User Reviews

Robin Hood becomes Dr. Loveless? What ever happened to rob from the rich to feed the poor? It doesn't happen here. Loveless in his green wardrobe is a friend of the Indians trying to whip them up into a frenzy and kill his nemesis, James West.

Instead of doing that, Loveless alter ego in this, a mid-evil knight is shining silver armor is called upon to scare the Indians straight into cooperation. A nice touch for Loveless is his work on the suit of armor which is quite impressive.

There is a showdown late in the show with West, the white knight to decide who is the hero & who is evil. The Indians are smart enough never to trust Loveless in the Robin Hood get up. Loveless escapes a fire at the end in a tree trunk. The episode is good but not the best of the Loveless shows.

I've seen more WWW episodes than I care to admit. At its best, it's a guilty pleasure. At its worst, it's profoundly stupid. It works well when it sticks with more-or-less conventional villains looking to kill the President, or cheat settlers out of their land, or print counterfeit money (etc, etc, etc). It works badly with super villains who seem to have been dragged in from a James Bond film. (Why do you think the hero is named James? (The writers apparently never had the nerve for him to introduce himself as "West. James West.")

The chief of these villains is Dr Miguelito Loveless, a scientific genius whose plans vary from honestly trying to help people, to just being mean for its own sake -- and sometimes a mixture of the two. A dwarf, he's played by a real-life dwarf (not a midget), the superb actor Michael Dunn. Superb is not too strong a word. Put him in a scene with anyone, and he steals it, simply by the intensity of his personality. *

Of the "crazy" WWW episodes, this is arguably the best, with a complex story that wouldn't be out of place in James Bond film. The basic plotting involves Dr L destroying forest life to make the Indians dependent on him, a prelude to destroying Washington and giving the country back to the Indians. And that isn't the half of it. You have to see it to believe it.

The budget for this episode must have been huge, involving large, complex sets, and two versions of the same Indian village, one outdoors and the other on a sound stage. The producers must have thought "This is a great story. So let's throw money at it." And they got their money's worth.

* I can't help but think of Dunn in "No Way to Treat a Lady", where he confesses to the murders. The police dismiss him, and he accuses them of prejudice towards small people. "You don't think I'm big enough!"