cult film freak: GENE RODDENBERRY 1970'S SCI-FI PILOT OF 'THE QUESTOR TAPES'

Title: THE QUESTOR TAPES Year: 1974

There are two trivia facts about another Gene Roddenberry science-fiction television pilot during the 1970's as the iconic 1960's STAR TREK was beginning its nostalgic cult climb towards yet another future...

Score: ****

First, the android named QUESTOR, played by Robert Foxworth, would extend into Roddenberry's NEXT GENERATION character, Data: right down to the cozy charm mixed with a Vulcan's strict leaning on fact and logic paired-up with Mike Ferrell, not long before replacing Wayne Rogers on MASH, as a tall and lanky straight man, worrying "his robot" could give them away with a blunt speech pattern and chicken-like head-pecking motions... The latter like Jeff Bridges in STARMAN (yet most of all, Spock)...

Well that's obviously the attempt, which leads to the second piece of trivia: unlike GENESIS II, PLANET EARTH and SPECTRE, this series was almost picked-up for a series despite the fact not much happens but a proverbial Oscar and Felix (or really, Felix and Felix) ODD COUPLE searching for the android's creator while traipsing around a casino, wherein some the best moments occur. And yet, this creative, sparse and breezy pilot opens doors for other adventures since it doesn't have a beginning, middle and end. In other words, Roddenberry's spy/science-fiction hybrid THE QUESTOR TAPES, being the most incomplete of the batch, succeeds as a would-be catapult. Throw in a few more fish out of water situations and cut back on random scenes with greedy corporate villain John Vernon (antagonistic as usual), there might've been even more reasons for this vessel to actually take episodic flight.