My Favorite Martian
A Martian anthropologist hides on Earth with a reporter.
My Favorite Martian, a CBS sitcom starring Ray Walston as Uncle Martin and Bill Bixby as Tim O'Hara, ran for 107 episodes from September 29, 1963, to May 1, 1966. It was the first fantasy sitcom of the mid-1960s, airing before Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. The first two seasons were black-and-white; the third was in color.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Sitcom
- Creator
- John L. Greene
- Producer
- Jack Chertok
- Executive producers
- Harry Poppe
- Starring
- Ray Walston
- Bill Bixby
- Alan Hewitt
- Pamela Britton
- Theme music
- George Greeley
- Country
- United States
- Camera
- Single-camera
Facts from the source article.
Premise
A human-looking Martian anthropologist, aged 450 years, nearly collides with a U.S. Air Force X-15 rocket plane while piloting a one-man spaceship. 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 others. The Martian agrees to keep his identity secret while repairing his ship, revealing his powers only to Tim. These include retractable antennae that allow invisibility, telepathy, levitation via his index finger, animal communication, freezing people or objects, and super-speed. He also invents devices: a time machine that transports them to various eras, a molecular separator that rearranges matter, 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 who occasionally romances the Martian. She later dates Detective Bill Brennan, who is suspicious of Uncle Martin.
Production
The series was produced by Jack Chertok Television in association with CBS Productions. Theme music was composed by George Greeley, performed partly on an Electro-Theremin by Paul Tanner, and influenced Brian Wilson's work on the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." An album of Greeley's music from the first two seasons was released in 2007. Network executives brought in Sherwood Schwartz to revise early scripts, shifting focus from Tim to the Martian as a "fish out of water." The pilot's love interest, Annabelle, was dropped to make Tim a playboy, and Mrs. Brown was changed from intelligent and suspicious to scatterbrained. Bill Bixby credited Ray Walston as a mentor who taught him acting on the job. The first two seasons were filmed in black-and-white at Desilu; the final season was shot in color at MGM, allowing Martin additional powers like mustache growth and nose levitation. Detective Brennan's police chief appeared often in the third season to humiliate Brennan.
Home media
Rhino Entertainment released the first two seasons on Region 1 DVD in 2004–2005 but did not release the third season. Australia's Umbrella Entertainment released all three seasons on Region 0 DVD, viewable worldwide on region-free players, with season 3 released on February 5, 2008. Rhino also issued a three-DVD set of selected episodes in 2007. In January 2010, MPI Home Video acquired Region 1 rights and planned a season 3 release for summer 2010, but it was postponed and eventually released on October 30, 2012. MPI re-released season 1 on June 24, 2014, and season 2 on December 23, 2014, followed by the complete series on October 20, 2015. Umbrella's season 1 includes audio commentary, a stills gallery, script, and an interview with Ann Marshall; season 3 includes an unaired pilot, behind-the-scenes home movies, interviews, audio commentary, and scans of the original comic series and scripts.
In other media
An animated series, My Favorite Martians, aired on CBS Saturday mornings from September 8, 1973, to December 22, 1973, for sixteen episodes. It featured Tim, Martin, Mrs. Brown, and Detective Brennan, with Martin joined by his nephew Andromeda (Andy) and a Martian pet named Okey. Tim had a niece named Katie, and Brennan had a teenage son, Brad, and a pet chimpanzee. None of the original actors voiced their roles; Jonathan Harris voiced Martin and Jane Webb voiced Mrs. Brown. The cartoon used scripts intended for a fourth live-action season. Two VHS volumes were released in 1989, and distribution rights were held by Classic Media as of April 2013. A 1999 feature film remake by Walt Disney Pictures starred Christopher Lloyd as the Martian and Jeff Daniels as Tim. Ray Walston appeared as a different Martian trapped on Earth since the original series. The film changed the premise: Martians are non-humanoids with four arms, four legs, and three eyes, using a gumball-like substance called nerplex to assume human form.
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