Reviews

The character of Issac Gampu is almost a polar opposite to Jonathan Harris's earlier role in Lost in Space. Whereas Dr. Smith was a foolish ,selfish coward, who often caused whatever predicament the Robinsons had to solve that week, Cmdr. Isaac Gampu was wise, studious and brave. It is my opinion that the memory of this character was lingering in the back of the minds of the writers for Star trek, the Next generation, when they were writing for Capt. Picard. There are strong similarities in both characters. It could also be that the archetype of a wise, noble leader inspired both sets of writers. It is a testament to Harris' talent as an actor that he could play both characters so memorably.

I have recently seen parts of Fantastic Voyage, and it struck me just how backward the technology looks today. For example, Proteus Navigation systems consists of rolled up charts, and its communication system is a wireless Morse code key. They may as well be aboard Titanic. As for the purpose of the mission, that is to remove a potentially fatal blood clot from the brain of a defecting scientist, they do much the same things these days with catheters and arthroscopic surgery. The sub seemed to be over crewed as well. I suppose someone had to roll and unroll all those navigation charts. Of course even the best views of the future often collide with the actual future. Think of William Shatner with a cell phone.

"Living and Working in Space" is a brief study of life in space, both in 1993, and in the near-future. It features an assortment of skits with documentary footage about life in space. The main story involves a high-school student, named Arturo, (Raymond Cruz), who is confessing to his calculus teacher(Jaime Escalante), that he finds the subject too taxing. After a few words of encouragement, the story jumps ahead about 10 or 15 years, to find our student now en-route to the Moon.

Other sketches include a couple of asteroid miners (Vincent Schiavelli, James Stephens III) , an asteroid deflection team(Pat Morita, Sheila Tousey) , and a Lunar Chemical Engineer with a housekeeping problem (Kathy Bates). The best of these sketches involves a Lunar economic development agent (Rodney Grant)reviewing a series of 'off-beat' applicants. The weakest sketch involves Jesse Ventura as a DMV candidate, taking a Lunar Driving test. The whole skit just shows him thinking. This was well before he became governor of Minnesota. This program would be good to get middle school students involved in the study of space.