The pilot episode, The Night of the Inferno , was produced by Garrison and scripted by Gilbert Ralston, who had written for numerous episodic TV series in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1997, Ralston sued Warner Bros. over the upcoming motion picture based on the series. (Wild Wild West was released in 1999.) In a deposition, Ralston explained that he was approached by Michael Garrison, who ' said he had an idea for a series, good commercial idea, and wanted to know if I could glue the idea of a western hero and a James Bond type together in the same show. [2] Ralston said he then created the Civil War characters, the format, the story outline and nine drafts of the script that was the basis for the television series. It was his idea, for example, to have a secret agent named Jim West who would perform secret missions for Ulysses S. Grant.
As indicated by Robert Conrad on his DVD commentary for the first season, the show went through several changes in producers in its early weeks of production. This was apparently due to conflicts between the network and Garrison. Collier Young produced episodes 2–4. In an interview, Young said he saw the series as The Rogues set in 1870. (The Rogues, which he had produced, was about con men who swindled swindlers, much like the 1970s series Switch.) Young also claimed to have added the second Wild to the series title, which had been simply The Wild West in its early stages of production.[4] Young's three episodes also featured a butler named Tennyson who traveled with West and Gordon. Tennyson was dropped after the fourth produced episode, but since the episodes were not broadcast in production order, the character popped up at different times during the first season.
The Wild Wild West was filmed at CBS Studio Center on Radford Avenue in the San Fernando Valley. The lot was formerly the home of Republic Studios, which specialized in low-budget films including Westerns starring Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and Saturday morning serials (which The Wild Wild West appropriately echoed). CBS became the primary lessee of the studio lot in 1963, and produced Gunsmoke, The Virginian and Rawhide there, as well as Gilligan's Island. Later, MTM Enterprises (headed by actress Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband, Grant Tinker) became the Studio Center's primary tenant, beginning in 1971. Seinfeld was filmed there in the 1990s.
The Wild Wild West told the story of two Secret Service agents: James West, the charming gunslinger (played by Robert Conrad), and Artemus Gordon (played by Ross Martin), the brilliant gadgeteer and master of disguise. Their unending mission was to protect President Ulysses S. Grant and the United States from all manner of dangerous threats. The agents traveled in luxury aboard their own train, the Wanderer, equipped with everything from a stable car to a laboratory. James West had served as an intelligence and cavalry officer in the US Civil War; his cover during the series is that he is a railroad president. After retiring from the Service by 1880 he lives on a ranch in Mexico. Gordon's past is more obscure; when he retires in 1880 he goes on the road as the head of a Shakespeare traveling players troupe.
