The Many Lives Of Dylan Hunt!

The late 60's and early 70's were heady times for TV science fiction. We had just got to the Moon and I seem to remember a general notion that it was the first "giant leap for mankind" with the emphasis on "first". I was ten and now I"m six times that old and we haven't really taken any further steps. We've done work in the nearby neighborhood and sent probes to the distant planets, but man himself has been content to walk in his old footprints. The future, so bright and filled with helpful technology as seen in Star Trek and The Jetsons had another side, a darker side. Gene Roddenberry tried to explore possibilities in a few more series after Star Trek and one that lingers in the memory is Genesis II and its siblings.

Genesis II tells the story of a future in which sprawling underground subways link the world and man seems to have finally shaken off the old warlike ways. But as one man found, nothing lasts forever. As part of a cryogenic experiment Dylan Hunt was locked into a chamber and put into a coma, and just then an earthquake buried the facility and he was forgotten. A hundred and fifty years later he's discovered and revived and finds that man's old ways of war were not so forgotten. And he learns that mankind itself has given rise to new variations. That's story in Genesis II and it features a odd blend of tech and barbaric splendor. Alex Cord plays Dylan Hunt and a ravishing Mariette Hartley plays the woman who brings him back. With the likes of Ted Cassidy around this one is pretty entertaining. But as a pilot it failed to convince the networks.

So that brings us to Planet Earth. Dylan Hunt is still around, but he and his world have altered a little with a bit more modern detail worked into the mix. The great John Saxon plays Hunt in this new pilot and he and his team working for the PAX organization seek to bring a tattered world together. To that end they confront an amazon culture in which men are slaves called "Dinks" and the world is harassed by apparent mutants called "Kreeg". This strikes closer to the formula Roddenberry had hit with Star Trek, but still it fails to garner a series.

Lastly is Strange New World in which we remain the future but "Dylan Hunt" (now called by a new name of "Anthony Vico" but still played by John Saxon) was not frozen alone nor underground but in orbit just when meteors savaged the planet Earth. When he and his two compatriots return at last they are looking across a scorched landscape for a hint of the civilization they remember. In the course of this TV movie cobbled together from two episodes of the proposed series the team finds itself confronting high tech vampires who live in a fragile bubble and a gang of stalwart "game wardens" who protect the animals (lions and tigers and bears and more) against poachers. Their mission,once a job description has become a calling and a religion. Roddenberry had little to do with this version but alas it also failed to find a network to call home.

So in three years or there about one story of a man stranded in the future seeks to find purchase on the network landscape, but doesn't catch hold. More is the pity.

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