I recently
had a chance to re-watch “The Incredible Hulk” (no, not that
one, although I did like the movie).
No, I mean the TV
show with Bill Bixby
and Lou Ferrigno, specifically the pilot
episode. I was quite pleased with the
level of writing involved and how well the translated the premise to a
believable show that both adults and children could enjoy. There be spoilers ahead (although I don’t
know if revealing information about a 30+ year old show counts as a spoiler) so
be ye warned.
The episode
opens with a musical montage of scenes with a man and a woman, obviously
husband and wife or in some other kind of relationship, going through a variety
of life events. Overall, they seem to be
happy. The montage comes to a close when
they are involved in a car accident, the man being thrown from the car (remember,
seat belts were still optional in the ‘70’s).
The car lands on its roof and flames have started to appear. The man can’t get the door open, no matter
how hard he tries. Finally, he wakes up
in bed, alone. He has had a nightmare.
In case you
haven’t guessed it by now, that man is Dr. David Bruce Banner. We learn that his wife, Laura, died in that
car accident 11 months ago and since then he has not only bee having nightmares
(for which he has seen a psychiatrist multiple times) but he’s been obsessed
with his research. That research is
trying to find out why certain people manifest incredible strength in times of
desperate need and, more importantly to him, why he didn’t. Banner and his partner, Dr. Elaina Harding Marks, examine blood
from people they have interviewed about these occurrences. They use an electron microscope, boosted in
power by the resident tinkering maintenance guy, to see the DNA (yeah, we’ll
just gloss over that bit of mis-science) and discover that they all possess an
abnormal sequence.
Banner feels
relieved, since that means he couldn’t have saved his wife after all, but Marks
points out that they don’t know that he doesn’t possess the same
abnormality. Of course, testing Banner’s
blood reveals that he does have that abnormality. In fact, it’s larger than all the
others. So why didn’t Banner turn the
car over? That’s right, gamma rays. Banner discovers that during each instance of
incredible strength, sun spots had been producing a high amount of gamma
radiation. Banner’s car accident
occurred during a low point on the readings, hence no strength.
As any good
scientist would, he decides to experiment on himself by exposing his body to a
high amount of gamma rays. Since Marks
has gone home, and is not answering her phone, Banner does this all on his own,
not noticing that tell-tale tape on the dial that indicates that tinkering has
been done. He turns the gamma ray
projector all the way up and turns it on.
Since he’s alone, he doesn’t see the “Danger” light flashing. (One would think that there would have been
some kind of alarm sound as well, but maybe the maintenance guy took that
off-line.) After the exposure … nothing
happens.
Frustrated,
Banner leaves for home, walking out into a downpour and heading for his
car. On the way home he gets a flat
tire. While changing it, the tire iron
slips and he hits himself with it. This
makes him angry. Cue
transformation. The car, the focus of
the Hulk’s anger, is flipped down into a ravine and he runs off. He apparently wanders in the woods until
morning because the next scene is in the daylight. The Hulk, much calmer, runs across a little
girl fishing in a lake. He approaches
her, hoping to make a friend, but she screams for her father and gets into a
boat to row away. The boat tips and she
falls in. Unable to swim, or just too
scared, she starts to flounder.
It is at
this point that her father returns to the campsite and sees the Hulk pushing a
tree over on to his daughter, although we know he’s trying to save her. After shouting for him to get away, the
father pulls out his rifle and shoots the Hulk.
Now he’s done it. The Hulk runs
towards the father, a wound on his arm, while the daughter grabs a branch of
the felled tree. When the Hulk reaches
him, the father goes for a swim as well, being thrown 30 yards into the
lake. The Hulk runs off and, eventually,
calms down and changes back into Banner.
Banner shows
up at Dr. Marks’ apartment in his tattered clothes, explaining what he did and
how he blacked out on the way home. She
is, understandably, upset at his recklessness.
He shows her his gunshot wound and she tells him that it looks like it’s
been healing for almost a week. While
he’s there, a reporter, Jack Magee, knocks on the door looking for an interview
with Dr. Marks. He sees Banner in a
mirror and, seeing as how he works for a tabloid, he figures he’ll follow them
and see what juicy details he can find out.
Thinking
that they are alone, Marks and Banner head to a remote laboratory, part of the
same institute for which they work, where a deep sea lab module has been tested. Banner wants to recreate his transformation
under laboratory conditions, so they know what they’re dealing with. Marks just wants to try an x-ray cure, but Banner
resists. He locks himself in the lab and
tries to recreate all the circumstances of that night, while Marks monitors his
vitals from outside. It doesn’t work
and, frustrated, Banner tries to sleep.
He has the same nightmare as the beginning of the episode and
transforms, destroying the lab module.
Marks is able to get a blood sample (apparently smashing the inch thick
glass cut the Hulk’s hands up) and calm him down, reverting him to Banner.
It is
eventually discovered that Banner has absorbed 3 million Gamma Units (whatever
those are), not the 200,000 he had intended.
This, combined with his DNA abnormality, has created the Hulk. They decide to try the X-Ray cure, and so
return to the main lab. While they are
out, Magee breaks in, after having failed to obtain entry while the doctors
were there, and hides in a storage closet.
Of course, the cure doesn’t work, so Banner and Marks return to the
remote lab to plan their next move. When
they arrive, Magee overhears them talking about their “friend”, which he pieces
together with the damaged lab and Banner’s wrecked car, and concludes that the
Hulk is an artificial being that was created in the lab and hence escaped.
When he
exits the closet to confront the doctors, Magee knocks over a bottle of acid,
which flows over to some broken bags of chemical compound. Banner escorts the reporter out, warning him
that “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
Marks, still in the lab, smells the acid and yells for Banner, just as
the whole lab explodes. Banner leaves
Magee and tries to get in. He transforms
and rescues Marks, who he then carries off to the woods, past a stunned Magee. Marks dies of her injuries, but not before
telling the Hulk that she has always loved Banner. The Hulk leaves the body and runs off.
Magee prints
a story recounting how Banner and Marks were killed by their own creation, for
which he is berated at their funeral by a laboratory colleague. Banner is shown, over his own grave, ready to
begin his journey to cure himself. It is
left unsaid, but I presume that the reason he can’t return to the institute
would be that he would then have to explain what happened to him, and why he
was using himself as a guinea pig.
Overall, I
think that this episode holds up very well.
The changes from the comic are all very well done and help to lend more
believability to the story. Banner is no
longer an aloof scientist not caring what his research brings about (such as
the gamma bomb), but someone who genuinely wants to find the answer to why he
couldn’t save his wife. The Hulk is no
longer invulnerable, even though he does heal quickly, making for more tension
in those scenes. All of my memories of
the series are from when I originally saw it as a child during its original
run, and the variety of repeats during the years, and I am quite pleased that
the show holds up extremely well. Yes,
there are some fantastic leaps and bad science, but no one was going to watch
The Incredible Hulk expecting hard science fiction, so I can forgive them.
