My Favorite Martian Television Show Was Seriously Weird

Long before there was Mork and Mindy, there was a different type of alien show. My Favorite Martian was a favorite for children and adults during the early 1960s. While the show only ran for three seasons, it was rated in the top 25 shows during that time.

The show was a comedy, but it also expressed some pretty far-out notions for the time, many of which we see played over again and again in today’s television shows and movies. While many people say that the first season was the best, the truth is that all three seasons were great. The antics just kept getting crazier and crazier.

Meet Martin

My Favorite Martian’s first episode aired in September of 1963. The show, then in black and white, jumped into the story when Tim O’Hara, a reporter for the Los Angeles Sun, witnessed a crash. Tim got out of his car and ran to the scene of the crash.

At the site, he spotted a miniature rocket ship. It was far too small to be a regular rocket ship going to the moon, but since he was near a military base, Tim probably figured that the ship was of earth origin. Of course, he could not be further from the truth.

The Martian Looked Human

After the rocket ship crashed and Tim O’Hara reached it, he pulled open the door to the ship like a true hero and what he finds inside looks like a human dressed in a bizarre shiny green suit. Tim automatically assumed the person inside the ship was human.

The green-suited man was knocked out but quickly came to. The entity toldTim that he is a martian and an archaeologist. The martian said he was studying the primitive planet earth. In fact, he claimed he was the sole authority on the people of earth and had been studying the planet for 150 years.

Sarcastic English

What was pretty weird was that the martian spoke English. There is no speaking in strange tongues here. In fact, the martian that Tim found was so fluent in the English language that he had mastered sarcasm.

For the entire series, the martian is nothing but oozing with wicked sarcasm that would make most sane people want to scream and pull out their hair in frustration. You can tell from the first episode that poor Tim the reporter is going to have his hands full with this alien, even though, during his first encounter with his new alien friend Tim is still convinced that he may still be a human being.

Those Antennas

The only real physical difference between humans and the newly-found martian was that the martian has two little antennae that popped out of the back of his head whenever he felt like he needed them. Otherwise, the antennae were not visible.

What was really funny is that you could tell the antennae were coming up from behind the martian’s head and not out of the top of his head. Such were the wonders of special effects in the early 1960s. Everyone could tell there was someone behind the martian lifting up the fake antenna.

Invisibility Powers

Being a martian, it is not very surprising that he had some pretty nifty tricks up his sleeve, right? His first martian trick was shown in the first episode when he turned invisible so that Tim O’Hara could bring him into his apartment without the landlady seeing what was going on.

The martian showed off his second otherworldly trick right afterward when he stopped a dog from barking and the dog obediently got up on his hind legs, saluted, and walked away on his back legs. Invisibility and the command over animals were just the beginning of what this famous martian could do.

Uncle Martin

In order to keep the martian in his apartment, Tim convinced his landlady that the martian was his Uncle Martin. The cover story was that Uncle Martin would be staying awhile.

Meanwhile, Uncle Martin was going to secretly fix his spaceship in order to return home. Poor Tim had his hands full trying to teach Uncle Martin to act like a human among the other humans, from the landlady to the neighbors. That meant no levitating items in public, no exposing his antenna, and keeping his strange spaceship equipment hidden from prying eyes. This was no small task for a simple newspaper reporter.

Martians Can Catch a Cold

Episode three of season one must have been a reference to War of the Worlds because Uncle Martin, the martian, caught a human cold. Now you would think that our biology was different enough so that his more evolved race would not catch a common cold, but not so. The Martian got sick.

And not only did Uncle Martin catch a cold, but some pretty silly stuff happened to him as well. For example, every time he sneezed, he turned invisible. He also had a problem with his antennas. This could have led to a total disaster as the landlady kept stopping by with chicken soup to help Uncle Martin through his cold. Fortunately, the landlady, like all women portrayed on television in the 1960s, was oblivious to all the weird stuff going on.

Manifesting Dreams

In one episode, Tim snuck into the apartment at night and Uncle Martin was dreaming away on the sofa. In front of the sofa were three harem women, dancing. Tim was enthralled by the women, of course, and quickly woke up Uncle Martin to make sure he wasn’t going mad. As soon as Uncle Martin awoke, the women disappeared.

Tim learned that Uncle Martin’s dreams could be seen outside of his head. The only problem was that when Uncle Martin ate something that his martian body couldn’t handle, objects from his dreams would begin to fill up the apartment. It was a total disaster as Tim and Martin tried to hide all the items from the landlady’s prying eyes.

Always Meddling in Love Lives

When it came to matters of love, Uncle Martin just could not help himself. From helping a dog meet up with its love interest to fixing the love lives of other people, Uncle Martin was a master of the heart.

This talent did not extend to Tim. Uncle Martin pretty much screwed up every potential relationship that came near Tim. Tim was desperate for a love interest, but it was almost impossible to have one with Uncle Martin screwing things up for him. Eventually, Tim did get a love interest, but then the battle was trying to keep her from finding out that Uncle Martin was actually a martian.

Removing Memories

The 1960s was a time of experimenting with mental capabilities and there was a strong interest in ESP in a scientific sense. This interest spilled into the show, especially when Uncle Martin pulled out his memory machine.

You see, Tim was having problems getting women’s names right. He called one up on the telephone and then called her by the name of a previous woman. To help him out, Uncle Martin showed him how to work the memory machine which allowed him to remove a memory. The memory was then taken out of his head and turned into pill form. The only way to get the memory back was to swallow the pill. Weird.

Never Bring a Psychic Home

When you have a martian living with you, never bring a psychic home. According to Uncle Martin, Martians naturally have ESP and meeting up with a human with ESP could have dire consequences.

Luckily enough, there was a way for Uncle Martin to turn off or hide his ESP abilities, but of course, there was always a disastrous consequence to any action in the show. Uncle Martin unloaded his ESP into the houseplant and the plant became a “sensing” form in the show. It did not take long for the human psychic to catch on to the fact that things just weren’t right in Tim’s apartment.

Mrs. Brown

Mrs. Brown was the landlady to Tim’s apartment. She was the typical busy body of the times. The woman was always just barging into the apartment without a single knock and only showed up at the worst moment.

Early on, Mrs. Brown fell head over heels for Uncle Martin and started showing off her good wifely qualities in the hopes of getting Uncle Martin interested in her. Uncle Martin was always super nice to Mrs. Brown, but he definitely gave off the “I’m not interested in women” vibe. Poor Mrs. Brown; in her desperate search for a suitable husband, she was blind to all of it.

Duplicating Machine

Before Star Trek hit the airwaves with its replicator, there was Uncle Martin’s duplicating machine. This alien machine could duplicate anything, from food to household items. The downside was that the duplicated items only existed for a short amount of time.

The disaster came when Mrs. Brown got duplicated. She was supposed to be going on a date with a detective, but when she got doubled, Tim and Martin were stuck trying to fix the situation with the double going out on the date, liable to disappear at any moment.

Cleo the Rabbit

Apparently, Martians take daily vitamins just like humans do. The only problem was, the vitamins were only meant for Martians. When the neighbor’s bunny, Cleo, nibbled on Martin’s dropped vitamin, she turned into a huge bunny.

This humorous episode featured a person dressed in a scruffy looking rabbit suit that looked like it went through one too many Easter holidays. And once Cleo the rabbit was human sized, Martin and Tim were stuck trying to figure out how to get Cleo back to normal size. It was not easy, but a solution always came through at the last and worst possible moment.

Molecular Separator

Among Uncle Martins numerous martian toys and gadgets, he had a molecular separator. This device could separate molecules and make an item disappear. It could also, thankfully, bring those items back.

The molecular separator looked like a ray gun stuck on a tripod. Trouble happened when the detective neighbor showed up and started snooping about. The detective was naturally suspicious of Uncle Martin, but this time his suspicions got him in a bit of a jam when the molecular separator dismantled the detective with a push of a button. It was up to Martin and Tim to put the detectives’ molecules together.

Time Travel

Uncle Martin also had a machine that could time travel. This was, undoubtedly, a pretty awesome gizmo, but it did get Tim and Uncle Martin into a bit of trouble when it took them back to the old west.

Just about every science fiction gizmo is brought to light in this classic martian television show. If it could be dreamt up, it was used as a prop or catalyst in an episode. The props were of the same silly quality used in the early Star Trek episodes, giving the show a ton of cheesy fun.

Taking Pictures of the Future

By season three, the last aired season, My Favorite Martian was in color. For the first time, we got to see colors of the house and Uncle Martin’s ginger hair. Previous color assumptions turned out to be completely wrong and the show really came alive.

Of course, Uncle Martin was back to playing with his gadgets. This time it was a camera that took pictures of the future. It was a nifty idea, but when Uncle Martin took a photo of Tim, 24 hours into the future, it looked like Tim was about to get married. Both men went into a panic, and rightly so.

The Last Episode

By the last episode, aired May 1, 1966, Uncle Martin was still stuck on the planet Earth and Tim was playing around with the time travel machine. Tim accidentally messed something up in the past and changed his present. It was up to Uncle Martin to fix the past and return things to normal.

After the television show ended, it wasn’t until 1973 that a cartoon of the show was released. None of the original actors supplied the voices and the show only ran for 16 episodes. In 1999, a movie was made of the television show, but again it was nowhere near as good as the original show.

Bill Bixby

Most people don’t think of My Favorite Martian when they hear the name Bill Bixby. He is perhaps best known as Dr. David Banner from The Incredible Hulk television series that aired from 1978 to 1982.

Bill Bixby looked so young when he was in My Favorite Martian that it is easy to see why most people don’t recognize him as the Hulk’s David Banner. Bixby lived a tragic life, losing his six-year-old son to a throat infection. Some years later, Bixby was diagnosed with cancer. He passed away in 1993.