QUARK revisited: Goodbye, Polumbus
Plus an update on the whereabouts of a certain long-lost garbage scow
Quark was a half-hour science fiction comedy series created by Buck Henry which aired on NBC 1977-1978. I was eight years old when it aired, and thought it was the greatest thing ever. More than four decades later, I dare to ask the question, “Does it hold up?”
I’m starting this installment of “QUARK Revisited” with a bit of a side trip. Those two photos above? They’re recent images of the actual shooting model of everybody’s favorite garbage scow, shared here courtesy of Doug Drexler. Drexler is friends with John Harrington, who is a longtime property master for film and television, having worked on such productions as True Blood, From the Earth to the Moon, Inspector Gadget, Solaris, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back… you get the idea. In addition to working in the field, he’s a fan of genre productions and recently rescued the model above from a Los Angeles-area antiques store. He’s probably one of the few individuals around able to instantly recognize what it was and also know how to restore and care for this niche piece of television history. Personally, I am delighted to know the model did not end up in a dumpster somewhere over the previous four decades.
SPACE PLOTS! On Perma One, The Head gives Adam Quark a suicide mission (as usual). Quark is to investigate the planet Polumbus, where several United Galaxy missions had gone missing. Oh, and the dreaded Gorgons are reputed to be interested in the planet. Quark argues with Otto Palindrome, demanding to know why he’s the one who keeps getting suicide missions. Palindrome answers that Quark is the top commander the United Galaxy has. If that was true, Quark responds, shouldn’t he be commanding a starship rather than a garbage scow? Palindrome dismisses this argument, reasoning that starships are too obvious for missions that require subtlety.
Arriving at Polumbus, Quark, Ficus and the Bettys beam down to the surface. They greeted immediately by two men wearing silver jumpsuits and masks doing a strange interpretive dance. The Bettys join the dance enthusiastically, revealing that the two men both have Quark’s face beneath the masks. Baffled by the Bettys’ total focus on the dance, Quark has Andy beam them back onto the ship. The clones immediately convince Andy to send them back, where they take up the dance again upon their arrival.
Quark and Ficus quickly locate the missing ship commanders and scientists from the prior lost missions. They are all engaged in romantic pursuits with attractive members of the opposite sex. They have no desire to return to the United Galaxy as they have found paradise. The missing commanders credit a mysterious structure known as the Limbicon with creating the paradise, so naturally Quark and Ficus investigate. Soon, however, Quark is approached by a beautiful woman he finds strangely familiar and irresistible. They begin kissing. Ficus comes across an attractive teacher solving equations on a space-age blackboard. Ficus finds this irresistible and they begin reciting equations to each other.
Gene/Jean, monitoring from the ship, is frustrated that nobody has died on the suicide mission yet and beams down to intervene. As soon as Gene/Jean does, Kraylex warriors from the children’s super-hero story “Zoltar the Magnificent” attack. Gene/Jean is thrilled to battle these villains, and soon Zoltar the Magnificent himself joins the fight on the side of Gene/Jean and Quark. During the fight, Quark accidentally belts Gene/Jean in the jaw, knocking the Transmute out. Immediately, Zoltar and the Kraylex warriors vanish. Quark deduces something on the planet is manifesting the deepest fantasies of the United Galaxy personnel.
Following this insight, Quark realizes the woman fawning over him is Diane, a fellow cadet he had a massive crush on during his academy days. The real Diane had no interest in Quark, so he realizes this particular fantasy is a hollow one and sets out to find the Limbicon. He and fake Diane find it quickly—a black citadel surrounded by a crimson glow. Diane begs him not to destroy it, but after some waffling, Quark blows it up with his blaster. In the aftermath he seeks out Diane only to find a grey, mud-dripping woman who calls herself Lystera, queen of the Clay People. She explains that her people can shapeshift and manifest the deepest desires of intelligent beings. The Gorgons installed the Limbicon on their planet to drain all scientific knowledge from visitors, and enslaved the Clay People in order keep the United Galaxy visitors trapped. Quark has set her and her people free by destroying the Limbicon and she loves him for it, and is eager to depart with Quark back to his ship. Quark, utterly repulsed by the muddy, dripping Clay Queen, convinces her that her duty is to her people, but not before she plants a big, slobbery kiss on him.
SPACE BAGGIES! This is, obviously, a spoof of the original Star Trek episode, “Shore Leave.” It leans pretty heavily on that earlier episode—remember, Star Trek reruns are at their height of popularity at this time, spurring development of the Star Trek Phase II series—and even has The Head declare that space is the final frontier, sending another commander on a “five-day mission to seek out new civilizations.” Despite being wholly dependent on that earlier show, this is the least bad episode of Quark to date. In fact, it’s actually better than some of the worst episodes of the various Star Trek series (yes, I’m taking about Voyager’s “Threshold.” As bad as Quark has been at times, at least he and the Bettys have never turned into salamanders).
Here’s a more subtle bit o’ funny: the episode title is a nod to Goodbey, Columbus, a 1969 film starring Richard Benjamin (who plays Quark) and Ali McGraw (who, sadly, plays neither Diane nor the Queen of the Clay People). Is there a connection beyond that? Not that I can tell beyond the writers being silly with a punny title. And Polumbus isn’t even a proper pun.
Once again, testosterone-fueled raging Gene dominates the Transmute scenes, with a few seconds of stereotypical effeminite Jean thrown in as a punchline.
Here’s a deeper cut for you folks—the episode, with the complicated Limbicon/Clay People MacGuffin, reminded me very much of the Omega Men comic from DC back in the 1980s. Specifically, the Limbicon trap is exactly something the villainous Psions would set up, using the Clay People as bait. I know 99% of the people reading this will have no idea what I’m talking about, but the 1% who do will nod their heads and say, “Yes, exactly.”
SPACE JOKES! This episode continues the trend of the series being less sucky with each subsequent episode. It’s also getting funnier. It’s still not side-splitting by any means, but beggars can’t be choosers. When Quark figures out everything on the planet is a figment of their imaginations, fantasy Diane kisses him deeply. When Quark finally comes up for air, he quips, “I always did have a great imagination.” Later, Diane offers to fulfill any desire he has if only he refrains from destroying the Limbicon:
QUARK: I don’t want a love slave—I want a woman who’s my intellectual equal!
DIANE: (incredulous) You do? Remember, I’m not making this stuff up!
The fact that Gene/Jean’s deepest fantasy is to live out an adventure from a children’s story is strange. I mean, it’s amusing and silly, but raises a whole heck of a lot of questions. If Jean had been the dominant personality at the time would they all have been doing needlepoint? And the Bettys’ dance is more along the lines of a cheerleader high-kick routine. Funny, but I’m not sure intentionally funny in that way. And Ficus getting the fantasy schoolmarm hot and bothered with equations—”I haven’t even gotten to Calculus yet”—was another amusing example of how the Vegeton is the best-written character on the show.
Another amusing subplot involved Andy the Robot’s inept attempts to romance Mandy the Robot long-distance back on Perma One. Mandy, it seems, is jealous of Andy spending so much time with the Bettys, and Andy digs his own grave by way of Freudian slip by accidentally calling Mandy “Betty.” The editing here is choppy and undermines the humor, but again, the end result is amusing.
Quark’s abrupt revulsion at the Clay Queen would’ve been more convincing had it not been obvious an attractive woman was playing her. Even so, the unwanted muddy kiss was a nice capstone to the episode.
I had never seen this episode before, and was pleasantly surprised. It exceeded my admittedly low expectations. Had this episode been the pilot and the series progressed from that baseline, we might be discussing a long-running comedy landmark today. However, this is the fifth episode of a show that only lasted eight, so even if the final three installments are comedy gold, we know it was too little, too late.
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QUARK revisited: All the Emperor’s Quasi-Norms, part 1
QUARK revisited: The Good, the Bad and the Ficus
QUARK revisited: The Old and the Beautiful