Trainwreck TV: The Man from the 25th Century

It was 1968, the year that saw the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy Sr., masses of rioters assail and embarass the Democratic National Presidential Convention, and cities around America grapple with unrest as people desperate for peace and change found themselves confronted by violence and despair.

Prolific producer Irwin Allen (1916-1991) was in pursuit of his next TV hit. The man who launched Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea first as a theatrical release (1961) and then as a television series (1964-1968), who rocketed Lost in Space (1965-1968) onto TV screens, who sent viewers to the past through his short-lived Time Tunnel (1966-1967), and who aimed for new heights with Land of the Giants (1968-1970), had an idea for a new show, one that would satisfy his need to keep costs low and profits respectably high.

With Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, and Time Tunnel all either canceled or on death's door, and Land of the Giants barely underway, the notoriously penny-pinching Allen recycled music, sound effects, and props from his dead or dying shows to create a distorted take on pulp hero Buck Rogers, famously a man from the 20th century who was accidentally thrust into the 25th. Allen's hero, Robert Prentiss, was a man from the 20th century trained by evil aliens (of course) said to have a civilization 500 years more advanced than Earth's, figuratively making their abduction and return of Prentiss a round trip from the 20th century to the 25th and back again.

Allen's circuitous concept had little chance of success, but given networks had previously approved such sci-fi duds as It's About Time (1966) and Captain Nice (1967) from other producers, he pitched it anyway.

To nobody's surprise, it failed. Undeterred, Allen would return to film production and create a string of disaster films so commercially successful that he would earn the nickname, "Master of Disaster."

The Man from the 25th Century starred the late James Darren, a popular singer of the late 1950s through the mid-1960s who leveraged his fame to move into acting, and who had earlier starred in Allen's production of The Time Tunnel. Darren would later become a favorite among Star Trek fans through his recurring portrayal of Vic Fontaine, the holographic nightclub crooner who radiated Rat Pack aura, as seen on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Behold, for below is a video that validates the existence of Visine. I give you, The Man from the 25th Century (click the "Watch on YouTube" link below):

Thanks for stopping by. Please subscribe to this blog. THANKS!