Traces of Martin Landau

"People say it's failed. My attitude it that it didn't."-- Anthony LaPaglia

The Bellero Shield is transcendental despite itself, and always haunted the dowager, setting aside that it assuages Seti Institute vanity like a wet dream, Landau now the tortured son of an overbearing father who wants his own version of domination. Searching for aliens and hello, a humanoid in a glitter suit pops in speaking English like a Buddhist monk and gets murdered by an avarice driven wife ironically imprisoned by her own overreach. A retired science teacher wrote an excellent post, which he should publish, on Yabberz, about why alien life forms on hospitable planets will never find each other, and I should have copied it-- not to be unethical, but because it was the best rebuttal I have ever read about why this human quest is doomed to failure-- a grand opera version of quantum mechanics, but beneath the surface of this high camp, with catty lesbianistic overtones, is an undercurrent about justice and mercy complicated by megalomania, which, again, despite itself, imprinted and stayed, despite lack of recollection about the humanoid's disappearance, a film splice of a martyr, do his "people" save him, does the blond with diluted white out on her palm die, go insane? Do we pity Landau for his work in these serials, with his hawkish countenance, recycled in Without A Trace, where he provides a more evincing performance as LaPaglia's dying father afflicted with end stage renal disease, not discounting on Columbo he gets to play his twin, which Falk invariably foils? Unfortunately, I never saw Space 1999, and cannot afford to put the series on my video library, but such are the intangible qualities which lead actors into video science fiction.