Star Trek

A New Jersey woman enters the afterlife and tries to become a better person and make amends for past bad behavior in this comedy.

Sid and Marty Krofft's first---and probably most popular---children's fantasy revolves around the wacky adventures of a young boy named Jimmy with a magic golden flute that's coveted by the evil Witchiepoo. The lad and his talking instrument are lured to a faraway island governed by H.R. Pufnstuf, a friendly, googly-eyed dragon.

A reality-bending drama about a detective who lives in two parallel worlds after surviving his family's car accident. In one reality, his wife survived the crash and his son perished. In the other, his son continues to live but his wife was killed. While trying to regain footing in his complex double lives, he continues his efforts to crack cases in both worlds.

Although there had been several attempts throughout the 1950s and early 1960s to create a TV sitcom based on the legend of Aladdin's Lamp--one of these, "Al Haddon's Lamp", featured Buddy Ebsen as a bucolic genie--the premise did not result in a full series until producer Sidney Sheldon hit upon the brilliant idea of featuring a sexy female genie. Debuting September 18, 1965 on NBC, the weekly, half-hour I Dream of Jeannie starred Barbara Eden as Jeannie, a curvaceous blonde bottle imp rescued from 2500 years' imprisonment by astronaut Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman). Out of gratitude, Jeannie arranged for Tony to likewise be rescued from a desert island, then followed him to his home in Cocoa Beach, Florida, there to serve and obey her new "master." Unable to convince anyone that he'd found a genuine genie, Tony opted instead to keep Jeannie's presence, and her true identity, a secret, which proved problematic whenever our heroine used her magic to get her master in and out of various jams. The only other person who knew Jeannie's secret was Tony's astronaut buddy Roger Healy (Bill Daily), whose various efforts to profit from Jeannie's awesome powers invariably came a-cropper. Also featured was Hayden Rorke as Cocoa Beach's air force psychiatrist Dr. Alfred Bellows, who was convinced that the mysterious goings-on in Maj. Healy's household were proof that Tony was crazy and delusional, obliging Jeannie to gently discredit Bellows in the eyes of his superiors week after week after week. Although Tony tried to maintain a normal social life with several girlfriends, these relationships were forever scuttled by the jealous Jeannie, who of course had fallen in love with her master. Ultimately, Tony reciprocated Jeannie's affections, and the couple was married during the series' fifth and final season. By this time, Jeannie had begun wearing "civilian" clothes and had pretty much forsaken the midriff-baring harem costumes that had been her trademark in the first few seasons (Amusingly, network censors demanded that the series' producers disguise the fact that Barbara Eden had, like practically every other woman on earth, been born with a belly button!) Complicating the lives of the principal characters were several "visitors" from Jeannie's past life in Baghdad. Among these were Jeannie's twin sister Jeannie II (also played by Barbara Eden), a dark-haired vixen who hatched endless sinister schemes to snag Tony for herself; and Jeannie's magical pet dog Djinn Djinn, who managed to render himself invisible at the most inopportune moments. Lasting 139 episodes (109 of these in color), I Dream of Jeannie ended its NBC run on September 1, 1990. Barbara Eden went on to star in a brace of "reunion" TV movies, telecast in 1985 and 1991; and from 1973 to 1975 an animated version of the property, simply titled Jeannie, was seen on CBS' Saturday-morning lineup.

The fourth Saturday morning TV series produced by puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft, Land of the Lost was far more serious in tone than their earlier efforts (H.R. Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos, and Lidsville), and far more ambitious. While embarked upon an expedition of the Colorado River, camp ranger/explorer Rick Marshall (Spencer Milligan) and his children Will (Wesley Eure) and Holly (Kathleen Coleman) plunge over a waterfall and into a time vortex. They emerge in a faraway planet called Altrusia, a primitive land that had somehow become a gathering place for beings of various other time periods. The Marshalls were now surrounded by a frightening array of Paleozoic dinosaurs, a Cenozoic-era family of monkey-like humans called the Paku, and the fearsome, seven-foot-tall Sleestak, who resembled a cross between beast and insect. Also residing in Altrusia was Enik (Walter Edmiston), a superintelligent being who at first glance appeared to have come from the future, but was actually an antecedent of the Sleestak, who had devolved from a once highly advanced civilization. The resourceful Marshalls managed to carve out a new home for themselves in this land of the lost, and to befriend the Paku, who spoke in a bizarre language called Pakuni (developed for the series by Dr. Victoria Fromkin, head of the UCLA Department of Linguistics). Though somewhat crude-looking by 21st century standards, the special effects on Land of the Lost, combining back projection, stop-motion animation, and puppetry, was quite impressive in its time, and is still nothing to be ashamed of when seen today. Also, during the first two seasons, the scriptwork maintained a lofty Star Trek-like level, thanks to the input of such eminent sci-fi/fantasy writers as David Gerrold, Larry Niven, Ben Bova, D.C. Fontana, and Theodore Sturgeon. Debuting September 7, 1974, Land of the Lost soon emerged as NBC's most successful and popular live-action Saturday morning series. This may explain why it was the Kroffts' longest-running children's TV program, ultimately lasting three seasons and 43 half-hour episodes. That said, it must be admitted that the series' first two episodes were more impressive than its third year on the air. For season three, several changes were imposed, not least of which was the removal of Spencer Milligan as Rick Marshall. It was explained that, during an earthquake that destroyed the Marshalls' mountain living quarters, Rick was sucked through another time portal and vanished, never to return. By an astonishing coincidence, another member of the Marshall family, Will and Holly's Uncle Jack (Ron Harper), had fallen into still another time portal while searching for his lost family members and was deposited in Altrusia! While this incredible set of circumstance was hard enough to swallow, even more problematic was the fact that the Marshalls were suddenly being visited by a wide variety of misplaced persons and creatures who came and went through additional portals with the greatest of ease -- even though the Marshalls themselves were never able to find a means of escape! Thus, whereas the first two seasons of Land of the Lost was very Star Trek-ish in its approach, season three took on the juvenile trappings of Lost in Space. After finishing its NBC run on September 4, 1978, Land of the Lost entered the realm of rerun syndication. The original episodes were rebroadcast by CBS in 1985 and 1987; in 1991, a brand-new version of Land of the Lost, with a completely different cast, began a two-year run on ABC.

While stranded in the jungle during a massive storm, Claire and Simon unknowingly stumble upon a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure sought by Sinjin.