My Favorite Martian

Network: CBS
Episodes: 107 (half-hour)
Seasons: Three

TV show dates: September 29, 1963 — May 1, 1966
Series status: Cancelled/ended

Performers include: Ray Walston, Bill Bixby, Pamela Britton, and Alan Hewitt

TV show description:
Extraterrestrial Exigius 12 1/2 (Ray Walston) from the planet Mars crashes his spaceship just outside of Los Angeles. Tim O’Hara (Bill Bixby), a newspaper reporter for The Los Angeles Sun, sees the spaceship and decides to help the alien.

He brings the Martian home and passes him off as his “Uncle Martin,” which isn’t difficult since Martin looks human, except for two retractable antennae. But Martin’s special skills of communicating with animals, telepathy, and moving objects at the point of a finger make him appear all the more unique.

While he works on rebuilding his spaceship, Tim swears to keep Martin’s identity under wraps which provides for suspense and comedy as his nosey landlady, Mrs. Lorelei Brown (Pamela Britton), always seems to be snooping around. Her boyfriend Brennan (Alan Hewitt) also has doubts about Martin.

Tim helps Martin through uniquely human experiences such as catching a cold and a strange emotion he’d never felt before coming to Earth: love. Martin shares his extraterrestrial skills with Tim and helps him to read the mind of girlfriend Daphne Joyce (Jackie Russell) and allows Tim the use of his antennae to pick up transmissions on the local police scanner in order to scoop stories for newspaper boss, Mr. Harry Burns (J. Pat O’Malley).

Later in the series, Andromeda (Wayne Stam), Martin’s young nephew, crashes his spaceship and adds to the confusion.