The Lost Saucer

The Lost Saucer was one of my favorite Saturday morning TV shows as a child. I loved it! The Lost Saucer was a live-action series with all the energy and fun of a cartoon. It was wonderfully zany and anything could happen as they traveled through both space and time. It was wild! Where else on Saturday mornings could you encounter a "Chickephant"? LOL! The cast and characters were also terrific. Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzy were a perfect zany comedic duo for a kid's show. Alice Playten and Jarrod Johnson were both wonderful. The show's heart was in the right place too. It wasn't cynical or mean. The Lost Saucer was always fun and positive. I enjoyed it immensely. I have a lot of happy childhood memories of this show. I wish they'd release it on DVD.

Great to see these available on the cineverse platform. Many of the productions were only one season but everything that Sid and Marti did were very creative and now beginning to get more available. However buying anything for future watching as a owning any of them is still difficult outside a DVD. Tubi has a few shows but cineverse offers the most content. The lifetime of memories of these shows continue today. Attempted in past was a theme park and it closed. The actors from a few of the shows have provided interviews and in person guest experiences. YouTube and Facebook offer a lots of information and Facebook has a group for Sid and Marti krofft fans.

I loved this show as a little kid. The humor was clearly designed for young children, so anyone viewing episodes now on YouTube might find the show dumb. As a kid, the show was nice escapist fantasy for me. I used to wish I could go on their adventures with them and finally see what's in the back rooms of the saucer. The silly humor added to the show's appeal, and I think that comedians Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors were the perfect choices for the androids with their bright sunshiny optimism, which is in sharp contrast to today's surprisingly darker characters that you find in a children's program. They also chose a catchy tune for the theme song, which I like to this day.

In this nightmarish tale, two innocent (although annoying) kids are abducted by stupid alien robots, convincingly played by Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi. Now they are lost in time and space, and fly the titular craft to Earth's past and future to get the kids home. It's kind of like "Far Out Space Nuts" without the subtle touched of Bob Denver's performance.

This show is excruciatingly bad. The plots go no where, the effects fall below even Sid and Marty Krofft's already low standards, and you want to reach into the TV and hit Jim Nabors. Also, I found Buzzi's multi-color leg warmers really disturbing.

Come on, let go of your inner critic, man! This show was cool! I really wish there were shows like this today, for my own kids to watch. No cynicism, no meanness, just good clean fun! I especially liked the Dorse and the Chickephant. This giant half-chicken, half elephant thing that lumbered along and pecked at the UFO? Inspired and surreal. Just plain silliness.

In retrospect, the plot is very similar to that of Doctor Who... Time travelers pick up young people and then can't get them back home. Somehow that makes it even cooler.

"Oh no, it's the Chickephant!"