You're right--this kind of story would not be considered for production for today's TV environment.epaddon wrote: ↑Sun Apr 21, 2019 5:01 pm The pilot episode "An Echo of Bugles" has a plot that would NEVER get by in today's world of uber-PC. Colton, the drifting ex-Union vet objects when a young punk harasses an old ex-Confederate soldier in a bar by desecrating the *Confederate* battle flag he still carries. Colton sees the Confederate soldier as someone who shared the same horrifying experience in war he did and that his battle flag is meant to honor his comrades, not the cause that he (Colton) fought against.
I think Dozier did not have the creative vision to be as prolific as a Quinn Martin; we know about the rise and quick fall of Batman, and Dozier's unrealized developments for The Green Hornet probably leading to its early demise, but the rest of his ideas were not high concept at all.6-I hope that if Oscar gets a chance to study the archives further, he might check out the material related to Dozier's big mega-flop "The Tammy Grimes Show" which I think is the key to why by the end of the 66-67 season, Dozier was really looking to get out of the whole business of producing with just one more season of "Batman" needed to guarantee a good syndication sale. In the fall of 66, Dozier was conceivably in position to become as big a TV producer as say, Quinn Martin with three shows on the air, and what followed was "Batman" in decline, "Green Hornet" a middling flop and "Tammy Grimes" a show with a lot of hype (there are even publicity pix of Tammy and Adam together with Adam in costume and Tammy wrapped inside his cape with him!) that became one of the first network shows ever to flop so bad it was yanked off after just several weeks.
In fact, they were out of step with the changing interests of TV audiences as the 1960s came to a close. Dick Tracy was just Batman barely warmed over, Wonder Woman would have been a farce that angered more than entertained audiences ("stupid" woman who--among other things, thinks she's beautiful when she's not--and that's one of the series jokes), and the Tammy Grimes Show was doomed to fail thanks to being yet another cookie-cutter sitcom starring someone not exactly shooting up fireworks of personality, and was even less liberated than the milquetoast Ann Marie from That Girl.
Producers such as Quinn Martin and even Irwin Allen (who had three of his four 60's sci-fi series all running during the 1966-67 season) tapped into new ideas, or took existing concepts in fairly new directions. That was not Dozier. He either bought into ideas that were long past their shelf life, or believed certain performers were irresistible to the public (again, Grimes), despite having no evidence to support that belief.
Describing Dozier as a one-trick pony might be harsh, or possibly inaccurate (since he did produce more than one series), but he has only one series that was "big" or in his catalog, and that's yet another reason he would never rise to the level of Martin, Allen or a Jack Webb.
Yes, Dozier's response was weak--or he was being inexplicably dismissive of Robin as a character. If a villain removes Robin's mask, it exposes the entire Bat-operation. They are a team, not "Batman and Fill-in the Blank". No villain worth his reputation would pass on the opportunity of a lifetime to expose and/or end the threat of Batman and Robin forever.8-Looking at the documents, I have to admit that Bennett asked a very good question in his memo on the pilot about why Riddler never thinks of taking Robin's mask off, and this of course was something that I thought stuck out like a sore thumb even *more* in "That Darn Catwoman" in S2 when Catwoman never once asks Robin to take his mask off. Dozier's response on this point frankly is weak where he says that Riddler couldn't care less who Robin is he would rather unmask Batman. But wouldn't unmasking Robin logically provide him with a pretty darn good idea who Batman is????? Dozier's response that "this is a dangerous can of peas to open" is pretty much a cop-out.
Then again, we don't know if Riddler would even recognize Dick Grayson, since the series had been very inconsistent with just how well known Wayne and Grayson were (on sight) to the general public. Some villains recognized them instantly (Egghead, the second Mr. Freeze) while others had no clue who they were. In any case, Dozier was flat out wrong about Riddler not unmasking Robin; in addition to just being common sense, the risk of a masked man's identity revealed to his enemies is one of the long-lived (and interesting) plot devices from superhero fiction.