I had just fallen in love with my college girlfriend in 1975 when I learned Rod Serling had died on the operating table. The non-romantic part of my heart available for the heterosexual devotion to a science fiction writer broke when I realized there would be no further word from the genius that had authored "The Twilight Zone," REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, and PLANET OF THE APES. When Irwin "The Master of Disaster" Allen died in 1991, I felt like an eccentric uncle had died, the one who had always gifted me with books by Jules Verne ("Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"), Robert Louis Stevenson ("Lost in Space"), and Jonathan Swift ("Land of the Giants"). By contrast, when Quinn Martin died in 1987, I immediately recognized a master showman had gone to his reward.
"The Fugitive" TV series brought America together, at least for one night, to watch that last episode in unity. Our Richard Kimble, our David Janssen, our Jean Valjean, was certainly going to be vindicated and we were all going to watch this miracle together. The mystery was going to be solved.
"The F.B.I." was cool. While I didn't buy for a minute that the Lewis Erskine character would drive a sporty Mustang, I knew that actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. and the Ford Motor Company would love it. The number of guest stars make watching the episodes for free on AOL worth it. The "based on a true story" stories were compelling and excellent examples of the police procedural. The heroes were Kennedy style educated lawmen who wore nice suits and knew how to use a gun if they had to. The series garnered the respect of a lot of kids my age for the agency. By '65, the James Bond fad was aging. Who knew about J. Edgar at ten years old?
That "The Invaders" was ahead of its time has been proven by "Kolchak" and "The X Files." In a way, "The Invaders" incorporated the best of both "The Fugitive" and "The F.B.I." The man on the run who can't go to the authorities is investigating at the same time he is being investigated.
According to the IMDB, one of Quinn Martin's "most lasting contributions to the genre was developing and perfecting the formula for the one hour television drama -- the number of acts, the number of 'beats' of action per act and the ability to end the act on a cliffhanger for the commercial break thereby assuring that the audience would stay tuned through the commercial."
The Museum of Broadcast Communications via Wikipedia puts it better. "His series were known for their highly stylized format: a prologue featuring a stern-voice narrator to establish the premise; explicitly announced Acts I, II, III, and IV; and an epilogue, again featuring the narrator."
Quinn Martin (May 22, 1922 - September 6, 1987) RIP
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