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Intelligent Dinosaurs - Droyne - Near Space

Mithras,

Ahhhh....

I completely misunderstood the story.

In the wise words of Miss Emily Litella; Never mind...


Regards,
Bill
 
Whipsnade: I thought about your comment concerning the vast amount of time that has passed, so I have had them devolve on the new world.

But your idea of the aliens being trapped in jumpsace is very very neat, and solves that problem of have eons separating events.

The two species, insterstellar dinosaurid and Martian dinosaurid would, then be identical.
 
Ah, Land of the Lost, that looks like it was a great show! (Wiki is your friend!)


Mithras,

I wouldn't go that far. It's a campy favorite currently, people of a certain age looking back with nostalgia towards their old Saturday morning TV favorites. A younger sister of mine identified with Holly quite strongly, even to the point of wearing braided pigtails, so the show was on our sole TV every Saturday morning despite the best attempts of the rest of us. Seeing as she was the youngest and a real creep, she usually got to watch what she wanted.

The sets and, what could kindly be called SFX, were spectacularly bad, the acting was at the "At least I'm working" level, and the production values were lousy. I'm talking Banana Splits/Danger Island lousy. The stories were equally bad with the exception of the one written by Niven and Gerrold and another I oddly remember.

In the Niven/Gerrold story...

Spoiler:
..."Marshall, Will, and Holly" encounter a Sleestak who is far more intelligent than the usual bumbling herd. He turns out to be a time traveller. Both he and the family assist one another in some way I don't quite remember but, in a poignant moment, the time travelling Sleestak realizes he hasn't travelled into his past at all. The Sleestak everyone had been assuming were his ancestors are actually his descendants and his machine has sent him into the future.


In the other story I can recall, the science fiction reader in me was very pleased to watch...

Spoiler:
...Marshall, the father, deal with a knotty time paradox. Somehow or another, time in the Land of the Lost has stopped. It remains noon for most of a day and first Marshall, then the kids, begin exploring one of the nearby cave system for clues. Marshall gets captured by the Sleestak who let him go after consulting some preserved Sleestak heads. He realizes that he's done something in one of the pylons that has screwed up time, only not in the past but in his future! There's all sorts of shenanigans as each member of the family keeps meeting the others in different points in time. Very bizarre stuff until Marshall happens to put the right crystal in the right place.


The Sleestak were simply bizarre in the show, more comic relief than actual threat. They had these toy crossbows with which they could not hit anything at all. I remember our father remarking one day that it looked like stage hands were simply tossing crossbow bolts at the heros. When Star Wars came out later and people began remarking what poor shots the Imperial Stormtroopers were, we naturally assumed they matriculated at Sleestak Marksmanship and Bumbling Fool School.


Regards,
Bill
 
But your idea of the aliens being trapped in jumpsace is very very neat, and solves that problem of have eons separating events.


Mithras,

Not my idea. It's Hogan's with a generous dollop of Vinge.

I do not create, I steal and modify. There is a great difference between the two. ;)


Regards,
Bill
 
The Conspiracy X game includes Saurians:
Before the dawn of time, they rose to rule their world.
Sixty-five million years ago, they fought a war so devastating that it nearly destroyed that world and eveything on it. Those who survived fled into the vast night of space, looking for a new home.
Today they are here, among us.
Those who know them call them Saurians, viscous looking lizard creatures with technology centuries beyond our own. For the moment, they walk among us, hidden within False Flesh, barely reconized as their own.
 
The Conspiracy X game includes Saurians:
Today they are here, among us.
Those who know them call them Saurians, viscous looking lizard creatures with technology centuries beyond our own. For the moment, they walk among us, hidden within False Flesh, barely reconized as their own.
Do they have trouble saying "ka nama ka lajerama"?



Hans
 
The sets and, what could kindly be called SFX, were spectacularly bad, the acting was at the "At least I'm working" level, and the production values were lousy. I'm talking Banana Splits/Danger Island lousy.
You forgot about Far Out Space Nuts, which I think is the gold standard for Sid & Marty Krofft awfulness. Or did you intentionally black that one out? I know that's how I managed to cope with my traumatic early childhood experience of accidentally coming across an airing of Lidsville.

The stories were equally bad with the exception of the one written by Niven and Gerrold and another I oddly remember.

In the Niven/Gerrold story...

Spoiler:
..."Marshall, Will, and Holly" encounter a Sleestak who is far more intelligent than the usual bumbling herd. He turns out to be a time traveller. Both he and the family assist one another in some way I don't quite remember but, in a poignant moment, the time travelling Sleestak realizes he hasn't travelled into his past at all. The Sleestak everyone had been assuming were his ancestors are actually his descendants and his machine has sent him into the future.
Actually, you need to thank Walter Koenig for that story, since he's the guy who actually wrote it. Although you can be forgiven for assuming it was a Niven/Gerrold venture -- Gerrold worked as the story editor for the first season, and between Niven and him (either alone or in collaboration), they account for over a third of the episodes for the first season of the show. Throw in Koenig and D.C. Fontana, and you have half the first season right there ...

Although the show drops considerably after that -- like off a cliff. The only major writer who contributed to the later seasons, I think, was Theodore "ninety percent of everything is crud" Sturgeon.

The Sleestak were simply bizarre in the show, more comic relief than actual threat. They had these toy crossbows with which they could not hit anything at all. I remember our father remarking one day that it looked like stage hands were simply tossing crossbow bolts at the heros. When Star Wars came out later and people began remarking what poor shots the Imperial Stormtroopers were, we naturally assumed they matriculated at Sleestak Marksmanship and Bumbling Fool School.
Ya know, that's actually a pretty popular school. I'm pretty sure those Zhodani from Twilight's Peak actually matriculated there.

Although at least the Zhodani were able to move at a decent pace. I don't think I ever saw a Sleestak clocking in at any higher than three miles per hour on open ground ... and yet, the Marshalls still only managed to just barely keep ahead of them.
 
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