The Minstrel: TV's first Cyber-Criminal?

[Model Builder]

Back when I was about six or seven, my friends and I thought that The Minstrel, as portrayed by Van Johnson, was only a so-so villain, at best. But after seeing "The Minstrel's Shakedown" (first shown September 21, 1966,) again a few weeks ago, something occurred to me that I could not have thought of back in the day: The Minstrel was what would now be called a "Hacker" or a "Cyber Criminal." Moreover, The Minstrel's forward-thinking crime even pre-dated the establishment of ARPANET by almost three years! Quite a concept for a mid-1960's television show . . . .

To the best of my knowledge, The Minstrel may even be TV's first depiction of a Cyber-Criminal. I cannot be the first Batman '66 fan to have noticed this. Does anyone else here have any thoughts on this matter?

[Gorshin Romero]

From what I can guess, perhaps the closest thing to what we would call a Cyber-Criminal today may have been portrayed in any of the novels of the James Bond series, but considering that I never read any of the books, I wouldn't know that for certain. Perhaps the Minstrel IS the first Cyber-Criminal to be portrayed in pop culture, but I wouldn't know for sure.

[Bat-Tiger]

If not the first, he was definitely one of the first. I could easily imagine him evolving into a black hat hacker.

[Dr. Shimel]

A B&W episode of The Adventures of Superman entitled, "The Machine That Could Plot Crimes," has a criminal using a computer to find the best ways to avoid capture, timing lights perfectly, etc. Obviously, that computer was beyond primitive, being the early 50's, but that gent might get the "honor" of being the first cyber-criminal on TV.

[Progress Pigment]

I'm not sure if shows like "The Avengers" or "Man From Uncle" might've beaten it, but that said, the Minstrel was likely the most well defined cyber criminal of that time, or certainly in the top five. I've read most of the Bond books & have all the films, and only "View to a Kill" (the movie) had a highly realized cyber crook. BTW, a wonderful episode! One of my favorite from the second season.

[High C]

Interesting observation by the OP. The Minstrel was ahead of his time in a lot of ways. When I first saw it in the 1970s in syndication, I thought the concept of him being both a musician and an electronics genius was weird. But then, a few years later, we saw the explosion of techno-pop. And even in the late 1970s there was the rock group Boston, in which the founder and driving force, Tom Scholz, had a degree in engineering from MIT.

I also liked the episode itself, especially part 1, because Batman really had to do some thinking to try to figure out what the Minstrel was up to. It was two intelligent people matching wits, as opposed to some of the nonsense we would have later on.

[HappyDude]

I think there's more to this story than just early cyber-crime. The Serbian physicist Nikola Tesla once supposedly managed to vibrate the building he was in after he accidentally hit the building's resonant frequency in one of his experiments. He also believed that if he could find the right resonant frequency he could shatter the earth. Interesting, given Robin's comment about preventing "the end of the world". I wonder if the writers knew about Tesla and his work when they put that line in?

[Progress Pigment]

HappyDude, thank you for that! I think you hit upon something there. The series being right at 50 years old, we almost certainly miss some of the references that audiences in 1966 may , or may not, have recognized -- depending on how astute they were. Some of which might go back 40 years or more. Like when Bruce Wayne mentioned getting a raccoon skin coat from a crooner "fallen on hard times" in the Egghead episode. Close to 90-something years from today! I'm pretty sure my 10 year old and the 20-somethings watching would not immediately think of Rudy Vallee.

[Dr. Shimel]

HappyDude, thank you for that! I think you hit upon something there. The series being right at 50 years old, we almost certainly miss some of the references that audiences in 1966 may , or may not, have recognized -- depending on how astute they were. Some of which might go back 40 years or more. Like when Bruce Wayne mentioned getting a raccoon skin coat from a crooner "fallen on hard times" in the Egghead episode. Close to 90-something years from today! I'm pretty sure my 10 year old and the 20-somethings watching would not immediately think of Rudy Vallee.

Another throwaway line in the Egghead episode that future (and probably current) generations wouldn't get comes when criminals are running wild after Egghead takes over the city. A woman is seen complaining about a crime as the camera pans to the weary cop taking down the information--Ben Alexander--who utters the line that's attributed to his most famous role as Frank Smith on the original Dragnet: "Just the facts, ma'am."

[WhatsMyCrime]

Hello all, first post here.

Doesn't exactly count as cyber-crime per se, but I was always impressed with his hacking of the local TV signal (Joker did the same at one point, hence my screen name).

These criminal acts anticipated the "Captain Midnight" and "Max Headroom" broadcast signal piracies of the 1980s by 20 years or more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Mi ... _intrusion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqgeM6rWSkw

[Gorshin Romero]

Welcome aboard WhatsMyCrime.

[Commodore Schmidlapp]

There are a few technological Bat-devices that inadvertently predicted what would come in the future.

Seeing Batman with a portable Batphone likely seemed far-fetched in the 60's, yet today we all have them.

Also how about the Batcomputer vs. Google?

It must've seemed like a fantasy back in the 60's to submit a question to a machine that would come back with an answer. Yet today, that's exactly what Google does. And with the microphone feature on its mobile app, you can literally ask a question without even typing.

Google of course searches all sorts of information and yields its results. I don't know that it was ever revealed how the Batcomputer obtained its data.