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"...Andy Griffith at the helm was enough to have the series last for 14 episodes, as Harry went through everyone's garbage. No; seriously. Well...kind of. "

---from the article

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There's this "chicken and egg" sort of question I've always wondered. I remember a supposed sci-fi series about a guy who tries to make a spaceship out of garbage scraps. I also remember (no joke) a real-life news story about some guy who did exactly the same thing...though as you'd expect, his spaceship never flew. One clearly inspired the other. Thirty years later, I wonder if it matters which came first. Both ideas were mistakes best left in the past.

The premise of Salvage-1 was that a garbage dump owner named Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) planned to go to the moon and salvage the junk he found there from the old moon landings. Keep in mind that as brilliantly profitable as this idea sounds now; this was around 20 years before eBay, so no, it didn't make...total...sense. Yet Andy Griffith at the helm was enough to have the series last for 14 episodes, as Harry went through everyone's garbage. No; seriously. Well...kind of. Each episode involved Harry's team of salvagers sent to retrieve junk here and there, unearthing supposed mysteries. Ah, yes. They would supposedly find great mysteries in said junk, though...not really. The whole thing seemed more like when the paparazzi sift through a Beverly Hills trash can.

The real problem with the series, however, was a lack of direction. Okay; so the original story had a guy make a spaceship out of scraps. What now? Well; he could go into space and rescue some astronauts there, but that didn't make much sense, did it? No; the only other memorable episode to this 30-something sci-fi lover, is the one where they come across a haunted house and the "ghost" turns out to be an alien. That's about all a guy with a junky spaceship could do. After all; where else could Harry fly his salvaged junk ship? Apparently, Harry could never decide. After 14 weeks, viewers made their own decision...to tune out.

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