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Storyline
Jonathan Chase is a British college professor at New York University who has the unusual ability to transform into any kind of animal he wants. He decides to use his power to assist the New York Police Department in solving unusual crimes, and in this series pilot, he teams up with cute cop Brooke and war buddy Ty to stop some terrorists from stealing a supply of toxic gas. Written by
Marty McKee <mmckee@wkio.com>
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Trivia
The two hour pilot's set description had the hero living in a New York Town House, with a subterranean safe room where the beasts were housed. Another set, which would be adjacent, was the garage where his auto was stored. The production's designer, Hub Braden, proposed a two story main house interior with the second floor having a center open well to view the first floor, with a glass sky-light ceiling. The proposed budget for this newly constructed main set was $150,000.00. The safe room for the animals was $75,000.00. Glenn Larson and Harker Wade, (sort of) went along with the main sets' estimated costs until the 20th Century Fox Television Division balked at the expense. In stead of building the new set, a standing film set (from a recently shot film) was ordered to be used, revamping for the required hero home base. After all the alterations and additional requirements for the productions needs, this one main interior set resulted costing over $350,000.00 (in revisions) for the pilot. While the "panther and hawk" enclosure safe room remained in the budgeted $75,000. An exterior Fox Lot-studio New York Street facade was used for the exterior Hero house, which had a lower ramp-up to the studio street, which became the main garage driveway entrance, revised with a new automatic garage door addition.
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Goofs
Whenever Jonathan turned into a bird his hands became talons. His feet should have turned into talons and his hands and arms to wings.
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Connections
Edited into
Automan (1983)
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Alas, the producers evidently could not afford new first-class special effects every week, so the man-to-animal transformations, though impressive the first time you saw them, were quickly worn out by re-use. But the idea was a good one and I hope that one of these years we'll see a remake.