Legend

Like everyone else who's posted here, I reveled in "Legend." It was one of the few TV shows on any network that I made an effort to see every week. I've also been kicking myself for ten years that I didn't record it when it aired! John de Lancie & Richard Dean Anderson had wonderful chemistry, & it was obvious how much fun RDA had, finally getting to flex his comedic muscles after seven years as straight-arrow MacGyver.

The bright side, if any, to "Legend"s cancellation is that it freed Richard Dean Anderson up to work on "Stargate SG-1" the following year. How drab would television be had he not gone down _that_ path? The first time de Lancie showed up on "Stargate SG-1," I giggled & thought "It's Bartok!"

God, I loved this series. Luckily, I taped them. Bartok was indeed a Tesla clone. What a wonderful, imaginative, wholesome show this was. I knew it was doomed because it was so good and so weird. The main character seemed to be base upon Ned Buntline, a 19th century writer who wrote stories and dime novel popularizations about Western heroes such as Wild Bill Cody. His own life was as colorful as the characters about whom he wrote. Richard Dean Anderson's next venture, Stargate SG-1, is one of the very best Sci-Fi shows ever, and is one of my very favorite all-time TV shows. Of course, it is a continuation of the "Stargate" movie starring Kurt Russel. What a great show. Intelligent, exciting and funny. Just love it.

And only one of the ones on UPN, besides Voyager, that I used to watch...USED to watch. I was heart-broken when UPN took it off. Seems like pretty much all of their shows fail. In my opinion, they never gave it a chance. I was in the process of writing a Legend novel when the show was trashed.

The show's plot was original and out of this world. I miss it.

As webmaster of The Unofficial Nicodemus Legend Page (please use a search engine if you want to find it, as IMDB requests that URLs not be included), I've been in a position to learn much about "Legend" in the five years since its untimely demise. This was a show almost universally loved, yet killed when a station not yet available in most of the country couldn't get ratings. Richard Dean Anderson and John DeLancie both cite "Legend" as among their favorite projects of all time. It is my hope that Paramount (or whoever currently holds the rights to this program) will eventually release the episodes to videotape. Or better yet, maybe some company could get the rights to a new series. Given a chance to GET the audience (which UPN never gave it) this is a show that could be very successful.

If there ever was a show that deserved a fair chance to find its audience, or for its audience to find it, it was Legend. It had everything going for it. Everything except network executives with the discernment to recognize what they had. Anderson and de Lancy were the perfect actors for the roles of Pratt/Legend and Bartok, and the chemistry between them was pure magic. I haven't enjoyed a show with such an outrageous premise and sly humor since The Wild Wild West.

I place Legend in the small and sad category of TV shows that truly died before their time.