Techtite's TV Reviews!

"Among the three seasons of 1970's Wonder Woman, this is by far the best of the trio, with admirable DVD extras as well."

---from the review

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The Best Series Always Have the Best Theme Songs, Part 3. Good theme songs are cool. Are you listening, networks? No more of this whiney, new age, "I'm a silly broad so let's whine about it," Felicity- Ally- McBeal- teenybopper crap. "Wonder Woman...Wonder Woman...in your satin tights...fighting for our rights...and the old red white and blue!" Cool theme song...even a quarter century later.

Her "Wonder"-ous Age. Realists may wonder (no pun intended) how Wonder Woman was able to make the leap from 1940's to 70's with not a single new pair of laugh lines. It's important to remember that Wonder Woman's origins are magical, and in essence, she doesn't age. In fact; some of the more amusing quips this season seem to try and remind the viewer that Diana, aka Wonder Woman, is several thousand years old. As many a joke used this season will jest; she sure doesn't look it.

Spotting the Special Guest Stars. It's not like a 1970's show could net the special guest stars from TV, and for the most part they could only get guests from stars from shows on the same network. Yet trivia buffs will have fun nonetheless, identifying which cameo is by which well-known TV personality. Look closely and you'll see such stars as: Eve Plumb (Jan from The Brady Bunch), John Colicos ( "Baltar" from the original Battlestar Galactica series), Ed Begley Jr. (St. Elsewhere), Kristin Larkin (Dallas), Anne Ramsey (Six Feet Under), Melanie Chartoff (Fridays), and musician Rick Springfield.

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Wonder Woman: 

The Complete Second Season

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A Review by Techtite

As Always, a review of both The Show, and The DVD (extras)!

The Show: What a difference a network change makes! While the first season of Wonder Woman was almost its last, the second season was so good it warranted a renewal of the series...for a third season, anyway. This is not surprising. Season two was not only better than the first. It is quite frankly the best Wonder Woman season of them all.

What was different? Not just the network; that's for sure. For one thing Wonder Woman was no longer in the 1940's, during WW2. She'd be fighting the forces of evil in then-"current day" 1977. An upgrade to Wonder Woman's costume was also in order, and while it was admittedly a more cleavage-friendly costume, I liked it far more than the 1940's-bathing-suit of the first season. Of course, a more modern setting also meant more imaginative adversaries, with a smooth transition from one or two World War 2 adversaries in the first two or three episodes, to the sort of high tech super villainy of later episodes.

Mind you; jumping to the 1970's meant another adversary: opposition like 1970's sci-fantasy hits, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman. It can be argued that a need to appease the "bionics" mania at the time, was one of the bigger reasons for Wonder Woman's return to TV. To this series' credit, however; the ways the scriptwriters made these "New Adventures of Wonder Woman" similar to "Bionic Woman, " without getting sued, were rather brilliant. For one thing; Wonder Woman ran faster, and now jumps even higher. Bionic? Nah; she's a superhero, after all...! As for high-tech electronics: this season would soon introduce IRAC, the super computer with an "artificial ego" all its own. As for villains: admittedly, it would've been a major lawsuit had they blatantly pit Wonder Woman against bionic "fembots," no matter how cool that fight might have been. Yet how imaginative was it for the writers to find a way for Wonder Woman to fight robot adversaries anyway, in an amusing episode titled "The Deadly Toys"...?

Okay; enough background story. How about "Favorite Episodes"...? One of my personal favorites was the one where Wonder Woman was thwarting an assassination attempt ("Death in Disguise"). In "Light Fingered Lady," Diana Prince must go undercover to thwart a thieving ring; in "Knockout" she must stop various government officials from being kidnapped. While the two-part "Mind Stealers From Outer Space" was not my most favoirite per se, anyone has to love how this story was an amalgam of all popular 1970's sci-fi (check out the Mork From Ork style "eggs" that stole people's minds, as well as the Darth Vader like monster Diana must defeat!). The season ends with an admittedly imaginative prototype missile, that can be controlled by just the thought of the one who fired it. Consider how few special FX were possible in 1977, and think of how imaginative these stories truly were.

Not that this is meant to be a big fanboy commercial plug for the season. Every TV series has its hits and misses. Remember "Spock's Brain" from the original Star Trek series? Well, this series laid an egg almost as bad, in "The Pied Piper." The idea was that there was this guy who could play his flute so well that it hypnotized his prey into doing his crimes for him. It doesn't help the story when this "Piper" is played by Martin Mull. It would be one thing if you had a Pied Piper so dashing and debonair that every woman fell prey to his very whim. Allow me to repeat: The Pied Piper was played by Martin Mull. As an added bonus: his victim is played by Eve Plumb from The Brady Bunch. Not that this helps the script any, though it does help make the episode more fun, train wreck that it was.

As a final bonus, there were all the fun quips in the dialogue. After all; what is a super-heroine, without the witty retort to back her up? "Shopping for honeymoon lingerie?" she asks one crook sifting through Diana's luggage. When a prince Diana is assigned to protect muses that she doesn't look like a typical government agent, Diana muses that she left her trench coat back home; "Well, then we'll have to keep you out of the trenches!" quips the Prince. Of course, when the obligatory 1970's sexist pig insists that he could not be saved by Diana "because you're a woman," Wonder Woman jests, "Yeah...I've been told that once or twice!" Even at its most drol, this season's writing was fun.

---Techtite

The DVD: The only setback of this second season is that all the better extras were apparently put in the first season already. There is the added bonus of a new featurette: Revolutionizing a Classic: From Comic Book to Television, and once again Lynda Carter "today" gives various anecdotes and behind the scenes trivia about her experiences as Wonder Woman. However, at least one good audio commentary would've been nice, as well as a guest star or two asked to give their take on this particular season. Apparently, someone felt that the season alone would sell, regardless of any major extras. They're of course absolutely right, though it's still a shame that one featurette is the only DVD extra.

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