The TV Series History
The Beginning
It all started in 1988. Alexander and Ilya Salkind, who produced the first three Superman motion pictures starring Christopher Reeve, decided to venture into the Superman world again. But this time they wanted a different direction. Rather than film, they wanted to try their hands at producing a TV series. So, they went into the field with "Superboy", a half-hour series based on Clark Kent's college years. This was ironic in a way, because just two years earlier, John Byrne had revamped the Superman mythos and erased Superboy from "existence". According to Byrne, Clark didn't become Superman until he reached adulthood. This fact didn't stop the Salkinds though. Superboy went into production at Disney and Universal Studios in Florida. Thirteen episodes were filmed with John Haymes Newton starring as Superboy, Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang, and Jim Calvert as T.J. White, son of Perry White, Clark's future boss.
The First Season
The first thirteen episodes filmed became the first half of the first season. Superboy made its debut in syndication in October of 1988. The first episode was entitled "Countdown to Nowhere" and featured the story of Superboy's first appearance. Lana and a group of students were protesting a new experimental laser weapon when Lana was kidnapped by a group of men who wanted to sabotage a space shuttle launch using the weapon. Clark was forced to appear as Superboy for the first time to save her. In this episode we were introduced to not only Lana and Superboy, but also T.J. White, Clark's roommate at Shuster University in Capitol City, Florida. T.J. was a photographer and he and Clark worked together on the Shuster school newspaper. It just so happened that T.J.'s father was Perry White, editor of the famous Daily Planet newspaper in Metropolis. "Countdown to Nowhere" was later re-edited and aired as a flashback episode, with the story of Superboy's first feat told by Lana.
Among the first thirteen episodes was "Troubled Waters" which introduced Martha and Jonathan Kent to the series. Martha was played perfectly by Salome Jens, and Stuart Whitman gave us a very memorable Jonathan Kent. This episode also introduced the Superboy series' vision of Clark's home town, Smallville. Martha and Jonathan Kent would appear throughout the series in some of the most memorable episodes.
Superboy's initial 13 episodes could be viewed as somewhat crude. The special effects left something to be desired at the time, and some of the stories were rather bland. the main villains of the show included mostly common criminals, crime bosses, and the like. But Stacy Haiduk as Lana, as well as the music by Kevin Kiner, helped make up for that. At this point Kiner's music for the series was leaning toward a rock and roll style with lots of heavy drum and electric guitar sounds, but the music worked quite well. The music throughout the series was synthesized, so it was performed as well as written by Kiner himself. (And to be honest, I never really knew it was synthesized until recently, even though I've been watching the show since '92. It sounded that good.)
After half the season had aired, "Superboy" went through some changes. The opening sequence, which originally featured Superboy flying over a bridge (no idea what bridge), had been redone to feature scenes from several of the season's episodes. The series musical score no longer leaned toward rock and roll, instead it became more like the scores in the Superman films in style. The stories improved somewhat and the overall look of the show changed for the better.
During this second half of the season, some memorable stories were produced. Denny O'Neil, comic book writer, introduced Mr. Mxyzptlk to the show in "Meet Mr. Mxyzptlk". The dreaded kryptonite appeared in "Kryptonite Kills" written by Mike Helfer and Andy Carlin, two editors at DC Comics. Another story by Helfer and Carlin, "Revenge of the Alien", aired after "Kryptonite Kills" and featured an unusual villain. A gas alien that could inhabit the bodies of others and could even kill them from inside. In the episode, the alien inhabited the body of Pa Kent and held Lana hostage on a rooftop in order to make Superboy surrender to him. Superboy allowed the alien to enter his body, but used kryptonite rays on himself to force it to surrender instead. The season finale, "Luthor Unleashed", ended the season by bringing a famous part of the Superman mythos to life. The story depicted Superboy saving Lex from a laboratory fire and in the process blowing chemicals through his hair that caused it to fall out. Luthor's hatred for Superboy hit an all time high in this episode. The story was based on an early comics story in which Superboy performed a similar feat, and Luthor's hair loss then created his immense hatred for Superboy.
The first season of Superboy (26 episodes long) ended with a bang, and left viewers wondering exactly how Luthor would exact his revenge on the boy of steel. We would find out in the next season, but before that some changes had to be made........
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