Episode Guide
Briefings
Theme Music
Discuss
The Wolf's Lair
Special Projects
Fun & Games
Web Archive
Forum
Home
<< back
>> forward
Airwolf article from Starlog Magazine April 1984
Death Duel on the Small Screen
battles
A pair of superchoppers engage in explosive aerial combat as ABC
pits its TV series adaptation against a CBS original imitation.
By LEE GOLDBERG
The television logic seems simple enough: hit movies make hit series, right? If audiences loved it in the theater on Saturday night, they'll love it every week on television—with just a few minor alterations.
There have been a staggering 85 television series based on movies, the bulk of them arriving in the last decade. And that doesn't count series which seek to somehow capitalize on the success of popular films.
Now, in fly Blue Thunder and Airwolf, adaptation and derivation, both aimed at the audiences who paid big bucks to see Roy Scheider fight crime in a weapon-laden, high-tech helicopter. And both are in a death duel on the small screen for ratings glory.

 "Blue Thunder" Storms

The only connection between Blue Thunder the movie and Blue Thunder the TV series is the chopper. In the 1983 film, (profiled in STARLOG #70), a secret government organization develops the supercraft as a way to covertly observe people and attack subversive groups and individuals. It is an evil device.
Scheider plays Frank Murphy, a renegade chopper cop plagued by had memories of his tour in Vietnam. Asked to test fly Blue Thunder, Murphy discovers the government's plans for its use, exposes the conspiracy and eventually destroys the craft.
The series exists on its own, making no direct reference to events in the film (save for a few character names and use of movie footage in the title credits and certain episodes). Columbia Pictures drafted Roy Huggins, creator of such series as Maverick and The Rockford Files, to rework the concept for the small screen.
"Now, the machine is on the side of good," says producer Don Safran, "and loaned out to the LAPD by a government agency called APEX."
James Farentino stars as the pilot, Frank Chaney, an ex-cop who works for APEX and flies Blue Thunder, aided by a young computer wizard named Wonderlove, played by comic Dana Carvey, a "JAFO" (Just Another Frustrated Observer) described by co-producer Jeri Taylor as the "wacky one of the group."
Blue Thunder is backed up by the Earth-bound Rolling Thunder, a souped-up, computerized van operated by two former football players-turned-APEX-agents, played by football players-turned-actors Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith.
Roy Scheider (interviewed in STARLOG #73) had turned down an offer to play Chaney. The role initially went to Gil (Buck Rogers) Gerard, who departed the project due to "creative differences." Farentino replaced him.
"The hero Roy Scheider played was not appropriate for weekly TV, and he was too dark and troubled by problems from his Vietnam experience," explains producer Taylor, whose credits include Quincy and Cliffhangers. "We wanted an upbeat, roguish kind of feeling. Chaney is a maverick. He flew in Vietnam, but we really don't deal with that experience. He's the kind of person who wants to do things his way. He has great instincts for smelling out trouble and would rather go with those instincts than follow bureaucratic procedure."
And, in classic TV adventure show fashion, this leads to constant conflicts between Chaney and his "by-the-book" commander, Captain Braddock (Sandy McPeak in the role of the same name played by the late Warren Oates in the movie).
"We have a much cheerier show than the feature was, but it's not The A-Team in the sky," Taylor announces. "It isn't that frivolous."
Maybe not to her. Dan (ALIEN) O'Bannon, who co-scripted the Blue Thunder movie with Don Jakoby, calls it "The B-Team" and views Butkus and Smith as "two Mr. Ts."
"Dan O'Bannon is always upset," Safran says. "He said some unnecessarily cruel things about director John Badham when they were working on the feature [see O'Bannon's interview in STARLOG #71]. Dan says many things he has a tendency to wish he hadn't said an hour later. He expresses certain emotions which are not consistent emotions but are of the moment."
O'Bannon and Jakoby are billed as executive story consultants, although O'Bannon and Safran comment that the two are not involved in the series.
"There were some initial meetings with them, but they were only involved as advisors," Safran says. "The stories which have been generated came in without them.
"My biggest curiosity was how on Earth they would convert Blue Thunder to television standards," says O'Bannon, referring to his meeting with Huggins. "Well, it's My Mother, the Helicopter. I didn't expect it to be any better. Once they described the concept, it was hard for me to get excited. Roy Huggins wanted more ideas from us, bits of action regarding the helicopter."
O'Bannon and Jakoby wrote two scripts, "just to see what it was like to work in TV," O'Bannon says, but Safran notes those teleplays were not filmed as part of the initial seven episodes ordered by ABC.
"As a business deal, I'm excited about the series," O'Bannon says. "If the series does well, lasts a few years and hits syndication, I can stick a couple grand in my pocket everytime my 'Creator of Blue Thunder' credit airs. I would tune in every evening at 7 and 11 just to see my bank account swell."
And Safran and Taylor, naturally, think the show, which premiered in early January, can last, although it flies in the face of powerhouse competition from CBS' Dallas. After all, it was NBC's Knight Rider, another series built around a mechanical gimmick (STARLOG #79) that was the first Friday night contender to seriously threaten the Ewing clan's ratings stranglehold.
"What is appealing about the chopper is its sophistication. That's what people responded to in the movie. But, that would get boring week after week," Taylor says. "So, we've developed some nice characters. The equipment is never at the forefront."
"We feel we have a pre-sold commodity in Blue Thunder," Safran says, adding he doesn't expect the CBS chopper entry, Airwolf, to pose much of a threat. "Blue Thunder is now a generic term for helicopters. Airwolf must go out and sell itself."

 "Airwolf" Howls

Oddly enough, Airwolf, which began its Saturday night flights in late January, is perhaps truer to the tone and intent of the Blue Thunder film than its authorized descendant.
Jan Michael (Damnation Valley) Vincent stars as helicopter pilot Stringfellow Hawke, who is just the sort of troubled, dark character the Blue Thunder producers found unacceptable for television.
"He's a very quiet guy, a loner who is into classical music and plays the cello," says Airwolf producer/creator Donald Bellisario, who performed similar duties for Tales of the Gold Monkey and Magnum PI. "Hawke is very afraid to form relationships because the people close to him always die. He thinks he's walking bad luck. When he sees someone he is attracted to, he stays away from them.
"Hawke's parents were killed in a boating accident and he was raised by Dominick Santini [Ernest (Future Cop) Borgnine[, the only guy who has survived around him. Santini rents choppers and stunt pilots to the film industry. Hawke is an ex-spy for The Firm, which has developed a special helicopter that has been stolen by Quaddaffi. The Firm asks Hawke to get it back. He agrees to do it if they'll find out what happened to his brother, an MIA. When they welsh on the deal, Hawke holds onto the copter."

Alex Cord, who starred in the Gene Roddenberry-created pilot Genesis II, plays Michael Archangel, Hawke's former Chief at The Firm. Archangel makes another arrangement with Hawke.
"He says, 'I'll let you know what the government is doing to trick you into getting back the chopper if you will do certain jobs for me,'" Bellisario explains. "What Hawke doesn't know is that the government isn't wild about The Firm using the chopper, either and would really rather it was destroyed or kept under wraps. The Firm can't build another one. Its inventor erased the plans and there's only one prototype."
Airwolf grew out of an unsold series pilot—a sample segment of a proposed weekly show—aired as an episode of Magnum PI (which, like Matt Houston, The A-Team and Riptide, regularly includes helicopters in the action).
"I had an on-air series commitment from CBS," Bellisario explains. "I had a Magnum spinoff I was working with called Birds of a Feather. It wasn't Airwolf, but it concerned a pilot. CBS liked that idea and said do a flying show for us."
Or did they say "do Blue Thunder for us?"
"No," Bellisario replies. "Airwolf owes the usual things a TV show does to the movies. I f there was a major, very successful Western and the network then came to me and said do a TV Western, I won't hold back just because the big hit movie is also a Western. That's what opened the door. I own and fly helicopters. It's my love. So, when CBS comes to me and asks, 'Would you like to do a helicopter show?', Damn right I would!"
The Blue Thunder and the chopper piloted in Airwolf are, Bellisario says, two totally different helicopters with different functions.
"There are no guns showing on the Airwolf copter. All the equipment, rockets, missiles, 30 millimeter chain guns, cannons and all the standard armaments are developed from the helicopter. It looks like a fast, sleek chopper. It's not a cop-type machine," the producer says. "The big thing it has is the ability to go faster than sound and become a jet fighter. It's a tactical helicopter capable of streaking in like a jet, delivering like a jet and becoming a copter
And Bellisario is quick to add, like his Blue Thunder counterparts, that his series is not "just a helicopter show. It is not a high-tech equipment program. I don't make that kind of series. And I use aircraft in anything I make—Baa Baa Black Sheep, Galactica, Tales of the Gold Monkey, Magnum, and now Airwolf. The novelty of a helicopter will not make the show go."
Airwolf, he predictably notes, "is a people show. This is no more a hardware show than Magnum is a detective show. One criticism of Magnum is he isn't really a detective. He stumbles around, he makes mistakes, he is boy-like, he giggles too much; all the things which make Magnum P.I. work."
If these two series fail, save your tears. There may be more high-tech superchopper adventures in the offing. Writer Dan O'Bannon says Columbia Pictures is toying with the idea of a Blue Thunder sequel—this vehicle designed, not for aerial duels on the cathode ray tube, but to once again streak across the silver screen.
Home | News | The Wolf's Lair Magazine | The Series | Special Projects | Fun & Games | Forum
Copyright © Veritas Fan Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
Return to the Top