My Favorite Martian

My Favorite Martian was a CBS sitcom that ran for 107 episodes from September 29, 1963, to May 1, 1966. It starred Ray Walston as the Martian, known as "Uncle Martin," and Bill Bixby as Tim O'Hara. The show was the first of the mid-1960s "fantasy" sitcoms featuring characters with extraordinary abilities, airing before *My Living Doll* (1964–1965), *Bewitched* (1964–1972), and *I Dream of Jeannie* (1965–1970). The first two seasons (75 episodes) were in black and white, while the 32 episodes of the third and final season were in color. John L. Greene created the core characters and format, with Jack Chertok producing.

The premise begins when a 450-year-old Martian anthropologist, piloting a one-man spaceship, nearly collides with the U.S. Air Force’s X-15 rocket plane. Tim O’Hara, a reporter for *The Los Angeles Sun*, witnesses the crash landing near Los Angeles after covering the X-15 flight. He takes the Martian in, introducing him as his "Uncle Martin" to avoid public panic. The Martian hides his abilities from everyone but Tim while trying to repair his ship. His powers include retractable antennae that allow invisibility, telepathy and mind influence, levitation via his index finger, animal communication, freezing people or objects, and super-speed for himself and others. He also invents devices: a time machine (transporting them to medieval England, 1849 St. Louis, early Hollywood, and bringing Leonardo da Vinci and Jesse James to the present), a molecular separator (rearranging matter, like turning a squirrel into a human), memory-storage pills, and devices for duplication or levitation without his finger.

Tim and Uncle Martin live in a garage apartment owned by Mrs. Lorelei Brown, a scatterbrained former WAVE (revealed in the first episode). She and the Martian have an awkward, on-and-off romance, but he avoids commitment due to his plan to return to Mars. Later, she dates Detective Bill Brennan, a vain, cold-hearted plain-clothes officer who distrusts Uncle Martin. The Martian’s real name is Exigius 12½, revealed in "We Love You, Miss Pringle." His nephew, Andromeda (played by Wayne Stam), crash-lands on Earth late in season three, appearing only once before vanishing from the live-action series (though he became a regular on the animated *My Favorite Martians*). Andromeda has a single antenna, explained as a baby antenna falling out with only one