The F.B.I. season 1 part 2

The F.B.I. was one of the most successful American series of its era, running from 1965 to 1974. The F.B.I. has been released on DVD in half-season boxed sets. I’ve already reviewed season one part one, so now it’s on to part two.

The major change from the early part of season one is the departure of Lynn Loring who played Inspector Erskine’s daughter Barbara who was engaged to marry Erskine’s protégé Special Agent Jim Rhodes. She just suddenly disappears. The other change in the second half of the season is that espionage stories are given greater prominence. The F.B.I. was one of the most successful American series of its era, running from 1965 to 1974. The early seasons have been released in half-season DVD sets. There were 32 episodes in the first season. I reviewed the first half-season set a while back. The second set, containing another sixteen episodes, is just as good and just as interesting.

The major change from the early part of season one is the departure of Lynn Loring who played Inspector Erskine’s daughter Barbara who was engaged to marry Erskine’s protégé Special Agent Jim Rhodes. She just suddenly disappears. The other change in the second half of the season is that espionage stories are given greater prominence.

The great thing about a series like The F.B.I. is that the Bureau investigates so many different kinds of cases that the sheer variety of stories that can be encompassed is immense. Not just a variety of crime stories but espionage stories as well. And the series takes full advantage of this.

This was the height of the Cold War and the F.B.I. was checking under every bed for communists. What makes the espionage stories so interesting is that they’re totally unlike the spy stories in most TV series and movies. These are not spies with a licence to kill who spend their time romancing beautiful but deadly women and gambling for high stakes at Monte Carlo. These are ordinary spies, just everyday people, they’re not glamorous, they’re often rather tawdry. OK, for commercial reasons a certain unrealistic amount of action has been added to these stories but they’re still a lot more realistic than anything you’ll see in any other American spy series of that era.

The other thing that’s interesting is that when they’re tracking down spies they rely mostly on routine investigative procedures - lots of boring legwork, lots of boring sifting through personnel files. The series tries quite hard to emphasise that the work of the Bureau isn’t especially glamorous - mainly it’s a matter of taking infinite pains, following up every lead, .

The first season went to air in 1965 at a time when the F.B.I. had an almost godlike status in the eyes of most Americans. It’s difficult today to imagine a time when people actually trusted the F.B.I. but in 1965 people really did. In many episodes you’ll see portraits of J. Edgar Hoover on the walls of F.B.I. offices and that’s not an ironic touch. Hoover was regarded as a heroic figure who was all that stood between the American people and the chaos and evil of crime and communist subversion. It’s important always to keep in mind that this series is absolutely and totally sincere. While many American television series at this time were succumbing to the temptation to indulge in social criticism and indulging in highly critical political agendas that certainly cannot be said of this series.

Episode Guide

The Chameleon is a con man but he’s more than that. He’s a murderer as well. His schemes are incredibly elaborate. Most recently he’s managed to take control over a bank and the bank has made a lot of loans but the loans are secured by binds that are forged. That’s how Erskine and Rhodes get involved. A bank vice-president got suspicious and sent one of the bonds to the Bureau. The problem is that this con man is a man who doesn’t exist. There’s not even a single photograph of him. Having pulled off his latest coup he has vanished without trace. His wife has also vanished.

But at the F.B.I. they know that nobody can disappear without leaving traces. Con men have certain individual signatures. Their cons follow a pattern and the pattern repeats, and the F.B.I. has an immense archive of bits and pieces of evidence collected over the years and those patterns can be traced. This is a classic episode demonstrating all the strengths of this series.

The Sacrifice is an espionage story and it’s very much typical of this series. On the one hand it’s a realistic spy story, with seedy non-glamorous spies and with Erskine and Rhodes solving the case by patient routines investigative methods but on the other hand this is network TV and it has to be entertaining so there’s a shootout which maybe doesn’t quite ring true but hey shootouts are always fun. A Russian defects tips off the F.B.I. to a major security leak at a defence contractor. The spies know the Bureau is onto them, and the Bureau knows the the spies know this. Enjoyable stuff.

In Special Delivery a bank robber named Porter is on the run and the Bureau believes that he’s going to use the services of a gang who specialise in getting wanted criminals out of the country. The only way to break that gang is for an agent to go undercover, posing as a   fugitive. Erskine volunteers himself for the job. The gang is going to transport Erskine, Porter and Porter’s girlfriend Linda Rodriguez to Rio. If Porter lives that long - he has a bullet in him. A fairly exciting episode with Erskine in real trouble when his cover starts to get rather shaky. Some nice human drama as well. An excellent episode.

Quantico is an interesting attempt to deal with the rise of the counterculture. Someone has tried to blow up a government building and it’s considered certain that he’ll try again. A couple of years later the bomber would have been a hippie type, but this was January 1966 so he’s a young jazz trumpeter named Willard Smith. He’s a sort of beatnik. He looks like a beatnik. The counterculture existed and its existence was recognised but people were not quite sure exactly what it meant. They thought (correctly) that it was dangerous but they weren’t quite sure exactly how it was dangerous.

Willard Smith grew up in a bad neighbourhood. So did his cousin Charlie. Willard has been as big shot as a teenager. Now Charlie is a star trainee at the F.B.I. Academy and Willard is just another loser. But can Willard drag Charlie down with him?

The Spy-Master is a tense spy thriller episode. Erskine goes undercover as an American diplomat named Rogers working for a Red Chinese spy ring. Patrick O’Neal is nicely sinister as spy-master Victor Allen and he is genuinely smart - he out-thinks Erskine who is lucky to get out of this one in one piece. Allen is under pressure to achieve results and he puts Rogers/Erskine under pressure. There’s also a beautiful blonde lady spy, and an action climax in which Erskine again gets lucky. It’s all tense and very effective.

The Baby Sitter is the story of a crazy woman who kidnaps a baby. But what are her intentions? There are some ominous indications. This is an intriguingly poignant episode.

In Flight to Harbin an airliner is hijacked en route to Seattle. The hijacker wants the plane flown to Harbin, in Manchuria. Nobody knows who the man is or exactly what it is that has motivated him. That’s something the F.B.I. are going to have to find out, fast. In the meantime one of the passengers has decided to play at being an amateur hero. It’s all pretty tense and it works well. One thing that is a bit startling is the idea that in 1966 passengers could legally carry guns on to civilian airliners as long as they got permission first.

The Man Who Went Mad by Mistake sees Inspector Erskine committed to a mental hospital. Actually of course he’s undercover. He’s there to try to prove that Mark Tabor isn't really mad. Mark Tabor was supposed to testify in a big court case and his Mob associates were worried that his testimony might cause them some embarrassment. So they decided it would be better if Tabor wasn’t alive any more. Tabor fled, but he chose an interesting place to hide - he got himself committed to a mental hospital. He has a psychiatric history so that wasn’t too hard.

The problem is that while he’s in the hospital he cannot testify. And the Feds really want him to testify. Hence Erskine’s presence in the asylum. It’s an interesting and clever story idea. A good episode.

In The Divided Man a bomb sets off a fire that decoys a petro-chemical plant making rocket fuel for American missile. Inspector Erskine’s boss suspects the commies are behind the sabotage. In fact it’s a research chemist who has gone seriously crazy. He makes further attempts at sabotage and he’s obviously going to keep on serving bombs so it’s a race against time to catch him before he does even more damage. And he’s getting crazier by the minute. The bomber seems to want help. He makes appointments with a psychiatrist but he walks out on the appointments. There’s a reasonable amount of excitement and catching a suspect in a chemical plant isn’t easy - if the F.B.I. agents use guys they could blow the whole plant.

The Defector is a two-parter and it’s a Cold War spy saga. A chess champion from an eastern bloc country is in the U.S. for a major international chess tournament. Holman is however more than just a chess player and he’s believed to be ready to defect. Then he gets blown to pieces by a bomb. The trouble is that this story just doesn’t satisfy  Inspector Erskine. There’s the fact that Special Agent Rhodes who was tailing Holman lost sight of the chess champion for a moment. There’s the fact that Holman’s body was burnt beyond recognition. Most puzzling of all is Holman’s last chess game. It was a good game. The puzzle is that it was a good game the first time it was played, back in 1834. It was the exact same game, which means it was rigged. But why? What exactly was Holman playing at? For Erskine an added complication is that Holman’s unfortunate accidents may have implications for a vital international conference and he’s getting pressure from the State Department.

This is classic spy thriller stuff with lots of spy tradecraft on display and a delightfully devious plot. There’s code-breaking and lots of double-crosses and a fine action climax. It’s an elaborate game of chess, played for the highest stakes, and although Erskine claims to be a lousy chess player it turns out that he’s pretty good. Excellent stuff.

The Tormentors is a kidnapping story, complicated by the fact that the kidnapped boy’s father is most uncoöperative and his foolishness seems likely to cost his son his life. The highlight of this otherwise fairly routine episode is the F.B.I.’s use of an Air Force RF-101 Voodoo supersonic high-altitude photo-reconnaissance aircraft to try to locate the kidnappers’ car. The ending is reasonably exciting as well. Not a great episode but it’s OK.

In The Animal a murderer named Earl Clayton (played by Charles Bronson) breaks out of prison with four others. Given that the escaped convicts are now armed to the teeth and that Clayton’s record suggests he’s spectacularly violent, and given the Clayton is already facing execution for murder, the chances of retaking them peacefully seem remote. Clayton and one of the other escapees take refuge in a mountain lodge and they have four hostages. This episode is an interesting example of changing times. Today the lodge would be surrounded by dozens of heavily armed F.B.I. agents and cops but this is 1966 so four F.B.I. agents are considered to be an ample force to deal with the situation. A very good episode with Bronson in fine form.

The Plunderers is about an odd bank job. The vault was wide open but nothing was taken, even though the robbery seemed to have been very well planned. And a guard was killed during the robbery. Erskine and Rhodes don’t have much to go on - a red button and a few fibres plus a nagging feeling on the part of Erskine that he’s seen this M.O. before. It’s a fine police procedural tale in which the Bureau makes good use of its natural advantages - unlimited resources, modern laboratories - plus lots of legwork and a thoroughly methodical approach.

If you’ve been watching the series so far you’ll be wondering - where are the neo-nazis? There are always neo-Nazis in a 60s TV series. Well they finally make their appearance in The Bomb That Walked Like a Man. They’re an outfit called the Marshals of Freedom but they’re clearly full-on neo-Nazis plotting to overthrow the government. But the F.B.I.’s interest is in this organisation’s latest recruit, a suspect in a kidnapping-murder. And he’s a real crazy. Someone will have to go undercover to get the necessary evidence and of course the someone will be Erskine. This gives Efrem Zimbalist Jr a chance to do his cool guy under pressure thing, which he does very well. The added complication is the local police chief. His daughter was the murder victim and he may be planning to take the law into his own hands. It’s a good episode.

The Hiding Place is an all-Japanese town in Oregon and fingerprints taken near the scene of a hit-run incident suggest that one of the townspeople is a Japanese war criminal named Fujita. Fujita never renounced his American citizenship so technically he was guilty of treason. The case threatens to tear the town apart. Even if the plot is a bit contrived the episode is interesting as an example of the way the format of the series allowed it to deal with subjects that would have been right outside the orbit of a conventional cop show.

Final Thoughts

The F.B.I. is a fascinating blend of spy thriller and cop show. It succeeds for the same reason that the wonderful British series Special Branch succeeds - the format allows it to  approach spy stories in a slightly unusual and original way. The F.B.I. has the added advantage of being able to take a slightly different approach to crime stories as well.

The F.B.I. is a superbly made and very entertaining series. Highly recommended.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - Solo (1963)

Solo is the original feature-length pilot for The Man from U.N.C.L.E., shot in colour in 1963. The head of U.N.C.L.E. is Mr Allison, played by Will Kuluva. It was later edited down to 50 minutes with some reshoots (and with Leo G. Carroll as Mr Waverley replacing Will Kuluva) and screened in black-and-white as the opening episode of the series, The Vulcan Affair.

It has a fairly straightforward spy story plot. U.N.C.L.E. has discovered that wealthy industrialist Andrew Vulcan is a THRUSH agent. Vulcan intents to assassinate the president of a new independent African nation, THRUSH having decided that having their very own country would be very useful - for one thing their agents could claim diplomatic immunity.

Solo makes use of a device that the series would use again and again - an innocent bystander gets caught up in the world of espionage. In this case it’s Elaine May Donaldson, an ordinary housewife who just happened to have been Vulcan’s girlfriend years earlier when they were both at college. U.N.C.L.E. persuades her to help them foil Vulcan’s scheme.

When it was picked up as a series by NBC it was retitled The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and you might wonder why it was not called The Men from U.N.C.L.E. The answer is obvious when you watch Solo. The focus is entirely on Napoleon Solo. Illya Kuryakin is a minor character, in fact very minor, and was intended to be at best a minor character in the series. Illya was however so immediately and insanely popular that that idea was hurriedly revised and so there ended up being two men from U.N.C.L.E. but it was too late to change the title. It was pure accident that David McCallum lasted long enough for any of this to happen since the network wanted to fire him after the pilot, another example of the reliable stupidity of network executives.

On the subject of titles it’s worth mentioning that the original working title was Ian Fleming’s Solo, later shortened to Solo. Solo was however the name of a Bond movie minor character and MGM discovered they weren’t allowed to use it as the series title but oddly (and luckily) they were still allowed to use it as a character name.

Ian Fleming had been involved in the early planing stages of the series. He had at first intended it to feature two U.N.C.L.E. agents, Napoleon Solo and glamorous girl spy April Dancer (Fleming was always amazingly good at character names). Fleming’s involvement was short-lived but the pilot episode still has a very Ian Fleming feel to it. Napoleon Solo is an American James Bond - suave, cultured, charming, educated, upper class and with a taste for the good things in life. Including women. Especially women. There’s a touch of refined arrogance and there’s supreme self-assurance.

Like Bond Napoleon Solo is a very 1950s kind of hero. He’s dapper but his suits are both well-tailored and very conservative. And like Bond he’s a touch old-fashioned even by 1950s hero standards. He could be the hero in a Hitchcock spy movie. That’s why it turned out to be very fortunate that David McCallum wasn’t fired - lllya Kuryakin is a much more 1960s hero. Even though Robert Vaughn and David McCallum were almost exactly the same age Solo and Kuryakin seem to belong to different eras. Which is why they made such a great team.

The whole thing has that characteristic Ian Fleming feel to it. This is espionage with glamour, excitement and wealth. The plot is not too outlandish. THRUSH is a totally Ian Fleming concept - it’s just SPECTRE with a different name, an international criminal organisation aiming for power and wealth but with no ideological overtones whatsoever. The villain, Andrew Vulcan, could have stepped straight out of one of the 1950s Bond novels - a smooth very upper-class megalomaniacal industrialist.

It’s very stylish and very classy. It was made by MGM Television and some of the old MGM gloss is still in evidence. It looks expensive. It probably was expensive by television standards. There’s an ambience of money and glamour. The chemical plant sets are pretty good.

The tone is fairly serious. There’s the occasional witty moment but on the whole it’s played very straight. Even Robert Vaughn plays it pretty straight (well plays it straight by Robert Vaughn standards. anyway).

Will Kuluva is quite adequate as Mr Allison but of course Leo G. Carroll proved to be a better choice for the series. The guest cast, as was the case throughout the run of the series, is very strong with Patricia Crowley playing the innocent rôle to perfection. Fritz Weaver as Vulcan is a good villain but he’s much less colourful than later Man from U.N.C.L.E. bad guys.

The first season was considerably more serious than even the second season and the pilot is more serious still. Solo is however definitely worth seeing.

Mission: Impossible (the 1996 movie)

Movies based on popular 1960s TV series are usually pretty dire but the 1996 Mission: Impossible movies is an interesting exception.

At this stage of his career Tom Cruise had reached the very reasonable conclusion that the best way to ensure that he got rôles that appealed to him was to produce the movies himself. As a kid he’d been a huge fan of the 1960s Mission: Impossible TV series and making a movie version sounded like a tempting idea. The fact that Cruise was a sincere and enthusiastic fan of the TV series is significant. He didn’t want to do a deconstruction of the TV series or a parody. He wanted to make a movie capturing as much of the spirit of the TV version as possible.

This was actually quite a challenge because Mission: Impossible was a very unusual TV series. Bruce Geller, the creator and executive producer of the TV series, not only had some highly idiosyncratic ideas as to the form it would take he actually managed to persuade the production company and the network to allow him to do it his way. His first and most notable idea was that the characters would have no personality whatsoever. The focus would be entirely on plot. And, after all, spies don’t have personalities - their whole lives and their very survival are based on being able to pretend to be something other than what they are. By the time you get to the end of the 171 episodes of the series you know no more about any of the characters than you knew at the beginning. You know pretty much nothing important about their backgrounds and absolutely zero about their personal lives. Does Barney have kids? Is Cinnamon married? Does Mr Phelps play golf on the weekends? Was Willy in the army? We have no idea. Having characters with zero personality was going to be tricky for a 1990s feature film.

The TV series also has no humour at all. Humour might have humanised the characters, which was not what Geller wanted. That was also going to be tricky for the movie version.

The series also had a very distinctive structure. These were very specialised spies. They conducted not just covert operations but what would later be known as black ops, totally illegal. Almost every mission was an elaborate con game, a tortuous exercise in deception and misdirection. The Impossible Mission Force did not shoot people but it did very often manoeuvre them into a position where their own side would shoot them. Any attempt to transfer the series to the big screen would have to at least partially incorporate this idea.

The movie nails its colours to the mast right at the start. We get a pre-credits scene that is classic Mission: Impossible deception stuff and then we get the opening credits, done very much in Mission: Impossible style. And we get the theme music, and yes it’s Lalo Schifrin’s original theme music for the TV series. After which we get Mr Phelps (yes, Mr Phelps) receiving his instructions complete with the “this tape will self-destruct in five seconds” thing. He chooses his IMF team and explains his plan.

The key member of the team is Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and he’s rather in the same mould as Rollin Hand from the TV series although considerably more athletic. He is a master of disguise (just like Rollin) and he even does magic tricks (just like Rollin). There’s also hacker Jack Harmon who performs pretty much the same function as Barney in the TV series. He even has to climb up inside an elevator shaft, just as Barney did in at least one TV series episode. Instead of Cinnamon Carter the team includes three glamorous females.

Up to this point the movie is practically an episode of the TV series. It then departs from the original formula in some respects button entirely. The film’s most spectacular action sequence could have been taken straight from the TV series, albeit it’s done on a much more lavish scale. There is a major action set-piece at the end of the movie that is very Bond movie, but commercial realities being what they are there’s no way they could have avoided including such a sequence.

The famous lines from the TV series about the Secretary disavowing all knowledge of the IMF if they got themselves killed or captured also become painfully relevant.

It’s also interesting that despite a few Bondian moments this is definitely not a Bond movie clone. And Ethan Hunt is most definitely not a James Bond clone. In this movie he does carry a gun but it’s noteworthy that he doesn’t shoot anybody. He also doesn’t rely on his fists or martial arts skills. He does make use of his superb physical fitness and his nerves of steel but mostly he relies on out-thinking his opponents and on the classic Mission: Impossible TV series methods of deception and of setting elaborate traps. As the CIA agent tasked with catching him says at one point the difficult part of hunting someone like Hunt is that he’s so pro-active. And that describes him perfectly. He’s constantly devising plans. When you thinking you’re hunting him he’s probably actually hunting you. His mind never stops working (there’s one superb scene in which you see him talking to a key character and all the while Hunt is analysing the data available to him and fitting the pieces of the jigsaw together). As action heroes go Ethan Hunt is pretty cerebral. His methods are more like George Smiley’s than Bond’s. And the plot is the kind of classic mole-hunt that Smiley would have relished.

What’s most notable is just how closely this movie adheres to the formula and the structure of the TV series. Ethan Hunt is a more well-rounded character than any in the series but when you think about it how much do we actually learn about him? Was he ever married? Is he married now? Does he have children? Is he ex-military? How was he recruited to the IMF? What does he do on his days off? What are his tastes in music and books? The very very few facts that we learn about him are those essential to the plot.

The movie’s plot is a series of complex snares relying on deception and misdirection. Some of the traps are laid by Mr Phelps, some by Hunt’s enemies and some are improvised by Hunt himself.  Any of these traps could have made a fine episode of the TV series.

The only departures from the formula are those that were unavoidable given the commercial realties of the film marketplace. Tom Cruise had to be permitted the occasional (actually very occasional) wry wisecrack. Ethan Hunt had to be marginally more human than the TV characters. There had to be more action. There had to be a Bond movie-type action finale.

There’s also no more sex than there was in the TV series, the violence isn’t graphic and there’s very little bad language.

There’s some definite Cold War atmosphere in the movie and visually there are even a few hints of film noir. And with Brian de Palma directing there are of course lots of references to other movies. In this case de Palma has fun paying homage to the classic heist movies of the ’60s, movies like Topkapi, The Thomas Crown Affair and Gambit.

To be honest I don’t think it’s possible to appreciate this movie fully unless you’re a fan of the original TV series. There are all sorts of little touches that only make sense when you recognise them as homages to the TV series. Ethan Hunt’s disguises and his magic tricks are much more fun when you know they’re nods to the series. The same applies to the gadgets (which are much closer in spirit to the original series than to the gadgets in a Bond movie). The insanely over-complicated plot is more enjoyable when you know that the series was renowned for its insanely over-complicated plots. The lack of a really strong romance angle makes more sense when you know that in the TV series romance was only ever present as a weapon used by the IMF to entrap people. I suspect that a lot of the critics who disliked the movie didn’t notice the extraordinary efforts to capture the feel and the conventions of the series.

Mission: Impossible is surprisingly successful in retaining the feel of the TV series whilst still being an exciting ’90s action movie. It’s enormously enjoyable. Highly recommended.

Airwolf season 2 (1984-85)

Airwolf was created by Donald P. Bellisario and any series that Bellisario was involved in is  likely to be unexpectedly intelligent and complex. The first season of Airwolf was dark, edgy, cynical, moody and with multiple layers of ambiguity. There was pressure from the network to lighten things up a bit in the second season (which ran from late 1984 to 1985).

Stringfellow Hawke (Jan-Michael Vincent) is still working with Dominic Santini (Ernest Borgnine) flying commercial helicopters doing stunt work and film work, and still carrying out assorted crime-fighting and intelligence missions in his ultra-advanced combat helicopter Airwolf, which he sort of stole from the U.S. Government. He still enjoys unofficial protection from Michael Coldsmith Briggs III (Alex Cord), code-name Archangel, who is very very highly placed in The Firm (which is clearly meant to be the CIA), on the condition that he uses Airwolf for the occasional very secret probably totally illegal covert operation for The Firm.

The season opener introduces Jean Bruce Scott as girl helicopter pilot Caitlin O’Shannessy. She will become a semi-regular character in season two. The series certainly doesn’t need yet another helicopter pilot but I guess they figured that adding a feisty gal pilot would please the network. She’s an unnecessary character but she’s harmless enough and manages not to be irritating. She even becomes vaguely likeable.

Throughout its run the series struggled to find an audience and it became obvious that the network was likely to exert even more pressure to dumb things down. There was also the problem that this was a very expensive series to make. It’s not surprising that Bellisario severed his ties to Airwolf after the end of the second season.

What makes Airwolf really stand out is that it has an absolutely vital extended story arc, a very unusual thing to find in an 80s action series. That story arc concerns the fate of Stringfellow Hawke’s brother St John. It also explains a great deal about String’s character and motivations and how he came to steal an advanced combat helicopter and why he’s prepared to allow The Firm to make use of it. String and St John were ace combat helicopter pilots in Vietnam and they were involved in covert operations. String made it back home after the war but his brother didn’t. String strongly suspects that his brother is still alive and possibly still a prisoner-of-war. He also suspects that there may have been treachery involved in St John’s disappearance and that treachery may have involved U.S. government agencies, and that there may be people within those agencies who know the truth about mission prisoners-of-war.

So this extended story arc adds a hefty dose of paranoia and obsession to the series. And this story arc continues through season two, popping up in several key episodes. String keeps coming across coincidences and hints that suggest that he’s getting close to finding out the truth but it seems that every time he gets close the evidence turns out to be inconclusive, or ambiguous, or it simply vanishes. It’s rather similar to Mulder’s search for evidence of aliens - the evidence that would clinch the case is always just out of reach. And Stringfellow Hawke is every bit as obsessive as Fox Mulder.

Vietnam is the key to the whole series. Stringfellow Hawke learnt his combat helicopter skills there and he certainly had dealings with The Firm (which obviously represents the CIA which was popularly known as The Company). He also learnt not to trust people, especially people from the government, especially people from the intelligence community and most of all he learnt not to trust The Firm. It’s not that The Firm is portrayed as being evil as such. Sometimes The Firm does things that are good and necessary. Sometimes its motives are murkier. But String thinks that The Firm can help him to find his brother, so he’s prepared to be coöperative, up to a point.

String’s attitude towards Archangel is also complicated. String trusts Archangel, within very narrow limits. He doesn’t trust him enough to tell him where he has Airwolf stashed. Archangel is an intriguing character. He’s ruthless and since he’s a  a career intelligence man lying and deception and manipulation come as naturally to him as breathing. But only up to a certain point. Oddly enough Archangel does have some morals. There are some things he won’t do. He really believes he’s one of the good guys and there are things that the good guys don’t do. Archangel’s assistant and confidant Marella (Deborah Pratt) initially seems to be an even more cold-blooded version of Archangel, but there’s more to it than that. Like Archangel she’s in a profession that has no room for ideals or personal loyalty but she’s not quite as cynical as she appears to be.

The politics of Airwolf is interesting. Mostly it’s sceptical and cynical towards all sides of politics. The message is don’t trust the government but also don’t trust the enemies of the government. It’s not taking a left-wing or a right-wing position. Just don’t trust anyone in any official position. Don’t trust anyone really.

At times the paranoia level reaches X-Files proportions. What saves it from complete nihilism and despair is that String and Dom have been through enough together that they know they can trust each other. So it’s kind of like Stringfellow Hawke against the world, but he knows Dominic Santini will stand by him. And in season two he’s pretty sure Caitlin will stand by him as well. So you can trust friends, if they happen to be people you know real well.

String’s relationship with Archangel is also somewhat similar to Mulder’s relationship with various powerful authority figures who are prepared to help him and protect him but within limits and as long as it serves their agenda. I’m not suggesting that The X-Files was directly influenced by Airwolf, but the similarities of tone suggest that The X-Files was tapping into an already existing reservoir of paranoia that had been growing throughout the 80s.

The Episode Guide

Sweet Britches takes String to a small town in search of a lost friend but the local sheriff is very unfriendly and the whole place turns out to be pretty deadly. It’s an action-filled season opener.

Firestorm is totally over-the-top. Dom’s friend Eddie, a burnt-out pilot who’s crawled inside a bottle and intends to stay there, drives Dom nuts with crazy stories of UFOs and weird lights in the desert. Eddie is obviously hallucinating, except that he isn’t, what he’s seeing isn’t UFOs but it is real and it’s a whole lot more dangerous than UFOs. It’s an outrageous episode but it works.

Moffett’s Ghost is a ghost story of sorts. The crazed and evil Dr Moffett, the man who designed Airwolf, is dead but his ghost lives on. His ghost is a kind of computer virus built into Airwolf. And his ghost is as megalomaniacal and malevolent as the real Dr Moffett. This one is every bit as good as the best of season one. An excellent episode.

In Sins of the Past Dom’s past comes back to haunt him in a major way.

The Fallen Angel of the title of this episode is Archangel and he’s in big trouble. The Firm is in big trouble. It seems that Archangel has kind of gone rogue. He’s set off to rescue a former lover but he’s actually walked into a trap, and a very dangerous one. It’s a great episode and it’s interesting in being a very character-centred episode, with Archangel allowing his emotions to cloud his judgment, and with Marella having to choose between loyalty to the Firm and loyalty to Archangel and displaying an unexpected side to her character. You don’t really expect to see supporting characters in an 80s action-adventure series having to deal with complex conflicting loyalties and emotional crises but this is Airwolf and this is the sort of thing that makes Airwolf such a fascinating series.

Flight #093 Is Missing is a kind of riff on Airport ’77 with a hijacked airliner on the ocean floor but the passengers are still alive, and Caitlin is one of the passengers. It’s perhaps slightly less silly than Airport ’77 but it’s still fairly silly. But kind of fun.

HX-1 is an attack helicopter that may be just as formidable as Airwolf and it’s been stolen.  The way it was stolen worries String. Certain elements of the theft were eerily reminiscent of his brother St John’s style. String becomes more and more convinced that St John was mixed up in it. But he’s going to have to prove it and that could get him killed and it could get St John killed, if he’s actually alive and involved. A good episode.

Once a Hero is another episode in which the Vietnam War plays a part. String hears a rumour that his brother is alive and in a POW camp in Laos. He puts together a team of Vietnam vets to undertake a rescue mission but there are a lot of things that happened in Vietnam that refuse to stay in the past. This is a pretty dark episode by season two standards but it’s pretty good.

In Random Target String and Dom are doing some aerial filming. And it soon becomes evident that someone is prepared to kill to get hold of the film. String and Dom have no idea why. It was a totally routine job, and now a friend of theirs has been murdered because he was believed to be in possession of the film. And the lady cop assigned to the case doesn’t want to listen to the theories that String and Dom have come up with to explain the killing. More trouble follows, while String and Dom desperately try to figure out why it was that they filmed. A very good episode.

Condemned takes place on a remote island on which a deadly bioweapon has gotten totally out of hand. If it spreads to the outside world the prospects are very grim indeed. String and Caitlin have to find out exactly what the situation is but there is also a party of armed Russians on the island and they’re there for the same purpose. The Russians are just as worried about the situation as the Americans. The immediate problem is that String and Caitlin have to find a way to work amicably with the Russians in an atmosphere of quite understandable mutual suspicions (since one side or the other has been doing very silly and very dangerous things with this bioweapon). This is very much a detente-influenced story, the message being that both sides have to learn to work together. It’s also a very tense and suspenseful and generally very effective episode.

The American Dream is another episode with its roots in the Vietnam War. Vietnamese immigrants are still being oppressed by the same warlord who oppressed them in the old country. It’s an OK story.

In Inn at the End of the Road terrorists have stolen a device that can make any aircraft unbeatable in air-to-air combat but now the terrorists are holed up in a remote cabin in the mountains and they’ve taken hostages. A solid episode.

In Santini's Millions Dom is on a mission of mercy with a heart for a transplant operation when he stops and does a good turn for a stranded billionaire whose plane has been forced down. The billionaire is impressed by Dom’s incorruptibility so he leaves Dom a huge share of his fortune in his will. And then promptly dies, leaving Dom in a difficult situation - he is now rich but that means the has a whole crop of dangerous enemies. A pretty good episode.

Prisoner of Yesterday isn’t a great episode but it’s intriguing for the political ambiguity. A revolutionary leader who became president of his country has been deposed by the military and now, in failing health, languishes in hospital. Or he did, until a revolutionary group led by his daughter snatched him from the military hospital. To care for him they have kidnapped ‘Doc’ Gifford (who appeared in an earlier episode) and String is determined to rescue Doc. But things aren’t so simple. Guzman, the old and ailing ex-president, had been a genuine idealist. Having gained office he either sold out the revolution, or he became a realist and concentrated on doing what was possible, depending on whose story you believe. He’s not a real hero but he doesn’t seem to be a real villain. The young revolutionaries have mixed motivations. Some are moderates, some are extremists who hope to provoke civil war. His daughter and political heir is ambiguous as well. She has to decide whether to choose the path of violence or the path of compromise. It’s not the most exciting of Airwolf episodes but the political and ethical ambiguities are interesting.

Natural Born is the story of a hotshot young helicopter pilot named Kevin with extraordinary flying abilities, and extraordinarily poor judgment. His uncle is murdered by drug dealers and he wants revenge. He’s also penniless and jobless but String and Dom take him on as a kind of odd-job man because they feel sorry for him. He manages to lose them an important job and almost get himself and Caitlin killed but the kid can fly so they are willing to forgive almost anything. An average episode.

In Out of the Sky String, Dom and Caitlin get mixed up in show business when they get a job doing filming and stunts for a concert tour featuring country music star Roxy Marvel. The main stunt involves slowly lowering a huge fake UFO onto the stage from a helicopter. Roxy is a troubled star and there are obviously some strains between her and her ex-husband and manager, the very sleazy and very creepy Nick DeSoto. String starts to fall for Roxy but he doesn’t realise that she could actually be in real danger. A route episode although the fake UFO is quite cool.

In Dambreakers Hawke’s job is to fly a reporter into a remote Christian community that has decided to shun the modern world and all its evils and live the simple life. In three days’ time Hawke will return to pick her up by which time she should have her story.  And it might not be the story she expected since this community might turn out to be not quite what it appears to be. A very good episode.

Severance Pay is one of the Airwolf episodes dealing with the murky world of The Firm. These episodes are very similar in some ways to the conspiracy episodes of The X-Files. Klein and Mason, a couple of analysts retiring from The Firm, believe they’re being cheated out of their retirement bonus. When Klein dies Mason decides to get even. But something much more sinister is happening behind the scenes. Mason had discovered that there was a highly placed mole within The Firm. Mason is releasing material to the press and so is the mole. Mason’s material is embarrassing - the mole’s information is treacherous. It’s a fascinating episode for the casual acceptance of the idea that of course The Firm has all sorts of dirty secrets to hide, secrets relating to all kinds of illegal activities. And the even more casual acceptance of the idea that The Firm doesn’t fire or prosecute unreliable employees, it liquidates them. What makes this episode so good is the combination of extreme cynicism and whimsy.

In Eruption Dom and String are collecting data from a volcano for a university when the volcano decides to erupt. It decides to erupt in a really big way, as in a whole mountain exploding. Dom and String are forced down and find themselves in the town of New Gideon. This episode is basically a western. The town is under the control of the evil Davenport Mining Company. The miners are exploited and their families face near-starvation. And the corrupt sheriff is owned by the mining company. String is the Stranger Who Rides Into Town One Day and sets things right. Instead of the climactic gunfight in the main street we get a helicopter duel but it’s the same principle. It’s still an entertaining episode and the post-eruption post-apocalypse scenes are quite effective.

In Short Walk to Freedom Caitlyn joins an archaeological dig in South America with a bunch of American kids and they manage to get captured by guerillas. String rescues them but then he gets captured and Airwolf is badly damaged. Dragging Airwolf across the desert is a bit silly but it adds some drama. There’s air combat, there’s ground combat, there are daring rescues. It’s the Airwolf formula and it works for me. Good stuff.

Final Thoughts

So Airwolf has lots of cool action scenes, lots of explosions and lots of air combat. It has some reasonably decent scripts. It has a very good cast. It’s an attempt to make a dumb action adventure series that isn’t actually dumb at all. So why wasn’t it a bigger hit? Why did it struggle in the ratings throughout its run?

I really don’t know the answers, but it may be that it was at times a bit too ambitious and also at times a bit dark. Even though the second season was an attempt to make the series a bit more commercial it still has the odd dark and edgy moment. It doesn’t have the pure fun comic-book feel of Knight Rider or The A-Team.

And maybe Jan-Michael Vincent didn’t have the charisma to carry a show like this. A few years earlier he might have but by the time he was cast in Airwolf he was having serious drinking problems. He was just short of 40 when the series began but he looked a rather ravaged 40. I think he gave an extremely good and subtle performance but it may have been a bit too unconventional for the target audience.

Maybe the second season doesn’t quite live up to the promise of season one but it’s still an exceptionally interesting and entertaining series. Highly recommended.

Danger Man season two (1965-66)

Danger Man had a reasonably successful run as a half-hour spy drama series in 1960-61 and was revived, even more successfully, as a one-hour series which ran from 1964 to 1967. The title was unchanged in Britain but for some obscure reason it was given the incredibly dull title Secret Agent in the United States. Danger Man remains one of the most influential of all television spy series, and certainly one of the most interesting.

The reason it’s so interesting is that almost everything about this series is slightly ambiguous. The first layer of ambiguity of course is the matter of whether it’s actually the same series as the 1960 version and whether the hero is the same man. As with almost everything to do with Danger Man the ambiguities can never be entirely resolved. In the 1960 incarnation John Drake is an agent for an unnamed (and mythical) NATO intelligence  agency. In the 1964 version he works for an equally mythical British intelligence agency (M9). It is of course quite possible that he always was a British agent but that he had formerly been seconded to NATO.

The second layer of ambiguity is John Drake’s nationality. In the 1960 version his nationality is never explicitly stated but he seems most likely to be American. In the 1964 version he must presumably be a British subject since he’s working for British intelligence.  Again this does not necessarily mean he’s not the same man. He could easily be an Englishman who lived for many years in America, or he could be American-born but with British citizenship. The ambiguity is enhanced by Patrick McGoohan’s own ambiguous nationality - he was an American-born Irishman who was raised mostly in Ireland but spent his early career in Britain and he had a genuine transatlantic accent which he could tweak slightly to sound vaguely English, vaguely American or vaguely Irish.

There’s also a certain class ambiguity. John Drake is educated and cultured but somehow he is not quite a gentleman. There is a suggestion that he is a bit of a class outsider. His superiors (in the 1964 Danger Man) are mostly upper-class Englishmen but we get a definite sense that neither they nor Drake himself consider him to be a gentleman. On the other hand he is clearly not working class.

The series itself is slightly ambiguous. On the whole it belongs to the realist school of spy fiction. It has the touches of cynicism and moral ambiguity common to that school, and Drake is the kind of hero usually associated with that school - he has definite moral qualms about many of the things he has to do. On the other hand it avoids the full-blown cynicism and nihilism generally associated with realist spy fiction (writers like Greene, Ambler, le Carre and Deighton) and realist TV spy dramas like Callan and the very underrated Man in a Suitcase. It has touches of humour (for all its many virtues there are no laughs in Callan) and even on occasion touches of whimsy. The storylines are mostly of the realist type but occasionally the series ventures into more fantastic plots. Overall it’s a serious spy drama but it avoids wallowing in existential despair or bleakness.

While there are plenty of Cold War-themed episodes the Cold War is not the sole focus (perhaps not even the main focus). M9 seems to be equally concerned with trying to preserve the tattered remnants of British prestige and influence. In fact this is the dominant theme in a great deal of postwar British spy fiction, especially le Carre and Ian Fleming’s Bond novels - an attempt to deal with the appalling shock of realisation that Britain was no longer a major power. Many of Drake’s missions are attempts to keep pro-British regimes in power in the Third World or to protect Britain’s rapidly declining economic influence, or to prevent the process of abandoning the empire from degenerating into a complete shambles. Mostly it’s not the fate of the Free World that is at stake.

There are many interesting things about this series but the most interesting of all is the character of John Drake (and Patrick McGoohan’s portrayal of Drake). John Drake is the anti-Bond. He hates using guns. And when it comes to women he’s an old-fashioned gentleman. There’s no sex and no graphic violence, largely due to McGoohan’s religious beliefs (he was a devout Catholic). Drake is a moral spy. Which is of course an impossibility - being a spy is all about lying, cheating and manipulating people. Drake is no fool. He understands this. But he still tries his best to be a moral spy.

That doesn’t mean that there’s any lack of action. There are very few gunfights but lots of fistfights. It’s an exciting action series, but compared to other spy series there are comparatively few fatalities. Which actually makes Danger Man more realistic than most spy dramas - in real life spies very rarely kill each other (or at least they very rarely killed each other during the Cold War).

So how does the 1964 reinvention of Danger Man stack up against the 1960 original? There are the slight differences alluded to earlier but on the whole both the formula and the feel remain unchanged. The hour-long format offered writers more scope but on the other hand the half-hour format tended to produce fast-paced punchy television. Production values are high in both series. McGoohan’s performance is pretty much identical in both series. Both versions have their virtues and I personally wouldn’t care to express a preference for one over the other.

Season Highlights

The whole season is extremely good but there are a few definite highlights.

In You're Not in Any Trouble, Are You? Drake is up against an organisation of professional killers. He gets some help from a girl named Lena. He doesn’t need her help and he doesn’t want it but she’s determined to help him anyway and she’s a terribly nice girl and he can’t bring himself to hurt her feelings. The always delightful Susan Hampshire guest stars as Lena (and she pops up another episode later in the season).

Sting in the Tail also benefits from a great guest starring performance. This time it’s Derren Nesbitt as a very charming but very deadly Middle Eastern assassin named Noureddine. The battle of wits, and wills, between Drake and Noureddine is the highlight.

To Our Best Friend is one of a number of episodes in Which Drake really hates having to do his job. He has to investigate a suspected double agent who happens to be one of his oldest friends. There are several layers of divided loyalties and betrayals in this excellent story.

I Can Only Offer You Sherry is an investigation of a security leak. The case seems straightforward but turns out not to be, or at least it turns out not to be morally straightforward. A very good performance by Wendy Craig in this one.

In The Hunting Party Drake goes undercover as a butler. It’s another possible security leak but this one is almost inexplicable. The only clue is that a wealthy English couple living in France, Basil and Claudia Jordan, seem to be a common factor in a number of leaks. It’s a clever if slightly far-fetched plot of a type that was very popular at the time but the main attractions is the deadly battle of wits between Basil (played with great style by Denholm Elliott) and Drake. And it’s the sort of scenario that McGoohan really relished as an actor. The toy car race is a superb touch.

Two Birds with One Bullet is a good but not a great episode but it’s notable for the murkiness of the politics, with British Intelligence trying to save the leader of a moderate revolutionary party because the party’s existence provides a useful outlet for opposition that might otherwise be directed in more dangerous directions.

I Am Afraid You Have the Wrong Number is another perhaps not outstanding but very solid episode that is noteworthy for the number of gadgets Drake uses, and for Drake behaving like a bit of a one-man army. He is investigating the death of a British agent in Geneva but is the agent really dead? he agent is named Standfast, a nice nod to John Buchan's classic spy thriller Mr Standfast.

The Man with the Foot starts with an operation that goes wrong in the course of which  Drake’s cover is blown. He is sent on leave and decides that Spain might be nice at this time of year. An odd decision since it’s the middle of winter. He stays in a small hotel in the Pyrenees. He is the only guest, until Monckton turns up. It doesn’t take Monckton long to conclude that Drake is a spy. It doesn’t take Drake long to reach the same conclusion about Monckton. They’re both right. They are both spies. But what on earth is it that Drake is up to? His behaviour is such that any self-respecting spy observing him would be justified in thinking that he was up to something incredibly important and incredibly secret and the viewer will be thinking the same thing. But there’s an odd clever little twist to this one.

Robert Urquhart is great fun as Monckton plus we get Bernard Lee as well in the guest cast. It’s an offbeat slightly quirky episode but it’s surprisingly successful.

In The Paper Chase the First Secretary at the British Embassy in Rome has had some papers stolen from his car. Since the papers were top-secret and he was not even supposed to take them out of the Embassy he’s going to be in big trouble. So he asks his old friend John Drake for help. It’s Saturday. Drake’s task is to retrieve those papers and he has to do it before Monday morning. Unfortunately the chase for those papers turns out to be remarkably complicated since they have already changed hands several times. It’s a tense and moody episode and then right at the end - well let’s just say the ending is somewhat bizarre and unexpected. An enjoyable episode just the same.

Pirate radio stations were a big thing in the 60s and in Not So Jolly Roger Drake goes undercover as a DJ on Radio Jolly Roger, broadcasting from what looks like an oil rig just outside the three-mile limit. In fact it’s apparently some kind of wartime maritime fort - in any case it’s a fantastic location. He’s taking over from the previous DJ who met with a very unfortunate accident. It seems that Radio Jolly Roger isn’t just broadcasting the lates pop hits, it’s also broadcasting signals to enemy submarines. The setting gives this highly entertaining and stylish story a slight hint of the surreal.

Final Thoughts

At the time it seemed like a bold move for Patrick McGoohan to leave Danger Man to make his ground-breaking very ambitious very experimental series The Prisoner. In retrospect The Prisoner has not dated all that well. It’s still interesting but its flaws (particularly its self-indulgence) are all too evident. Danger Man by contrast now seems like much the more successful series.

Danger Man is one of the great TV spy series. Very highly recommended.

a third season Star Trek miscellany

Star Trek is far from being my favourite 1960s science fiction TV series. It had its great moments but it had some excruciating moments as well. For me the problem was never the occasional campiness. That doesn’t bother me. My problem was with the heavy-handed messaging in so many of the scripts. At times it was even more heavy-handed than The Twilight Zone which is saying something. There was also often a bit too much obviousness in the scripts. In season three the great moments were becoming progressively rarer.

That Which Survives

That Which Survives is a late season three episode which is a mixture of good and bad. The best news is that it’s entirely free of social messages. The bad news is that the story is not exactly dazzlingly original.

The Enterprise arrives at a planet which is very puzzling indeed. It appears to be only a few thousand years old but there is life on the surface. Complex life could not possibly have evolved in such a short time but there it is. As Kirk and three others are about to be transported to the planet surface a strange woman appears in the transporter room. She touches one of the technicians and he dies instantly.

Then things get really worrying. The Enterprise disappears, having been instantly propelled to a point a thousand light years away. Kirk and the landing party think the ship has been destroyed while on the Enterprise similarly grave fears are held for the safety of the landing party. Both sets of fears are well-founded. The members of the landing party are being stalked by that strange woman while the Enterprise has been sabotaged and may blow up at any moment.

The explanation when it comes might not be very original but there is one interesting twist regarding the woman’s motivations.

Lee Meriwether plays the murderous woman, Losira, and does a decent enough job. Her makeup is rather startling.

William Shatner gets to do some overacting, which is always good. Spock is particularly Spock-like in this episode while engineering officer Mr Scott (James Doohan) is ever more Scottish than usual.

That Which Survives works pretty well. It’s entertaining and it has none of the irritating ingredients that mar so many episodes. I recommend this one.

All Our Yesterdays

All Our Yesterdays was the second last episode of Star Trek, and it proves that even at this very late stage the series could still come up with a truly excellent story. It’s a time travel story with some nice twists. What’s particularly satisfying is that the twists are emotional twists as well as science fictional ones.

The Enterprise arrives just in time to rescue the inhabitants of a planet. Their sun is about to go supernova. Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down and find to their surprise that everyone has gone, except for the ageing librarian. He is however more than a librarian.

Where have the planet’s inhabitants gone? It ties out that they’ve escaped into the past. Not in their imaginations but in reality. The librarian, Atoz, has invented a machine that can send them back to any period in the planet’s history. There is one little catch, which I’m not going to reveal.

The machine accidentally sends Kirk back to a time roughly similar to Europe in the 17th century. The fact that it looks more like a period in Earth’s history than in an alien planet’s history doesn’t affect the story. Kirk finds himself accused of witchcraft and finds out about the catch I mentioned earlier. Spock and McCoy are accidentally sent back to the Ice Age where they encounter the beautiful Zarabeth (Mariette Hartley). Amusingly, when she takes them back to her cave and removes her furs she’s wearing an incredibly skimpy costume underneath. This doesn’t make much sense except that hey, she’s really hot and she looks good wearing very little clothing and that can’t hurt the ratings.

Spock reacts very strangely to all this. It’s not just that he seems to be falling in love with Zarabeth, which is startling enough, but his behaviour is odd in other ways. What’s really neat is that the plot gives us a plausible and entirely satisfying explanation for his behaviour, an explanation I’m also not going to reveal.

There’s also a race against time element (that sun is going to blow at any minute) which adds some suspense.

Leonard Nimoy gets a chance to do some real acting as well and he’s able to make Spock’s personality aberration seem convincing.

This is a script (by Jean Lisette Aroeste) that ties all its threads, scientific and emotional, together very neatly and very cleverly. OK, by the halfway point you can see how it’s going to end but that’s not a flaw since it increases the emotional impact.

The time travel stuff is naturally pure technobabble but what matters is that at least it sounds like it makes sense (which is more than can be said for a lot of TV sci-fi) and all the implications have been clearly thought out.

All Our Yesterdays manages to be an original and surprisingly coherent time travel story, a story with some emotional depth and fine entertainment. This is the kind of episode that almost persuades me to forgive Star Trek for the disappointments of so many other episodes. It has a very effective ending too. This one is highly recommended.

The Cloud Minders

An episode of Star Trek with a political subtext is no surprise. There are countless such episodes. But The Cloud Minders is something different. The social message here is not a liberal one. This one is pure Marxist class struggle stuff.

The Enterprise has to pick up some ore from the planet Ardana. The ore is desperately needed to fight a botanical plague on another planet. Ardana is a rigidly divided society. On the planet surface (or rather below the surface since their main function is to mine the ore) are the Troglytes. They’re the oppressed workers. The members of the ruling class live in Stratos City, a city that floats in the clouds. They devote their lives to art and intellectual pursuits. They do no actual work. Their idyllic lifestyle is made possible by the labours of the Troglytes. And now the Troglytes are rebelling against their appalling working conditions.

What’s really interesting is that the ruling class are not an old-fashioned aristocracy nor are they quite a capitalist class. They are an intellectual/artistic class. They live lives devoted to art and philosophy. Those lives are of course based on exploitation.

The Stratos City dwellers pride themselves on the fact that Stratos City is entirely free from violence, while the Troglytes are violent and dangerous. In fact Kirk, Spock and McCoy (who have beamed down to Stratos City) will soon discover that the city dwellers are quite happy to use torture on Troglytes.

Kirk is naturally determined to end this injustice even if it means violating his orders and interfering with the government of Ardana.

The story develops in a somewhat contrived manner. This is not exactly a subtle story, but Star Trek was never renowned for its subtlety. It’s still a reasonably OK episode.

Lost in Space - No Place to Hide (unaired pilot, 1965)

No Place to Hide is the unaired 1965 pilot episode of Lost in Space and it provides a fascinating look at the original concepts behind the show. It differs from the first episode of season one (The Reluctant Stowaway) in many ways, some obvious and others more subtle but no less important.

The basic premise, that the Robinsons are to be the first family sent into deep space to begin the task of him colonisation, is the same. There is however a voiceover narration in the early part of the episode (it’s actually supposed to be the voice of a controller at Alpha Control) which explains a lot of details that The Reluctant Stowaway glosses over and adds information that gives the mission a slightly different character. The spaceship is named the Gemini 12 rather than the Jupiter 2.

The most obvious difference is that there’s no robot and no Dr Smith. It soon becomes clear why it was so vital to add Dr Smith to the cast. He was so incredibly useful in plot terms - he could always be relied upon to lose or break some piece of vital equipment or cause some other problem that would put everyone in danger and thereby create the necessary dramas. And of course in The Reluctant Stowaway it’s the extra weight he adds to the spaceship by stowing away that causes them to become lost. In No Place to Hide the Gemini 12 runs into a meteor storm that damages the ship and sends them wildly off course.

It’s also interesting that in The Reluctant Stowaway the Robinsons seem to be a typical American family chosen more or less at random, with John Robinson and Don West seeming to be the only qualified members of the crew. In No Place to Hide they’re all incredibly highly qualified experts in a variety of vital fields. Don West is Dr West rather than Major West and he’s a genius scientist. John and Maureen Robinson are also both genius scientists. Even Penny is a zoologist, and Will is a scientific prodigy. The one odd exception is poor Judy - she’s an aspiring musical comedy star!

The Gemini 12 crash lands on an unknown planet. Within six months they have established a base camp and they’re growing food and domesticating animals. Then things start to go wrong and they’re plunged into a series of dangerous adventures. Some of these adventures would be recycled for use in early season one episodes.

Most of the characters are pretty much the same. Despite their impressive scientific qualifications they do not, with the exception of John Robinson and Don West, appear to do anything scientifically impressive (although of course it could be assumed that Maureen and Penny are making their contributions in the areas of food cultivation and animal husbandry).

The overall tone is fairly serious. Of course the tone of the first half dozen or so episodes of the first season is also fairly serious compared to later episodes but without Dr Smith and the robot there are no actual comedy moments at all in No Place to Hide.

There’s at least a token effort to establish a romantic relationship between Don and Judy. Since No Place to Hide takes itself rather seriously it’s likely that the original idea had been to aim at a wider audience rather than specifically a juvenile audience so it’s possible that the intention had been to develop this romance angle a bit more fully. One of the minor problems with the series was that with the lack of focus on this romantic pairing Judy ended up being a character without any really defined rôle.

I don’t recall there being so much emphasis in The Reluctant Stowaway on the idea that if the mission had gone as planned the Robinsons would have spent 98 years in suspended animation before reaching their destination.

The spacecraft-in-flight special effects are a bit iffy, especially during the meteor storm, but they're not noticeably worse than those to be found in other television science fiction series of that era. On the other hand some of the other effects are quite decent and it’s obvious that some serious money was spent here. Overall it’s visually quite impressive by 1960s television standards. The inland sea sequences are thrilling and very well done with some fine miniatures work.

No Place to Hide is most definitely worth watching if you’re a dedicated Lost in Space fan or an Irwin Allen fan. Like the first few first season episodes it offers a tantalising hint of some of the directions in which the series might have gone.  It seems fairly clear that when this pilot was made the intention was that Lost in Space would be a real relatively grown-up science fiction series that would appeal to a wide audience. Watching the pilot you can see why changes had to be made but you can also understood why it was picked up as a series.

No Place to Hide is included as an extra in the season one volume two DVD boxed set (or at least it's included in the Region 4 edition). I have no idea if it's also included in the more recent complete series releases on DVD and Blu-Ray.

I reviewed the early relatively serious season one Lost in Space episodes a few years back. That post can be found here.