ay Walston died on Jan. 1. The 86-year-old actor’s career spanned 60 years, from the Broadway stage (Damn Yankees, South Pacific) to feature films (The Sting, Fast Times at Ridgemont High) to television, including the miniseries version of Stephen King’s The Stand. Walston also won two Emmys for his work on Picket Fences and made appearances on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Those of you of a certain age will know Ray Walston for one thing: He was Uncle Martin on My Favorite Martian.
Ah, yes. My Favorite Martian, one of the first (and best) of the first wave of sci-fi comedy on television. In those long-ago days of 1963, the only bit of sci-fi of any kind on the three networks was Twilight Zone, though Outer Limits was about to arrive.
My Favorite Martian was an amiable series about a Los Angeles reporter (played by Bill Bixby) who rescues a lost explorer from Mars who possesses unusual talents and an alien perspective. The series was a breakthrough of sorts, since it took a basic sci-fi idea--essentially the same one at the heart of Robert A. Heinlein’s award-winning, and soon to be best-selling, novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)--about what we silly Earth people
would look like to a visitor from another planet. Only Walston, unlike Valentine Michael Smith, played it for laughs.
Yes, it was the standard sitcom of the times, complete with a nosy neighbor. But My Favorite Martian led the way to a series of sci-fi and fantasy-based programs, such as My Living Doll, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched and It’s About Time, and even spookier variations, such as The Munsters and The Addams Family. Some of those you will recognize, others have mercifully vanished into some Public Storage facility in the San Fernando Valley.
What the successful ones had in common was engaging stars like Walston, Barbara Eden, Elizabeth Montgomery and John Astin. What made some of them sci-fi was that very workable premise of a fish out of water, the “wise fool” who can comment on the silly things we take for granted. The Martian-inspired wave of sci-fi comedies was largely gone by the late 1960s. I don’t know why--maybe the Vietnam War made audiences unwilling to laugh at the foibles of humans.
Walston did it first and best
The next major sci-fi comedy was one that used the same premise as My Favorite Martian. Mork and Mindy, starring the then-unknown Robin Williams, premiered in September 1978, following a hilarious guest appearance by Williams on Happy Days the previous February. This alien fish out of water was from Ork, a planet much farther away than Mars, but possessed, fortunately, of beings that looked sufficiently like humans to be able to pass.
Where Martian provoked, at best, a chuckle, Mork was good for outright insane laughter. However, Ray Walston was forced to spend years re-building his career after being stereotyped as an alien, while Robin Williams made a smooth transition to feature film start. (By the way, have you noticed how many genre films Robin Williams has done in that career? Jumanji. Bicentennial Man. What Dreams May Come. When they get around to reviving Twilight Zone on television for the fourth time, and you know they will, how about Robin Williams as host? No, don’t thank me.)
Mork also suggested that sci-fi based comedies could be ratings hits--provided, it seems, that they stuck with the fish-out-of-water premise. Quark, a somewhat more ambitious idea (remember, we’re talking sitcoms) about spacegoing trash collector played by Richard Benjamin, tried to be a second-generation sci-fi comedy: It took place in a future world. It was a workplace comedy, like contemporaneous hits Taxi and Barney Miller.
Quark, alas, also tried to be a parody, surfing on the Star Wars wave, and failed rather quickly, reinforcing the opinions held by several generations of network and studio executives about the strength of fish-out-of-water stories vs. anything else.
All sorts of unusual sci-fi comedies have been developed in the 20 years I’ve been watching, and all of them, for one reason or another, have barely made it past the pilot stage--if at all.
The only one that has survived, even thrived, is Third Rock from the Sun, which would be worth watching if only for John Lithgow’s accomplished scenery-chewing. In concept Third Rock is basically My Four Favorite Martians. It’s funny, but it’s no breakthrough.
In space, no one can hear you laugh
One reason is that sci-fi stories are harder to write than stories which take place in the here and now, or a well-known historical setting. Heck, you’ve got to invent a world. And comedy of any kind is harder to write than drama of any kind. Ergo, sci-fi comedy is harder than anything. And thus, quite rare.
What also makes it rare is the inability of most actors to play sci-fi characters. Think about it. What questions does an actor ask herself in order to play a role or even a scene? Where was my character born? Does she have money or is she poor? Educated or not? Sexually open or icy? Make your own list, then ask yourself how easily you would find the answers
when confronted with a fresh script. The original Star Trek’s actors eventually gave their characters a great deal of depth, but only as the whole Star Trek universe was "filled in" with details like Spock’s seven-year mating cycle.
And since most situation comedies are really personality comedies--they are designed for and by stand-up comics like Roseanne or Jerry Seinfeld or Drew Carey--the sheer difficulty of playing a character is that much greater. What stand-up comic does sci-fi? I can’t think of one, either.
The spin-off that might have been
Of course, not all actors were frightened by the challenge. Even though being a Martian had hurt his career, Ray Walston remained open to playing sci-fi people.
I had the great fortune to work with Ray Walston on Eerie, Indiana, in early 1992, when he was guest star for an episode titled “The Loyal Order of Corn.” Instead of having him play an alien, however, we cast Mr. Walston as “Ned,” the mysterious and possibly immortal executive secretary and bartender of a twisted, small-town fraternal lodge. (John Astin was a regular in the cast of Eerie by this time, another bonus for a TV kid like me.) Mr. Walston was charming, professional and full of pointed questions that would help him play a scene.
I also got to pose as one of the long-deceased “colonels” in charge of the lodge, with “Ned” peering over my shoulder.
Sometime after the end of filming, Mr. Walston phone me about the possibility of turning “Ned” into the star of his own series. I was polite, but not encouraging. For one thing, "Ned," like all the characters on Eerie, was owned by the production company and the show’s creators, Karl Schaefer and Jose Rivera. The difficulties attendant on spinning “Ned” off were daunting and, given the fact that Eerie was not remotely a hit, probably overwhelming. Mr. Walston and I spoke several times, but nothing ever came of the idea.
Ah, what might have been.
Goodbye, Uncle Martin.
Michael Cassutt has been a writer and/or producer for a number of SF and
fantasy television series, from The Twilight Zone and Max Headroom through Eerie, Indiana, The Outer Limits and, most recently, Seven Days. He is also the author of a number of books on space flight, including his new novel, Red Moon, to be published by Forge Books in January 2001. His short story "More Adventures on Other Planets" was recently published in SCI FICTION.
