Quark flies again - sort of...

Just a few weeks ago I was watching Breaking Bad - easily one of the best dramas on TV today - when something very unusual but very familiar caught my eye.

Not to give away any spoilers, a side plot involved viewing a karaoke-style video one of the characters had made to the tune of Peter Schilling's Major Tom. Behind him ran mostly space themed stock footage.
And, unmistakably, footage of the space ship from Quark.
In fact, it was clearly from the episode "The Good, the Bad, and the Ficus," which is about the ship being pulled through a black hole and, with dazzling disco-y effect, splitting into two copies - one good one evil. (Ficus, being the emotionless Vegeton alien, is neither good or evil - hence the title). I recognized the ship right away not just because it's so distinctive -
but because I had recently commissioned this model of it online, and had sent the manufacturer every angle of the ship I could find on the show. They built it with the garbage collecting door open, and the trash bag collecting arms extended.

Once you're commissioning models, I think you have to admit to a certain obsession with a show - or at least, in this case, an obsession with collecting everything possible on the program. With this model, plus all the scripts (except one) and dozens of press stills and more, I think I can safely literally say what I once joked: I almost certainly have the largest collection of Quark stuff assembled.
The music video also included footage from a show even more obscure than Quark, if only because it was never released on DVD.
That odd 3-engined rocket is Salvage One, the ship from the Andy Griffith show by the same name. Griffith played an ex-astronaut who used NASA surplus to make his own rocket to go to the moon and salvage everything NASA had left behind, plus bring back his own moon rocks too. I don't remember much about the show, but I remember enjoying it.

A bit of trivia: Quark may be about the only science fiction show that never named it's spaceship - all the scripts only call it "Quark's ship."

More soon!

The World's Largest Quark collection grows

I promised myself when I started this blog that I wouldn't write about not being able to write. However, I haven't been able to write for awhile for a reason that has to do with collecting, in a way, so I'll explain more soon.

In the meantime, please enjoy this TV Week with a cover of Quark that I picked up awhile back. The article inside quoted Buck Henry as saying Quark was meant to do for Science Fiction what "Get Smart" did for the spy genre. And it did, just not for very long.

"The World's Largest" is a joke I use for when I collect something incredibly, incredibly obscure and imagine no one else in the world has even bothered to put two items together. Please note I'm aware that most likely there is a larger collection out there somewhere. That has nothing to do with the joke and I'm not trying to get nto the Guinness Book. It's more to the point that I'm collecting something fairly obscure.


Like, for example, my World's Largest Collection for "Carpoolers," the short-lived ABC show from last year: this air freshener, and a single episode still saved on my Tivo. I really grew to like that program. Why do all the best TV shows seem to have less than 13 episodes?

All the Emperor's Quasinorms - First Time on DVD

In celebration of the 70's sci-fi comedy show Quark finally being released on DVD, I present one of the rarest "Quark" items still surviving, I imagine. Back in 1978, my dad's office was near the local NBC affiliate in Syracuse, WSYR-TV3. Every week, someone typed up their program schedule and they printed it in a little double fold pamphlet. He brought home this schedule for February 26th thru March 4th, the week Quark premiered.

The cover is illustrated with a small publicity photo of Richard Benjamin as Captain Adam Quark, and a large piece of "file art" of what looks like an Apollo / Saturn rocket. You know, to make it all "spacey." Star Wars was still playing at the Shoppingtown Mall in Syracuse at this point (10 months after it opened - and it would be there at least another three, as I recall!) and Quark was one of the first shows to take advantage off the new craze for science fiction. It had a jump on other shows because it had already been pitched and rejected before Star Wars was released, so it was ready to go in production ASAP when all the studios scrambled to release more science fiction.

Looking at the schedule, Quark premiered on Friday night. right after Bowling For Dollars and Concentration, and right before CPO Sharkey, the Don Rickles-in-the-navy sitcom that remains permanently etched in my brain today. It's also a showcase of many other barely remembered and mostly forgotten shows: Project UFO, James at 16, and Grizzly Adams are all vague memories. But "The Chuck Barris Rah Rah Show" and "What Really Happened to the Class of 65?" are virtual blanks in my personal TV database.
I strongly recommend Quark if you like clever writing, silly comedy, and cheesy special effects. It's only 15 bucks at Amazon (sorry - I mean 14.99)! The Betties and Gene/Jean will thank you.

It's a subatomic particle, too

According to Blogger, I'm the 23rd person to list "Quark" as one of my interests, as of my post on Monday.  

I'm the only one that wasn't referring to page layout software...

Long before Ferengi were even thought up...

I'm quite a big fan of the 1978 NBC TV show QUARK.

It only ran for eight episodes total, but included some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen on tv. Also some of the silliest. It was created by Buck Henry, and Richard Benjamin played Adam Quark, captain of a "United Space" garbage ship that roamed the galaxy mostly cleaning up after big space parties. He also managed to save the galaxy almost every week.  His crew consisted of Betty and Betty (one original and one clone - they didn't know which was which), Ficus, an entirely logical plant who looked human, Gene/Jean, a tough guy whose dual set of chromosomes could turn him effeminate in the blink of an eye, and Andy, a cowardly robot.  The last figure on the sheet music there is Conrad Janis as Hugo Palindrome, Who sent Quark on his missions.

Being eleven when it first aired, I loved the show, and dutifully recorded the audio of each episode on my modular Panasonic tape recorder much like the one shown here. Years later, I was able to buy a couple of shaky VHS tapes of all the episodes at comic book conventions (shown below). With those, and the sheet music above, I liked to joke that I have the world's largest collection of memorabilia: three items.  I have to believe the sheet music was the only "merchandise" made for this show.

In the early 90s I was working for a small film distribution company that was working with Conrad Janis and I had the opportunity to meet him.  This, I thought, was the perfect chance to get better copies of the shows than the shaky bootlegs I had.  I introduced myself as a Quark fan and he said in his most delighted "Mindy's dad" voice: "Ah, Hugo T. Palindrome.  You know, I've never seen an episode!"  So much for borrowing copies!  He also related a story about getting a check for residuals for under 2 dollars, because the show played in Turkey or Hungary or someplace like that.

One more interesting thing to note: when I decided to show the sheet music on this blog, I did a little research and found out that Perry Botkin Jr., the composer, has his own website.  I wrote to him there, sent the jpeg of the sheet music, and asked if he had any thoughts on the theme song - or if it might be a small, forgotten job from the distant past.  Less than three hours later I had a reply:

Interesting.  I just ran into the QUARK main title on the Net yesterday.  Hadn't heard the theme in many years.  Hmmmm   Sort of  "Star Trek" sideways with a disco beat.  I did get "MORK and MINDY" because of it so somebody at Paramount must have liked it.  It was a marvelous show wasn't it.  Really too hip for it's time but very very funny none the less.

P.

It's really amazing to consider, in this relatively small way, the effect the internet has had on collecting and fandom.  Not only did I buy the sheet music on eBay, but I was able to find the composer, contact him, and hear back in one afternoon.  I'm dating myself here, but way back in, say, the 1980s, if you were a fan of a show it took legwork at a library or at least on the phone to find a place to contact the creators.  If you sent off a letter, you were most likely to never hear back - but if you were lucky, you might get a form letter in a few weeks.

Also if any of you are moved to learn more about Quark, go to your local internet browser.  You can find Quark fan sites, and even episodes posted on YouTube.  (that'll give you a fast listen to the theme song, too).

As rare as the sheet music must be, I do have one even rarer Quark item to share in the future on this blog...

The Galaxy, and Infinitum!