My Favorite Martian

The series was produced by Jack Chertok Television in association with CBS Productions. The show was originally syndicated by Wolper Pictures, then it moved to syndicator Telepictures, and finally by successor-in-interest to Warner Bros. Television Distribution. The Chertok Company retained ownership of all copyrights for the series; Rhino Entertainment held U.S. video distribution rights until August 2008. Australian entertainment company Umbrella Entertainment acquired distribution rights for Australia and New Zealand and released seasons one through three (the last in full color) in 2007 and 2008 on region free DVD. Those rights, together with video streaming, were acquired by Shock Video; in November 2017 Shock released a new complete boxed set of the series using restored show elements. In 2010, MPI Home Video acquired the series distribution rights for home video. In 2018, Pidax Video Germany acquired both streaming and DVD distribution rights for Germany and released the series the same year under its German title Mein Onkel vom Mars; As of early July 2013, Warner Bros. held domestic and international syndication rights for the series. Those rights have since returned to the Chertok Trust.

The theme music for the series was composed by George Greeley and performed in part on an Electro-Theremin by Paul Tanner, a former member of Glenn Miller's band. It was influential in Brian Wilson's engagement of Tanner in 1965 and 1966 to work with the Beach Boys on their landmark hit, "Good Vibrations". Greeley also scored the series; an album of his music from the first two seasons was released by La-La Land Records in 2007 (dedicated to the composer, who died while the album was being prepared).

Unhappy with early script submissions from creator/producer Jack Chertok, the network hired script doctor Sherwood Schwartz to lend a hand. Schwartz changed the Tim-centric scripts to focus more on the Martian, as a fish out of water, on, as he termed it “this backwards planet.” The pilot featured Mrs. Brown's daughter Angela as Tim's love interest, but she was dropped to allow Tim to become more of a playboy. In a major change, Mrs. Brown, who was multi-talented, intelligent and suspicious in the pilot, became decidedly more scatterbrained.

Bill Bixby in a 1965 episode when a malfunction takes Uncle Martin back to babyhood

The first two seasons were filmed in black-and-white (at Desilu), but the final season was shot in color (at MGM), resulting in minor changes in the set and the format of the show. In addition to the extraterrestrial powers indicated in the first two seasons, Martin was able to do much more in the final season, such as stimulating beard growth to provide Tim and himself with quick disguises, and levitating using his nose. Brennan's boss, the police chief, was involved in many episodes in the third season, generally as a device to humiliate the overzealous detective Brennan.

My Favorite Martian, which premiered in the fall of 1963, was the first of "fantasy" situation comedies prevalent on American television in the mid-1960s featuring characters who could do extraordinary things, predating My Living Doll (1964–1965), Bewitched, (1964–1972) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970).

All episodes now in color.

My Favorite Martians
Title card
Genre	Animation
Voices of	Howard Morris Jonathan Harris Lane Scheimer Jane Webb
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	16
Production
Producers	Norm Prescott Lou Scheimer
Running time	22–24 minutes
Distributor	[Warner Bros. Television Distribution]
Release
Original network	CBS
Original release	September 8 (1973-09-08) – December 22, 1973 (1973-12-22)
Chronology
Preceded by	My Favorite Martian

An animated series, My Favorite Martians, was made by Filmation and was broadcast as part of the Saturday morning programming on CBS from September 8, 1973 to December 22, 1973 for a total of sixteen episodes.[10] The series features Tim, Martin, Mrs. Brown and Detective Brennan (Brennan is considerably different). To appeal to a younger audience, Uncle Martin is joined by his Martian nephew named Andromeda, nicknamed "Andy", who only has one antenna and thus lesser powers than Uncle Martin and did appear in one episode of the live-action series.[11] The pair also have a Martian pet named Okey, a sort of bouncing sheepdog with antennae. Tim also had a niece of his own, named Katie, living with them. Brennan also had a teenage son named Brad living with him and a pet chimpanzee named Chump. None of the characters were voiced by the original actors; Bixby was at the time committed to his latest project, The Magician, and Walston tried to distance himself from the role. As a result, Jonathan Harris voiced Martin and Jane Webb voiced Mrs. Brown.[12]

The cartoon utilized a number of scripts from what would have been season four of the live action show; as of early July 2013, Jack Chertok Television co-owned it, with the Chertok company retaining all merchandising rights to the show.

At least two VHS tape volumes were released of the cartoon series in 1989 by UAV. (https://archive.org/details/myfavmartians2) Distribution rights were held, as of April 2013, by Classic Media as part of their Filmation holdings.

The series was also remade as a feature film in 1999 starring Christopher Lloyd as the Martian and Jeff Daniels as Tim. This film was released and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Ray Walston was featured in the film (both Bill Bixby and Pamela Britton had since died; the former in 1993 and the latter in 1974) and played another Martian who had been trapped on Earth since the time of the first series and wore a similar space suit from the series; his cover was now that of a Government investigator of unidentified flying objects. However, the premise was changed: Martians such as Lloyd's "Uncle Martin" are now non-humanoids with four arms, four legs, and three eyes who use a gumball (which they call "nerplex") to assume human form. The "nerplex" comes in a selection that will turn the person ingesting it into assorted life forms, including Martian, Venusian and one to "never use" (Venox 7).

The TV series was adapted into comic book form by Dan Spiegle and was distributed by Gold Key Comics; it lasted nine issues and ran from 1963 through 1966.[13] Gerry Anderson's company Century 21 acquired the rights to produce a comic strip adaption; it ran in their weekly newspaper, formatted comic TV21, for two years (1965–66) and was featured in three of the British Christmas comics annuals. Unlike the Gold Key Comics adaption, the British strip, in its later run, featured Martin's nephew Andromeda. Due to a lack of reference he was depicted as a chubby freckled British schoolboy.

The comic rights returned to the Chertok company, who licensed a reprint of the Gold Key title produced by Hermes Press; it was subsequently issued in a special single issue edition reprint for the national free comic book day. That reprint is the only instance of a 1960s television comic reprint being used for this event. Subsequently, during the event, the books, in almost every venue, were the first to sell out. The Chertok Company is actively looking to reprint, for the first time, the British comic adaption in a single, stand-alone volume. However, the TV21 Martian pages have been used as special features on the US DVD release of the TV series from MPI, for the Australian DVD release from Umbrella Entertainment, and more recently on the Australia New Zealand DVD release from Shock Entertainment.

During the show's initial run, several products were produced resulting in a board game, a magic set, a paint by numbers set, and a springs with bells beanie hat.

Licensing resumed in 2012 on the My Favorite Martian property, resulting in both a scale plastic model kit of "Uncle Martin"'s spaceship and a built up version, both from Pegasus Hobbies. Due to the success of the model kit, the Chertok company subsequently has extended the Pegasus license.

The Pegasus model kit is in fact a scale replica based on the Martian spaceship's appearance as seen in the series episode "Crash Diet", where the spaceship is shrunken down in size; the initial version of the shrunken spaceship is in the same scale used for the Pegasus model. A still of "Uncle Martin" holding that scaled space ship was placed on the back of the product carton for the assembled, non-kit spaceship.

An after-market photo-etched metal detail parts kit from the Paragrafix Company gives modelers the ability to seriously upgrade the model kit's cockpit detail. They also for the first time created a scale version of the time machine suitcase, along with offering "Uncle Martin"'s flight log book reproduced in both English and Martian text.

Factory Entertainment produced a shake ems version of both "Uncle Martin" and his spaceship. They also offered a special edition black-and-white version of their Uncle Martin statue as a San Diego Comic Con International exclusive.

In 2015 Greenlight Collectibles produced a prototype My Favorite Martian boxed set featuring the second season's Plymouth Fury, as seen in the show.

In November 2017 Zynga Entertainment added My Favorite Martian to its cell phone game "Black Diamond Casino".