Daily Posts: Feb 12, 2023

Question: This short-lived 1975 show had Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors as hapless aliens who take a boy and his babysitter with them on their flying saucer. Can you name it?

Answer:

The Lost Saucer.

"The Lost Saucer"  was about two friendly time-travelling androids from the year 2369 named Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Jim Nabors) who land their flying saucer on present-day (1975) Earth. They good-naturedly invite a young boy named Jerry (Jarrod Johnson) and his babysitter Alice (Alice Playten) to check out the interior of their craft.  As onlookers begin to gather though, the two androids become nervous about attracting attention and abruptly take off with Jerry and Alice. The flying saucer has the ability to travel through time, but the controls which allow the androids to specify an exact date were damaged, thus preventing the androids from returning Jerry and Alice to their rightful time and place.  The series follows the foursome as the two androids (who bicker and argue incessantly with each other, neither seeming competent with the ship's controls) encounter various adventures while trying to get Jerry and Alice back home or return to their own home on planet ZR-3 where they hoped to make repairs with the help of their lookalike creators Doctor Locker (Nabors) and Professor Pringle (Buzzi dressed as her purse-wielding spinster character Gladys from Laugh-In).

The adventures are usually set on Earth (or an Earth colony) either in the distant past or in the distant future hundreds (or even thousands) of years hence. Typically, episodes were blatant social commentaries dealing with extremes such as a world where names (and faces) were replaced with numbers, where machines were outlawed due to a global energy shortage, or a city where the population had grown lazy and obese because robots do all the physical work.

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