Modern superheroes are all fast-paced action movies, which is great but rarely gives you time to think or breathe. In 1978, they didn’t have much in the way of special effects and so had no choice but to take it steady. The contrast works to its benefit.

The plot is typically daft, but you don’t go into this looking for a good story.

To put it in a nutshell, Merlin (John Mills), using the name Lindmer, is reaching the end of his long life. This gives the Nameless One (Hell’s overlord) an opportunity to break free, and he sends his minion Morgana Le Fey (Jessica Walters), using the name Morgan, to kill him before he can pass his power onto his successor. If she can’t do this, she must kill his successor before Merlin can pass on his power.

That successor is psychiatrist Dr Stephen Strange, a kindly protective person with a clear mind whose parents were killed in an automobile accident when he was young (an accident intended to kill him).

Knowing what is to come, Lindmer reaches out to Dr Strange but needs to ensure that Strange accepts his destiny freely. When one of Strange’s patients is used by Morgan in an attempt to kill Lindmer, Strange is drawn into this mysterious world.

Peter Hooten certainly has the right look for Dr Strange, but doesn’t get the chance to be in costume until the final moments of this TVM (don’t be fooled by the wonderful DVD cover). It looks like it would have been a good series, with John Mills being the “old one” of the format as the title character finds his way and learns of his powers. It’s definitely aimed at a slightly more mature audience than some of the other superhero TV series around the time, which is probably why it was never picked up.

The special effects are not bad for the late 70s, even if the “Nameless One” does come across as a stop-motion sock puppet, and the realisation of his world is evocative of the “sword and sorcery” movies from around the same era.

The only negative thing is that Dr Strange doesn’t really get to do much in the way of “Dr Strange” type things, because the whole story is handed over to the origin tale. In other pilots of the era, the title character invariably got his/her powers in the first half of the adventure which allowed the second half to establish what they could do. With the lack of further episodes, we miss out on a lot.

One interesting point of note is when we see Dr Strange pick up a “Hulk” comic (probably the best “crossover” they could do in those days).