Friday, August 30, 2013

MAN FROM ATLANTIS: My Review From '77

Apparently, I was destined to author this blog. On a recent visit to my parents' house, my mom presented me with this recently unearthed, Junior High-era essay that I wrote in the Autumn of 1977, reviewing the Man From Atlantis television series. Attached to this grammatically-challenged document was a first place ribbon - so, obviously, this was written for some sort of classroom competition.

I think my grammar is slightly better these days, but I'm surprised at how otherwise familiar my writing style appears here. I'm also quite pleased at my note that the show had a lousy time slot; at 13, I was clearly reading enough TV Guides and Starlogs to understand the role of scheduling on a series' success or failure.

9 comments:

  1. Christopher nice honest junior high/middle school essay. I too was a boy in '77 recreationally reading both TV Guide and Starlog magazine to feed my interest in science-fiction.

    SGB

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  2. I bought my first Micronaut on the same day as The Man from Atlantis pilot/TV movie aired, so it was a pretty awesome day for me, too. :)

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  3. I still have a Marvel Superhero encyclopedia that I must have made when I was no more than 12 or 13. I only got to finish A-MA and abandoned the project for some reason. I included all the heroes I knew at the time. I think it's about 30 pages.

    And I still have both issues of my riveting self-made comic book "Boba Fett and Jawa" which I think I made when I was 10.

    Nerd for life, man!

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  4. Look at you, li'l Sci-Fi Critic In Training, gettin' your quotation marks on! Go on with yourself!

    Your Pal,

    Storm

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  5. Pretty fun to revisit childhood at times. Being a bit older, I've been watching Leave It to Beaver episodes on weekdays and on Saturdays watching some Hopalong Cassidy, which I haven't seen in ages. I hope some of these retro channels continue to revive some of these classic series.

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  6. That's great! I still have a review of Star Trek: The Next Generation I wrote my freshman year of college, but this is much more valuable (and fun), I think...

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  7. That's a pretty savvy review for a child that age. Especially recognizing how time slots are important to a series. (At that age, though, I suspect it's because your parents enforced a strict bedtime ;)

    All I can remember of watching Man from Atlantis as a young boy is that I couldn't figure out how to swim like him. We had a backyard pool and I'd try to hold my arms at my side and use that wave-like motion with my body, but I'd swim straight to the bottom.

    Fun memories ;)

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  8. Strangely enough, the same day that you posted this, the co-runner of my favourite Trek-related blog, "Fashion It So", posted a review he wrote in 1990 at age 9 for the ST:TNG episode "Lonely Among Us". He finished his review with this wrap-up:

    "...I recommend this to people 9 yrs upwards who are very smart and can figure out things very quickly.

    That’s all I can tell you."

    Your Pal,

    Storm

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  9. Awesome blog. All of my favorite memories in one place. I remember Man From Atlantis being awesome. Now, so many years later, I'm kind of afraid to watch it.

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