Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

• Title: Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman – Pilot
• tv.com: link

With a new Superman ready to fly into theaters this summer every now and then I’ll take a look back at the hero’s more memorable moments on both the big and small screen. The concept of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was different than almost every comic book hero television show which came before or since. More concerned with Clark Kent (Dean Cain) than Superman, and at least equally concerned with Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher), the show presented a peril or dilemma of the week for the Man of Steel to solve, but the crux of the series was the relationship between a pair of reporters whose obvious heat brought the Lois and Clark together in both television and comics.

Premiering on September 12, 1993, the show’s two-hour Pilot episode brought farm boy Clark Kent to the big city and into the newsroom of a great metropolitan newspaper. The Pilot also introduced all the major players of the supporting cast of the series: Lane Smith as the Elvis Presley-obsessed Daily Planet Editor Perry White, Michael Landes as Jimmy Olsen (who would be replaced by Justin Whalin at the beginning of Season Two), gossip columnist Cat Grant (Tracy Scoggins), and Martha (K Callan) and Jonathan Kent (Eddie Jones). The pilot episode also introduces John Shea as Lex Luthor, the First Season’s major villain. In this version Lex and Clark are never friends as both Clark and his spandex-clad alter-ego see through Luthor’s act much quicker than anyone else in Metropolis (especially the smitten Lois who even briefly considers marriage to the millionaire at the end of the First Season).

Several of Superman’s powers are on display here including super-speed, flight, x-ray vision, and heat vision, as the Man of Steel tries to single-handedly save the space program and the NASA space station from Luthor’s behind-the-scenes machinations which include discrediting and killing a scientist (Kenneth Tigar) speaking up about problems with the latest space shuttle. We also get a humorous new origin for Superman’s costume during a montage in which Martha sews several alternatives before finally settling in on Superman’s classic look. Following this sequence the show even gives a nod and a wink to Clark’s “disguise” of his trademark eye-wear.

It may not be John Williams score for Richard Donner‘s Superman, but the show’s score composed by Jay Gruska is already in fine form in this first episode and will continue to be one of the strength’s over the show’s four seasons on television. Cain may not be Christopher Reeve, but he makes for a darn good Clark Kent and a passable Superman. Hatcher is perfectly cast in the role of Lois adding a natural humor and goofiness to go along with the character’s drive that’s often lacking in other actresses’ portrayals. By the end of the Pilot episode, Superman will be introduced to the world, and to Lois Lane, but the show leaves much of the character’s mythology still to be uncovered over the course of Lois & Clark‘s First Season.