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December 21, 2021 If you’ve been reading my Down the Teen TV Rabbit Hole features, you know I usually deal with television shows from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s that were either obscure or short-lived. But this time, I’m going to make a slight departure and write about a teen television show that never existed — a teen-centric spinoff to the New Adventures of Wonder Woman featuring a male lead character. But first, a little background on the Wonder Woman television show. |
Wonder Woman in the 1970s
Despite being America’s first and best-known female superhero, Wonder Woman’s path to television glory was circuitous and her reign was not particularly long. It started in 1974 with an utterly forgettable TV movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby. Plodding, poorly acted, and with virtually no similarity to the source material (this Wonder Woman had no superpowers), the movie seemed to doom the Amazon princess from the outset. However, ABC Television was willing to try again, and the following year it premiered The New Original Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter in the title role. |
The revised series was set during World War II — the comic book character was created in the same era — and had a more fun-loving, campy approach. More importantly for fans, Carter looked and acted like the heroine they’d grown up with, bouncing bullets off her bracelets and prying the truth from Nazi spies with the help of her magic lasso. The original pilot movie was a huge success, and thirteen one-hour episodes were ordered for the following year with Diana Prince employed by Army Intelligence under the command of the intrepid Major Steve Trevor (Lyle Waggoner).
In late 1977, the show jumped networks to CBS and was retooled for the third time. Now called The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, the show was set in the modern day. Diana Prince was employed by the Inter-Agency Defense Command (IADC), a kind of CIA-FBI hybrid organization that hunted international terrorists and Soviet spies. Lyle Waggoner returned, this time playing the son of World War II-era Steve Trevor, but with the same name. The show ran for two seasons on CBS and was canceled in 1979.
In its cumulative five years on television, Wonder Woman inspired quite a few imitators. Kids could thrill on Saturday mornings to The Secrets of Isis or Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Even Space: 1999, a British science-fiction show, introduced a super-powered female alien in its second season, which they openly billed as “the Wonder Woman of outer space.” Yet strangely, the show never produced any spin-offs in an era where spin-offs were all the rage.
In late 1977, the show jumped networks to CBS and was retooled for the third time. Now called The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, the show was set in the modern day. Diana Prince was employed by the Inter-Agency Defense Command (IADC), a kind of CIA-FBI hybrid organization that hunted international terrorists and Soviet spies. Lyle Waggoner returned, this time playing the son of World War II-era Steve Trevor, but with the same name. The show ran for two seasons on CBS and was canceled in 1979.
In its cumulative five years on television, Wonder Woman inspired quite a few imitators. Kids could thrill on Saturday mornings to The Secrets of Isis or Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. Even Space: 1999, a British science-fiction show, introduced a super-powered female alien in its second season, which they openly billed as “the Wonder Woman of outer space.” Yet strangely, the show never produced any spin-offs in an era where spin-offs were all the rage.
Spin-outs, But No Spin-offs
Although no Wonder Woman spinoffs ever made it into production, it wasn’t for lack of trying. During its first full season, Diana was joined in America by her sister Drusilla/Wonder Girl (played by Debra Winger). There were hopes that Wonder Girl would get her own show, but Winger wasn’t interested. In seasons two and three, at least three other characters were introduced in the hopes of pulling them into spin-offs. But was there a fourth attempt as well?
IMDb has an intriguing bit of trivia for a third season two-parter called The Boy Who Knew Her Secret. It reads: “The Boy Who Knew Her Secret was going to be developed into a Wonder Lad origin story, but that idea was scrapped.”
Although the IMDb trivia has no source or context, it supports something I had long suspected about these two episodes since I first saw them in 1979. Was this two-parter introducing a recurring set of characters, or perhaps even a direct spinoff, to Wonder Woman? And was this new show — as IMDb suggests — going to introduce a young male superhero called “Wonder Lad”?
Let’s look at the evidence, even though it is anecdotal.
IMDb has an intriguing bit of trivia for a third season two-parter called The Boy Who Knew Her Secret. It reads: “The Boy Who Knew Her Secret was going to be developed into a Wonder Lad origin story, but that idea was scrapped.”
Although the IMDb trivia has no source or context, it supports something I had long suspected about these two episodes since I first saw them in 1979. Was this two-parter introducing a recurring set of characters, or perhaps even a direct spinoff, to Wonder Woman? And was this new show — as IMDb suggests — going to introduce a young male superhero called “Wonder Lad”?
Let’s look at the evidence, even though it is anecdotal.
The Case for a Wonder Lad Spin-off:
By its third and final season, Wonder Woman’s attempts to lure in teen viewers became particularly heavy-handed, with plots built around fads like pop stars, disco music, skateboarding, amusement parks, and science-fiction conventions. Lynda Carter often paired herself with popular teen idols of the day, including Leif Garrett, Ike Eisenmann, and Rick Springfield. But the best evidence of a potential teen-oriented spinoff comes from the final episodes of the series. |
The last two episodes to be broadcast were The Phantom of the Roller Coaster, Parts 1 and 2. However, this two-parter was intended to be shown much earlier in the season. If taken in the proper order, the final three episodes were The Boy Who Knew Her Secret, Parts 1 and 2, and The Man Who Couldn’t Die.
The Boy Who Knew Her Secret was broadcast on May 28 and 29th, 1979, and provides intriguing clues to the “Wonder Lad spinoff series.” The plot harkened back to the science fiction classic, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a remake of which had been released a few months earlier and was a huge box office hit. In the show, mysterious metallic pyramids from space fall over a small California town called Crystal Lake, and those who touch them are immediately “inhabited” by an extra-terrestrial presence. Seventeen-year-old Steven “Skip” Keller (Clark Brandon, a teen idol in his own right) discovers this silent invasion and helps Wonder Woman unravel it. Not only does The Boy Who Knew Her Secret reinforce the show’s intentional pivot toward teens and science fiction, but there’s an unusual amount of backstory for Skip Keller.
Like most 70s television, Wonder Woman’s supporting characters were painted in broad strokes. The show’s villains were familiar, two-dimensional archetypes like the mad scientist, the greedy billionaire, the ruthless mobster, or the cunning art thief. But the more benign characters also fell into neat categories: the eager and helpful witness, the exuberant child, and the flustered university professor. By season three, even Steve Trevor, the show’s only other regular character, was pretty two-dimensional. Trevor rarely had an active role in the show and was primarily used to provide the exposition.
Like most 70s television, Wonder Woman’s supporting characters were painted in broad strokes. The show’s villains were familiar, two-dimensional archetypes like the mad scientist, the greedy billionaire, the ruthless mobster, or the cunning art thief. But the more benign characters also fell into neat categories: the eager and helpful witness, the exuberant child, and the flustered university professor. By season three, even Steve Trevor, the show’s only other regular character, was pretty two-dimensional. Trevor rarely had an active role in the show and was primarily used to provide the exposition.
Considering this simplicity in character development, Skip was surprisingly nuanced with an expansive backstory we got to see, not just hear about from Steve Trevor. Skip’s story runs quite independently of Diana’s — especially during the first part of The Boy Who Knew Her Secret. We see him interact with his parents (John Milford and Joyce Greenwood) — his dad’s hard on him and his mother’s sympathetic and encouraging. He has two best friends, Pete and Sunny (Tegan West and A.J. Blake), with the former playing a considerable role in the two-parter. He has a crush on a nerdy, horse-loving girl named Melanie (Lenora May), who’s suspicious that this good-looking, popular boy is cruelly toying with her. He’s smart but plays dumb so he won't raise anyone’s expectations of him. He even has a secret treehouse where he writes stories, keeps an audio journal, and reads the works of Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare in solitude. The only person Skip allows into his little “bat cave” is Diana, and they share a nice scene where she encourages him to embrace his talents openly.
It's also notable that The Boy Who Knew Her Secret had a very different setting than most of the Wonder Woman episodes. Although set in Washington, D.C., the show was filmed in the greater Los Angeles area so most of the storylines were set in big city locations. However, Skip's hometown of Crystal Lake (actually Westlake Village) is presented as being small and rural. The scenery is more pastoral as the village is nestled in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains. Lakes, woodlands, open spaces, and horse country provide a visual contrast to the cityscapes and industrial areas often featured in the show. Westlake Village is about six hours round trip from Warner Bros. studios where Wonder Woman's soundstages were located. While that's not an impossible distance, it is far outside the L.A. area and was certainly chosen to provide specific contrast to the rest of Wonder Woman. So why was so much time dedicated to Skip and his backstory at the expense of Diana in these two episodes? They don’t even share a scene until most of the way through Part 1. And rather than being someone Diana needs to rescue, Skip’s brave and innovative. When he accidentally sees Diana transform into Wonder Woman, he uses this knowledge to save her in Part 2. If there was a candidate for “Wonder Lad,” then Skip was probably he. |
Was Wonder Lad a Comic Book Hero?
If Wonder Woman had spawned a Wonder Lad spin-off, was there a comic book precedent to draw from?
The simple answer is no. While there were two characters called "Wonder Boy" (one from the 1940s and another from the 1990s), neither character was directly related to Wonder Woman herself. Undoubtedly, a Wonder Lad TV show would have featured an entirely original character created just for television... Let's hope they would've come up with a better name for him, too. |
The show addresses Skip’s return in this exchange just before Wonder Woman uses her magic lasso to wipe his memory and protect her secret identity.
Skip: “Can I still be friends with Diana?” Wonder Woman: “Of course. In fact, you two are going to be seeing a lot of each other… Word is that she’s going to be on permanent assignment in Los Angeles by the end of the month.” Skip: “We make a great team, huh?” Wonder Woman: “Her thoughts exactly.” Even in 1979, I never considered these to be throwaway lines. More than likely, the show’s producers were setting Skip up for something bigger, unaware that cancellation was looming. More informal evidence for Skip’s eventual reappearance is revealed at the very end of Part 2. Skip is seen listening to his audio diary and rediscovers Diana's secret identity. The show ends with Diana realizing she forgot about Skip’s audio tapes — but it’s too late. Why would the two-parter end with this cliffhanger if the producers didn’t intend to do something with it later? |
The Teen Idol Who Might've Played Wonder Lad
In keeping with the third season's tendency to bring in teen idols, 21-year-old Clark Brandon portrayed Skip Keller in The Boy Who Knew Her Secret.
Brandon was a teen idol during the 1970s and 80s. He's probably best known for his roles in the TV series The Fitzpatricks and Mr. Merlin, and the movies My Tutor and Fast Food. Interestingly, Brandon's father played a minor role as a nuclear scientist in the first season of Wonder Woman. Brandon graduated from acting to directing in the 1990s but has since left show business. |
No Spin-off for a Canceled Show...
In The Man Who Couldn’t Die, Wonder Woman’s last episode, and the one to directly follow The Boy Who Knew Her Secret, Diana has indeed moved to Los Angeles. She’s now working for the local IADC office, and Steve Trevor is history. New characters include Diana’s boorish boss Dale Hawthorne (John Durren), the physically indestructible Bryce Candle (Bob Seagren, who was also be groomed for a spin-off show), a streetwise kid named T. Burton Phipps III (James Bond III), and — God help us — a chimpanzee providing comic relief. All this was an attempt to breathe fresh life into a show with poor ratings. Ultimately, it was not enough to save it.
If Wonder Woman had made it one more year, would she have had a companion Wonder Lad series? The possibilities — and questions — abound. While the Amazon princess handled global and intergalactic threats with her new IADC companions, would Skip Keller have taken on more street-level and teen-centric plot lines in a less urban setting? How would Skip have manifested superpowers since he had none in the two-parter? Would there have been the inevitable crossover episodes between the shows, which was also popular in 1970s television? Had Wonder Lad actually happened, he would’ve been the only teenage superhero on TV. After all, world-saving teens didn’t come into their own until the 1990s with the likes of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, et al.
Of course, all of this is conjecture on my part and I fully confess that. I did reach out the Lynda Carter to ask her about the Wonder Lad spin-off idea, but as of this writing have received no response. Hopefully, one day, I'll know the truth.
If Wonder Woman had made it one more year, would she have had a companion Wonder Lad series? The possibilities — and questions — abound. While the Amazon princess handled global and intergalactic threats with her new IADC companions, would Skip Keller have taken on more street-level and teen-centric plot lines in a less urban setting? How would Skip have manifested superpowers since he had none in the two-parter? Would there have been the inevitable crossover episodes between the shows, which was also popular in 1970s television? Had Wonder Lad actually happened, he would’ve been the only teenage superhero on TV. After all, world-saving teens didn’t come into their own until the 1990s with the likes of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, et al.
Of course, all of this is conjecture on my part and I fully confess that. I did reach out the Lynda Carter to ask her about the Wonder Lad spin-off idea, but as of this writing have received no response. Hopefully, one day, I'll know the truth.