I get a lot of e-mails from people asking me about television shows, made-for-TV movies or miniseries they remember from years or decades past. I try to answer each question as best I can. Every now and then I like to dig through my inbox and pull out a few choice e-mails to answer here at Television Obscurities for everyone to read. Keep reading for today’s questions and answers.
There is a movie that I saw on TV as a kid and I can’t find the name of it. It was about a scientist working on a project and someone broke into has lab while working and people beat the stuffing out of him and left him for dead. He survived but was paralyzed, he developed a suit that allowed him to walk and stalked the individuals that hurt him.
Sean
I initially thought Sean was remembering a one-season wonder called M.A.N.T.I.S., broadcast by FOX during the 1994-1995 season. Carl Lumbly starred as a scientist who, after being shot and paralyzed, built himself a Mechanically Automated NeuroTransmitter Interactive System (M.A.N.T.I.S.) that allowed him to not only walk again but fight crime as a superhero. A made-for-TV movie that served as pilot for the series aired on January 24th, 1994 and the series proper premiered on August 26th, 1994. But Sean replied with the following:
You’re right that is very similar. But unless I was super drunk, which is entirely possible it was definitely late seventies early eighties. The big difference between them is the suit in the old movie is like a deep diver suit. Like danger Will Robinson. Why can’t anyone help me? Please. Thanks again brother.
Sean
Eventually, I identified the telefilm Sean recalled watching as NBC’s Exo-Man, broadcast on Saturday, June 18th, 1977. David Ackroyd starred as Nicholas Conrad, a brilliant physics professor paralyzed from the waist down after being attacked by mobsters. Conrad was going to testify against the mob, so they tried to silence him. Instead, they just made him mad. Using his expertise, Conrad devised an “exo-suit” that did look something like a diving suit, and then had his revenge on the mobsters, crashing through walls and otherwise proving invulnerable. Jose Ferrer played the head mobster and Anne Schedeen played Conrad’s girlfriend.
Exo-Man was written by Martin Caidin, whose 1972 novel Cyborg was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man and its spin-off The Bionic Woman. His script was later rewritten by another writer and then producer Lionel E. Siegel turned out three additional drafts [1]. Siegel told the Associated Press why he spent so much time reworking the script:
I personally like to write about people who are vulnerable, to show and dramatize those scenes. What I did was work with the characters until I liked them and understood them, and put them into situations that exposed their anxieties, their fears and their strengths. [2]
Exo-Man was produced as a pilot for NBC’s upcoming 1977-1978 schedule but failed to make the cut; Siegel hoped that it would make the network’s mid-season schedule (it didn’t) [3]. Executive producer Richard Irving also directed the telefilm, which was broadcast as an installment of NBC Saturday Night at the Movies. It aired from 8-10PM opposite repeats on ABC and CBS.
Works Cited:
1 Buck, Jerry. “‘Exo-Man’ tries for spot.” Associated Press. Lawrence Journal-World TV Scene. 18 Jun. 1977: 2.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
Martin Caidin later blamed Universal’s merchandising department for killing any chance of the pilot being sold. He was quoted, in Lee Goldberg’s “Unsold Television Pilots: 1955 through 1988”, as saying that Universal wanted to make an “exo-suit” for the two-hour pilot that could easily be marketable as a children’s toy when (and if) it became a series- and that went against everything Caidin had originally created in the script. He said their idea of the “exo-suit” destroyed any chance of NBC buying the concept as a weekly series.
Wasn’t Martin Caidin originally part of the 2 or 3 90min Six Million Dollar Man movies of the week?
Universal was making so much money on all the Bionic toys and games Lee Majors had to fight for a share during the last season of the show.
Caidin wrote the novel “Cyborg”, that was the basis for “THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN”, ‘pBOB’, and was directly involved in the early 90 minute movies.
The EXO-MAN pilot rated a 13.9HH/33%, quite a good number for a pilot aired in summer on the ‘NBC Saturday Night at the Movies’. It’s lead-in on NBC was the ‘Photoplay Gold Medal Awards’, which garnered a 13.5HH/30%, and its only original competition that night was a summer burn-off episode of ABC’s delightful detective dramedy ‘The Feather & Father Gang’ at 10 pm.
One of the reasons that the EXO-MAN pilot was passed over at the 1977 May upfronts was that Mr. Paul Klein had made an unanticipated pick up of ‘The Bionic Woman’ for Saturdays at 8 pm (likely one of the few timeslots where an ‘Exo-Man’ series would have gone). During the 1976-77 season, ABC’s ‘The Bionic Woman’ had finished up in 14th place with a 22.9HH average, although ratings had eroded as the season progressed. Nevertheless, it was a shocker ABC cancellation that spring by Mr. Fred Silverman, who replaced it with the dramedy ‘Eight is Enough’, which was thought to be a better female-skewing series to lead off Wednesday nights than ‘The Bionic Woman’.
Further to Mr. Grauman’s note, I remember there was an awful lot of merchandising activity around ‘The Six Million Dollar Man / The Bionic Woman’ series…doll figurines, lunch pails, t-shirts, board games. It wouldn’t surprise me that from a Universal perspective, getting another season of ‘The Bionic Woman’ took a higher priority than pushing a chancey scifi pilot that still hadn’t had an airing…in those days, most series were viewer-tested in winter-spring broadcasts of their pilots.
Another factor against an ‘Exo-Man’ series pick-up was that NBC had also commissioned ‘The Man from Atlantis’ to series (for Thursdays at 9 pm out of ‘CHiPS’), which was greenlit based on four pilot telemovies, three of which had aired over the 1976-77 season prior to upfront announcements. While the first pilot airing in March had gotten a stunning 27.3HH/46%, the second and third telemovies aired during the May Sweep to weaker numbers. The second telemovie got a rather tepid 15.8HH/31% against tought competition (James Bond on ABC), but the third telemovie aired on a Tuesday against mostly encores and garnered a dismal 12.7HH/24% ratings, no doubt prompting a few Martini lunches at 30 Rock when the overnights came over the teletype.
Thanks for the background information, ‘DuMont’! Lee Goldberg obviously didn’t know all that, and took Caidin’s sour attitude towards the fate of the pilot as the “official explanation” as to why it didn’t sell.
…There’s one other factor as to why “Exo-Man” wasn’t picked up: According to Jim Shooter in an interview in the early 1980’s regarding Marvel Comics characters on TV, Marvel’s attorneys reportedly began looking into legal action after Caidin had admitted in an interview that he’d read a few issues of Iron Man prior to his original submission for “Exo-Man”. However, Caidin’s original was significantly different enough from what the final shooting script called for that if Urinalversal had shot that instead, they’d have lost the potential toy market but there wouldn’t have been any legal ground for Marvel’s attorneys to stand on. In other words, no suit, no suit.
A LA COMUNIDAD POR FAVOR ME PUEDEN DECIR QUE SIGNIFICA “EXO” TUVE UN SUEÑO DONDE ME DIJERON LA FRASE “EXO HOMBRE “Y NO SE REALMENTE QUE SIGNIFICA SI ME LO DICEN LES ESTARE MUY AGRADECIDO mi correo [email protected] GRACIAS
Good grief, I thought I was the only one who remembered Exo-Man. I was always disappointed it wasn’t picked up as a series.
I remember seeing this in the UK circa 1978, an quite liking it…what did I know, I was 5…. It received a second airing here a couple of years later but I’ve not seen it since.
It would be quite interesting to see what I make of it in my 40s.
Olá, Pessoal da “Televisão Obscurities”!
Acho que depois de 35 anos é que neste mês (Janeiro de 2.016) assisti o filme “Exo-Man”: gostei muito, porém poderíeis disponibilizar o “Seriado”, que a até hoje não consigo encontra-lo – aguardo resposta -l