Product Details

• Actors: Stephen Young, Donnelly Rhodes
• Directors: Bill Davis (VI), George McCowan, Harvey Hart, Martin Lager, Peter Levin
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Vci Video
• VHS Release Date: January 23, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000056AWJ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #577,837 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Post-Trek, pre-B5 Walter Koenig on 70s Canadian Sci-Fi TV, July 6, 2004

By 

Vorthog (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Starlost - Alien Oro [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This videotape edits together what are arguably the best two episodes from a notoriously bad early-70s Canadian Science Fiction TV series produced by CTV called "The Starlost".

Although the series ran for only one year, its episodes were replayed frequently on Canadian TV for years afterwards as an easy way for stations to help fulfill our government's Canadian content quotas. Thus it was with a kind of twisted nostalgia for the (bad old) early days of Canadian Sci-Fi TV that I purchased this tape.

The series was actually ghostwritten by Sci-Fi great Harlan Ellison, and has become quite the embarrassment for him. It stars Keir Dullea of "2001: A Space Odyssey" fame as Devon, as well as Robin Ward (--who Canadian viewers will recognize as currently working as a weatherman on Canada's "Weather Network"!) as the stoic blacksmith Garth.

The premise of the series is that Devon and Garth, along with female companion Rachel, who have been raised in a conservative agrarian community resembling the Mennonites, one day stumble upon a doorway and discover that their "world" is actually part of an immense spaceship. It turns out that many communities had been loaded onto the ship to evacuate them from some imminent disaster, each in their own "dome" (which bear an uncanny resemblance to the domes in the then-recent film "Silent Running"). But somewhere along the way, an accident had permanently sealed the domes off from each other and had also killed the ship's piloting crew, sending it dangerously off course and heading for a sun. Now untold years after the accident, driven out of their community as blasphemers, Devon, Garth and Rachel travel from dome to dome trying to find someone who can set the ship back on course.

Thus it is in the course of their travels down the deserted ship's corridors that they meet up with Mr. Walter Koenig as the enigmatic alien Oro. --Is he friend or is he foe? Watch it and find out!

Oro originally showed up in Episode 7, and was later brought back for a sequel episode in Episode 13 of the series. This tape edits both together into one long "movie", and not having the other episodes in between kind of diminishes the original impact that Oro's reappearance for a sequel had.

I was also very disappointed that the makers of this tape have edited out the series' original classic opening narration sequence and theme music, which I dearly loved, and have replaced it with some generic muzak. WHY???

In closing, I would recommend this tape to all fans of cheesy and just plain BAD Sci-Fi. Terrible, plodding pacing, wooden acting, low-tech sets, and best of all Mr. Chekhov! How can you resist?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Classic bad Sci-fi, November 30, 2001

By 

Glenn Nichols (Broad Brook, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Starlost - Alien Oro [VHS] (VHS Tape)

In the year 2790 A.D., a giant Ark, drifts through deep space, out of control, its crew having been killed five-hundred years earlier. When the accident that killed the crew occurred, the airlocks connecting the ship's domes that housed the last survivors of the dead planet, Earth, were sealed. Cut off from the outside world,: many communities simply forgot that they were on a spacecraft. They accepted that their world was fifty miles in diameter and the sky was metal. Content with their lot, no one knew that their world was in grave danger. Without a crew at the helm, the Ark was on a collision course with a sun.
Another short-lived SF series that probably looked exceedingly good on paper, but lost something in the translation to video. The only survivors of a ravage Earth roam the galaxy in their spaceship looking for a home. What they find, however, is alien menace and alleged adventure week after week. Harlan Ellison (along with Ben Bova) created the show, then aborted the mission upon seeing its maturation

Alien Oro

With B5/Star Trek's Walter Koenig

A spaceship collides with EARTHSHIP ARK, resulting in heavy damage to both ships. But it's only the beginning of an alien ruse to sabotage the huge vessel and use it to return home.

(Compiled from episodes #7 The Alien Oro & #13 The Return of Oro)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Clarifying Harlan Ellison's Role, March 31, 2006

By 

Steve P.-O. (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Starlost - Alien Oro [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Just noting that Harlan Ellison did not "ghostwrite" this show: he created it; things went horribly, horribly wrong; and then he took his name off it and used his standard Writer's Guild pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird."

He did write the pilot, "Phoenix Without Ashes," but again, without his name attached, as he couldn't stomach what was done to his original teleplay.

You can find the whole story of his experience with "The Starlost" in his essay "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto," which you can find in his book "Stalking the Nightmare," available through Amazon.