Have Now Officially Seen This Series Twice, Not Counting Viewings as a Child

[Cori aka ChrisSCrush]

Well, I have now officially watched The Wild Wild West, the original series, two times, the first TV movie two times, and the second one time. Only strong financial incentive would induce me to watch the theatrical fiasco, and bidding would have to start at at least $100.00. One episode, "The Night of the Janus," is missing from Pluto, where I watched the others. The first time through, I watched that episode on Internet Archive. The episode was missing the first few minutes and the rest was in awful condition, but I found a transcript online which gave all that was said. When it came time to watch the second time, all episodes in English had been removed, but I found a set in French.

I watched the forbidden episode in French. I played it from Internet Archive to my TV using Airplay. It played with the sound PERFECTLY in sync, picture BEAUTIFUL, no glitches WHATSOEVER as I have noticed with certain programs played on Airplay from Internet Archive. Perhaps it’s more of an issue with movies. I got the transcript, which is found here, up on my phone, and followed along. https://subslikescript.com/series/Th...t_of_the_Janus You’ll notice the script also very helpfully gives sound effects so even if you don’t know the language at all, you’ll be able to know where you are, but with the English words in front of me, I was able to pick out many of the French words. Sometimes I read the dialogue as quickly as possible so I could watch the screen, and sometimes I read the English exactly as the French was spoken. My theory as to why this episode is not on Pluto is that it contains an original song. It is the ONLY difference between this episode and any other episode of The Wild Wild West. When the song, “Two-Faced Stranger in the Garden," is sung by Jackie deShannon, it is in English, but when it is sung by Charles Aidman, it is in French. It was really nice seeing a good clear copy of this episode. The important thing is the action scenes contain no dialogue, so I got to watch them all.

I have great news! The local library has ordered the DVD set, so I will get to watch the complete series, including the scenes undoubtedly cut by Pluto, which I know for a fact butchered The Brady Bunch.

[Cori aka ChrisSCrush]

Just a quick note to say that the DVD set of The Wild Wild West arrived at the library and I rushed down and checked out Season 1. I watched the pilot and didn't see anything I could definitely say was not on the Pluto version. It became immediately apparent that due to the DVD commentary I was going to have to watch everything twice--once to watch the episode and once for the commentary. The commentary was done by Robert Conrad when the DVD set was made on the 40th anniversary of the show in 2005. It is very entertaining and though the episode was the same length both times it seemed much faster with the commentary than without. The DVDs are in excellent shape, they look just as good as the restored versions on Pluto, and it's obvious that CBS had respect for what they had unlike SOME STUDIOS (Universal, hmmm, hmmm) who put out absolute garbage without even a word of commentary although the actors very graciously offered. After watching I put two check marks after the episode so I now will have watched them all at least four times, that is not counting many viewings as a child. In light of this I don't know whether I will have time to watch movies for awhile.