- Reporter Tim O'Hara, while covering a flight of the Air Force X-15, finds a spaceship that contains a genuine martian. The martian is a professor who specializes in the planet Earth and now has to repair his spaceship before he can go home.
- While covering a flight of the US Air Force's X-15 rocket plane, newspaper reporter Tim O'Hara finds a crashed alien spaceship that contains one live martian, a kindly professor that specializes in the Earth's backwards culture. The martian can levitate things, read minds and disappear when he raises his antennas. Not wanting to be discovered by the authorities, he assumes the identity of Tim's Uncle Martin and begins to repair his spaceship so that he can return to Mars.—laird-3
- [ This is the very first (pilot) episode of this TV sitcom. ]
Tim O'Hara (Bill Bixby), a newspaper reporter, is awakened in the morning by his three separate alarm clocks. But after he turns them off, he immediately goes back to sleep and takes the phone off the hook so he can't be disturbed. His angry newspaper editor, Harry Burns (J. Pat O'Malley) telephones Tim's next-door neighbor and landlady, Mrs. Lorelai Brown (Pamela Britton). Her phone is answered by her teenage daughter Angela (Ann Marshall), who takes the message. Mrs. Brown enters. Her visiting niece, Annabelle (Ina Victor), who is wearing a baby-doll nightgown, volunteers to wake up Tim, but her aunt reminds her that her nightie is too provocative to greet Tim, and brings her a robe to cover up. Lorelai and the two girls go upstairs to Tim's apartment. They knock on his bedroom door and he comes hurrying out. Angela tells him that his editor called and that he wants Tim to go out to Edwards Air Force Base to cover the test flight of the X-15, which has been moved up a day. Both girls seem to be romantically interested in Tim, but he seems to only have eyes for the older Annabelle. Mrs. Brown steps between them to head off any contact between the bachelor and her niece.
The scene cuts to footage of the X-15 rocket-plane detaching from the wing of a B-52 mother ship. It then switches to the interior of an Air Force control room, where a group of military men are monitoring a radar scope tracking the X-15 during its test flight. Suddenly, a second blip appears on the radar screen, and the radarman says it is on a collision course with the X-15 and traveling over 9,000 miles per hour. The pilot reports that something just went by him like he was standing still, and refers to the unknown object as "a flying saucer". This upsets the commanding officer, Colonel Whitehead (Herbert Rudley), who tells the pilot to stop talking nonsense. The Colonel says that he is just happy that the reporter (Tim) wasn't around to hear their pilot talking about flying saucers or to report that their radar is picking up "things that aren't even there". As the Colonel starts to leave, he encounters Tim just arriving, and the officer quickly escorts him out and bars the door, refusing to let him interview the pilot. Tim is curious about why there is so much secrecy for what is supposed to be a routine flight.
The scene cuts to Tim driving back home on a mountain road in the woods. He hears an unusual sound and looks up to see some sort of craft speeding across the sky, and he watches as it appears to crash. Leaping from his convertible sports car, Tim hurries down to the crash site, where he finds a small silver spacecraft. Examining the ship, he accidentally opens a hatch and discovers the unconscious body of a middle-aged man clothed in a shiny chrome flight suit. While he is checking for a heartbeat, the injured man wakes up and tells Tim that he is a professor of anthropology from the Mars, specializing in "this primitive planet". Tim doesn't believe him. The man says he crashed because he had to avoid colliding with the "antique" X-15, and is now marooned on this planet until he can repair his ship. Since the man from Mars is hurt, and hasn't yet adapted to the Earth's heavier gravity, Tim has to carry him back to the car.
The scene cuts again, back to Tim's house, where he arrives with the injured man sitting in the passenger seat. When Tim asks how they are going to get him inside without Mrs. Brown spotting them, the man suddenly sprouts two antennas from his head and vanishes, becoming invisible. While Tim is carrying the now-invisible man into the house, a small dog arrives, barking at them. The man from Mars says he'll take care of the dog, and immediately the dog stops barking, salutes, and walks away on its hind legs, amazing Tim. Mrs. Brown comes out of her house and asks what Tim is doing, and Tim improvises that he is "pretending to carry an invisible man", as he staggers up the stairs with his arms awkwardly held out in front of him.
Inside Tim's apartment, we see that he has put the man from Mars to bed so he can recover from the crash, and they have a conversation. When Tim asks the man how he could know details about Earth if he's from Mars, the man tells him that he is "the greatest living authority on your planet", and has visited earth many times, "especially in the last 150 years". Tim is flabbergasted, and asks if he has been here before why the visit didn't make headlines. The man points out that (since he looks perfectly human from the outside) unless he points it out, who would ever know that he's a Martian? He mentions meeting Thomas Jefferson. He says that humans are handicapped because we only use a small portion of our brain, while Martians use all of theirs. He says that humans are illogical and emotional, and that while Earth is all right for a visit, he wouldn't want to live here. And he says he will leave as soon as he can repair his spaceship. Tim tells him that he can't leave until Tim gets the news story and pictures, because he believes he will win the Pulitzer Prize with this story. But the man assures Tim that he would never be believed if he told people he had found a real-life Martian, and threatens to disappear if Tim brings anyone there to see him.
Suddenly, the man raises his fingers to his temples and tells Tim that "there's a very attractive brunette walking up your steps right now" and that "she is thinking very warm thoughts about you". Tim realizes that the Martian can read minds, and the man confirms this ("unless there is a conscious effort to shut me out.") Tim answers the door and Annabelle enters, carrying a newspaper (The Los Angeles Sun). The headline reads "X-15 SMASHES RECORD - PILOT SIGHTS FLYING SAUCER". The story has Tim's name as the author. As Tim and Annabelle embrace, he hears the man from Mars in his head warning him that he is about to have visitors. Abruptly, two men in suits barge into the house without knocking, frisk Tim, flash their credentials, and tell him the Air Force wants to know where he got his information on the X-15 flight. The men walk into the bedroom and find the Martian still in bed. They ask Tim who he is. Tim at first starts to say that he is a Martian, but quickly corrects himself to say that his name is Martin, and that he is his visiting uncle. As the two men take him away, Tim keeps quiet about the Martian's secret, but gives "Uncle Martin" some cash, in case he needs it, and unselfishly wishes him a pleasant trip home. Martin is impressed by Tim's kindness. Annabelle says she and her aunt will take care of him. Martin reads her mind and recites details about her Aunt Lorelai, pretending that Tim spoke with him about her.
Back at the Air Force Base, Tim stands before the angry Colonel who tells him that he isn't going to be freed until he reveals who gave him the information about the secret X-15 flight. Tim refuses to reveal his sources, and winds up behind bars. Uncle Martin suddenly appears in Tim's jail cell, having snuck in while invisible when the guard opened the cell door. He suggests that Tim tell them that he picked up their control center communications on his car radio, and offers a few made-up details that might convince the authorities to believe it. He disappears again when the guard returns to the cell. The guard is curious about who Tim was talking to, but Tim convinces him that he is a ventriloquist, demonstrating both voices (with the help of the invisible Martin).
The scene cuts back to Tim's house, where Tim gets out of a car driven by the Air Force authorities. The Colonel insists that it's impossible that Tim's car radio could have picked up their control center, but Uncle Martin has rigged Tim's radio so that it starts broadcasting what sounds like a conversation from the control center. They take Tim's radio from his car, threatening to send Tim to prison if they find any unauthorized equipment he has placed inside the radio to make it pick up their secret frequencies. But as the Colonel walks away, a concealed Uncle Martin trips him up (via a levitated garden hose), making him drop Tim's radio. It smashes when it hits the ground. During the confusion, Martin levitates away the special part he put in the radio that allowed him to create the fake control center broadcast. Tim realizes that Martin is behind the trick, and smugly smiles as the Colonel and his men leave.
Back in the house, Martin tells Tim that he didn't let him know in advance about the radio trick, because he wanted him to act naturally, so as not to arouse the Colonel's suspicion. Martin says he will need a number of very scarce items to repair his spaceship. Tim observes that it sounds expensive, and asks him where he will get the money to pay for the parts. Martin says he's been reading about Las Vegas, and suggests that with his "special talents", and Tim rolling the dice, they ought to do all right. Tim is reluctant, but Martin reminds him that with Martin 's mind-reading ability he could be extremely helpful providing inside information to Tim for his job as a newspaper reporter. The episode concludes with the two men agreeing to work together for their mutual benefit.
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of My Favorite Martin (1963) in Australia?
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