The Secret History Of Wonder Woman Remains Mostly Obscured, Despite Jill Lepore’s Best Efforts!

The Good: Scholarly, Writing style is readable
The Bad: Seems to have large gaps in research/includes a number of unsupported suppositions or opinions
The Basics: The Secret History Of Wonder Woman might well be the definitive biography of William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman, but the book is easily summarized and a lot more fluff than it ought to be.


A few weeks ago, I was driving to deal with some errands and I heard an interview on NPR that caught my attention. It seemed an interesting convergence of coincidence that while I was out, randomly flipping through radio stations at an irregular time for me, that I would hear an interview on NPR that had anything to do with my favorite comic book hero, Wonder Woman. The interview was with Jill Lepore, the author of The Secret History Of Wonder Woman. Despite the title capitalizing on the popularity of Wonder Woman, The Secret History Of Wonder Woman is Lepore’s biography of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman’s creator.

The interview on NPR featured Lepore talking about the book, her research and about William Moulton Marston himself. On the strength of the interview, I picked up The Secret History Of Wonder Woman. The hardcover edition of The Secret History Of Wonder Woman is 410 pages (actually, 297, with the balance being devoted to footnotes and an index) and it is a quick-enough read, at least for those who like scholarly works.

The thing is, the tease was almost as substantive as the work.

Fundamentally, The Secret History Of Wonder Woman is written like a dissertation, loaded with footnotes and citations, quotes and references and stylistically, it is more problematic than it ought to have been. The Secret History Of Wonder Woman is chock full of redundancies, like on pages 76 – 78: Pages 76 and 77 feature panels from a Wonder Woman comic strip and Lepore writes about William Moulton Marston’s life and the incidents that she reasonably asserts led to him writing those particular panels. But on pages 77 and 78, she describes the panels and relates their dialog . . . which readers have already seen, read, and understood in the context of Marston’s life. We get it; we got it from the source, we didn’t need the source simply re-described.

In a similar way, The Secret History Of Wonder Woman illustrates how there are severe limits to how much research based on documents, no matter how rich they seem to be. William Moulton Marston, his wife Elizabeth Holloway, and Olive Byrne (the imprecision of modern relationships makes “mistress” not quite right and co-wife to Marston a bit more accurate) spent decades in a relationship that they kept hidden, even from the children Marston and Holloway had (and Byrne subsequently raised). People who are smart about the lies they live with, people who are adept at telling lies and who build a network around them of people who accept their lies as truth, tend not to leave a wealth of documentation. As The Secret History Of Wonder Woman goes on, the subjunctive is tossed around with increasingly more frequency. The result are passages like “He entered the lecture hall. Marston may well have been there, acting as his assistant. Munsterberg began to speak; he began to sway” (47). Given that this is a biography about Marston, whether he was present or not seems to be a pretty important detail. How Lepore’s research can be so precise that she can write that Munsterberg slumped to the floor in the middle of a sentence, but cannot definitively place Marston in the room at the time seems odd. It makes the reader wonder why either the incident or the line was included . . . and the book is full of moments like that.

The Secret History Of Wonder Woman feels rushed as a result, like Lepore was on a deadline to deliver the book and was unable to finish her research. As well, I discovered quickly that I was not a huge fan of Lepore’s style in the book – the passage on page 47, for example has three short sentences in a row that begin with “he [verb],” which followed two slightly longer sentences both with secondary clauses that had “he [verb].” A highly-researched biography from a professor should not read like a Dick And Jane book.

That said, the meat of The Secret History Of Wonder Woman is well-encapsulated in the NPR interview with Jill Lepore. Lepore speaks articulately about her work and William Moulton Marston’s life and the interview is entertaining and engaging. For those curious about William Moulton Marston and his unconventional life, the abridged, audio version Lepore delivers conversationally on NPR is a better use of time, money and attention than The Secret History Of Wonder Woman.

For other biographies, please visit my reviews of:
Society’s Child By Janis Ian
Keeping Faith By Jimmy Carter
The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin

3.5/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Books Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Emotionally Satisfying, But Objectively Inferior, Wonder Woman The Complete Series Stagnates

The Good: Some fun stories, Moments of concept, Feminist aspects
The Bad: Erratic storytelling, Formulaic plots, Reworked multiple times, Almost no real character development
The Basics: Wonder Woman is a great concept for a television series, but the late-1970’s version of it, now on DVD, illustrates how much trouble the studio and writers had with adapting the source material.


For those who have not read my many, many, many reviews, I love Wonder Woman. In fact, I devoted a year to reading Wonder Woman graphic novels when I started yearlong studies of various super heroes and superheroines. So, as I sit down to contemplate the 1975 – 1979 television series Wonder Woman, it is not a lack of appreciation for the source material that leads me to be critical of the series. I’ve also taken some flack (in reviewing the original season sets) because I fail to acknowledge the quality of the show at the time. I am not watching Wonder Woman in the 1970s and I am not recommending/not recommending it to viewers in 1975; I am viewing it through 2013 eyes. However, it is worth noting that in my rating system, effects only account for one of the ten points I used when evaluating a visual work.

So, things like the cheesy looping and unnecessary jumping is not what brings down Wonder Woman down. When contemplating a complete series on DVD – and, to be fair, Wonder Woman The Complete Series is just a simple bundle pack of the three seasons’ DVD sets – consistency is a fair element to consider. Wonder Woman is one of the most retooled series’ I have ever watched and while its initial reworking is after the first season, the second and third seasons are in a state of near-constant reworking as the writers and producers desperately try to find the winning formula that will get and retain the audience. This makes for an overall unsatisfying viewing experience, even if viscerally, Wonder Woman is fun to watch.

Wonder Woman The Complete Series is a simple bundle pack of:
Wonder Woman - Season 1
Wonder Woman - Season 2
Wonder Woman - Season 3

The series begins with Steve Trevor, a U.S. Air Force colonel in World War 2, crashing his plane on Paradise Island in the Bermuda Triangle. Kept unconscious by the female population there, Trevor’s injuries are healed and a contest is performed to see who shall be the emissary sent to Man’s World to return Trevor to his people. The Queen’s daughter, Diana, is chosen and she takes up the mantle of Wonder Woman with a belt that gives her superior strength, bracelets of feminum (an indestructible metal that allows the super-fast Wonder Woman to deflect bullets with her bracelets), and a lasso that compels those tied within it to tell the complete truth. Diana returns Steve Trevor to the Air Force and decides that the conflict the United States is in against the Nazis is a just one and she adopts the alter ego of Diana Prince to serve with Steve Trevor on missions to save the U.S. and help win World War 2.

After returning to Paradise Island, Diana meets Steve Trevor, the son of the man she served with in World War 2, when terrorists hijack his plane over Paradise Island. She accompanies Steve Trevor back to the United States where she goes to work with him at the Inter-Agency Defense Command, an anti-terrorist intelligence organization in the United States. In thwarting spies, alien invasions, and con men, Diana Prince and Steve Trevor grow close, though Trevor never puts together that Diana Prince is Wonder Woman. When Steve Trevor is promoted to be Diana’s boss, the agents rely increasingly on a wisecracking computer and help that Diana finds while on missions. After the promotion, Diana finds herself increasingly without Steve Trevor and more and more performing missions in Los Angeles.

Wonder Woman is loaded with weird production problems – and I’m someone who has very little problem with the temporal reboot – that make for occasionally baffling programming. For example, multiple guest stars appear over the course of the series in different roles looking virtually identical to the character they initially played. And yet, some of the recurring guest characters are recast (constantly, in the case of the Queen, who is played by three different actresses over the run of the series!), sometimes in ridiculous or problematic ways. So, for example, in the first season, Wonder Woman helps save the Earth with the help of an alien who is part of a species that is judging humanity. In the second season, that character returns, recast with a younger actor in his place. And yet, Vic Perrin, who played him the first time around comes back in that season as a completely different character!

In the second season, especially, Wonder Woman is plagued by poor direction. As I say, if you can tell the producers are using the first take, they aren’t doing something right! The second season is a rough transition season: the show starts out following the formula from season one, only set in the 1970s, with Diana and Steve Trevor going on missions together, before replacing their human boss with a talking computer (and, eventually, a little remote controlled robot) and then promoting Steve Trevor out of the main action. When Diana goes solo, usually to Los Angeles episode after episode, the show becomes formulaic and stale and never quite recovers.

At its best, Wonder Woman acts as a “buddy” action show, with Steve Trevor relying quite a bit on Diana Prince and, especially, Wonder Woman. While Steve and Diana keep things entirely platonic, Steve is Diana’s superior officer in the Air Force and then at the IADC, which does undermine the feminist message some (personally, I would have been impressed if Diana had been promoted above Steve at the IADC and episodes became him going out on missions and needing Diana and Wonder Woman to continually bail him out!). When Steve is promoted, the chemistry of the buddy action dies a quick death.

On screen, Lyle Waggoner and Lynda Carter have decent chemistry, portraying Steve and Diana as professionals and the intellectual equals of one another.

At the heart of Wonder Woman is Lynda Carter. It is hard to imagine a better portrayal of the character, especially from performers of the time than Carter. She is articulate, able to convey compassion and resolve, and looks great in the bathing suit-style outfit that defines the iconic Wonder Woman.

But, despite the incredible portrayal of the character, Wonder Woman is a deeply flawed television show. The main protagonist does not grow or develop. The biggest changes Wonder Woman, as a character, has is in her use of her tiara as a boomerang, two different body-hugging outfits (one for swimming and one for motorcycle riding), and the way she starts using her lasso to alter minds as the series goes on. Her resolve never weakens and she is never sufficiently challenged to either doubt her mission or her ability to do it. She never illustrates higher senses of justice or reasoning; she simply goes from one spy caper to the next until the series abruptly ends.

On DVD, Wonder Woman has a few commentary tracks for three or four episodes, none of which are unique to the Complete Series pack. Each season has a featurette on Wonder Woman in the larger mythos or pop culture. It is fun to see and hear Lynda Carter and Douglas S. Cramer (Executive Producer and Director) talk about the show on the commentaries and bonus features, but Lyle Waggoner’s absence is obvious (and his presence and input is missed).

Wonder Woman is fun vintage television, but it is hard to take it seriously as more than that, given that the show is too-frequently put together in a sloppy or inconsistent manner. Perhaps the reason Lynda Carter is considered such an iconic actress as Wonder Woman has less to do with how impressive she is in the role (though she is!) and more to do with how she remains the only constant in an otherwise chaotic production.

For other live-action DC superhero works, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight Trilogy
Green Lantern
Jonah Hex
Watchmen
Superman Returns
Catwoman
Batman
Supergirl

4/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the shows, seasons, and series’ I have reviewed!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Erratic, But Not Unwatchable, Wonder Woman Finishes Weak With The Complete Third Season!

The Good: Decent primary acting, A good protagonist
The Bad: Mediocre DVD bonus features, Formulaic plots, Erratic execution of stories
The Basics: Unsure quite what it wants to be, Wonder Woman devolves into a mundane spy thriller with a superheroine protagonist in its third season.


Action-adventure television shows are hard to do if the production is episodic, as opposed to serialized. When the series has a central hero and an essentially stable villain (or group of villains), the show can grow and evolve with characters who are truly dynamic. The alternative is episodic television: works where the conflict comes into being and is resolved by the end of the episode and there are no consequences that carry from one episode to the next. Episodic television quickly becomes formulaic television and, unfortunately, in its third and final season, that is what happened with Wonder Woman. Say what you will about the first season of Wonder Woman (reviewed here!), but when Wonder Woman’s objectives centered around fighting the Nazis, the quality of the show was a lot less erratic.

Unfortunately, by the time the third season came into production, it was clear that the executive producers and the network did not know what they wanted from the show or how to sustain it. As a result, the episodes vary incredibly in terms of plot and production quality. The third season seems to be on such uncertain ground that it was completely retooled at the end (the penultimate episode on the DVDs) to eliminate Steve Trevor and introduce a bevy of new characters (including, sigh, a monkey) and relocating Diana Prince to Los Angeles.

The move to Los Angeles would hardly have been as big of a deal as one might suspect; for most of the third season of Wonder Woman, Diana Prince flies from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles in the course of the episode because that is where whatever problem needs to be solved this episode actually is. In the third season, the formulaic nature of Wonder Woman becomes painfully obvious, though the episodes are generally produced with more care (there are less awkward moments where it appears the editors used bad takes where actors forgot their lines, missed their marks, etc.) than in the second season (reviewed here!).

The standard formula for Wonder Woman in its third season is this: While in the service of the Inter-Agency Defense Command, Diana Prince uncovers a terrorist activity, kidnapping, bomb threat or alien invasion. Assigned by Steve Trevor, who stays back in Washington, D.C., to investigate the suspicious activity, Diana Prince goes to the sight of impending doom or the last known whereabouts of the kidnapping victim, where she meets someone who will act as her sidekick for the episode. In some fit of ensuing action, Diana Prince and her sidekick get separated, usually while encountering some lackey for the episode’s main villain. Diana uses the opportunity to transform into Wonder Woman who saves the sidekick and interrogates the lackey, finding out who the real villain is. Leaving the lackey – usually erasing their memory and/or compelling them to turn themselves in – Wonder Woman departs and Diana Prince arrives to comfort the shaken-up sidekick. Employing the information she gleaned as Wonder Woman, Diana Prince and the sidekick go off to try to thwart the villain, but in the process usually Wonder Woman’s strength is needed to stop the main villain from escaping, so she transforms again. The episodes usually end with either a humorous recap or a melancholy good-bye as Diana bids farewell to the episode’s sidekick, despite the fact that odds are pretty good she’ll be back in Los Angeles the very next week.

So, the third season in a nutshell, following that formula, involves Wonder Woman and Agent Diana Prince rescuing a kidnapped pop teen idol after he is replaced by his twin brother (thanks to the help of a precocious girl who reminds us that people who work for tips will do pretty much anything for money because they are otherwise paid at slave wages), cracking a ring of car thieves when a Rolls Royce and its valuable hood ornament are stolen, and thwarting a down-on-his luck scientist who uses his muscle-control technology to aid underdog football teams so he wins the least likely bets. Wonder Woman discovers that an artist who creates amazing statues is actually just “freezing” humans, disco is being used for mind control, and that a mousy scientist has made herself into the far more assertive queen of the ants. Wonder Woman confronts a time traveler (problematically played by the same distinctive blonde guy from the prior season who played a single father who seemed likely to hook up with Diana), a leprechaun, and a wealthy man who wants to become immortal by transplanting his brain into a young hunk.

Diana Prince pretends to be a country music singer to . . . who cares; it’s an excuse to see Lynda Carter sing! And how cool is it that Rene Auberjonois (who would play Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fifteen years later) plays a villain at a science fiction convention?! (Auberjonois was very big on the convention circuit and remains a draw for Star Trek fans at science fiction conventions.) And the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers-type story (“The Boy Who Knew Her Secret”) is actually pretty cool.

In its third season, Wonder Woman may be painfully formulaic and conform to many of the conceits of the day – there are many, many car chases this season, though (fortunately) this season precedes the early-‘80’s conceit that had hubcaps flying everywhere during chase sequences – but Wonder Woman and Diana Prince are remarkably consistent. Fans of Wonder Woman will be disturbed by how Wonder Woman uses her lasso of truth this season consistently as a tool of compulsion – she erases more memories this season than (pure comic book geek reference!) Zatanna did during the events uncovered in Identity Crisis (reviewed here!). She is assertive, strong and uses her ability to communicate with animals more in season three of Wonder Woman.

Unfortunately, the formula in the third season made Steve Trevor virtually obsolete. He consults with the talking computer and has an assistant (Eve) of his own for a few episodes, but usually in the third season, he gives out the assignment, is available for a phone call at some point in the episode and possibly a check-in at the end, but is otherwise a non-entity.

On DVD, Wonder Woman The Complete Third Season includes a commentary track on a single episode and a featurette on the feminist role of Wonder Woman. Neither are entirely indispensible, though they do add some extra value to the boxed set. Sadly, though, it is not enough to recommend this DVD set. Wonder Woman is unfortunately dated, formulaic, and not conceptually audacious, even for the time.

For other shows that aired on CBS, please visit my reviews of:
Two Broke Girls - Season 1
The Big Bang Theory - Season 5
How I Met Your Mother - Season 3
Northern Exposure

3.5/10

For other film and television reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Wonder Woman - Season 2: One Of The Worst-Directed, Most Inconsistent, Gems Of Classic Television To Reach DVD!

The Good: Message, Character, Concept
The Bad: Awful direction, Abysmal special effects, Drastically inconsistent (does not know what it wants to be), Mediocre DVD bonus features
The Basics: For all my love of Wonder Woman, it is impossible not to look at Wonder Woman Season 2 and cringe . . . a lot!


It is hard not to be a fan of Wonder Woman and not have an affinity for the television series Wonder Woman. Years ago, during my Wonder Woman Year, I picked up the complete series of Wonder Woman, but I only made it through the first season (reviewed here!). So, when I sat down to watch the second season of Wonder Woman, I was hungry for some smart, but probably campy, entertainment. What I ended up with was a series that was almost as bad as V - The Television Series (reviewed here!).

Wonder Woman Season Two is not inherently bad. It is, however, dramatically inconsistent and often poorly-executed when the scripts are good. The producers of Wonder Woman were continually tweaking the series in the second season, trying to find a formula for the show that would work. Unfortunately, that makes for a ridiculously inconsistent season that does not so much grow and develop as much as it flounders desperately looking for solid footing.

Princess Diana returns to Man’s World when Steve Trevor Jr.’s plane goes off course near Paradise Island and his fight against a terrorist organization that is trying to gain control of a nuclear reactor comes to her attention. While investigating a potential Nazi who has limbs regenerated, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor discover a clone of Adolph Hitler starting a new Nazi movement in Latin America. The two investigate a government-created psychokinetic who wants revenge. To protect Paradise Island, Diana must work with Steve on a mission in the "Devil's Triangle" to stop a terrorist and prevent the U.S. from using the area as a nuclear testing ground.

The series takes a turn when Steve Trevor’s boss is promoted and Steve takes his place in command of the Inter-Agency Defense Force unit that Diana works for. That puts Diana alone out in the field more frequently and, ironically, traveling from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles almost every episode. It also shifts the dynamic, as villains begin using magic flutes, weaponized toys, and alien devices to put greater emphasis on the computer character IRAC and, subsequently, Federal robots. As the show becomes less and less realistic in its missions and the government agency running those missions, Diana as Wonder Woman uses mind control (without her lasso), her ability to communicate with animals, and two new outfits (a diving outfit and a motorcycle outfit) in her repertoire.

The diminishing of Steve Trevor – along with getting rid of Joe Atkinson entirely – forces Diana and Wonder Woman to make new allies almost every single episode. This leads Diana to befriend (in a very episodic way) a single parent, a girl from another mythical realm on Earth (much like Paradise Island) and Andros, the alien she met back in the 1940’s. None of these alliances are particularly compelling, though it is cool to see Andros again (though he has been recast for the invasion episodes he is present in).

Wonder Woman unfortunately lacks daring in its second season. Rather than promote Diana Prince and have Steve Trevor working for her (and, consequently, force Wonder Woman to continually rescue Steve Trevor), both the man and a computer take on greater executive authority than Diana, who is only too happy to keep them in power by bailing them out of every sticky situation that comes up!

Worse than that is the execution of the show. Lynda Carter performs fine as both Diana and Wonder Woman. However, watching the series now, it is easy to see just how terrible the direction is. I swear, Warner Brothers must have forced its directors to shoot every episode in a single take. The reason for that assertion is simple: no matter who is directing the episode, usually at least once per episode, an actor obviously flubs their line or misses their mark (part of the reason I continue to assert Lynda Carter is a wonderful actress is that more often than not, she seems to catch the mistakes and leap in to fix the problem, usually by adding to exposition that another actor has delivered and adding key information they missed when they delivered their lines). Rather than reshoot, which makes a lot of sense, more often than not, these bad takes are present in the episodes.

The special effects in the second season of Wonder Woman are abysmal. People who jump into the ocean, for example, are then seen swimming underwater in a pool. Wonder Woman finds her way blocked by a fountain that she leaps over several times in the season (it’s the same footage each time) and the effect is fine, if a bit ridiculous and obviously cut.

On DVD, Wonder Woman Season Two comes with only a single bonus feature, a featurette on the progression of Wonder Woman to the late 1970s and how that related to the comic book at the time. The four disc set is campy, for sure, but it has good intent. Wonder Woman is a strong feminist character and Diana Prince is happy to be working for the Federal government, even when she has to infiltrate the lair of swingers. Sadly, the execution is repetitive and silly and that diminishes the overall message of Wonder Woman.

For other Wonder Woman reviews, please check out my reviews/articles:
Anne Hathaway For Wonder Woman!
Realworlds: Wonder Woman By Glen Hanson & Allan Neuwirth
DC Direct Justice Wave 3 Wonder Woman Action Figure

4/10

For other film or television reviews, please visit my Television And Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Campy, Delightful And Hopeful: Wonder Woman Season 1 Is Still Worthwhile!

The Good: Good characters, Decent acting, Moments of plot, Liberal values
The Bad: Often campy, Melodramatic deliveries, Often predictable plots, Light on DVD bonus features.
The Basics: The first season of Wonder Woman is unintentionally funny too often, but is still surprisingly worthwhile!


As my loyal readers of my reviews know, 2010 was my Wonder Woman Year, a year in which I did everything I could to read everything pertaining to Wonder Woman that I could. I read a bunch of graphic novels, inspected Wonder Woman toys and even watched the animated feature Wonder Woman (reviewed here!). But despite the pressure to produce on my new blog, I was still delighted when I received the late-70s television series Wonder Woman on DVD. The first season of Wonder Woman was somewhat incongruent with the rest of the series, but still had some real merits. Objectively, though, Wonder Woman is only slightly better than average and the first season strays too far into the camp field. Even so, Wonder Woman does not fall so hard into that field to be considered on the hokey level as Batman.

Wonder Woman is an hour long drama set in the 1940s and follows Princess Diana of Paradise Island. The first season is comprised of a dozen episodes and the pilot, which establish the comic book heroine as a viable television franchise. Indeed, it is almost shocking how Wonder Woman has not been followed up on cinematically or on television since. The truth is that Wonder Woman may be dated, but it is fun, tells a decent hero story and has a protagonist who is not just remarkably easy on the eyes, but is substantive in every meaningful way.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Wonder Woman, the television show reboots the mythology of the comic book character starting with Steve Trevor, a pilot in World War II. While flying to fight the Germans, his plane is shot down by a Nazi over Paradise Island, an island whose population is entirely women. While the Queen determines that Trevor does not pose a threat to the Amazon way of life, she decides to deport Steve back where he came from. For that, a contest is demanded and the winner of the challenges is the Queen’s disguised daughter, Diana. Diana then makes the trip to the United States where her provocative outfit garners her stares, but she is able to return Steve Trevor to a hospital. After a brief stint as an entertainer deflecting bullets with her enchanted bracelets, Diana takes on the alter ego of Diana Prince and works as Steve Trevor’s assistant at the War Department.

From her desk in the War Department, Diana Prince is able to monitor significant events and intervene as Wonder Woman in order to stop Nazi subterfuge, save Steve Trevor from Nazi attacks, Etta Candy from donuts and General Blankenship from humiliation. Over the course of the first season, Diana excuses herself from missions so Wonder Woman can thwart a Nazi spy working at the War Department, use her powers to make a trained killer gorilla docile and help an honest rancher feed the American soldiers by stopping a cattle smuggling ring. Wonder Woman is also visited by her precocious younger sister and has to rescue Paradise Island from a Nazi invasion! Wonder Woman also has to thwart an alien invasion when an advanced race decides to pass judgment on humanity based on how they treat one another and extraterrestrial visitors!

Wonder Woman is the quintessential feminist super hero (or heroine). She uses reason more often than her fists (arguably why a Wonder Woman film has been so long delayed; to be true to the character would not have a big battle, but rather Wonder Woman talking her enemies out of their actions) and her super powers in the television series are fairly limited. Her powers are derived, in part, from a power belt and allow her super speed, super strength and some measure of accelerated healing (she never stays down very long!). In addition, Wonder Woman is outfitted with two essential tools. The first is her lasso of truth, which is not explicitly a divinely created tool in this season and her bracelets. Wonder Woman’s bracelets are made of an indestructible metal which allows her to deflect bullets with them and which become the target of Nazi intrigue.

Unlike the comic book version of Wonder Woman, the character of Wonder Woman in this season of the show is not psychologically fully realized or a truly strong and independent woman. Instead, she spends the first season mooning over Steve Trevor from her yeoman’s desk and she only plays at professionalism until the men’s backs are turned. Then, she seems content to gossip with Etta Candy. Etta Candy is almost exactly like her comic book incarnation with her obsession with food and her own undying love for Steve Trevor. On its own, Wonder Woman Season 1 seems to have equal parts female stereotype and feminism realized.

Wonder Woman is a great character to poke fun at gender inequality and the first season of Wonder Woman has no problem doing that. The fact that the show was set in the 1940s gave it license to disguise contemporary (late 1970s) feminist issues into the plots with some safety. Wonder Woman speaks openly about equality and the strength of women. She frequently uses the failures of her enemies to esteem her skills to their own disadvantage. She is clever, funny and smart in a way that few female protagonists have ever been illustrated. And yes, Lynda Carter looks like a million bucks in the Wonder Woman outfit (in the interest of full disclosure, Carter as Wonder Woman might have been my very first crush as a kid and I still remember her Mabeline lipstick commercials from around the same time). That said, the show is far more than just the outfit and the twirling that was used to fade Diana Prince in her uniform into Wonder Woman and her . . . costume. The show promotes progressive values.

Even so, the special effects are remarkably low budget and they are often cheated due to the lack of CGI (it hadn’t even been conceived when these episodes aired!). Wonder Woman stops trucks with her bare hands, deflects bullets using remarkably good squib work and leaps off buildings with some (I’m assuming) wire tricks that look great while she is jumping down and incredibly silly when she leaps up. Still, the show does not fall into a lot of the ridiculous early-80s conceits, like the television series V (reviewed here!) did with things like hubcaps constantly flying off cars.

As for the acting, Richard Eastham and Beatrice Colen do fine in the supporting roles of Blankenship and Candy, respectively. The problem they have as actors is that they are written to be archetypes, mostly designed to deliver exposition for the audience. They do this perfectly well, but without any distinction that allows them to do more than deliver melodramatic exposition.

Somewhat better off is Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor. Waggoner has both the acting chops to pull off the serious role of Trevor. Waggoner has to credibly be a war hero and he does that quite well. He has a serious side that plays well and he delivers his lines, even the ones with military jargon without having to fall back on his looks. Waggoner is more than just a sidekick and the risk Wonder Woman initially takes is having him open the show. Considering he carries the opening before Diana is introduced, there is a lot to be impressed with from his acting!

But it all rests on Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman and Diana Prince. Carter is able to play Wonder Woman as an often hapless heroine, baffled by the actions of men around her and the way that humans treat one another. The danger of her initially naïve and idealistic performance is that when Wonder Woman has to present serious ideals and stern warnings that she will not be taken seriously. That is not the case, though. Instead, she manages to play strong and stern with her eyes and body language with an equally convincing control of her body language.

On DVD, Wonder Woman Season 1 comes with minimal bonus features. There is a season retrospective and a discussion on how the series came to be produced. There is also a commentary track on the pilot episode which has the executive producer and Lynda Cater describing the project. The bonus features are all right, but fans are likely to want more.

Still, the first DVD set of Wonder Woman is enough to give fans a visual treat that is smart and funny, even if it is a bit dated and occasionally silly.

For other Wonder Woman reviews, please check out my takes on:
Contagion By Gail Simone
Circe action figure
Mythos By Carol Lay

6/10

For other television series reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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