Forgotten Television: The Man from Atlantis

Mark Harris (Patrick Duffy) is believed to be the only surviving citizen of the lost city of Atlantis, but he cannot remember who is or where he originally came from.  His aquatic background gives him great abilities, like breathing underwater, super strength, the ability to withstand extreme depth pressures, and being able to see with minimal light.  He can also swim as fast as a dolphin and produce a type of sonar blast.  He works with the Foundation for Oceanic Research and leads the crew of the Cetacean, a technologically advanced submarine.  He is joined by the woman who saved his life, Dr. Elizabeth Merrill (Belinda J. Montgomery) and C.W. Crawford, Jr (Alan Fudge) as well as the supporting crew of the Cetacean.  Every week, Mark and the team investigate and battle different threats to the planet, including schemes contrived by his nemesis, Mr. Schubert (Victor Buono) who returns from time to time in an attempt to obtain the secrets that Mark might possess.

Man from Atlantis is an American superhero science fiction series that ran on NBC for a single season from September 1977 to June of 1978 and was cancelled after the only 13 episodes due to the declination of ratings and the high production costs. The show was a continuation as opposed to a reboot of four television films that had been released earlier in 1977 and featured the same primary cast.  There were some changes made, In the movies, the Cetacean’s commanding officer was Captain Bracy (Fred Beir), but when the series starts, Mark is inexplicably in command with no reason given for what happened to Bracy.  The tone of the show also shifted from the more serious science fiction elements to something similar to Star Trek as an escapist fantasy show with Mark as the adventurous captain.  As the show progresses, Belinda’s character is given less and less to do and eventually she was able to legally break her contract with the studio and leave the show after eleven episodes.  The series was produced by Herbert Franklin Solow’s studio which is a company spun off from the live-action arm of the Hanna-Barbera Productions animation studio. The Cetacean submarine scenes were done with miniature work by Oscar winning Gene Warren’s special effects team who won his academy award for special effects on 1960s The Time Machine.

As a child I remember watching the series more than the original movies and I loved it.  As an adult, I am not as fond and can see why it didn’t last.  The show falls to the same issues that many sci-fi shows of that time period primarily being that it wasn’t taken seriously and became cheesier and campier as time goes on.  Patrick Duffy even likened the series to the 1960’s Batman show. While many of the storylines are fantastical and interesting, the writing just couldn’t back it up and no amount of good acting could save it.  The fight scenes seemed lackadaisical and thrown together at the last moment with no real choreography to add the type of excitement or suspense that it should have had.  Where Belinda Montgomery’s Dr. Merrill was compassionate and caring in the movies, she seemed wasted and out of place in the series and I can’t blame her for wanting out of her contract.  Even with the negatives, the show does possess a certain charm and can still be fun to watch.  Victor Buono in particular is a great “super villain” and although he is a bit more over the top in the series than in the films, he steals the show in all his scenes. The supporting cast is also multi-ethnic, which I like, adding a good amount of diversity to the characters with the actors consisting of Richard Laurance Williams, Jean Marie Hon, Anson Downes, Penelope Willis and Brandyn Artise and J. Victor Lopez.  The production design is well done and the music, although indicative of the era, is complementary and enhances the scenes.  Overall, it was fun to revisit the show and I have to say, I enjoyed the movies more than the series, but both were enjoyable trips to the beach!