Planet of the Apes (TV Series)

From The Sacred Scrolls

Contents 1 Cast 2 Synopsis 3 Episodes (Aired) 4 Episodes (Unfilmed) 5 Spin-Off Media Stories 6 Notes 7 Behind the Scenes 8 Trivia 9 External links 10 References

[edit] Cast

Starring

• Ron Harper as Alan Virdon
• James Naughton as Peter Burke
• Roddy McDowall as Galen

Also starring

• Booth Colman as Councillor Zaius
• Mark Lenard as Chief of Security Urko

[edit] Synopsis

[edit] Episodes (Aired)

• Escape from Tomorrow
• The Gladiators
• The Trap
• The Good Seeds
• The Legacy
• Tomorrow's Tide
• The Surgeon
• The Deception
• The Horse Race
• The Interrogation
• The Tyrant
• The Cure
• The Liberator
• Up Above the World So High

[edit] Episodes (Unfilmed)

• Episode One
• Episode Two
• A Fallen God
• Hostage
• The Trek
• Freedom Road
• The Mine
• The Trial

[edit] Spin-Off Media Stories

• Power Records Planet of the Apes "Little LP's", 1974

• Mounatin of The Delphi
• Dawn of The Tree People
• Battle of Two Worlds
• Volcano

• Brown & Watson 'Planet of the Apes' Annual, 1975

• Journey Into Terror
• A Promise Kept
• When The Earth Shakes
• The Scavangers
• Swamped

• Brown & Watson 'Planet of the Apes' Annual, 1976

• Galen's Guerrillas
• From Out Of The Past
• Pit Of Doom
• The Captive
• Raiding Party
• Ship Of Fools
• When The Ghosts Walk
• The Marksman

• Brown & Watson 'Planet of the Apes' Annual, 1977

• Blow For Blow
• The Prophet
• Breakout
• The Arsenal
• Power Play
• From Out Of The Sky
• Flight From Terror

• El Planeta de Los Simios Argentinian Comics, 1977

• The Wandering Jew
• New Life... On The Old Planet
• Depth
• The Beach Of Time
• Ultrasonic
• The Gods Of The Stars
• The Master Of The Forests
• The Zombies
• The Circus
• Rockets

• Fan-Produced Comics

• Going Home
• Return To Yesterday

[edit] Notes

• Many sources list “The Liberator” as "Unaired" in the United States during the series’ initial run - possibly because it was pre-empted in one or two major markets - though it did run in Europe. However, it was shown in some areas, as both CBS-TV records and Neilsen Ratings data testify.^[1] It was eventually syndicated on Sci-Fi Channel and other networks in the 1990s.
• Ten episodes were re-edited into telefilms, with newly produced framing sequences featuring Roddy McDowall as Galen. These framing sequences were not included on the TV series’ DVD release, but can be viewed online at Kassidy Rae’s Planet of the Apes: The Television Series website.
• Rod Serling wrote two pilot scripts (“Episode One” and “Episode Two”) that greatly differed from the aired versions.
• The scripts to “Hostage” and “A Fallen God” are available online at Hunter Goatley’s Planet of the Apes Archive; synopsis of the other four unfilmed episodes were included in the series bible, reprinted in Simian Scrolls issue #12.
• An animated version of this series was briefly discussed in the 1980s but never produced; a concept drawing by artist Jack Kirby, reproduced in The Jack Kirby Collector and later in Simian Scrolls #6, shows that it would have featured Virdon and Burke, along with a female “blonde companion of astronauts” and Toomak, a “human slave boy.”

(Information taken from Timeline of the Planet of the Apes: The Definitive Chronology, by Rich Handley.)

[edit] Behind the Scenes

An 'Apes' television series was planned as early as 1971, around the time of Escape from the Planet of the Apes. The continued success of the films delayed any TV series until after the fifth movie.

An undated concept for a TV series was prepared. This concept outlined two human astronaut characters - Alan Virdon and Stan Kovak - who crash-land on the Planet of Apes while on a routine reconnaissance flight. Their personalities are already set out as they will be seen in the filmed series. Their adversaries are Ursus the gorilla, who wants the astronauts killed, and Zaius who wants to question them and learn from them. Galen the chimpanzee is their only ape friend as they try to evade capture. The magnetic disc holding their flight information is already a central part of the plot, and the planet is described in some detail with three zones: the ape city where humans are servants and slaves, a rural zone where ape and human farmers live uneasily side-by-side, and a Forbidden Zone around the ancient cities inhabited by rebellious humans. Quite why they wanted to re-introduce Ursus and Zaius, who's deaths had already been shown in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, is unclear, given that at this point the project was still controlled by Arthur P. Jacobs, who was careful to maintain a certain amount of continuity through the movie series (though not without many slip-ups).

At some point, Rod Serling wrote a two-part script for episodes one and two of a TV series. His script was a peculiar mixture of the TV concept, a very early script written by him for the original movie, and the plot of the second movie. It is significantly different to the filmed episode, although it does set up the series scenario in line with the concept, and some of the ideas were carried over into Art Wallace's script for "Escape from Tomorrow". The plot concerned Virdon and Kovak landing on a mysterious planet after a period of suspended animation (Kovak: "To age four weeks...while travelling almost six years...and to know that nothing we've left behind will be the same when we return...if we return"). The reason - to rescue or find a crew of missing astronauts (Virdon: "Somewhere - out there - are Taylor, Thomas, LaFever and Bengsten - or their remains. We're going to find them...or finish an epitaph for them." Here, the story begins to mimic that of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, while the names recall earlier ideas of Serling's: George Taylor is, of course from the first movie; John Thomas was the name of the central character in Serling's early draft script, subsequently changed to Taylor; Paul LaFever was also in the early script, the character later became John Landon - the other astronauts on that mission were Dodge and the deceased Blake). The continuity of this story is somewhat confusing, it's almost a sequal to his first movie script, which was revised heavily for the movie, rather than tying-in with any of the actual filmed movies.

The earliest dated TV script is for an unfilmed episode 'A Fallen God', from March 2, 1973. This and other early TV scripts follow on from the concept and feature Virdon, Kovak (or 'Ed Rowak') and Galen evading Ursus (or 'Urso') and Zaius, before Wallace's final re-write for episode one (July 1974) introduced the names 'Burke' and 'Urko' along with a new story. While Serling's contribution hasn't been acknowledged (unlike his work on the movie script), the concept of a previous astronaut crew survived into Wallace's script (Zaius: "More than ten years ago, another such ship landed. Humans. They said they were from Earth...but from another time period...long ago."). This plot device isn't explored further in the series, although it might have been had the series continued. Another plot device introduced by Wallace was the hint that there may be more, unconnected, advanced humans on the planet (Virdon: "Maybe...just maybe...the humans that built that grenade are still on Earth, and they have the knowledge to..." Burke: "to do what? Build a spaceship? And a computer?" Virdon: "Where did you get this [grenade]?" Zaius: "A human. He didn't live long enough to tell me his name. That human was caught trying to sneak into the city. And yes, I had him killed."). Again, this may have had some significance as the series developed.^[2]

The spur for finally starting production of a TV show was when the CBS network bought the TV rights to the first two Ape films, showed them on American screens and - WOW! In response, 20th Century Fox began showing all five Ape films in back-to-back "Go Ape!" film marathons in movie theatres. The next step, naturally, was a TV series, and CBS bought the TV rights and started production, filming at Fox studios and ranch, produced by Herbert Hirschman and Stan Hough, and starring Roddy McDowall as the renegade chimpanzee, Galen - one of the few Apes in this strange, alien world of the future willing to befriend the two astronauts from out of Earth's past - Ron Harper as astronaut Alan Virdon, and James Naughton as his companion in nightmare, astronaut Peter Burke.^[3] Even as CBS was preparing it's weekly TV series, Marvel Comics was publishing apes comic books, Topps was selling apes chewing gum, and dozens of other companies were flooding the market with everything from apes cookware to puzzles to beachballs. Twentieth Century Fox, which was cheerfully controlling this monstrous merchandise campaign, estimated that Americans would spend over a $100,000,000 in the grips of monkey madness.^[4]

A reporter from Marvel visited the set of the TV show in the weeks before it went on-air and noted, perhaps from official publicity, that "Humans are now inferior inhabitants of the inner zone (the centre of the ape world) and their jobs are those of minor clerks, servants, labourers and slaves. An occasional human is elevated to the rank of an overseer, but they are subject to the ape civilization and exist at its whim. Unlike the original 'Apes' motion pictures, some of the humans in the series have powers of speech and the intellectual capacity of apes. The change was made to allow more plot flexibility and to provide the possibility of roles for guest stars. The most amazing off-camera feature is the daily creation of 'appliances' to the heads and faces of the apes. Dan Striepeke, one of the creators of the 'Apes' appliances, has a crew of a dozen makeup artists working under him. Their art practice is energy-draining in that it takes three full hours to apply the features. At midday, actors wearing makeup appliances cannot eat solid foods, but must partake of liquids by means of straws. During days when the heat rises to 110 degrees on location some actors can lose as much as ten pounds in a single day!"^[5]

[edit] Trivia

• Planet of the Apes aired on CBS on Friday nights from 20:00 - 21:00, between 13th September and 20th December 1974.
• In the UK the series was broadcast on ITV (Granada Region) on Sundays from 19:25 - 20:25, between 13th October 1974 and 19th January 1975 (with the exception of 'Escape From Tomorrow', which was aired from 19:55 - 20:55). ^[6]

[edit] External links

• Kassidy Rae's Planet of the Apes: The Television Series Website

• Planet of the Apes (1974) article at Wikipedia

• Planet of the Apes (1974) at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

• Planet of the Apes (1974) at TV.com

• Hunter's Planet of the Apes Scripts Archive

[edit] References

---

"It appears that there is something missing from the Sacred Scrolls!" This article is a "stub" page. This page may require additional information in order to meet a higher standard of quality. You can help The Sacred Scrolls by expanding the content of this page. This template will categorize articles that include it into Category:Article Request.