"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World" is based loosely on Conan Doyle's adventure novel about an amazingly high plateau in the South American jungles that is inhabited by prehistoric beasts who avoided extinction. These also, for some reason, never evolved further, but that's beside the point.
The five plucky adventurers of this series (four in the original novel, though the four characters who are from the book are at least accurate as to names) are, in the first episode, joined by an ethereally lovely female Tarzan-type, Veronica, an Aryan Squanto who not only teaches the others how to survive in this alien habitat, she speaks perfect (even modern colloquial) English and her skin has escaped the ravages of the climate despite her wearing nothing except a prehistoric bikini, with no beach in sight.
Warning: this series must be accepted for what it is, an adventure geared for boys of all ages (for the best of us never grow up). If any logic is applied, it resembles a serious, hour-long "Gilligan's Island."
Though our six stranded castaways (who apparently arrived on the plateau with unlimited tons of ammunition, since every episode has its share of gunfire) can't get off the plateau, other people come and go as they please.
Through the series they meet up at least twice with time-travellers and once with a Gypsy-style fortuneteller. They stumble upon lizards who evolved into man-like beings (speaking perfect English). They find English-type villages and colleagues they knew from their old lives. And they have problems in places called Camelot and El Dorado and they even stumble over Ponce de Leon's fabled Fountain of Youth.
"Stone Cold" is a fascinating episode because it allows the actors to play other roles. Finding themselves in an old castle (and not the first, either, on their prehistoric, South American plateau), they are enticed to dress up in neat old clothes (18th century style, which they insist on referring to as medieval) and find themselves taking on the characteristics of the people who wore them centuries ago, when the castle was transferred by a magician called Prospero (right out of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST) to escape the plague in Europe.
The reporter, Malone, looks and acts like Chauvelin from THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. The big game hunter, Lord Roxton, sword-fights and dances in a powdered wig. The biggest surprise is Veronica. Out of her stone-age foundation garments, with her hair beautifully coiffed, she is still incredibly lovely and sexy. In fact, it's almost a shame to see her revert to "Veronica." In fact, one wishes they'd done a version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses with this cast. They're all wonderful.
No new actors appear in this episode, but all the actors we've come to know and (especially Veronica) love have a chance to horse around in a cockamamie play-within-a play. They seem to be having a high old time and with the right frame of mind so does the viewer. A real change of pace for a series that is beginning to be a bit stale by this time.
One caveat. I'm a medievalist and am irked by references to anything in this episode as medieval. Most of all, when Challenger, who should know better, refers to a saurian-type chimeral statue as a "gargoyle." A gargoyle is a waterspout and nothing else. But then . . . that's taking this show seriously, and that's a no-no.
The five plucky adventurers of this series (four in the original novel, though the four characters who are from the book are at least accurate as to names) are, in the first episode, joined by an ethereally lovely female Tarzan-type, Veronica, an Aryan Squanto who not only teaches the others how to survive in this alien habitat, she speaks perfect (even modern colloquial) English and her skin has escaped the ravages of the climate despite her wearing nothing except a prehistoric bikini, with no beach in sight.
Warning: this series must be accepted for what it is, an adventure geared for boys of all ages (for the best of us never grow up). If any logic is applied, it resembles a serious, hour-long "Gilligan's Island."
Though our six stranded castaways (who apparently arrived on the plateau with unlimited tons of ammunition, since every episode has its share of gunfire) can't get off the plateau, other people come and go as they please.
Through the series they meet up at least twice with time-travellers and once with a Gypsy-style fortuneteller. They stumble upon lizards who evolved into man-like beings (speaking perfect English). They find English-type villages and colleagues they knew from their old lives. And they have problems in places called Camelot and El Dorado and they even stumble over Ponce de Leon's fabled Fountain of Youth.
"Stone Cold" is a fascinating episode because it allows the actors to play other roles. Finding themselves in an old castle (and not the first, either, on their prehistoric, South American plateau), they are enticed to dress up in neat old clothes (18th century style, which they insist on referring to as medieval) and find themselves taking on the characteristics of the people who wore them centuries ago, when the castle was transferred by a magician called Prospero (right out of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST) to escape the plague in Europe.
The reporter, Malone, looks and acts like Chauvelin from THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. The big game hunter, Lord Roxton, sword-fights and dances in a powdered wig. The biggest surprise is Veronica. Out of her stone-age foundation garments, with her hair beautifully coiffed, she is still incredibly lovely and sexy. In fact, it's almost a shame to see her revert to "Veronica." In fact, one wishes they'd done a version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses with this cast. They're all wonderful.
No new actors appear in this episode, but all the actors we've come to know and (especially Veronica) love have a chance to horse around in a cockamamie play-within-a play. They seem to be having a high old time and with the right frame of mind so does the viewer. A real change of pace for a series that is beginning to be a bit stale by this time.
One caveat. I'm a medievalist and am irked by references to anything in this episode as medieval. Most of all, when Challenger, who should know better, refers to a saurian-type chimeral statue as a "gargoyle." A gargoyle is a waterspout and nothing else. But then . . . that's taking this show seriously, and that's a no-no.
