... it is much bigger and grander in my memory than it actually is. I guess its power, at least in my case, is in its nostagia, so YMMV.
Peter Barton stars as Matthew Star, a normal-looking high-school age teen who is secretly a fugitive prince from a distant planet. Lou Gossett Jr co-stars as Walt, also an alien, who has acted as Matthew's guardian on Earth, where the boy has lived most of his life. Being part of the alien royal family, Matthew has various super powers, such as telekinesis and limited telepathy. Matthew just wants to live the life of a normal Earth teen, spending time with his high school sweetheart Pam (series regular Amy Steel), while Walt goes undercover as a science teacher at the school Matthew attends. Matthew and Walt have to deal with assorted troubles from the mundane (drag-racing teens, trouble on the football team) to the extraordinary (alien bounty hunters, inquisitive scientists).
At the half-season mark, the series underwent a soft reboot, with the high school setting eventually dropped, and Amy Steel being dropped from the cast. Matthew and Walt are now working for the government, in the person of skeptical contact James Karen. They are assigned missions searching for valuable technology, stopping terrorists, or fighting other sundry crimes. Matthew also exhibits a bunch of new powers, such as being able to project an astral body version of himself that can walk through walls; shoot laser blasts from his hands; and even transforming items with a wave of his hand.
The series has a reputation as one of the worst science fiction shows in television history. I was prepared for worse than it is, but it's still not good. The stories range from silly to stupid, and there's a lot of early-80's network cheese on display (plenty of laughing freeze-frames to close out episodes). Barton and Steel (who had both starred in different Friday the 13th movies) are blandly pretty, while accomplished pro Gossett is definitely slumming (he was appearing in this when he won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman). The producers included Harve Bennett who had worked on Star Trek (Leonard Nimoy directs an episode, and Walter Koenig wrote one), and Bruce Lansbury, brother of Angela Lansbury. Bruce's daughter/Angela's niece Felicia Lansbury appears in one of the last episodes.
