L'âge de cristal

The one thing this show had going for it was that it predated the Star Wars craze that wracked TV and movies alike. Similarly it was missing a certain something to make it a complete TV rendition of the feature film.

The foibles with this show are sundry, but more technical than truly artistic. The props and sets were tweaked and manipulated about as far as the budget would take them to create an imaginary dystopic future, complete with gun wielding bandits and robots gone haywire.

Shot on a shoe string budget the shots and stories look like they were cranked out in record time. Ditto with some of the plots. But the actual stories, however oddly executed, seemed to have a real heart to them. Which is all the more shameful, for had this series just waited perhaps another eight months, then the powers that brought it into being could've drawn some very good lessons from Star Wars, and infuse some real production values into a series coasting off the diminishing wave of its feature film predecessor.

Instead we have a TV translation of a major motion picture, that, like a lot of TV series based off of major theatrical releases, really doesn't hold up to well. And this is from a man who saw the 1980s revamp of Buck Rogers, and liked it.

TV's "Logan's Run" is what it is; an attempt to bring some G-rated adventure from source material is firmly in R-territory. As such the anti-debauchery message is lost, and we have a sort of fugitive sci-fi theme running amok on the screen. I purchased and DL'd the season premier from Amazon, and the only real height I could take away from this effort was Donald Moffat's thesping. Otherwise I'm sorry to say the series hasn't aged too well.

Still, it's light hearted adventure that actually does entertain, though does become a bit pondersome at segments. I enjoyed it, and perhaps that's all that really matters.

If you've got a hankering for retro-TV, then scope out the nearly forgotten "Logan's Run" TV series.

Although I was only 9 or 10 when it was first aired in my country (dominican republic), I was very impressed with the storytelling and I thought that the actors were pretty cool!! Specially REM. All of my friends and I thought that Heather Menzies was a goddess!!

The fact that it ran for only 14 episodes makes the prospects of ever watching reruns (specially here in my country) so much harder!! Too bad, such a great series...

A show I recall enjoying in my teen years, it was nice to track down the feature length pilot episode. I hadn't then but have since seen the parent film and obviously to make a multi-episode series, numerous changes have to be made to allow the show to develop. That was the case here as two on the run on the big screen became three on the run on the small screen with the addition of android Rem as Logan and Jessica start out their no doubt extended search for a place called Sanctuary, pursued all the while by Logan's former friend, fellow Sandman, Francis.

I have to confess a youthful crush way back then for Heather Menzies which it was pleasant to recollect with this viewing but better yet was the story itself which seemed to condense two strands into one, the first being Logan and Jessica's escape from the City Of Domes and the second their strange encounter with a bunch of androids determined to pamper them to death in a neat inversion on the hoary old lunatics taking over the asylum plot-line, along the way bumping into their soon-to-be new ally Rem.

Viewed critically today, from over 40 years since its first broadcast, I can now see the budget restraints manifested in the locations, costumes, machinery and special effects deployed and sure the acting isn't of the highest standard either but overall I still enjoyed the storyline for this extended introductory episode and will try to catch the rest of the series to see if it matches up to my younger self's fond remembrance of it.

Logan's Run, based on the 1976 movie of the same name, was a good show. Gregory Harrison was Logan, a Sandman, Heather Menzies was Jessica. A Runner. Runners are people who want to live beyond the age of 30. In the futuristic society that Logan and Jessica live, it's against the law. When you reach your 30th

birthday, you're a dead man, or woman. Donald Moffat played the android Rem. Logan's Run originally aired on Friday nights at 9:00 pm, but was bounced around the time slots so much by CBS that when it finally ended in 1978, CBS didn't care whether it survived or not. It was never on the Sci-Fi Channel. It would also make a good DVD presentation.

The film had a long list of problems. The book was complicated and episodic and the film left out most of it. There were also obvious problems like how could two sheltered city kids survive in the wilderness.

The series is far better written than the film. Better acted. The Film's actors overacted. While the series is obviously cheaply made, it does reuse some clips from the film as well as sets from Planet of the Apes and Lost in Space.

The series has time to flesh out its characters, where you didn't even have time to know them in the film. They resolve some of the inconsistencies from the film. Each of them carry food pills, entire meals in pill form. The only obvious logical problems are the men never grow beards and the women have perfectly blowdried 70s hairstyles.

It's certainly far better than dumbed down attempts at sci fi like the 6 Million Dollar Man. A shame it didn't last longer.