In 2011, a Wonder Woman pilot starring Adrianne Palicki in the lead role and written by David E. Revival: The Wonder Woman character returned to television in the Justice League animated shows and DC put out the Wonder Woman ’77 comics starting in 2014 that picked up where the 70’s series left off. But CBS decided not to bring the show back (partly because Linda Carter herself had lost interest in the show), truncating it at 59 episodes. Wonder Woman went through a bit of a reboot at the end of its year third (bringing in new characters which included an indestructible chimpanzee) prepping for a new direction in its fourth season. The show did okay for that network in its second season, but its increasing tendency toward camp started to take a toll on the viewership. ABC hesitated on greenlighting the show to a second season, but CBS stepped in and picked it up, moving it to a contemporary setting to cut down on costs. But since it was set during World War II, it was a “period piece” and expensive to produce. This series started off on ABC where it drew decent ratings for its pilot and first season. The pilot and the first season are worth a look (as is the earlier pilot mentioned above), then you can sample a few episodes beyond that to get a good idea of what the series is about.Ĭancelled Too Soon? Probably. Diminishing returns set in pretty quickly on this one by the time you get to its third season, but it was an iconic show from its time and is well remembered by many. Still, Wonder Women could be fun at times, especially in its first season. Like contemporary series Charlie’s Angels and its clones, this was more about jiggle TV than presenting women in a positive light (case in point: the 1974 Wonder Woman pilot with Cathy Lee Crosby in the lead role wearing a non-cleavage friendly costume failed to make it to series). Positive role model or not, network executives were much more interested in storylines that featured Wonder Women running in her costume (which sported ample cleavage) as much as possible. And while that may be true, this show might have had an even better legacy if the producers had managed to drum up a few decent scripts. Wonder Woman is considered somewhat of an important series for its time because it delivered a strong female lead who provided a positive role model. For shows like Wonder Woman and the Hulk, the network usually only had the license for the title character (though the former did bring in Wonder Girl), so there was little in the way of crossover from the comics and the heroes tended to face off against a string of rather generic television heavies (though Wonder Woman had the Nazis to fight in her first season). The Skinny: In the 1970’s, sci fi on television typically came in the form of a superhero-type series such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk, and this show, and they all followed the basic pattern of the hero using his or her powers to battle the villain of the week or resolve the issue of the week.
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