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.
CBS reran several episodes of The Wild Wild West in the summer of 1970 before the program moved into syndication and new life on local stations across the country, including WGN and WOR-TV. This further antagonized the anti-violence lobby, since the program was now broadcast weekdays and often after school. One group, the Foundation to Improve Television, filed a suit on November 12, 1970, to prevent WTOP in Washington, D.C., from airing The Wild Wild West weekday afternoons.[12] The suit said the series contains fictionalized violence and horror harmful to the mental health and well-being of minor children, and should not air before 9 p.m. U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica, who later presided over the trial of the Watergate burglars and ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over White House recordings, dismissed the lawsuit in January, 1971.[13]
This is one of the classic shows in the serious since it introduces the most famous continuing nemesis of the Wild West team. The writer and director had a clear vision for what the series should be like and since every Holmes needs his Moriarity and every Batman needs his Joker, Loveless fits the bill perfectly for Jim West. His intellectuality (albeit warped) is a perfect foil for Jim's sheer physicality. I really look forward to seeing how Artemis' intelligence will be used to combat Loveless in future battles. How anyone can compare the superb performance of the television favorably with that of the movie's Loveless, is laughable!
