Would 'Assignment Earth' really make it as a series?

As I've been saying, I really think the Doctor Who comparisons are mistaken. I get why people make that assumption based on the aired episode, but the 1967 prospectus document makes it clear that the intended series would not have featured alien threats or time travel, at least not frequently. One can draw comparisons between Gary Seven and the Third Doctor as characters, but the nature of the threats Gary would've faced wouldn't have been anything like DW plots as a rule. If we're making British TV analogies, it would've been far closer to The Avengers, or maybe Sapphire and Steel.

 

There's lots of pilfered ''kryptonite'' in the second half of ROBOCOP, structure-story wise.
Or adapted DARK KNIGHT themes in STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS.

 

It's an elevator pitch, not a treatise. The DW elements in "Doctor Who meets Mission: Impossible" would be the presence of an older, fantastically-wise man with a young female assistant. That's the extent of the comparison in that particular elevator pitch.

 

Fair enough, but that also describes The Avengers, and to an extent Sapphire & Steel as well, which is why I chose them. The Doctor Who comparison is the most recognizable one to American audiences, but it's the poorest "elevator pitch" of the three, for the reasons I explained. And a pitch is just an invitation to have a longer, more in-depth conversation about the subject, which we've already been doing.

 

I've mentioned elsewhere that if it had become a series, the most natural crossover in the world would have been with Here's Lucy, which ran from '68-'74 (AE aired in '68, and would've been a show by '69-'70.)

Here's Lucy featured an employment agency whose goal is "finding unusual jobs for unusual people". So maybe Roberta takes a vacation or is sick, and Carter's Unique Employment Agency is tasked with finding a temp to fill in for her. As secretary Lucy often does, she takes the job herself, and chaos ensues, also per usual. Although the series name-drops Star Trek in the episode "Lucy's Replacement", shows have done that before without people caring (i.e. mentioned a show as a show, then later featured characters from it as if they share a universe).

 

I'd agree with The Avengers but not Sapphire and Steel. That is a show that's truly out there. Nothing else like it IMO.

 

Crossing a mundane sitcom over with a sci-fi show seems unlikely, but then, I Love Lucy did that George Reeves Superman crossover episode in a way that left it deliberately ambiguous whether "Superman" was George Reeves being addressed by the name of his TV character, or the actual Superman.

I'd think a Mannix or Mission: Impossible crossover would've been more likely, though.

Like how characters in Batman watched The Green Hornet on TV and characters on The Green Hornet watched Batman on TV, and then Batman and Robin met the Green Hornet and Kato in person.

As I've mentioned, though, I think it's entirely possible that an A:E series would have avoided any mentions of Trek or would've soft-rebooted itself to be out of continuity with the Trek backdoor pilot episode. So it wouldn't have been an issue in that case.

Yeah, which is why I was iffy about suggesting it. Still, it takes place almost entirely on contemporary Earth, and doesn't generally involve aliens other than the main characters, although it does tend to involve threats involving time in various weird ways. So as poor an analogy as it is, it's at least a bit closer than Doctor Who, which just goes to show what a poor analogy Doctor Who would have been, despite what people generally assume.

How about we split the difference between the various elevator pitches suggested herein? Assignment: Earth would've been like The Avengers if it had starred Klaatu and Jo Grant.

 

True, though regarding HL, the crossover would be Seven on her show, not Lucy Carter on his, and would be played for laughs, not drama. HL had several spy-ish plot episodes.

 

Sure, but the thing Assignment: Earth has in particular in common with Doctor Who but not with The Avengers is that that young female sidekick is not native to or at first comfortable with that older man's larger-than-life world, and serves to some extent as an audience identification vehicle.

Sure, but the particular context of me calling it "Doctor Who meets Mission: Impossible" was that I was trying to quickly describe the basic idea behind Assignment: Earth to my wife to explain why I was geeking out over the transporter fog at the end of a PIC S2 episode.

 

Which is not the part that most people take away when they hear that comparison. Hence, it's misleading.

You explained that already. And I've already said it's perfectly understandable why people would think that Doctor Who was a good analogy if they were basing their opinions only on the Trek episode. But that's the whole reason I've been focusing on what the series prospectus reveals about what was actually intended, which was different from what we expected. What matters isn't what we said or thought in the past, but how we improve our understanding going forward.

 

Where Roddenberry productions were concerned, the brick wall preventing too many visits to the future (and not appear to be discount Lost in Space) would have been the budget, since that was always a problem for the then-continuing TOS. Yes, a Gary Seven series may not require the amount of futuristic sets, etc., but the format was sci-fi, and going cheap and/or limiting the potential suggested by "Assignment: Earth" (purposely from the Roddenberry end, or due to Paramount) would kill the series, or as noted previously, rendered it some sort of Man from U.NC.L.E., which--by 1968--was not what audiences were interested in watching.

Then again, on TOS, Roddenberry, et al., recycled costumes, matte paintings, etc., so I'd expect some TOS elements to find their way into a Gary Seven series, to keep costs down.

 

I would love a reboot-sequel-whatever of Sapphire & Steel...

 

I honestly wasn't crazy about it. I guess if you like eerie, inexplicable ghost stories, it might appeal, but I didn't find it to my taste. It was also really, really low-budget and stagey, built around multi-part stories taking place in a single setting, like a haunted house or an empty train station. I think they only did location shooting once, and that was on a rooftop. Although I guess a reboot/sequel wouldn't be limited to that, necessarily. Unless they wanted it to be.

There have been several series of S&S audio dramas by Big Finish, starring Susannah Harker as Sapphire and David Warner as Steel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sapphire_&_Steel_serials#Audio_serials

 

Works for me! Especially the Jo Grant part!

 

I could have seen it happening in a Six Million Dollar Man style way except set in the sixties, but that Gary Seven is not bionic and just has the alien science and devices to assist him in catching spies, maniac tyrants and possible alien invasions. A bit like a Gene Roddenberry Mission:Impossible sort of thing.
JB

 

Teri Garr, the human car.....

Just spare us the slow motion.

 

Slow motion and the chimping noise was a must for this series but Gary Seven wasn't a mechanical man as far as I know although he was resistant to the Vulcan nerve pinch!
JB

 

They were relying on that pinch way too often, so it was good to see Seven shrug it off.

 

The chimping noise! Love it. Was that a typo? Or do you mean the nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh noise when he lifted things? Does it sound like a chimp? I never heard it that way, but this sure made me smile for some reason.

 

He probably meant "chirping".

I think the slow motion was a good choice, it's been many years since I last saw it, but I think in the pilot they used sped up motion for some scenes and it looked way goofier.