ODD REVIEWS BY ODDCUBE
Opinions on the Obscure, Off-Beat, and Outdated


BARNEY MILLER

Hello, and welcome to the column! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here with another scintillating subject to share with you! But first, for those of you who are uninitiated and unaware of the usual on-goings that go on in and around my odd little area of the internet, I shall obtain the initiative to explain instantly!

I, Oddcube, gamer geek and total square, utilize my indefatigable devotion to duty to draw a random subject out of a hat and research it tirelessly, ceaselessly, and endlessly… Or until time for dinner, anyway. Now you may very well be asking, why do I do that? Well, because there’s a lot of cool stuff out there that doesn’t get the attention it deserves! And you don’t want to miss out on cool stuff do you? Man! The very thought that you could be missing out on something cool just keeps me up at night! I can’t deal with it, so I write up this column every month in a meager attempt to keep you informed!

Now, what kind of cool stuff do I talk about? Why, the COOL kind, HA! I slay me! Seriously folks, I talk about all kinds of stuff. I talk about movies. I talk about music. I talk about games. I talk about old time radio shows. I talk about cool TV shows. Hey, speaking of cool TV shows…

This month’s review is about an old sitcom called “Barney Miller”, which aired on ABC from ’75 to ’82. The show, of course, is about the titular Captain Miller and the detectives of the 12th Precinct in Greenwich Village, New York. The show was created by Danny Arnold and Theodore J. Flicker, and almost didn’t happen!

See, Danny Arnold had a nifty idea for a show about a Jewish patrolman. Ted Flicker wanted to do a sitcom about an L.A. detective. They put the ideas together and came up a show called “The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller”. The network wasn’t really interested in it, but they did include the pilot as part of a special called “Just For Laughs”, which aired in August of ’74. However, ABC was negotiating with director John Rich to keep him working for the network after his success with “All In The Family”. Well, Rich had seen the special and was interested in working on the show, so he insisted that the show became part of his deal. The network conceded, and commissioned thirteen episodes for season one! And then John Rich had several artistic differences with writer/producer Danny Arnold and left the show after two episodes!

By then, I guess it didn’t matter, the show was saved! Changed, but saved. The title was shortened to just “Barney Miller”, and originally the show was going to follow his life both at work and at home with his wife and children. This concept was altered so that the show only followed the goings-on at the 12th precinct.

The show itself was way ahead of its time; it was politically correct before being politically correct was cool…or required. Precinct 12 did not discriminate due to race or gender, and the cast reflected this. First off, there was Hal Linden as Captain Barney Miller. Then, there was Abe Vigoda (from “The Godfather”!) as aging Jewish detective, Philip K. Fish. Maxwell Gail played Stanley “Wojo” Wojciehowicz, a naïve but gung-ho cop of Polish descent. Ron Glass, perhaps better known today from “Firefly”, played the ambitious, intellectual Detective Ronald Harris. Jack Soo was the dry-witted gambler, Detective Sergeant Nick Yemana of Japanese descent. Gregory Sierra was the dutiful Detective Sergeant Chano Amanguale, who originated from Puerto Rico. James Gregory was Deputy Inspector Frank Luger, the unintentionally insulting old-school superior. Ron Carey played the eager and ambitious patrolman, Carl Levitt. Steve Landesberg played intellectual and enigmatic know-it-all, Detective Arthur Dietrich.

Hmm, I haven’t mentioned any female cops. But trust me, they had some! The most noteworthy one was Detective Janice Wentworth, played by Linda Lavin. The character was a recurring character during the first and second seasons, but did not appear again after Lavin won the starring role on the sitcom, “Alice”. There were a few others, too, but they none of them seem to have lasted very long.

The show was pretty low-key for a sitcom and for a cop show. Sure the characters were kinda wacky in their own way, but none of them were really over-the-top. In fact, they were all pretty believable, probably because of their quirks. In fact, several real-life policemen (including policeman-turned-actor, David Farrina on the show “Dinner For Five”) have claimed that Barney Miller was the most realistic cop show on the air (I don’t know if that is still true today, but at least you didn’t have to see anybody’s bare backside).

The show itself was kinda weird, too, because it almost exclusively took place in the squad room of the precinct house. Out of eight seasons, only thirteen episodes featured some other location. But that was okay, because the show was about the characters and how they responded to all the criminals and wackos that they had to deal with.

The show won a whole slew of awards, including two Golden Globes, a Peabody Award, three Emmys, and a DGA Award from the Director’s Guild of America. Despite all of this, the show was losing its audience, and they decided to end the series before the network pulled the plug. The series ended with a three-part story in which someone finds an old revolver in the precinct house which leads to the discovery that Teddy Roosevelt was once stationed there when he was on the New York Police Force. So the Precinct House was declared an historic landmark, and the 12th Precinct was disbanded, with all the detectives getting transferred to new assignments.

To put it lightly, the show was just great, but has somehow become hard to find now-a-days. If you’re lucky, you can find reruns on some cable channel somewhere. Or you could go the DVD route, but only the first three seasons are currently available. I even found some rumor on the net that “They” (whoever “They” are in this instance) currently have no plans to release the rest of the series. But seasons 1-3 ARE available for purchase from Amazon, and for rent at Netflix. Oddly enough, the first FOUR seasons can (mostly) be seen on crackle.com. I say “mostly” because they are missing an episode or two from each season.

So, there ya have it! It’s a great show and you should check it out! Oh yeah, almost forgot! I still have to give it a rating.

My highly scientific and sophisticated strategy for rating is deceptively simple: I roll a pair of percentage dice from my D&D game. In case ya don’t know it, percentage dice is just a pair of 10-sided dice used to determine a number between 01 (Danger, Will Robinson!) and double-0, which actually means 100 (you have not LIVED until you have experienced this). So with all that in mind, I shall give my dice a toss just like this…

and roll a respectable 93! Read it and weep! Even the dice say it’s too good to miss!

But hey, you don’t have to take my word on it! Go check it out and see for yourself! That’ll give me time to figure out what I’m gonna tell ya about next time! So be there, and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube!

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.

ODD REVIEWS BY ODDCUBE
Opinions on the Obscure, Off-Beat, and Outdated


HUNTERS OF THE RED MOON

Well hi there! Good to see ya! Glad ya dropped by! You don’t wanna miss this! You know why? Because it’s time for me to say: Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube here, saying Hello and welcome to the column!

First off, just in case you’re new, I’d better tell ya what’s what around here. What it’s all about. Well, it’s like this: I seek out really cool stuff from the past, the present, and the future (cuz I’m that good! …and humble, too!), and tell ya all about it, cuz I’d hate to think that you were missing out on something cool. See that? It’s sort of a public service! Anyhow, sometimes I talk about movies, or books, or music, or games, or whatever else manages to catch my interest. Basically, I talk about everything and anything, and I do so with easily-obtained information, an entertaining attitude, over-inflated opinions, occasional honesty, and often with annoying alliteration!

This time I’m gonna tell you about a book, in a meager attempt to look like the intellectual type! That’s right; I read a novel, a short novel, perhaps, but a novel just the same! It’s called “Hunters of the Red Moon” and was written by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Now, you’ve probably heard of Marion Zimmer Bradley. After all, she’s a BIG name in literary circles of fantasy and science fiction, and not just cuz it takes seventeen letters to spell it! Nope, it’s because she’s got a list of credits as long as your arm! However, she’s apparently best known as the creator of the Darkover series, and for the novel The Mists of Avalon, and the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series. But you probably didn’t know that she wrote some gay and lesbian pornographic novels in the Sixties (under pen names, of course). You also might not know that she was a co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and is credited with coming up with the name. Sadly, she died in September of ’99, after years of declining health.

But we’re here to talk about Hunters of the Red Moon. Well, let’s see, it was published in 1973. I found mine in a local second-hand bookstore, attracted first by the author’s name, then by the spiffy cover (credited to a fellow named George Barr). So, I read the back cover, which tells you that these Hunter dudes kidnap intelligent beings from all over the galaxy, give them their choice of weapons and plenty of time to train with them, then dump them on some moon and hunt them down. For sport or something. It sorta sounded like a nifty sci-fi version of “The Most Dangerous Game”, so I decided to check it out.

So, it starts off on Earth, cuz that’s the way these things are supposed to start. There’s this guy, Dane Marsh, a hotshot American adventurer-type. He’s done all sorts of adventuresome things, and is in the process of sailing around the world alone while moping about the modern lack of adventure opportunities.

That’s when the flying saucer comes down and KO’s him with a beam of light.

He wakes up on an operating table with these two lion-faced cat-people standing over him. They just put some sort of translation device in his neck so he can communicate, and refuse to give him any answers. They dope him up to shut him up, and he later wakes up in a cell.

He meets some other prisoners, all kidnapped from various worlds. A human-like lady archaeologist named Rianna, a different human-like empath named Dallith, and a ten-foot tall lizard man named Aratak, among others. From them he learns that the cat-men are Mekhars who have kidnapped them all to sell as slaves.

Of course, Dane and his fellow prisoners observe the sloppy security and organize a break-out. It fails, mostly because it was all a test laid out by the Mekhars! Dane and the other prisoners behind the escape plan were spared from the slave market, and instead sold to the mysterious Hunters for their ritualistic Hunt! They are joined by a Mekhar guard who is disgraced because they overpowered him during the break-out. His name is Cliff-Climber, and he volunteered for the Hunt in the hopes of regaining his honor.

So, on the planet of the Hunters, they are cared for and guarded by a population of robots with a collective consciousness, who all respond to the name Server. They are fed, clothed, and given free-range of the prison they are in, including baths and an armory as big as a football field! They are told that they may use whatever weapons they can carry during the Hunt, and are given plenty of time to train with them so as to use them affectively. There are no guns in this arsenal. They are all swords and axes and slings and other medieval-type weaponry, some of it alien, but mostly recognizable.

The moon that circles the planet falls into the planet’s shadow on a regular basis, like every eleven days or something like that. The “Sacred Prey” are shuttled to the moon and the Hunt begins when the eclipse is over, and ends at the next eclipse. There are some other rules, like the daily hunt ends at sundown every day and is not resumed until midnight. There are certain “safety zones” both for the Prey and also for the Hunters. Any member of the Sacred Prey who is still alive at the end of the Hunt is given an incredible reward, great respect from the Hunters, and a free ride to anywhere in the galaxy in a hundred light-year radius…or something like that.

The tricky part is that no one knows what the Hunters look like. Most races in the galaxy aren’t even sure they really exist. Ha! They’re like an urban legend or something!

Now, I don’t really want to give too much away, cuz it was really cool and you should read it. But they did have some nifty discussions about Universal Sapience, and what each character’s culture considered “Sapience” to be. I also thought that the weird secret of the Hunters was especially clever!

Anyway, it was a really cool book, a stand-alone adventure ringing in at 176 pages. However, a sequel was written called The Survivors which was published in ’79; so I guess I just told you that somebody lives. Both books are available at Amazon and, no doubt, other places.

Well, I can’t just say “if you like nifty outer space, sword-n-planet adventure, then this book is for you!” cuz I claim to be a review column. And to keep up that flimsy premise, I have to give you a rock-solid rating!

To do that, I employ my nifty D&D percentage dice! These are two ten-sided dice that give you any number between 01 (the pits, avoid at all costs) and double-0, which actually means 100 (you have not lived until you’ve seen this). So I shall hastily calculate for wind resistance and give my handy-dandy dice a roll just like that…

...and end up with nice respectable 90! See that? Numbers don’t lie, you should read this book!

Well friends, I guess that’s all I got for now. But don’t be sad, I’ll be right back here again next month ready, willing, and able to instruct and inform you on…uh…well on some other subject that has yet to be decided upon! See ya then, folks, be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube

Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.