Sunday, July 10, 2011

Saturday School: Korg, 70,000 B. C. (1974)

It wasn't enough that Hanna-Barbera had Valley of the Dinosaurs on CBS as a counter-measure to the Kroffts' Land of the Lost on NBC. Seeing the Kroffts' usual cheaper-than-a-flea-market budget resulting in Land looking like it was produced on a college soundstage, H-B went for the downs with a live-action series of their own, set in prehistoric times.

While the Butlers of Valley and the Marshalls of Land were thrust backward in time, or so it seemed, Korg: 70,000 B. C. was firmly set somewhere in the Stone Age, which H-B had previously experimented with via the animated superhero, Mightor, 7 years earlier. The cast of unknowns, ultimately, proved to be Korg's undoing, as the series, like Valley, was cancelled after 1 season. The only names familiar to anyone as it relates to the series are the show's creator and co-producer, Fred Freiberger, and narrator Burgess Meredith (the Penguin from Batman). 70skidvid uploaded the open & close, stopping short of the rainbow H-B logo introduced that year, due to the fact that the clip is taken from an airing when the series resurfaced on TNT a few years ago.



Freiberger had served as a writer at H-B, having worked on the abysmal Josie & the Pussycats in Outer Space and the underappreciated Sealab 2020, and would later be a writer-producer on Space: 1999 & The Six Million Dollar Man, among others. Most fans will recall his contributions to the legendary Star Trek, which would be enough to give him some cred with the sci-fi crowd all by itself. Korg, if memory serves, aired directly opposite Land of the Lost and Shazam!, thus ending up a poor third in the ratings.

No rating, as I never really watched the show.

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