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Fantastic Journey, The

Entry updated 10 November 2023. Tagged: TV.

US tv series (1977). Bruce Lansbury Productions/Columbia Pictures TV/NBC. Produced by Leonard Katzman. Writers included Michael Michaelian, Kathryn Michaelian Powers and the story editor, D C Fontana. Directors included Andrew V McLaglen (pilot episode), Vincent McEveety. Cast includes Carl Franklin, Jared Martin and Roddy McDowall. One season, pilot episode of 75 minutes plus nine 50-minute episodes. Colour.

The pilot episode has explorers entering the Bermuda Triangle, an ocean area in which planes and ships are reputed to disappear; but, after an effectively eerie opening in which their boat is consumed by a pulsating green cloud, it becomes evident that they are still within the borders of television-formula-land. Reaching an Island that "isn't on the map", they meet a twenty-third-century human, Varian (Martin), and discover that the landscape consists of segments of past and future time and space, a Zone of geographical Timeslips perhaps inspired by Fred Hoyle's October the First is Too Late (1966). This concept allows the protagonists to enter a new (stereotyped) culture every week, each within walking distance. Silly and somewhat repetitive adventures take place, including encounters with a dictatorial Brain in a Box, an Android-peopled seeming Utopia, an Alien time-invader, a love Drug, and escapees from a Prison craft who threaten an ultra-pacifist society. The series was quickly dropped, running only from 3 February 1977 to 16 June 1977. [JB/PN/DRL]

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