WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

	WONDER WOMAN was created for DC Comics in 1941 by psychologist William Marston under the pseudonym Charles Moulton. In the following years, raven-haired Amazonian Princess Diana battled against evil at the side of Major Steve Trevor, whose secretary, Diana Prince, she had secretly replaced. As popular as Superman and Batman, her battle to reach the TV airwaves . exactly 20 years ago - took much longer to win, as John S. Hall recalls...

	Considering the campy spin he had given BATMAN, William Dozier seemed an appropriate first candidate to bring the Amazon Princess to the small screen in 1967. He envisioned the show as a complete comedy, almost a satire on the original Forties comics. He commissioned Stan Hart and Larry Siegel to write a half-hour script, which was rewritten by BATMAN writer Stanley Ralph Ross. Here, Ellie Wood Walker played Diana Prince as a plain, klutzy young woman who lives with her nagging mother. When she switched into an ill-fitting attempt at the superheroine's patriotic costume and went before the mirror, a much prettier and full figured reflection of what she imagined herself to look like (played by another actress) stared back at her. The networks passed on this concept, and Dozier gave up. Only a five-minute mini pilot, directed by Leslie Martinson and narrated by Dozier, exists.

	The next unsuccessful adaptation reached the American airwaves on 12 March, 1974 Simply entitled WONDER WOMAN, this TV movie had everyone's favourite Amazon foiling the espionage plans of Abner Smith, a villain played by Ricardo Montalban. Unfortunately this attempt suffered from a plodding script, meandering direction and a thoroughly miscast Wonder Woman - former tennis pro Cathy Lee Crosby, whose performance was zombie-like. Her dirty blonde hair looked nothing like Diana's dark tresses, nor did her costume at all resemble the traditional skimpy, star-spangled bodice and tights; if anything, it looked like a badly-made jogging suit with a few stars sewn on the sleeves and a lasso that had to be cranked out of her belt buckle.

	Although universally panned and scorned by critics, WONDER WOMAN garnered enough ratings for the ABC network to give the concept another go - and the third time was a charm (at least initially). After a dogfight in the Bermuda Triangle, an injured Major Steve Trevor (Lyle Waggoner) parachuted to the shores of Paradise Island, an uncharted piece of land
and home to a group of Amazons who had lived there for millennia. Although hardly the lantern-jawed blonde hunk of the comics, Waggoner's Trevor still became the object of love for Princess Diana (Lynda Carter), who found him on the beach and nursed him back to health.

Because an Amazon had to take Trevor off Paradise Island in an Invisible Jet, Queen Hippolyta (Cloris Leachman) staged elaborate Olympic-style games, the winner of which would bring the Major back to America. Although the Queen forbade her daughter Diana to participate, she did just that with the help of a mask and a blonde wig, winning the crucial game of bullets and bracelets. In wartime Washington, Wonder Woman's scant costume caused quite a stir, so she ended up posing as Yeoman First Class Diana Prince and, by the end of the two-hour pilot, became Steve Trevor's secretary after exposing his stenographer Marcia (Stella Stevens) as a Nazi spy.

WRITTEN BY STANLEY RALPH Ross, THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN could hardly have been more faithful to its source material, although some slight changes were made to give the character some vulnerability. Her strength and dexterity now largely stemmed from her golden belt; her bracelets were now made of "feminum", and her golden tiara could be hurled with devastating accuracy like a boomerang. Statuesque Lynda Carter, 1973's Miss USA, made the perfect Wonder Woman, and Waggoner balanced his heroism with enough headstrong stupidity to ensure he always needed rescuing. Adding capable but oblivious help were Richard Eastham's bluff General Philip Blankenship and Beatrice Colen as the perky Private Etta Candy.

Theirs was an appropriately comic book view of World War II, with Nazi spies and agents - nearly all with atrocious accents - lurking everywhere. Whenever these enemies of democracy showed up, frumpy Yeoman Prince would nip off to some secluded spot, twirl, and, with a burst of light, transform into Wonder Woman. Naturally, these men were no match for Diana's strength, agility, or bracelets which could ward off even a barrage of machine gun fire.

THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN did well enough in the ratings as a "Movie of the Week" for ABC to order two more episodes - Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther, and Fausta The Nazi Wonder Woman wherein an early nod to female equality, Nazi agent Fausta Grable (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE's Lynda Day George), successfully captured Wonder Woman through intelligent observance of her weaknesses, but came to see the error of working for unappreciative Nazi chauvinists. However the network didn't want to commit to more as it already had THE BIONIC WOMAN, but when production on that series shut down due to Lindsay Wagner's injuries in a car accident, ABC quickly ordered nine more episodes Of WONDER WOMAN.

Highlight of this season of THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN was the two-part The Feminum Mystique, which introduced Diana's energetic younger sister Drusilla (future film star Debra Winger); had Carolyn "Morticia" Jones playing Queen Hippolyta with delicious aplomb; and culminated in a temporary Nazi takeover of Paradise Island. Both Winger and Jones would reprise their roles in the season finale Wonder Woman in Hollywood, which naturally took place at Warner Bros studios where the show was filmed.

Midway through year one came the show's first foray into science fiction, the two-part Judgment from Outer Space. The alien Andros (played by Tim O'Connor, later Dr Huer on BUCK ROGERS) had been selected by the Council of Planets to observe Earthling behaviour and determine whether or not the species deserved to continue living. Scenes such as Andros and Wonder Woman discussing humanity before the Lincoln Memorial still retain their impact twenty years later.

However, ABC didn't show the series at a regular time slot, preferring instead to air them as "specials" whenever they deemed it best. Naturally Warner wanted their show to be broadcast once a week, and so went to rival network CBS which quickly snapped up the property. In making WONDER WOMAN a regular weekly series, though, they ignored the old adage: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

THIS TIME AROUND, THE NEW ADVENTURES OF WONDER WOMAN took place in the present-day Seventies. In the two-hour The Return of Wonder Woman, we learn that Princess Diana returned to Paradise Island after the Allies won World War II. Apparently the Korean War and Vietnam Conflict weren't enough to warrant her return, but when a plane containing several unconscious people - including a Steve Trevor look-alike landed on the isle, Wonder Woman took an interest in the outside world again.

This dead ringer turned out to be Major Trevor's son, Steve Trevor Jr. (again played by Lyle Waggoner), who worked for the Inter-Agency Defence Command (IADC), Despite initial protests once again from Queen Hippolyta (now played by Beatrice Straight), Diana returned to Washington DC where she helped defeat the world-conquering plans of one Dr. Solano (Fritz Weaver). Now known as IADC operative Diana Prince, she traded in her dowdy Naval uniform for designer clothing, but retained her Clark Kent-ish glasses. She also hacked her identity into the organisation's Internal Retrieval Associative Computer, IRAC (the voice of Tom Kratochzil), which became the only character to know her true identity.

Initially Diana and Steve were given assignments by Joe Atkinson (Normann Burton), but he was phased out halfway through the season when producer Bruce Geller came onto the show; Steve became head of the IADC and Diana his agent in the field. Because of this, any scenes with the two of them together in the same room became a rarity, and telephone conversations a la Mulder and Scully the norm. Not surprisingly, this didn't sit too well with Lyle Waggoner, who also chafed at his character's Lois Lane-like inability to recognize the more fabulous-looking Wonder Woman.

From a viewer's standpoint, the two years of episodes set in the Seventies aren't nearly as satisfying as the first batch set in World War II. These started off as remarkably po-faced and lacking in the gentle, knowing humour of THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN. While this did improve once Bruce Geller was brought in, the show was never really the same.

The stories have not aged well. The third season opener, My Teenage Idol Is Missing, featured then-teen heartthrob Leif Garrett; and in Disco Devil, the telepathic villain Nick Moreno (Michael Delano, not Wolfman Jack as widely believed) wore a white, three-piece, polyester suit with open necked black shirt and plenty of medallions. Nowadays it's tough to take seriously a bad guy who dresses like John Travolta in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER!

Nevertheless, WONDER WOMAN's initial foray into the Seventies had a few memorable moments. The first two episodes tied up some loose ends from World War II: in Anschluss '77, a group of neo-Nazis based in South America and led by Fritz Gerlich (Mel Ferrer) attempted to rebuild the Third Reich by cloning Hitler. And while Diana never battled the Japanese on screen (although she had in the comics), a Japanese veteran with telekinetic powers, The Man Who Could Move the World, had waited 35 years to exact his revenge on her. Later on, the alien emissary Andros - or possibly his son (the script wavers vaguely on this point) returned in the two-part Mind Stealers from Outer Space. Now played by Dack Rambo, Andros helped Diana defeat the Skrill, a band of aliens who resembled little green Power Rangers and had a nasty habit of draining people's mental patterns.

The success of STAR WARS (1977), combined with a steady loss of adult viewers, resulted in a slight revamp for the show's third year with more science fiction elements geared for a younger audience. Still, fantastic villains were hardly a new element to the show's CBS years. In The Pied Piper, Martin Mull had played Hamlin Rule, a rock musician whose songs mesmerised listeners into doing his bidding. Roddy McDowall guest starred as a mad scientist, The Man Who Made Volcanoes, who could cause volcanic eruptions with a laser device, while "The Riddler" himself, Frank Gorshin, portrayed evil toymaker Dr Hoffman, whose lifelike androids (including one of Wonder Woman) wreaked havoc in The Deadly Toys.

Wonder Woman's foes for her third season were no less inspired. Lorene Yarnell played a scientist with the comparative strength of an ant and the ability to control insects in Formicida. In Time Bomb, greedy 22nd-century time traveller Cassandra Loren Joan Van Ark) came to 1978 intent on using her knowledge of things to come to make a fortune. Then came Gault's Brain (voiced by John Carradine), the cognitive organ of a billionaire that sought a new body. An actual science fiction convention provided the backdrop for Spaced Out as several factions fought for possession of a laser crystal; guest stars for this story included future DEEP SPACE NINE actor René Auberjonois and Robby the Robot.

The two-part The Boy no Knew Her Secret featured metallic, mind-draining alien pyramids and a shape shifter. However, the penultimate episode to air, The Man Who Could Not Die, seemed almost like the introduction to a fourth season as Diana had moved to the Los Angeles branch of the IADC, Lyle Waggoner did not appear, and new regular" characters were introduced.

After the two-part Phantom of the Roller Coaster (in which a young Marc "Gul Dukat" Alaimo appears), THE NEW ADVENTURES OF WONDER WOMAN went on hiatus and never returned to the airwaves. Considering the show's slow but steady declines this was probably for the best, as Lyle Waggoner told Amazing Heroes magazine in 1986: "When [WONDER WOMAN] went to the Seventies, I thought it lost all of its charm and all of its humour."

WITH TWENTY YEARS' HINDSIGHT, IT'S interesting to note how WONDER WOMAN took place in the two decades of the 20th century crucial to female empowerment. American women received unprecedented autonomy and employment opportunities during World War II as the men went off to fight in Europe or the Pacific; they essentially kept the country running at this time. And during the Seventies came feminism and the women's rights movement, developments which the Amazon Island no doubt approved of wholeheartedly. Also, the show's timing to coincide with America's bicentennial was impeccable; perhaps the producers thought, "What better way to celebrate the country's 200th anniversary than with a patriotic superwoman wearing the colours of the American flag?"

As for the show itself, its first year remains the best and most faithful to the source material. By embracing the "present day" and more realism for its next two years - even replacing the animated credits with footage of the Amazon performing various feats of prowess - the show stumbled badly and never regained its footing. Although at the time WONDER WOMAN strove to avoid the deliberate campiness of BATMAN, to Nineties viewers the earnest results are just as quaint.

Ironically, the success of BATMAN in the movies may once again give rise to Princess Diana. Warner Bros currently has a script for a movie in development, and apparently they're trying to keep the camp elements to a minimum. Although it's far too early to speculate on casting, many feel that XENA's Lucy Lawless would be the perfect candidate to fill the bodice, as long as Lynda Carter plays Queen Hippolyta, that is.

In spite of its flaws, WONDER WOMAN remains an enjoyably entertaining romp. Although the live action version ended in 1979, Diana had become one of the many superheroes who participated in the animated adventures of THE SUPER FRIENDS beginning in 1973, and she remains a staple of the DC Comics line. Like the original theme song said, she was "In her satin tights/ Fighting for our rights/ And the old red, white and blue" - she's still a wonder, that Wonder Woman.