In the beginning, Gene Roddenberry looked upon television and saw it was void and without form. And Gene said, "Let there be Star Trek," and there was "Star Trek" and the Great Bird of the Galaxy saw that it was good.Following "Star Trek," there was a long drought of good and successful science fiction on television. The roadside was littered in the '70's with an array of series that lasted only a half season before network axe fell. "The Invisible Man." "The Fantastic Journey." "Logan's Run." And "Man From Atlantis."
"Man From Atlantis" was produced by Star Trek veteran Herbert F. Solow, who would seem to have the pedigree to return science fiction to its rightful place on the airwaves. But it just was not to be. The show starred Patrick Duffy, who later went on to greater fame as Bobby Ewing, the occasionally dead brother of J.R. Ewing on "Dallas." As the Man From Atlantis, Duffy played the mysterious and amnesiac water-breathing man, who was named Mark Harris by the group of scientists who nurse him back to health after finding him "drowning" in the open air on dry land.
A more detailed post on "Man From Atlantis" will come later. I write today about the theme song from this show which has become available for download from the iTunes Music Store. Composed by the late Fred Karlin, who also scored the sci-fi movie classic "Westworld" with Yul Brynner, as well as its inferior but still entertaining sequel, "Futureworld," this theme has, as far as I know, only been available as a scratchy bootleg .mp3 file in the years since the show aired in 1977-78. Looking Karlin up on imdb.com, I see he also scored a memorable TV movie, "Bitter Harvest" with Ron Howard, and also a less memorable (except by me) cop series with James Earl Jones, "Paris." Karlin died in 2004.
I've searched the iTunes store about once a month for a few years now to see if episodes of "Man From Atlantis" would show up there, as "Logan's Run" did in 2007. I came up empty every time until about a month ago when a recording of the theme showed up. I wish the arrangement of this track had been more faithful to the original series theme, but it's still an entertaining track for any Sci Fi TV nostalgist. You can preview and download the track (99¢) from the iTunes Music Store by clicking the button below:
"Man From Atlantis" theme on iTunes Music Store
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