Otherworld

1985

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
7.3| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 26 January 1985 Ended
Producted By: Universal Television
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Otherworld is an American science fiction series that aired for only eight episodes from January 26 to March 16, 1985 on CBS. It was created by Roderick Taylor as a sort of Lost in Space on Earth. Taylor gave himself a cameo role in each episode.

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Reviews

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
wingsandsword I saw this show when it was on, for it's very short run, when I was a little kid, and even then I could see the huge plot holes.A "typical American family" touring Egypt finds a local boy who offers to show them an unauthorized tour of the Great Pyramid, on the day of an eclipse, and the boy suddenly stops in the middle of the pyramid and demands more money. When the family refuses, he extinguishes the light and leaves them alone in the Pyramid, where the eclipse happens and they are mysteriously sucked through into another dimension/world.Now, at this point it seems vaguely akin to Sliders or Stargate SG-1, which treated the concept of other worlds and ancient Egyptian space/dimensional travelers much better, however here comes the big problem.They are barely arrived in this new dimension, where they land in a huge desert with a single road going through it. A futuristic car drives up and out of it comes some strange official-type person, who tries to arrest the family and is quickly beat up, looted of some strange crystal, and the family flees.Apparently this official was a very, very high ranking leader of the "Zone Troopers" this world, and that crystal was a huge, powerful command permit that gives its wielder nigh-unlimited authority over the computer and governmental systems of this world, which turns out to be huge set of vastly different "zones" with different cultures and peoples, all policed by the "Zone Troopers". Also throw in some bit about how they are trying to go home by following a series of obelisks that have the "eye in the pyramid" sign found on US Dollar bills on them that leads to a mysterious capital city they hope can send them home.This is all in the first 10 minutes of the pilot. This leader will be a recurring nemesis as he follows them trying to get his crystal back, but like Colonel Decker of A-Team fame, he's always 3 steps behind.Now, in one of the episodes the son does poorly on a test at school and is promptly drafted into the Zone Troopers. Bad, but it's worse when he finds out that conscription is for life, unless he can excel at the training program so well he's made an Officer and is allowed to resign immediately.Suddenly, that crystal goes from being able to shut down massive power grids, rewrite any computer file, open any lock, override any command, and being nigh-godlike in the system to being ignored. The dad just says something about "I can't use that to get you out of every little problem you get yourself into, you have to take care of these things yourself." The dad just arbitrarily decides to let his son be drafted, probably for life, on an alien world just because he failed a test at school, and decides not to use the plot-device uber-permit (mainly because it would completely shortcut the episode) but it makes the dad look like a real jerk.So the show sets up that the main characters don't have to worry about the bureaucracy of the new world they find, which they decide to arbitrarily ignore early on, and make the main characters look either incompetent or uncaring. They couldn't make it 8 episodes without completely backpedaling on one of the main concepts of the show?
swood-8 I very much remember watching this show when it was on TV. The most striking thing that I remember from the show were the upside-down guns. The laser pistols on the show had the barrel underneath the stock. My friends and I used to emulate this when play gunfighting.The most memorable episode for me was the "I Want to Hold Your Hand" Rock and Roll episode. As a kid in the 80s, this was one of the first exposures (that I remember) I had to the Beatles. If my memory serves me, after this episode I went through a period of listing to my step-mom's Beatles records.I am absolutely certain that this show, if it were watched today, would invoke spontaneous retching and gagging. While I haven't actually seen it in 20 years I can be certain that this show is better left as a fond memory of quirky 80s television. Like it's quirky 80s siblings "Square Pegs" or "Silver Spoons" it most likely would NOT hold up against shows today.
Plumpkin I loved this show. I was in high school at the time, and I can't believe I actually remember that Tony O'Dell was the actor who played the boy. Everytime I see the actor that played Kroll, I remember him with the scar and how evil he was.I remember the Rock and Roll episode, and my dad complained that they went from playing the Beatles to modern rock way to quickly and they should have had the music evolve more slowly and naturally. I remember the dad selling something like Tupperware called like, Burpoware or something like that. It was the episode that auctioned off the son, and the women were the 1950's type men.There was an episode where everyone wore white, but I don't remember much about it (they were maybe in a spa of some sort?)I was so sad when it never returned to the air.
eno2000 Although the characters and the plot was different, the premise is very similar: a group of people (a family this time) are on a parallel world trying to get back to their own. Instead of sliding from one universe to the next, they travel extensively on the world they originally entered. Each "province" they travel to is as different as the worlds that the Sliders visited.

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