that way.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

We'll we'll talk about that part later.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

It's uh he just really didn't end up doing much acting, but supposed to be like the the sexy bad boy kind of vibe, you know. It's like he didn't want to be part of the crew, but because the guys also picked up Jane Miller, played by Jennifer Holmes, who had worked on Voyagers previously. Well, well, well. They had her. Uh she was friends. In fact, uh, Billy kept trying to hit on her, which never worked. But she was the probation officer for Gloria DiNalo, played by Courtney Cox.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

The only one, and we'll get into this later, the only one who came out of this unscathed.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

Yes. She had just been in the Dance in the Dark video by Bruce Springsteen. So coming off the heels of that, they decided to cast her. A lot of people were against the idea, but James thought that she had a spark in her and could really do something. He apparently had an eye for talent, at least in this instance. And now Courtney's character, Gloria, uh, played a troubled telekinetic teenager who uh had run-ins with the law, and her mother was in a mental institution because she kept saying that her father was from outer space.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Okay. Yeah, I'm I don't know. I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. Yeah. Uh and you know what Courtney Cox is a compelling um presence on screen, and uh you could see that they thought, even though this was a collection of other relatively at least with like Dean Martin's son and everything, like this is this seems like a super team, even though she's really young. She's kind of the star power in the making. You can see that's the kind of thing they were going for here.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Yeah. And she has what they term visual telekinesis. So whatever she can see, she can move with her mind, I guess, to a point. Which when they show it in the show, they do a close-up on her face, she scrunches her her eyebrows, maybe ruffles her hair with her hands, and a sense of uh focus or frustration, and whatever they're showing, it all goes black and white. And then pow a rock is moved or someone's pushed off their bicycle uh or or whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Um yeah, basic telekines.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Let's not actually show telekinesis. Let's just like uh I mean, how do you show something that's invisible? That's kind of always a tough thing.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Well, it they could have done the whole like let's uh here's a gun that I took out of somebody's hand and they, you know, like move it across the screen with on wires or whatever. They don't even do that.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

There is zero wire work in any of these telekinesis bits in the entire show. It's bizarre. The closest thing is like you'll have wire stunts where a stunt guy, he'll have a wire like attached to his back, and if you gank that, it looks like he's being like pushed back. The same thing, like if someone kicks really hard or punches somebody and they fly back, they use that wire stunt, you know, to pull them out of the camera frame. You'll have that, but nothing ever floating. You could show the telekinesis, but it's all these violent off-screen interactions, yeah, or just subtle. Yeah, they have their team, and Gloria helps convince fellow misfit in Johnny B to come join the group because obviously he wants to bone him. In a way of like, oh, it's kinda kinda nice. He's like, Oh no, you're too young. I think of you as more of a sister or family. You know, you'd expect the attractive bad boy to maybe take the easy road here, but uh actually stand up guy for a rock musician. Yeah. So now that we've got our misfits together, they go to Humanodyne to break out beef.

Finale Chaos And Sudden Hero Status

SPEAKER_02 43:51

And in the process of getting beef, they find out about the neutron laser. Which apparently then everybody finds out it's really complex. Evoluted how that works or how anybody knows anything within the framework of the show. But they decide we need to stop the neutron laser as well. So they're on the run from the government. They're now outlaws after having stolen beef and are trying to figure out a plan to go back and get the laser, which now the whole world has found out about the laser, which the government had the plans, but they actually just built one, even though people don't know. But the whole world uh is afraid that if they have this neutron laser, the world will end. It's like this new new weapon. There are protests in Paris and Moscow, and there's news coverage. They're also covering the misfits of science. They have deemed them that, even though nobody told them, they have to give them a moniker on the news broadcast that happens to be the one on the show. There's so much of this episode that's really dumb, and that's one of the things. But try to cram 90 minutes into hopefully not a 90-minute explanation of the episode. They end up going to Humanodyne again and through the power of teamwork, combining their superpowers, and again, I guess if we're counting beef, four of them of the six have superpowers, even though beef never comes back. So it's really just three with superpowers, two that can only be used for a short period of time, and then they are burnt out, and one, the shrinking really small, barely plays any role in anything.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

Yeah, it's used as a plot device in a couple of episodes, but not really to any real effect that matters. I do appreciate that there are things in it where each of the superhero type characters, because they're supposed to be relatively grounded and not, you know, Superman level, or they have limitations like Johnny B, he can be he can be short-circuited by throwing water on him. Okay. And Kevin Peter Hall can only do it for about an hour or whatever. But it also really works to its detriment at the same time. I don't know. It doesn't really make any sense and it doesn't work. But I do appreciate that that on paper I could see why that's appealing and why that kind of works, but that's done better by other further down the line, or even contemporaneously, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

Yeah, just to wrap this all up, once they break into humanodyne to try to get the laser, all of a sudden the misfits of science are covered as heroes on the television broadcasts. They find out that the laser is extant and that the government has it. The government are trying to get away with it. Thankfully, the misfits are able to pause malfunctions enough that they the evil general who is about to use the laser on the misfits ends up shooting his own helicopter in a truly moronic moment of usage of powers and then Billy using a helmet as a basketball to hit the rotors of the helicopter to push it off on I ugh. Why can he use science? Yeah. Isn't that his whole misfits of science?

SPEAKER_01 46:56

He almost does no science in it. I don't exactly know what his role is supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Honestly, the only thing he does in the pilot episode is he comes to realize that he kind of sucks, that he's kind of a womanizer, and that he's a bit of a failure. But in doing so, he brings the team together and he leads them, quote unquote, to victory. What that victory is, but he doesn't know. But uh yeah, I mean the laser is no longer a problem, the McGuffin is taken out of the show, everyone cheers for the misfits all across the world. Yay, misfits. But they are not famous after this. No, nobody knows them or cares about them after this episode, and somehow they kind of get their job back at the end.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

Kind of question mark? They're more like recontracted as a new organization. But during this whole uh rigmarole, I I think it's very exemplatic of why the show works and doesn't work. They are a ragtag group unaffiliated with the government, but then when they do all of this stuff, there is this period, which is actually interesting and could be a thing, but they don't explore. They're considered weird freak fugitives. There is a point where Billy goes to it's like a gas station and there's a TV on. Yes, they're doing news reports, and they're talking the conservative government who's trying to like smear them, associated with Fidel Castro, and then the quote terrorist group Black September, and you're like, okay, there's something here. I don't really know why they're doing that. I think it's because they undermined the government's use of the neutron beam or whatever, but then that doesn't ever really come to fruition either. Nothing ever really comes from that. Because they were like fugitive, fugitive X-Men types on the run, and I think that's interesting. There's ground there. There's f they don't really go into that either. And then they're just kind of beloved, and then everything's fine.

SPEAKER_02 48:55

Yeah, there's just a lot of jumps in logic, no explanation for what is happening. They're just trying to get through the action of the episode, which I can kind of get, but you have to ground it a little bit and make it somewhat dramatically enticing. They do not do that in this episode.

Later Episodes And The Wrestling Swing

SPEAKER_02 49:12

There aren't really much to the characters so far.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

Yeah, and having watched the whole series, and I was very excited to watch this as a kid, I thought it was really fun because I was a kid. Just like I remember loving my secret identity, but try watching that show today. There are things that they do flesh out, there are things that they do continue on manifesting, but it never really feels right. It it always feels a little off. It does get better. Most of the time, what show was the pilot their best episode? It almost never happens. That's why we didn't just go on the pilot.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

After we got a sense of what the misfits were, so I think we both watched other episodes to kind of you know get a fuller range of the experience of the show. Because one, I'd never heard of the show before talking to Skip. Yeah. And I'd obviously never seen it, so this is all new to me. I watched what you might term their wrestling episode. It was number 15. So it was their last episode that was shown. Sounds like desperation. They only made 16 episodes, but the last one never aired. It is on the it wound up coming out on the DVD, but of the 16 that were ordered, 15 only actually aired before the show was pulled off the air. Jesus. And this was about some of the crew are going to watch other local wrestling show. Local professor wrestling. And there is back when it was localized. Yes, yes. Someday when we do one of our wrestling themed episodes, I'll tell you all about how wrestling used to be local before it was all bought up by the McMahon family, and then essentially bequeath the Vince McMahon from his grandfather who started everything. Doesn't really matter. In this area is a local, like the biggest fan of the promotion. He's behind the curtain and put on one of the lucha-esque masks and capes. And then while that's happening, the mom and pa popcorn sellers are in a hallway, just like a scene out of Spider-Man, thugs are gonna rough them up and take their money or something. And so this fan, he comes out, he's in the wrestling attire. As he goes to rush to stop the thugs, Courtney Cox happens to be back there and uses her TK powers to knock the uh assailants away. But it appears as though the wrestling fan did it with his wrestling prowess. Then it becomes a game of hijinks as he thinks that he's a super badass wrestler and he's gonna take it to the streets as the avenging angel, a vigilante who's stopping local crimes, but Courtney Cox's character happens to be there whenever he meets up with one of these situations and saves the day with her telekinesis powers. Right, right. This ruffles the feathers of the mob and the dirty cops that they have on the payroll who are I again is never explained, somehow involved in the wrestling and are doing something. Are they laundering money? It's never explained, and I I racked my brain trying to figure out what the actual layers to this are. There's just the mob. But essentially, the mob are running the wrestling. They have to figure out some way to tell him that he's not almost a superpowered crime fighting professional wrestler, but it's Courtney Cox's special mind powers that are saving the day. Obviously, you know, it ends up he wins the big wrestling match at the end. There's a weird dream sequence with the professional wrestling, and everyone's dressed up in different attires and whatnot. It's very silly. Yeah, and it's a w a lot of it's pretty dumb.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Yeah, it's a weird superhero sereno de Bergerac type thing they're trying to do, and it doesn't really work.

SPEAKER_02 53:00

It really doesn't. The professional wrestling bits are pretty dumb.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

And also pandering. Professional wrestling was huge at the time. It seemed like a desperate Hail Mary to keep the show on the air.

SPEAKER_02 53:10

Yeah, they had to save the day against small time crimes in the local area without actually doing a lot of special effects. True. Or having larger themes. They're not fighting the government as they were in the original episode. They're just kind of doing local stuff that happens to come up the same way Ace Ventura Pet Detective does. That's not untrue. But you can see why this didn't really work. I I watched a bit of another episode and was like, ugh.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

It just doesn't stick. And it's not one of those shows that did work, but then you look back and it's like, oh well, that was problematic, or I don't know how that it just didn't work. It's not like Quantum Leap, but at the same time the show works, it functions. It's never at war with itself. But this show is kind of constantly battling itself. It's all basically just executive notes back and forth. It's functionally a mess. And of course it gets cancelled pretty much immediately, like we said. And it doesn't ever really amount to much.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

There are

Why The Show Failed On NBC

SPEAKER_02 54:08

three big reasons why I think this show failed. Other than it's just kind of a hodgepodge, the characters aren't really well defined. I think the casting for a lot of them is kind of off. Their motivations don't work, the writing is kind of poor, there isn't enough money into special effects or anything. But behind that, I think this show could still have been a hit in a different time. Yeah. Because I think it would have gotten its legs under it after a season or two. They probably would have coalesced, they probably would have added more people with special powers. I think they would have figured out who their audience was, how to tell the best story for that audience. But this was also a time when it really wasn't cable TV. You had at this time four channels, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

Uh three. Three at that point, I think. I don't think Fox is really that big then.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

No, Fox wasn't there yet, but um, you know, if you had like a local PBS or something, or or like a UHF channel or whatever. Right, something something like that. But most households had one TV. They put this on in the death slot, the Friday night, hmm, up against the biggest show in the world at the time, Dallas. Oh boy. Every other station was trying to compete with Dallas, but Dallas was the biggest show in the world on Friday nights. So anything you put up against that wasn't going to come out successfully. Right. And then when you have one TV, you have the audience that was for this, a much younger audience, probably didn't have control of the TV on a Friday night. When Dallas was on, it it was never gonna get the eyes. No, it was doomed to fail from the get-go, which is why I think part of the reason for the inception and the production of the show was we're just gonna throw anything at the wall and see what sticks. And maybe we strike gold, but probably nine times out of ten, it's gonna be a flop. And Misfits was a flop, but that wasn't the saddest bit of the show. No, no. That's the stuff that comes after.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

Just a little bit of before we get to that, not necessarily trivia, but a follow-up to a lot of the stuff we talked about, the minutiae of it. Mickey Jones, his character Beef, originally was called Iceman, but Marvel Comics threatened legal action, which is crazy because I'm pretty sure that's around the time Marvel went bankrupt. And then most of the complaints of the show were that what they wanted to do was have these powers, but unfortunately they didn't have the budget to actually show what the powers could do. That's why in one of the middle episodes, the big show of powers is Courtney Cox making a slinky go up the stairs. And you can tell as it's going that it knows it it's in trouble because eventually Billy starts dressing like he's in Miami Vice. They in fact they make a joke about it. It was definitely doomed to fail, and the extent to which it has a really tragic ending. So

Real Life Tragedies After Cancellation

SPEAKER_01 57:05

even if the show had been successful, it still probably never would have amounted to much. Following the production of this show, horrible tragedies occurred. Obviously, Courtney Cox did pretty well. She right after this, she did How did her career work out that well? She did this and then Masters of the Universe and still came out a star. I don't know how that works. Sometimes cream rises to the top, you know? Dean Paul Martin tragically died only a year after the show was cancelled. This was 1987, and he was flying a plane as part of the California Air National Guard and it crashed. Then, in 1991, Mark Thomas Miller was in an accident that temporarily prevented him from continuing his acting career. I didn't look into a lot of the details. Apparently, he was in a car accident and it was really bad. He did go back to acting and did have some good credits, but he said his heart wasn't in it anymore. And in the same year, Kevin Peter Hall passed away from AIDS-related pneumonia, which he contracted because of a blood transfusion when he was 36 years old. What a doomed tragedy this whole thing was. Uh really, really sad. But I mean, what are the odds that everybody involved in this other than Courtney Cox? I mean, did they get a VHS tape they weren't supposed to watch? Is this Final Destination? I don't really understand what happened here. It's just a bunch of really weird coincidences. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:32

And it obviously with those tragedies, there's never gonna be a resurgence or, you know, bringing the show back. No.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

It's one of the reasons no one's ever heard of it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:41

Even if it had worked, or even if people wanted it to come back, you couldn't. And the only reason people know about it, really, is because it was picked up by the sci-fi show. By the sci-fi channel. Exactly. In one of their early blocks of programming. I'm assuming that's how someone like you happened upon it.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

100%. By the way, also trivia-wise, the idea was to keep Iceman beef in the ice cream truck. That was the whole idea. Oh, what okay. Yeah. But anyway, in physical uh form idea on my own, so. In France,

International Releases And YouTube Survival

SPEAKER_01 59:14

the series was known as Superminds. Okay. In Germany, it was known as Die Specialisten Untervegs, or the Specialists on the Way. In Brazil, it was called Curto Circutio, or Short Serpit. In Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and the I guess the rest of Latin America, it was called Los Scientificos Rebelleds, or the Rebel Scientists. And in 2008, the series was released, all 15, not 16, but 15 episodes were released. In Germany as a five-disc DVD box set, Region 2. So don't get any funny ideas. With all episodes, including the final one, which was broadcast on TV in Germany, with both English and German audio and German subtitles. So that was the end until YouTube. Any modern availability or format. That's Misfits of Science.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:16

One thing we missed that we should point out, just because we we did bring it up before, is that Max Wright, who you might know as the dad figure in the Alf show, he was their liaison after the pilot through the rest of the show as their liaison from Humanodyne to the military.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

Yeah, that is true. And sadly, some of the other characters, like one of the female characters, and we weren't trying to Bechtel test anybody here. We only downplayed the female characters because they're very downplayed in the show. One of them Jane Miller, played by Jennifer Holmes. Yeah, she is credited in the show throughout the whole run, but she only appears in like the first like four episodes.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

Well, that's because when she was a proposition with the show, she's like, Oh yeah, I'll do it, but I'm pregnant. So you'll see as they film, she's shown less and less because she started a show. And then she was just kind of taken off of the show. And the other main female character is uh Miss Nance, played by Diane Savita. She's the secretary, and she's given next to no lines. Nothing. She essentially just watches TV the whole time. Sometimes with her dog there, sometimes not. We didn't write that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:24

That's that's them. Yeah, that's them. It we are not downplaying their characters. The writers and producers downplayed female characters in general. It's really sad and weird, and trust us, it's not it's not a choice that we made. We're just showing you what they did. And the show, basically, a better version of the show would be kind of done with heroes, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:45

It was definitely a progenitor of something that, as superheroes, came in vogue a good 15-20 years after it went off the air.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:54

Yeah. Your heroes, misfits. Misfits is actually a I think a better parallel. The idea is that these are superheroes without the capes and tights. They are relatively limited, they are kind of grounded, but they're not Marvel or DC. Think about it like Jessica Jones, much more on the ground superhero stuff, theoretically. I just don't think they pulled it off in any real substantive way. I want it to work. I watching it, I'm like, there's a show here, but it's not. Live up your nostalgia, man, absolutely, but it doesn't work. And on top of that, it's tragic ending in real life. The show was doomed from the get-go.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:31

We brought it back. It's an interesting, you know, example of something that the sci-fi channel was doing at the time.

Sci Fi Channel Legacy And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

You know, giving a second life to these sci-fi related projects that might have legs and would end up having big beefy legs in the far future, just way ahead of its time.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

Yeah, and audiences wouldn't have been able to see these types of shows were it not for the sci-fi channel. I think really speaks a lot about our premise of talking about the sci-fi channel as a subject. Good faith, bad faith. It's all there.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:04

Let's talk she wrote. We'll have more sci-fi channel shows coming up in the near future. All part of our sci-w series. I'm loving it. So we hope you guys come back for that. We hope you've enjoyed. We will take you through uh a wide-ranging collection of different sci-fi properties and then end with an ending to the history of the sci-fi channel, telling the larger, wide-ranging story. So please come back for that. Please like, share, subscribe. If you wouldn't mind rating us five misfits of science on the favorite podcast app of your choice.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:41

Well done.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:41

Perhaps Apple Podcasts. That's the best way for our humanity to be uh heard and seen and uh ideally pay us some money in the near future. Um because this is a labor of love. We do it for the passion of the game. And uh until that time, Skip, what should they do?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:01

Well, they should definitely make sure that they have paid their tabs, cleaned up after themselves to some sort of reasonable degree. Make sure that they have tipped their bartenders, their DJs, their KJs, their wait staff, anybody who's applicable. Make sure that you've supported your local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch Ajax, we would like to say no matter where you go, there you are.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

So it's a science theme song. Blah blah blah. Please go away.