The story begins in 1977. At that time, American television was looking for new forms of fantasy and science fiction. Star Trek had already become a benchmark, The Six Million Dollar Man and Super Jaimie had popularised heroes with extraordinary abilities, whilst the success of Jaws had put the ocean back at the centre of the popular imagination. Producer Herbert F. Solow, who had previously worked on Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, developed a simple yet highly effective concept with screenwriter Mayo Simon: to turn the underwater world, in a sense, into the new outer space. Patrick Duffy himself summed up the original ambition as a sort of ‘Star Trek’ set under the sea.
A man is found barely alive on a beach after a violent storm. He is suffering from amnesia, has partially webbed hands and feet, can withstand depths impossible for a human being, and appears to be able to breathe underwater. Taken in by Dr Elizabeth Merrill, played by Belinda Montgomery, he is given the name Mark Harris. Is he really the last survivor of Atlantis? An alien? A new stage in human evolution? The series deliberately maintains the mystery. This ambiguity is, in fact, one of the great strengths of the early episodes.
NBC, however, was hesitant. Instead of commissioning a full season straight away, the channel proceeded in stages. A first TV movie was broadcast on 4 March 1977. Its viewing figures encouraged NBC to commission a second, then two more. It was only following the success of these four feature-length episodes that thirteen weekly episodes were finally put into production. Patrick Duffy explained that this transition had been a stop-start process, as the channel had never seemed entirely sure what it wanted to do with the programme.
And yet, Patrick Duffy has everything it takes to make Mark Harris instantly recognisable. He is young, athletic, almost constantly bare-chested and has those famous artificial green eyes that give the character his inhuman appearance. Filming, however, was far from as idyllic as it seemed. Duffy actually had to shoot long sequences underwater, at a time when digital effects obviously did not exist. The enormous contact lenses used to alter his gaze were particularly uncomfortable, and he had to learn to move underwater without producing the bubbles that would have given away the fact that he was holding his breath. The actor also recounted that some of the scenes were shot in extremely cold water.
His swimming style even became a trademark. Mark Harris did not use the front crawl or the breaststroke: he moved by undulating vertically like a dolphin. A spectacular style on screen, but far less efficient in reality. Duffy would later joke about his slowness and the rather physically demanding nature of the shoot. But the image works. Even today, you only need to see a few seconds of Patrick Duffy gliding underwater, arms pressed against his sides, to immediately recognise *The Man from Atlantis*.
The problem arose when the TV films became a weekly series. The first four stories had genuine science-fiction ambition: strangeness, questions about Mark’s origins, creatures, unknown civilisations, the marine environment and mystery. For Patrick Duffy, the change that followed was quite radical. The series gradually shifted towards a more conventional superhero show, with recurring villains, improbable monsters and plots that were at times downright fanciful.
The actor would quip that the programme had gone from science fiction to something more akin to Batman. In his view, some of the audience drawn in by the early TV films no longer really found what they had loved.
There are, however, still some episodes that are delightful in their very 1970s-style madness. Mark Harris faces giant creatures, encounters inexplicable phenomena and regularly comes up against the Machiavellian Mr Schubert, played with relish by Victor Buono. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar even makes an appearance in one episode. The special effects, which seem rudimentary by today’s standards, paradoxically add to the show’s overall charm: scale models, laboratory sets, suits, homemade monsters and genuine underwater sequences give the series a tangible quality that modern digital productions have sometimes lost.
But NBC gave the programme virtually no chance to find its feet. The series began in the autumn of 1977 in a tough time slot, particularly up against *Hawaii Five-O*, and then quickly changed its broadcast day. After several episodes, it even disappeared from the air for months before the final episodes, which had already been produced, were finally broadcast in the spring of 1978. Viewing figures were dwindling, and the cost of a series relying so heavily on underwater filming obviously didn’t help. Only thirteen episodes were produced following the four TV films. The final one was broadcast in the United States on 6 June 1978.
It is an irony of the story that the failure of *The Man from Atlantis* almost immediately opened the door that would change Patrick Duffy’s life. Whilst the final adventures of Mark Harris had not even all been broadcast yet, CBS launched *Dallas*. The first episode was broadcast on 2 April 1978, with Duffy taking on the role of Bobby Ewing. Within a few months, the fish-man from a struggling science-fiction series had transformed into one of the most famous faces on global television.
In France, however, Mark Harris was to enjoy a surprising second lease of life. The programme arrived on TF1 on 29 January 1979, initially under the title *L’Homme qui venait de l’Atlantide*. It was subsequently rebroadcast, notably on La Cinq, and became a cherished childhood memory for many French viewers. Patrick Duffy was dubbed into French by Pierre Arditi, a detail that became almost as delightful as the series itself. Decades later, Duffy would still speak with particular fondness of the French reception given to his first major role.
It is perhaps precisely because it ended too soon that *The Man from Atlantis* retains such an aura today. It never had time to wear itself out over ten seasons, nor to truly find its identity. It remains suspended somewhere between ambitious science fiction, an aquatic B-movie, an ecological adventure and a television superhero series.
With just four TV films and thirteen episodes, it ultimately achieved something that much longer series never manage: an instantly recognisable image and a character etched into the collective memory. Patrick Duffy quickly moved on from Atlantis to the Southfork ranch. But before Bobby Ewing, there was Mark Harris, with his green eyes, webbed hands and that improbable dolphin-like swim.
And nearly half a century later, the Man from Atlantis still continues to resurface.
