Sunday, February 10, 2013

What Might've Been: The Powers of Matthew Star (1982)

By the early 80's superheroes were no longer in vogue in primetime. The Incredible Hulk had ended its run after 5 seasons. Wonder Woman & The Six Million Dollar Man and its companion series, The Bionic Woman, were long gone into syndication. NBC decided to roll the dice, and, well, let's just say they didn't exactly have good fortune.

The Powers of Matthew Star was penciled in to lead off NBC's Friday lineup when it launched in 1982, a year later than planned when production was halted due to injuries sustained by its star, relative newcomer Peter Barton (now a soap actor, most recently on The Young & The Restless). If memory serves, 1982 was also the first year for a more successful action series that followed---Knight Rider, which somehow flourished despite the lead-in being a catastrophic failure.

Creatively, the show had a strong pedigree. Bruce Lansbury had worked on shows as diverse as Wonder Woman & The Fantastic Journey. Another executive producer, Harve Bennett, had worked on Six Million Dollar Man. Steven DeSouza was the series creator, and was later attached to other series, which I can't recall at the moment. Barton also had an Oscar winner to play off of in Louis Gossett, Jr. ("An Officer & A Gentleman"). Halfway through the series, with the change in producers came a format change, with Matthew (Barton) & his mentor, Walter Shepherd (Gossett) now government agents. Initially, the mentor-student relationship between Shepherd & Star was similar to that of Billy Batson and his Mentor (Michael Gray & Les Tremayne, Shazam!, 1974-77), but the changeover to government agents recalls the final season or two of Wonder Woman, or right around the time Lansbury came aboard that series. Hmmmm.

As memory serves, what hurt Matthew Star, besides the format change in midstream, was the opposition, particularly The Dukes of Hazzard. Enough said.

Kinder uploaded the open, narrated by Gossett.



I tried watching the show at first. I didn't stick around for the format change, which really didn't help.

Rating: D.

3 comments:

magicdog said...

I do remember this one. It had potential (alien prince hiding on Earth from intergalactic enemies until he reclaims his throne), but when he suddenly became an agent of the government.... LAME!

magicdog said...

Forgot to mention: This show did have a spiritual successor in the form of the TV series, "Roswell" and the recent film, "I Am Number Four".

I don't know if a sequel is coming but that film played far more like a TV pilot than a theatrical film.

hobbyfan said...

I wouldn't call Roswell a spiritual successor to Matthew Star, not by a longshot.

Not sure, either, if I Am Number Four actually did anything at the box office to warrant a sequel. Didn't see it myself, as I wasn't interested.

Oh, yeah, before he joined Young & The Restless, Peter Barton's last primetime gig was the remake of Burke's Law. I'll get that up sometime.