Nunderwater Lair

I did this also, recording episodes of the original Muppet Show. I'd make my family watch the show in silence as I didn't want them to ruin my recordings. That I grew up to become a Location Sound Mixer... total coincidence. ;-) You made recordings of Battlestar Galactica? Great idea.

Hi guys, I hate to copy/paste something straight out of wikipedia, but as I listened to the episode, I remembered reading about how the the movie was heavily inspired by a Jack Kirby comic book, "The New Gods" just as much as the original He-man cartoon. I know I still have the original article buried in a closet here somewhere, but wikipedia has the essentials, including confirmation from the film's director. This "New Gods" inspiration is responsible for the portals and the flying disc that He-man rides on, among other things. Additionally, Skeletor is "in reality" He-man's uncle (according to the old cartoon), so there are shades of Star Wars and again, New Gods. (Orion, the hero of New Gods is revealed to be the son of the big baddie, Darkseid; Skeletor's parallel character) Copy/paste from wikipedia: Jack Kirby inspiration Comic book writer/artist John Byrne compared the film to Jack Kirby's comic book metaseries Fourth World, stating in Comic Shop News #497: “ "The best New Gods movie, IMHO, is Masters of the Universe. I even corresponded with the director, who told me this was his intent, and that he had tried to get [Jack] Kirby to do the production designs, but the studio nixed it. "Check it out. It requires some bending and an occasional sex change (Metron becomes an ugly dwarf, The Highfather becomes the Sorceress), but it's an amazingly close analog, otherwise. And Frank Langella's Skeletor is a dandy Darkseid!" ” Director Gary Goddard clarified this in a letter appearing in John Byrne's Next Men #26, in which he stated: “ "As the director of Masters of the Universe, it was a pleasure to see that someone got it. Your comparison of the film to Kirby’s New Gods was not far off. In fact, the storyline was greatly inspired by the classic Fantastic Four/Doctor Doom epics, The New Gods and a bit of Thor thrown in here and there. I intended the film to be a "motion picture comic book," though it was a tough proposition to sell to the studio at the time. 'Comics are just for kids,' they thought. They would not allow me to hire Jack Kirby who I desperately wanted to be the conceptual artist for the picture… "I grew up with Kirby's comics (I’ve still got all my Marvels from the first issue of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through the time Kirby left) and I had great pleasure meeting him when he first moved to California. Since that time I enjoyed the friendship of Jack and Roz and was lucky enough to spend many hours with Jack, hearing how he created this character and that one, why a villain has to be even more powerful than a hero, and on and on. Jack was a great communicator, and listening to him was always an education. You might be interested to know that I tried to dedicate Masters of Universe to Jack Kirby in the closing credits, but the studio took the credit out."

If HDTGM ever does the Postman, they can get easily get David Brin, the book's author, to participate. I have heard him rip the movie on other podcasts already. I remember him as being a little long-winded, but pretty affable. I think he'd be up for it.

If you buy Zardoz off iTunes (never bought a movie there before) does it come with the director's commentary? Here's something a little wacky: Zardoz miniatures. These are unlicensed and done as a joke, basically. Unfortunately, the Sean Connery/Zed figure is sold out. http://www.thewarstore.com/TheWarStoreMiniatures.html (the first 2 shown are non-Zardoz, just scroll down)