Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Despite the attention lavished on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, and even Star Trek or the Alien universe, I feel like the science fiction franchise most consistent in quality is the Planet of the Apes. Sure, it's not without its duds (Burton's film) and lesser lights (the last original film, the cartoon, perhaps), but the Wyatt/Reeves reboot?/prequel? series of the 2010s defied sequel gravity and only got better as it went along. (To me, anyway. Some would say Dawn was the high point. Either way, War was still good.)

When Reeves left and Disney acquired Fox, I had some trepidation about where the series would go. Happily, it seems like Wes Ball has things well enough in hand, at least with this first installment. While it's not as good as the best of the 2010s series, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was more enjoyable and more substantial than any other existing-franchise entry I've seen in the theater since the end of the pandemic--though perhaps that's damning with faint praise.

Anyway, it's "many generations" after the time of Caesar. He has become a mythic/religious figure. His name is borrowed. and his legacy evoked by an up-and-coming bonobo tyrant who (like King Louie in the Jungle Book) wants the technology of humankind. He needs (ape) slave labor to get it at it and a mysterious, young human woman, so when he captures Noa's village and kills his father, the young chimpanzee makes common cause with the human. 

There are hints of Beneath of the Planet of the Apes in here, and (perhaps unintentional, perhaps not) Biblical echoes with a hero named "Noa," but those are as they should be with an ape installment. The special effects are amazing, and it makes me mad the Marvel Cinematic Universe films often seem sloppy. I guess when your whole premise requires motion capture, you have to get that thing right.

I miss Andy Serkis here like everybody else, but he trained the new cast of apes well. It probably could have been a bit shorter, particularly for a film that is a lot about establishing a new conflict, but I'm not immediately sure what I would have cut.

All that to say, if you liked the previous ape films you should see this one. If you haven't seen any of the new apes films (which lately I've discovered a large group of folks that haven't) then you should see those and see this one.

You can also check out the watch and commentary Jason "Operation Unfathomable" Sholtis and I did of the much less good but still entertaining 70s Planet of the Apes TV show.

Back to the Planet of the Apes: The Wrap Up

Trey: Well, we've finished our watching of the first and only season of the Planet of the Apes TV show from 1974. I feel like if it had somehow made it into weekday evening or Saturday afternoon syndication in the early '80s, I would have appreciated it as a welcome bit of the fantastic amid episodes of Big Valley, Sanford & Son, or The Andy Griffith Show that would have been on in my home, but not generally of my choice. Its ape designs and makeup, really just carrying for the film designs, are impressive for the small screen, and it's got a fair amount of action.

However, as an adult, viewing it as a science fiction show and as a part of the ape franchise, I feel like it doesn't really succeed. While it does deal with the themes of prejudice and hatred that pervade the films, it does so in a very shallow way--an approach necessitated, perhaps, by the need to give everything episode a pat and fairly upbeat ending. You could have had those things, perhaps, and done something better by giving the astronauts a goal that would make their isolated battles against ape oppression more meaningful and provide direction that might have made the scripts more consistent. Even though they dangled potential threads, they never followed up on them. The astronauts keep moving as if they are looking for something, but the second half of the series gives no indication of what that might be.

Even as is, the approach could have worked better if perhaps the aimless wondering led to dramatic tension among the heroes. We are given a few half-hearted references to Burke and Virdon not being 100% on the same page regarding their goals, but it never becomes a source of dramatic conflict.

Or perhaps the easiest way to make it better would have been to up the fantastic content. That is what the Ape films first went to, and where the comics went, so there's precedent. Some writers who wrote for Star Trek showed up here, and I'm sure they could have gotten more.

Jason: I came to this series fresh, having only seen the original film in its entirety, but forewarned by its early cancellation and the few lukewarm-at-best reviews I had seen, adjusted my expectations to their lowest settings. With this measure in place, I was pleasantly surprised by the watchability of the series. Had I not been involved in this review series, I doubt that I would have made it through all fourteen episodes, but that has as much to do with my own dwindling consumption of episodic television in general as with the overall quality of this show.

I enjoyed many aspects of the production, especially the many fine performances of the cast and guest stars, who managed to wring out the maximum amount of drama possible from the mixed bags of scripts they were provided. The fever-dream allegory of a human oppression in a world of ape supremacy is golden and almost enough to sustain interest in and of itself. 

The tension between a dark, gritty dystopian setting and what the producers hoped would be a show attractive to both children and adults, proved to be a tall order from the various screenwriters who took a crack at the show. This, coupled with the static circumstances of the protagonists meant that the astronaut-led revolution I pined for throughout my viewing experience would never happen. Continuity was out the window after the first episode and you could count on our heroes hiding behind shrubbery at the beginning of most episodes, and fleeing from whatever took place at the end. 

So, ultimately, I must agree with your assessment. It could've been great, but it just wasn't in the cards.

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 14 "Up Above the World So High"

 "Up Above the World So High"
Airdate: December 20, 1974

Written by Shimon Wincelberg
Directed by John Meredyth Lucas
Synopsis: Virdon, Burke and Galen help an eccentric human inventor, Leuric, to build a hang glider, but things get more complicated when he is captured by the apes and a scheming chimpanzee scientist, Carsia, plans to use the completed glider in a coup against the Ape Council.

Trey: Here we are, the final episode!

Jason: It's all over but the cobbled together TV movie repeats to come.

Trey: This episode comes with a stronger science fiction pedigree than most. It was directed by John Meredyth Lucas who directed 3 episodes of Star Trek among other genre shows and wrote 4 episodes, and its script is by Shimon Wincelberg who wrote 7 episodes of Lost in Space, 2 episodes of Star Trek, 2 of Wild Wild West, and 1 of Logan's Run, among others.

Jason: Well, the pedigree is there, but is it SF? I'll say that there is some speculative content present, mostly by implication and of the "soft science" cultural variety. The ape society gains a new wrinkle or two of complexity. 

Trey: Yes, we see chimpanzee sedition! More on that in a moment, but first, this episode is a kind of humorous note to end the series on. Not that the show has been devoid of humor, but this one plays more toward humor than most--certainly more than the last two. 

Jason: The tongue seems to be slightly in cheek this time around, but only slightly. I think this episode stands as a solid example of what made the network execs pull the plug -- a show with seriously adult themes but written with an all-ages audience in mind, essentially at cross purposes with itself. 

Trey: Well, I'm not sure. I feel like somewhat humorous episodes are a classic TV staple, but I would agree it works against the typical themes of the franchise. It is quite possible fans don't tune in for "lighthearted romps" without strong messages.

Anyway, again the Renaissance nature of the late 20th Century astronaut is in evidence! At least this time the skill they are displaying is aviation related.

Jason: It was no stretch this time, and Virdon seems like the kind of guy to have subscribed to Hang Glider Magazine in the years prior to his ill-fated 1980 space mission. 

Trey: Back to chimp sedition, I'm trying not to think the show has a sexist view of ambitious women, but two out of three of the driven, career-minded female apes we've seen (and female chimpanzees are the only female apes we get in the series!) are kind of sociopaths! And 100% of the ones that seem to have political ambition are.

Jason: I don't want to do the math on all the male apes presented as sociopaths, but they appear plentiful. What we definitely don't have is a representative sample. Galen's mom was cool, but for the most part, female apes are invisible. We never see a single example of a female gorilla or orangutan, so far as I recall. That said, ape society is definitely a highly stratified retrograde patriarchy and this is the first episode to address intra-ape resentments and prejudices. 

Is Carsia the most openly and wildly evil of the many villainous apes we've seen in the series? 

Trey: Well, probably not, but the only other female chimpanzee related to the Ape Council (Wanda in "The Interrogation") is similarly callous and career-minded. Compare them to the more benign chimpanzee Prefects our heroes have run across. For all his credit-hogging the chimp doctor in the "The Cure" is less evil.

For all Carsia's scheming though, she gives up really easily. I mean, the crashed glider was right there in the water. She could have tried to salvage it. At least attempt to reverse engineer it. But nope, time to move on.

Jason: The ape mind is a curious thing -- mercurial even among dedicated apes of science. Is "Monkey see, monkey do" merely a horrible piece of specist hate speech or does it have a grain of truth? Don't make me bring up the "Problem of the Use of Nets!"

 

Virdon and Burke seem confident enough of such an outcome to slip off unconcerned about any further ramifications.

Trey: For the record, I've never made you bring up nets. Maybe Galen sussed out she had an utter inability to adapt? Otherwise it seems like they should be concerned about all the bombs she has!

Jason: Galen really had to work hard to ignore the many red flags she hoisted during their semi-intimate encounters. He was like putty in her hands right up until the moment he realized the majority of her luggage was composed of cluster bombs.

Trey: Anyway, it was an enjoyable episode enlivened by good performances from the guest cast, though perhaps slightly sillier than most, but only slightly. It might have been better earlier, though. One might have hoped for Urko playing a bigger role in a final episode!

Jason: Urko gets enough screen time to spew his typical "kill 'em all and let the ape gods sort 'em out" attitudes, so as a fan of his over-the-top villainy, I'm at least placated.

I liked the episode as well, despite some of the TV clunkiness one must expect from fare of this kind. The final shot of our heroes floating off to extremely temporary freedom almost feels like a kind of ending to the series.  

Trey: All right, well, I'll give you a week to collect your thoughts and mull it over, and we'll deliver our final thoughts on the series.

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 13 "The Liberator"

 "The Tyrant"
Airdate: December 6, 1974

Written by Howard Dimmsdale
Directed by Arnold Laven
Synopsis: Helping a human being pursued by apes, leads to Virdon, Burke, and Galen being captured by a fatalistic, religious human community that provides human slaves to work in the apes' mines. Virdon and Burke's survival is dependent on convincing their captors to rebel against the apes.

Jason: At last, I dared hope, in this penultimate episode we'd see some human beings with self-respect, rising up to reclaim their freedom from the oppressor ape! What I got was a lot weirder and darker than that. That darkness, or at least the themes most uncomfortably close to real world troubles of the time, likely prevented "The Liberator" from airing in most or all markets during the original run. 

Trey: Yes, it's interesting, at time it was seen perhaps as referencing the Vietnam war. Certainly, it has "peace above all" message. It's also perhaps naive in its anti-war message, but then that would be par for the course of TV in the era.

Jason: Still, there's a lot to love! The cynical use of religion as a means of control is in play. We see blind obedience to the law from both humans and apes - rule of law is great as long as the laws don't suck!

Also, Weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of a Scooby-Doo villain!

Trey: I would disagree with that a bit. I think we see true believers with regard to religion. True, Brun true goals are not revealed to his flock in the village, so I guess in that sense its cynical, but he still thinks he's doing the same god's plan. As an aside, this is really the first time with see the humans actively aiding ape oppression, but it's all a means to an end for Brun and his ancestors.

 His execution of his revenge against the apes...well, yes, that's a bit half-baked, no argument.

Jason: Once again human beings make the case for the ape supremacists! Given the option, human leaders are inclined to press the big red button and destroy everything. There is hope of redemption at the end, unless the Meadow people have something else in mind. 

Also, more so than in previous episodes, these people are depicted as deeply credulous boneheads. Their dialogue was more stilted and simplistic than ever, especially poor Talia, who seems like she can barely string together 3 or 4 words at a time. 

Trey: Yeah, they are definitely heavily indoctrinated, more so than even the fisher folk in "Tomorrow's Tide." It is almost sort of a dramatization of "religion is the opiate of the masses."

Jason: I picked up some heavy Star Trek vibes this time out, with the astronauts unconstrained by any kind of Prime Directive. Sufficiently motivated, these Burke and Virdon will act decisively to dismantle your culture before excusing themselves and hitting the road, never to return!

Trey: There's definitely that! At first blush it seems more in service of the needs of the mass medium and serial programming that Burke and Virdon are unwilling to take this new weapon and lead a race war against their ape oppressors. On the other hand, I think it can be explained from a character perspective. These astronauts have discovered that warfare destroyed their civilization. They also have come from a time (being young adults in 1980) where they had seen a lot of rapid advancement in civil rights after a hard-fought but mostly nonviolent movement. It's plausible that they would feel violence isn't the answer. Well, apparently only large-scale violence with weapons of mass destruction, as they still encourage the villagers to resist. I don't think the plot arose from examination of their characters, but I do think you can explain it that way.

Jason: Well, I'm prepared to render my verdict: One of the better episodes, only disappointing in that it had the potential to be a great one. 

Trey: Agreed.

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 12 "The Cure"

 "The Tyrant"
Airdate: November 22, 1974

Written by Walter Black
Directed by Ralph Senensky
Synopsis: When a human village is quarantined due to a malaria outbreak, a disease ape science doesn't understand, Virdon and Burke race to concoct a cure and convince a skeptical ape doctor to use it. If they don't succeed, Urko will implement his own version of infection control by burning the village to the ground with everyone in it.

Jason: Well, this episode bummed me out. I don't think it was particularly bad, especially in the context of the series as a whole, but after what we both thought was a particularly good episode, "The Cure" seemed to me perhaps worse than it actually was.

Trey: I can see that. I found it merely middling. This episode was written by Edward Lasko who also wrote "The Trap." It's inferior to that episode, I think, but still shows good craft. Malaria creates a credible and genuine danger and it's a logical place for "knowledge of the past" to be legitimately helpful, but it continues the trend mostly of endings just being a bit too pat, and the apes too neatly separated into "good" and "bad." What these sorts of episodes remind me most of are Westerns of the era that want to acknowledge mistreatment of Indians while being very careful to put the blame only on a few bad actors.

But we got to our summations early! Let's get into the details.

Jason: I know, highly irregular, but I had to get that off my chest! Sondra Locke guest stars in this episode, looking her youngest and most innocent. I was hoping against hope her character would escape from the trauma and misery that would become her stock and trade in future collaborations with Clint Eastwood, but alas! 

Trey: Nope. Jilted here by an as-tro-naut after a bout with malaria.

Jason: How about that mosquito SFX?

Trey: Gilligan's Island level! But I guess we can't expect much more from 70s TV.

Jason: It's now established canon that Virdon can do anything. But did this one seem like more of a stretch than usual, or was brewing quinine part of standard ss-tro-naut training? I don't remember seeing this information in the Boy Scout Handbook.

Trey: I've got a theory for that. Obviously astronauts of the future--well, past for us--in this alternate history are given comprehensive training much like the elite scout protagonist, Adam Reith, of Jack Vance's "Planet of Adventure" series. 

But that theory aside, at the very least they could have kept the unexpected skills consistent. Previously, Virdon was the farmboy with animal handling skills and Burke had the medical knowledge.

Jason: I enjoyed getting a bit more of Zaius and the ape council this episode, weighing in on the fate of the unfortunate village. It will come as no surprise that Urko served up some of my favorite lines advocating for a scorched earth approach to the problem. 

Trey: Urko's the kind of leader you can believe in! In a political context one wonders why Zaius doesn't maneuver Urko out. Maybe he feels all the alternatives are worse?

Jason: Maybe! Or maybe it serves Zaius' purposes to let Urko squander his reputation by mishandling everything. I don't know if they have some kind of 'no confidence' provision in the Ape High Council, but it's time to invoke it!

So, in these post-pandemic times, did you find any entertaining parallels in this episode? 

Trey: I can't think of any direct parallels, but I liked the realism of the ape researcher viewing this crisis as an opportunity to increase his prestige. Also, in their only nod toward a systemic view of anti-human prejudice, he seems to bare the astronauts no personal animus, but he's going to turn them over to Zaius because "that's his duty" which really seems to be a cover for "because that's least like to get me in trouble."

Jason: Okay, maybe I dislike it less in retrospect, but I'll say the middling ones are less fun than the spectacularly bad ones (I'm looking straight at you, Stock Footage Shark). 

Trey: In the next episode religion again rears its head, and we finally see a human with a plan of resistance. We'll see how that turns out!

Jason: I've been waiting for this! Human dignity must triumph! Right? Right?

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 11 "The Tyrant"

 "The Tyrant"
Airdate: November 22, 1974

Written by Walter Black
Directed by Ralph Senensky
Synopsis: To foil the plans of a tyrannical and corrupt gorilla leader, who is trying to overthrow the chimpanzee prefect and gain control over a human farming district, Galen, Virdon and Burke risk making common cause with Urko.

Trey: I would almost say this is the best episode we've seen so far. 

Jason: We are in full agreement--including the "almost" qualifier.

Trey: It may still be, but the ending winds up being a bit rushed, I think compared to the first half.

Jason: Agreed. The climactic scene (which is also the final scene, our heroes have no time for a denouement and skedaddle abruptly), comes perilously close to descending into farce, a stark contrast to all that preceded it. I thought the episode took the series back to a tone of seriousness, with nary a wink or a nod to be found, and for the most part succeeds.  

Trey: We have, as the guest heavy, Percy Rodriques (known from numerous classic tv shows, including Star Trek and Wild Wild West) as Aboro, a corrupt gorilla commander with ambition. An ambition that allows him to be entrapped into agreeing to kill his old "academy pal" Urko by the wily astronauts and Galen.

Jason: Rodriques stands as one of the few guest stars to not only give a very fine performance, elevating the material with his presence and gravitas, but also to wring the maximum expressiveness out of his gorilla makeup. 

Only McDowall surpasses him in this esoteric category, but Roddy's had a lot of practice.

Trey: I agree. He has a great knowing leer with the prosthetics.

Jason: McDowall rises to the occasion, here, and the script offers him more opportunity to flex his considerable chops. Galen has gone undercover on several previous occasions, but never like this! McDowall's impersonation of Octavio is a master class in visual characterization for makeup-clad ape actors. But the whole ensemble performs at the top of their game. 

Trey: This one has a lot of action--and serious action. Is this the first on-screen murder of a human by apes since the pilot?

Jason: I think you're right. They've definitely served up numerous head wounds and casual threats of death, but rarely delivered on-camera. I kept anticipating the prone farmer would prove to be merely wounded, but not this time. Fights were frantic, brutal, and shot well. Hand-held camera wildness worked well in these moments. 

Trey: Exactly! It could be my imagination but this one seems more cinematically shot than previous episodes. More interesting angles are chosen by the director.

Jason: Every element of this episode seemed to be of higher-than-average quality.

Trey: Also, this is definitely the first time we've seen apes make a bomb!

Jason: That bomb comes perilously close to becoming a prop in a Warner Brothers cartoon. It's still a fun gambit, but rushed, as you say.

Trey: It called to mine mine Adam West's Batman's frantic attempts to get rid of a cartoonish bomb in the 1966 movie. 

We should note that Urko apparently abhors corruption among his officers, but possibly cheated on exams and definitely cheats at horse racing.

Jason: We have a lot of contradictory evidence on the ape concept of integrity. It remains poorly understood! Urko himself is some kind of narcissistic maniac, holding others to standards he never intends to uphold himself. 

I wish we could have seen the promised-but-never-delivered chat between old school chums Urko and Aboro. 

Trey: For 70s mass audience TV consumption, the series really leans into compartmentalizing the ape oppression. So much of it is down to "bad apples." The errors are corrected and/or the villains punished, so humans in a given area are left in a somewhat more benign ape servitude, and Burke and Virdon travel on. Never is the broader issue addressed or revolution as a goal suggested.

Jason: One would hope that the producers might have introduced such elements down the road, had the series persisted. The episodes we've watched so far don't suggest a broad plan, or even a consistent series 'bible'. Episodes vary wildly in tone, approach, and casually contradict each other in matters of worldbuilding. I understand that sequential stories were off the table, with no guarantee of episode order being honored in syndication, but the show seems needlessly incoherent in some pretty basic areas. I've had fun coming to my own conclusions about say, ape psychology, based on evidence presented, but this is far from ideal! That said, I really liked this episode and it's return to  more serious drama. Sadly, it can only hint at what might have been. 

Happy Independence Day!

 

Like any patriotic ape, we're out celebrating the historic day, documented in the Sacred Scrolls, where Aldo spoke a word which had been spoken to him time without number by humans and said, "No!"

A review of episode 10 of the TV series will be up later this week. Stay tuned!

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 10 "The Interrogation"

 "The Interrogation"
Airdate: November 15, 1974

Written by Richard Collins
Directed by Alf Kjellin
Synopsis: Burke is captured by Urko's soldiers and Zaius allows an ape scientist who has been studying ancient human brainwashing techniques to experiment on him. If she should fail, however, Urko plans to kill the astronaut. Galen and Virdon race against time to save their friend, but to do so requires the help of Galen's estranged parents.

Trey: This episode seems to me the most "1970s" of the episodes we've seen. I don't mean "1970s TV," but something that sort of plays to concerns of the time. "Brainwashing" in this case.

Jason: With cancelation looming, i almost wish they would gone in heavy with other prominent 70s tropes. Might as well throw in UFOs, Bigfoot, and "split personalities" at this point. 

Trey: A bigfoot episode would have been awesome.

Jason: What might have been! 

Trey: Regarding brainwashing, it's a rare strictly comedic moment for this show when Wanda has to explain to an incredulous Urko that brainwashing does not in fact require the removal of the brain from the skull.

Jason: Urko has been reading Gorilla of Fortune magazine instead of keeping up with scientific journals.  Call me an Urko fanboy if you must, but he's always a highlight. My favorite moment came when he intervened in Wanda's enhanced interrogation to gratuitously slap Burke around a bit. "I'm just trying to help!" 

I can't fault him for taking out some of his colossal frustration on one of the humans who has made a fool of him again and again!

The tone of this episode feels like it's skewed into open silliness. The last time I got this sense was when the stock footage shark menaced the spear fishing operation a few episodes back. Speaking of which, I noted the use of net technology in Burke's capture. They've got nets but must lack the imagination to employ them for anything other than human suppression. 

Trey: You are obsessed with those nets! Anyway, in another call back, We also get references to the lobotomy treatment given to Landon in the 1968 film. 

Jason: "Removal of the Front Bump," as the procedure is known amongst the apes. The crude diagram of the human brain they reference lets us know just how far along they are in their understanding. 

Trey: Zaius seems much more cavalier sharing ancient human knowledge in this episode. Before he basically felt like no one should see it, now he's okaying its experimental use.

Jason: It's as if they're all coming a bit unglued as the astronauts whittle away at their cherished beliefs. Urko keeps it real - lobotomize or destroy all as-tro-nauts!

Trey: It's interesting to meet Galen's parents, who must, despite their love, be so disappointed since he threw away a chance to be Zaius' right-hand ape to become a radical and fugitive. Since this is TV, though, they have to support him despite their disagreements.

Jason: The fact that Galen's dad is able to hold on to elected office with a fugitive son running around says something about the state of ape politics, but I don't know what. Galen's garden conversation with his dad was so mature and reasonable it makes a decent case for ape supremacy.

Trey: Could this be TV's first interspecies kiss? (Well, guess technically Star Trek has a bunch of them, but everyone involved looks human.)

Jason: I haven't checked, but Lassie or Rin Tin Tin might hold the record. Maybe that robot in Lost in Space got a friendly peck on his metal cheek? Anyhow, Wanda, our first truly diabolical female ape villain, seemed pretty swept up in the moment. 

This episode is perhaps the zaniest so far, with moments of wild slapstick as in the hospital fight scene (which was dangerously close to Three Stooges territory!), mind-bending torture sequences, and over-the-top villainy from Urko and Wanda. Bonus points awarded for dynamic violence and stunts: when the gorilla apprehends Burke using a double-fisted ape smash, Burke stays clobbered. Also, when Virdon and Galen both fling themselves gracefully through a small window to escape pursuit--a Batman moment...Well, I wasn't bored!

What's your verdict?

Trey: I liked this one. The best way I can describe it is "over the top"--and that's saying something in a show about a future world being run by talking apes! It veers from comedic to some of the grittiest peril we've gotten in the show, but it always keeps the presentation as "lurid."

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 9 "The Horse Race"

 "The Horse Race"
Airdate: November 8, 1974

Written by David P. Lewis & Brooker Bradshaw
Directed by Jack Starett
Synopsis: To save a condemned boy, Virdon agrees to ride Prefect Barlow's horse in a race against Urko's best horse. Urko has never lost a race, but of course, as our heroes discover, Urko doesn't play fair. 

Trey: You asked for it and you got it: John Hoyt is back as Prefect Barlow. And he's still an ape with very little concern for the value of human life. More than your average gorilla, true, but not much.

Jason: Did I? In any case, Hoyt delivers! His Barlow is a likeable jerk, willing to go pretty far into morally nebulous territory if it further his own ends. I feel like Hoyt's characterization hits just the right note - he knows deep down that humans are just as sentient as apes, but it serves his aims to continue to dominate them, so he kids himself. 

Trey: The blacksmith, Martin, here is played by craggy-faced character actor Morgan Woodward who is probably most iconically the mirrorshade-wearing symbol of oppression in Cool Hand Luke, but also is also in two episodes of Star Trek, mostly memorably as the antagonist in "The Omega Glory."

Jason: I remember him well and he gives a decent performance here. The script requires him to make a rather abrupt turn, but that's not Woodward's fault. 

Trey: Yes, he seems a bit too trusting in ape benevolence given he's a man that spent his life under their thumb, but I guess he's desperate to save his son.

This episode also shows a dishonest side of Urko we haven't seen before. It's not a break with his previous character necessarily, but it's a new facet.

Jason: Urko is a jackbooted authoritarian speciest, sure, but yeah, this episode seems to erode ape integrity at every turn. Urko gets in some great one-liners and death threats out of it. Mark Lenard's delivery of the line "I love racing!" is a classic moment of ape absurdity. 

Trey: I like this one. It's straight forward but moves along well and has a lot of good action. Urko is beginning to get a bit of a Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane vibe with them Astronaut boys always just one step ahead!

Jason: Burke and Virdon are the original Beau and Luke? I enjoyed it as well. Just as I finally begin to acclimate to this version of the eponymous Planet, we're starting to run out of episodes!

Trey: True, but we've still got a few to go. And the next one sees Burke renditioned and put through some harsh interrogation techniques!

Back to the Planet of the Apes: Episodes That Never Were

This week, Jason and I are taking a break from our reviews to present to you our pitches for further episodes of this series: our speculation as to what might have been if it had gone into multiple seasons...

"No Place Like Home": Burke wakes up in a futuristic house he shares with a woman claiming to be his girlfriend --with no memory of how he got there. Could he really be home? The truth is, while he and his friends were exploring an ancient city, he fell into a model "home of the future" run by a still-functioning computer. A computer desperate for company!

"Urko's Struggle": After an attempt at capturing the astronauts goes awry, Urko is taken hostage. Suffering from a head injury, he goes in and out of consciousness, and we are treated to a series of flashbacks to pivotal points in his early life: an abusive father, limited economic opportunity, and the he-ape toxicity in gorilla culture. Urko's mutterings on these topics provokes Virdon to confront the Security Chief in a fiery, climactic speech: "Don't you see, Urko? Your hate is fueled by trauma after trauma! Inside you're just a scared little gorilla, lashing out at human beings in place of your own failure!" Urko seems moved-- perhaps changed, but it is a ruse, and he escapes, vowing eternal vengeance.

"The Legend": In a Halloween episode, Burke, Virdon, and Galen introduce the Headless Horseman to a rural district to help a young chimpanzee sympathetic to humans prove his courage and win back the post of Prefect.

"Into The Forbidden Zone": Burke, Virdon, and Galen meet a chimpanzee trader returning from an expedition into the forbidden southern regions, his wagon loaded with technological items harvested from a city of the ancients. Grateful for their knowledge the trader invites them to join him. En route, the group are stalked by a giant, mutant gila monster. Trapped in the ruins of a military base, they have no choice but to detonate the surviving munitions in a desperate bid to kill the creature, destroying all they hoped to gain in the process. 

"The Romantic": Burke and Galen are forced to play Cyrano for a lovelorn, young chimpanzee to get his help in freeing Virdon from the gorilla soldiers before Urko arrives.

"We The People": Inspired by the discovery of an ancient book on the founding of the nation, Burke becomes an obsessed evangelist. He seeds a human village with revolutionary dogmas quickly radicalized local humans. Virdon and Galen, fearing for Burke's mental health and terrible consequences, attempt to intervene, but it is too late, the villagers have captured a gorilla wagon full of arms. They escape with Burke after Urko exacts a brutal crackdown on the village in a bloody battle, and can do nothing more than watch as the forces now unleashed play out.

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 8 "The Deception"

 "The Deception"
Airdate: November 1, 1974

Written by Anthony Lawrence
Directed by Don McDougall
Synopsis: Galen, Virdon and Burke befriend a chimpanzee named Fauna, the blind daughter of an ape supposedly killed by humans. Unaware that Burke is human, Fauna falls in love with him, as Galen and Virdon hunt down the masked Dragoons, a band of anti-human vigilantes on a campaign of intimidation, only to discover that Fauna's uncle is one of them.

Trey: There is a lot I like about this episode but also some things that I am less fond of.

Jason: We start out in total agreement! 

Trey: The central story with the Dragoons and various factions of apes being shown is interesting. We've got pro-human apes, violent anti-human apes, and by-the-book apes who are quite prejudiced against humans, but also by the book. It's all very metaphorical for the U.S. and race relations of the era, or perhaps a decade before. 

Jason: Ham-fisted stuff, but its heart is in the right place. Does this kind of allegorical treatment of such serious subject matter stand the test of time? Was it even up to speed with its own times? 

Trey: I do like how it sort of mocks the Klan stand-in Dragoons when Galen infiltrates them, but portraying them kind of as wannabe apes of resolve, that are to a degree kind of cosplaying a militia. Not that it isn't serious enough for the humans getting harassed, but their main power isn't so much in their actions, but the fact that they have societal support and cover.

Jason: It's hard to tell just how intentional some of these elements were, but yes, those hateful apes come across as a ludicrous, if still lethal, force. My impression was that POTA apes, despite sincere efforts made, simply can't match human beings when it comes to cruelty. While an ape might not think twice about shooting of a human being for any reason, they treat each other better than humans do. As odious as human oppression is as depicted in the series, the conditions beat the treatment of apes in our world (especially at the time) by a country mile.

Tangentially, I couldn't help but think of the cast and extras - I hope they got to skip ape makeup on Dragoon shooting days. 

Trey: We can hope! Fauna's story is a bit of classic TV stock, but I think it's made a bit more interesting in this story of prejudice, because her disability suggests a degree o3f disenfranchisement that ought to make her a natural ally of humans, but in a refreshingly realistic turn, she isn't.

Jason: Fauna's vengeful anti-human bias rang true, as you say. The Little House on the Planet of the Apes vibes returned with a vengeance in this subplot. The fact that human voices are indistinguishable from those of apes sent me reeling for a moment until I regained my senses and remembered this is less science fiction than parable. 

Trey: A point you made while watching the episode: Virdon's fight with the soldier is one of the grittiest we've gotten. 

Jason: t was brutal! The stunt work in this show has been pretty solid. Like Burke's one-on-one match with Orko in episode 3, superior ape-strength comes into play, which I appreciate for no good reason. Virdon had to work hard and sustain plenty of damage to survive the encounter. Outside of anti-human hate crimes, this was the only action sequence this episode, and it was fun watching Virdon pursue and assault his quarry in full action hero mode for a change. 

Roddy McDowell delivers a fine bit of espionage himself, all accomplished with his wit and charm. His Galen impersonates an unenlightened supremacist a little too well!

Trey: To circle back to your question about its success as an allegory of serious social issues a bit, what I didn't like was that it resolves too easily as all the blame is on "a few bad apples." In fact, the bad apples repent their ways when it seems like they may be siding with a guy that hurt other apes.

Jason: Apes are just better people! When their folly is made plain, they repent, or at least change course. No defensive doubling down or retreat into denial! All that wishful thinking aside, as depicted, this reversal was both abrupt and artless!

Trey: But if apes are just better people, well, we're perhaps in the arena of vaguely utopian (!) science fiction, and not allegory?

Jason: Seems like we're dancing haphazardly around both camps. TV entertainment is the prime directive.

Trey: Also, given the general level of ape-human relations we've seen, I don't think apes acting like the Dragoons would need to hide their identities. Rather, it seems the army would do it.

Jason: Maybe it's just no fun to form a secret society of evil without all the ceremonial pomp and circumstance? Or maybe it was convenient to forget about all that to drive the point home with no ambiguity (or subtlety) whatsoever!

 

Trey: Still, these sort of criticisms are a given for classic TV really.

Jason: That's right. You tune in for an hour in the evening ..,

Trey: And it just washes over you?

Jason: Well, yes. For my part, I remain pleasantly surprised at the watchability of this show. At times ridiculous, at others genuinely effective, this episode (and the series thus far) is a mixed bag that manages to hold my interest.

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 7 "The Surgeon"

 "The Surgeon"
Airdate: October 25, 1974

Written by Barry Orringer
Directed by Arnold Laven
Synopsis: When Virdon is shot, his friends make a desperate game and contact Galen's old girlfriend, Kira, who is now a talented surgeon. So that she can operate, Galen and Burke must steal a forbidden book on human anatomy from the very home of Dr. Zaius.

Trey: Apparently, our fugitive heroes are relatively close to Ape City again, as they get to the hospital on its outskirts fairly quickly. It's odd that they never get far from their given the dangers it poses. Perhaps (though it's never mentioned) they want to stay close to the ruins of the biggest cities as they stand the best chance of finding more old tech there? Not much for them in the ruins of Bakersfield, I guess.

Jason: They've got the map right there on the wall, but distance measurements must be one of those black boxes impenetrable to ape minds. Objects are closer than they appear.  Another instance where the assumption must have been "no one will care about continuity - they are lucky to be getting apes at all."

Trey: This episode was originally intended to reunite McDowell with Kim Hunter who had played his character's wife, Zira, in the feature films. Hunter was not up for the makeup ordeal, apparently, so the role of Kira went to Jacqueline Scott.

Jason: Scott's performance was a highlight of the episode. To my surprise, the whole ensemble seemed to step up their games for this episode. Maybe the script was better than average?

Trey: I think so. We've also got David McNaughton as Dr. Stole. He's the brother to James McNaughton, the actor playing Burke.

Jason: Dr. "Stole Your Girlfriend," I think you mean! (Sorry, I can't leave the obvious stuff alone in these ape reports!) Anyway, another refreshingly, um, human performance this episode. 

Trey: Well, Stole seems pretty cool with this strange doctor Kira brings in. He's got questions sure, but he doesn't get in a contest of egos with him. That--or jealousy--would have been an easy angle for them to go in.

Jason: Stole knows what he's bringing to the game and his supremely secure ego isn't threatened by the likes of Galen! A frequently irritating trait, it's one I don't mind so much in my surgeon!

Trey: Well, I wouldn't advise having this ape as your surgeon for reasons the episode makes clear! This is yet another episode with the astronauts bringing knowledge the apes don't have.

Jason: It's now officially the most handy plot device in the series.

Trey: In this case, though, it's more reasonable as it's about human physiology. Burke gets some of the facts he asserts about blood groupings wrong, though, but hey, he's going off stuff he learned in college, probably.

Jason: Burke is suspiciously well-versed in (fictional) blood typing for a wise-cracking astronaut, but that's exactly the kind of broad-spectrum, renaissance-person training a candidate for interplanetary exploration should have.  

Trey: I like that the B plot regarding Arna, the shunned girl, ties backs into the theme of ignorance, but also directly to blood types. A little contrived perhaps, but it works.

Jason: The genuine performances sell it. The seemingly arbitrary nature of human (and ape) ignorance is certainly convenient for the screenwriters, but Arna's redemption was as close to moving as anyone can reasonably expect from POTA series.

Trey: It's become a pattern than Urko and sometimes Zaius just show up pretty much to remind us that their menace is out there!

Jason: And I'm glad they do! An episode without Urko's maniacal devotion to Ape Cultural Security and his hateful dialogue would be a shame. There's also that Urko is still having trouble pronouncing "as-tro-nauts!" I love that. 

Trey: I like that Kira and Stole, when given irrefutable evidence that some of their beliefs are wrong, accept it pretty quickly as primates of science.

Jason: As any Urko worth his jackboots can tell you, that's why you have to round up the brainy apes first if you want to keep that oppressive fascist regime operating smoothly. 

Trey: The theme of ignorance is carried through nicely with the trick played on Urko to afford our heroes an escape.

Jason: Indeed, yes! I know I keep carrying on about that map on Urko's wall, but I couldn't help notice the resemblance between the portentous skulls and X's on that map and the symbols on the door to the hospital's precisely named "Room of Death!"

Despite the protestations of my inner 12 year old, who would complain about the lack of ape action in the episode, I found this to be one of my favorites. Good performances, some interesting world building (appreciated even as it increasingly seems unlikely to skew towards a coherent vision), a foolproof hospital drama, and some very mature handling of ape romance, this one has a lot going for it. What's your verdict, Trey?

Trey: I agree with both adult you and your inner 12 year-old. Not much action, but good classc TV drama.

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 6 "Tomorrow's Tide"

 "Tomorrow's Tide"
Airdate: October 18, 1974

Written by Robert W. Lenski
Directed by Don MacDougall
Synopsis: Virdon and Burke rescue a man lashed to a raft from the ocean. When the man, Gahto, refuses to give them information but continues to insist he is dead, the astronauts investigate a nearby fishing village, where they are captured by soldiers. Hurton, the chimpanzee administrator, presses Virdon and Burke into service after they pass a test by swimming under flames. Galen tries to rescue while also trying to keep Gahto from drowning himself. Things get worse when Hurton's superior, Bandor, comes on an inspection tour, and only quick thinking and some novel fishing techniques can keep our heroes from being fishermen permanently.

Trey: We're out of the desert and down by the seaside. I'd like to think these human fisherfolk are the descendants of laid-back California surfers.

Jason: I'm grateful for the change of scenery! Those fisherfolk are certainly laid back and obedient, listlessly poking around with their wickedly barbed spears. Was there ever a time when those spears were employed against their ape overlords? These dudes are too laid back!

Trey: This is Lenski's second episode (his first was "The Good Seeds") and this has some of the same elements: the astronauts bringing some lost knowledge to the inhabitants of the future, an ape that warms to our protagonists a bit when they prove useful, and word-building regarding the culture and belief of this age. 

Jason: The "astronauts bringing knowledge" theme suggests that perhaps Lenski had thumbed through Chariots of the Gods as part of his no-doubt extensive research for this gig.

The holes in ape knowledge are slightly comical. Net technology was employed to great effect on Charlton Heston in the first film, but the imaginative leap to also use them for fish is beyond ape reckoning.  

Trey: Well, according to the timeline, the events of that film are several hundred years in the future, so maybe Burke and Virdon inadvertently led to Taylor's capture?

Jason: The irony!

Trey: Another big part of this episode: astronaut beefcake. They must have been trying to up their female viewership.

Jason: The beefcake is strong! The fact that it was unaccompanied by cheesecake is a little puzzling. The POTA films were not shy in this regard. The humans of the TV series, astronauts aside, have been a decidedly unsexy rabble! 

Trey: Yeah, and that's seems off-brand for 70s TV.

Jason: It serves to underscore the dystopian nature of this future!

Trey: Two interesting guest stars this episode: Roscoe Lee Browne who was the voice of Box in Logan's Run as Hurton, and perennial unctuous baddie, Jay Robinson as Bandor.

Jason: Roscoe Lee Browne and Jay Robinson both turn in fine performances. Too bad this is their only appearances in the series. And too bad the script criminally underuses their talents.

Trey: We should talk about the shark. The stock footage shark. 

Jason: Don't forget that handy dorsal fin prop! While no sharks were literally jumped in this episode, events and circumstances depicted do seem to veer wildly into the absurd.

Trey: I've been resisting the urge to make a "shark jump" joke, I'm glad you were less demure. Anyway, I'm not quite clear whether the apes believe in the "shark god" or simply the humans.

Jason: The apes use the inherent religiosity of human beings to enforce ape supremacy and cynically employ the tenets of this faith against each other! But do they believe? I can only speculate, but there seems to be at least a level of social courtesy regarding gods and spiritual practices, like sophisticated ancient Romans or Greeks. Galen doesn't seem inclined to challenge whatever beliefs are practiced in the regions the fugitives visit.

Trey: Overall, this one is interesting because of the way it expands the ape universe into new territory, but I think it's probably not as accomplished as "The Good Seeds" in the writing department (and that was already an episode with some silliness), and perhaps is let down more by the constraints of television.

Jason: "It's a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!" I thought as this episode unfolded. Packed with speculative scenarios, glistening Astronaut torsos, and underwater thrills, it could have been a standout episode (and maybe it will rank high in the final assessment, depending on how dire subsequent episodes turn out to be). As it stands, it will definitely rank as one of the most peculiar. 

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep5 "The Legacy"

 "The Legacy"
Airdate: October 11, 1974

Written by Robert Hamner
Directed by Bernard McEveety
Synopsis: In the ruins of Oakland, Burke and Virdon discover a holographic message from scientists from their own time, which might help them return to the past. First, though, they must escape Urko and a cunning trap set by Zaius, baited with a young scavenger and his mother.

Trey: This one was interesting mostly due to the fact a writer finally thinks to give us a hook to drive the plot of future episodes: there are apparently caches of ancient tech scattered about. Maybe these can help the astronauts return home? 

Jason: Return to your home, Astronauts, but only, repeat only, do so after we've squeezed the last drop of juice from this series! 

Trey: Or maybe, you know, they could use the info to help rebuild the world? Anyway, I shouldn't say a writer finally thinks of that. There was the metal disk with the information on it that was important in the first two episodes, but spoiler...that disk never gets mentioned again.

Jason: I shall delete that disk and the plot coupons it represented from my expectations. I do wonder how much of the script survived contact with the shooting schedule.

I'll mention the director here as well, as I was immediately impressed by a marked change in aesthetic in this episode. The cameras are on the move this episode, tracking, panning, dollying, zooming all over the place, or at least that was my impression. I felt a definite change in energy. Am I crazy? 

Trey: No, I think you're right. We shouldn't over sell it. It's still pretty standard TV stuff, but more dynamic than what we've seen before.

This episode has as a guest star a young Jackie Earle Haley as Kraik. I used to the think of as "the kid from the Bad News Bears" but now I guess he's "Rorschach from Watchmen."

Jason: He's one of those character actors from the era that was immediately recognizable but seems always relegated to supporting parts. I don't think I ever learned his name until Watchmen. He's great at projecting a sinister vibe, even as a young kid, and never really escaped this type casting, so far as I know. He was great in Spielberg's Lincoln, but again, sinister. As soon as I recognized him, I was tipped off to the treachery that would soon be afoot.

Trey: Indeed! I feel like his character is the first time we've got a real "collaborator" sort of human character. I mean, we've had humans loyal to apes before, but mostly because of their upbringing and the fact they had never considered things might be different. They tend to wise up as the story progresses. But young Kraik is a wheeler dealer looking out for number one--and willing to sell out other humans to get by.

Jason: That boy is pure evil! Haley's performance is good, right down to the hollow insincerity of his "redemptive" weeping at the end! 

While he isn't as smart as he thinks in the end, Zaius proves himself the more deadly adversary to the humans than Urko. His psy-op here giving Virdon a surrogate family so he'll but his guard down and start revealing things is way more sophisticated than anything the gorilla's ever attempted.

Of course, his shallow understanding of human psychology is his undoing. While the ready-made family is working on Virdon, Virdon is working on the family.

Jason: Hopefully Zaius will get the picture and stop underestimating his opponents. Virdon is only human but made of stuff stern enough to resist the charms of a single-mom Wilma Flintstone and her villainous boy.

The scenes featuring Virdon's irrepressible urge to offer fatherly council to this almost-feral kid help solidify his stated motivation - to get home to his family. He is not a particularly colorful man, but holy moly is he resourceful and decent. 

Perhaps weirdly, Virdon's surrogate wife blithely allows the "man from the past" to tell her son what she must regard as all manner of bullshit stories, and she has no concerns about spending time incarcerated with a guy suffering from grandiose delusions.

Trey: Look, dating options are limited for single mothers of teenage delinquent kids, even in the post-apocalypse!

A continuity note here: Virdon says he's "forgotten what a city looks like" so this episode must take place prior to "The Trap" where they visit the ruins of San Francisco. The only oddity there is that they sort of seem surprised in that episode that there's a city nearby, which if they had already knew they were in the Bay Area, why would they be? 

Jason: Yes, the Bay Area. I had almost forgotten what a matte painting looked like, but this episode managed to get in a juicy one of the ruins of future-Oakland.

Trey: In any case, it's an argument perhaps that the internal chronology of the episodes isn't airing order but perhaps production order. This episode was 4th and "The Trap" 5th.

Jason: This kind of stuff is particularly jarring after a couple of decades worth of continuity-minded TV. 

Trey: Speaking of relics of TV past--and it happens a lot in plots like this in shows: why don't they make any effort to hide the computer before racing off to the cache? I realize it wasn't the most important thing, but why make it easy for the apes to find? 

Jason: Things got pretty choppy towards the end of the episode. I got the feeling they shot too much, and it was a brutal edit to make the target length. "Is it 43 minutes yet? I don't care if it makes perfect sense!"

Trey: Once again, the concepts and tropes on display here are hardly unique, but we do get a bit of actually sci-fi at last, and it's a pretty effective episode dramatically. It's only marred by the fact that I'm fairly certain the interesting plot development here will go nowhere.

Jason: They were definitely on the right track with this one, for my tastes. The result was far from perfect, but dammit, it was fun. 

Back to the Planet of the Apes: ep 4 "The Good Seeds"

 "The Good Seeds"
Airdate: October 4, 1974

Written by Robert W. Lenski
Directed by Don Wies
Synopsis: When Galen hurts his leg and can't travel, Virdon and Burke seek refuge on a farm so he can recover. The tenant farmer and his family are mistrustful of humans but agrees to let them stay so long as the humans' work. Most of the family warms to our heroes as their knowledge proves useful around the farm, Anto, the eldest son, resents the strangers, fearing they will hex his cow that is about to give birth, and ruin his change to start a farm of his own. When Virdon helps deliver not one but two bull calves, Anto is won over and names the calves after the astronauts.

Trey: This episode should be subtitled "or how astronauts from a technologically advanced society know way more about farming that mutli-generation ape farmers." 

Jason: It's my 2nd favorite episode of Little House on the Planet of the Apes, just behind the one with  guest star Johnny Cash! 

Trey: Don't give our readers false hope.

Jason: But yeah, it seems like Virdon has forgotten more about farming than these apes will ever know.

Trey: We're given a preview of this theme in the obligatory "heroes on the run" bit in the beginning: We're told apes don't know anything about the compass and can only tell direction at night by the stars. They can make firearms and snazzy uniforms, but not a compass.

Jason: Priorities! If you're going to run an ape-centric fascist society you're gonna need guns and jackboots. Advanced farming strategies can wait. 

Galen's first reaction when shown Virdon's hand-crafted compass is to ask "Is it witchcraft?"-- statement heavy with implications, none of which will be explored here. Give me ape witches, please!  

Trey: I think this may also be the first references to ape superstition/religion in the series! There is certainly much more talk of spirits here than in previous episodes.

Jason: Yes, and it's nice to be thrown a little world-building here and there in this otherwise standard pastoral tale. No details, but it makes my ears perk up when such hints are dropped about the setting. Speaking of which, we also get another glimpse of that wall map of North America, including additional X's and skulls, presumably to indicate areas still too irradiated for habitation, but we are given no clues. Give me Journey Into the Forbidden Zone on the Planet of the Apes! Okay, I'll stop making unreasonable demands now. 

Trey: Well, don't stop on my account! Anyway, the tenant farmer family is a mix of Old West and Medieval. Polar and his wife are like Western homesteaders. Remus could be the kid from Shane or similar. Anto on the other hand, acts like the superstitious villager from a time travel story.

Jason: The whole production skews toward the Western. I expect most of the actors and stuntmen portraying gorilla thugs on horseback were wearing cowboy hats and menacing Hoss and the boys at the Ponderosa not too long before. 

Trey: The scenic Fox Movie Ranch adds to that effect. So, the tenant farmers status adds another aspect to ape society we haven't before. IMDB says the script originally called for them to be gorillas. That would have been interesting, because we don't really get any "good" gorillas (or orangutans) in the series. On the other hand, having them be chimpanzees and disparage poor farmers breaks up the species caste system.

Jason: Low-status chimps..Or perhaps part of some back-to-nature movement?

Trey: Surely not chimp hippies! Though there is precedent with the anti-war protestors in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

Amusing that these poor farmers even have a strong idea of what is "human work" vs. "ape work."

Jason: The social commentary in this episode, as progressive as mid-70s TV productions got, of course, is definitely in the forefront. Uncomfortably so at times! One not-so-hilarious remark from Burke in particular sticks out like a sore thumb.  

Trey: I know the one you mean! But I like that the writers are thinking of the implications of ape vegetarianism and their society. The fact that they believe humans are dangerous to cows or could never keep them because they would just eat them is funny.

Jason: I enjoyed this as well. One of the few reminders that this program is ostensibly science fiction instead of a fantastic parable. It's nice to see something speculative once in a while.

Trey: The best part of the episode for me, though, is Anto's human impression. I feel like that ape should give up farming and move to the big city and become a comic on the simian equivalent of Vaudeville.

Jason: Oh yeah? I say ape humor has advanced about as much as their farming techniques. Keep trying, apes!

Trey: This episode was lower on the action/adventure aspect but took more time with the characters and worldbuilding (in a way) than previous episodes. The story, I suppose, is as formulaic as what came before, just in different ways, but the script perhaps made better use of that formula.

Jason: Formulaic, to be sure, but I agree that this episode worked better than it had the right to. It was my favorite so far. Sci-Fi action it was not, but it gave us some fun insights into ape culture as it ticked off the boxes. What's next, I wonder?

Trey: Well, from "good seeds" to a bad seed--or at least a kid in need of a good father figure. He's played by Jackie Earle Haley!

Jason: Onward!