Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: The Mind of the Master (Fantastic Voyage, 1968)

From Fantastic Voyage:

Guru (Marvin Miller) falls into a coma when he is attacked by an unknown assailant. He telepathically contacts Jonathan Kidd (Ted Knight) in the middle of the night to alert him and the rest of the CMDF team to his whereabouts.

From there, "The Mind of the Master" becomes the closest thing to an actual adaptation of the original novel upon which the 1966 movie was based. Oh, by the way, the common misconception with the movie was that Isaac Asimov's novelization of said film is mistakenly assumed to be the original source material.



Fantastic Voyage turns 50 in 2018. Anyone think a remake is in order for this series? Fox, are you paying attention?

Rating: B.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

Shhhh! Don't let those Hollywood maniacs get a hold of this for a remake!! I've seen the damage they've done to some once great properties! Unless I'm in charge, I refuse to allow it.


It was nice to see the cartoon reference the film, but it's pretty flawed.

No one thinks its a coincidence that an old friend of Guru's happened to have arrived in the US at the same time he's comatose?

The team doesn't wear scuba gear when they leave Voyager - since being in the bloodstream would essentially be the equivalent of being under water or in space.

We still don't really know how Guru is able to travel so quickly when called. If I were writing this, I'd have had his appearances all be telepathic clones. He'd still be wherever he is based, but can send an image anywhere he wants.

The villan gives up magic to work for a living? Uh-huh. A little too simplified and silly for an ending - especially since he's responsible for injuring Guru in the first place and essentially tried to kill (or at least delay) the crew while trying to save him.

He was made to disappear by the mysterious flame yet he was corporal again to be rescued by Kidd. Huh?

hobbyfan said...

Well, since Fox holds the rights to the series, maybe they can find some competent writers.....!

This was one of the few scripts not written by head writer Ken Sobol. Hmmmm.