INDEPENDENT COMICS IN THE MEDIA
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. #9
MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. IN THE MEDIA
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The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American television series broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1964, to January 15, 1968. It follows secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a secret international counter espionage and law and enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. Originally, co-creator Sam Rolfe wanted to leave the meaning of U.N.C.L.E. ambiguous so it could refer to either "Uncle Sam" or the United Nations. Concerns by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer legal department about using "U.N." for commercial purposes resulted in the producers' clarification that U.N.C.L.E. was an acronym for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Each episode had an "acknowledgement" to the U.N.C.L.E. in the end titles
TV SERIES: Man from U.N.C.L.E.[]
The series centered on a two-man troubleshooting team working for U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement): American Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn), and Soviet Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum). Leo G. Carroll played Alexander Waverly, the British head of the organization (Number One of Section One). Barbara Moore joined the cast as Lisa Rogers in the fourth season.
The series, though fictional, achieved such cultural prominence that props, costumes and documents, and a video clip are in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library's exhibit on spies and counterspies. Similar U.N.C.L.E. exhibits are in the museums of the Central Intelligence Agency and other US agencies and organizations gathering intelligence.
U.N.C.L.E.'s adversary was T.H.R.U.S.H. (W.A.S.P. in the pilot movie - not to be confused with the World Aquatic Security Patrol from Gerry Anderson's Stingray). The original series never divulged what T.H.R.U.S.H. represented, but in several U.N.C.L.E. novels by David McDaniel, it is the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity,[6] described as founded by Col. Sebastian Moran after the death of Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Final Problem".
T.H.R.U.S.H.'s aim was to conquer the world. Napoleon Solo said, in "The Green Opal Affair", "T.H.R.U.S.H. believes in the two-party system — the masters and the slaves," and in the pilot episode ("The Vulcan Affair"), T.H.R.U.S.H. "kills people the way people kill flies — a reflex action — a flick of the wrist." T.H.R.U.S.H. was considered so dangerous an organization that even governments who were ideologically opposed to each other — such as the United States and the Soviet Union — had cooperated in forming and operating the U.N.C.L.E. organization. Similarly, when Solo and Kuryakin held opposing political views, the friction between them in the story was held to a minimum.
Though executive producer Norman Felton and Ian Fleming conceived Napoleon Solo, it was producer Sam Rolfe who created the U.N.C.L.E. hierarchy. Unlike national organizations like the CIA and James Bond's MI6, U.N.C.L.E. was a global organization of agents from many countries and cultures. Illya Kuryakin was created by Rolfe as just such an agent, from the Soviet Union.
The creators decided an innocent character would be featured in each episode, giving the audience someone with whom to identify. Despite many changes over four seasons, "innocents" remained a constant — from a suburban housewife in the pilot, "The Vulcan Affair" (film version: To Trap a Spy) to those kidnapped in the final episode, "The Seven Wonders of the World Affair".
TV SERIES: Girl from U.N.C.L.E.[]
The series was popular enough to generate a spin-off series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. The "girl" was first introduced during "The Moonglow Affair" (February 25, 1966) an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and was then played by Mary Ann Mobley. The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. spin-off series ran for one season, starring Stefanie Powers as agent "April Dancer", a character name credited to Ian Fleming, and Noel Harrison as agent Mark Slate. There was some crossover between the two shows, and Leo G. Carroll played Mr. Waverly in both programs, becoming the second actor in American television to star as the same character in two separate series. (The first had been Frank Cady, who played general store owner Sam Drucker on Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies.)