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Watch This Space looks at the first woman who played Wonder Woman and the failed pilot she starred in.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: June 16th 2026

#wonderwoman #superheroes #dc #dccomics #dcsupeheroes #tv #television

Category

📺
TV
Transcript
00:04Wonder Woman is a character who's had an interesting history of media adaptations.
00:09While people can point out the two DCEU movies starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins,
00:15or the Linda Carter TV show from the 70s,
00:17that's mostly it, besides appearances and team-up shows like Justice League or DC superhero girls.
00:21Wonder Woman doesn't have a wide breadth of adaptations like her contemporaries, Batman or Superman,
00:25and thus you don't have a lot of obscure oddities that is often explored,
00:29that those two have.
00:30Wonder Woman does have a few...
00:32You've probably seen other people talk about the Wonder Woman pilot from 2011,
00:35made by David E. Kelly and starring Adrian Palicki,
00:38and to a lesser extent the Kathy Lee Crosby TV movie that came out before the Carter series,
00:42which looks nothing like the comic,
00:44because it took an influence from the character's run from 1968 to 1972.
00:48But there is one piece of Wonder Woman media that not a lot of people talk about,
00:51the 1967 mini-pilot or test reel, aka Who's Afraid of Diana Prince.
00:56The pilot, or pitch reel, was produced by William Dozer,
00:59who had a hit with Batman and tried to adapt other DC superheroes for the small screen.
01:03The next well-known was the test reel for a Batgirl show, Sonia Von Craig,
01:07but that didn't go anywhere except with Craig's Batgirl being folded into the Batman show.
01:11The Wonder Woman pilot didn't go anywhere because, well, it's not good.
01:14It takes the approach Dozer used on Batman,
01:16a more campy and comedic take where the comic book elements are cranked up to 11,
01:20but for Wonder Woman it doesn't work.
01:22Turned Wonder Woman into a sitcom like Bewitched,
01:24where she's more timid and clumsy than the action heroine we all know.
01:27It takes away from the fantasy elements as well,
01:29where her mother is not Queen of the Amazons, but a normal woman.
01:32It just doesn't work.
01:33It's not a good pilot, and you can see why it never made it to the series.
01:36But let's take a look at the first woman to play Wonder Woman, Ellie Wood Walker.
01:40Walker was an actress,
01:41and some of her most high-profile works were in 60s classics,
01:45Target in 1968 and Easy Rider in 1969.
01:48She was also made to actor Walker for a time,
01:51best known as Charlie Evans in the Star Trek episode Charlie X.
01:54Walker wasn't the only Wonder Woman in this pilot.
01:56For a brief moment, Linda Harrison was also Wonder Woman.
01:58She's best known for her role in Nova in the original Planet of the Apes films,
02:01but she also had a small role in the Adam West Batman show,
02:04so hey, that's a cool bat connection.
02:05Wonder Woman's mother was played by character actress Maudie Prickett.
02:08She was normally typecast as maids, spinsters and aunts.
02:11She's been in roles such as Harvey or North by Northwest.
02:14She's also had a previous DC acting credit,
02:16appearing in the Adventures of Superman show from the 50s.
02:18The pilot was written by Stan Hart and Larry Siegel,
02:20who would later end up writing the Carol Burnett show,
02:22and Stanley Ralph Ross, who would later become a voice actor,
02:25with works in DC cartoons like the AT Superman cartoon,
02:28Super Friends and Plastic Man.
02:29So that's the Wonder Woman pilot,
02:30an interesting oddity with various connections to other DC media.
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02:53Also contains some of my old blog posts,
02:56if you want to see what else I used to do back in the olden days.
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Comments
eilbe.waf178
Creator
Whose your favourite Wonder Woman?

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