The Man and the Challenge

With the death of GEORGE NADER, on 4 February 2002, I thought of this most interesting program, which even though it had only a short run, was a tremendous idea with good story lines throughout. Generally unseen for over 40+ years it would be worth viewing again. The opening credits showed many differing images, one of which was a snippit of COLONEL JOHN PAUL STAPP, riding his famed rocket sled, at the point where he was often referred to as "The Fastest Man Alive".

I watched The Man And The Challenge when it was first on in 1960 and was intrigued. I was born destined to become an electrical engineer so this program presented a scientific challenge each episode that challenged my future knowledge of physics. Finally a show that wasn't complete fluff like a talking horse or a guy married to a witch. A thinking adult man who was drastically challenged each week and had to save himself or the situation using scientific principles. I wanted to learn so bad! And I wanted to solve the puzzles before the show revealed the solution. This show has never been publicized since, but I always remembered it all these years, and could stump most everybody else who had never ever heard of it. I'd love to see a show today to see how it matches my recollections.

I've remembered the opening sequence of this show for quite some time, but no one I mentioned it to could ever come up with the show's title. Finally I found it with a properly worded Google search - amazing tools we have today.

I remember a specific episode where there was a crazed driver who was tormenting the motorcycle cops by speeding through their speed traps and - once the motorcycles were in pursuit - releasing numerous logs out of his rigged trunk and the poor policemen would wreck their bikes after running over the logs. Yeah, far-fetched, but it got worse.

The hero of the show then took some sort of mind-altering drug and demonstrated in the lab that - under the drug's influence - he was capable of amazing feats of concentration and dexterity. He grabbed speeding arrows out of the air effortlessly.

So after the lab tests, the cops were given the drug and were then capable of driving their bikes around the logs and catching the demonic motorist.

With some 50 years of retrospection, I'm wondering now if that magic drug might have been LSD? It was a more innocent time...

Anyway, it was a favorite show of my 7-year-old self. That and "The Troubleshooters" and "Rescue 8".

I saw this show only a couple of times in its short run, but have the vivid memory of being excited by the ideas of physical and mental challenges posed by the pre- Mercury space race. I was disappointed to not see it more. I recall the intro to the show portrayed the star being propelled in a high-acceleration rocket sled along rails in the desert. This appealed in the same imagination stimulating and quasi-educational vein as Lloyd Bridges' Sea Hunt, and a few other shows of that period of the late 50's-early 60's.

My father was a career Air Force man. So when Col. John P Stapp's famous rocket sled images appeared in the opening credits of THE MAN AND THE CHALLENGE in 1959 I, as a 14-year-old, was immediately hooked.

...and George Nader was the perfectly-cast star. I loved the stories. It didn't matter they were off-center from science-reality, as we knew it then - in my mind, they were 'possible.' The ideas just fascinated me. That it was possible to live through an elevator fall - or that one could survive a marooning at sea by drinking the base nutrients from a raw fish squeezed through a torqued towel, made absolute sense in my young, formative mind - they still do.

I've often reflected on that series over the years, and now realize what a huge impression it made on my ultimate enrollment in the aerospace industry.

I appreciate what all of you have written in remembrance of George Nader and this wonderful TV series. Yes, the film world often brings heroes - but much more than that; 'ideas of quality' can shape and determine one's entire future. It certainly did mine - may you all have been so blessed.