Over the last few hours I’ve been following rumors of a Star Wars live action television series which will be shot in Australia — well I’ve just confirmed from a source who has a friend that works at ILM that this rumor is in fact true! My understanding from what I’ve been able to gather is that the series will be high quality and tap into local talent from Australia from well know film people to science fiction writers. The series is suppose to be aimed at adults (unlike the previous cartoon series) and focus on relationships and emotional landscapes — which means that it might be in more of the “chick flick” tradition.

I’d trust Lucas to not let this series get too silly — but frankly it comes down to the team they put on it. Although my hopes are are what we’ll see will fall more in the tradition of this:

Rather than this:

“The year: 2500 AD. The ‘Phoenix Five’. The crew: Captain Roke, Ensign Adam Hargreaves, Cadet Tina Kulbrick, and their computeroid Karl. Their mission: to patrol the outer galaxies for Earth Space Control, to maintain peace, and to capture Zodian the humanoid, who with the aid of his computers Alpha and Zeta endeavours to become dictator of outer space.”

Growing up I always aware of British science fiction TV shows thanks to PBS, but I had no idea that there were a number of home grown space operas from Australia. On such show that had escaped my radar is Phoenix Five which was produced in 1969 and ran for 26 episodes in 1970. Sadly this series hasn’t made it to DVD yet, but from what little I’ve seen you can tell the show was slightly on the low budget side to say the least although from what little I’ve seen on YouTube its seems to have a certain kitsch charm to it. Here are the opening and closing titles to give you a flavor:

While Phoenix Five doesn’t quite have the originality and drama of a BBC series — the sheer cheesy quality of series makes it a cult classic to me, in fact one regrets that it never got the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. The first thing that hits your eye is that the visual style of the show is kit bashed from everything you can think of: The costumes have a Star Trek quality to them, the robot looks borrowed from Dr. Who and the industrial design of the spaceship is a throwback to either Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon film serials:

From what I could find out about the series was that it was uneven at best (as you can see from the videos). My understanding is that one of the problems of the series was that the scripts would vary a great deal from clever to just plain silly — in fact actress Patsy Trench who played spunky Cadet Tina Kulbrick once complained in an interview “The script writers weren’t even aware of the capabilities of the space ship, and nobody seemed to know what was going on”. Although that said with age one can say that the clichéd quality of the dialog (which is just one notch above porn) and the thin soap opera plot are strangely compelling. It’s like eating a bag of potato chips — you know it’s bad for you but you just can’t stop once you’ve started:

As a television series Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future was one of my favorite shows from the 80s. Of course the character of Max pre-dates that series — he got his start with a talk show in England in 1985 which in many ways inspired Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. When Coke launched their new formula they made the bold move of picking Max as their spokesperson using the tagline “Catch the Wave!” Folks loved Max but not the new Coke and the old Coke was bought back with the label “Classic Coke” (which was just recently dropped).

What I love about this first commercial from Australia (from 1987) is that’s much more racy than this ad from the States which was made at the same time:

In these two spots from 1986 and 1987 Max Headroom refutes the infamous Pepsi challenge, which on a nerd note was created by John Sculley when he was at Pepsi before he left to become CEO of Apple Computer in 1983:

This spot which was produced a bit later harkened back to Max Headroom’s talk show roots, but with the extra twist of casting him as a gameshow show host:

Of course Max Headroom’s appearance wasn’t just limited to television, Coke made a wide range of goodies from plastic cups to posters to skateboards:

Catch the Wave!

My special thanks to Todd Franklin from the photo of the Max Headroom cup.