Today, we look at when The Six Million Dollar Man tried to launch a TV series about a man with a “computerized” brain, and when it didn’t work, the show was tried a second time WITHOUT The Six Million Dollar Man connection!
This is Back Door Blues, a feature about “backdoor pilots.” Backdoor pilots are episodes of regular TV series that are intended to also work as pilots for a new series. Sometimes these pilots get picked up, but a lot of times they did not get picked up. I’ll spotlight examples of both successful and failed backdoor pilots.
December is a month of Back Door Blues!
CONCEPT: The Ultimate Imposter – A show about a special agent with a fully “computerized” brain, so he has pretty much all of the world’s knowledge accessible at any moment.
SERIES IT AIRED ON The Six Million Dollar Man
Really, the setup for The Six Million Dollar Man was such a great design for spinoffs, as we already know that the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) was able to rebuild Steve Austin (Lee Majors), so why wouldn’t they be working on OTHER secret agents? That was precisely the conceit of the Season 4 episode, “The Ultimate Imposter,” in January 1977, where one of Steve’s old buddies, Joe Patton (Stephen Macht), has become the first “computerized” human, as he has had basically the contents of the world’s largest computer all fed into his brain, so he can speak any language, recite any piece of arcane knowledge, etc. However, his girlfriend (also a special agent for OSI) is worried about what this whole situation is doing to him.
One of the interesting things about the episode is that Steve and Joe are SUCH good buddies in it that it practically seems like they’re dating each other…
DID THE PILOT GO TO SERIES? No. What’s interesting, though, is that writers Lionel E. Siegel and W.T. Zacha and director Paul Stanley thought that the idea was so good that they tried it AGAIN in 1979, only this time with a new actor as the agent (Joseph Hacker) and without The Bionic Man connection. Oh, and the effects of the computerized knowledge now fade after a few days. This time didn’t work, either, but it WAS released as TV movie, The Ultimate Impostor (yes, they spelled it differently, as if the E was the reason the first pilot didn’t work).
SHOULD IT HAVE? Honestly, if an idea is good enough to secure TWO pilots, it’s probably at least good enough to earn a season, so sure, I think it would have been worth a shot. As my pal Garth noted, this is BASICALLY a less comedic version of the premise of Chuck, which worked as a series.
Okay, that’s it for this installment of Back Door Blues! I KNOW the rest of you have suggestions for other interesting backdoor pilots, so drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com (don’t suggest in the comments, as this way, it’ll be a surprise!).
OK. Were Siegel, Zacha, and Stanley involved with Chuck in any way? The computer brain thing seems an awful lot like the Intersect.
Xander has a point but it also reminds me of The Delphi Bureau, about an agent who can assume all kinds of disguises because his total recall lets him master whatever knowledge he needs (e.g., posing as a plant expert he just flips through some massive botany textbooks).
It’s odd because in spite of the fact that The Six Million Dollar Man was my favourite show as a child, I have no recollection of the backdoor version… but I do remember the TV movie failed pilot of it. Which was actually pretty good (or good enough for a 10 year old!)