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Showing posts from September, 2021

Calling Doctor Strange, Dr. Stephen Strange...

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Forty three years ago - September 6, 1978 - a (nominal) Dr. Strange movie aired on CBS, intended to be a pilot for a series. Starring Peter Hooten as the titular doc, in this version a psychiatrist who becomes the successor to the Sorcerer Supreme, up against an Arthurian threat: Morgan le Fay.  The rewriting of the story was more than I wanted to accept, then or now. Most prominently, Strange's whole moral character arc was removed from this version - the greedy, egocentric surgeon who had to lose his skill as a result of a nerve-damaging accident, sending him on a quest that would utterly transform him. That biased me against it even more than their choice to go the Arthurian route with the menace, and making Clea just some random person who was mind-controlled as part of the villain's scheme. Morgan was played by Jessica Walter, which is probably one of the few components about this that's aged well both as a person and a career. (Doesn't she look th...