• Directed by Fred C. Bannon
• Written by Ronald Davidson
• Starring
  • George Wallace
  • Aline Towne
  • Roy Barcroft
  • William Bakewell
  • Clayton Moore

Even in their heyday, serials were pretty cheap. They were meant to be. Aimed at a juvenile (or, at best, young teen) audience, they were often vehicles for reusing both other creative properties (comic-book characters, radio heroes, etc.) and other resources like leftover sets from “real” movies and contract players who needed to be kept busy.

By 1952, though, serials were on the wane. The novelty had faded, and the budgets had shrunk, even for the genre; compare the production values of 1936’s Flash Gordon to Radar Men, and you can see how much the belts had been tightened. More than that, though, there really wasn’t much new to be done with the adventure serial format. The lifeblood of the serial is the cliffhanger ending which guarantees that the kiddies will be back in the theater next Saturday, and there are really only so many ways to write a cliffhanger ending. The format had gotten stale. And thus we get Radar Men From the Moon, a Republic Serial with reused props, borrowed footage, and a plot which repeats itself so many times it’s like a fever dream.

Having said that, I want to reiterate that the distance between “good serial” (Flash Gordon) and “bad serial” (this one) really isn’t that great. Modern viewers, watching all of the chapters collected on a single DVD, are bound to be more impressed with the collective inanity in from of them than those who watch a serial in its intended format: a single fifteen- or twenty-minute chapter a week. That’s how I first watched Radar Men From the Moon, in company with my target-audience children (readers of my blog even got to follow along as it happened), and thus my attitude may be more forgiving than those of people who watched it all as an ill-paced, illogical lump.

So. Without further ado, your chapter-by-chapter review.

Chapter 1: Moon Rocket

All over America (or at least all over the unstated California in which the story takes place), bad stock-footage things are happening: oil rigs exploding, power lines collapsing, office buildings crumbling to dust. In times of crisis, the United States can only turn to one man: Commando Cody (George Wallace), an avuncular scientist-spy-whatever whose name really appears to be “Commando.” Ensconced at Cody Labs, he and his square-jawed assistant Ted (William Bakewell) and peachy galpal Joan (Aline Towne) are hard at work on perfecting a rocket ship. (Why would a rocketry lab have a display of bubbling beakers covering one wall? Inquiring minds want to know!) They are approached by Henderson (Don Walters), a benign but sepulchral government representative so top-secret he can’t even tell them what his job is. (I bet he’s got one of those “Bikini Inspector” IDs in his wallet, too.) According to him, these explosions and disintegrations show all the signs of being atomic in nature, possibly through some kind of heretofore-uninvented “atomic ray.” As luck would have it, they’re also monitoring unusual atomic activity on the moon. (As opposed to all of the usual atomic activity on the moon.) With that in mind, Uncle Sam wants Cody to use his almost-finished rocket to fly to the moon and find out what’s going on.

In the meantime, Cody can also help them figure out what’s going on by means of his flying suit. Yes, Cody has previously invented a flying suit (helmet, jetpack, and much of the footage having come directly from the Zombies of the Stratosphere serial from earlier the same year, from the same writer and director). If it were me, I’d probably put more muscle into marketing this particular invention before working on the rocket ship (at the very least, I’m sure the Department of Defense would be an eager customer), but I guess Cody’s more an idea man than a money-grubbing capitalist; he only has the one suit. And he’s use it to try to track whoever’s shooting the atomic ray here on earth.

Beakers? Of colored liquids? But that must mean — there’s SCIENCE going on here!

Working from descriptions of a truck seen in the vicinity of some disasters, Cody flies off and finds a couple of people we’re going to get to know well: Graber (Clayton Moore, better known as the Lone Ranger in the serials) and Daly (Bob Stevenson), two very terrestrial thugs. After a shootout, Cody manages to capture the truck-mounted atomic ray-gun while the thugs hightail it back to their hideout — a hidden cave in which moon-man Krog (Peter Brocco) directs the work of sabotage as a precursor to a full invasion. Krog sends Graber and Daly back to get the ray-gun from Cody’s lab before they learn the secrets of its operation.

Which leads to one of the features which makes these old serials shine: A fistfight. The thugs just walk in the unguarded front door of Cody Labs, into the back laboratory where Cody and Ted are examining the ray-gun, and start hammering on them after the requisite “knock away the gun” gambit. I tell you, they don’t do fights like this these days. No fancy editing required; just two actors beating on two other actors realistically, throwing punches, diving over tables, breaking chairs with reckless abandon. (It helps immensely that Clayton Moore was raised as a circus performer.) And of course, when it’s done, nobody’s got a scratch on ‘em. After beating Cody and Ted senseless, Graber and Daly make off with the atomic chamber from the disassembled ray-gun, and commit a tactical error which they repeat several times: they don’t kill the good guys.

With no ray-gun to examine, Cody moves on to the rocket launch, taking along Ted, pilot Hank (Wilson Wood), and of course, Joan (as she says: “You’ll be very glad to have someone along who can cook your meals.” And don’t forget to wash our socks, wench!) The rocket takes off from a flat spot in the middle of nowhere, and flies for five days through a curiously starless sky to reach the moon, where stock footage reveals a Greco-Roman city.

After they land in a protected canyon, Cody flies to the city to reconoitter, and is led inside the wall by a mysterious voice — belonging to Retik (Roy Barcroft), ruler of the moon! (The ruler of the moon has an office/lab with direct access through the main wall of the city?) Retik dresses in a style which back in the day would have been called “Oriental” and today would be called “frickin’ gaudy,” but worse than his fashion sense is the fact that he simply talks too much. Lording it over Cody, he tells all about the impending invasion from the moon because the moon’s atmosphere has become too thin for residents to go outside without breathing equipment. He also tells all about the sabotage efforts, their mighty atomic weapons, and the element “lunarium” which powers them. Even Cody starts to catch on eventually: When the bad guy goes to such great lengths to explain his nefarious plan, it’s because he intends to toast your butt as soon as the last malificent laugh escapes his lips.

Fortunately for Cody, despite all of Retik’s bragging about his superior weapons, nobody thought to design an atomic pistol which fired more than one shot before reloading. So Retik ends up vaporizing half of his lab and then struggling with his pistol while his two lackeys wrestle with Cody. Eventually, though, Retik gets Cody in his sights, hiding behind some equipment, and — BOOM! A puff of smoke! How could Cody have survived?

Chapter 2: Molten Terror

As I mentioned before, there are only so many ways to engineer a cliffhanger, and the laziest way is simply to cheat. Each chapter opens by backtracking the last several seconds of the previous chapter, and a “cheat” involves adding information or action to those last few seconds to show how the hero escapes. In this case, Cody dove to the side before Retik fired, so he wasn’t even behind the equipment than went up in smoke.

Fins! You can never go wrong with fins!

He scampers out of the lab (okay, he isn’t that quick, but Retik’s still fumbling with his “superior technology”) and back to the rocket. There, our heroes hatch a plan to go back and steal the full-sized ray-gun that was in Retik’s lab for the terrestrial scientists to study. The gambit revolves around a canister of nitrous oxide that they just happen to have aboard. (Performing a little in-flight dentistry? Or occupying the five-day flight time with some interplanetary raves? You be the judge.) Cody flies back and starts venting the NO into Retik’s air compressor intake. Soon, Retik and his new lackey (because he managed to toast all of his previous ones in the last chapter) fall unconscious, and Cody comes in to unbolt the gun from its pedestal. He’s an uncredibly lucky fellow, because if the moon men had been using metric measurements for their hardware, his wrench would have been useless. Thanks to Retik’s quick powers of recovery, there’s yet another fistfight, and then Cody jogs off with the gun, since it’s too heavy to fly with. (Apparently everyone overlooked the fact that Retik’s personal ray pistol uses the same technology, and weighs a lot less.) Ted has come out to meet him, wearing a spare flying-suithelmet (no extra jetpack, alas), to help him cart back the gun… but they’re pursued by a moontank, a teardrop-shaped vehicle with hugs fins on the back. They take refuse from the tank’s ray-gun blasts in a cave, but the tank turns its ray to continuous heat and starts to melt the whole cliff face in on them (an unusual effect, too — melting an emulsion, maybe?). How can they ever escape?

Chapter 3: Bridge of Death

No, it’s not a cheat, but still, “Maybe we could get out over there!” really doesn’t seem to fulfill the promise of the cliffhanger. Anyway, they get out through a side passage (had to leave the big raygun behind, alas), and toss some grenades at the tank before scuttling back to the rocket ship. They make plans to leave posthaste, so that the information that Retik injudiciously blabbed to Cody can be relayed to the government. (Nobody thought that this rocket ship should have any kind of radio system for such things.) after Cody knocks a moon scout to his death from a cliff (so much for the gentler gravity), they get spacebound.

But that five-day flight lag gives Retik plenty of time to communicate with his man Krog on Earth. Krog hasn’t yet been able to reconstruct a ray-gun to go with the atomic chamber he rescued, so he gives his thugs the charge of using conventional means to kill Cody and his crew on touchdown. This scene also contains Krog’s line, “I’ll pick up their approach on my radar,” which is noteworthy because it’s the only conceivable justification for an otherwise inexplicable title.

Alas, the cycle of violence between roundheads and pointyheads just goes on and on…

Graber and Daly go to meet the rocket ship (being met at its unimproved landing lot the desert by two cops), but they can’t get close enough to plant a bomb before touchdown, and soon everyone’s shooting at everyone else. The thugs take off and Cody grabs the policecar to chase them. A man of action, he is! After several seconds of exciting period cars rounding corners and speeding along the straightaways, Daly stops just long enough to plant the bomb on a bridge. And when Cody drives over the bridge in pursuit, BOOM! The bridge explodes, and the flaming car falls into the river! Could he have possibly survived?

Chapter 4: Flight to Destruction

Yup, a cheat. Just before the bomb exploded, Cody saw it and dove from the car.

So. Regrouping at Cody Labs, Cody gives his report to Henderson. Given that Krog’s mission is to soften up Earth’s defenses before the invasion, it stands to reason that if they can thwart the sabotage, they can forestall the invasion.

In fact, Krog has more problems than the good guys know about. The new (and as yet incomplete) ray-gun will need a new truck, so Krog sends Graber and Daly to rob a bank for the necessary funds. Graber and Daly, both accomplished hands at it, nevertheless try to pawn the dirty work off on a couple of hirelings; the hirelings both get shot in the robbery, leaving them empty-handed. Their next plan is kidnapping and ransom — and who would be a better target than Commando Cody himself? Especially because they already know where his security-free lab is! They waltz right in, but Cody isn’t there, so instead they exchange fisticuffs and broken chairs with Ted, and haul Joan off. Their plan gets positively Rube-Goldbergian at this point, as they intend to exchange Joan for Cody, then hold Cody for ransom… all so they can buy a truck. (Maybe they should just hold Joan for ransom in exchange for a truck and skip a couple of steps?)

“I do not understand. What is this ‘Canadian bacon’ of which you speak?”

As soon as Cody gets back, he alerts the police to the kidnapping, and soon receives word that a couple matching Daly’s and Joan’s descriptions has taken off from a small airport. Gee, that’s wise — go airborn, where Cody can find you easily! He zooms off and catches up easily, whereupon Daly sabotages the steering controls and bails out. Cody flies in and clambers aboard, but the plane is going down — and crashes into a rocky hillside! Is there any way they could have survived?

Chapter 5: Murder Car

Another cheat. Cody found a parachute under the seat for Jean and they both got out before the crash.

Cody tries to chase Daly when the latter commandeers a car to get back to his cave, but loses him after much shooting and driving and stuff.

Krog is getting a little tired of radioing Retik with, “I’m sorry, we buggered up again, Your Excellency,” so this time they try for a simpler crime: a payroll job. (Explanatory note for you young whippersnappers: Back in the day, they didn’t have direct deposit. They didn’t even have paychecks. The company would pay everyone in cash, which meant that the night before payday they’d have an oodle of cash delivered from the bank to the company safe to cover payroll. You’re welcome.) The job goes so quickly, they leave it off-screen; next thing you know, police are chasing Graber and Daly’s car as they speed off with a bagful of money. When it becomes apparent that they’re not going to chase the cops, Dale tosses the moneybag out the window so they can retrieve it later. Then their car goes over an embankment. (I don’t think that was part of the plan, per se.)

Sure, they’re simple controls — but they’re also upside-down to the user!

Daly escapes, but Graber ends up in the jail hospital. The government plans to move him to a secure facility to question him (so that rumors of an impending invasion from the moon won’t cause the general populace to collapse into giggles — I mean, won’t start a mass panic). To spring him, Daly “pulls a Chekov” — you know, he lies down and pretends to be injured — in the middle of the deserted road which the jail’s ambulance is travelling alone for the transfer. Daly commandeers the ambulance, lets Graber off to be picked up by an associate and, hearing over the radio that Cody and Ted are driving their way to intercept the ambulance, plans to ram them with the ambulance. He bails out at the last second, and the ambulance hits Cody’s car, taking it off a cliff! Is there any way they could have survived?

Chapter 6: Hills of Death

My son Alex turned to me and said, “Let me guess — they jumped out of the car right before the ambulance hit, right?” Right. Cheat.

Now they finally have enough money for a new truck, but Retik has another mission for them first. (See why the plot seems so fragmented when watched as if it were a feature?) He instructs Krog to give the thugs the miniature atomic bomb which he’s been saving for just such an occasion; they’re to charter a plane and drop it in the crater of Mt. Alta. The ensuing eruption should disrupt weather patterns all over the country!

Which is exactly what they do. The plane rises up over the steaming crater of Mt. Alba, they drop their mini-nuke, and BOOM! It’s a positive onslaught of stock disaster footage, most of it real newsreels of torrential rains and flooding across the heartland.

Flying Men Over Hollywood!

Naturally, Cody and crew suspect the moonmen of being behind the eruption. “That volcano’s been dead for years!” (Yeah, except for the part about it ominously smoking to begin with.) Thinking that the thugs must have dropped a small nuclear device into the crater, Cody starts checking out charter airplane services, and soon finds someone who recognizes Graber and Daly from the description. And though the contact info they gave was all phony, Daly did leave behind a matchbook for Al’s Diner (oh, those matchbooks — clueful bane of masterminded plans everywhere!).

Proprietor Al volunteers that yeah, those two guys are in there all the time — in fact, here they come now! Yes, it’s time for another fistfight, but this time there are checkered tablecloths in the background! Beating Cody into submission, they take Ted along for security. (Or — they could just shoot Cody and Ted! Sheesh! No wonder these two are working for some moonman out of a cave.)

And Ted manages to bail out of their car anyway (hey, he’s had lots of practice), and calls in to the lab just as Cody gets back. Cody sets out for where the thugs are waiting for Krog to send another car for them, since theirs could be identified (yeah, a black sedan is way too conspicuous to travel in safely). After the requisite shootout, Graber and Daly manage to lure Cody to the top of a cliff — and knock him over!

Chapter 7: Camouflaged Destruction

No, it’s not a cheat, but — come on. Flying suit, remember? Unfortunately, Cody loses his gun in the fall, and has to leave off pursuit.

Actually doing a little bit of detective work, Cody goes back and quizzes the regulars at Al’s Cafe, and discovers that the thugs had been asking about garages that could work on their truck. Cody goes to one of the garages recommended, and discovers the truck — and lo and behold, Graber and Daly show up! It’s time for yet another fistfight, this time with the mechanic as the second half of Cody’s team, but in the end, the mechanic and Cody end up knocked out on the floor. So Daly shoots Cody. No, I’m kidding; he never takes that last little step which would rid him of Commando Cody forever. Instead, they just take off in their truck.

“Yeah, I’m just saying — a viewfinder, maybe?”

Cody soon gets new reports of troop trains being blown up, so he and Ted set out to track them down; Cody flies ahead to reconnoiter, Ted comes behind in a plane with bombs. It works like a charm; Cody sites the truck from the air, then boards the plane mid-air to help Ted drop the bombs. Graber and Daly simply wheel the truck around, open the back, aim the gun, and BOOM! goes the plane!

Chapter 8: The Enemy Planet

I don’t even need to tell you anymore, do I? Of course it’s a cheat; Ted and Cody got out of the plane safely before the ray struck.

Henderson the sp00k comes back to the Cody Labs and tells Cody that they could really, really use some lunarium to study and maybe make into their own ray weapons. Cody’s game, so it’s another five-day flight to the moon. On his first trip out from the rocket, Cody manages to find a moon sentry who also works in the lunarium storage facility, so it’s little trouble to take the moonman prisoner on the rocket and leave him in his lunar skivvies while Cody ventures into town in the moonman’s pressure suit. Oddly enough, the lunarium storage vault is unguarded, and like Retik’s lab, is easily accessible via a door in the outside wall. It’s heavy stuff, too heavy to cart back to the rocket even with Ted’s help, so Cody steals a convenient mooncar.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Henderson, but you just creep me right out.”

A second mooncar pursues them (all right, it’s very likely the same mooncar, but let’s not say anything, okay?), which demonstrates that, again, for all their vaunted technological superiority, the moon engineers often leave out fundamental functions — in this case, a rear-view mirror. A hit from the pursuit damages the main feed line in Cody’s vehicle, so while he tries to repair it, Ted goes out to lob some grenades. Then a second hit on Cody’s car knocks him over, and the air intake tube on his pressure suit comes loose! He sinks into unconsciousness!

Chapter 9: Battle in the Stratosphere

Hey, look — no cheating! Once Ted is done using grenades to dissaude their pursuers, he gets back in time to reattach Cody’s air tube, and he’s as right as rain. It’s no trouble to get the case of lunarium aboard the rocket, and they also decide to take their captured moonman back with them. He of course has other ideas, and since they make no effort to restrain or confine them, he starts swinging a wrench during takeoff. Fisticuffs on a moving rocket! Unfortunately, the moonman ends up on the wrong end of a grappled gun, and they unceremoniously dump his body. (As Hank the pilot puts it, “It’s just like a burial at sea, Joan, except his body will float around in space forever.” Aside from that, though, they’re practically the same.)

Who would paint their rocket to look like a panda?

Once again, the five-day commute gives Krog plenty of time to prepare a welcome (and you can tell Retik’s getting a little steamed about Krog’s lack of results: “This time you must not fail!”). Graber and Daly thus try to shoot the rocket out of the sky; after the first miss, Cody leaves the rocket in the flying suit in mmid-air to clear their approach. He gets knocked out of the sky (but otherwise unhurt) and starts firing his pistol at them from behind a rock. This leads to an exposure of Graber’s basic indecisiveness: Shoot Cody! (So Daly fires at Cody.) Wait, the rocket’s coming down — shoot the rocket! (So Daly fires at the rocket.) Cody’s firing at us again — fire at Cody! (Daly fires at Cody.) Wait — the rocket! (Fires at the rocket.) When it becomes clear that they can’t hit Cody directly behind his rock (and no one explains why a raygun that can demolish oil rigs and office buildings can’t shoot one single solitary boulder), they instead fire at the cliff above and behind Cody. Rocks crumble and shower down on him! How can he ever survive?

Chapter 10: Mass Execution

Once again: No cheating, only lameness. Cody hides under an overhang, safe. And since Graber and Daly failed to get the rocket either, they pack it up and go home.

Which leads to Krog having to make one of those calls: “Um, Retik, remember how you said that this time I must not fail? Well, um…” Which leads Retick to announce that he’s going to come down and take over the mission personally. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, especially when your covert operation is comprised of one incompetent moonman who never leaves his cave and two out-of-work felons.

Retik demonstrates the superior technology of lunar hose nozzles.

Meanwhile, Henderson seeks some kind of clue as to projected timescale for the invasion. Which leads to some blatant filler (even in comparison to the rest of the serial), as Cody rehearses for him, with copious flashback footage, his first meeting with Retik and his attempt to steal the large ray-gun. It’s only after going through all of that that Cody volunteers to Henderson the ray-gun he picked up off the moon sentry on their first trip. Um, yeah, I’ll bet the earth scientists would love to look at it, you dope!

All of which gives Graber and Daly time to once more enter the completely unprotected Cody Labs building — this time to barricade the lab door, then to go outside and release a tank of deadly gas into the lab’s air-conditioning intake. Were I to ascribe more talent to the screenwriter, I would say that it was an attempt at an ironic book-ending of Cody’s similar gambit at Retik’s lab; as it is, I’m going to chalk it up to laziness.

By the time anyone realizes they’re being gassed, they’re almost too weak to do anything. Cody can’t even open the window, because Dale and Graber are outside to prevent it. He slumps to the floor, along with Joan and Henderson! Can anything save them?

Chapter 11: Planned Pursuit

Well, cheating might help. This time, Cody managed to hit the alarm button before collapsing, and the klaxon immediately brings a police patrolcar to investigate. The friendly policeman opens the door and drags them into fresh air, where they all immediately revive. (Boy, that’s some deadly gas, that is.) When Cody dashes outside and sees Graber and Daly driving away, he and Joan commandeer the police car, without telling the policeman inside the lab what they’re doing. Which means that, while Cody and Joan are chasing Graber and Daly, all of the cops in the city are chasing Cody and Joan. Things take a turn for the comical when Cody, meaning to toss a tear gas grenade into the other car, accidentally drops it in the police car; the two cars end up crashing, and all four occupants are dragged into police headquarters.

“Joan! How many times to I have to tell you — no Mexican!”

Cody and Joan easily get out, as they explain to Ted on returning to the lab, by telling the cops who they are. And then Cody’s plan gets devious: he arranges for Graber and Daly to be released for “lack of evidence,” mainly so that he can tail them from above back to their hideout. (Under no circumstances should you think about how many chapters back he should have come up with this idea.) And so Graber and Daly blithely drive out of town, wondering all the while why they were let off so easily, never suspecting that they’ve been set up. Memo to self: If ever I should embark upon a world-conquering scheme which requires some muscle, I will administer some form of IQ test instead of simply picking up the two most nattily-dressed felons on the day-labor line at Henchmen-R-Us.

In no time at all, Cody has tracked them back to Krog’s cave (which here is an entirely different cave entrance than what’s been used as an establishing shot up until now). He overhears Krog talking via radio to Retik, who is now on Earth and is hiding in yet another cave (those moonmen, they love their subterranean lairs). Then he reveals himself, because — hey, gotta get another fistfight in here somewhere! After destroying half of Krog’s technobaubles in the fracas, Cody throws Krog against a huge instrument panel which immediately belches smoke and sparks, electrocuting Krog. (And I think that drives the final nail into the coffin of the “superior lunar technology” myth.) But immediately thereafter, Daly shoves Cody against the same panel! More smoke, more sparks! Could Cody possibly survive?

Chapter 12: Death of the Moon Man

Well, he could, but the cumulative punishment he’s received over the last dozen chapters proves to much for him, and he dies.

I kid! No, thanks to all the metal in his suit, he was sufficiently grounded to escape with only mild stunning. (That’s what he explains later, and I guess we have to believe him — I mean, he’s a scientist and all.)

Retik instructs Daly over the radio to move all of Krog’s old equipment, including the big ray-gun, to Retik’s new digs, so Graber and Daly head back into town to round up a couple of extra guys to help with the move. Where? Why at Al’s Cafe, of course! Al surreptitiously calls Cody, who arrives with Ted. (I think Al seriously needs to re-evaluate the clientele he attracts.) Naturally, there’s another fistfight, naturally the bad guys win, and naturally Graber and Daly won’t spend the five seconds to plug these two guys they’ve been trying to kill repeatedly. Instead they run out to their car; Cody and Ted revive almost instantly and give chase. It’s a long and winding mountain road, and finally Graber and Daly buy it by driving over a cliff. They, apparently, did NOT learn how to leap from an endangered vehicle at the last second.

Fedoras. That what the world needs now. More fedoras.

Cody and Ted then meet with Henderson’s men, who have appropriated the ray-gun from Krog’s cave, near the entrance to Retik’s lair; Cody and Ted sneak in and have a passing gunfight with the lone spear carrier that Retik brought with him. (Seriously, the moon men don’t seem to have enough manpower to conquer your average 7-11, much less the entire Earth.) And then…

…then a much svelter Retik tries to get away in his own rocket ship. This makes sense when you realize that actor Roy Barcroft has been wearing the same costume he wore seven years previous as the villain in The Purple Monster Strikes (1945). Why? Mostly so they could use the shots of the Purple Monster in his spaceship and avoid the expense of constructing another rocket set for this serial. But his trimmer waistline doesn’t help him any; as soon as his rocket clears his lair, it is shot to bits by the commandeered ray-gun. Oh, the irony!

And that about wraps it up. Henderson is confident that the moon men won’t be trying another invasion any time soon, especially with the Earth coming up with its own lunarium-based weapons. The end.

I suppose that, after a massive write-up like that, I really ought to have some kind of summation here. But there isn’t much of one. It’s a science fiction serial that keeps going back to cheaper elements like car chases and bank robberies to conserve on budget. The lazy writing makes the twelve chapters seem even longer and more drawn out than the cumulative three-hour running time. It’s fun to watch once, but I’ve now watched it twice, and that’s twice as many times as anyone should.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 13 (plus unmentioned collateral damage)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 36
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 3
  • George Wallace (Commando Cody) played “Admiral Simons” in the TNG episode “Man of the People”
  • Peter Brocco (Krog) played “Claymare” in the classic episode “Errand of Mercy”
  • Carey Loftin (an uncredited “Launch Heavy”) was a stunt driver on the original series