The universe ad infinitum!

Briefly, very briefly, as in blink and you would have missed it, from February to March in 1978, the science fiction sitcom Quark appeared on television. Created by Buck Henry, the show is still referred to as everything from ahead of its time genius to the worst show ever broadcast. Whichever, it did its best to parody the likes of Star Wars, Star Trek, 2001, and Flash Gordon. Set in the 23rd century, or the year 2222, it followed Adam Quark and his unusual crew aboard their spaceship as they collected the universe’s garbage. And had some absurd adventures along the way.

Quark’s crew consisted of: Andy the Android, Ficus who was a take-off on Mr Spock, half man and half plant (funnily when they traveled to a parallel universe where the rest of the crew became their opposites, he stayed exactly the same), clones Betty I and Betty II who both denied being the clone, Gene/Jean (not sure if inspired by the Bowie song) played by Tim Thomerson of the futuristic cop Trancers movies, and a pet ball of protoplasm named Ergo. Mork & Mindy’s Conrad Janis also appeared as Otto Palindrome. I’m not sure how he was connected to the crew. Quark’s boss was The Head, a large head (see 3rd Rock from the Sun’s boss “The Big Giant Head”) which appeared disembodied on a viewscreen much like Holly from Red Dwarf. Their enemies were called The Gorgons, sounding if not looking quite similar to Douglas Adams’ Vogons.

Only the pilot and seven other episodes of Quark aired before the network realized it was on and quickly yanked it off. There’s no sign of a DVD release of the series although there is an online petition for one that you can sign. Since it might be quicker to travel across the universe than wait for that, you can download poor quality files of the episodes from the internet.