Friday, July 07, 2006

Voyagers


When I was rather young-- and I'm talking pre-kindergarten here-- my favorite show was Voyagers. It featured Phineas Bogg (Jon-Erik Hexum) and his 12-year old orphan sidekick (Meeno Peluce, brother of Soleil Moon Frye-- aka Punky Brewster). They would travel through time correcting "mistakes" of the past in order to fix the present (the mid-90s show Sliders kind of borrowed from this premise). The show only lasted 2 seasons before it was cancelled by NBC but was briefly in syndication and was shown on WWOR-9 (out of NY City) on Saturday mornings as I continued to watch it religiously-- even the episodes I'd seen before.

This being said, is it any wonder that in grade, middle, high school my strongest subject was history and I graduated with a B.A. in History in 1999.

People ask why I majored in history and/or where my interest in history came from. And as I look back I'm pretty sure the seeds were planted by Jon-Erik Hexum and Meeno Peluce all those years ago.

After re-watching some of the episodes recently the cheese-factor was undeniable. But that didn't stop me from wondering, with better special-effects and writing this would make a pretty solid TV series today. And it certainly wouldn't hurt the audience to gain a little bit of an education when propped in front of the boob-tube. I mean it would certainly be an improvement over the ad-nauseum reality TV drivel seeping out of every single network these days.

7 comments:

:P fuzzbox said...

I remember that show. It was good despite the high cheese factor. In this vein of sci-fi I also enjoyed 'Quantum Leap.'

Anonymous said...

AMEN! I agree. I don't like TV at all anymore. I learned all about science from Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Green Eyes said...

You mean, we can learn something from the TV? Wow! Now, there's a concept! lol I'm in!

Normlr said...

Wow, I'd totally forgotten about that show. I used to watch it all the time. I think I even might have even thought that Phineas was hot, in some weird pre-pubecent way. Makes Quantum Leap look like a rip-off. Total cheese.

Perplexio said...

fuzz: I agree about Quantum Leap-- and, luckily, that didn't have the same high cheese factor as Voyagers. A lot of the acting by the guests who were playing historical figures was rather hokey and overdone on Voyagers. I remember on one of the episodes I re-watched recently Ed Begley Jr. played one of the Wright brothers and his performance was embarrasingly bad.

bar: With the success of American Idol the major networks now see fit to saturate TV with dime-a-dozen American Idol wannabe shows. It's par for the course for Hollywood though-- if they get a good idea America likes they end up totally ruining it by oversaturating us with clones of that original idea.

green eyes: I've gotten to the point where I find the most compelling stuff on TV to be on The History Channel.

normlr: I've noticed there are still fan sites out there for the late Jon-Erik Hexum, most of them have been set up by females who were quite heartbroken by his untimely demise. In all honesty, I did have a heterosexual male crush on him-- that is to say I wanted to be him or be like him (as opposed to wanting him) when I was a kid.

Susan as Herself said...

I don't recall that show...hmmm---now I feel like I missed something. But I will say that I too am damn sick of reality TV and all the sludge (for the most part.) But I do enjoy "Globe Trekker" on PBS--- I ALWAYS feel like I learn something about someplace else after that show!

Metal Mark said...

I watched Voyagers regularly, but I was in middle school.