Quark

Buck Henry's 1978 Series "Quark" was one of those shows that will always be remembered by its' few fans as the one that got away. Most people don't really remember it since they were watching something else on Friday nights but those of who do know that Buck Henry should have had another "Get Smart" on his hands and didn't. The satire was VERY dry and a lot of the gags missed with those few viewers who weren't sci-fi fans. I don't blame NBS for cancelling the show I just wish there was a Sci-Fi channel back then because they would have immediately snatched it up. Richard Benjamin at least got a lot of exposure and this helped his career despite it being cancelled so soon.

This was an excellent satire program of Sci-Fi in general and traditional "Space Operas" in particular. Should you ever happen to run across the odd episode of Quark, be prepared for laughs in the extreme.

Quark tells the tale of an inter-galactic garbage hauler and his crew of misfits as they find adventures well outside of their normal duties. The humor, though rooted in the cultural strangeness of the 70s, will be very entertaining to adults who remember the 70s as "the good old days". Quark poked fun at most popular culture of the era and the Science Fiction of the day was not spared. Star Wars and Buck Rogers were almost constant targets of jabs and pokes. Even the venerated Star Trek series was humorously taken to task on occasion.

Tragically, it was cut short by circumstances of weather. The entire midwestern US was crippled by power outages during the worst ice storm in US history. The resulting loss of rating points cost it dearly.

I was an adult when this show came out. I changed my whole schedule on Friday evening so I could see the show, and then the network would change their scheduling. My niece, who was in grade school, would act out female characters in the show. It had a great, great following, and I think the network had rocks in their head to discontinue the show. As more and more space themed TV shows came back after the original Star Trek, their decision appears more and more flawed.... Richard Benjamin was great as the captain. It would work even now if they brought it back in new form. Buck Henry was a comedic genius. I am sure something like this would work very well now.... and we need something like this again.

I was a preteen when this show aired and I loved it, but I was savvy enough to realize that most people wouldn't get it. I wasn't surprised at the cancellation. As an adult, I couldn't find ANYONE else who remembered it, even my husband who is a huge SciFi Fan. I finally found a copy of a small film clip in the Television Museum in L.A. Based on the condition of that clip, I fear that there may not be surviving episodes, but I would LOVE a DVD of whatever episodes still exist. I know a great many of my friends who would enjoy it now, even though they missed it then. Perhaps with so much communication through the internet, there will be enough interest generated to get a DVD released, preferably before the turn of the NEXT century!

Long available only from bootleggers, this series which played on TV very, VERY briefly (two months in the summer of 1977) and became a cult item among sci-fi and Get Smart fans is now finally out on DVD.

The look is cheap and cheesy and the humor is almost cringe-inducing at this point, so it hardly needs mentioning that the series has not aged well. Nonetheless, fans who remember the series and fringe-dwelling thrill seekers are advised to give this curious 70s reliquary a look. Basically, it's a lower budget Star Trek spoof with Get Smart level humor, courtesy of Buck Henry. Some gags still work, others just make you gag, but the cast is likable, especially Richard Benjamin as the eponymous Quark and his barely-clad twin female sidekicks, the Bettys. Like Get Smart there are several running jokes - each of the Bettys claim the other is the clone, while Gene/Jean the transmute flip-flops from gung-ho to girlie at random moments - but the show never ran long enough to wear them out, so some are still pretty funny.

A viewer seeking something a little different may find the series entertaining, but low expectations are a must.