<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The Wild Wild West was a 1965 TV series. It was an 1870s spin on James Bond. Stars Robert ("I dare you to knock this battery off my shoulder") Conrad and Ross Martin were surprisingly amiable spies/law men for an equally surprisingly sober U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

The hook was that James West (Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Martin) were gadget guys. While no official tally has ever been completed, it is estimated that every single boy who watched the program (1965-1969) wanted a pair of slick leather boots with Conrad's forward-angled heels that could be slipped off to reveal precisely the tools needed to get out of a jam. A smaller, but still significant, number of boys grew up wanting to wear Conrad's tight, burgundy waist coats. They are bussing tables at Chicago's Pump Room.

Yet for all of the show's rudimentary technology (lots of plastic explosives and guns that fire grappling hooks) one of its most amusing dodges involved two silhouettes placed on a spinning Victrola playing a record of West and Conrad talking. A ne'er do well sees what appears to be the pair pacing back and forth behind a shade-drawn window. Needless to say, shots are fired but our heroes are safe.

The show was ahead of its time in one aspect. While other programs cautiously introduced women and people of color in supporting roles, The Wild Wild West had Michael Dunn as villain Dr. Miguelito Loveless, a little person every bit the equal of West and Gordon.

It takes a lot for a man of Loveless' stature to taunt, 'Come back, you, you scaredy cat!' Only his siding with evil doomed Loveless.

You can see a bit of The Wild Wild West in the comic Amazing Screw-On Head.

The concept for the show was adapted and updated in 1999 as a feature-length movie called, simply, Wild Wild West. It starred Will Smith and Kevin Kline as, respectively, Captain James West and U.S. Marshall Artemus Gordon, while Kenneth Branagh took on the role of Dr. Arliss Loveless.