Unleashing my inner fanboy...

It's nostolgia time...

On my eleventh birthday (March 1 1977) I was parked in front of the television anticipating a show that I was sure would be a thing of greatness. I was not disappointed. On that night, NBC aired the pilot episode of "The Man from Atlantis" starring Patrick Duffy (Dallas' Bobby Ewing) and the lovely Belinda Montgomary.

After a violent storm a young man is washed up on a Californian beach where he is discovered by the beautiful Dr Elizabeth Merrill. The doctor rushes him to a naval hospital and soon realizes that this is no ordinary male. With piercing green eyes, gills instead of lungs and webbed hands and feet, this amnesia-plagued patient also has abilities that make him very useful to the doctor - he can swim faster than a dolphin and has superhuman strength and senses. When his health returns she christens him Mark Harris and recruits him to join her and her colleagues at the Foundation for Oceanic Research.

I was so sold on this show. It became a series that lasted all of 17 episodes, mainly due to the fact that it fell victim to the same thing that plagued most shows in the late seventies (ie Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk, etc)- it was poorly written, had a low budget, and was quickly reduced to camp.

That being said, I bought the novelizations, I bought the comics, I had the lunchbox... as with a lot of kids, I was able to look beyond the dretch they were spoon feeding me and embrace the overall concept.

And it was one helluva concept...

Shows that deserve to be remade? This one's at the top of my list.