Starman (TV series)

Did You Know?

• Robert Hays accepted the lead role just as his one-year contract with Columbia Pictures Television was set to expire.
• Rather than a traditional pilot, Columbia produced a 20-minute presentation showing the look and feel of the series, describing it as being in the vein of The Fugitive and The Invaders.
• Starman was nominated twice in 1987 for the Young Artist Award, including Best Family Television Drama and Best Young Actor Starring in a Television Drama Series for Christopher Daniel Barnes.

Storyline

Fifteen years after the events of the film, the alien returns, now appearing as a clone of the late photojournalist Paul Forrester, played by Robert Hays. His mission is to find and guide his teenage son, Scott Hayden Jr., portrayed by Christopher Daniel Barnes, while they evade a U.S. government agent and search for Scott’s missing mother, Jenny Hayden. Each episode follows the fugitive father and son as they travel from place to place, helping people they encounter along the way. Scott tries to teach his alien father what it means to be human, while Starman deals with the consequences of Forrester’s reckless past. Both carry a small silvery sphere, about three to four centimeters in diameter, which can be used by a trained mind for limited telekinesis or telepathy. Starman is skilled with the sphere, but Scott is still learning to focus; in the episode “Blue Lights,” he accidentally creates a rotating ring of blue lights that is mistaken for a UFO. The pair can also form empathic connections with animals. They are constantly pursued by government UFO investigator George Fox, played by Michael Cavanaugh, who sees them as a threat to humanity and refuses to let them live freely. When Starman tells Fox that children are the world’s hope, Fox angrily implies that Scott is a mutant and unacceptable. Despite this, Starman holds no grudge and even treats a life-threatening condition Fox suffers before escaping with Scott. In the two-part episode “Starscape,” Starman and Scott find Jenny Hayden, now living as an artist named Karen Iseley in Arizona. A final episode, “The Test,” aired afterward in an attempt to set up a second season, but the series was canceled.