The Lost Saucer

The Lost Saucer
Genre	Children's television series Adventure Comedy Comic science fiction
Starring	Jim Nabors Ruth Buzzi Jarrod Johnson Alice Playten
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	16
Production
Producer(s)	Sid and Marty Krofft
Running time	25 minutes (per episode)
Production company(s)	Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions
Distributor	CBS Television Distribution
Release
Original network	ABC
Original release	September 6, 1975 – September 2, 1976

The Lost Saucer is an ABC network television series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. It originally aired from September 6, 1975 to September 2, 1976. Reruns of the show aired from September 1976-December 1976 on The Krofft Supershow, and in daily syndication from 1978 to 1985 as part of the "Krofft Superstars" package with six other Krofft series.

Premise

The Lost Saucer was about two friendly time-travelling androids from the year 2369 named Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Jim Nabors) who land their flying saucer on present day Earth (present day being 1975). They good-naturedly invite a young boy named Jerry (Jarrod Johnson) and his babysitter Alice (Alice Playten) to check out the interior of their craft.

As onlookers begin to gather though, the two androids become nervous about attracting attention and abruptly take off with Jerry and Alice. The flying saucer has the ability to travel through time, but the controls which allow the androids to specify an exact date become damaged, thus preventing the androids from returning Jerry and Alice to their rightful time and place.

The series follows the foursome as the two androids (who bicker and argue incessantly with each other, neither seeming competent with the ship's controls) encounter various adventures while trying to get Jerry and Alice back home or return to their own home on planet ZR-3 where they hoped to make repairs with the help of their lookalike creators Doctor Locker (Nabors) and Professor Pringle (Buzzi dressed as her purse-wielding spinster character Gladys from Laugh-In).

The adventures are usually set on Earth (or an Earth colony) either in the distant past or in the distant future hundreds (or even thousands) of years hence. Typically, episodes were blatant social commentaries dealing with extremes such as a world where names (and faces) were replaced with numbers, where machines were outlawed due to a global energy shortage, or a city where the population had grown lazy and obese because robots do all the physical work.

Accompanying them on their adventures was a creature known as the Dorse (played by Larry Larsen) which was a half-dog, half-horse hybrid with the body of a large shaggy dog and the head of a small horse.

There were 16 original episodes produced for the 1975-76 season. The first six episodes were later rerun in the first half of The Krofft Supershow's first season.

Themes

Each episode had a specific theme, usually a social or environmental one. "Fat is Beautiful", for example, depicted a future in which people were grotesquely obese due to over-dependence on push-button conveniences, and leanness was in fact outlawed. In "Get a Dorse", two scientists kidnap the Dorse to use as a power source because the world's fuel supplies were finally used up.

Episodes

* The exact date of this episode is uncertain.

DVD Release

The Lost Saucer: The Complete Series is coming soon to DVD from Vivendi Entertainment as a part of "The World of Sid & Marty Krofft" collection.

External links

• The Lost Saucer on IMDb
• The Krofft Supershow on IMDb
• The Lost Saucer at TV.com