My Favorite Martian Film Festival...

My Favorite Martian is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from September 29, 1963 to September 4, 1966 for 107 episodes (75 in black and white 1963-1965, 32 color 1965-1966). The film festival, to be post by Saturday, May 31st, is a five part series of the pilot episode originally aired September 29, 1963, starring Bill Bixby (Tim O'Hara), Pamela Britton (Lorelei Brown), Ray Walston (Uncle Martin O'Hara). In the pilot episode, Martin's spacecraft crash lands on earth. He meets and moves in with Tim O'Hara.

Premise

A human-looking extraterrestrial in a one-man spaceship crash-lands near Los Angeles. The ship's pilot is, in fact, from Mars and is now stranded on Earth. Tim O'Hara, a young newspaper reporter for The Los Angeles Sun, is on his way home from Edwards Air Force Base (where he had gone to report on the flight of the X-15) back to Los Angeles when he spots the spaceship coming down.

Tim takes the Martian in as his roommate and passes him off as his Uncle Martin. Uncle Martin refuses to reveal any of his Martian traits to people other than Tim, to avoid publicity (or panic), and Tim agrees to keep Martin's identity a secret while the Martian attempts to repair his ship. Uncle Martin has various unusual powers: he can raise two retractable antennae and become invisible; he is telepathic and can read minds; he can levitate objects with the motion of his finger; and he can communicate with animals.

Martin also builds several advanced devices, such as a time machine which transports Tim and the Martian back to Medieval England and other times and places, such as St. Louis in 1849, the early days of Hollywood, or bring Leonardo da Vinci and Jesse James into the present. Another device he builds is a "molecular separator" which can take apart the molecules of a physical object, or rearrange them (a squirrel was made into a human). Another device can take memories and store them in pill form to "relearn" them later. Another device can create temporary duplicates.

Tim and Uncle Martin live in an apartment house run by a congenial but scatterbrained landlady, Mrs. Lorelei Brown, who often shows up when not wanted. She later dates a vain, cold-hearted, plain-clothes police officer, Detective Bill Brennan, who dislikes Uncle Martin and is highly suspicious of him.

The first two seasons were filmed in black-and-white (at Desilu), but the final season was shot in color (at MGM), resulting in minor changes in the set and the format of the show. In addition to the extraterrestrial powers indicated in the first two seasons, Martin seemed to be able to do much more in the final season, such as stimulating facial hair to provide him and Tim with a quick disguise, and levitating with his nose. Brennan's boss, the police chief, was involved in many episodes in the third season, generally as a device to humiliate the overzealous detective.

Martin's real name, Exigius 12 1/2 (revealed in "We Love You, Mrs. Pringle") was heard again when his real nephew, Andromeda, crash-landed on Earth in the show's third season. Andromeda, originally devised to bring younger viewers to the aging show, disappeared without explanation after a single episode and was never referred to again in the two episodes filmed after it, or six episodes already filmed, but aired afterward (Andromeda was, however, a regular on the later animated series My Favorite Martians). He had a single antenna, which Martin explains was because his baby antennae had fallen out and only one adult antenna had come in, so far.

In Popular Culture

• Ray Walston appeared in a television commercial for AT&T in 2000. The conversation makes it evident to those who remember the TV series that he is playing the role of Uncle Martin, still on Earth. He asks if the rates AT&T offers also apply for phoning fellow Martians living in the United States.
• In an episode of the TV series Picket Fences, Walston's character, Judge Henry Bone, attends a Halloween party wearing antennae like those he wore on Martian.
• In the end title theme music for the film Spaced Invaders, a Halloween comedy involving incompetent invaders from Mars, one of the Martians hums the first bars of the theme from My Favorite Martian.
• Gold Key Comics published a My Favorite Martian comic for nine issues, Oct 1963 - July 1966.

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