Legend (1995)

Creators: Bill Dial and Michael Piller

Directors: Charles Correll, Michael Vejar, William Gereghty, Bob Balaban, Michael Caffey, James L. Conway and Steven Shaw

Screenplay: Bill Dial, Michael Piller, John Considine, Timothy Burns, John Consone, Carol Caldwell, Marianne Clarkson, Peter Allan Fields, Ron Friedman, George Geiger, Frederick Rappaport, David Rich, Bob Shayne, Steve Stoliar and Robert Wilcox

Cast: Richard Dean Anderson as Ernest Pratt; John de Lancie as Janos Bartok; Mark Adair-Rios as Huitzilopochtli Ramos; Jarrad Paul as  Skeeter; Robert Donner as Mayor Chamberlain Brown; Dick Bellerue as Smoky; Douglas Rowe as Sheriff Sam Motes; Bob Balaban as Harry Parver

Ephemeral Waves

[NOTE - Does contain spoilers for certain episodes]

UPN (the United Paramount Network) was an American television broadcaster that existed between 1995 and 2006, and had great success with Star Trek: The Next Generation, a considerable hit for them. Unfortunately, barring a few other shows, most of their programming only lasted for one season each. One such show, which could have become something of great interest, but is now an obscure curiosity, is the steampunk western television series that is not The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (1993-4). That show, starring cult star Bruce Campbell, is the show that gained a cult reputation as a steampunk western television show cancelled after one season, making the actual show I am talking about, Legend starring Richard Dean Anderson and John de Lancie, even more obscure.

Legend instead stars Richard Dean Anderson, who helped executive produce the show as well. For my generation, at least in my household, he is most well known for the long running Stargate SG-1 franchise, a television series that spin off from Roland Emmerich's 1994 film and from my perspective was swallowed by it completely in terms of public consciousness. For 1995 however, I would not be surprised if Anderson was known for MacGyver, a show I am aware of because The Simpsons made it a running joke that Marge Simpson's sisters were obsessed with the television show, itself a behemoth in how long it had lasted between 1985 and 1992. Here for UPN, Anderson was clearly a bankable start to promote a fun action romp from and a wise investment to begin with.

The pilot by itself for Legend would have been a little gem if it never got twelve episodes, setting up the premise completely and even ending on the best conclusion for any of the episodes. Anderson is Ernest Pratt, a dime novel author in the 19th century Wild West who, despite his drinking and womanising, created the character of Nicodemus Legend, the ultimate hero and saint of a cowboy hero who uses imaginative tech to outwit his foes and is the polar opposite of his creator.

This is something which Pratt will regret as, having posed as his character for public events, the pilot has him accused for having redistributed an entire river for poor farm owners against a corrupt land heiress, forcing him to have to investigate the scenario. This leads him to the main location of the series, the town of Sheridan in Colorado, and Hungarian immigrant and scientist Janos Bartok, played by John de Lancie, most famous from my childhood for playing Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Beyond the joke that, eventually, a Q from one franchise is effectively playing a "Q" as famous from the Bond franchise, who creates gadgets for the hero here, de Lancie is playing a stand-in for Nikola Tesla, a scientist with radical ideas who like Bartok (but in real life) was screwed over by Thomas Edison.

Whilst his accent is erratic to say the least, de Lancie alongside Anderson help bolster the show with two great lead performances, Bartok the virtuous figure who can bring Nicodemus Legend to life with technology beyond the time period, be it an electric gun to a steam powered car, all whilst being able to bend Pratt's hand into being heroic. It is a shame that the third lead, Mark Adair-Rios as Huitzilopochtli Ramos, is not as distinct, especially as in a show that can be accused of having an all white cast, a smart and equally skilled Hispanic member of the trio is just as distinct in the little we get for the character, the straight man to Bartok's sincere eccentricities, and Pratt's womanising and hesitance to act.

Honestly, any issues from Legend as a series for me are that it is an episodic show, not an issue aside from that the fact that the quality per episode of the stories is a greater concern as a result than a continuous storyline that can fix itself. Production wise, even a television budget here is spun to have some spectacle, especially as the premise means that it can play with technology from beyond the era. It is especially helped by the fact that humour is inherently a core feature of the show, be it every time Pratt uses the hand glider being fraught with peril or Bartok's ill advised attempt to scientifically improve opening a locked safe. The show is at its best when it is about the characters, to which the cast and the scripts, when it is character building, is strong. Pratt is now stuck as his own character, even to the point anyone who would provide him alcohol would be ostracised by the town of Sheridan, leading to him having the barkeeper pretend it is tea and serve the liquor in a porcelain cup.  

It is to the character's advantage that, alongside nobility when pushed to, Anderson is really good in the role. Whilst the character is a simple one to get, you can even in this very cleaned up and simplistic version of the western get a complexity in a man who (as learnt) was a journalist, got cynical and liked his women, and got to writing Nicodemus Legend likely as a semblance of his old ideals as much as to make money. It is not insane to compare this character to how Mark Twain is different from Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the real man behind Twain the persona, or if this series had ran with this premise and a figure from the era like Jules Verne (or Twain himself) appeared and had to live up to their characters, like Verne acquiring Captain Nemo's submarine. Even in Pratt still loving and quoting poetry suggests even he, the coward and drunk, is still a good man, his Legend character a trap now for him but a necessary one he subconsciously built. The show gets so much reward from this dynamic.

Especially, say, when a cattle rustler kidnaps Pratt only to complain to his hostage that his depictions of stagecoach robberies is woefully inaccurate, all because no sane person would try to rob one from behind. Or the episode when a mother and child team of con artists manages to convince Pratt's publisher Legend needs a child sidekick, the show mocking a terrible trope of having cute child sidekicks to appeal to an audience that are usually hated. That both examples used are from the same episode shows how Legend the show was full of playful and clever work at its best. The same can be said for Bartok as, being the noble immigrant scientist who wants to help everyone, his almost naive interest in innovation matched by a desire for virtue is as lovable.

The side cast is also, thankfully, as strong. The fourth person (and lat) in the opening credits is Jarrad Paul as  Skeeter, a bellboy who is not in a lot of scenes is constantly surfcasting in a playful way, who also stands out because Bartok's constant electricity experiments has lead to his hair being permanently stood erected. The other worthy figures of mention are Bob Balaban, actor and director of one episode, as Pratt's contact to his publisher Harry Parver, and Robert Donner as Mayor Chamberlain Brown, who is also the town taxidermist and undertaker, measuring Pratt for a coffin before he is even expected to die or trying to shill a home to retire in to General George Armstrong Custer.

As that suggests, Legend does tackle real life western history with figures guest starring. The Custer episode does have to negotiate around his history of anti-Native American battle campaigns, but the show does make comments about this in the negative, alongside the episode referencing this being just before his ill advised last stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. President Ulysses S. Grant has an episode where his life is threatened, leading to a scene which references his drinking and deals with the fact, whilst sanitised, this period is set after the Civil War and the divide of the North to the South. Then there is the Wild Bill Hickok episode which becomes something special and one of the episodes which won me over. Why I include spoiler warnings, it recreates Hickok's legendary death, in the town of Deadwood with a Dead Man's Hand in cards, cutting from a fun episode to a sombre aesthetic and an alternative rock song, not as good as Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heaven's Door for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), which opens with the death of one of its lead character in his twilight years, but in the same ballpark of the tone. It is a sudden moment of real seriousness in this programme which has been playful and funny for everything before...only for the fact that, in this version, Bartok invented a bullet proof vest before they existed and Will Bill Hickok can fake his own death to retire.

There are flaws. When Legend tries to be serious, I do not think it succeeds. There is an episode about a fake Evangelical priest, played by Robert Englund of A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, which attempts the science versus religion debate, apt as (referred to in an early episode for a joke) this was also the era of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Like a lot of work however in this area, it always is a simple take on religion with it being part of cartoonish villains rather than anything complicated and morally murkier, poking the issue of moral corruption in religion even in a fun romp more precisely or even wondering about the history of scientists who still claimed themselves to be believers over the centuries. It says a lot that this same show, whilst the best scene in the episode, that the story hedges its bets with a narrative, about Bartok trying to create a cloud buster for rain, with the machine never working and its ending being left open. Either it was a literal deus ex machina, or a coincidence, or a cop out, but it is entirely your choice. Likewise, Ramos' episode is about racism, John Vernon playing a rich man who may be stealing Aztec artefacts, which is very simple and is very flat, sadly the last of the series and this leaving the show on an anti-climax.

In fact, when the show is being humorous, it is far more able to be complex because the premise allows for this and the jokes are good. It is not an exaggeration that the pilot has an ending that should have ended this sole season, a twist on walking into the sun as in the end of a traditional western only for Pratt to be convinced otherwise, all because his publisher threatened to cancelled his series if he did not stay. The paradox of a man being forced to play his opposite is poetic and dynamically rich even when played as a comedy, all entirely because it still stems from the cynical lead creating an ideal hero imbued with virtues, hence clearly having the virtues himself even if he presumed them to be lost. Most westerns also do not have the protagonist convince a hired gunfighter to not kill him by offering to bring him to his publisher for his stories. Legend does this, also in the pilot, and that scene is golden.

Even in terms of an action show, it is solidly made on a television budget and helped by the fact that, whilst westerns have had a waning interest past their golden era, they have always been made in the United States whether for cinema, revisionist or otherwise, for television and even straight to video/DVD/streaming productions. The western frontier, even now, can still be found because the United States has vast desert plain and wilderness that cowboys would have wandered on in the old days, and westerns were still being made at this point in the nineties and meant you could, as seen, access to good costumes, good production design and especially stunt actors who could do things like ride horses. Nothing in Legend, barring the CGI stand in for the heroes' hot air balloon for transport, looks terrible in terms of budget in the current day either, and whilst it never really gets bombastic in aesthetic, it does not need too. The real exception is, again, played for comedy with Pratt's scenes of writer's block trying to create new Legend stories, such as being chased in a ghost town by dwarf bank robbers or pursuing a villain on a hand glider, which are shot in sepia and look striking just from that one effect.

Sadly, Legend was cancelled, and honestly, it is peculiar that even happened. UPN, if you look at their programming when they existed, is mainly a list of casualties as a lot of their programming in various genres did not last more than one season, and in some cases not even all the episodes were shown. I admit that Legend itself in the later episodes is weaker at times, but you can see a show like this learn from its mistakes and grow in ambition, especially as it can have a quality production design and style without being too expensive. The biggest risk the show ever takes when it has an episode entirely set in San Francisco, an entirely different look, and that is one of the stronger later episodes because it is for a good reason, introducing Pratt's mother who is memorable, and having a go at interest plot points like the interest in spiritualism in that era. Even the problem with the show not having a fine enough grip on serious subject matter could be rectified, as even the humour does this better, such as the running joke of Native Americans betraying stereotypes by being business savvy or pointing out the lack of need in a rain dance due to the climate of their homeland. So yes, particular as this has a flawed second half, I would have been happy to have seen more of the show, entirely because even if it had not lasted longer beyond, we could have seen the show progress even more. We could have mended the disappointment of the show leaving on an anti-climax, even if it was only a couple of extra episodes or a second season, and the premise certainly had a lot of potential. I admit I prefer a continuous narrative for the most part in long form work, but it is "mostly" because examples like this show how it could work perfectly as a story of the week premise.