Spoilers

“Giant”

This was a really fun episode of Man from Atlantis. I had been hoping for a break from Mr. Schubert, as played by Victor Buono, for awhile now. He had been in all of the run of the series, since the end of the TV movies. This was the episode that finally gave us a break from Schubert. And in his place, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar!

The former Lakers star appeared as a giant named Thark. Water from the ocean was being drained through a vortex into another world where Thark was mining gold. Another person named Muldoon was trying to steal the giant’s gold.

This was a weird episode, but I did like it quite a bit. At first, it looked as if Kareem’s giant character was monstrous, but he turned out to be friendly and helped Mark stop the flow of water. When Thark learned that the water, which was invisible in this world, was a danger to Mark’s world, he immediately went to help him.

I really like how Mark deals with his conflicts. Many action heroes would head into a confrontation with the giant using physical threats, but, even after getting thrown around by Thark, Mark just spoke to him and used his words to convince him that he meant him no harm.

There was an ironic lesson to be learned for Muldoon too as he wound up stranded in this odd location with Thark. Muldoon had come back after deserting Mark to help them close the vortex, but the show still had him pay for his greed. I felt bad for Muldoon.

This was a step up from last episode’s offering. I thought Kareem did a good job in his role, which was admittedly fairly simple. The sci-fi concept of the ocean containing portals to different dimensions is an intriguing idea. I wonder if they were going to use this idea eventually to deal with the origin of Mark Harris and where he came from had the series continued.