Kill the burn, Cody!

Some children grow up harboring dreams of becoming an airline pilot. Some fantasize about designing or engineering a sophisticated new type of aircraft. Well, when I was a child, my dominant ambition was to someday watch a movie in which Lee Majors piloted a sophisticated new type of aircraft designed by Hal Linden. Thanks to THIS-TV's recent airing of "Starflight One," I have finally lived my boyhood dream.

Before I discuss this 1983 sci-fi/disaster epic, I should point out that I saw a truncated version. In fact, it must be wayyyyy edited down because originally it aired as a 3-hour movie, and THIS crams it into a two-hour slot. I generally check out movies' running times before taping them off THIS because they tend to wield either the scissors or the compressors (whatever device they use) liberally.

I've never seen Michael J. Fox snort cocaine--I was a sheltered child in the eighties, too wrapped up in my dreams of seeing Lee Majors/Hal Linden movies to experience such worldly events--and so I was going to check out "Bright Lights, Big City" on THIS one night, but when a 118-minute movie is shown in a two-hour timeslot with commercials, you know more than a few scenes are gonna be missing, and likely some cocaine-snorting ones.

I can't imagine what is missing from the edited version of "Starflight One," but I suspect it's a lot of shots of the craft...floating. That and maybe Kirk Cameron's entire part, because I saw him in the credits but not in the actual movie. Of course, it's entirely possible I was just distracted by the sight of the two old pros Linden and Majors at the top of their games.

Linden designs the commercial passenger ship--the hypersonic commercial passenger ship--Majors flies it, and they and a group of passengers deal with DISASTER when a near-fatal collision with a rogue rocket launch (trust me, the guys that do the launch are just schmucks, and this element of the story isn't nearly as cool as the phrase "rogue rocket launch" indicates) screws up everything and pushes them out of the atmosphere, forcing them to buy time in orbit while everyone scrambles to figure out what to do. See, the hypersonic craft can't re-enter the atmosphere to land because of the lack of something or other. Look, I don't remember the details. All I know is that when Majors, as Captain Cody Briggs, is trying to get the big hypersonic hunk of parts under control, we see a nervous Linden in his seat, saying to himself, "Kill the burn, Cody! Kill the burn!"

THAT'S your movie right there.

I want this to become an iconic phrase. It should be already, of course, but I'm willing to ignore the ignorance of all those who have let this movie languish in obscurity for so long. It's time to look to the future, and while that future might not include hybrid airplane/space shuttle vehicles anytime soon, it CAN involve t-shirts, bumper stickers, and tattoos emblazoned with the phrase, "Kill the burn, Cody!"

I don't even know what that means, but I know cool when I hear it. Lauren Hutton and Ray Milland are also in this film, but neither one of them says "Kill the burn, Cody," so let's not dwell on them.

Kill the burn, Cody!