WONDER WOMAN: SEASON ONE - Get us out from under, Wonder Woman!

There is always a danger when you look back on things you fondly remember from your youth. What you once cherished, when viewed with adult eyes are found lacking - and either they were just never any damn good in the first place and we just didn’t notice or we've become more relatively sophisticated over the years. Not having watched Wonder Woman in decades, I was afraid that the show would have been closer to the dreadful Buck Rogers than it was the still pretty good Battlestar Galactica.

Wonder Woman, for the oh so tiny handful of those of you who don't know, is set during the height of World War II. Ace fighter pilot Steve Trevor (played by Carol Burnett Show regular Lyle Waggoner) is shot down in the Bermuda Triangle while on a top secret mission (aren’t they all?) and parachutes to safety on an uncharted island. Turns out that he's landed on Paradise Island, the home of the Amazons.

The Amazons, eager to get rid of Steve, have Princess Diana take him back to the united states. Once there, Diana (or more accurately her secret identity of Wonder Woman) decides to stay in America, posing as the meek and mild Yeoman Diana Prince, to fight the Nazis and keep the world safe.

In all honesty, this show probably shouldn't work. Hollywood has as a notorious record for completely screwing up superhero adaptations to the little (and big) screen. The live action Spiderman (the one with Nicholas Hammond) was cheesy fun, but absolutely no good whatsoever. The Adam West Batman was a fun show, but a comedy more than anything and screwed up the character in the comics for decades, and the Fantastic Four (either the Roger Corman version or the new ones) are dreadful.

Really I can only think of three really good superhero adaptations - Superman: The movie, the television version of Incredible Hulk, and Wonder Woman. The common thread? All three series have a fantastic actor in the secret identity part. Oh sure, everyone remember the big green Lou Ferrigno tearing out of his pants, but it was Bill Bixby that did all the heavy lifting (emotionally speaking) on that show. While the effects in Superman: the Movie made a generation believe that a man could fly, it was Christopher Reeve that made us believe that it was a MAN that could fly.

The same thing here - one key figure pulls the show together: Lynda Carter. I don't think that anyone has taken their roll and made it theirs this much, aside from perhaps Claton Moore and the Lone Ranger. She rises above the dreadful special effects, men in terrible ape suits and occasionally ham-fisted scripts to make the whole thing work. Charisma, intelligence, beauty, grace and the ability to believably beat the everluvin crap out of every Nazi within arms reach. She's a bit stiff in the pilot and the first couple of episodes, but you can quickly see Lynda settle into the roll. Eventually it becomes obvious that she's just having fun with the part, in on the joke and loving every minute of it.

On the other side of the X/Y chromosome, Lyle Waggoner is just right as Steve Trevor. Carter and Waggoner play off each other so very well, creating a nice balance of dramatic tension. It's interesting that despite this chemistry on screen, the two apparently couldn’t stand each other - which is the reason that Waggoner was slowly phased out over the next couple of seasons.

Actually, I say ham-fisted scripts, but if the show is looking to accurately reflect the comic book, these simplistic plots that occasionally don't make a whole lot of sense are what we got in the era. It's very black and white - Americans are good and Germans are EEE-VIL. Everything is wrapped up nicely within fifty minutes (unless it's a two parter), and there are no lasting consequences for anyone.

The show manages to emulate the look of a comic too - we get an animated credit sequence (and oh, what a theme song) that looks just like they stepped off the printed page. We get "Meanwhile, back at the defense department" captions for scene changes, and comic book pages for commercial bumpers. Think what Ang Lee did for the Hulk movie a couple years back, but not quite as obnoxious, and you're pretty close.

It's not perfect all the time - when the special effects are good, they're terrific (Diana's spinning transformation into Wonder Woman is downright iconic now), but when they fail, oh man. The invisible jet is not much more than a Barbie doll in a clear plastic toy plane suspended in front of a blue backdrop, and the episode where Wonder Woman has to wrestle a man in the second worst ape suit I've seen in my life.

Of course it really goes a long way to selling the show when we actually get Lynda Carter doing her own stunts, knocking down doors, whupping all kinds of Nazi ass, jumping off roofs and bending gun barrels like it was going out of style. Later seasons would scale this back, as the insurance companies made Lynda behave. But for season one, she really gets physical.

Despite the strong ratings, ABC waffled on if they were going to renew the show or not. So Warner quickly turned to CBS, who snapped it up for two more seasons. Unfortunately the change in network meant there were changes to the show, including moving the series to the then modern era of the seventies and getting rid of the Nazis(mostly) as the heavies. Frankly, it was messing with something that wasn’t broken, and season one is far and away the best series of the three. If you're only going to get one season, this is the volume you want.

THE DVD -
With television shows of this vintage, you have to be prepared to cut them some slack. But while there are some instances of white specks, scratches and dirt, for the most part the masters look great. The stock footage (war scenes, establishing shots) occasionally looks bad, but the rest is really clean.

THE EXTRAS -
It's a pretty skimpy set, as far as extras go. We get a commentary from Lynda and Executive Producer Douglas S. Cramer on the pilot. Lynda is charming and fun to listen to, and the two have a pretty good rapport. Disc three offers up the documentary Beauty, Brawn and Bulletproof Bracelets: A Wonder Woman Retrospective, with interviews of Lynda and Cramer, author Les Daniels, and illustrator deity made flesh Alex Ross. Sadly, no Lyle Waggoner anywhere to be seen.

Oh, and doesn't Lynda look amazingly good for a lady over sixty?

THE BOTTOM LINE -
Lets see - great lead, fair emulation of a comic book brought to life, fun (if slightly cheesy) action and respectful treatment of the character? Sounds like a winner to me!