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Quark
pilot episode
USA 1977
produced by Buck Henry, David Gerber (executive), Mace Neufeld (executive) for David Gerber Productions, Columbia/NBC
directed by Peter H. Hunt
starring Richard Benjamin, Tim Thomerson, Douglas Fowley, Patricia Barnstable, Cyb Barnstable, Conrad Janis, Alan Caillou, Misty Rowe, Bobby Porter
written and crated by Buck Henry, music by Perry Botkin jr, special effects by Richard Albain
TV-series Quark
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Quark is the commander of a garbage disposal spaceship for the United
Galaxy Sanitation Patrol and reigns over a small crew consisting of two
Betties (Patricia Barnstable, Cyb Barnstable), where one's the clone of
the other, but nobody knows which one, a transmute, Gene/Jean (Tim
Thomerson), who's male and female at the same time, or rather switches
from one to the other with every other line, eminent scientist Dr. Mudd
(Douglas Fowley), who's just not as clever as he ought to be, and horny
robot Andy (Bobby Porter), who doesn't seem to have much of a function. That
all said, the rulers of the galaxy Palindrome (Conrad Janis) and Head
(Alan Caillou) learn a giant enzyme cloud is heading for them, and the
only one who can stop it is Quark, by blowing his own ship up - and it
seems both Palindrome and Head would be rather happy to get rid of Quark
and the cloud in one go. But before this can happen, Andy has emmitted the
whole garbage load of the ship as he fell in love with the control panel,
thus sending the enzyme cloud off into another direction after all the
garbage, and thus not only saving the ship but also the galaxy in the
process. Now basically this is a very hit-or-miss sci-fi
comedy, with only very few jokes hitting the mark while the humour's a
weird mix of really childish sight gags and some definitely not childish
sexual innuendo, with this pilot failing to really finding its tone.
What's interesting though is that even though this one hits the typical
1970s space opera look, it was released roughly two and a half weeks
before Star Wars hit the big screen and opened the floodgate for a
whole plethora of space operas that Quark (the pilot at
least) seems to spoof. Quark of course went into the series
only after Star Wars in 1978 but wasn't blessed with too long of a
screenlife. An interesting side note, a line in this one about
the "sacrifice of the few for the sake of the many" somehow
anticipates a similar quote by Mr. Spock in 1982's Star Wars II: The
Wrath of Khan by some 5 years.
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