The Castaways on Gilligan's Island

"The Castaways on Gilligan's Island" is a television movie that continues the adventures of the shipwrecked castaways from the 1964-1967 TV series "Gilligan's Island" and the first reunion movie, "Rescue From Gilligan's Island", featuring the original cast from the television series with the exception of Tina Louise, who was replaced in the role of Ginger Grant by Judith Baldwin. Written by Al Schwartz, Elroy Schwartz and series creator Sherwood Schwartz and directed by Earl Bellamy, it was first broadcast on NBC May 3, 1979.

Cast

Synopsis

The movie picks up directly after the end of "Rescue From Gilligan's Island". The castaways are once again stranded on the same island that they had been on for so many years. The storm has contaminated all of the underground springs, and they are desperately searching for fresh water. Gilligan stumbles upon a couple of planes that are hidden in the jungle (and that they had somehow managed to overlook during all their time on the island. This overlook was explained that the island was a base of operations for the Army Air Corps during the Second World War, and the hangar was abandoned and overgrown by jungle brush. The tidal wave destroyed the foliage and exposed the hangar) and the Professor believes that he can combine the two planes into one and fly them all back to civilization. He combines the planes and, dubbing it Minnow III, they head back. This occurs though in the original series it is established that the Professor cannot fly a plane in not one but two different episodes with the character "Wrong Way" Feldman.

However, during the attempt to fly back to Hawaii, the plane has engine trouble. The professor orders Gilligan to jettison some weight, and in doing so, Gilligan falls out and has to parachute down to the island. Against their better judgement, the gang decides to return to the island to get him. They find him stuck in a tree. After a little while, the engines of the plane fall off. Fortunately for them, the engines collapse "after" they land, meaning that although they are still stuck on the island, going back to get Gilligan saved them from plummeting to their deaths as the engines would have fallen off in midair. But now they are dismayed because the plane was their last hope of rescue. Their despair is quickly dispelled when a U.S. Navy captain appears saying that their plane was detected on radar long enough for them to follow it to the island. The castaways are once again returned to civilization and ensure that Gilligan's Island gets charted and that the U.S. government pinpoints the location of the island to prevent future castaway incidents. This closed the first half of the two-part episode/movie.

The second half picks up a year later, with the island now a tropical resort spot fully linked to civilization and owned by Mr. Howell (who makes Gilligan and the others employees silent partners in the hotel). The rest of the castaways work as the staff of the resort and this second half of the show was originally intended as a pilot for a "Love Boat" type of weekly series. Gilligan and the Skipper deal with being unable to locate a little boy's parents; it is later revealed that he ran away from his parents to get away from their constant pressure on him to excels in athletics and in school, and Tom Bosley plays a workaholic whom his wife, played by Marcia Wallace, is trying to get to forget about work.

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078945/ "The Castaways on Gilligan's Island"] at the Internet Movie Database