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Small Strange Bird
Sep 22, 2006

Merci, chaton!

Nebakenezzer posted:

I've heard of tales of the unexpected thanks to the old ricky gervais podcast; I feel like the title is promising more than it can deliver
The first couple of seasons were based on Roald Dahl's original stories, and went into some weird areas (like in 'Royal Jelly'). After they were used up, it became known as Tales of the Glaringly Obvious.

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Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

I've been a bit distracted lately by real life and Flash Gordon, the filmation cartoon. Flash Gordon as a pop culture reference is strange in that it was clearly an influence on a vast swath of later things, from Star Wars to Star Trek, early DND, and Christ knows what else. It is a tv show, however, that a friend described as having "mormon animation".



Our Hero at his most charismatic



Knowing this show's love of animation re-use, I'd bet you five bux we see the scene where these two kiss later.



This is the way people laugh in Filmation, it's consistent across time



I swear I didn't remove any frames here; this is how they animated Space Princess Aura throwing a spear. The dude in green is "Prince Barron" who does the tricky thing of possessing a French accent without having one.



"Come." "hup----!"

It's a show that brings out the purile gif maker in me, simply because mocking what goes on feels like a waste of time.



Example: this is how well designed Ming's robots are. A few episodes later, we see these tin honkeys immersed in water and functioning.

Flash [OOOOOHHHHHHH!] is uniting the many factions of the planet Mongo to bring down Space Emperor Ming the Merciless Blizzard style (IE uniting a bunch of factions who hate each other to take down a bigger existential threat) and every new place they go to, there's a space princess who wants to gently caress Flash as soon as she lays eyes on him, or Flash and his band are enslaved. Sometimes both. Also the amount of times Dale (Dale Arden being Gordon's Earth girl) is forcibly married off is-------well, I guess it played differently in its day, now it is a bit weird.

Aside from that Dale's main job is to fume as the latest space hottie attempts to bang the Earthman



It's not that she lacks moxie, it's just it rarely gets animated



Also Flash is always dragging her when they run



Here Princess Aura attempts to seduce Flash on her peltbed, ignoring that Flash's GF and this sulking Lion Man are literally right there



Ming is clearly a freak himself, as I see lioness-women, hawk-men-women, and a green skinned gal who might be a mermaid



Of course these human dancers are in the Hawkmen city...



The astral projector. Get it?!



She was killed, Flash was fine

Ming the Merciless is his own trope - one that has taken a lot of different forms over the years. Europeans and North Americans created this trope of the fiendishly smart and totally ruthless Asian dude - I guess the idea being that somebody who adapted to western technology, science, commerce etc without all those deeply enshrined cultural values would be amoral and terrifying - true, as far as it goes. Ming is immortal and is described by one person as the best scientist in the universe which is quite a claim, but here, voiced by the VA who did the voice of Skeletor (?) he comes off as endlessly pissy and insecure. In fact, the only time there's good dialog thus far is in episode five, where Space princess Aura and a officer of Ming's fail to capture Flash Gordon. They report back to Ming, and Ming throws the officer into the slave mines as punishment, when suddenly Aura speaks up and calls Ming out on how petty this is, especially as Ming was abjectly defeated by Gordon in the previous episode.







Ming also as his zoom background has a Mosaic of himself



More clever money saving by skipping the bits that would let the action make sense



We need to economize animation frames so we can do the 'giant king chases Dale around the table' scene



"You know those green skinned girls you see? That's because Ming tapped that, or similar."



I like this Lizard-Woman who is sus of the slave. For some reason Ming's slave drivers are all identical lizard women, which could mean, well, something aside from economy in a better written series



Aura deploys the woke ray



In one of those weird moments of recognition, these green tentacle things are blind, and find their prey by sound. Very much like some Half-Life monsters, although those guys didn't look like sock puppets





This is how you steal a fishman's boat-sub-thing.



The first climactic battle with Ming happens in a control room that looks like an abandoned theater or casino



I don't know if they are Balinese dancers



The Bali wedding episode is wild all around. Here, Dale foils Ming by smashing something that isn't explained and we never see get smashed.



This is about 30 seconds before they are flash frozen in the pool, with the entire top sealed with ice. Flash's expression does not change.



Also the Bali wedding episode. Turns out if you keep a firm grip, you can just marry them!



The one thing I can give Filmation is that with its constant re-use of animation and generally crazy composition, there are rarely animation errors. Here is one, and I was saddened to discover Rasputin-smurf didn't in fact have a tiny, cloaked, hovering assistant



Dr. Zarkov is also from Earth, and announces his plan to follow Flash Gordon down the elevator shaft by diving in headfirst, then screaming "help me I'm falling! Save me Flash!"



Ten seconds later, he's bitten by a poisonous bat despite Flash causing a forest fire to drive the bats away



The last episode I saw had some echoes of DnD. Namely they encounter a Witch queen, who possesses such mind control powers she's basically a Mind Flayer. She kidnaps flash, then ERASES HIS PERSONALITY as he's identical to her lost King in appearance, Ming's old Master, King [ugh] Gor-Dan.







This is what mind control looks like, BTW.



They have, 10 episodes in, finally started doing multipart episodes, so we will see if things improve. Right now the Witch Queen is getting mind erased Flash Gordon to murder his friends. I'll keep you updated

Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 19:11 on May 25, 2024

Owl at Home
Dec 25, 2014

Well hoot, I don't know if I can say no to that

Nebakenezzer posted:



Of course these human dancers are in the Hawkmen city...

Ahaha I love it in old cartoons when something is clearly rotoscoped and it sticks out like a sore thumb. I wonder what the source footage was

Madurai
Jun 26, 2012

And yet, it remains Filmation's peak achievement.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Madurai posted:

And yet, it remains Filmation's peak achievement.

Despite all my mockery, I do sort of get that. It's a continuing story, and there are flashes (if you pardon the pun) of interesting visuals. People die, if not characters. I have zero familiarity with anything previous of Flash Gordon, but I can only assume it is faithful to the earlier material.

Madurai
Jun 26, 2012

Nebakenezzer posted:

Despite all my mockery, I do sort of get that. It's a continuing story, and there are flashes (if you pardon the pun) of interesting visuals. People die, if not characters. I have zero familiarity with anything previous of Flash Gordon, but I can only assume it is faithful to the earlier material.

Faithful-ish. The original newspaper strips rambled all over, and much like golden age comics, did not give one singular gently caress about consistency.

LashLightning
Feb 20, 2010

You know you didn't have to go post that, right?
But it's fine, I guess...

You just keep being you!

Nebakenezzer posted:




Here Princess Aura attempts to seduce Flash on her peltbed, ignoring that Flash's GF and this sulking Lion Man are literally right there

[...]







Ming also as his zoom background has a Mosaic of himself

One can't help but respect the power plays for their audacity alone.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

LashLightning posted:

One can't help but respect the power plays for their audacity alone.

Meh; I've told Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos many times that if they want my respect, they better start dressing like Serpentor

ConanThe3rd
Mar 27, 2009
My one bit of bonus info is that the Voice of ZZ in Bots Master, Mark Hildreth, is also the person who voiced Hero Yui in Gundam Wing.

I just find the coincidence funny.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

The Botsmaster 2: Enter the Ninjzz

It's night, and Blitzy, Doc Wattson, Cook, and this muppet-like hand helicopter thing are in a closed grocery store, swiping food. The security can't be that bad, as Cook is actually being quite choosy about things like the cheese they are stealing. Well, I say stealing: once they have a full cart, Blitzy takes out some ZZ monogrammed stationary, writes a note to explain the theft, then pays in cash what they owe. It's only when Blitzy opens the cash register that she sets off the alarm. Blitzy runs for the door with the shopping cart, but like this was a GTA style sandbox game, approximately 12 police cars have spawned 144 police bots. When they run back inside, all the police bots open fire. Blitzy is unphased, as she called for an air evacuation, gets the domesto-bots to take the groceries to the roof, and then uses the muppet bot [called Freehand] to distract the police. The police bots meanwhile were just issued special instructions, that because "the subject is wanted by RM corp, the subject should be captured alive". Which, considering the subject is ten, you'd think would have been a flag already set?

Anyway, Freehand first blinds the police bot optics with black spraypaint, then to defeat the backup radar, takes a roll of aluminum foil, and feeds it into its own rotor. Which isn't quite real radar chaff, but is close enough.



The party escape via one of the big fighting gestalt bots Blitzy and Genisix whipped up between episode one and two. Back at the ranch, ZZ accuses Blitzy of being cavalier with this whole one man revolution thing. Kiddy, a bot permanently stuck at the age of five who I guess ZZ made for Blitzy when she was small, steals Blitzy's sandwich. Zib takes both of them to the robot foundry they apparently have at the house, and shows off two Gundam sized war machines already constructed by it. ZZ then shows responsibility by letting Kiddy and Blitzy play rock'em sock'em robots with them. (Blitzy's sandwitch is returned, but once again, Kiddie being stuck as a child is a strange choice ZZ evidently forgot about.)

MEANWHILE

At the top of the RM Corp towers, where LLP apparent has an executive office hanging with the required transparent floor, which is honestly pretty cool------



Dr Hiss shows of HIS new toy, a lion-like bot that can hunt ZZ by smell. Oh, and RM's total control of the media is busy painting Zib Zoolander as a monster (They control the TV, the news, newspapers AND magazines!) Ironically the one thing missing in this show is the internet.



Audio: Left, the dulcet tones of Lady Frenzy, right, unpleasant dentist suction sound

Meanwhile, we get to see Ninjzz, A new BOYZZ built for combat. Only problem is (apparently) programming its fighting skills. ZZ gets Da'nerd (basically a living Clippy hooked into Wikipedia) to find the identity of “the greatest Ninja warrior who ever lived.” At this point I'd really like for ZZ to discover Ninjas didn't exist, but of course they do, and the greatest warrior of them all died in 2017. [Oh, this show is set in the grim darkness of the far future 2025.]



OK, this is a good gag, when De'nerd gets scared his tv face just locks into a still of him screaming

The next day, in Dr. Hiss's stainless steel office, he joyfully informs VP Frenzy that ZZ has been detected by the lion bot, who's detection abilities are evidently much more long range than you'd think. Hiss says “It will be a lovely day!” now that ZZ can be captured or killed.

We cut to the library, where ZZ, disguised as Albert Einstein, and Da'nerd scan a hologram for DNA. {Long story short, Ninjzz is getting programmed via “holographic DNA” from the ninja warrior, who will then have that warrior's fighting ability, and possibly that warrior's tragic allergy to cold medicine, as well.} Then, Dr. Hiss and his enormous robot dog enter the library. Our heroes run for the back door, and call Trip for a pickup. Unfortunately, Trip doesn't know where ZZ is. After running into traffic to flee the Robot lion, ZZ makes the unusually smart command decision to tell De'nerd to deliver the scan back to the hideout, and to tell Blitzy what happened. ZZ is captured soon after when the robot lion explodes through a wooden fence, allowing the RM's cyberpunk goons to get ZZ into the van.

Back at the ranch, the news of ZZ's capture causes really, really shrill bot hysteria. Blitzy manages to bring the rec room to order, and loads the “DNA” into the Ninjabot. Ninjzz comes to life. Two blessed things, is that first Ninjzz has a fairly normal voice, and second, despite having been brought to life seconds ago, he takes command of the rescue, pointing to the competent Boyzz (Jammerzz and Tools, plus Trip) and two of the sports boyz. (ZZ at some point built sports playing robots. They play baseball, football, golf (!) and volleyball. They can lay their balls with ballistic force, or maybe they just get explosive balls, we'll see.)

Oh, did I mention most of the boyzz have built-in rollerblades? They have built in rollerblades.

The posse of bots break into the RM factory. The vollyball boyz distracts the gate guard 3Ms with a vollyball, and in a motion almost too fast to be animated, Ninjzz slits them up a treat with his energy katana. Meanwhile Dr. Hiss has ZZ in the palm of his hand, IE the hand of a very large bot. Lady Frenzy is trying the carrot approach: “rejoin RM and all is forgiven, plus maybe sexytime with me?” Dr. Hiss is impatient to murder ZZ. The good guys burst in, and the golf bot fires a golf ball right into the very large warbot remote Hiss is holding.



A 3d action sequence follows, where the RM 3As are knocked ten for six by the boyzz. I'd say more but the 3d scenes are basically a license to cheat action. All I can say is that Ninjzz slices the robot fist off with his light-ish sabre and the 50 ft fall to the floor doesn't injure ZZ.







Oh, and Dr. Hiss and Frenzy should be killed, but are not.

The good guys escape (why'd you smash through the roof when the hanger door was wide open, anyway?!) and Frenzy tells Hiss and his lionbot to shut up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Winner: Ninjzz. There's being precocious, and then there's organizing a successful rescue operation when you are ten minutes old.

Casualties: Zero

Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 00:37 on May 12, 2024

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

PS> I don't know what the Karate Kid series was about, but if it were this, we'd ALL know what the series was about.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

To them I say



nuts

Mighty Orbots:

One episode takes the Orbots to the urban planet, where a kaiju-in-a-box is stolen by two thieves.



Umbra dispatches an agent to find this kaiju and she has a terminator-esque robot helping her



Umbra gives her a tracking device, and of course we're going to frame it so it looks like Umbra has tiny mechanical arms:







She owns this apartment that will stomp about later this episode:



Sadly we don't get to see much of this incredible pawn shop:





It took me a second to figure this one out: this is a 1980s style promotional hologram for the circus, animated



The cosmic circus arrives on earth via space choo choo train:



Calvin and Hobbes are naturally agents of Umbra - though I think Umbra would have been embarrassed if he took over the earth "via a circus."


An example of how much design work they put in: the ringmaster flies around on this disc decorated like a genie's lamp



Another example of incredible detail work: the clouds are shown to be in a plane with themselves, and I'm not sure you'd be able to see that on a smaller 1980s TV:



House of mirriors:



Of course they fight giant alien animals, it is a circus:





The cosmic circus has a spy in the shape of a sinister clown-lizard:





Umbra: sinister sentient AT&T logo



Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 00:14 on May 27, 2024

Smik
Mar 18, 2014

Crikes it's too bad Orbots had meh writing because the animation is fantastic.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Madurai posted:

For a long time, I thought maybe I'd hallucinated this show. I mean, it was 1976, I was eight years old, and a lot has happened since then. Twenty years ago, I went looking for it, but the internet wasn't ready then. But now, like ruins of a lost civilization from which the covering sands have begun to blow away, traces have emerged.

I give to you, gentlegoons, The Kids from C.A.P.E.R:


Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Might Orbots: Space Elf Texan

Mighty Orbots has some casual star trek refrences around the edges; I now think the space elves are supposed to be Vulcanish.

Anyway, Rondu meets an old friend, who's a space elf with a mustache and a texas accent, many mysterious powers. This is him neutralizing the Mighty Orbots via mental powers:



Image analysis reveals he is in fact the doomslayer:



He is of course a bad guy in service to Umbra. Shover bots deploy!



He is defeated, Mighty orbots starts welding starfighters to Umbra's battleship. Umbra is bringing the shadow star to where the orbots are, and he sees his fleet defeated and the Orbots functioning, and runs away. It's so undignified for a moon-sized AI



In another episode, there's an ocean planet and a whale the size of long island



The whale was made by this oceanographer, because that's something oceanographers can do



Naturally the good and bad guys get swallowed by the whale



In the opposite of what filmation would do, there's a sequence where the Orbots ride the whale's bloodstream through its heart in one continuous shot



The final episode, the Orbots defeat Umbra. They do this because they think Matt is building their replacements, and they want to show they can still be useful. They get Ono to approach Matt, but in unfortunate timing, something breaks and Matt says to his Robot friends "the great thing about technology is if it breaks, you can toss it out!"



So they actually go to that dyson-sphere thing and punch a shot of the sun exploder Umbra has built right back at him. The Orbots in the end learn they were looking at plans of themselves and what Matt was doing was making cakes for their birthdays.

Not exactly being crushed by rocks

RC and Moon Pie
May 5, 2011

I've got a rarity on my hard drive. I converted some 1980s VHS tapes to DVD and it had a random episode of One Big Family.

One Big Family was Danny Thomas' last show and probably why somebody bothered recording it. So little about the show is out there that I'm not sure what episode I even have, especially since it was a summer rerun from the next year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xypp5IhMaA4

The episode's premise is that Danny Thomas' buddy performs comedy at the restaurant where one of the daughters is a waitress. The friend is a sexist creeper cad and waitresses refuse to work unless he's gone. One Big Family at least admits it's a problem, but Danny Thomas is still torn because he's a friend and that's equally important to him being a horrible person.

Here's another obscure one. Someone on YouTube uploaded what looks to be the complete Amanda's By the Sea, a Fawlty Towers knock-off starring Bea Arthur.

So much potential and yet it falls completely flat. Especially their Manuel.

HopperUK
Apr 29, 2007

Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?

Oh dang I've never heard of One Big Family before. I *had* heard of the disastrous Fawlty Towers re-attempt.

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009
Yeah, isn't that not a rip off as much as an attempt at pulling an All In The Family or Sanford & Son by officially licencing the format?

Madurai
Jun 26, 2012

Salvage I was a short-lived (1 season and change) series following on the success of a pilot made-for-TV movie, starring Andy Griffith as a junkman with a dream of building his own moon rocket, flying to the lunar surface and claiming all of NASA's abandoned Apollo Program hardware as salvage and making a fortune off of it. The movie is charming, if improbable, but the series left itself with not a lot of places to go (Moon notwithstanding). It essentially plays out like the A-Team, if the A-Team was a band of hucksters out to get rich quick and had a rocket instead of a van.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE4SePvpais

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Madurai posted:

Salvage I was a short-lived (1 season and change) series following on the success of a pilot made-for-TV movie, starring Andy Griffith as a junkman with a dream of building his own moon rocket, flying to the lunar surface and claiming all of NASA's abandoned Apollo Program hardware as salvage and making a fortune off of it. The movie is charming, if improbable, but the series left itself with not a lot of places to go (Moon notwithstanding). It essentially plays out like the A-Team, if the A-Team was a band of hucksters out to get rich quick and had a rocket instead of a van.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE4SePvpais

Nice. I came across this and was stunned. Especially as they go to the moon in the Pilot?

I mean what do you do in season 2, go to mars on the cheap

RC and Moon Pie
May 5, 2011

Madurai posted:

Salvage I was a short-lived (1 season and change) series following on the success of a pilot made-for-TV movie, starring Andy Griffith as a junkman with a dream of building his own moon rocket, flying to the lunar surface and claiming all of NASA's abandoned Apollo Program hardware as salvage and making a fortune off of it. The movie is charming, if improbable, but the series left itself with not a lot of places to go (Moon notwithstanding). It essentially plays out like the A-Team, if the A-Team was a band of hucksters out to get rich quick and had a rocket instead of a van.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE4SePvpais

I grew up on The Andy Griffith Show. I'm always amused to see something else from Griffith's career between that show and Matlock because the attempts to get a series to stick were all pretty awful. Griffith was a headmaster of a private school for a couple of series. There were two Andy Griffith Show knock-offs he did. And this.

I saw a bio of Don Knotts that mocked him doing The Love God. At least that film was intended to be a comedy.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

So I'm watching Salvage-1

Here are my notes

They get their rocket FAA certified, the head of the FAA is a schlub but also oddly accommodating, accepting the registration fee in person

The rocket is going to fly to antarctica and survey icebergs as part of a pilot project to fill up malibu pools with water from antarctic ice

Nope, spider monkeys. Since the trip is paid for already, the rocket is going to stop off at a fictional island off of Africa so Griffith can collect some spider monkeys for the zoo

The rocket takes off, the sartorial game of LAX air traffic controllers is beyond your comprehension

They fly above antarctic sea ice, confirming that there's ice down there

They land on the island

there is a sasquatch

they meet somebody who's been hermiting on this island for the past 15 years somehow

He's an American philosophy professor who in 1965 decided "communication has broken down" because of short skirts and the Beatles or something

He's spent the last fifteen years studying primates

this is his grand theory:

"Evolution is ongoing"

That's it, that's his theory

but then he breaks out a mini-piano made of wood that allows the local primates to talk to him

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

OK wait no it's worse

the bamboo mini-piano speaks the languages of all primates

so the professor can order any primate around

He plays the keyboard, it makes monkey-ish sounds

it works

the professor promises to cook them a "delicious jungle meal" and I'm sorry, that sounds gross

We cut to possibly the stupidest plot development I've ever seen

The Sasquatch (who we haven't seen to clearly thus far but is clearly a chewbacca costume) lopes out of the forest next to the rocket, and attempts to get a bananna out of a trap cage

he gets caught

in trying to free himself, he bashes the cage against the rocket, which springs an ominous leak

back at the professor, this motherfucker has electricity

the lady wants to take a bath, and this honkey is all "here's a towel and some soap"

"I make everything myself. The fuel for my generator comes out of my still. I make alcohol out of coconuts."

So Carol (likely not the correct name) goes down to the river and is touched by the sasquatch

The Sasquatch then shows up at camp

while they don't do a good job of cheating it, the show tries to imply the Sasquatch is 10-12 ft tall

we then get a scene of the prof trying to talk to the animal

eventually the Sasquatch decides "gently caress your little tiny talking piano"

He smashes up the camp, people retreat to the rocket

They discover the leak, and god, it's a good thing they didn't power this thing with red fuming nitric acid, or hydrazine or something

This has the climax of Andy Griffith fending off an angry Sasquatch with a "overdriven" flashlight

this is followed by the dude trying to fix the rocket while the Sasquatch is out there, the fuel turbopumps are losing pressure and he is literally fixing that with tape

Sasquatch nabs "Skip"

They have to leave the rocket idling otherwise they won't get it started again

Skip, on a portable radio: "I'm in some sort of-" [dramatic pause] "cave, and that creature is guarding the entrance."

Carol [real name nell, but who cares] attaches a belt buckle to her walkie talkie, allowing it to home in on Skip's signal

Andy Griffith, to Sasquatch: "Don't throw the rock! Don't throw the rock!" [Sasquatch throws rock]

The rocket has a carburetor, because it has a choke for setting a rich or lean fuel mixture



So that was something

It's like the A-team if the people writing it didn't understand anything

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

A friend of mine found Salvage-1's TV movie where they go to the moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F9vUUjvJMQ

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Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

So I've watched the Salvage 1 intro movie. A friend who's also into TV like this has reported to me the scientific literacy varies a lot by episode; sometime it's good, sometimes it's fending off Sasquatches with flashlights. And if you watch this TV movie, you get that because it for the most part feels LESS silly - even though it's just as much nonsense. It's interesting, actually - the movie is a bit slower paced, and even though ultimately just as silly, the addition of context and slowing the pace a bit still makes it less "Galliger hitting watermelons with a sledgehammer" that the first episode had."

The TV movie gets our principals together: Andy Griffith, Scrap Dealer, Skip, horny unconventional physicist (?), and Mel Slozar, rocket propellant chemist. They do indeed go to the moon, but as I said, context: it's implied scrap yards are full of Apollo castoffs (I mean, when this show was made, the last Apollo flight was Four years previous). Skip has "a method" to get to the moon an back that was "unacceptably high risk" for NASA. In a weird scene, Skip attempts to explain this, and it's still all gibberish: his plan is to go to the moon is apparently analogous to rolling at 10 km/h in a car with a standard transmission, and shifting to fourth and very slowly accelerating. Mel uses "mono-Hydrazine" to power the rocket, needing only 1000L of the stuff, which is slightly more dangerous than actual hydrazine. (A common propellant mix for rockets that must remain standing in a ready to fire position is hydrazine, or to be technical Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, or UDMH, and red fuming nitric acid, RFNA. Mono-hydrazine is fictional but at least is riffing on something real. Both real substances are great at propelling rockets and missiles, and loving terrifying in pretty much every other respect.)

The bad guy is, of course, the US government, but watching it I'm kind of on the government's side. Y'see, Griffith keeps this moon launch secret, and what's more does it from his somewhere-in-greater-LA junkyard. The feds think something is up but basically observe this guy build his own ICBM-sized missile powered by incredibly dangerous fuel. The first snag is the total lack of a guidance computer. They get around this by 1) writing their own guidence computer code (that the job of the one Black guy with a speaking role), then, they find a aerospace mainframe and hack into it, via a modem. ("Hacking" and "modem" are not terms used, but this is what happens.) So the rocket is running its guidance computer code over a radio and a modem. This gets hosed up post launch, and the Aerospace company is all "if you had asked us, we would have done it for you for free! Oh, your code? Sorry, we deleted the lot of it." Somebody pointed out to me that the scrapyard wouldn't have had a backup. If they did, it was a paper one - but that assumes they had access to a computer and its printer.

When the Junkyard tests the rocket engines, everyone at the junkyard makes noise: using an angle grinder, dropping a scrapped car with a forklift to hide the noise. When they actually launch, it's at six AM, and imaging an unannounced rocket launch in greater LA at SIX AM is hilarious. Things go wrong in the spaceflight of course, almost like a bunch of people trying to Stockton Rush their way to the moon isn't a good idea, and when the rocket returns, the FBI is alarmed that a crippled rocket with 200L of mono-hydrazine on board could fall and destroy LA. At one point the Salvage one crew uses their "liquid oxygen" to cool down their fuel, and thus run out of air, because when you warm oxygen you destroy it. So on the whole silly, but LESS silly than the first episode.

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