"Spectacles of Doom": YouTube science-fiction adventure.

Low_Roads · Nov 26, 2023

This project was originally conceived in the mid 1980s for presentation on cable-access TV. At that time, I was participating in a program created by my buddy GM called "Commander Duck and the Quacketeers", a retro sci-fi themed kids show which originally appeared in a weekly 15-minute interview/variety format and was shot live in the cable studio. However, it soon evolved into half-hour long productions which were videotaped at home for better control and more expansive narratives. "Commander Duck" was quite successful by cable standards, having a 10-year run from the late 1970s into the late 1980s and only terminating when GM's health issues made production too taxing. In the later years, multi-part storylines had become common. I'd written and directed several of these myself and "Spectacles of Doom" was meant to be the most ambitious of them all. Early plans called for the saga to be six episodes long and filmed live action, but it eventually grew past the point that our meager capacity for realizing exotic locales and involved action scenes could handle. My revised intentions to make it a graphics-based show hit a snag when efforts at trying to videotape the first episode fell flat. Particularly problematic were the numerous attempts at introducing motion into the frame, such efforts being facilitated through crude mechanical set-ups that our recording capabilities were inadequate for capturing successfully. I'd rather ill-advisedly spent a year and a half putting together all 17 episodes before checking to see if filming any of it was feasible; as a result, the entire project sat in storage for decades until about 10 years ago when I cobbled it all together into comic book pages for presentation in the non-tk forum of Tickle Theater. Its inclusion there does no one any good anymore, of course, but as I've become more heavily invested in YouTube contributions, I thought I'd upload the pages there and see if they'd play. The short answer is that no, they didn't, not terribly successfully; their static nature and the long waits between page-turns made for dull viewing. I feared that single panel displays (which would pick up the pace) wouldn't register well enough, but subsequent experiments showed that they would; the project is now being realized much the way I'd always intended it should, one panel at time (making for a cinematic vs comix presentation), with numerous moving elements to break up the monotony. Reception so far has been rather ho-hum (viewership is light, with no likes or comments); regardless, I intend to press on until completion. Old habits die hard. The individual chapters are being offered in 8 to10-minute chunks for easy uploading. I'll have one ready every week or so until the project's finally done. Music is being provided through YouTube's Audio Library, an invaluable resource for entirely cost-and-hassle-free background tunes.

"Spectacles of Doom" is not a fetish-devoted story the way "Tales from the Low Roads" is; even so, I couldn't resist including one instance of tickle torturing. It takes place in Chapter 15, which means it won't be ready anytime soon. I'll post a special update when it finally rolls around.

Caution to any with epilepsy: some scenes in these videos contain flashing images.

Chapter 1: "Lair of the Octopoid".

Chapter 1, part 1:

Chapter 1, part 2:

Chapter 1, part 3:

GhostOS · Nov 30, 2023

I knew the title of the thread sounded familiar! I did read/view something about this decades ago, on the Tickletheater (I still lament it's passing). I have always been a fan of your skill of storytelling, clearly grounded in classic film, so I clicked on the link of the first episode, and man, you got me hooked! It echoes an atmosphere of golden age space exploration, it actually gives me a similar vibe to an ancient though groundbreaking (and fairly obscure) 1960's British sci-fi puppet series called "Space Patrol". Maybe that's why, in my mind, I'm just viewing this as a Gerry Anderson Supermarionation production. Damn, with modern technology, a production like this would be so easy! Hell, even a simple smartphone gives one better definition than the most professional 16mm camera these days! Thank you for sharing these here; even though the fetish is precious to each and every one of us, sometimes we must transcend it to indulge into the pure art of visual storytelling! 🙂

Low_Roads · Nov 30, 2023

Thank you, GoS! So glad you're enjoying the story; it's a blast finally being able to put it together the way I'd always planned! You're so right about the ease of production made possible by modern digital advancements! Matter of fact, I'm doing all the compiling and compositing using my phone with commonly available editing ap! The thing was practically free (I'm using a system called InShot, which I find very easy to work with, but I imagine competing systems are just as good); I paid a one-time fee of $40.00 to unlock its full capabilities and to remove the watermark, though had employed their free-to-use version for earlier simple projects. Its green-screening capabilities are making effects easily achievable that proved to be impossible to implement when the project was first envisioned.

I wasn't familiar with the 1962 "Space Patrol"; at first, I thought you meant the similarly titled US series from the '50s, but YouTube has several of the British show's episodes available for viewing and I soon got caught up. Quite a treat for the eye, with its early use of color and lavish model-work! The stories are proving to be quite impressive too, set as they are within a widely colonized solar system and featuring a multi-ethnic crew that would eventually become the norm in space operas. The marionette work is really well done; the models deliver a convincing sense of weight, the lack of which often compromises this kind of puppet usage. Gerry Anderson's example (and while "Space Patrol" isn't, strictly speaking, a Gerry Anderson series, it certainly operates in the same arena as "Supercar", "Fireball XL5", "Stingray", "Thunderbirds" et. al. I grew up with, enjoyed and was influenced by all these latter shows!) is a proud one to be compared to! If "Spectacles of Doom" can be deemed to achieve any semblance of that adventurous tone and rigorous attention to detail, I'll be well pleased!

Thanks once again for your generous appreciation! I hope that coming installments will continue to merit your enjoyment!

GhostOS · Dec 4, 2023

I came across the British Space Patrol series purely by accident while searching for another hidden gem from the 1960's; the German "Space Patrol Orion" (Raumparouille Orion) which was a short-lived counterpart to Star Trek, but it's aesthetics are far closer to Forbidden Planet (to a point that one could see it as an unofficial "extended universe" of that movie) -this series is also on Youtube, with subtitles, worth checking out. 😉

Some of the marionation techniques in Space Patrol are more advanced than the Gerry Anderson ones, the walking scenes of the puppets are quite convincing, something Anderson tried to avoid as he -in his own words- could never get it quite right.

I think the character design in "Spectacles of doom" with its exaggerated features such as the eyes and noses would translate perfectly into puppets. Maybe one day I find enough time to build a marionette based on your visuals! That would be an interesting challenge! 😀

Low_Roads · Dec 6, 2023

GhostOS said:
I came across the British Space Patrol series purely by accident while searching for another hidden gem from the 1960's; the German "Space Patrol Orion" (Raumparouille Orion) which was a short-lived counterpart to Star Trek, but it's aesthetics are far closer to Forbidden Planet (to a point that one could see it as an unofficial "extended universe" of that movie) -this series is also on Youtube, with subtitles, worth checking out. 😉

Thanks for the tip! "Forbidden Planet" is one of my all-time favorite SF films, so I'm most eager to check out "Space Patrol Orion's" aesthetics! Am also curious to see what a German version of "Star Trek" might look like. The last German space flight film I can recall having seen is "Frau im Mond", so I have a lot of catching up to do! Will update as soon as I've had a chance to look it over.

Some of the marionation techniques in Space Patrol are more advanced than the Gerry Anderson ones, the walking scenes of the puppets are quite convincing, something Anderson tried to avoid as he -in his own words- could never get it quite right.

I remember it became something of a joke on "Captain Scarlet", with the characters being seated almost all the time or obscured so that their walking movements were hidden. The only time I can recall seeing one of the models full figure, the wirework was especially bad, with the puppet wavering around all over the place. Gerry was trying for a more realistic tone on that series, to the decision to avoid mood-killing puppeteering was doubtless a wise one. Haven't seen any episodes in quite awhile, so I can't really say how effective the series was. I certainly don't have the vivid recollection of it the same way I do for "Super Car" or "Stingray".

I think the character design in "Spectacles of doom" with its exaggerated features such as the eyes and noses would translate perfectly into puppets. Maybe one day I find enough time to build a marionette based on your visuals! That would be an interesting challenge! 😀

Wow! If you do, please send pictures! I'd love to see what it looks like! You're quite right about the feature exaggeration; I really don't have the skill to attempt any kind of realism, so the more abstract the character model is, the easier time I have working with it. My designs tend to be so schematic, they likely would indeed lend themselves well to 3-d modelling as puppets or clay figures. I sculpted a few of them in plastic back in the '80s and they turned out well enough. Stuff like having the Commander's hair or beard being a stylized solid mass (as opposed to trying to suggest separate hair strands) certainly makes the figure simpler. Gerry Anderson's models were more sophisticated than that, of course, but a certain amount of abstractness was necessary to accommodate the mechanics that made them function. They'd be far harder to realize if the designs were closer to actual human proportions. Doubtless more pleasant to look at too, uncanny valley and all that.