Gemini Man

Gemini Man was a fun Harve Bennett tv series about a guy that could go invisible for 15 seconds after clicking a watch. Half of it's twelve episode was never aired. The best episode was 'Minotaur' that had a huge killer robot patrolling a vast complex. It was the creation of a mad scientist upset about something. Much like a few of the episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man. It was last shown on the Sci-Fi Channel (USA).

In a sense, this could be seen as a tongue-in-cheek version of the Invisible Man. The previous version of the series was serious because of David McCallum. But then we have Ben Murphy in this new version, his character, a surfer dude. That characterization should be taken into account in addition to the wrist watch. Because in most of the episodes, the charm of the series comes from his lighthearted and even mischievious banter with his boss, Driscoll. Adding to the fun is the lady scientist Abigail who comes off as a character who's much more tolerant of Gemini's behavior.

This reworking of the failed 1975 Invisible Man series starred Ben Murphy as government agent Sam Casey. Following exposure to radiation Casey learns that he can become invisible. Unfortunately, he can only remain unseen for fifteen minutes each day or else he'll lapse into permanent invisibility and die! Nevertheless, the disappearing act proves quite handy for Casey as he undertakes assignments for yet another secret government organization. Gemini man avoided the biggest problem David McCallum had in his invisible man series by having the hero simply flip a switch on his watch to become invisible. The trouble with The Invisible Man was that, while it was inventive and attempted to be more realistic, filming scenes with the rubber mask took a lot of effort, and still remained highly unconvincing. Despite the watch gimmick, Gemini Man fared terribly in the ratings, only half of its episodes where aired before the show was canceled. Still the idea of allowing the hero to have the ability to switch between visibility and invisibility was not lost. The concept would reappear nearly 25 years later when The Invisible Man returned to television.

Despite being on MST3K, Gemini Man has a few good things going for it. Namely, a fairly good acting talents (one has to wonder if it's the writing that's awkward or the actors, I choose the latter) and a quite original idea: invisibility for only a short time before all bets are off and SOMETHING will happen. One gets the feeling that this SOMETHING would have made an interesting cliffhanging season finale if this series had continued.

But nevertheless, the show was more a fistfight than an academic bout. Despite it's background, don't mistake the show for cerebral ground: the producers chose Ben Murphy for fighting alone. The rest of the cast, through competant, really don't stand out.

Bottom Line: Watch "Gemini Man" if you want something along the lines of "Knight Rider," but without the bad flashbacks to a certain actor's "Baywatch" career. It's just harmless fun, either if you're getting into it or just laughing and remembering "Riding With Death."

Not that bad of a series.