I rushed home from ballet class to watch 'Get Smart' on television. I can remember one day especially, waiting at the glass and wood doors of the building, it was a rainy afternoon, and my Mom was soon going to pull up in the car and pick me up. That one day sticks in my memory for no reason I can think of. I just remember the rain and the theme at the beginning of "Get Smart" going through my head over and over as I waited for my Mom. Once we were home it was always just in good time to see Maxwell Smart, the Chief and Agent 99.

Do you Remember Maxwell Smart and Agent 99?

Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) was an agent of CONTROL, along with Agent 99 and other super spies. They fought KAOS. Max always had great gadgets and a shiny red convertible car. Best known among the gadgets was his shoe phone. I still see someone refer to the shoe phone on modern TV shows every now and then. Of course, the shoe phone back then was rotary. So much has changed since the days of Maxwell Smart (1965 - 1970).

It's funny how much I enjoyed the show. I don't watch many comedies these days. I usually find them too silly and immature. The same old jokes, misunderstandings and such which situation comedies have been all about for too many years. 'Get Smart' was more than stupid humour. Max seemed to bumble around and yet he always pulled it off (with help). I really liked Agent 99 and the Chief though. Agent 99 was so cool and collected, so smart and such a modern 70's woman.

Barbara Feldon was Agent 99. She was always the smart woman behind the bumbling but lovable Maxwell Smart (Don Adams). Recently I watched the modern remake of 'Get Smart' with Anne Hathaway. Although she captured Agent 99 quite well, there was much less snarkiness and feeling of being superior to Barbara Feldon as Agent 99. She did respect Max and though she had the odd smirk at his goof ups, I never felt she was smirking at his expense. Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 was class and clever, very well dressed too.

I enjoyed the opening and closing credits and watched every time. I don't know if I expected something to be different, but I did think it was funny to see him get stuck in the phone booth or have his nose caught in the doors. That's how I remember the show most of all, the opening music and the long corridor of doors.

The Unclassified Get Smart Site

Get Smart with Would you Believe...

There are dinosaurs in Canada and they aren't all quiet, old fossils.

Primeval was (or maybe still is) a science fiction series about dinosaurs coming into the current, modern time through anomalies. The anomalies were portals which popped up in the time of the dinosaurs and led them to the current time. If you watched Primeval you would see dinosaurs in the swimming pool, the fast lane on the highway and acting like a bull in a china shop at the city museum.

The show was created in the UK, cancelled and brought back, then cancelled again. For a year (a season) Primeval had a new version, made in Canada. The Canadian show didn't get a second season but it sure went out with a bang, not a whimper.

The Story So Far

The leader of the Canadian team (Vancouver, British Columbia) is Evan Cross. He seems to have unlimited money from a business connected to science and computer technology. Evan Cross discovered the anomaly and the dinosaurs while urban exploring with his wife. She was eaten by a dinosaur, he witnessed her death but was unable to stop it. Since then he became determined to discover where the dinosaurs are coming from, how they are able to travel through time and how it can be stopped.

So Evan builds up resources (hidden inside his existing business) and a team of people to help him. First on the team is Mac Rendell. I count Mac as first because he has a connection to the dinosaurs in his own unique way. He was also killed by one, but in a future time which is how Even finds him (at Mac's death). It is a complicated story and yet while you watch the episode on the show it all seems pretty logical and sensible. Mac, in the future, was on the UK Primeval team and died trying to capture an escaped dinosaur. Of course, he could not have his body found in the past (when he should have been a teenager living in the UK still). So Evan hides the body in a deep freeze in his offices.

Dylan Weir is used to dealing with wild animals, in the present time. She joins the group when her mentor is killed by a dinosaur - this is also how she finds out about the dinosaurs. Evan invites her to join and she becomes his right hand in the field.

Toby Nance is a young woman who dresses like a pop star but is actually the brains being the operation. She is inventive and ingenious. She does not usually join the group in the field but stays behind in the secret lair to guide the team and come up with solutions when technology fails or any other problems arise.

Ange Finch starts out running the actual business. She is Evan's business partner and a trusted friend. As the show progresses Ange wanted to take part and do more. She has feelings for Evan and though he also likes her romantically he can't quite get past his wife's death and his own feelings of guilt and the drive to do something about it. At one point Ange seems to defect and being working with another group who are aggressively hunting the dinosaurs for their own purposes.

Primeval New World didn't get another season but you can watch the original UK series for more background on the story.

If you are truly a Canadian science fiction fan/ geek you must know Starlost.

If you have never heard of Starlost you need to catch up on it! Starlost was a Canadian science fiction TV series created by Harlan Ellison and broadcast in 1973 on CTV in Canada. Ben Bova was the science advisor.

It was quirky and people will say it was not very good but I would say it had personality and was loads of fun to watch. But, I like science fiction when it’s not very good. (I do draw the line at down right awful though).

The Starlost was 16 episodes (1973 – 1974)

• Keir Dullea as Devon
• Gay Rowan as Rachel
• Robin Ward as Garth

One Day you Discover your Planet is Actually One Community on the Spaceship, Ark

The Starlost is about Devon, Rachel and Garth who grow up in a backwards pioneer sort of community, Cypress Corners . Rachel, Devon and Garth are in a romantic triangle. Rachel wants Devon but is told to marry Garth. So they run away, Garth following. This is when the bottom drops out of their world.

Garth, Rachel and Devon are on a spaceship, the Ark, which is on a collision course with a Class G solar star. Cypress Corners has just been one domed community in a giant spaceship. They find this out when they discover a computer set up to provide assistance and answer questions should any of the Ark inhabitants wander outside of their community domes and discover they aren’t on a planet at all.

The TV series becomes the three of them working together, in spite of their differences, to try to keep the Ark and all it’s inhabitants from destruction. They meet other cultures who have been isolated in their own domes (biospheres) and evolved in unique ways. They also find out more about the Ark itself and those who built and ran it. However, they discover the crew of the bridge are dead when they find skeletal remains in spacesuits.

The most memorable part of the show for me was the computer man. Sometimes he was just a disembodied voice and other times he was the face on the screen when they interacted with the ship’s computer. The actor who played the computer and voice was William Osler. He was very distinctive and a bit intimidating (even scary) when I watched the show long ago.

Quirky, old science fiction TV series and movies are a treasure to be shared.

Exploring the Abandoned Planet (urban exploration after people)

We may think about life after death but it's our own death we consider. What happens to the planet, the culture, machines, and animals we leave behind when (if) there were no people left on the Earth to maintain and build them?

Whether you think about something small like a goldfish in a bowl or big, like pollution... have you ever wondered how much impact humans have on the planet and how the Earth would change once we were all gone?

Life After People is a video series based on the idea that people (all of us) have disappeared from the planet. There is no discussion about what happened to us. Once the documentary begins we become irrelevant (except for everything we have left behind and how we left it).

If you have seen the series or one of the movies, do you watch it for the science fiction, the illustrations of abandoned civilization or out of curiosity to see what happens to everything when we (who think we are so important) are not here any longer?

I must admit, as an urban explorer (one who explores abandoned, derelict and ruined places and things) I do love to soak in the illustrations. I could spend the entire length of the documentary just pouring over the details of the ruined places. I would enjoy time to look at still images and catch all the details of the abandoned cars, roads, homes, and all the rest.

However, this series is so great because they go beyond the everyday places and things you would think of. Places like abandoned amusement parks, churches, historical monuments. Things like domestic livestock, family pets and oil leaking from cars in parking lots over time. The series of movies would have to go on forever to capture every last detail but you can find out so much in just an hour, or two.

The Neverending Adventure of our Planet, Life and Everything

I'd like to live forever. Not because I'm afraid of death but because I want to see how the story goes here on our planet. How far do people evolve and what big inventions and changes come along? Can we clean up the planet, control over population and give the animals some habitat back? What happens to the planet.. does the sun die out and leave the Earth cold, barren and out of luck? Does the moon last or some day get hit by space junk we created? So many questions, all leading to the end of time, and farther. How long can the story go? We don't even know where it all began. So many questions and so few answers we can count on 100% as fact. I'd like to know!

We can read so many ideas in science fiction but no one really knows anything, it is all just ideas based on what we know or think we know so far.

If I could have my three wishes... the first would be for health and losing weight, the second would be to live forever and be able to get around exploring the world and seeing it al for myself. Actually seeing it all, rather than reading about it in paper and print. As a bonus I'd take photographs with a digital camera which never runs out of battery life or memory space.

The third wish I would keep in reserve, you just know something will come up and I'm going to need that extra wish somewhere through all time and space.

I'm reading Frankenstein.

I picked an edition which includes a lot of extras, mostly about Mary Shelley, the author and her life. Did you know her Mother wrote a classic book about women and women's rights long before it became a popular issue? Mary was a liberated woman herself. Yet, these ideals must have been given to her from her Father (William Godwin) because she never met her Mother. Mary Wollstonecraft died just after giving birth to her daughter. How did that form Mary and what did it add to her story about creating life, death and regret?

I picked Frankenstein as my classic fiction book to read this year because I do find the theory of reanimating life, animals able to grow back body parts and cloning interesting. Modern science is doing the same sort of research still. I don't think we really do hear about all that goes on in various laboratories around the world. Likely, there are still horror stories being written in the name of science (fame and fortune too).

Did you Know Frankenstein Will be 200 Years Old in 2018?

Frankenstein, the book, is almost 200 years old. The original story was published in 1818, a third edition came out in 1831. This was the final edition, with all her rewrites and additions to the story.

As I read Frankenstein, I am enjoying a glimpse of the past and the old style of writing. It really is more like prose, lines of poetry, than our style of plainer writing these days. I wonder if people also spoke that way or was the writing just that bit more formal.

My nephew, Zack, read Frankenstein for school and said he hated it. I think he just didn't like the style of writing, the prose which goes on and on about scenery and emotions rather than pressing on to move the story ahead or dwell on gruesome details. We are used to such a different way of telling a story these days - this does make it harder to read a book written 200 years ago.

Still I am enjoying the read, the adventure back in history and the idea of recreating life from something dead and how that could work out if I were to write my own story of Frankenstein.

Frankenstein: Read it or Watch it

In the later editions of Mary Shelley's book publishers had her revise the story, make it less shocking for people of the day. You can still find copies of the book, the original story from 1818. However, in the edition I'm reading the actual process of creating the monster is not written about in anything near to the detail which it has been given in the Frankenstein movies.

Also, it's interesting that the books consider the monster to be named Frankenstein. If people refer to Frankenstein they usually mean the monster created by Victor Frankenstein. Actually, in the mind of Victor Frankenstein himself he thinks he is the monster for creating this creature, or daemon has he refers to it more than once in the book.

Frankenstein in Film 1910 and Onwards.

From 1910 to the current I, Frankenstein movie trailer, you can find many versions of Frankenstein to watch. But, read the book at some point. It's the original and the inspiration for all the versions of Frankenstein which have come along since Mary Shelley published her story.

Life Without Soul was the second movie made from Frankenstein but there are no known copies of it surviving.

There had been a theatre production in 1826.