| The
last time I remember seeing Mr. Wizard was in eighth grade
science class. The teacher was big into using videos (actually,
it was laserdiscs -- how many people remember those, eh?)
every now and then. I’m not sure whether it was just
so he could avoid preparing a lesson that day or whether he
was on to the trend that my generation was becoming more attuned
to picking up info from media other than lectures. At any
rate, during the course of the year, ol’ Mr. Wizard
popped up a few times. And I loved every minute of it.
 I’m
not sure a lot of the younger readers of this piece might
be totally aware as to who exactly Mr. Wizard was. Actually
an actor by the name of Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard’s show
aired when even I was pretty young (back in 1983*), and it
was on Nickelodeon to boot, so a lot of people who are younger
or didn’t have cable missed out on seeing Mr. Wizard’s
World. This is really too bad, because Mr. Wizard was
awesome.
You see, Mr. Wizard’s World was the premiere
science show for kids in its day. Sure, there were equivalents
that aired on PBS, but none could hold a candle to what Mr.
Wizard was up to. If anything, Wiz was the Fred Rodgers of
science programming -- warm, friendly, and certainly not condescending
to the kids that helped him on the show -- this guy even brought
you into his house (a set of course, but still supposed to
be his house) to do his show. The kids that appeared on the
show were like the kids from the neighborhood, and they’d
come by after school to learn MORE about science! And of course,
all the experiments he performed on his program were easily
replicated in your own home, and you were encouraged to do
them along with the program. Lastly, he was a charmingly old
white-haired guy, and who doesn’t like those types?
(I used to confuse him with a weatherman from Channel Eight,
Dick Goddard, although Goddard really had a lot more hair.
Hey, weather is science too, so don’t give me crap about
the confusion.)
 It
suddenly occurs to me that I didn’t really have a point
when I started writing this -- aside that Mr. Wizard was cool
as hell and I wanted to write about him -- but I’ve
got one now. The best science teachers were always the ones
that made science interactive and fun. Simple enough premise,
but think back to all the science teachers you had -- I bet
only a few of them really stick out as being the ones that
had fun with it. And for those of you who had a cool science
teacher, I bet you remember him or her pretty well, don’t
you? And I’m sure he/she was one of the more popular
educators in that school, too. Right?
Anyhow, did I mention that Mr. Wizard also had a robot? We’re
not talking about some phony cardboard stage prop, mind you,
but an honest-to-God HERO-1 model. This was a serious kind
of robot that if you had stupid amounts of disposable income,
you could buy the kit and build yourself. I think that’s
a good benchmark for the level of quality that went into the
program -- the money wasn’t spent on glitz and glamour
like cheezy special effects, but they dropped some scratch
to get some seriously cool stuff for Mr. Wizard to have hanging
around the homestead. This isn’t to say that contemporary
shows that feature types like Bill Nye the Science Guy (who
is cool because he IS a scientist, and God love him is geeky
as all get out) are of lesser quality, but like most modern
programming, all the production values seem to make it cheaper…
less about the science, more about the eye-candy value. They’re
working to hold an audience through visuals, rather that genuinely
entertaining programming. When I was seven, sure it WAS cool
seeing a room filled with fog, but it was even cooler when
it was Mr. Wizard’s own kitchen, and it was coming out
of his sink filled with dry ice.
*Although it appeared in reruns until 2000, and is Nick’s
longest-running show of all time. Don Herbert also played
Mr. Wizard on NBC from 1951-65, although for all intents and
purposes, this was still the dark ages of science. You know,
when the theories of the sun revolving around the earth and
whatnot still were around. |
