Those of you not in the comic geek loop may not even know what "unaired pilot" I'm talking about. Before I get started, let me just quickly summarize: over the last couple of years, a live-action "Wonder Woman" TV series has been in the works. In late 2010, Warner Brothers (the company that owns DC Comics as well as the intended producers of this series) began pitching the show to the various networks. The series was meant to be "a reinvention of the iconic D.C. comic in which Wonder Woman – aka Diana Prince – is a vigilante crime fighter in L.A. but also a successful corporate executive and a modern woman trying to balance all of the elements of her extraordinary life" (Entertainment Weekly). The series was denied by all of the networks. In early 2011, reports again surfaced that NBC was willing to look into it, and ordered that a pilot episode be made. Warner Brothers went ahead and made the pilot episode, starring Friday Night Lights star Adrianne Palicki as the Amazonian princess. In May, NBC announced that it would not be picking up the show, which pretty much put the nail in the coffin of this series.
But a few days ago, I finally was able to view the pilot episode of this series that could have been. And honestly? I didn't think it was all that bad--I guess I kind of have mixed feelings about it.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD
First off let's start with the good--I think Adrianne Palicki is very well suited for the role of Diana. She seems comfortable in the role (and the uniform), looks the part, and is a good actress. To me, she was a very convincing Wonder Woman all around. The plot of the episode involves a company that has been producing illicit enhancement substances that have been killing teenagers throughout the country, and Wonder Woman has to go after the head of the company (Elizabeth Hurley's character Veronica Cale) to shut the operation down. The writing also wasn't terrible--it wasn't fantastic, and there were a lot of odd quirks things that seemed really odd and unnecessary (more on that later), but I was never really bored throughout the show's forty minute runtime. Her relationship with Steve Trevor (who was Wonder Woman's love interest many, many years ago in the comics) seems like it was something that could be interesting, but was not yet fully developed. And finally, the action scenes (especially the fight at the end) looked fantastic! Nicely done!
That being said, the show takes some questionable artistic liberties with the Wonder Woman character. In the show, Wonder Woman is the CEO of a corporation (called Themyscira Industries) that produces...*sigh*...merchandise based on HERSELF. She's the DEFINITION of selling out. It seems completely at odds with the idealistic alien-in-a-foreign-land Wonder Woman we've known all these years. I also find it weird that the character has THREE identities--one is Wonder Woman (the superhero), the second is Diana Themyscira (her "public" identity as the CEO of Themyscira Industries who everybody knows is Wonder Woman), and Diana Prince (her "private" identity that no one knows is Wonder Woman and/or Diana Themyscira). The show barely even hints at her origin (more of that in a bit), yet is somehow going to try to get the audience to wrap their heads around three separate personas? There's also a moment where she flat out MURDERS a guy with a pipe, which seems totally inexcusable for Wonder Woman.
The weirdest thing about this show is that it always made me question obvious things that I felt I should know the answer to but didn't. When this show started, I wasn't even sure if this "modern" version of Wonder Woman was even an Amazonian princess from Themyscira or even had any superpowers at all (after all, they made it obvious that strong artistic liberties had been taken with the character). I felt that that is something very obvious that the writers should've informed audiences of right off the bat. It took me a while to figure out that she was actually the Amazonian princess we know from the comics and that she that DOES have real superpowers. The first time you see Wonder Woman, she's chasing a guy on foot through the streets of LA. Sure she seems fast and fit (like any other action hero), but there's no clear indication of any real superpowers until AFTER she captures the guy and she unnecessarily slides him like ten feet across pavement towards some police officers. With all this "moderness" and "big city girl" stuff going on, I had pretty much assumed that they had scrapped her comic book origin story of her being a princess from the ancient mythological all-female city of Themyscira. But then midway through the episode, a character makes an offhand remark that's something along the lines of "it's like your favorite uncle...but you wouldn't know", indicating that she doesn't have any uncles because she's from an all-female tribe. To me, the show just did a very poor job of establishing exactly who Wonder Woman is and what her powers and abilities were, and it just kind of left me confused for the majority of the episode.
Overall I guess I liked it enough that I would have watched episode 2, but they would have had to make some major changes to keep me interested for a whole season. I wish the show stuck more to Wonder Woman's roots as a mythological figure instead of just an "everyday, business owning girl in the big city"--because there's already so much of that on TV. I guess I have more of a problem with the questionable and often seemingly unnecessary artistic license they took with the character, rather than the plot and story of the show as a whole. But I really don't understand why NBC nixed the project altogether--I think there are definitely the makings of a great Wonder Woman show lying somewhere in here, and with a couple of rewrites and character adjustment I think this could have been a fun, interesting show.
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