Wonder Woman First Aired 50 Years Ago Today

Back in the day, network TV would air pilots for TV shows if they felt they might be a costly gamble, and then the show would or wouldn't get picked up based on the success of that pilot, often released as a TV movie.  

On November 7th, 1975, ABC aired The New Original Wonder Woman aired and got solid ratings.  

If you've never seen the show or it's been a while, this version of Wonder Woman was set during World War II, using the original origins from the comics, which was adapted to World War I for the film.  Steve Trevor crashes his plane onto the mysterious island, populated entirely by ageless, brilliant, warrior women.  Diana, Queen Hippolyta's daughter and the only child of Paradise Island, wins a contest to return Steve to Man's World, which the Amazons abandoned millenia ago.

The pilot includes the entire bullets and bracelets bit, which assumes that somehow Amazons have guns and bullets in the comic.  I don't recall if they use Steve's gun in the pilot.  But the basic idea sets up that Diana can use her fancy metal cuffs to deflect bullets.

Hippolyta is Cloris Leachman here, and the tone is camp.  Folks like Ken Mars appear.  We're less than a decade since Adam West's Batman, and superheroes have become synonymous with comedy in the public's mind, and will remain there until Michael Keaton swoops in.  For many-a-kid, opening a comic book in the 1980's felt like entering a secret land where these stories were actually taken seriously, and superheroes were, of all things, cool.

I have vague memories of Lynda Carter and Wonder Woman from when I was a kid.  Part of that was that the kid I played with when the show was still in first-run episodes always wanted to play superheroes, and always wanted to be Wonder Woman.  And, yeah, he was a little boy in 1970's suburban Michigan.  But can you blame him?  

Boots?  Check.  Flashy suit?  Check.  Wisdom of Athena?  Check.  Invisible plane?  Check.  Tossing bad guys around like a minor inconvenience?  Double check.  Plus: twirling and a magic lasso.

Later, I caught episodes in syndication, but not often.  Then, in college, The SciFi Channel (eventually SyFy) ran the show during the day, and if I was home, I'd watch. 

I got into Wonder Woman comics around 2000, and still read and collect them.  A huge part of that was that Phil Jimenez, who wrote and drew the run that got me on board, understood what was appealing about the character beyond cheesecake and warrior-woman stuff.  And I know that came via the show.  Wonder Woman was not just to be ogled, she was smart, she was determined, she was literally fighting for truth and justice. And those were things that Lynda Carter brought to the screen.

Which I know, because eventually I picked up the three seasons of the show on DVD, and watched episodes, but all out of order.  But it wasn't until maybe 2010 that I finally sat down and just blitzed through the whole series.  And I had a blast doing it.  

Yes, the show starts on ABC and for a season takes place during WWII.  But then the show moved to CBS for its next two seasons and was set in contemporary times - and this is probably the version you remember.  

Full stop, I think that Wonder Woman is a straight up good show.  It made me really miss when you could watch one-off episodes of something, and while there's a bit of mythology/ lore/ what-have-you, you're resetting every week and it's just about that week's adventure.  

Lynda Carter is so solid in this show, it's unreal.  I've not seen her in too many other movies or shows, but she's effortlessly charismatic, beautiful and buyable as the lead.  And she's like in her mid-20's carrying this show.  Clearly born to play the role, so much so that despite Gal Gadot appearing several times as Wonder Woman, I still default to Carter in red boots for my mental image of Diana.

The only other real supporting cast is Lyle Waggoner who plays Steve Trevor, and had the show gone on to a fourth season it seems he was being written off.  Behind the scenes it seems he and Lynda Carter weren't getting along, and by the end of the third season he would appear in whole episodes where he spoke to her on the phone.

In general, I do prefer the 1970's-set episodes when they took the show more seriously, but YMMV.  It's still pretty silly and self-aware, but isn't leaning into wisecracks and forcing the comedy and works better for an hour-long program.  And they had a wider variety of things to take on in the 1970s.

Anyhoo... here's to Wonder Woman, in her satin tight fighting for our rights and the old red, white and blue.