ONE SEASON WONDERS Part III - Man from Atlantis

We continue our series on short-lived science fiction shows that barely lasted a season and take a look at an early TV superhero. However this wasn’t a familiar costumed crusader from Marvel or DC, rather this was a hero spawned just for TV - Man from Atlantis!

Now like many of the series we are discussing in this series of articles, Man from Atlantis, which I am resisting the urge to abbreviate to MAF, first splashed onto our screens in a TV movie. Airing on NBC on March 4th 1977, Man from Atlantis had a mysterious man washing up on a beach This unfortunate fellow, played by Patrick Duffy, has anaemia and can offer no clue to his identity or home. However he had webbed fingers and toes, possessed above normal strength, could withstand great depths and high water pressure, and could apparently communicate with some sea life, mostly dolphins and whales. He also swam in a manner similar to a cetacean too. 

He is placed in the care of scientist Doctor Elizabeth Merrill, played by Belinda J. Montgomery, and named Mark Harris. Ok, not the most glamorous name, but hey he could have been lumbered with Flipper or Gill-boy! Anyhow in this first adventure, his unique water-based talents are put to good use by the US Navy to locate a lost submarine. However he discovers an underwater lair built by the sinister Mr Schubert, played with gusto by Victor Buono,  a scientific genius who has decided time is up for humanity and wants to wipe out the world and start over in a marine-based utopia of his own devising. And in a strange coincidence, this was exactly the same megalomaniac scheme that Bond villain Stromberg was attempting in The Spy Who Loved Me which came out later the same year. Perhaps they both went to the same Evil Villain school…

This TV movie was a huge hit, however a series did not immediately follow. Somewhat unusually, NBC commissioned not just one sequel TV movie, but three more feature length adventures for their newly-minted marine hero. And hence a few months later, on 7th May, Man from Atlantis rode again, well, swam again, in a new adventure called The Death Scouts. This had Mark and Dr Liz uncovering some aliens lurking the depths of the oceans checking out Earth as a possible invasion target. Mere weeks later, the third TV movie aired, entitled Killer Spores, and this featured, well, killer spores from space. But with the wrinkle said spores were intelligent And could possess people. And then in early June, the fourth aquatic adventure, The Disappearances aired, in which Dr Liz is, well you guessed it, disappeared, and the Man from Atlantis uncovers a plot to kidnap Earth’s top scientists and bugger off to another planet. And if you think that sounds a little too similar to the plot of the first TV movie, you would be right. And perhaps that was an alarm bell that the Man from Atlantis concept perhaps would have been better served staying as a TV movie or two. 

However the ratings were good, and that summer the trips to the pool were well and truly ruined by dozens of kids splashing about emulating Mark’s signature dolphin kick swimming style. Hence NBC struck while the iron was hot and commissioned a series which began airing mere months later in September 1977.

The series pretty much picked up where the TV movies had left off, but with the added wrinkle that now Mark was in charge of the super-duper submarine The Cetacean and each week would pilot the craft into some new underwater adventure. Now on the face of it this seemed like a great idea. After all, Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had a similar concept and that show had run for four seasons between 1964 and 1968. Furthermore the set-up was not dissimilar to Star Trek, indeed the bridge of the Cetacean was suspiciously similar to the original Enterprise, and that was not a coincidence as the show’s producer Herbert F. Solow has been of the execs for original Trek. 

However perhaps they should have taken a little more time developing the show’s concepts, for the series soon hit several snags. Firstly filming underwater sequences every week was fiddly and expensive. Secondly, and more seriously, the series struggled to invent a convincing rogues gallery for the Man from Atlantis, something essential for any budding superhero. While Mr Schubert would return several times, becoming the nearest thing Mark had to an arch enemy, the show failed to build up any real recurring villains or threats. There was a conman character named Muldoon - sort of like a marine based Harry Mudd - but having him appear twice within a half dozen episodes felt like the writers had no real idea what to do with Man from Atlantis. 

This suspicion is supported by the fact that several episodes ditched any marine theme at all, with adventures that had Mark transported to an alien planet, thrown back in time to the Wild West, and even, somewhat bizarrely, turning up in Renaissance Verona to become embroiled with the events of Romeo and Juliet. Now possibly these out of the water adventures were a means to cut costs and use existing sets and costumes, but it felt like the show was running out of ideas fast. 

Now considering Marvel’s Submariner and DC’s Aquaman had been having undersea adventures for years at this point, and as we mentioned, on the small screen Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea clocked up four seasons and over a hundred episodes, there was really no excuse for struggling to find suitable thrilling stories set beneath the waves. 

Similarly the characters weren't very well served either. Mark's mysterious past was never really explored, missing a huge opportunity for stories building up the lore of lost Atlantis. Schubert quickly became a generic baddie rather than a proper themed villain. But worst of all, poor old Dr Elizabeth’s role was often reduced to standing around on the bridge and very little else. In fact she was getting so badly served by the scripts, Belinda J Montgomery called her lawyers to get her out of her contract, and hence last left the series in episode eleven. A new female lead was cast, Dr Jenny Reynolds, played by Lisa Blake Richards, but by this point the ratings were sinking fast, and the show came to an abrupt end with episode thirteen which aired on 6th June 1978. Unlucky for some indeed. 

And it was a shame, for Man from Atlantis clearly had captured the public's imagination. The first four TV movies were novelised by Richard Woodley, and released as a paperback series, while Marvel comics released a monthly Man from Atlantis comic. And this was no cheap cash-in either. To begin with on art duties were with Frank Robbins and Frank Springer, but providing scripts was the great Bill Mantlo had written for most of the classic Marvel heroes, plus produced two comics based on toy lines - Micronauts in 1977 and Rom Space Knight in 1979 - which became big hits in their own right. However the comic only began in early 1978, and the title was scuppered after seven issues when the TV show was cancelled. In a similar vein, there was a range of toys planned from master action figure makers Kenner, but with the cancellation of the series meant they never got out of the prototype phase. 

The series has also been a hit around the world. In the UK, ITV acquired the TV movies and series and began airing them on a Saturday tea time, in competition with the scifi juggernaut that was Doctor Who, then in its fifteen season and still with Tom Baker helming the TARDIS. Stiff competition indeed. And yet for a few weeks Man from Atlantis won the ratings battle with the venerable Time Lord. 

In February 1978, ITV’s own children's magazine, Look-In began running a Man From Atlantis comic strip drawn by Mike Noble. But of course, like its Marvel-ous sibling, the strip ended in June 1978 when the series sank beneath the waves. However there was a Man from Atlantis annual for Christmas 1978. Plus, again mirroring events over the pond, a range of Man from Atlantis toys from Denys Fisher was planned, but never made it to the shops thanks to the TV show getting cancelled. 

Considering there were books, ongoing comic strips and planned toy ranges on both sides of the Atlantic, one can't help feeling that perhaps NBC was a little hasty in scuttling the show. It's true there were problems with the scripts and the series hadn't found a solid direction. But there have been many shows that had similar woes in their first season but found their feet in a second. And unlike most of the other one season wonders we are discussing in this series, the Man from Atlantis wasn’t axed after a handful of episodes aired. Indeed, counting the quartet of TV movies, the show had clocked up seventeen adventures and had run for practically a full season, rather than being cancelled before Christmas like so many other short-lived scifi series. 

Its true ratings were down, but might it have been wise to let the show rest, develop some stronger concepts and scripts and come back hopefully bigger and better for a second season… And maybe, just maybe, they could have - shock horror - given the show a bit more money? Considering there was plenty of merch out there, clearly other folks still believed Man from Atlantis had legs. Or fins. Whatever… 

As it was, the Man from Atlantis was not to return to our screens, but Mark would eventually resurface again, albeit many many years later and in print. For while Patrick Duffy had gone on to bigger and better things, starring in Dallas and so forth, he clearly still had an affinity for the character. For, in June 2016, he published his own Man from Atlantis novel, which picked the action up many years after the events of the TV series. The book’s blurb outlined Duffy's grand ambitions for the book - 

Not needing to confine his imagination to the special effects limitations of the 1970s, he has fleshed out an incredible life history of not just Mark Harris but of his entire Atlantean race

And apparently it was going to be a trilogy, but as of yet no further books have surfaced. Whether their publication was nobbled by the villainous Schubert or just poor sales, I will leave for you to decide…

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ONE SEASON WONDERS Part II - The Fantastic Journey

After The Gemini Man bombed, a replacement show also with a science fiction theme was hastily slotted in the schedules. Now if The Gemini Man had failed to engage viewers with its admittedly slim premise of invisibility via digital watch, one couldn’t accuse its replacement of lacking imagination. For The Fantastic Journey very much took a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach. And so we had a series that featured time travel, the Bermuda Triangle, aliens, pirates, psychic powers and Atlantis!

The series kicked off as was usual for the time with a gesture length pilot in which a group of folks on a boating jaunt who failed to heed Barry Manilow’s warning and blundered into the Bermuda Triangle. And indeed they did disappear, vanishing is a glowing cloud and finding themselves trapped on a mysterious island. And it turns out that this island featured different overlapping pockets of time and space, which the plot dubs Time Zones, linked by invisible doorways. They meet a man from the 23rd century, a stranded time traveller called Varian, played by Jared Marti. And with him they set out to find a particular Time Zone, named Evoland, that can get them home again.

When the pilot was optioned a series, there was a little rejigging of the cast, with most of the passengers being sent back to their own times. So in the series proper, we still had Fabian, who became the group’s leader, plus we have Scott Jordan (played by Ike Eisenmann) who was the sort of kid character TV execs seem to think we will like but often don’t, and Doctor Fred Waters (Carl Franklin) who is young, hot-headed and streetwise, all flared trousers and jive talk. In the second episode they are joined by a lady who is half Atlantean and half alien, Liana (Katie Saylor). Thanks to her extra-terrestrial parentage, she possesses super powers, but to be honest she was mostly there to deliver what used to be termed “something for the Dads”, and hence ends up doing more standing about in short skirts than feats of super strength.

Joining the regular cast in a later episode was slightly suspicious scientist Dr Jonathan Willoway played by the legendary Roddy McDowall. Willoway was a scientist from the 1960s who initially is something of a bounder in the a Dr Smith from Lost in Space mould, but quickly mellowed and joins forces with our happy bandy of temporal wanderers. Oh and there also was Sil-El, Liana’s cat who she could talk too telepathically because, well, why not throw psychic pets into this heady mix too.

Of course hopping to a different Time Zone every week meant different guest stars, and so episodes were graced by the likes of John Saxon, Cheryl Ladd, Mel Ferrer and Joan Collins. Plus a young Ian McShane appears as the 17th century ship’s captain in the pilot episode!

Behind the scenes, Star Trek veteran DC Fontana led the writing team, and she recalls they did not have long to turn around the scripts before filming began, which explains a good deal about the somewhat eclectic nature of the plotting. Apparently the original concept would have seen our merry band traversing various Time Zones and having more historically based adventures, however the Powers That Be soon ordered that aliens and futuristic stuff was to the order of the day, and so episodes regularly featured more science fiction orientated fare with various Time Zones effectively standing in for alien planets.

In that respect, The Fantastic Journey was very much mirroring the tonal trajectory of classic Doctor Who, which had begun with the intention of having educational adventures in history before monsters and aliens began to dominate the stories. However while classic Doctor Who took several seasons to morph into full blown science fiction, The Fantastic Journey managed it in a handful of episodes. Such is the power of memos from ratings hungry producers! However it would seem that Doctor Who was a key influence on the show, for Varian had an odd device that looked like a cross between a tuning fork and some stray Christmas decorations, called the Sonic Energizer…

Over the pond, the BBC picked up the show and started airing it on 4th March, just a few weeks after its US debut. The feature length pilot was shown on a Saturday night, with episodes of the series airing in an early evening slot on Fridays every week afterwards. The entire series would be repeated in December 1978, when it was shown on a morning as part of the Christmas holiday schedule, sandwiched between episodes of the 1939 Buster Crabbe Buck Rogers serial and assorted cartoons.

However the imaginative mix of scifi tropes and guest stars dressed in disco-galactic outfits never quite gelled, and ratings gold proved elusive as Evoland. While the concept promised a visit to a different exotic Time Zone every week, in practice this was a huge strain on the show’s budget and, to be honest, many of the sets, costumes and effects were less than impressive. Plus being scheduled up against the insanely popular Waltons didn’t help the show’s fortunes either. Hence the series was cancelled after just nine episodes, with a final tenth episode limping out a couple of months later. Somewhat ironically the axe fell on the show in April 1977, literally weeks away from a little movie called Star Wars being released, becoming an instant smash hit, and leaving TV execs hastily highlighting anything vaguely spacey to grab a piece of scifi pie…

Even more ironically, most of the folks who had worked on The Fantastic Journey found themselves making another hurriedly green-lit science fiction show which would also not last a full season…But that’s a story for another day. And what of Fabian and co? Well, that hasty cancellation meant their travels in the Time Zones just stopped, and so the poor sods are still trapped in the Bermuda Triangle…

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ONE SEASON WONDERS Part I - The Gemini Man

Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s it was always exciting when we got a new scifi TV show from over the pond. We always assumed we were getting the cream of the crop, but we got many series that only survived for a season. And so this week on One From the Vaults, we are looking back at some of these short-lived shows, which might have only had a handful of episodes, but cult TV fans still fondly remember. Although admittedly not always for the best of reasons...

We start with series from 1976 called The Gemini Man. Launching with a feature length pilot episode on 23rd September 1976, this show was very loosely inspired by The Invisible Man by HG Wells. However this was not a show about mad science, rather it was an adventure series featuring a spy who could turn invisible, a premise that previously that been been used for an earlier series called The Invisible Man starring David McCallum. Likewise, The Gemini Man starred by another familiar face, Ben Murphy, fresh from three seasons of popular series Alias Smith and Jones.

The show centred around a secret agent Sam Casey (played by Murphy) who was caught in a radioactive blast which rendered him permanent invisible. However boffins at the super secret spy agency Intersect devised a DNA Stabiliser, which looked suspiciously like a digital watch, which would return him to visibility. However his magic watch also had another feature - it would allow him to turn invisible for fifteen minutes, a very handy ability for a secret agent, and a fantastic plot device to use every week. However there was of course a catch, and that was if he exceeded the quarter of an hour time limit he would not only be permanently invisible but also permanently dead.

And while that sound a bit a of cheap gimmick now, it was very timely, as interesting, 1976 was the year digital watches became affordable and cheap, with Texas Instruments releasing a watch that retailed at just under twenty dollars.

However it seemed that a weekly countdown on a digital watch just wasn’t quite exciting enough for viewers, and hence after only five episodes were shown, poor ratings made The Gemini Man disappear forever. Well, almost forever…

For the series had been picked up by the BBC in the UK, and began airing in October 1976. And over here, The Gemini Man was met with a much warmer welcome, and throughout the winter of 1976/77, all eleven episodes that had been made were aired. And up and down the land, that Christmas kids were pestering their parents for a digital watch with a stop watch function so they could play The Gemini Man.

Indeed the series was popular enough to spawn an audio adventure LP from Power Records, a hardback annual book for Christmas 1977, and in 1978, a year after it had finished showing, there was a Gemini Man colouring book and a sticker book too. later still in 1981, The Gemini Man would return briefly to TV again, in the shape of TV movie entitled Running with Death, however this was just two episodes of the show cobbled together. Sadly however there was never an official Gemini Man digital watch, and I can’t help feeling they missed a trick there…

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