THE RETURN OF WONDER WOMAN
The Season Two premiere. The first CBS episode. The revamped costume. The next generation supporting cast. The feature-length running time. The retelling of the WW origin story. And a new series name:
The New Adventures Of Wonder Woman.
It's fair to say there's a lot riding on this episode. Expectations must have been fairly high all round. The big question is whether or not it delivers.
As bold a move as this episode seems, there are also some helpful parallels to the character's original comic book medium.
Like it or not, a significant feature of the WW comic was its frequent changes in creative teams and consequent revamps. Along the way they've tried it all: taking away WW's powers and costumes for a while; having a period setting (a change that actually was inspired by the first season of the WW TV series) to having others taking on WW's identity in her place.
At the end of each short-lived revamp, the powers that be always go back to WW ground zero: the Amazonian princess leaving her island having been gifted with her costume and the responsibility of bringing hope to a warring world. And that's exactly what we see in this episode. Something that sets this particular revamp apart is the continuity. There are no retcons (at least not major ones). We're not being asked to forget what we've seen and start over. Instead there are references to the history of the series to date. There's even a montage of Steve Trevor's scenes from the ABC season which, brief and wordless as it was, I suspect may have cost CBS a bundle.
I'm sure there was a lot of promotion around the relaunch explaining how the setting has changed from wartime to the present, but even so I appreciated how that information wasn't dropped in our laps immediately and unfolded organically.
There were similarities galore to
The New, Original Wonder Woman. Some scenes felt like they'd simply re-shot aspects from TNOWW. This is necessary. There are some parts of WW lore that simply have to get re-told with each update. Steve's plane crashing off the island; Diana seeing it and rescuing him (as in TNOWW she's frolicking with one of her sisters here and sends her on to tell the Queen); the Queen forbidding Diana to leave the island; the contest; Diana assuming her Diana Prince identity and attracting the attention of fans and enemies alike.
Beatrice Straight is my favourite Queen hands down. She seems level with Lynda Carter in playing the scenes simply and for truth and seems to embody the Hippolyta of the comics during that era very well. She lacks the knowing camp of Carolyn Jones (enjoyable as she was in her own way) and - thankfully - the hand biting drama and seemingly permanent irritation of Cloris Leachman's version.
Enjoyable as they are - and they are certainly that - some elements serve to reinforce how TV censorship had taken hold in the two years since TNOWW. The Bullets & Bracelets contest in particular highlighted this:
- In the original Pilot, the Queen spoke of how the contest was a test of the true skill which only Amazons possessed, which they must use to avoid the bullet.
- In The Return Of Wonder Woman, the Queen speaks of how neither competitor can be harmed as they're wearing their feminum bracelets - essentially telling the audience not to worry and taking any sense of jeopardy out of the scene.
- In the Pilot Diana won the contest when one of the bullets she fired struck her competitor on the arm.
- In The Return Of Wonder Woman, the contest is won when Diana's bullet hits a star shaped target behind her competitor. Adding insult to injury, at this point there was some naff ADR of a disembodied Amazon explaining to nobody in particular how Diana had won the contest by hitting the target. Presumably because The Powers That Be feared the audience would be too thick to understand what they had just seen.
That said, the moment where we get this season's first Wonder Spin into the new, improved, tighter and teenier costume makes it all worthwhile.
Let's talk Donfeld for a bit. He was the maestro of bringing DC comics characters to life, as the Batman series shows. His first Season WW costume, too, was incredibly authentic.
This revamped version feels like he's put his own stamp on it as he did Catwoman's getup in the
Batman TV show. While it echoes the previous costume, this version introduces a look that is very much unique to the TV show. The differences between the ABC and CBS version - both Donfeld designs - can best be seen by comparing them side-by-side.
The gold bracelets feel more cohesive than the previous silver ones. They're certainly more glam. Incidentally, at the time the series aired, the comic usually showed the bracelets as a dark blue, the bracelets being remnants of the shackles that had once held them in bondage when they were dominated by men (based on his own interests, WW creator William Moulton Marston included many themes of dominance and submission in WW's early appearances. Hence the lasso and endless examples of characters ending up in forced submission). So the bracelets were actually reminders of male brutality and the need for women to be free. There's so much symbolism to the WW mythology. But the series happily (and probably wisely) avoided all that, accessorised said bracelets with some stars and the rest was history.
While the difference is clear, these changes are nothing compared to the evolution of WW's costume in the comics over the years. She's gone from wearing a skirt to trunks to French cut knickers and (highly controversially) leggings. Her belt has been white or gold. She's alternated between boots and sandals. Her belt and tiara have been adjusted to have points at the bottom as well as the top.
Probably the most noticeable difference between the two main versions of the TV costume is the eagle bustier motif, which went from a definite eagle to something a bit more abstract. Curiously, this new bustier foreshadows a fairly major change that occurred in the comics just a few years after the TV series ended when DC tried to trademark its well-known characters for marketing purposes. They did Superman's "S" symbol, of course. And Batman's chest logo. But then they discovered they couldn't trademark the Eagle, forcing DC to give WW a new symbol which the character still uses today:
To my eyes, the revamped TV costume resembles the one that would come years later. Maybe Donfeld planted a seed. Hell - even some of the TV show designs have shown up in the comics from time to time
But with the move to the Seventies, there's a sense of the show losing a little of its USP. Once Diana arrived in Washington, there are scenes, dialogue and setups that could just as easily be featured in
The Bionic Woman or something.
The scenes of Diana establishing herself; plotzing at inflation; showing how she had enough money to live well by pawning ancient coins; and setting up her new identity as an IADC agent by overriding their computer all work really well and show some thought had been put into giving the changes a kind of credibility.
But it's good news/bad news. With no Nazis to battle (but watch this space...), the world here is threatened by a terrorist group which plans to turn governments against each other with the threat of nuclear destruction (plus ça change...). When an Amazon suggests they're like the Nazis, Diana laments that they may be worse. Now, I'll happily believe that a woman flies round in an invisible plane and fights off bullets and can change clothes by spinning round. But to say that The Third Reich pales when compared with the extremely arch and rather daft Dr Solano is taking it a little far, I think.
Even by the standards of the time, the killer robot unleashed by Solano is dire. The fencing battle between WW and the robot version of Solano is pretty much unwatchable. I dare you not to laugh when she removes his face to reveal the robot head underneath (which, naturally, is twice the size it was before she removed it). It's an issue with this show that the more futuristic it tries to be the worse it is. But that's part of the charm.
That said, Fritz Weaver captures the tone and gives his all to this one, taking some terrible dialogue and giving it more meaning than it deserves. He's a bit of a mumbler though, and delivers his lines at quite a pace. I'd have had trouble picking up some of his dialogue had I not watched this episode so many times.
Jessica Walter is very watchable as the bitchy Gloria who spends half her time glaring at Diana and making passive aggressive little digs and the other half scheming.
Steve himself is replaced by a robot at one point. And a pretty horny one too, since it decides to try it on with Diana. Waggoner gets to be at his sleaziest here, which is entertaining enough.
All in all, it's a decent start. Albeit one which encapulates everything that is great about this new version while also starting to show the shortcomings to which the series would (as I remember it) become more attached as time went on.
