Chapter 1 - (intro)

This is another story with a basis in nostalgia. The central idea comes from an episode of the short-lived Sid & Marty Krofft TV series THE LOST SAUCER--not to be confused with another and far better-known Krofft show, LAND OF THE LOST, which drew its thinly veiled inspiration from Jules Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, and which was rebooted as a TV series in the early '90s, and later got the big-screen "reimagining" treatment as a Will Ferrell vehicle in 2009. But The Lost Saucer stayed...well, lost.

As with all the Krofft series--and there were at least a couple dozen of 'em!--THE LOST SAUCER obviously was produced on a shoestring budget and probably was doomed to obscurity from the get-go. Would you expect anything less of a kids' show starring Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors (who was basically playing Gomer Pyle as an android)? The simple premise of the show (revealed in the opening credits) is that a kid named Jerry and his babysitter Alice make the fateful decision to investigate a U.F.O. that lands in the backyard. The U.F.O.--a time-traveling flying saucer, no less!--is piloted by two friendly androids, Fi and Fum (Buzzi and Nabors, respectively), who have an alien pet called the Dorse (because it's part dog and part horse). The androids usher the kids inside the craft, demonstrate some of their far-out futuristic technology, and whoops, go figure, there's some kind of malfunction. The saucer takes off with the kids on board, and they're all whisked off into outer space. The series follows the gang as they wander aimlessly from future year to future year while Fi and Fum try their best to return the kids to their proper time and place on Earth.

Anyway, there was one episode called "Fat Is Beautiful," in which the saucer lands near a futuristic city called Fatropolis, where everyone is fat. In fact, being thin is illegal there. So the Mayor of Fatropolis tells the kids that they have to eat until they each weigh 500 pounds, but not to worry, a handy-dandy food-making computer will whip up whatever they desire. I distinctly remember the kids sitting at a table with sundaes (or something) in front of them. The younger kid Jerry says something like, "If he thinks we're going to eat all this food...he's dynamite right!" His babysitter Alice smiles and nods, and they dig in.

I only saw that episode once, in re-runs. I think it's a relic that's well and truly lost forever. There was a reissue of a few episodes of the show on VHS years ago, but I don't think "Fat Is Beautiful" was included. The episode evidently was posted on YouTube a couple of years ago, but it was removed due to copyright infringement. I only found the dead-end video after it had been taken down, so I never actually got to see the episode again.

In any case, I remember that the episode was pretty disappointing, to say the least. I'm not sure whether there even was any depiction of weight gain. The actor who played the Mayor was heavyset, but that's about it. I think the extras just had pillows stuffed underneath their costumes. And at the end of the episode, something happens to wreck the Mayor's plans. As I recall, the Mayor had been feuding with his polar-opposite brother (who was fit), but by the end of the episode, the two siblings finally resolve their differences. So the Mayor decrees "Stout is out, and thin is in!" And he's shown jogging around while holding a tennis racquet or something to that effect. I promise there will be none of that in my story!

In fact, I'm going to jettison pretty much everything except for the core idea and the setting. And I'm giving it a bit of the Barbarella treatment, with dashes of Heavy Metal ambience (the illustrated magazine, that is--although this story isn't illustrated) and other retro-futuristic sci-fi touches. I don't consider this story pure science-fiction by any stretch of the imagination, and neither should you. It's WG fiction against a space backdrop.

After I first started working on this story a few years ago, I discovered that an author named Tracey L. Thompson wrote a book called FATROPOLIS: A NOVEL, which I haven't read, except for snippets of whatever excerpts are available on Amazon, but I'm 90% sure her book also liberally borrowed from this episode of THE LOST SAUCER and was similarly re-purposed (although hers seems to be more of a BBW/FA storyline, while mine is decidedly WG-oriented). I find it endlessly fascinating, though, that what was obviously designed to be silly disposable entertainment managed to leave an unexpectedly huge and unintended impression on certain members of its target audience.

As stated in the title, this story is currently in a rough-draft form, so please check back as I add new content and modify existing content.