A while back I gleefully purchased The Complete Man from U.N.C.L.E. on DVD from Time-Life Home Video, and heartily digested many many episodes of one of my favorite TV shows. Well, tomorrow the set will be available for anyone to buy at retail, and (of course) I recommend it highly (BTW, the guys at DVD Geeks have a special episode of their radio show on the release, and if you catch the syndicated broadcast you’ll hear Yours Truly’s recommendation of the set).
To celebrate the release, I’m gonna do something a little crazy: I’m going to (rewatch) EVERY EPISODE, one a day, for the next 106 days. Or, at least, I’m gonna try. I have family reunions planned over the next couple of months AND business travel so I may miss a day (or five) but I will do my best to keep up…
(And, heaven help me when the horrid third season Batman-inspired episodes come around…)
I’ll start with the unaired color pilot, when the show was called SOLO – I’ll be watching the edited-for-TV version “The Vulcan Affair” with a recast U.N.C.L.E. boss (and some drastic cuts) tomorrow.
The original pilot was 61 minutes long and, as I just noted, was broadcast in black in white as the first episode. As to why the title did not remain SOLO, I seem to recall some concern over the Solo title because the network was worried about potential litigation from the makers of the James Bond films (Solo was the name of a gangster character in Goldfinger and Fleming consulted on U.N.C.L.E.‘s early development): hence the title change.
The extra scenes, cut for broadcast? Scenes showing the intruders (who attack U.N.C.L.E. HQ at the beginning of the episode) committing suicide, an extended scene with the U.N.C.L.E. boss played by Will Kuluva (who magically turns into Leo. J. Carroll in the broadcast version of the episode), character moments with Ilya Kuryakin and Solo (in the aired version of the episode, Ilya is not even given a name as I recall – I’ll confirm tomorrow), and character moments between Napoleon and Elayne May Bender (Patricia Crowley), the “innocent” that Solo brings into the case in order to find out more about Thrush agent (and Vulcan Corporation President) Andrew Vulcan (wonderfully played by Fritz Weaver).
The episode is quite good, and is a fantastic introduction into the world of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement (and, of course, without their assistance this show would not have been possible). It has some great action, a death-trap to escape, the classic “turncoat” that tends to show up in these type of spy stories, and the wonderful acting of a personal favorite, Mr. Robert Vaughn (before the Helsinki Formula and TV ads for lawyers).
Great moments: The cameo appearance of Richard (Jaws from the Bond films) Kiel as a Big Bad who threatens Solo; The scene where Solo explains who (or what) THRUSH may be; the way Robert Vaughn enunciates “UNC… LE”; And William Marshall (the crazed Dr. Daystrom from Star Trek’s “The Ultimate Computer”) as an African Premier who is not who he appears to be.
Sam Rolfe, who created the show, wrote and directed this pilot. He was U.N.C.L.E.‘s “Roddenberry” figure, and his vision of the show carried through most of the first and second season (and then things started to… well, we’ll see in around fifty days).
A good start, and tomorrow I think I will experience some deja vu…