ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Bulldogtrekker and I watch a download of this unsold and never-aired TV pilot last night, and we were royally entertained. It's a strange mix of good ideas and novel approaches to the superhero genre.

Adrianne Palicki (the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who recently left that show) does a Marvelous () job as the Amazonian warrior princess with her own private jet and the glitziest outfit of any crime fighter.

Actually, she has three jets (none of which are transparent, but the designs by Patrick Von Janicke are very good) —





— and she parks them on the roof of her skyscraper for easy access whenever she changes from her regular identity as Diana Themyscira, millionaire CEO of Themyscira Industries, and soars off into the night to fight crime.




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I know what you're thinking. "Gee, doesn't that make it hard to maintain her secret identity?"

Well, it would . . . if she actually had a secret identity. But Wonder Woman doesn't bother with all that silliness. In fact, the whole world knows that Diana Themyscira is Wonder Woman. She's idolized by the public and adored by the press!

More amazing still, the company owns the rights to the Wonder Woman action figures and markets them aggressively. Here's how Wikipedia describes this remarkable plot element.
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Themyscira Industries owns and operates the concept of Wonder Woman as both a privately run crime fighting operation and for marketing the image of Wonder Woman as a role model to the outside world.
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How's that for transparency and full disclosure, eh?

The crazy idea actually works, too. They don't champ it up the way you'd expect. There's a scene in which Diana gets plum irate in a board meeting and tells the corporate heads that she objects to the way they exaggerated her boobs on her action figure!





Okay, so it sounds campy when it's described like that, but the scene actually works. And the story includes discussions of the glitzy costume and how it's made that way because the corporation has done research and focus groups to determine what outfit plays well with the public.

She actually has the traditional short-shorts costume as well as a version with pants that are so tight they scream for mercy. (So did I whenever she's shown walking away from the camera! )





It all sounds extremely believable in view of the way corporate America does business these days. After puzzling over this unusual way of presenting the whole costumed superhero idea, I finally decided it was damned clever!

Both as corporate CEO and drop-dead gorgeous superhero, her main concern is exposing a pharmaceutical company's lethal performance-enhancing drug, and the company is owned by a rich, beautiful, and unscrupulous villain played by Elizabeth Hurley.

Diana holds a press conference and boldly announces her corporation's intention to expose the drug company and imprison its sexy owner, Miss Hurley.





The most surprising aspect of the show is the way Wonder Woman defies both civil liberties and moral considerations. She does some shocking things!

To get info from an injured drug dealer she apprehended and put in the hospital, she literally tortures him in his hospital bed! She seriously injures and even kills several guards and henchmen when she breaks into a warehouse to find a hidden laboratory and free a group of men kidnapped from Third World countries who are in hospital beds and being given the experimental drugs.

The fight scenes in the warehouse between Wonder Woman and 20 of the villain's henchmen are remarkably effective. Adrianna does an amazing job with the stunts and fight moves. The fact that the wires on her and the stuntmen where not removed in this unfinished print of the never-aired pilot actually make it more fun to watch, because we get a glimpse of how these things are done in Hollywood.

And you haven't lived 'til you've seen sexy Adrianna lasso Elizabeth Hurley around the neck, yank her off her feet, drag her three yards across the floor, pick her up by the throat, and slam her into the wall seven feet off the ground!

Clearly this is not your grandfather's Wonder Woman!


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Robert (Butch) Day]

GREAT pilot! Much better than expected.

The only problem with the concept of Themyscria Industries as a "privately run crime fighting operation" is that legally they would have no more authority than your local rent-a-cop security company.

But this is a sci-fi/fantasy so I guess that's OK.
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Bud Brewster]

[Robert (Butch) Day]

[Pye-Rate]

Now old school, TV Batman was empowered by the police to act on their behalf within the scope of the law. He had means not available to the police and still acted within the law.

The Flash again has the same powers and authority as the TV Batman did. Legal and moral can be done and be interesting.
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The road to tomorrow runs through yesterday.

[Krel]

The Green Hornet couldn't be public, because he masqueraded as a crime lord so he could get close to criminals. This allowed him operate from the inside.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

[orzel-w]

[Bud Brewster]

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Well, these things happen when your post count if 4,711 . . . as of this one.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

I tracked down the video, and watched it tonight, and it was certainly good - in parts. I don't know why they had the Wonder Woman costume with the full-length tight sparkly jeans in the early part, and it was a relief to see the lovely Adrianne Palicki in the proper version later on. The whole way that the drugs thing was introduced at the start in the "I'm going to - college!" sequence was a peculiar way to start off - couldn't we just have been introduced to our star in action?

Some of the acting was a little basic, I thought; maybe some editing of a number of soapy non-action sequences needed tightening up, as well as removing those stunt wires and adding some police cars to the traffic heading for the lab! Maybe it's just as well that they never went to series...

Adrianne Palicki was fine, but I think a lot more work needed doing on the show. Ah well, if she'd been a star superheroine there, we'd not have had the chance to see her among the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., right?

And Diana did have a secret identity. She went home, wearing the statutory glasses, to her lonely apartment, and cat, as Diana Prince, rather than stay in her luxury suite at Themyscira Industries...

[Bud Brewster]

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Actually I think the long pants look as attractive as the shorts, partly because Miss Palicki's legs aren't her strongest physical feature. In fact, Lynda Carter's curvaceous figure is decidedly better than Adrianne's, curve-for-curve.

As for this statement —

[Custer]

Your secret is safe with us. Which of you wears the glasses, by the way...?

The jeans effect was rather messing with an icon. So Diana Prince was Diana Themyscira's secret identity, but not Wonder Woman's? That secret identity stuff does get complicated.

Oh, and my artistic secret identity used to be "Superswipe"...

[Bud Brewster]

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Back before Emily Deschanel plumped up while pregnant (and hasn't lost the weight), she dressed up as Wonder Woman for a season 3 Halloween show (The Mummy in the Maze) and demonstrated beautifully just what a great Wonder Woman she would have made!


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Adrieanne's other TV Movie/Pilot did not get picked up either, The Robinsons: Lost In Space. She played oldest daughter Judy.

The movie was not too good but they did have some nice production values. Battlestar Galactica must have thought so, too.They recycled some of the sets to be the Battlestar Pegasus.

[Custer]

I'm surprised by how many results an image search for Emily Deschanel Wonder Woman brings up... but, far enough down, it did bring up a picture of Kaley Cuoco from a poll here, in a Big Bang Theory episode...