Showing posts with label TV tie-ins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV tie-ins. Show all posts

Monday, December 18, 2023

UFO #2: Sporting Blood


UFO #2: Sporting Blood, by Robert Miall
June, 1973  Warner Books
(Original UK edition 1971)

I’ve mentioned before how crazy I am about that ‘60s/70s ultramod Spaced Out vibe, as displayed in such ‘60s sci-fi flicks as Barbarella2001: A Space Odyssey, and Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun. But in my mind the highest paragon of this ultramod “future 1960s” look would have to be Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s UFO, which was produced for UK television in ’70 and ‘71 and used many of the costumes, sets, and props from the aforementioned Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun (which was another Andersons “Century 21” production). 

To be sure, UFO is glacially paced, overly grim, and seldom if ever makes use of its colorful ultramod trappings. It’s almost as if all the colorful stuff was from the mind of Sylvia Anderson, from the silver “space age” suits worn by the characters to the purple wigs and miniskirts of the “girls” who worked at Moonbase. But Gerry Anderson sort of flew in the face of this, delivering a “grim and gritty” vibe that was more so just dour, with an often unlikeable lead character and plots that focused too much on loss, suffering, and despair. Only late in the series’ run, when many of the cast members had been replaced due to scheduling conflicts, did the producers bring more of a “fun” vibe to the show, but the earliest episodes – three of which are novelized here – are usually too “serious” for their own good. 

Make no mistake, though: I love the show, and could watch it over and over on permanent repeat, preferablly blitzed out on cheap blended whiskey. I’ve got the original DVD release but the discs are just gathering dust; I prefer to watch the high definition remastered episodes free with ads on Prime, and have watched the series through a few times over the years. There is something wonderful about this modtastic future that never was (the series takes place in the early 1980s), and I’d rather watch UFO than Star Wars or Star Trek any day of the week. 

The show didn’t make much of an impact in the US, where it played in syndication, but there was enough support behind it that the two novelizations Robert Miall had published in the UK in 1971 were brought by Warner Books to the US. However no changes were made to the text: we still have single quotation marks for dialog and British spellings are used throughout. This was the second of the two novelizations, and it’s interesting that Miall (of whom I know nothing) plants seeds for a third novelization at the end of Sporting Blood (the title has no bearing on the plot, by the way). 

This slim, 140-page book novelizes the episodes “Computer Affair,” “The Dalotek Affair,” and “Survival.” It’s worth noting that these are not comprehensive novelizations of the episodes; Miall leaves out scenes and often rewrites stuff to fit these three unconnected episodes together. But then, UFO was an episodic series to begin with; there was only the overall plot, of secret agency SHADO and its various high-tech craft waging an undercover war against aliens – all of it occuring in the “future ‘60s” of 1981 (or thereabouts – the show, as explained below, wasn’t always faithful to its own setting). 

The important thing to note is that the main appeal of UFO, the colorful ultramod setting, is not captured here by Miall. Rather, he has focused more on the “dour” aspects of the show, rarely if ever bringing to life the ultramod futuristic settings but instead focusing on the inner turmoil of the characters. He does at least cater the book to a male readership, with the main characters being the men on the show, and thus there is a narrative focus on the appeal of the shapely female SHADO agents (who themselves of course were another huge part of the show’s appeal). But then, there is very little racy stuff in the novel, with Miall never giving in to exploitation – I mean, the dude doesn’t even use the word “breasts” when describing Moonbase commander Lt. Gay Ellis (aka actress Gabrielle Drake – sister of singer Nick Drake): 


I mean that’s some serious restraint on the author’s part, friends. But then, Miall makes clear something the TV show only hinted at: the male agents of SHADO are damn horny, particularly given that they have curvy dishes like that sashaying around them in form-fitting catsuits and miniskirts…and there’s a friggin’ rule that prevents SHADO agents from becoming romantically involved with each other! In fact this is the plot of fist storyline “Computer Affair,” but then again it’s another instance where the show couldn’t seem to make up its mind, as there’s a lot of innuendo in the show that some of these agents were getting along in more than a professional fashion. 

Robert Miall treats everything with deadly seriousness; there is no camp here, no spoofery. We’re told the “girls” at Moonbase wear purple wigs, for example, but we aren’t told why. (Presumably costume designer Sylvia Anderson said the idea was the wigs were anti-raditation or somesuch…but then this begs the question why the men on Moonbase didn’t wear purple wigs!) Also the various SHADO vehicles are seldom described, and indeed Miall pulls an interesting trick throughout in that rarely if ever does he focus on characters who are operating these vehicles. Rather, the “action” is usually relayed from the perspective of whoever is commanding the mission from afar, watching viewscreens and sweating bullets in the hope that everyone survives. Again, the focus is on the grim and the dour, with very little in the way of fun escapism. 

Back to the glacial pacing of the show: it says something about how padded the average episode of UFO was that Miall is able to novelize a full episode in about 40 pages. I’m not sure how these three specific episodes were chosen for the novelization treatment, but Miall does a fairly good job of making them all seem part of a larger storyline, save for the issue that the aforementioned Lt. Ellis disappears from the text – because the actress was only in one of these three episodes, “Computer Affair.” Her disappearance from the rest of the text is due to a cold, it’s explained to us via dialog between SHADO honcho Colonel Ed Straker and his second-in-command Alec Freeman, and thus she must be quarantined from the safe and secure Moonbase. 

Speaing of Colonel Straker, he is the “unlikeable” main character mentioned above; while Striker (as portrayed by Ed Bishop), with his “bleached” white hair, is the character most associated with UFO, he seldom featured as the protagonist in early episodes, the three novelized here being prime examples. Only late in the series run, when Alec Freeman (George Sewell) was replaced by the uber-sexy Colonel Virginia Lake (aka Wanda Ventham, who would become the mother of actor Benedict Cumberbatch), did Straker take more of a Captain Kirk-esque place in the proceedings. In the earlier episodes, like the ones novelized in Sporting Blood, he mostly stays at his desk, barking orders, pushing his underlings, and looking dour. 

Another thing I want to point out is that not only was UFO episodic, but the episodes were broadcast way out of order from how they were produced; I follow this viewing order when watching the series. But even that viewing order conflicts with this novelization, which places “The Dalotek Affair” before “Survival.” Meanwhile for both the suggested viewing order and this tie-in novel, “Computer Affair” occurs first, yet per the Pop Apostle site I linked to above, “Computer Affair” seems to take place later than most other episodes, given references in the episode to the year. At the end of “Computer Affair” a character takes up a bottle of wine, looks at the label, and remarks, “1984, what a year,” or something to that effect. Clearly this means 1984 is in the past, so it must be at least ’85 (or they just serve really cheap wine at this particular restaurant – or hell maybe wines in this “future” have expiration dates!). Meanwhile “The Dalotek Affair” is stated as taking place in 1981. 

Anyway. The first forty pages of Sporting Blood are devoted to “Computer Affair,” probably one of the slowest-paced episodes in the entire series. In this one Alec Freeman is tasked with figuring out what’s going on at Moonbase, and ultimately determines there’s a blossoming romance between busty Lt. Gay Ellis and burly Lt. Mark Bradley (Harry Baird), one of the Interceptor fighter pilots on the base. Ellis happens to be white and Bradley happens to be black, but this is not a concern – in fact it isn’t even mentioned – for SHADO. Rather, it’s that this romance could conflict with duty and cause havoc. In fact race isn’t even mentioned in the book until the final story novelized, “Survival,” where Bradley is offered the opportunity to command Moonbase and is concerned his skin color automatically prevents him from this honor – a concern just as quickly dashed as it is raised. 

It's pretty slow going. Robert Miall proves posthaste that he is more interested in the inner turmoil of his characters, particularly that of Alec Freeman, than he is in catering to a sci-fi action vibe. The majority of this opening section keeps Freeman in center stage, which makes his sudden disappearance later on in the novel a bit bumpy for the reader. Here he flies in to Moonbase, ponders how friggin’ hot all these Moonbase chicks are, and then tut-tuts the burgeoning romance between these two young people who are trapped up here on a base separated from the Earth on a mission so secret that can’t even tell their closest family members about it. When another astronaut is killed during a fight against a UFO (the entire sequence as well from Freeman’s perspective, even though he’s safe and sound on Moonbase), it’s back to Earth for some computer-assisted psychological testing of Ellis and Bradley. 

Here we get some of the shrill and unlikeable Straker, who alternately bosses Freeman around and then worries over a UFO that’s landed in the wilds of Canada. Even the ensuing “Shado mobile” action is relayed from Freeman’s perspective. But humorously, just as in the actual episode, the Ellis-Bradley romance is passed off as being okay, and indeed the two don’t even kiss or anything…nothing more than an exchange of words…and also the two characters never even appeared in an episode together again! Miall even makes their romance less of a thing than the episode did; the episode ends with an Earthbound Ellis and Bradley in a restaurant, and Bradley’s the one who makes the remark on the wine bottle that’s dated 1984. Miall cuts this scene from the novel. 

This could be because the dates don’t jibe; Miall inserts dialog in the opening of the novel that “Computer Affair” takes place in November of 1981; Lt. Ellis makes the announcement that Mark Bradley was born in November of 1952, “twenty-nine years ago,” which would go against the “1984” reference in the actual televised episode. But then, Miall himself goofs; the second story novelized here, “The Dalotek Affair,” is set in April of 1981 – the date mentioned both in the episode itself and in this novelization – even though Miall has the story taking place after “Computer Affair.” 

Speaking of which, we are sort of thrust directly into “The Dalotek Affair,” not to mention we are suddenly given a new main character: Colonel Paul Foster, virile alpha male type who really was the closest thing to the show’s action lead. Memorably portrayed by Micheal Billington (who apparently was frequently short-listed for the role of 007), Foster when we meet him is commanding Moonbase in place of Lt. Ellis, who we are informed is still Earthbound due to a cold she picked up. Of course, none of this is in the actual episode. This story is my favorite of the three here, and the episode is good as well, if for no other reason than the majority of it takes place on the ultra-groovy Moonbase. This one concerns a mining combine called Dalotek which has insisted on getting to work on the moon, unaware – as is everyone in the world – that UFOs are a constant threat up here. 

But just as with Freeman, we here are often reminded how damn horny Foster is up on Moonbase, with all these chicks! And again all the groovy décor and escapism is ignored, Miall instead focusing on the dourness and the boredom of being stuck in this isolated base on a dead world. This is the closest the book gets to risque, though; one of the Dalotek people is a sexy babe named Jane Carson, and Foster is able to start something up with her even though she’s not on Moonbase and he has to drive across the lunar surface to see her. Miall changes a bit from the episode, though; in that, we know from the start that Jane does not remember Foster due to an “amnesia pill” she’s been given, and the entire episode is a flashback on Foster’s part. Miall ignores that and shows it all as it happens, but with a darker edge – in the climax, Jane does not know she’s about to be given an amnesia pill (so as to forget about SHADO and UFOs), and Foster, about to bed Jane, feels just a little guilty about it. I mean it’s basically a UFO roofie. 

Otherwise “The Dalotek Affair” is slight on the action front, as most every episode of UFO is. Again it’s more down to the turmoil and the arguing, with Straker in “one of his moods” and ranting and raving on Earth and Foster blaming the Dalotek people for causing various SHADO crashes on the Moon. It turns out to be an alien plot, of course – and here Robert Miall cleverly ties things together with the ensuing story, “Survival.” This one also stars Foster, and also is primarily set on the groovy Moonbase; the opening of the episode is very colorful in this regard, with Foster and a pal hanging out in an ultramod rec room and getting drunk before a window blows and Foster’s pal dies via decompression. Miall has it that this pal is the replacement astronaut for the one killed in “The Computer Affair,” and also the alien who shoots out the window was dropped by the UFO that inexplicably came and went in “The Dalotek Affair.” 

Regardless, here’s the goof – when the dead astronaut is given a space funeral, it’s mentioned that the date is April, 1981. Meanwhile Miall had “Computer Affair” as occuring in November of ’81. At any rate this one’s plot is a prefigure of the ‘80s sci-fi movie Enemy Mine, concerning as it does Foster and the alien stuck together on the harsh terrain of the Moon and having to work together to survive. Before that though we have an angry Foster going Earthbound for a bit to seek out Jane Carson for a little nookie – only to be turned down cold, as she has no memory of him. (An incident which, as mentioned, occurs in the beginning of the televised “The Dalotek Affair.”) Then he goes over to his girlfriend’s place for some off-page lovin’, and here we get Miall’s one reference to the show’s groovy décor, Foster noting the “psychostyle painting” in his girlfriend’s apartment. 

Another interesting thing about “Survival” is that it was the last appearance of Harry Baird as Lt. Mark Bradley; any appearances after this were just recycled footage. What’s curious is that “Surival,” both the episode and here in the novel, features a go-nowhere subplot where Straker, thinking Foster is dead, offers Bradley the opportunity to command Moonbase. Bradley accepts…and does nothing but send out a Moon mobile that will ultimately discover Foster is still alive…and Foster will resume command of Moonbase. Bradley as Moonbase commander is never mentioned again, either in the novel or in the show, and given that Bradley wasn’t featured in any other episodes (other than recycled footage, that is!), it almost gives the indication that the dude got pissed off and quit. 

Anyway, “Survival” is also slow paced, and the Foster-alien journey across the Moon isn’t just rigorous for them; it’s boring as hell to watch, let alone read. As I say, UFO was incredibly static and probably would best be appreciated after downing a few tranquilizers. But man it looks great…though as mentioned many, many times now, the “look” of the show is the one thing Robert Miall fails to deliver. That said, he clearly intended to write another novelization at least: Sporting Blood ends with Straker and Freeman discussing their concerns about a SHADO agent named Roper (and Roper’s wife), and they also decide to send Paul Foster to the seabound SHADO vehicle Skydiver for “three months.” These are direct references to the episodes “Flight Path” and “Ordeal,” and presumably these would have been two of the stories that Miall would’ve novelized in a UFO #3

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Mission: Impossible #4: Code Name: Little Ivan


Mission: Impossible #4: Code Name: Little Ivan, by John Tiger
No month stated, 1969  Popular Library

After a one-year gap the Mission: Impossible series returned with this fourth (and final) volume. Walter Wager also returned as “John Tiger;” he’d written the first volume back in 1967. That one tied in with the show’s first season; Code Name: Little Ivan ties in with the fourth season. Series regulars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were gone, meaning that their characters Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter do not appear in this book; instead, we have magician/actor Paris (as protrayed by none other than Leonard Nimoy in Seasons 4 and 5), and a female character named Annabelle Drue, a “sloe-eyed” beauty who previously worked as a model before becoming an IMF agent “three years ago.” This character is unique to Code Name: Little Ivan, and likely was a creation of the editors at Popular Library. 

For, page 12 and the back cover copy of Code Name: Little Ivan reveal that Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter did appear in Wager’s original text: Paris is mistakenly referred to as “Rollin” on page 12, and the back cover lists Cinnamon as one of the characters in the book. So it seems clear that these two characters were originally in the book, but had to be replaced when the actors left the show. And only the names were changed, as Paris acts in the same capacity as Rollin Hand – a noted actor who seems mostly into the whole IMF thing for the drama – and Annabelle Drue is described in the same terms Wager used for Cinnamon Carter in the first novel: a “leggy blonde,” etc. I’d imagine some editor at the imprint had to go through the text and change all mentions of “Rollin Hand” to “Paris” and “Cinnamon Carter” to “Annabelle Drue;” other than the aforementioned two misses, the editor did a good job. 

Wager again proves himself the best writer on this short-lived series, and not just because he’s clearly the only writer who actually bothered to watch the show. Once again his novel feels very much like an episode of the series, perhaps one with an expanded budget. While the previous two novels just seemed like generic ‘60s spy action, Code Name: Little Ivan is clearly intended to be a genuine Mission: Impossible story, following the template of every show: IMF “chief” Jim Phelps (described by Wager as an athletic “blond” man…who packs a .357 Magnum beneath his “expensively-tailored” sport coat!) is briefed via self-destructing tape and then goes about pondering the assignment and then putting together a team for the job. Here we get the tidbit that the Impossible Mission Force is comprised of “volunteer civilian daredevils.” 

One additional thing Wager injects into his version of Mission: Impossible is a sense of humor. I wasn’t too fond of this – the show itself is usually pretty cold and aloof – but fortunately it wasn’t too egregious. We aren’t talking pratfalls or anything, but we have a lot of goofy bantering between idiotic East German officials, with a bungling assistant who is the source of his superior’s wrath…and also a lot of the payoffs on the caper are done comedically, which doesn’t gibe with the series vibe at all. This even extends to the typically-cold IMF agents, particularly Paris, who often chortles to himself about “going too far” in his portrayal of an overly-patriotic Red Army officer. There’s also a little more “friendly banter” among the IMF agents than typically seen in the show; Paris, for example, is a bit egotistical, and Phelps convinces him to take the job by appealing to his egotism. 

Now that I think of it, Code Name: Little Ivan doesn’t veer too far from the constraints of the show; given some of the relatively implausible sci-fi scenarios seen on Mission: Impossible, I think the plot of this one could have fit right in. Basically, the IMF team must get into East Germany and steal a protoype Russian tank that’s made of a new alloy. As it turns out, though, there aren’t any big fireworks or really any action whatsoever; late in the novel there is a staged assault on a German military base, but in true Mission: Impossible style it’s all a fakeout, nothing more than Barney Collier hoodwinking the moronic soldiers with a sound effects tape. 

Wager has the mandatory opening down pat: Phelps shows up at a carnival in his unstated home city and proves his marksmanship skills to win a stuffed animal. After exchanging some code words with the proprietor, Phelps gets on a roller coaster – one that stops at the top so he, alone on the ride, can hear the secret tape that’s embedded in the stuffed animal. A secret tape which of course self-destructs after playing. From there to the also-mandatory bit of Phelps in his swank pad going over his IMF dossier to put together his team; here we learn that “Paris” was injured in a recent assignment and has not been stated as fit for duty by the medics, but Phelps figures Paris will take the job when he hears how impossible it is. 

And it truly is one for the “master thieves” of the IMF: they must steal an entire tank and sneak it out of East Germany. So they go about this in the usual caper way: Phelps and Barney pose as salesmen for “Lovely Lips,” a lipstick manufacturer(!), Annabelle is their hotstuff French model, and Paris poses as a KGB agent, with typically-sidelined muscleman Willy Armitage acting as his chaffeur. Willy’s presence was apparently challenging even for the screenwriters – how do you integrate a strongman into every single caper? – but Wager has it that he and Paris often work together as a pair, even though they are so physically mismatched. Of course, this likely made more sense with the original Rollin Hand/Martin Landau of Wager’s original text, rather than the tall and lanky Paris/Leonard Nimoy. 

Despite a brief 128 pages, there’s still a fair amount of padding in Code Name: Little Ivan, mostly due to the scenes featuring one-off East German characters. Also, the caper itself doesn’t unfold with as much tension as on the show. Wager does try to instill a little suspense in some spots, but it comes off as at odds with the show itself, where the capers most always went off without a hitch – even when they seemed to be going wrong, it would turn out to be yet another bit of “5D chess” by mastermind Phelps. Here we have sort of “tense” bits where the machine they plan to use to hide the tank starts leaking water from beneath the big “Lovely Lips” truck and Annabelle must distract the East German guard with some small talk; stuff like that. 

But otherwise there’s no action per se, unlike the previous two novels in the series with their car chases and shootouts. The caper goes down on more of a comedic nature, with Paris – wearing one of the show’s famous “rubber masks” – posing as a Ukranian tank expert and steering it for the awaiting IMF team. Spoiler alert, but just to note it for posterity: the way the IMF team hoodwink the Commies is they have a water-filled rubber replica of the tank, which they leave on the road while Paris drives the real tank into the awaiting Lovely Lips truck. Even here the tone is one of comedy, with an idiotic East German officer insisting one of his men to get on the “tank” the next day, only for the nonplussed soldier to claim the tank is sinking beneath his weight – because it’s a rubber replica filled with water. 

Wager does sort of replicate the moment where the villains realize they’ve been swindled – always one of the highlights of the show – but here, again, it’s mostly comedic, other than an off-page bit where two of the Commies shoot each other due to some IMF hijinkery. But that’s it; the two separate teams drive over the border to West Germany and that’s all she wrote for Code Name: Little Ivan, as well as the Mission: Impossible tie-in series itself. All told this was an okay series, with the caveat that the second and third volumes seemed to be novelizations of an entirely different show.

Monday, May 2, 2022

Harry O (Harry O #1)


Harry O, by Lee Hays
No month stated, 1975  Popular Library

A well-regarded private eye TV series I’ve never seen, Harry O ran for two seasons and starred David Janssen as a former cop turned P.I. in San Diego. I was born the year season 1 came out, so obviously didn’t watch it at the time. And I don’t believe it was ever syndicated, given it only lasted two seasons. In fact I think I only discovered the show a few years ago when I was looking up any and all crime-based TV shows of the ‘70s. Well anyway, even though Harry O didn’t last very long, it still managed to get a pair of TV tie-ins, both written by Lee Hays, and this being the first of the two. Curiously the “#1” only appears on the cover and nowhere else in the book, but Hays did publish a second novel the following year. 

This is an original story, so far as I can determine, and I can only assume it captures the vibe of the TV series (which I’m sure is on DVD, and maybe I’ll actually watch it someday). Hays follows what I’ve learned to be the setup of the show: Harry Orwell, who narrates the novel for us, is a grizzled ex-cop with a bad back, given that he was shot there by a perp some years ago (which led to his retirement). Now he lives off his pension in San Diego, occasionally doing private eye work while not fiddling with his boat, The Answer. He isn’t Joe Mannix by any means; Harry is not at all an action-prone private dick, and usually keeps his gun rolled up in a towel in his house. He won’t use it in the entirety of the novel. In fact, Harry won’t do much of anything in the entirety of the novel. He does manage to score, though, so at least there’s that. 

Speaking of which, it’s interesting that Harry O was published by Popular Library, who seemed to corner the market on private eye series paperbacks in the ‘70s – they published Cage, Hardy, Renegade Roe, etc. Maybe an editor there just had a serious jones for this genre. But at least this one wasn’t misleadingly packaged like an action series, as those others were. Which is a good thing, because it’s mostly action-free. Harry O follows the template of practically every private eye story I’ve ever read: cynical P.I. is hired by a sexy broad who seems to have ulterior motives and soon finds himself in over his head, embroiled in a convoluted plot. So in other words there’s nothing new here, and if the TV series was the same then all the critical accolades are confusing to me. Harry even has the mandatory fractious relationship with the cops, in particular a former captain who has a grudge against him. He also has the mandatory friend on the force: Manny Quinlan, a character who seems to have also been on the show. 

Hays takes adavantage of the San Diego setting with frequent trips to Baja and Tijuana. In fact, there’s a lot of scene-setting in Harry O, to the point that it’s a bit egregious. I’d also say it’s there so as to pad the pages, as Hays doesn’t give himself much plot to work from. We meet Harry as he’s working on his boat; he never sails it in the course of the novel, so maybe that’s another schtick from the show. And in true “burned-out private eye” fashion, Harry ignores the constantly-ringing phone over in his house, just wanting to work on the boat despite needing a job. The caller ends up coming to him, and true to the template it’s a hotstuff babe. While the novel isn’t explicit in the least, there’s still a lot of that casual ‘70s “male gaze” as it’s now referred to – Harry seriously checks this chick out, practically oggling her as she walks by him – breasts, butt, face, etc. And she of course just makes a flippant remark about it, which adds to the charm. 

Harry makes her some coffee; he’ll make a lot of coffee in the novel. If Harry isn’t making coffee he’s checking the coffee to see if it’s still warm enough to drink; if not, Harry will heat it up. This is pretty much the majority of what our narrator does in the course of Harry O. Anyway, the pretty young lady is named Mary Alice Kimberly, and she was sent to Harry by Harry’s cop friend Manny. Her story is that her husband, who wants a divorce she won’t give him, has taken advantage of some land she gave him in Baja, and Mary Alice thinks her husband plans something shady there – to the extent that he’ll kill her to protect his investment. Harry doesn’t really believe her story and she takes off. 

This is of course where the plot thickens. Mary Alice calls Harry that night and begs him to come over to the office of another private eye, this one a sleazebag who specializes in dirty divorces. Well he’s dead, courtesy a bullet, and of course Mary Alice says she found him that way; she says her husband probably killed him. But now she herself is on the run from the cops, so Harry will spend the rest of the novel hiding her from his former friends on the force while trying to clear her name. So far as Mary Alice is concerned, her husband Arthur is involved in some shady business, so Harry heads down to Baja to check it out – oh, and another recurring bit is that Harry’s car is always in the shop. But he doesn’t like to drive, anyway. I mean there’s a part later in the book where Mary Alice is driving him back and forth to Mexico, and she asks Harry if he’d mind driving for a while, and Harry initially demurs! I mean some kick-ass hero! 

The novel comes to life with the appearance of Sydney Jerome; with his “neat mod suit” and “girlish figure” he’s clearly intended to be gay, not that Hays actually states it. He’s the larger-than-life shadowy figure expected in the private eye template, employing his own henchmen and talking “like a character out of Dickens.” He offers Harry a drink (Harry drinks liquour, at least) and tells him he too is involved with the deal, and is also looking for both Arthur and Mary Alice Kimberly. The plot further thickens when Harry’s again woken up in the middle of the night by a woman, but this time it’s Billy, the former stripclub dancer who was married to the murdered sleazebag private eye. This part seems to go nowhere – lots of dialog about the couple that doesn’t matter to the plot but fills the pages – until it leads to unexpected developments. 

As Harry O moves into its second half, things become a bit more tense; Harry himself is now trying to clear his name of murder. And also he manages to hook up with Mary Alice, who per the template throws herself at him. However Hays keeps this entirely off page. But at least Harry’s boat factors into it, as this is where Mary Alice has been hiding. But when Arthur Kimberly himself finally shows up, he warns Harry not to trust his estranged wife and tells Harry that Mary Alice is a “nympho.” Regardless Harry spends a lot of time with her, shuttling back and forth to Mexico. Our narrator literally just sits around while Mary Alice does the heavy lifting of moving the plot; it now develops that Arthur and Sydney were involved in a heroin smuggling scheme, and Mary Alice intends to foil Sydney by dealing him sugar down in Mexico. And through it all Harry just sits there while she does all the plotting and planning. 

Even the finale is underwhelming. Again true to the private eye template, the “climax” is mostly comrpised of expository dialog while various characters explain what exactly has been going on. There’s no real action; at one point Harry actually goes to get his gun, but finds that the towel he rolls it up in is now empty. Harry finally figures out how he’s been swindled, but even here his approach to it is rather humdrum. Hell, if I’m not mistaken he even makes more coffee in the climax, or maybe checks the temperature of already-made coffee. But there isn’t a big finale; instead, the villain just waits calmly while the cops head for Harry’s house. And we leave our narrator where we found him, working on his boat. 

The back cover of Harry O features several blurbs from various publications praising the show. Curiously, half of them (plus the blurb on the front cover) are all based out of Chicago, so Harry O must’ve been pretty popular there, even if it was set in San Diego. Some of the blurbs even go so far as to say Harry O is the best private eye show in history. I don’t know, though. At least judging from this paperback tie-in…well, I’d rather watch Mannix.

Thursday, February 17, 2022

The Invaders


The Invaders, by Keith Laumer
August, 1967  Pyramid Books

The Invaders was before my time, but I became aware of it at some point. I don’t recall the series ever being run in syndication, but it came out on DVD some years ago, and also the digital antenna channel MeTV was playing it at one point. So far the only episodes I’ve seen were the two directed by Sutton Roley (“the Orson Welles of television”), and while I enjoyed them, I mostly just watched them due to Roley. 

Running for two seasons, The Invaders starred Roy Thinnes (star of one of my favorite ultramod “future ‘60s” sci-fi movies, 1969’s Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun) as a man who had stumbled upon the fact that aliens were here on Earth, posing as humans and up to nefarious ends. It was sort of a Fugitive schtick with Thinnes’s character, David Vincent, constantly on the run and going from place to place to stop the aliens. This novelization, by veteran sci-fi author Keith Laumer, serves as the origin story that never was. In fact, the novel is all original, which surprised me; you’d figure David Vincent’s first encounter with the aliens would’ve been the subject of the pilot episode. But apparently it wasn’t. 

TV tie-ins were known for sometimes combining several episodes into one novel, a la the Six Million Dollar Man tie-in International Incidents, which I have but haven’t yet read. Laumer follows the same vibe here, with the caveat that none of these stories were actually produced as episodes. So while the first section of The Invaders details how David Vincent becomes aware of the alien threat, the ensuing plotlines have him operating in more of the “lone wolf in a new town” capacity of the series. It’s all very episodic, but Laumer does tie things together with a recurring villain. So I guess people who enjoy the show would want to seek this tie-in out, as it delivers the origin story that the show itself apparently never did. However Laumer does detour from the show in some regards; the aliens do not have the extra finger that their TV counterparts did, and also they don’t turn into smoke when killed. However their faces have a masklike sort of appearance. In many ways the aliens here reminded me of the ones that appeared years later in another TV series, War Of The Worlds

When we meet him David Vincent is just a roving engineer who goes around the country providing consultation services for various companies. We don’t get too much detail about him, just that he’s tall and rangy, and that girls often smile at him. It doesn’t hurt that he drives a Jaguar XKE. But the passing mentions of young women smiling at David Vincent…these seem to be Laumer’s attempt to put at least some women in the novel, because folks there aren’t any others. In all three “books” of The Invaders, David (as Laumer refers to him) only deals with other men; there are only a few female characters in the novel, usually secretaries, or in one bit a college co-ed. In each case we’re to understand these women respond to the raw animal magnetism of our stud hero, but none of their burning yearning is ever requited. David spends such an unintentionally humorous amount of time telling himself he doesn’t “have time” for these women that one could easily come to a whole different sort of conclusion. 

Well anyway, we meet David while he’s consulting at a factory, where he happens to notice a strange object, one recently created by the factory for a client. David, we’ll eventually learn, has come across several of these strange objects on his nation-wide trips to various factories. They are made of a strange plastic he has never mentioned before and, when he inquires of the various factories, he learns that the objects are always ordered by a mysterious company in California. His interest runs him afoul of Dorn, the bulky security chief of the factory. When Dorn pulls the mysterious object out of David’s grasp, David marvels over how Dorn’s arm is “hard as oak” and also hot to the touch. Not that David Vincent is a pushover; in later backstory-via-dialog we’ll learn he kicked some shit over in the ‘Nam, though he doesn’t like to talk much about it. 

But then David isn’t much for talking, and comes off as cipher-like, particularly once he sets upon his one-man mission. He has a friend at least: Lieberman, an old college pal who works as a scientist. David, fueled by his curiosity, sneaks into the factory, grabs the pieces of mysterious plastic, and takes them to Lieberman. The scientist gradually figures out that the parts fit together into what appears to be a disintigrator ray gun – what we’ll learn is called an “Eruptor.” David and Lieberman decide that only the authorities can help, thus call the local FBI office. Laumer develops nice tension here with the agents being rather terse and, like Dorn, having faces that seem like rubber masks. David instantly distrusts them. 

One thing I can certainly say about this tie-in as compared to the actual show is that the tie-in is much more violent. David makes several kills here, and they’re all pretty bloody. He learns that Dorn and several other similar men are indeed aliens, their human forms elaborate disguises, and this leads to a violent battle. David kills a few of the aliens in the fight, dropping a crate on one of them (and ripping him in half) and impaling another with the tines of a forklift. He also gets in some shots with the Eruptor, but in true Maguffin fashion it grows so hot when fired that it can’t be held any longer, so David drops it, no longer able to rely on it. 

A vague detail Laumer doesn’t elaborate on is that David works for “the General,” a character who is ultimately unseen. After this big battle David rushes back to home base, hoping to get the General’s feedback…only to learn the General is dead. Here the novel gets very clunky, as we flash forward three months and David’s become a proto-Bruce Banner, traveling alone around the country, totally off the grid. A one-man army in the war against the invaders. Why? It’s never properly explained why he must stay underground, why he can’t go for help – in fact, the FBI agents were willing to help him in the earlier sequence. But that’s the setup of the show, of course, and Laumer’s constrained by it. He does what any contract writer would do and just barrells on, hoping we’ll overlook the illogic. I didn’t, because I take notes. 

David in his travels has come to a small town, where he happens to see flyers for ISIS, a “UFO cult” that has spread due to the numerous UFO sightings of the day. David goes to that night’s meeting, where he meets Henry Thrall, a man who claims to be like David – just here to gawk at the crazies. There’s some interesting insight here on how UFO sightings of the era were seen; David feels that it couldn’t all be a hoax, or a conspiracy…but personally I think Gian Quasar is on to something. David feels that these “saucerites” might be a sort of front for the invaders, and though he plays his cards close to his chest he suspects he might’ve encountered a kindred soul with Thrall. In fact, Thrall claims that he’s aware of the truth behind it all – and asks David to leave the meeting and come back to his house. (Again, the “hmmm” connotations are pretty strong here.) 

But this “book” is titled “The Maniac,” so we know something bad’s about to happen. And, sure enough, Thrall’s “house” turns out to be an abandoned wreckage in which he keeps all kinds of weird stuff…including an “autopsied alien” which is clearly just some poor guy the psycho captured and accused of being an alien. Again, all of it a lot more twisted than anything that could get on TV in 1967. This leads to a crazed game of cat and mouse between Thrall and David, the former chasing our hero through the darkened ruins of the house. The sequence builds in intensity, complete with the surprise return of our recurring villain. Here Laumer (or whoever wrote the unproduced script he was possibly adapting – perhaps series creator Larry Cohen, who is credited in the book) opens the story with Dorn offering David a chance at immortality – if David were to help the aliens, in return they would give him superstrength and other superhuman attributes, like being able to run forty miles an hour. 

All these things the aliens of the “Great Race,” as Dorn refers to his people, are capable of doing. They also have weird regrowth powers; Dorn’s hand was burned off by the Eruptor, and he displays a new babylike appendage that is growing on the stalk of his arm. Soon he will have regrown a completely new hand to replace the lost one. I don’t believe any of this stuff made it into the actual TV show; I don’t recall the aliens having any of these powers, but then again I’ve only seen two episodes. There is very much a hive mentality to the aliens in this novelization; Dorn also refers to the “Survival Master” as being the leader of the invaders; but then, Dorn later states that the aliens aren’t here to invade so much as they just want to cohabitate with the humans. They’ve spent millennia searching for a suitable planet, and have finally found it with Earth. I’m not sure if any of this backstory made it into the show. 

The final “book” is titled “Counterattack,” and has David hooking up with another one-off character, a sergeant near an Air Force base who relays his own story of having encountered aliens. It’s once again “three months later,” meaning The Invaders takes place over the course of six months. David Vincent is still traveling around on his own; Dorn mentioned that “something” would be happening within three months, and David is determined to figure out what it could be. A chance reading about an upcoming “meteor shower” in the paper is all the clue David needs; soon enough he’s meeting with various scientists to get more info on what the scientists claim will just be a harmless meteor shower in the desert. David suspects – and of course will be proven correct – that the shower will be camouflage for an alien invasion. 

Again we get more action than a TV show could handle, with David and his new military pal blasting away in the desert with heavy weaponry as the “meteors” turn out to be clusters of alien pods which are floating down onto the desert floor. We also get a final dealing with Dorn, who as mentioned is the novel’s main villain; another difference, as I don’t believe the TV show had any recurring villainous aliens. Like most ‘60s shows it was no doubt episodic, as is Laumer’s tie-in, but he does a good job of tying the three separate “books” of the novel into one story. By novel’s end David Vincent is once again on the road, one man alone against the Invaders, and you still don’t understand why he can’t go to anyone for help. 

Laumer is very much in a “pulp” mode for The Invaders, going for fast action and description. There are accordingly a lot of clunky sentences and typos, but then the latter could be the result of poor copyediting by the publisher. (Ie “Forty wall bulb” instead of “Forty watt bulb,” etc.) Laumer wrote another volume…and also there was an Invaders series published in the UK, some of the volumes of which were brought over to the US under different titles. It all seems rather confusing and I haven’t much researched it, mostly because I was fine with just reading this one book. 

Thursday, July 8, 2021

The Secret Of Bigfoot Pass (The Six Million Dollar Man)


The Secret Of Bigfoot Pass, by Mike Jahn
October, 1976  Berkley Books

Mike Jahn, who wrote the earlier Six Million Dollar Man tie-in Wine, Women And War, returns with another tie-in paperback, this one novelizing the famous Bigfoot episodes of the series. Actually I should make that the first Bigfoot episodes, as the creature returned in a later two parter. Anyway at 154 pages of big print, The Secret Of Bigfoot Pass comes off more like a novella, and Jahn does not go for the same sort of crafted approach as he did with that earlier tie-in. This one reads like what it is: a quick novelization of a goofy story. 

Whereas Wine, Women, And War almost had the vibe of a paperback produced by Lyle Kenyon Engel, with an adult or at least mature vibe, this one’ a lot more juvenile. But then I wonder if this is due to the edition I have; only after reading the book did I notice that it has “Special Scholastic Edition” on the cover. It’s possible that Jahn’s original edition was rewritten (ie “dumbed down”) for younger readers…but then no notice of this is given in the copyright, so I’m assuming this is just how he wrote it. Perhaps it just became increasingly evident to Jahn that The Six Million Dollar Man was more of a hit with kids than it was with adults, hence the mature vibe of that earlier tie-in being almost wholly removed from this one. 

Of course, this is true of the series itself, so Jahn is not at fault here. And in fact he does try to inject a little naughtiness; in the book Steve Austin meets a hot alien chick (seriously!) and Jahn goes out of his way to document the “meaningful” looks the babe gives Steve. However as expected absolutely nothing comes of it, and also there’s zero in the way of exploitation of the alien babe’s ample charms, other than that she’s pretty and wears a “comfortable jump suit.” Jahn clearly knows that kids would be his prime readers, thus he focuses more on Bigfoot and the various action scenes (all of which are bloodless). But again this could just be some Scholastic editorial tinkering; I haven’t been able to find anything online that would confirm whether this edition was edited. 

First of all, I love that this is titled “The Secret Of Bigfoot Pass.” How much of a secret are we really talking about here? Anyway the title is about as juvenile as the story: in this one, friends, Steve Austin meets up with Bigfoot, or “Sasquatch” as Jahn refers to him, not to mention a couple aliens who live underground. Speaking of which, Steve himself is referred to as “Austin,” one of the few holdovers from Jahn’s previous tie-in. And also again Jahn harkens back to the source novels of Martin Caidin, with Austin having a couple different bionic configurations than his on-screen counterpart. This actually factors into the finale, in which Jahn detours from the actual episode. But otherwise Steve here is the same as he was in the shows, and not the Caidin books…more of an affable but laconic country boy type. 

The part of the novel I found most interesting was the rundown Jahn gives of Steve’s background, likely taken from Caidin’s initial novel Cyborg. Here we learn that Steve got into the Apollo Program late, but still managed to command the final lunar mission, Apollo 17 – replacing the real world’s Gene Cernan (who isn’t mentioned). After that, Steve, trying to stay in the space program, test flew a shuttle design and crashed spectacularly. Here we get into the “we can rebuild him” stuff, with Jahn’s version of Oscar Goldman coming off like Steve’s original icy boss, as played by Darren McGavin in the first Six Million Dollar Man telefilm. Jahn makes concessions to the tone of the series with the note that, as time went on, Oscar became less icy, with he and Steve almost becoming friends. This is different than the show, in which Steve and Oscar call each other “pal” or “buddy” so often that you could make a drinking game of it. 

But wait, we were talking about Bigfoot. Let me briefly diverge on that. The Six Million Dollar Man was slightly before my time. I was born in late ’74 and was aware of the show, mostly due to my brother, who at 7 years older than me was the prime audience for the series. He had the Steve Austin doll with the plastic eye you could look through and the weird fake plastic skin on the leg and all that stuff, and I was fascinated with it. In fact I was obsessed with all of my brother’s toys, including his GI Joe doll with the beard that collected dust. My cousins also had the Maskatron, which I thought was even cooler than the Steve Austin doll. Also my brother had the space capsule, or whatever it was, complete with a space suit for Steve and this sort of operating table you could put him on. Well anyway I thought all this was great but I heard there was also a Bigfoot toy, but no one I knew had it. 

We’re talking here about the time right after the show had gone off the air, so I knew from my brother that finding a Bigfoot toy might be difficult – only many years later would I learn that the Bigfoot doll was hard to find to begin with. I also really wanted my own Steve Ausin doll and somehow my parents found one for me; I still remember the thrill I had when they came back with a new-in-the-box Six Million Dollar Man doll. Actually now that I think of it, this must’ve been around 1980, so the show had been off the air for a year or two. I’m assuming this doll must’ve been on clearance, or they just found one somewhere. Well anyway, I still wanted Bigfoot. Now there was this kid in my class (we’re talking first grade) named Steve Middleton who swore up and down that there was a Bigfoot doll at some store somewhere nearby. I pleaded with my mom and dad to look for it for me (no idea why I didn’t just go shopping with them), but they said there was no Bigfoot toy there – they’d looked and looked. 

I bring this up because this was the first time I learned that people could lie. When I told Steve that my parents couldn’t find the toy, he not only insisted the Bigfoot doll was there, but that there were dozens of them. And his tales would only become even taller. I was only six years old at the time, but I vividly recall that Steve Middleton was the first person who had so actively lied to me. And to this day whenever I think of the Bigfoot from Six Million Dollar Man (which is damn often!), I think of Steve Middleton. Actually I have another humorous story about Steve: later on, when we were in middle school (aka “junior high” if you’re in Canada or whatever), I always got amusement out of how he tried to get by in class. He never did very well academically, so he somehow came up with the idea of feigning interest in whatever the teacher was talking about. But I mean major interest: if the teacher said, for example, that the pyramids were a few thousand years old, Steve would bug out his eyes, gape in amazement, and wag his head back and forth. Of course he’d still fail the tests, but this feigned look of amazement only became more and more outrageous…sort of like his tall tales about the mythical Bigfoot toy he claimed to have seen.* 

Okay, we’re back; sorry for the divergence. I don’t belive I’ve ever even watched the episodes Jahn novelizes here, though I have the complete series on DVD – I stalled out at Season One. One can tell though that Jahn seems to have stayed pretty close to his source material; everything’s kind of threadbare, sort of like the low production values of the series itself. As usual it opens in the cheap showiness of nature (that way you don’t have to pay for sets), with Steve hanging out in a mobile command center in Northern California while a married pair of scientists set up some earthquake monitoring devices. Also here we have Oscar Goldman and a local scientist named Joe Raintree. When the scientist couple is mysteriously abducted, Raintree claims that Bigfoot took them – hence the big footprint left at the scene. 

However there’s no mystery for us readers. Jahn often cuts over to Bigfoot’s point of view, referring to him as “Sasquatch.” The opening is a bit slow-going as Sasquatch creeps around and Steve uses his bionics to run through the forest and look for the missing couple. This of course leads to the expected confrontation with Bigfoot, which goes on for a while and doesn’t have much bite to it; there’s absoltely no vibe here that Steve’s life is in danger. Everything’s very safe and cozy and by the numbers, with Steve even making quips as he battles the seven-foot beast. The fight ends with Steve accidentally ripping off Sasquatch’s arm – and discovering that it’s bionic like his own. 

From here things open up a bit, with Steve being captured and put in “electrosleep” so he can be monitored by a trio of jumpsuited aliens. Aliens who apparently look just like humans, with one of them, a babe named Shalon, apparently pretty hotstuff. As mentioned we get a lot of stuff about her making insinuating comments about Steve as she watches him on a giant monitor. Oh and meanwhile there’s an entire colony down here, and Sasquatch is a robot the aliens created to keep people away from their hidden base. There’s some hokey “science!” stuff with some sort of time scrambler device the aliens have created that lets thousands of years slip by in seconds, or somesuch, which makes your head hurt if you think about it too much. 

The gist of it comes down to the fact that the quake detectors have picked up a new earthquake that’s about to happen right here in the colony, but the aliens plan to divert it so that nearby cities take the damage. Steve screams at them that thousands will die, but the aliens don’t care. This leads to more running and fighting as Steve tries to prevent the massive quake and then also save the aliens from catastrophe. It’s a very bloodless and G-rated affair, and also the Steve-Shalon relationship is so scuttled that you wonder why Jahn spent the time building it up. In fact reading these novelizations you realize that the writers could likely turn in something better than the source material – given the time and inclination, I bet Jahn could’ve written a novelization of The Secret Of Bigfoot Pass that would’ve been entertaining even for adults to read. 

I mentioned the unique finale; one of Caidin’s creations that didn’t make it into the series was that Steve Austin had a metal plate in his head. At novel’s end, the aliens insist that Steve must be given amnesia so he’ll forget about them and their colony. Steve allows them to do this. It’s my understanding that Jahn’s conclusion is unique to the novel. After leaving, Steve turns around in the woods and speaks to the air – confident that the aliens are watching him (and we know they are) – and informs them that the metal plate in his head blocked their amnesia rays! Thus he remembers everything, and eagerly blabs about it to Oscar later that day. But man when one of the closing lines of the novel is Oscar’s “So Bigfoot is a robot,” you know we aren’t talking about a weighty piece of work here. Steve’s time with the aliens is basically brushed aside so that he can get back to his camping trip or whatever. 

Actually Jahn does include what seems to be a bit of mockery; when Steve first meets the aliens, he is so blasé about them that they almost take affront. Steve informs them they “ain’t the first” and that he’s met other aliens, casually going on about his various adventures. Not sure if this is in the actual episode, but the humor was nice here as it came off as Jahn spoofing the entire thing. And indeed Jahn’s own prose is so quick, the settings and characters barely described, that you suspect he just wanted to be over and done with it as quick as possible. That being said, The Secret Of Bigfoot Pass is at least a swift-moving read. 

*Steve Middleton’s feigned look of amazement made such an impact on me that I recorded a “song” about it many years later, in 1997. This was with my buddy Ken Zerby, who handles “lead vocals;” I provide backup on the chorus and play very rudimentary guitar. The “you’re a Commie!” bit midway through was our impromptu tribute to the ‘60s Fantastic Four cartoon.  You can hear it here if you’re bored.

Monday, December 14, 2020

Mission: Impossible #3: Code Name: Rapier


Mission: Impossible #3: Code Name: Rapier, by Max Walker
No month stated, 1968  Popular Library

No idea who served as “Max Walker” for this penultimate volume of the Mission: Impossible series; it might’ve been the same author as the previous volume, I’m not sure. Michael Avallone is usually pegged, but supposedly he himself said he didn’t write it, and besides the flat prose style is nothing like Avallone’s. Whoever it was, he (or she!) clearly had no understanding of the actual TV series; Code Name: Rapier is just a generic pulp-spy novel, with absolutely nothing unique about the Impossible Mission Force. Indeed the team is usually one step behind “The Other Side” throughout the book, leading to a climax in which team leader Jim Phelps breaks his cover to ask someone for help – and the only time something like that ever would’ve happened in the show, it too would’ve been revealed as just another facet of Phelp’s master strategy. 

All of which is to say, the show presented an IMF team that was almost godlike, in that every little detail of every mission was carefully plotted and executed. And just as they were masterful strategists, they were also ciphers in the personality department. Not true in either case, here, with the team fumbling through the assignment and also joking around with each other throughout. Again, the author had likely never seen the show, same as with the previous volume – there’s also a bit more action here than in the series, but nothing too outrageous. Actually the “climax” features the IMF taking on a gang of imposters…fighting and capturing them all in the span of a single paragraph. The most interesting action scene isn’t even explained; some guy waits with a submachine gun in Phelps’s apartment, but is taken out by some unknown person courtesy some poison gas. Otherwise the book is very rushed, and more narrative focus is placed on the one-off character the IMF team is tasked with protecting. 

Dr. Roberto Blackthorn is this character, a scientist who has invented a miniature computer which makes possible a host of things that would give America the edge in the Cold War. But word is “The Other Side” (aka “Them”) will try to kidnap Blackthorn…there might even be a third party behind a possible abduction attempt. Phelps is briefed on all this in a novel way: ripping apart a stuffed doll in a factory to find the customary briefing tape. After this it’s back to his New York loft where he looks at the IMF dossiers and picks the usual group: actor Rolin Hand, muscleman Willy Armitage, electronics whiz Barney Collier, and blonde sexpot Cinnamon Carter, who is again described in such a way that the reader in no way envisions Barbara Bain. This “putting together the team” is the last part of the novel that even seems like Mission: Impossible; from here on out it’s just a generic spy yarn, where the carefully-chosen IMF members could’ve been replaced by any other agent and not a difference would be made. 

As mentioned Blackthorn really gets the most narrative time. Rather than the frosty “scientist type” of cliché, he’s a brash, brazen young man given to chewing on unlit “stogies” and hitting on any woman who catches his eye. He’s also got a soft spot for mod discotheques (and really who doesn’t??), as he visits two of them in the course of the short novel. We first meet him in one, checking out the mini-skirted go-go dancers who hip-shake away to the “hard rock” group on the stage. He’s a loudmouthed jerk, and Walker does a poor job of conveying how such a guy would even have the time or wherewithal to come up with a slew of electronic inventions. Blackthorn takes up a lot of the narrative, too, giving the impression that Walker was more comfortable writing about this character he created than the IMF protagonists. 

Otherwise the feel of the show is completely absent. There’s a part that would be more at home in The Man From UNCLE where some mysterious assassin breaks into Phelps’s apartment, gets a submachine gun out of a briefcase, and waits patiently for Phelps to arrive so he can blow him apart. But instead the would-be assassin is killed by poison gas, which emits from a piece of paper his prey slips under the door. It’s cool and all, but doesn’t seem like something from Mission: Impossible. More importantly, it turns out later that it wasn’t even Phelps who killed the assassin, as when Phelps does return to his room he deduces that someone has broken into it and tries to figure out what they did. Eventually he finds a nasty anti-personnel mine has been hidden beneath his mattress. Here we learn that Phelps is a veteran of the Korean War; I’m assuming this is another invention of Walker’s, as Phelps and the others were such ciphers in the show they didn’t even have much in the way of background stories. 

Blackthorn has been invited to a science conference in St. Michel, an isle in the Caribbean. Phelps and team are to secretly guard against any potential abduction attempts. Phelps will pose as a lawyer for a patent company, Cinnamon as his secretary, Barney as an employee in Blackthorn’s hotel, and Willy and Rolin as “loud American tourists.” That’s it, folks. That’s the extent of Phelps’s strategy. Even more shockingly, absolutely nothing is done with the setup. Whereas in the show Phelps and team would roll out with a minutely-plotted plan in which every step – and potential misstep – was planned for, here it’s clearly just the author following an outline with no real understanding of the why of it all. As it is, the Phelps and team of this novel could be replaced by any other generic spy heroes. 

And as with the previous book Cinnamon is presented as the honey trap, a gorgeous blonde dish who could ensnare any man. As she does with Blackthorn, at one point going with him to yet another mod discotheque – probably the highlight of the novel, with yet another hard rock band playing in a club filled with psychedelic lights. But this part is goofy; there are big screens in the club, playing clips from old monster movies, one of them King Kong. And Cinnamon, dazed by the flashing lights, seems to hallucinate Kong reaching out from the screen and grabbing her – and apparently this is exactly what happens. A bizarre plot development that is never explained. Long story short, the IMF team is being picked off one by one, but this is a pretty “G” rated novel and none of them are killed. It’s just curious that this scenario is never explained, as the last we see of Cinnamon she’s doing a tribute to Fay Wray, being lifted up into the air by King Kong.  

Barney’s also abducted, and soon thereafter so are Rollin and Willy. Phelps eventually gets on the ball and realizes a pseudo-IMF team is afoot, made up of lookalikes. Curiously nothing is made of any of this. There’s even a pseudo-Phelps which the real Phelps takes on – after, that is, completely dropping his cover and telling Blackthorn he’s an agent here to protect him. Phelps soon locates his abducted comrades, leading to a painfully anticlimactic fistfight between the fake IMF and the real IMF. It’s over and done in a paragraph – one part that makes me suspect Avallone might’ve been behind this after all is a lame paranthetical aside that Rollin and Barney have a tough time with their opponents, because “in real life the good guys don’t always win.” Of course no insult meant to Avallone, but I could see him writing something like that. 

Even more painfully, the finale is given over to exposition in which the plot is explained to us. We also have the IMF team celebrating that Blackthorn gets away safely. The whole thing lacks the feel of the real show, and while the previous volume at least had some action, this one doesn’t even have that. Fortunately Walter Wager (aka “John Tiger”) returns for the next (and final) volume; he’s clearly the only writer to serve on this series who had actually watched the show.

Monday, December 16, 2019

Mission: Impossible #2: Code Name: Judas


Mission: Impossible #2: Code Name: Judas, by Max Walker
No month stated, 1968  Popular Library

The second installment of the four-volume Mission: Impossible tie-in series isn’t by Walter Wager, who wrote the first one; whereas Wager posed as “John Tiger” for his book, this second volume is credited to “Max Walker,” which was a Popular Library house name used by a few writers. One of these writers was Michael Avallone, who served as “Max Walker” for his 1970 novelization of The Last Escape, and perhaps it’s due to this that most assume that Avallone also wrote the second and third Mission: Impossible tie-ins. However, it’s clearly not Avallone – his style is not evident at all in Code Name: Judas – and thus was the work of some other still-unknown writer. (I also recall seeing a thread somewhere, years ago, where someone who knew Avallone said that Avallone himself stated that neither of the “Max Walker” Mission: Impossible novels were by him.)

At 126 pages of big ol’ print, Code Name: Judas is more of a glorified novella. It’s definitely fast-moving, filled with shootouts and car chases. As a swinging ‘60s spy thriller, it’s a success. But as a Mission: Impossible novelization, it’s a failure. While Wager clearly was familiar with the show, Walker only seems to be aware of the minor details, ie the names of the protagonists and the fact that they each have different specialties. Otherwise he turns in something wholly different from the show. Impossible Missions Force leader Jim Phelps is the star here, with the other IMF members getting minor spotlight. In this regard the book is like any other generic ‘60s spy yarn, featuring a square-jawed, action-prone hero with a love for danger. He even packs a gadget sort of gun – a .32 caliber pistol hidden in the brass buckle of his belt.

Unlike the strong and silent strategist of the actual show, this Jim Phelps has an eye for the ladies and looks at the espionage business as a “game.” He also lacks the thorough planning of his TV counterpart; Code Name: Judas breaks the cardinal rule of Mission: Impossible in that not only is Phelps’s cover blown, but outside disturbances threaten to wreck the entire IMF plot. The planning in the show ran with clockwork precision, even the “mistakes” usually revealed to be part of Phelps’s master plan. Not so here. But then, Walker has turned in something that would seem more in-line with one of the Eurospy movies of the day; it’s all fistfights, shootouts, and car chases as various enemy agents try to take out Phelps.

We meet Phelps in Paris, having just broken off a nightcap engagement with some busty Swedish babe he’s met. Word has come in that there’s a new assignment, thus he goes to an electronics repair shop to pick up his dictacting machine. Inside the booth, after trading a code phrase with the proprietor, Phelps is given his mission via audio recording; the tape erases itself after playing. This, followed by the bit where Phelps looks through a dossier of IMF agents to pick out his team, will be the only scene in the novel that vaguely seems like Mission: Impossible. Phelps’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to find out if a notorious freelance spy codenamed Atlas has really died in a car crash in Geneva, and if he’s still alive to find out what Atlas has learned about Red China’s plans for nuclear weaponization.

Of course after some deliberation Phelps picks the same team as appeared in every season 2-3 episode: electronics whiz Barney Collier, honeytrap Cinnamon Carter, strongman Willy Armitage, and master thespian Rollin Hand. Walker doesn’t know what to do with them, really; Barney’s gift for invention only comes into play in the climax, with a crane-like contraption which is built and used virtually off-page, Willy spends the entire novel posing as a hotel valet (save for one part where he carries a guy wrapped up in an exercise mat), Cinnamon poses as a nightclub chanteuse (with Barney as her piano player!), and Rollin poses as an addled tourist from the Midwest. Meanwhile Phelps does all the heroic man of action stuff, acting more like a field agent than a strategist; in this way the novel predicts where the series would ultimately go, particularly when Martin Landau (aka Rollin Hand) and Barbara Bain (aka Cinnamon Carter) left the show. (And I still like the final two seasons the best!)

We know we’re in for a different sort of Mission: Impossible immediately after Phelps receives his audio briefing; the proprietor of the repair shop is abducted by a group of gunmen, taken off for interrogation. Then on the flight to Geneva Phelps is bored by an “old Brixton” in the seat next to him who won’t stop talking about this or that; the man insists Phelps take the book he’s reading. Upon arrival in his hotel Phelps will discover the book is actually a bomb. Thus he knows his cover has been blown – and the assignment’s just started! The IMF team all operate out of the same Geneva hotel, Phelps as a banker here to “investigate the credit” of Cinnamon’s character. And Rollin is posing as the cousin of the man killed in the car crash, the man who might or might not have been Atlas: I forgot to mention, but Atlas has never been properly photographed, and one thing known about him is that he wears a false nose, his real one blown off in WWII. It’s suspected that he staged his death here, using a phony passport. Thus Rollin poses as the phony “cousin” of this phony “car crash victim.”

Honestly, the stuff with Rollin, Cinnamon, and Barney is page-filling at its worst; Willy isn’t included because Walker doesn’t even waste any time on him. The dude literally spends the majority of the tale off-page, posing as a valet. But again there’s little fidelity to the true Mission: Impossible vibe; Rollin is confronted by Swedish authorities who accuse him of being Atlas, here to cover his tracks, so Rollin takes a pseudo-cyanide pill which mocks heart attack symptoms. With the help of an apparently-pretty nurse – alternately described as chunky or leggy – he’s able to free himself. We also get a lot of padding about Cinnamon singing various torch songs in the hotel club, Barney doing his best to accompany her on piano. It’s very evident that Walker is struggling to justify the presence of these other IMF members, but ultimately they don’t contribute much.

Instead, and again unlike the actual show, things move along due to outside interferences. The old Brixton shows up in Phelp’s room one night and announces he was previously with “the other side” but wants to come over to Phelps’s. He claims he was pushed into those failed assassination attempts, and also that he too is here to find Atlas, and also might know where he is. This leads to another very un-Mission: Impossible-esque moment, as he and Phelps get in a car-chase/shootout, one that leaves the old man dead. From his dying words Phelps learns that Atlas is in disguise in the very same hotel Phelps and his team is staying in, taking us into a Scooby Doo sort of finale in which Atlas is outed, of course via yanking off his fake nose!

But this too is out of touch with the show’s vibe; it happens during a knock-down drag-out fight between Atlas and Phelps in the hotel gym. Phelps gets the upper hand, which leads to the aforementioned scene of Willy carrying an unconscious Atlas in a gym mat up to Phelps’s room. But even here things continue in your everday spy pulp vibe, with “enemy agents” capturing Cinnamon and offering her in exchange for Atlas. Phelps goes against the IMF policy – ie that a mission is a success if the goal is achieved, not necessarily if none of the IMF agents are injured or killed – and plans to rescue her. Here Willy’s crane device is quickly used to hoist Cinnamon to safety while the enemy agents are blown up. Walker can’t even pan out on his own subplots; we know early on there’s a brawny Chinese agent with martial arts skills who is also after Atlas, but we never even meet him, and must assume he’s one of these enemy agents!

Humorously, the book caps off with Phelps and his team having brief moments of reflection; Willy regrets he gets all the grunt work but he’s happy to see it’s going to be a sunny day today(!), Cinnamon realizes “the boys” came to her rescue and thus plans to reward them in some way (one wonders what the hell that is going to lead to), Rollin enjoys losing himself in his roles, Barney enjoys using his skills for invention, and Phelps enjoys the game itself. And that’s it, folks – we’re informed that the last part of Phelps’s plan involves smuggling Atlas back to the US so the Red Chinese info can be extracted from him, but all we see is a goofy scene where he’s hidden inside a piano and Barney, still posing as a pianist, fools some customs agents into letting it through. We don’t even find out what happens to Atlas, the info, anything – we just end the tale knowing that Phelps is about to get lucky with the Swedish babe he almost hooked up with at novel’s start.

While it’s definitely not what you’d expect from Mission: Impossible, Codename: Judas is a perfectly fine piece of ‘60s pulp spy-fi. Oh and I forgot to mention, the otherwise-inexplicable title comes from Cinnamon, who claims that Atlas is a “Judas” given to his willingness to sell info to any power. I assume Popular Library came up with the title and Walker had to justify it somehow. Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the same Walker wrote the next one; Wager didn’t return until the fourth (and final) volume of the series. No guesses on who this Walker was; his style (or her style, come to think of it) is fairly bland, just giving the necessary info and moving on. Other than a fondness for paranthetical sentences, there’s really nothing noteworthy about the style, or any clues about who the author might’ve really been.

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Chase


Chase, by Norman Daniels
No month stated, 1973  Berkley Medallion

Chase was a cop show that lasted a single season, running from September of ’73 until spring of ’74. I never saw it, mostly due to the fact that I hadn’t been born yet. And I probably never would’ve even heard of it had it not been for this paperback novelization of the pilot episode, courtesy Norman Daniels, the author who gave us the Man From A.P.E. series and tons of other books, most of them paperback originals.

But I of course had heard of series creator Stephen J. Cannell; probably any guy around my age will remember his name, if anything due to The A-Team, which Cannell created about a decade later and memorably featured that goofy bit at the end of each episode with him yanking the latest hot page off his typewriter and tossing it. I remember in college in the ‘90s my friends and I had recurring jokes on what Cannell was typing and throwing away – this was back before cell phones and the internet was still dial-up (plus it was for geeks anyway), so it’s not like we had much else to do or talk about. 

A little research shows that Cannell wrote this two-hour pilot, but then per network tradition the concept was altered before the actual series began – pretty much the same thing happened with The Six Million Dollar Man. It’s a wonder the show even got off the ground, because it has one of the most ridculous concepts I’ve ever encountered. Basically a police inspector in some unstated city wants to start a “secret” cop squad (gee, what could go wrong??), and when he can’t get the idea approved, he moves forward with it anyway…but it’s all so off-the-book that the squad members will have to cover operating costs out of their own pockets. And there are no promotions and no recognition. So this is like the one job that would be worse than being sent to Vietnam.

The novel opens with what will turn out to be the sole death in the novel; an undercover cop named Dan Freeman finally collars a thug he’s been chasing named Traynor, but Traynor gets the drop on Freeman and blows him away. He then stashes Freeman’s corpse and plants a gem on it, giving the implication that Freeman was dirty and on the take. This is the incident Inspector Dawson uses to make his “secret police force” a reality. Actually the concept wasn’t Dawson’s idea – it was Captain Chase Reddick’s, a “heavyset” cop “well into his 40s” (Daniels by the way seems to mean “stocky” by “heavyset,” as he uses the word a few times throughout). But Reddick had been drinking at the time and didn’t think Dawson would take him seriously.

So it’s all off the books and Reddick is to put together a top-secret team, one which will conveniently enough be called “Chase,” even though Reddick didn’t come up with the name and doesn’t like it(!?). Freeman himself was working on a secret case (one wonders what the hell is going on in this nameless city) and no one knows what it was, but due to the gem planted on him his widow and kids are being screwed out of his pension – as expected, the stupid city officials are more than willing to believe the cops are dirty. As expected, they also turn down Dawson’s “secret squad” idea in the opening, but their reactions are more sensible than Daniels intends to convey – I mean, a secret police squad, accountable to no one and totally off the books, could lead to nothing but trouble.

But to hell with sensibility! Reddick takes the job of leading the squad, even though he won’t get extra pay, the hours will be lousy, the danger will be high, and there will be no recognition for his deeds. Hell, there won’t even be any backup if he gets in too deep. It’s even more incredible that three younger cops join him, all of them “chosen by computer:” Fred Sing, a Chinese guy who is an expert biker (and it’s pretty cool that Daniels doesn’t constantly remind us Sing is Chinese, so the book’s kinda modern in that regard at least); Norm Hamilton, a pilot who flew tons of helicopter missions in ‘Nam; and finally Steve Baker, the top driver on the force.

I mean it’s ludicrous – we gotta find out why this undercover cop was killed, so we’re gonna need a motorcycle, a helicopter, and a fast car! Oh and we gotta pay for all of it ourselves. Anyway I digress. Baker has history with Reddick; hazy backstory has it that Baker and his partner were on the scene during a bank robbery or something, and Reddick barged in, causing the crooks to kill Baker’s partner. This backstory was kind of hard to get a handle on but the long and short of it is that Baker hates Reddick’s guts and instantly wants off the Chase squad. Oh, and that’s the other bullshit thing – you can’t quit!! Even though the squad doesn’t officially exist and all that jazz, if you’re assigned you’re assigned, and if you want out your only option is to quit the force.

Sing and Hamilton are all for joining, but Baker resents the transfer and spends the rest of the novel bitching about it and sending in transfer requests (which Dawson constantly denies). The Chase squad is set up out of an abandoned fire station, which reminded me of another cop novel I recently read: Killer At Large by Manning Lee Stokes, which also featured a new squad operating out of an abandoned fire station. The coincidence of this was too much; Stokes was likely writing Killer At Large when Chase was on the air, so I wonder if he ripped off the idea from this show. Well, I’ll just pretend like he did. I always enjoy these little synchronicities which have no meaning to anyone but me, but then that’s the very definition of a synchronicity – they only matter to the person who notices them, per Jung. (I’ve waited nine years to use “per Jung” in a review.)

I’m really digressing now. Reddick’s first order to the three men is to get some mangy clothes and grow their hair long – to look “disreputable and hippie.” Even Reddick goes for a long-haired grungy look, much to the ribbing of Inspector Dawson. Meanwhile Baker is tasked with souping up an ordinary-looking car and Sing is tasked with souping up a motorcycle. Hamilton meanwhile calls in on a favor an old friend offered him and gets a helicopter for a cheaper rental fee. Dawson even offers to pay for expenses out of his own pocket. It’s all very, very hard to believe, particularly given that the “disreputable hippie” look serves no purpose other than occasional jokes. 

A glaring problem with the book is that too much of it is comrpised of exposition, usually informing us of stuff we just saw happen. But its even worse in the action scenes. The first one sees Baker and Sing chasing a suspect in their souped-up car and motorcycle, Hamilton following from above in his helicopter, and the entire scene is relayed through dialog. Reddick, in a regular car and unable to keep up with the others, must listen on his radio as Hamilton reports on everything as it happens, as if he were a sports announcer calling plays. As for the straight-up expository stuff, as mentioned it’s usually Reddick meeting up with Dawson and going over the current status of the case. Material we readers already know. Clearly this is Daniels’s attempt at filling out the pages, but man, the book’s a mere 160 pages of fairly big print. He could’ve expanded on Cannell’s script and added more fireworks.

Because it’s clear that Cannell’s pilot suffered from the constraints of a TV budget. A concept like this needs to be wildly over the top; Chase and team should almost be like a commando squad, with constant firefights and chases on the ground and in the sky. But as it is, there’s absolutely no need for a motorcyle, a helicopter, or a souped-up car when you’re researching a homicide, and Cannell tries as hard as he can to make it work, as does Daniels. Who actually has a tougher job of it, because he can’t rely on visuals and a soundtrack to keep his readers from noticing all the problems with the concept and story.

Another thing missing, as expected, is any adult stuff; the sole female character in the novel is a lady named Barbara who was supplying Freeman with info. It’s intimated that Barbara was a hooker, but this being the novelization of a 1970s TV movie, it’s not very clear. She turns out to have more up her sleeve, though, working with Traynor, the thug who killed Freeman in the opening pages. These two characters are plotting to screw over wealthy criminal Quentin Mackenzie; Reddick discovers, through hard-to-believe means, that Freeman was very interested in an upcoming motorcyle race that starts in Tijuana and goes across the border into the US. At length we’ll learn Traynor is competing in this race and will be hiding diamonds or heroin in his bike, moving the stuff for Mackenzie, but secretly planning to make off with it on his own.

Finally the concept is worked into the plot, sort of; Sing heads to Mexico and tries to get in the race, having to break into the sign-up office to do so. This gets him arrested and into the orbit of Lt. Salizar, an old colleauge of Reddick’s. Now working with the Mexican police the Chase squad attempts to bring down Traynor and Mackenzie, with the highlight of the novel being the race. However again it’s mostly relayed via dialog. The other big action scene has Reddick and Hamilton chasing after Mackenzie as he tries to escape in a plane. No bullets are fired, though – in fact the heroes never fire a single gun in the book, which I guess is nice so far as keeping down the costs goes, but kinda sucks if you’re an action-starved reader looking for a cheap thrill.

The book ends with a “Special Note to Readers” which informs that the series itself will see Reddick in more of a behind the scenes capacity, with some new guy out in the field with Sing, Hamilton, and Baker. Plus there’s gonna be a dog. So the show was experiencing the usual post-pilot network retooling; it’s my understanding that further retooling occurred late in the season, with Sing, Hamilton, and Baker removed from the series entirely and replaced with three new guys. Not sure if this is indication that the show was doing poorly and the recasting was an act of desperation, but as for Chase the novelization, it seems to have fared pretty well, garnering two editions.