TV Review: Revisiting a “Legend”
Legend, all 12 episodes. Series created by Bill Dial and Michael Piller. Produced by Gekko Film, and broadcast on UPN. Show broadcast in 1995.
Back in the days, in the early 1990s, there wasn’t the entertainment choices we have now. We had three free channels (if you were lucky): ABC, CBS, and NBC. In 1995, Paramount launched UPN, with its anchor show that they pinned all their hopes on being the new Star Trek: Voyager.
The intended audience of the channel was the college community, with a side helping of the Black community. It was the home of shows such as The Arsenio Hall Show, Veronica Mars, and taking Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the WB.
The network had a lot of science fiction shows, banking on the Star Trek name to create cross-interest in some of the newer shows. One show was the science fiction western Legend. I loved the show when it was broadcast, and recently purchased the show on DVD, having only owned it on VHS, and gave it a re-watch.
Created by Bill Dial and Michael Piller, it starred Richard Dean Anderson as Western dime-store novelist Ernest Pratt. It’s the 1870s, and people are constantly mistaking him for his hero, Nicodemus Legend, since it’s Pratt’s image that’s used on the cover of the books.
This was still when Anderson was primarily known as MacGyver, and you can clearly see the glee he has playing someone completely different. While Legend is written as a hero of the plains, pure and chaste, Pratt is anything but: he drinks, he gambles, and he definitely likes the ladies. The best part is when Pratt has to get into a fight: the former ‘action’ star acts as if he has no idea how to throw a punch, and inevitably hurts his hand more than the person he punched.
Clearly influenced by The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (another great science fiction western from the 90s), Legend was also western steampunk. The show co-starred John de Lancie (best known as Q in the Star Trek universe) as Janos Bartok, a Hungarian scientist who is just basically Nikola Tesla under another name.
The Legend books often have ‘futuristic’ inventions (at one point, there’s a joke about him ripping off Jules Verne) and Bartok, being your typical ‘friendly mad scientist’, often takes the opportunity to create the inventions Pratt describes in his book. Together, they decide to make Legend ‘real’ between the two.
The show only ran for 12 episodes. I’m torn about that, because had it continued, Anderson would’ve likely never gone on to do Stargate. But having re-watched them the past couple of weeks, I think every episode is a joy. Anderson and de Lancie have great chemistry together, and the show has a few regulars (and the occasional guest star) that are also a delight. The show broaches topics that are still considered political today – racism, science denial and religion, and government corruption – and holds up surprisingly well in 2022. And while the steampunk aspect was not well embraced when the show premiered, it would fit in perfect with Dune, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and more. My only complaint is the typical one for a show from the 90s: the show is heavily male-based, with female characters showing up few and far between and only really there to advance the plot.
The DVD was fairly cheap to find on DVD, and I hope that the Paramount Network will have it as one of their streaming options. If you like steampunk, science fiction, Richard Dean Anderson, or John de Lancie, it’s well worth the watch. For more information, visit the Legend page on IMDb.