dls@mtgzz.UUCP (d.l.skran) (12/20/85)
Misfits of Science: Abortion on TV by Dale Skran This fall has brought what may or may not be a superhero team show. Misfits of Science may also be a parody of superhero teams, but I vote for the notion that it is simply very inept in the fashion American Television has established worldwide. Describing the plot would be a waste of your time and mine - it scarcely exists. The credibility level starts at the A-team and goes downhill from there. All this is a great shame since it will be used by a certain friend of mine as evidence that superheros and superhero teams cannot be done well dramatically, and in any case are not worth doing in a movie or TV format. Certainly a survey of television attempts at superheros supports this. Only the British series The Champions stands out as a serious, moderately effective story about what can only be described as three people with superhuman powers. Attempts to do Marvel characters have varied from the interesting Dr. Strange(canceled), the amazingly(!) popular Incredible Hulk, and the ludicrous live action spider-man. Perhaps the most nearly successful attempt was the Six Million Dollar Man, a series concerning Steve Austin, a cyborg endowed with superhuman strength and stamina. I consider the original two hour pilot to be fairly good for TV. Unfortunately, the show soon ventured into plots that consisted mainly of technical impossibilities such as Austin holding up a car at arm's length. Into this wasteland comes The Misfits of Science. Every super team has got to have someone who can throw lightning bolts. The Avengers have Thor, the X-men had Storm, the DNAGENTS Surge, the Outsiders Black Lightning, and the Legion of Superheros Lightning Lad(and Lass). Johnny B. seems to be somewhat derived from Surge, and I liked his desert abode. Apparently, contact with water causes the electricity to drain from his body very painfully. As a result, he lives as far from water as possible. In addition, the charge he collects allows him to run at super speed, although more on the order of Quicksilver than the Flash. The first show uses him as the standout hero, as he variously takes on an army here and an army there, all A- team style, never hurting or burning anyone. A hail of machine gun bullets surround him and our other heros, but no harm befalls anyone except in one scene near the end. The lightning bolt effects are BAD, although Johnny's glowing blue hands look OK. I admit it. I kinda liked the character. I especially liked the limitations built into his powers, and that fact the the script-writer noticed these limitations once in while. He can easily exhaust his supply of power, and in fact does so. Supergroups also need someone with a major power to back up the big guy. Misfits offers us a girl with telekinetic powers that she has only moderate control over. The effects are WORSE THAN BAD. When she zaps people, the whole screen goes negative, except for the scenes where the director didn't want this to happen. She twirls two people in the air for a long time with naray a flash, yet when she blasts away at the army(of course, without breaking a bone or so much as scraping a pinky) the screen is flashing again. This is unfortunate since the right way to do the effect is well within the powers of IL&M. Actually, there are two right ways: either stuff should just happen, or she should be surrounded by a faintly visible energy field that gets extended to do things. Finally, no supergroup is complete without a couple of fifth wheels. Here we have a tall black man who can shrink to barbie doll size via the use of more bad special effects, and a human popsicle who can freeze things by touching them but dies if he melts, so he waddles about in an insulated suit. Actually, the team isn't bad. Most comic writers could do something interesting with them. It's everything else in the movie, including the villains, the plot, the media people, and the guy who organizes the Misfits that are off-key. Most dreadful of all is the absolute unwavering refusal of the writer(s) and director(s) to allow any reality into the script. No one can be hurt more than superficially. No one is permitted to act in anything but the hammiest fashion. The villains deserve an award for worst imitations of villains in recent memory, especially the cigar-chewing general. Will it fly? Who knows? The Hulk was something between bad and silly, and had almost nothing to do with the comic, and it did well. Dr. Strange almost made sense, and it bombed. All I know is that it taunted me with a faint and mistily seen vision of what could be done if someone wanted to do it right.