steven-t-barnett

I used to watch this show along with Johnny Socko when I got home from school. Definitely campy and cheesy, but I didn't care. I was already a space travel fanatic and this allowed me to keep my dream alive to be an astronaut when I grew up. Of course at that time I thought that Starfleet Academy would be operational by the time I was going to be old enough to join. Reality dashed those hopes, but these shows propelled my dreams. Ultraman and Johnny Socko and his giant robot were magic to kids in the days before the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers came around a few years later. If they ever put this series out on DVD format, it will surely go into my collection.

Synopsis for this series: Our orbital space station is failing so let's send down a hundred delinquent teens and see if they can survive on the surface of a burned out world. The kids make horrible mistakes, but suffer little or no repercussions and many get killed before the rest of the occupants arrive and then start the process of making bad decisions starts all over again while the dictator class adults do everything they can to maintain their grip on power. I stuck through the first five seasons believing that it would get better, but in the end I was hoping that they would end up wiping themselves out because most of them had no redeeming qualities. Individual characters were unrealistic. The main example of that was a young teen girl who hid on the station for the first 15 years of her life, but once on the surface became the embodiment of savage version of Wonder Woman.

I know this film so well that I use it as a connection. Whenever I see another movie or television show, I find some way to connect it to Shawshank. Kinda like the degrees of Kevin Bacon. There are so many great actors in this one movie and when I see them in another movie, I always think of Shawshank. Red's (Morgan Freeman) monologue from the moment the warden discovered Andy's tunnel to the end of the movie was some of the best storytelling I've ever heard. My one minor complaint was when Red mentioned 500 yards being nearly half a mile. 440 yards is a quarter of a mile so it was 60 yards more than that. (Numbers are one of my OCD issues) 😄. Hands down the best movie of the twentieth century.

Considering the fact that Carrie Fisher did this six years after Star Wars, I was expecting a lot more from her in this horrible movie. Her dialogue was flat and should be ranked right up there with the Star Wars Christmas special.