The mid-1970’s was a time of a new, more modern heroes on television. Shows like
The Six Million Dollar Man and
The Bionic Woman gave us heroes who lived everyday lives like the rest of us, with
The Bionic Woman in particular living her life as a teacher and now and then going off on some exciting adventures. After the campiness of the
Batman series in the 1960’s, it seemed as if the time of superheroes in fancy costumes had passed.
Then came
Wonder Woman.
Lynda Carter was just 25 years old when she was cast in the lead role. She was beautiful and actually had a shape to her unlike so many of the "hot" actresses of today. Lyle Waggoner, and actor known mostly as a comedic sidekick to Carol Burnett, took on the role of the dashing Steve Trevor. The first season for the series took place in the same setting as the comic books, during the second world war. The pilot for the series was actually aired for the first time in 1975, with the first season consisting of 13 one-hour episodes airing in 1976.
History: In the summer of 1942 there is a Nazi mission to destroy a target in New York where the Americans are working on a new guidance system for their bombs. They use a single-plane attack on the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a decoy.
Steve Trevor takes the assignment to stop the plane. His apparently dim-witted blonde secretary with whom he shares a relationship is actually a Nazi spy. He shoots the plane down somewhere in what's knows as
The Devil's Triangle. It comes down near an uncharted island that the residents call
Paradise Island. The residents? Beautiful women with amazing powers and strength, most of whom have never seen a man before.
Queen: I names this island "Paradise" for an excellent reason - there are no men on it.
I hear ya sister!
Watching the pilot (and the entire first season, for that matter) there is some pretty bad scripts with schlocky dialogue:
General: Do your best, boy
Steve: General, I can only do my best
Yup, that's high-caliber writing if you ask me. Makes the Nancy Drew books look like Pulitzer prize contenders.
On Paradise Island, it would seem that Diana, daughter of the Queen, falls for Major Trevor. She ends up taking him back to the United States and begins to learn about the threat to the world that the evil Nazis represent. The pilot ends with Wonder Woman being hired as Steve's secretary under the guise of Yeoman Diana Prince.
Eric Braeden's acting in the pilot has to be the worst. Watching him in the cockpit as he and Steve are having their dogfight as he closes one eye just made me laugh really hard. As I was watching the pilot between the acting and the writing, I just kept thinking "I actually used to be crazy about this show?"
The editing job on the pilot isn’t all that great, especially when Wonder Woman stops thieves in the street and uses her magical bracelets to block the bullets they shoot at her. It's choppy as all get-out. In listening to the commentary, that's apparently due to the special effect used to produce the flash in her bracelets. They weren't too good at marking her and having her in the same pose from one shot to the next.
After watching the pilot, I was stunned and feared that all my fond memories of the show and how much I loved it were about the be shot to hell. Still, I pressed on. The second episode - the start of the actual series run - is where it seems to start getting a little better. Lynda Carter seems to be a little more comfortable in the role, and we have the start of her doing that spinning thing to change from Diana Prince to Wonder Woman.
The series took a page from the comic books, with cartoon-like captions as the scenes change. Things like
Meanwhile, back in Washington… appear in the corner to let the viewer know when the setting is changing. It’s a cute effect that works well in the show’s setting.
Throughout the series, there are some pretty memorable names making guest appearances. Douglas Cramer, the series Producer, explains in one of the special features that people were clamoring to make guest appearances on the show. Among those are Cloris Leachman and later Carolyn Jones as the Queen, Robert Reed, Dick Van Patten, Roy Rogers (whom it is rumored refused to work next to a woman in a bathing suit and made them change how Wonder Woman dressed in that episode), Anne Francis, Robert Loggia, John Hillerman, and Robert Hays. Debra Winger appeared in three episodes as Diana's younger sister, Drusilla.
Still, even the fun quality of the show couldn’t get away from some of the more campy aspects of the show and some pretty stilted dialogue:
"She is most surely back at the apartment."
Some of the episodes really descend into the ridiculous, such as
Wonder Woman vs. Garantua! which involves a gorilla brainwashed to fight the super-hero.
There are times that I look at this and think if this was what people were like who were this country's best in the 1940's, it's a miracle we beat the Nazis. Then I go watch a Ken Burns documentary and I feel better. I mean, Lynda Carter dons glasses, pulls her hair back, and puts on some clothes and this Colonel in the military can’t tell she’s one and the same as Wonder Woman. The fact that she managed to get clearance to work so closely with someone high up in the government also left me scratching my head a bit.
Still, if you can suspend the improbability of many of these events, it’s a fun show. I like the depiction of a woman here. Carter is beautiful and sexy, yet she’s not using that as a way to get what she wants. I don’t deny that Lynda Carter was the stuff of many a boy’s fantasy, but Wonder Woman went beyond that. She outsmarts people as much as she uses her superpowers. As much as some of the characterizations of woman during this time often bother me when I look back, this is one that definitely doesn’t.
The DVD release is good. The episodes have been cleaned up to produce a picture that’s pretty free from interference. There are a few special features, such as the commentary on the pilot with Lynda Carter and Douglas Cramer. I really like how Carter still embraces the role, rather than treating it as a stepping stone and something she’d rather not talk about the way many other stars regard roles they took early in their careers. The title of this review is taken from a statement Carter makes during the retrospective on the last disc about wearing the costume with what she terms “bullet breasts”.
The first season of
Wonder Woman was the only one set during the same time period as the comic books. It shifted networks and was revamped significantly following this season. It’s definitely worth checking out, especially for those of us who have fond memories of it. Although it is very family friendly, with a younger generation used to a lot more splashiness it might lose some of it’s charm.
Disc One:
• The New Original Wonder Woman
• Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Commentary on
The New Original Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter and Executive Producer Douglas S. Cramer
Disc Two:
• Fausta: The Nazi Wonder Woman
• Beauty on Parade
• The Feminum Mystique (Part 1)
Disc Three:
• The Feminum Mystique (Part 2)
• Wonder Woman vs. Garantua!
• The Pluto File
Disc Four:
• Last of the Two Dollar Bills
• Judgement from Outer Space (Part 1)
• Judgement from Outer Space (Part 2)
Disc Five:
• Formula 407
• The Bushwackers
• Wonder Woman in Hollywood
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Beauty, Brawn and Bulletproof Bracelets: A Wonder Woman Retrospective
Other comic book super-hero reviews:
Batman ~ Spider-Man ~ Spider-Man 2 ~ X-Men © 2008 Patti Aliventi
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