Note: This piece originally ran as a companion piece to an EOFFTV competition giving away copies of season two of The Incredible Hulk which explains my otherwise inexplicable focus of those particular episodes…
The Fugitive (1963-1967), as well as being a very fine thriller series in its own right, exerted an extraordinary influence over small screen science fiction in the 1970s, so much so that at one point one might legitimately have questioned if the studio heads actually realized that other formats may have existed at all. For those unaware – and there must surely be a few – The Fugitive featured David Janssen as Dr Richard Kimble, wrongly accused of the murder of his wife, who goes on the run from the law while tracking down the mysterious “one-armed man” who really committed the crime. Created by Roy Huggins and produced by the legendary Quinn Martin, The Fugitive ran for four seasons, was turned into a film starring Harrison Ford in 1993 and had a short-lived (one season of 22 episodes) “reboot” in 2000.
The appeal of the format was simple and obvious – it took the chief strength of an ongoing drama series (a recurring character that the audience could come to know and care about) and the flexibility of the anthology shows (a different supporting cast and location each week) and combined them into a durable format that TV execs clearly found impossible to resist.
Kenneth Johnson’s adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero title The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982) remains one of the best remembered genre takes on The Fugitive – it replaces Richard Kimble with David Banner (the original comic character’s name Bruce was replaced, allegedly because the producers thought it sounded too ‘gay’!) and Lou Ferrigno as the monstrous Hulk, but in all respects it was exactly the same format: an innocent man goes on the run, drifting from one town to the next changing the lives of those he meets along the way. The second series of The Incredible Hulk kicks off with a two-parter which seems to mark an end to Banner’s wandering ways- Married finds him seeking help from experimental hypnotherapist Dr Carolyn Fields (70s US TV staple Mariette Hartley) and marrying her in Hawaii. But the Fugitive effect was so great that any chance of happiness was dashed from the off – Dr Fields is suffering a terminal illness and the end is predictable but still rather moving.
Banner is soon back on the road and as ever tenacious journalist Jack McGee (Jack Colvin) is on his trail, just as equally tenacious cop Lt Philip Gerard (Barry Morse) tracked his quarry in The Fugitive. The rest of Season Two finds Banner and his green-skinned alter ego turning up as a mechanic at a racetrack (Ricky), a barman at a disco (Alice in Disco Land – this was 1978 and flares, funky guitars and mirrorballs were all the rage) and even crossed the border to Mexico (A Solitary Place). Surprisingly, the writers managed to come up with plenty of interesting variations on the well worn theme throughout the year – Banner gets involved with the Black Panthers (Like a Brother), escapes from a chain gang (Escape From Los Santos) and even investigates the possibility that a Hulk-like creature existed in prehistoric times (Kindred Spirits).
The Incredible Hulk was successful enough to run for 5 years and, almost by default, was the best of the rash of small screen superhero adaptations from the late 70s – The Amazing Spider-Man (1978-1979) was anything but amazing, Wonder Woman (1976-1970) was more successful but relied on camp to the dismay of hardcore fans and Dr Strange (1978) remained a one-off with not even a hint of a series in sight. The Incredible Hulk was far from perfect – stories concentrated far too much on Banner and not enough on the Hulk himself, quickly became repetitive and tended to stray far too readily into soap territory – but it proved beyond doubt that the innocent-man-on-the-run format was just about irresistible.
It wasn’t the first genre TV show to give The Fugitive a science fiction twist – in 1967, just as The Fugitive‘s Richard Kimble was coming to the end of his run, the baton was picked up by David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) who went on the lam after witnessing the beginning of a covert alien invasion in The Invaders (1967-1968). Owing as much to The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) as to The Fugitive, The Invaders is fondly remembered as the one where the aliens are smart enough to mount a secret invasion but could never get the hang of those pesky little fingers.
Later, science fiction Fugitive clones were everywhere – in Planet of the Apes (1974), two astronauts are pursued by intelligent gorillas on a future Earth while another big screen spin-off, Logan’s Run (1977) upped the ante and gave us three fugitives on the run from a society that systematically kills its residents at the age of 30. In 1981’s The Phoenix, the alien Bennu of the Golden Light (Judson Earney Scott) is the man on the run after he’s released from a casket discovered in ancient Incan ruins while in 1985’s Otherworld a whole family does the Richard Kimble thing, struggling to stay ahead of state bounty hunters in an alternate dimension. Outside the genre, the most successful Fugitive variant was Kung Fu (1972-1975) in which David Carradine roamed the Old West dispensing slow-motion justice while hunted by more of those bounty hunters. The format has proved durable enough to survive into the new millennium – in the much-loved Farscape (1999-2003), John Crichton (Ben Browder) is a combination Richard Kimble and Buck Rogers, a 20th century astronaut hurled into the future where he teams up with a whole spaceship full of fugitives; and in the less well known animation The Zeta Project (2001-2003), a robot goes walkabout after rebelling against its creator.
But of all these Fugitive departures, The Incredible Hulk remains one of the most fondly remembered. At the time, it was a huge hit in the playgrounds (go on admit it, you tried to rip your shirt like Lou Ferrigno – and how many times did you use the series’ famous catchphrase “Don’t make me angry – you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”?) and today it looks slow and a bit quaint but the strength of the format is such that you can still find yourself drawn into the plight of poor David Banner.
The EOFFTV Review 