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In April 1981 a new package of five Apes TV movies, pairing re-edited episodes of the TV series, were prepared by 20th Century Fox for broadcast.

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Older Galen as he appeared in TV movie promos

ABC decided to mark the event on it's owned-and-operated stations by presenting the movies under the banner The New Planet of the Apes, and calling upon Roddy McDowall to re-create his role as the now-aged Galen, to tape new footage to accompany the TV movies. Each of the five-part movie presentations opened and closed with a new monologue by Galen, recalling the adventures from the point-of-view of an old ape speaking to the viewer as a young visitor, replacing the original Fox/CBS TV intro. The final clip, shown after the last episode of the series, had Galen tell his audience that Virdon and Burke had "found their computer in another city and disappeared into space as suddenly as they’d arrived". For his part, Galen seemed to have lived into old age, in a home furnished with electric lamps and a computer screen, among other things.

Notes[]

  • WABC-TV New York edited the TV movies down further to 90 minutes, to fit their 4:30 movie slot.[1]
  • WABC-TV broadcast these unique edits the week of November 17th 1980, suggesting that the TV movies were actually created before the 1981 date generally acknowledged.[1]
  • In 1995, 'TV Zone Special' magazine stated that the New Planet of the Apes series of two-hour movies began airing on television "two years after the demise of the first run episodes of the Planet of the Apes television series", which would have been 1976.[2]

External Links[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Packaging Apes For TV Profit - 'Starlog' (April 1981)
  2. Ron Harper Interview, by Marc Shapiro - 'TV Zone Special' #17 (June 1995)
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