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.