Tim, Paul, great show as always, this time with a terrifically amusing guest.
Ken summed it up the best with his much better written plot. Even in a fantasy world, Hoffman struggled mightily to devise plots that had internal logic, even with the fantastic and far-out tenor of the show. This reminds me of some of his earlier scripts and rewrites, especially from season 3. How exactly is Joker going to benefit financially from the flying-saucer hysteria, especially when he has to pay more extras than Dozier had on the Greenway payroll to act as shills. As Ken said, this smacks of dumpster diving on the Lost in Space set (incidentally, also a Fox production).
It's unfortunate the pre-Nora Stanford Sherman did not take a run at this script, because the topic was ripe for riffing. At the time this was filmed, late 1967, the U.S. had gone through 2-3 years of 'UFO fever,' with Congressional hearings on the topic held in 1966. All of that helped fuel ABC's dour 1967 mid-season replacement series 'The Invaders,' about aliens who had landed in the U.S. and taken on human form for their nefarious plans. Batman: 'poor deluded alien creatures.' The series featured about 1-2 'Batfight' type altercations every episode.
In essence, that show was a sort of 'Fugitive' knockoff, with lead Roy Thinnes playing a lone man who knew the aliens had landed and was traveling the U.S. pursuing them and trying to convince a skeptical public (too bad he never met gullible Linseed). Epaddon once suggested to me it would've been a funny cross-promotion if Thinnes, in character, had met Batman for a cameo and been assured it was all the Joker's doing. 'Keep calm, citizen!'
With all that in mind Linseed's hysterical reaction comes across more as a plot point than anything. Bring back Nora and promote her to Mayor, stat! (Or Siren, Mayor Circe would do a terrific job, too.
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Like Batgirl, Barbara comes off badly. I mean, she is freaked out by Verdigris!! Bakalyan, btw, went on to write the screenplay for the ultra-violent nihilistic 1970 Western The Animals, starring Michele Carey (who should have been a henchmoll at some point).
Mrs. Green shouldn't have been worried about Martians. She should have been so serene because she and her husband had a TV in every room (Monkees reference). BTW, maybe Joker should have told his shills they're not henchmen, they didn't need 'green' names to make it obvious they were shills. Oh, and Ellen Corby appeared in the pilot for the aforementioned Invaders show.
Mr. Holtzhouser was on fire--the idea of Gordon saying, 'I have no idea, I'm calling Batman now' on a recorded loop would have been very cost-effective for Gotham City.
The Dragnet reference made me think Virginia Gregg, a regular member of Jack Webb's acting troop, should've been Mrs. Green. She often played 'bunco' types.
Ray Walston should have cameod. Didn't he reportedly once say, 'a martian wouldn't do that'? As Tim said, Bakalyan came off as an alien from a sitcom.
I think Adam's line reading of the 'penal code' bit for reporting men from outer space fit in with season 3 cynical Batman, like the one who said if we went to war with Belgravia because 'Kittwoman' stole the Golden Fleece, we'd have to spend years supporting them financially.
I agree with you guys, the fight music is too jaunty. However, I will say this--growing up in the 1970s, next to Batman reruns, my favorite show was the syndicated NFL highlights from the prior Sunday, with music beds underneath. The sound editors almost always had to truncate or elongate the tracks to fit the allotted time of the highlight, and they thought nothing of skipping ahead or behind. So I am used to that.
'I thought Siren was perfect for Joan.'--Stanley Ralph Ross, writer of 'The Wail of the Siren'
My hobbies include gazing at the Siren and doing her bidding, evil or otherwise.
'She had a devastating, hypnotic effect on all the men.'--A schoolmate describing Joan Collins at age 17
