Atlantis

When I was sixteen, my favorite TV show was "The Man from Atlantis" starring Patrick Duffy in one of his first on-camera acting performances.  The main character was 'Mark Harris' an amnesiac, amphibious human-fish who washed up the shore on night and decided to stay landlubbed for awhile.  A near clone to Marvel comic's 'Aquaman,' each week Mark Harris would swim like a dolphin, talk to sea lions and go on dangerous government missions when not helping with marine biology research back at his home base, the "Foundation for Oceanic Research.' Mark and his crew would go out on a submersible craft called "The Cetacean," named from the biological Order Cetacea, which referred to air-breathing marine mammals, specifically, species of dolphins and whales.  Ironically, the superhero protagonist had stolen the submersible from the series' prime antagonist, Mr. Shubert, during the pilot episode and for ambiguous legal reasons, was able to keep it for his own use. The show was cancelled after 4 hit made-for-TV movies aired followed by a campy, poorly written, short 14 episode season.  Patrick Duffy went on to star in the prime time soap opera "Dallas."  His character became famous when, after the show's writers killed 'Bobby Ewing' (allowing for Duffy to explore other career options which never quite panned out), a year later they resurrected him, creating a new storyline that included the entire previous seasons' worth of shows as merely a dream in his wife, 'Pamela Ewing's' sleepy head.  Both "The Man from Atlantis" and "Dallas" storylines dealt with the idea of parallel dimensions. I wrote short fan-fiction/crossover fiction for the series "The Man from Atlantis," trying to improve on tongue-in-cheek comic-book styled storylines and, at a World Science Fiction Convention, met another fan of the show who did the same.  For several years, we exchanged stories of Mark Harris through the mail and through fanzines, keeping the character alive, until we had a falling out.  I killed Mark Harris, not unlike the [spoiler alert] the missing son in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?"  My friend went on to become a NASA engineer; I went on to study marine biology, dolphins and creative writing. The aquaman is about to be resurrected again as a new re-tooled Aquaman series completes production in Australia.  Sometimes a good man is hard to keep down or drown.