Land of the Lost ... while stoned

Note: contains spoilers.

I had just finished re-watching (usually on my lunch break) all the episodes of The Secrets of Isis, which I hadn’t seen since I was a kid, and needed something new to watch while I ate. I remembered Land of the Lost, a Krofft Brothers Saturday morning series about a family who gets lost on a rafting trip and finds itself in a land populated by dinosaurs, ape-like creatures called Pakuni, and hostile lizard men called Sleestaks. Similarly, as with Isis, I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid, but I did remember some trippiness concerning the “pylons” (small pyramid-like structures), so I chose the episode “One of Our Pylons is Missing” (dir. Gordon Wiles, wr. William J. Keenan, Sept 1975). It did not disappoint! One of the characters falls into a mysterious and seemingly bottomless hole, deep within which floats a glowing red rock that shoots lasers and makes a sound like a beating heart. What the huh? Anyway, I decided to re-watch the series from the first episode.

One evening, as I had not watched Lost on my lunch break, I watched an episode called “Tag-Team” (dir. Dennis Steinmetz, wr. Norman Spinrad, Oct 1974) while stoned. There really isn’t anything intrinsically trippy about this episode, but the juxtaposition of live action, stop motion animation, puppetry, live sets, early chroma key with Bob Ross-like backgrounds, incidental music that sounded like The Residents’ early work (but was actually the work of composer Jimmie Haskell), dinosaur roars, and a mix of English and the Pakuni language made for a surreal experience! Being stoned also made a 23-minute episode seem like a 90-minute feature-length epic! The usual disassociation made the dialogue sound like an especially incomprehensible radio play. For example, let’s say you had absolutely no idea what the show was about: what the heck would you think was going on based on the following?

Rick	You know, I wonder what ever happened to Ta and Sa, Will?
Will	Ah, they must have gone back to get the carrot and turnip they stole from us.
Ta	(Pakuni language)
Rick	Oh, for crying out loud.
Cha‑Ka	(Pakuni language) Fah-rend!
Rick	Friends! Friends!
Will	Careful, Dad. Careful.
Rick	Friends?
Will	Hey look, it’s our carrot!
Rick	Okay, we’ll have to pick up that and our turnip on the way back to the carrot patch. And then I have an idea of how we can stop this from ever happening again.
Will	Well, how’re you going to manage that?
Rick	We’re going to give the Pakuni a lesson in harvesting vegetables. Come on, we’re going to teach you something.
Will	Come on, Cha‑Ka.
Ta	(Pakuni language)
Will	Hey, c’mon, that’s our carrot! Meh, take it! Well, I’ll be a dinosaur’s uncle.
Rick	Next he’ll start eating the cart.
Will	Look at that. I thought it was a brontosaurus, not a rabbit.
Holly	Let’s teach them to pick their own.
Rick	Come on.
Holly	Come on, we’ll show you something real neat.

A week or so later I watched another, even tripper episode than “One of Our Pylons is Missing”, “Skylons”, which featured crystals that control the weather, crystals that fly and flash signaling colors, and chickens painted pink, white, and blue. What more could I ask for on tincture night? :-)