Nearly 40 years ago, Doctor Strange got his first shot at screen glory.
We take a look back at the Dr Strange TV pilot…
Remember the theme tune to Manimal?
That was also Chihara.
This other reality is imagined as a wonderfully kitsch amalgam of weird filters and lava lamp-style vortices of colour.
The demon Balzaroth is imagined as a black-clad figure teetering on the back of a wayward horse.
Morgan Le Fay is here,looking resplendent in a red dress and matching cape.
Her supervillain credentials are undercut somewhat by the startling line, Im but a woman.
A man attracted me, when shes asked why she let Dr Strange escape.
Dr Strange takes rather longer to don his own purple garb, made famous by the comic books.
In one scene, hes thrown off a bridge and just gets up and dusts himself off.
Thats a pretty cool move for an aging thesp.
If anything, Strange is more like Tom Selleck inMagnum PIor 70s dandy Jason King.
Strange almost succumbs to her wiles, but manages to compose himself just in the nick of time.
Even Strange looks a bit surprised by this outburst.
Fortunately, he discovers his mojo and manages to rescue Lindmer from the clutches of darkness.
And thus the stage is set for a series of small-screen adventures or so CBS hoped.
Given a chance, it could have been the trippiest, funniest comic book series of the 1970s.
