Tuesday, June 05, 2018

Nostalgia themes

A surprise late post !

A surprise to me too ... (I should really be heading off to bed now).
Reading the Blake's 7 book made me think back to some of the themes that heralded those great ... and not so great shows. The ones you still vaguely remember now, even years after the programme finished airing.

What themes ? Here's the Blake's 7 theme. A great opening and a well crafted finish. Check out those state of the art BBC special drama budget graphics. This programme was never about the graphics though, it was about the interplay between the characters. Would Vila run ? Would Avon turn on everybody ? How irascible would Zen and Orac get ? How much trouble would the idealistic Blake get ? Great show. I was glued to this one as a kiddie.

I was also glued to Battle of the Planets. Yep. Nostalgia - check. A great show for after school. Oh and then there's Dogtanian (It's awful isn't it ...) for when we moved back to England. I'd rush back from school for that pup. I never got back in time for Mysterious Cities Of Gold, although I have the dvds which I haven't managed to watch yet. Ulysses 31 was a highlight too.

I hear Thundercats is coming back too. Hey look ! It's a Dungeons and Dragons ride. Classic comics.

And this one was pretty bad but spawned it's own legends. It's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
This was from the days when the programme makers would quite happily dedicate a minute or two of their 25 minutes to an intro theme to show you all the characters again.

Back to the more adult stuff .... I adored Battlestar Galactica, the original movies. It took a while before I could catch up on the series though. It didn't matter that the space effects sequences were used, reused and recycled thousands of times, it felt and looked great.

And then there's Knight Rider, the unmistakeable Woo Woo and futuristic music of its intro launching the Hoff on his career.

Yep. We had some very silly telly on every week in the 80s.

Not quite so silly in set up but extremely silly in its episodic plotlines was Space 1999. Sadly didn't have the scripts to back up Moonbase Alpha's setting. I loved the Eagle spacecraft. Very utilitarian, very flexible. It was a while before I got to watch this on reruns though.

Talking of silly .... Captain William "Buck" Rogers had a freak mishap, freezing him so that he would reappear ... to save Earth in the 25th Century with faithful sidekick robot Twiki.

There were many more too, like Sapphire and Steel which I really need to try and watch again.

One that I have enjoyed coming back is Macgyver. The new remake series has been an excellent update.

Right - I think it's getting too late for me to think of more to post. But if you need them and if you can find them, maybe you can hire ... The A Team.

And a late add on. How could I forget to include Doctor Who ? Here's the Tom Baker intro.

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