My Favorite Martian: Encyclopedia II - My Favorite Martian - Premise

My Favorite Martian - Premise

A human-looking extraterrestrial in a one-man ship crash-lands near Los Angeles. The ship's pilot is, in fact, from Mars and is now stranded on Earth. A young newspaper reporter, Tim O'Hara with the Los Angeles Sun, was on his way from Edwards Air Force Base (where he had gone to report on the flight of the X-15) back to Los Angeles when he spotted Martian's ship 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 in 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. Brown, who often shows up when not wanted. She later dates a plain-clothes police officer, Detective Brennan, who dislikes Uncle Martin and is highly suspicious of him.

While the first two seasons were filmed in black-and-white, the final season was shot in color, 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 name, Exigius 12 1/2 (revealed in "We Love You, Mrs. Pringle") was heard again when his real nephew, Andromeda, crashed during the 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.

The first two complete seasons are available on DVD from Rhino Home Video. The third season exists in its entirety on VHS (appropriately on green tapes), and is expected to be released by Rhino on DVD in 2006.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Premise", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki