The Secrets of Isis Episode 5: "Rockhound's Roost"

Kevin, a surly, lazy jerk, dislikes Fabian, the geology-loving (he also loves "everything in America, especially hamburgers and baseball," so right away I'm on his side) exchange student who also happens to be the prince of an unnamed African nation.  Why?  No reason; Kevin hates everything, especially chores.  To get out of doing some yard work, he forges his dad's name on a permission slip and joins Andrea Thomas's class on a field trip to Rockhound's Roost, the bear-infested park that's supposedly way out in the wilderness somewhere but features a busy street visible just beyond its trees.  Rick Mason and Ms. Thomas have their suspicions about Kevin's motives, which prove valid when Thomas catches the kid tossing the picnic dishes into the stream instead of washing them.  Things come to a head when Mr. Mason calls the school and learns of Kevin's deceit.  Kevin rashly runs away, pursued by a concerned Fabian.  Lurking nearby-- a hungry bear, desperate to protect its honey tree!

"Rockhound's Roost," which aired October 4, 1975, is the show's first outright dud.  It's preachy and heavy-handed in ways previous episodes haven't been, and its lesson is a snoozer-- yet Kevin's dad and Fabian both manage to lay it on us, using almost the exact same phrase.  Your responsibilities have a way of catching up with you.  Once again Isis is on hand merely to reinforce what Kevin learns through hard-won experience.  But over-emphasis on the moral isn't the fatal misstep here.  Because "Roost" features as its climax the least convincing bear attack since that episode of Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch where they have an acid flashback to the day they mauled those cops in Haight-Ashbury back in '67.  Really, a bear costume?   A bear suit is the only thing more ridiculous than an ape suit, and this one is particularly bad.  Always a mistake, and one from which this episode never recovers.

Thomas Carter as Fabian has a winning smile and maintains his fake accent well enough, but he's hamstrung by a lot of "In my country..." dialogue.  His character is vaguely reminiscent of just about every prince or princess who ever went out among the commoners in a TV sitcom.  Steven Paul as the troublesome Kevin really seems to lack conviction in the early going, which probably accounts for his character's lethargy.  Playing a moody jerk is no easy task.  Too far in one direction and the audience despises you and doesn't buy or care much about your eventual redemption.  Too far in the other and what's the point of the story?  It may be the plodding script that does him in, but it doesn't help that his performance is eerily similar to Hayden Christensen's in the Star Wars prequels.  They're sound-alikes anyway, with the same flat delivery.  By the time Kevin does his about-face becomes likable, we're already in bear country and he's fatally upstaged by the ridiculous bear.

Brian Cutler touched on this in his interview on the Isis DVD, but this episode is a perfect example of how the show acted as a starting point for a lot of youngsters who went on to successful careers both in front of and behind the camera.  Carter acted in 37 episodes of TV's The White Shadow and later directed multiple outings of Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, Amazing Stories and the critically-lauded miniseries A Year in the Life, plus theatrical features like Coach Carter and Save the Last Dance.  He's a three-time Emmy winner as a director and producer and a 6-time nominee.  While he was one of many producers on the Nicholas Cage Ghost Rider and its sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Paul's major contribution to world cinema is as director of Slapstick (Of Another Kind) starring Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn, perhaps the single most bizarre adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut novel we're ever likely to see.



We're not talking prestige projects here, but Paul's got some lengthy producing credits, mostly of family-oriented fare with titles like The Karate Dog.  He's apparently taking the reins of the Baby Geniuses franchise-- yes, it's a franchise now, in that they're completed a new entry in the series and are hard at work on numbers four and five-- from the late Bob Clark.

According to the IMDB, Paul bought his own building in Century City and "has a full bar in his office."  Okay, no joke-- I'm officially impressed.

Brian Cutler's Rick Mason becomes more and more interesting, with each episode adding little facets to his character.  The premiere didn't give him much to work with, just simple declarative statements for the most part.  But part of the fun of Isis is watching Cutler get into a groove as his character become the show's understated comedic relief.  He never plays Mason as a clown, but he gets in a zinger or two here and there.  Mason's the kind of teacher who doesn't mind farming for corn and chuckling at his own jokes.  But he turns serious and capable in a crisis.  Cutler may not transform into a hero, but he's obviously comfortable in the role of male Lois Lane at this point.

In fact, by now the show has developed consistent good chemistry among the lead trio.  Joanna Cameron continues to rock (get it?) her dual role even when faced with the horrific Ursus arctos horribilis.  You have to give her mad respect for maintaining her dignity during that sequence, which features a ring of fire that's all too obviously artificial, but proves effective at holding the slow-moving (possibly dying from some kind of ursine motor-neuron disease from the looks of it) bear at bay.  Joanna Pang as Cindy Lee is a total charmer as class spokesperson.  Literally.  Not a single classmate besides the two guest stars has so much as a single line of dialogue, leaving Cindy to do all the heavy lifting in the background.  "Don't worry, gang," Mason tells the class as he dashes off with Thomas to find that dick Kevin, "We'll get out in the field yet."

"You know what, gang?" Cindy says as soon as the teachers are out of earshot and her classmates gather around her to listen.  "I am worried!"
 
But the most amazing thing about this episode has to be Rick Mason's kick ass rayon-- you know, art silk-- shirt, the one he wears on the field trip.  What is that print?  Is it simply abstract, or is it some kind of an animal/peacock feather thing?  Whatever it is, it is happening.  It is 70s gold!  Fabian's dashikis are pretty cool, too.  I've always loved dashikis.  I've never worn one because I've never felt it would be culturally appropriate, but yeah.

As long as we're on this costuming kick, in her DVD interview Joanna Pang poked a little fun at Cindy Lee's light blue overalls and now I understand why.  It's not that she looks bad in them; she's cute as a bug.  It's that she wears them practically in every episode.  They're on fine display here, both in the classroom and in the forest.

Winner of the coveted "Costume of the Episode" prize goes to the poor stuntperson in that threadbare bear suit.  This is one of those times when cutting the already minuscule budget would have been a good idea.  "Hey, I don't think we can afford the top quality bear suit rental, but we can get this shoddy one for less because the last person to wear it died of the bubonic plague."  "Oh, that's too bad.  Bears and Isis just don't mix.  Let's come up with some other form of jeopardy for Kevin and Fabian... one that doesn't look quite so tacky."

Maybe they actually did try to rent a trained animal performer, but if they'd been thinking straight the producers would have realized a third act re-write was really in order.  Fabian gets his ankle caught conveniently in some rocks-- ironic, eh?-- and Kevin taunts the lethargic bear with a handful of what's supposed to be honey (should have used Post Super Sugar Crisp cereal instead) from about a foot away.  Ask Timothy Treadwell if that's such a good idea.  Of course with this particular bear, the biggest danger is being overcome by the twin menace of mothball fumes and the unbearable odor of the sloppily sweating stuntperson inside.

For those of you in the audience who are actual rock hounds-- you do get some rock lore here, but it's not going to help you pass that geology test.  Ms. Thomas fills us in on obsidian, Cindy Lee marvels at various stones, and Kevin's dad-- who earlier bonded with Fabian over the young fellow's rock collection-- teaches his son and the viewers at home the recipe for granite.

The Secrets of Isis Episode 2: "Spots of the Leopard"

Episode two?  But we just watched episode four.  Yes, this one is out of order.  Wait!  YOU'RE OUT OF ORDER!  YOU'RE OUT OF ORDER!  THE WHOLE BLOG IS OUT OF ORDER!  THEY'RE OUT OF ORDER!

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Al Pacino.  On with the review.

Can Isis help restore a girl's faith in her ex-con father when he's the main suspect in a crime spree?  That's what we're here to find out as we discuss the second episode of Isis, "Spots of the Leopard," which aired September 13, 1975.  Jenny Nelson and her dad Chuck have to fend for themselves because Mom's out of town.  Chuck recently got out of prison and when someone starts using his M.O. (that's crime talk for modus operandi, or "how the heck it's done") to steal industrial diamonds, and his alibi proves bogus, even Jenny suspects her dad's gone back to his thieving ways.  Cindy Lee tries to get her to discuss it with Ms. Thomas, who apparently has the answer to everything, at least according to Cindy.

The girl's reluctant, then her father takes her on a spur of the moment camping trip.  This does nothing to soothe her, especially when she sees his wallet stuffed with money.  Off to the woods again.  People are always going into the woods in this show.  Was Henry David Thoreau on the writing staff?  Only Jenny doesn't go there because she wants to live deliberately; twitchy because he's under scrutiny from the insurance investigator who sent him to the big house once before, her father gives her little choice, and she's not happy about it or him.  To make matters worse, she gets her foot caught under a fake log which conveniently rolls down a hill onto her ankle just when Isis flies in to talk to her.

Jenny is played by Debralee Scott, who was the 1970s version of the great Clea DuVall.  Like DuVall, Scott was one of those everywhere faces in the 70s and 80s, one of those actors you sort of recognize because they turn up when you least expect them and always seem to do solid work.  She seemed to specialize in baby sisters, though.  Scott played Louise Lasser's little sister on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (was there some kind of special casting relationship between that show and Isis, or were the Hartman actors simply up for every part in town at one point?), Rosalie "Hotsy" Totsy in a few episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter, then another younger sister to Donna Pescow on Angie.  After with Kotter, I probably remember her most from Angie, having been a major fan of that show as a kid for reasons my adult self cannot fathom.  She even had parts in a couple of those Police Academy movies.  Her own older sister produced for Robert Altman, by the way.

Sadly, while doing some background research on this episode, I discovered Scott passed away in 2005, followed shortly by her sister.  It's a strange story and upsets me to no end.

You won't get any complaints about Scott's performance here, even if she has to act opposite a papier-mache log, which weighs a couple of pounds at least, and pretend it has her foot pinned.  That set up is pretty contrived and silly, but the rest of the show is fairly solid.  I love the casual opening scene where Jenny teases her dad about buying too much at the supermarket.  Veteran character actor Lou Frizzell looks nothing like Scott (maybe she's adopted?) but because they're consummate pros, they create a believable father-daughter chemistry.  Due to the plot machinations that require him to be shifty and suspicious when being forthright would have solved his problems within the first five minutes, father Chuck comes across as a bit of a bonehead, though.

Thanks to Roger Ebert's Law of the Conservation of Characters the true culprit fools no one.  Even Chuck figures him out, but then he stupidly takes things a step too far when he rashly attempts to crimebust on his own and nearly pays for it with both his freedom and his daughter's respect.  Which is the real crook's plan all along.  Pin it on the obvious guy, then...  Well, after that it's not exactly clear how he plans to make himself wealthy with the diamonds, which will still have to be accounted for.

One thing you'll notice about Isis is the stories aren't really about Isis, or Rick Mason, and only rarely about Cindy Lee.  They're about the guest stars.  It's a formula pioneered by shows like Bonanza and The Fugitive.  The lead characters remain in stasis because they have to maintain the show's premise week after week.  And since all fiction involves conflict and change-- I mean character growth, not Ms. Thomas into Isis-- all the lessons have to be learned by various students and/or their families and we never see them again.  Ms. Thomas remains cool and collected, Rick Mason jovially dedicated and Cindy Lee enthusiastic about her studies and pro-Andrea Thomas.  Like the Cartwrights, they are transformative agents, popping into the story here and there to help things along.  Any personal growth they experience happens long term and off-screen.  But essentially, not at all.

But I'm troubled.  There's a little matter that really bothers me.  Chuck Nelson grills up some burgers for the gang, then goes off to confront the burglar.  In the meantime, there's a police stake out and people driving (or flying on zephyr winds) from location to location.  This is before anyone actually attempts to eat a burger.  So my question is, how long were those hamburgers lying around in the sun?

And yet they must be safe to eat because Ms. Thomas and Mr. Mason would never--  Oh, that's right!  Cindy, Jenny and Chuck settle in to eat, but the two teachers order theirs to go.  Probably to dump the contaminated meat patties in a wastebasket somewhere.  Their excuse is they have to paint Thomas's apartment.  Now there may or may not have been a little romance between them, or perhaps they maintained their professional relationship all along.  But asking someone to help paint your apartment is a pretty big step in a relationship of any kind.

Because I've been trained to by so many subsequent TV shows, I keep looking for signs of sexual tension or flirtation between Thomas and Mason, but these fine teachers remain merely colleagues no matter how much time they spend together investigating UFOs, looking for Cindy Lee or discussing crime waves.  The DC comic tries desperately to pair them up, but in this day of "shippers" and fan fiction pairings of every imaginable combination, it's kind of refreshing to think both Ms. Thomas and Mr. Mason date outside the show's onscreen cast in between episodes and just keep their private lives largely to themselves when they're on the job, or the case.  Every male-female duo doesn't have to be David and Maddy or Lois and Clark or Mulder and Scully or Booth and Bones, for Isis's sake.

Let's all give Cindy a hand for being nonjudgemental.  You can imagine the pressures faced by a teen who has to show up every day when everyone knows her father's a jailbird.  Kids can be cruel about things so seemingly inconsequential as a pimple or pooping your pants on a long bus ride during a field trip because you're too embarrassed to tell a teacher you're in gastric distress, so you can imagine how having a prison parent affects Jenny's social life.  And yet there's the popular and peppy Cindy Lee making it a point to sit with Jenny at lunch.  A true friend!

The Secrets of Isis Episode 4: "The Sound of Silence"

Andrea Thomas proves herself an absolute genius when she invents a uranium pellet-powered force field device she calls the “Circle Guard.”  Both Rick Mason and Cindy Lee refuse to throw a baseball at Thomas to demonstrate—Mr. Mason kids his insurance doesn't cover "beaning teachers who think they're invulnerable," while Cindy jokes, “Not me!  I don’t have enough friends as it is!” 

It’s no problem for the school’s other genius, Bill, played by actor-artist Leigh McCloskey.  Old timers like Bill Haverchuck and I remember him as Lucy Ewing's husband on Dallas; dude has an incredible voice, by the way (I'm jealous because I sound like Wallace Shawn on helium).  McCloskey is handsome, with a patrician air about him that reminds me quite a lot of Armie Hammer's dual role as the Winklevoss Twins in The Social Network.  Maybe because I think he looks like Armie Hammer.  That McCloskey gives such a polished performance is a plus because he's onscreen more than the series regulars, apart from Cameron.  

Bill helps Ms. Thomas with her baseball demonstration, astounding everyone in the room.  Brilliant student that he is, he quickly grasps the scientific principals involved and wonders out loud (mistake) if “the other side” might pay a pretty penny for it.  Later, in private with Ms. Thomas, Bill reveals his anger at having not only lost a science contest but also at having made a fool of himself by bragging to his classmates about the car he planned to buy with the cash prize.  See?  I'm not crazy to make this Social Network association.  It turns out Bill even has the movie Winklevoss's sense of outraged white guy entitlement, if not their wealth.

When the Circle Guard vanishes, Bill is the prime suspect.  The only suspect.  And yeah, he’s the thief.  His brilliant plan is to sell the Circle Guard to Jack Evans, boss of an organized crime gang of one or as many as two members.  But he must be a bad, bad man because the very name of Jack Evans strikes fear in the hearts of our three Larkspur High crime-busters.

All poor Bill wants to do is make a quick score and buy a sharp car to impress his friends so he can once again feel like a BMOC.  But the conniving Evans (veteran character actor Philip Bruns-- later of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and many others-- plays Evans with a touch of comic menace without ham-fisting it) has other plans.  Meanwhile, Ms. Thomas realizes the Circle Guard’s uranium fuel leaks radioactivity whenever someone activates the device.  Can Isis save Bill from himself, and the deadly effects of radiation?

"The Sound of Silence" (the title seems to be a non sequitor; silence plays no role in the plot, nor does sound in any unusual way) is more exciting than the three previous episodes put together (See?  You guys really needed to open “Fool’s Dare” with that bike race!), with a crime lord, action, comedic relief plus a smidgen of something resembling science.  Or, as Rick Mason would have it, science fiction.  Nothing beats watching Joanna Pang and Brian Cutler do the infamous mime bit, “The Invisible Box” while pretending to press against the Circle Guard’s force field.  The baseball richocet effect is surprisingly violent and convincing, though.  Later, Jocko, Evans’s lunkheaded hulk of a bodyguard (he loves comic books so he can’t be all bad) injures his shoulder trying to smash through the force field as Bill demonstrates it for the criminal duo.

The idea a high school teacher, even one as talented and dedicated as Andrea Thomas, could create a force field device-- much less power it with uranium pellets-- is ridiculous, of course.  If Andrea Thomas really does have the know-how to produce a hand-held force field generator, she’s wasting her time teaching chemistry at Larkspur High School.  She needs to be at Fermilab or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  There’s a Nobel in her future!

But we have to overlook that because the Circle Guard is merely a macguffin that gets us to the crux of the episode-- Bill's choice between right and wrong.  Wrong offers immediate rewards, right offers immediate punishment. All Bill has to do is activate the force field that will prevent the goddess from capturing the two criminals and he can have a different car for every day of the week.  Isis boldly encourages Bill  to make up his own mind.  No threats, no violence.  Just that goddess-like poise as she saunters into the forest clearing.  "It's a big decision, isn't it, Bill?  Maybe you ought to think about it for a moment before you make it.  Because once you do," Isis tells him, "there's no turning back."

Decent people like Bill sometimes make stupid, rash mistakes from momentary weakness or anger, but these don't have to define them for a lifetime.  And unlike, say, Batman's violent and arrogant presumption he has to beat everyone into correctness-- granted, it's in the face of an aggressively cynical strawman argument that the world is lousy enough to require him-- it's not Isis's job to take away from people the ability to make these choices.  Instead, she gently nudges them, then steps aside.  The show wraps these moments in the trappings of superheroics and magic, but the real secret of Isis is the show isn't really about Isis.  It's only occasionally about Cindy Lee.  It's really about the Bills of the world, the true heroes of their own lives if they wish to be.

A clever touch comes when the show re-works the denouement of the famous “Do you feel lucky punk?” scene from Dirty Harry into a nicey-nice kid-vid moment.  Curious to the last, Bill asks Isis if the force field really did stop her and could he have escaped by pressing the button, just like the bank robber “gots to know” if Harry Callahan has fired his last bullet or not.  And Isis, with a knowing smile, obliges him.

The uranium leak proves to be something of a red herring.  It’s referenced exactly once during the climactic chase and in the end, turns out not to have had an effect on anything other than Rick Mason’s photo negatives.  Despite Ms. Thomas’s—and Isis’s—apparent health and public safety concerns, Bill uses the Circle Guard approximately a million times without any ill effects.  Other than falling and breaking his ankle while trying to escape through some woods with Evans and Jocko.

Speaking of Jocko (Wayne Storm), the guy is hilarious.  He won’t stop calling Evans “Boss,” despite being asked and while holding Ms. Thomas captive—in a child-safe sort of way; even without her ample resources (and Tut's interference) she’s never in any danger—he gruffly offers her a “funny book” to read.  That’s probably his way of playing nice.

As for the Circle Guard itself?  Well, it’s just a metal box.  It looks like some kind of off-the-shelf electronic equipment you’d find at a Radio Shack and features some dials and switches, plus what looks like a telescoping radio antenna on the side for some reason.  But my favorite feature is one of those analog rolling odometers like on your grandparents’ 1973 Caprice Classic.  What the heck do those numbers mean?  Objects repelled?  Kids helped to catharsis by Isis?  Number of times Cindy Lee has risked death?

The Secrets of Isis episode 3: "Fool's Dare"

Who is the greater fool, the fool or the fool who follows him?  Cindy Lee tries to find out in this turbulent episode of Isis.  It's "Fool's Dare," which first aired Saturday, September 20, 1975.  Car theft runs rampant and it's got the Larkspur High School faculty worried.  Not far from the school, Cindy handily (or foot-ily) defeats two friends in a bike race.  The sore loser dares her to spend one hour in an abandoned junk yard.  Her pride wounded, Cindy hops the fence.  Right into danger.  Can Isis rescue the injured girl from a couple of (tepidly) desperate characters?

This otherwise adequate episode could have been improved with one simple addition.  The bike race!  We only get to see its aftermath.  While Cindy's adventure behind the junkyard wall provides child-appropriate suspense, there are just too many shots of the girl limping around and between old wrecked cars.  Opening with even a short action sequence with quick-cuts of the kids speeding along on their bikes would have provided a better visual hook to lead viewers into the talky first half and they could have cut the fat down to the real meat of the junkyard sequence.

We do get some Isis staples.  Teacher Andrea Thomas as a natural-born sleuth, Rick Mason's low-key sense of humor, Dr. Barnes's calm wisdom and Tut providing forced comedic relief.  Tut the talking crow is one of the few pandering elements here, an out-of-place touch of Saturday morning juvenilia on a show that generally avoids it.  I mean, avoids it as much as a children's show can with its main conceit a crime-fighting Egyptian goddess who works magic through rhyming couplets.

And Cindy.  Perpetually chipper.  Sunny.  The girl is so positive and trusting, so confident in the people around her and their motives, she's completely caught off guard when embittered loser Ernie first accuses her of cheating.  "I didn't cut you off," she insists, laughing innocently because she has no way of judging his wounded ego or how far he'll go to salve it.  She's backed up by boy #2, who seems squirmily uncomfortable about the whole thing, and cheerfully tells Ernie, "It's just a bike race.  It's not important!"

Not to you, Cindy.  You have your sincerity and self-esteem.  Others aren't so lucky or secure in themselves.  Like Ernie, who issues his petulant challenge.  He must have felt emasculated by his loss because he first employs the gender superiority stratagem.  Cindy knows girls are every bit as capable and curious as boys.  She's stung by Ernie's foolish assertions, but not fatally.  Undaunted, Ernie goes with that tried and true favorite:  threatening Cindy with the "chicken" label.  This, Cindy finally decides, is completely unacceptable.  Plus, for our own selfish entertainment needs we must have her in jeopardy so we can call in Isis and solve the car thefts.  Cindy can't do it all by herself, but she can spy on the crooks as they paint Ms. Thomas's car yellow.

The show's view of crime and criminals is a signifier of both a simpler time and its target demographic of Saturday morning kids.  When they realize Cindy's spotted them, the two car thieves' inclination is to run away before she can call the cops.  Actually, that's a pretty smart idea as far as criminality goes.  In our darker time or on a more adult-oriented show (or a hypothetical gritty hardnosed comic book reboot), they'd grab her and either beat her or kill her.  They'd at least threaten her with injury or death.  But then they'd go from theft to violent crime and more serious penalties.  Smarter to cut your losses.  After all, this is Isis, not The Dark Knight Returns.  All it takes is our hero tossing quips, old tennis nets and tires to put an end to car thievery forever.

Notice too how Ernie realizes on his own the disservice he's done Cindy and comes back to put things right. Without a prompting from Isis he apologizes.  Cindy, being infinitely kind-hearted, instantly forgives him.  "And I realize you're a better bike rider than I am," Ernie tells her.  "Some of the time," Cindy quips.  When Ernie admits he shouldn't have dared her, Cindy accepts her share of the blame for taking him up on it.  Ms. Thomas gently reinforces what the kids have learned for themselves, and the two boys help the injured girl walk away to get medical aid or ice creams or both.  The end of an Isis episode leaves its audience with positive vibes about just about everyone in the story.  Except the car thieves, and even they're apparently good at painting cars because the next time we see Ms. Thomas's car in the series, it's still yellow.

Makes you wonder if they shouldn't have just opened a legitimate paint and body shop.  If that's not an oxymoron in itself.

Speaking of cars, Ms. Thomas has a sweet ride, doesn't she?  It's a '74 or '75 Pontiac Firebird, baby!  No wonder these guys targeted it.  The car must have strained the show's meagre budget because they display not one but two of them-- the original in red and the re-painted yellow one.  It's impressive for Isis.  Did they rent two or actually find one in need of re-painting and work things out in trade?  Maybe it belonged to a crew-member or actor and the paint was in lieu of pay.  I'm not sure it was intentional, but giving the straitlaced science teacher a hot rod hints a bit at her dual nature.  Teacher and goddess.  And yet Ms. Thomas has her own skill set that should be appreciated-- she cracks the car theft ring using ordinary high school science equipment and strong observations skills.  Even Rick Mason scores on that one.

A couple of trivia points.  Joanna Pang slips up and refers to her teacher as "Miss Andrea" while spying on the thieves.  We can probably forgive her because Cindy seems to have the privilege of referring to her teachers by their first names.  And the two boys-- we never see them on the show again-- are played by Josh Albee and Jeff Tyler, a reunion because they earlier essayed Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a 1973 TV adaptation of the Mark Twain classic Tom Sawyer.