Calling Doctor Strange, Dr. Stephen Strange...


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 thrilled to be part of it?)
Okay, I'm being unfairly arch and unkind, and must admit my memories of it were fuzzy. I do recall watching it - that was back when you either watched it when it aired or, in many cases, might never expect to get another chance.
I like the details in the Hollywood Reporter piece from 2016, when the Marvel Studios production was churning up this bit of history.
  It fell with the single shot it had with the audience that night; in some other timelines it fared better -- maybe with a programming change on one of the other two networks, or a key bit of promotion that was missing from ours.
   It was a revelation to read how certain the people involved with the movie were that they were part of a Next Big Thing. It seems odd to think that there could have been a Dr. Strange show back there at the end of the '70s that would have built an audience and collective memory to rival or even surpass that of the Bixby/Ferigno Hulk series. We'll never know.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

The Tease of Things I Don't Need