DVD Review: Quark
- DVD release date
- September 2, 2008
- Grade
- B-
Dated, but a pleasure to watch if you remember the show fondly.
If you, like me, grew up in the 1970s, you might remember a short-lived series called Quark. For a mere eight weeks, it chronicled the adventures of Adam Quark (Richard Benjamin), the captain of a garbage scow charged with cleaning up the galaxy. Of course, Quark always ended up in the middle of a galaxy-wide crisis when he should have been collecting trash, but since he kept saving the galaxy, his bosses Palindrome (Conrad Janis) and the Big Head (Alan Caillou) let the interrupted trash pick-ups slide.
Quark existed in the space often occupied by Mel Brooks’ vehicles: a spoof of popular cultural icons. Targets for the Quark writers and producers included Star Wars, Space: 1999 and Star Trek. For instance, one of Quark’s crew, Ficus (Richard Kelton), is logical and emotionless. He’s also a plant. Ficus doesn’t understand why humans put so much value on love, and Quark finds himself unable to give a coherent defense of the emotion, finally saying only, “Love hurts.” By this logic, Ficus insists, any painful experience must be as wonderful as love to a human. Quark enters into his log, “I’ve just argued about love with a plant. And lost.”
The crew also includes two beautiful blondes: Betty and her clone Betty (Cyb and Tricia Barnstable). No one knows which is the original, and which is the clone. They look the same, dress the same, and have a tendency to speak at the same time. Quark is in love with Betty, but doesn’t know which one it is he’s in love with. The other human crew member is Gene/Jean (Tim Thomerson), a “transmute,” the ship’s engineer, who has a masculine and feminine personality. It’s never clear which personality will be speaking in any given situation. The way Gene/Jean’s gender issues are handled is the most dated part of the show, and most of the jokes that (one supposes) were funny thirty years ago fall flat today. The last crew member is the robot, Andy (Bobby Porter), who is anything but brave. When informed that battle is no place for cowards, Andy exclaims, “Then take me home!”
The conceit of a garbage scow captain saving the galaxy on a regular basis still has some life in it, but the slow pacing of the show and some dated humor makes this a holiday present for true SF nuts and/or 70s nostalgia fans only.
Copyright Martha Kneib. Published 1 December 2008 in What’s New.
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