'Dallas' Star Patrick Duffy Remembers 'Man From Atlantis'

Do you remember that moment on Dallas when Pam Ewing (Victoria Principal) walked into the bathroom to find her husband, Bobby (Patrick Duffy), in the shower, very much alive after he had supposedly been killed? It was a bit of retconning on the producers’ part, making his death nothing but a dream, due to the realization that Dallas absolutely needed Bobby as a counterbalance to his brother, J.R. (Larry Hagman). It’s the same way that Patrick himself never forgets that his career’s success isn’t because of the primetime soap, but, instead, the sci-fi drama he starred in several years earlier, Man From Atlantis.

“If there wasn’t a Man From Atlantis, I wouldn’t have been on Dallas,” Patrick exclusively told Closer Weekly at Nostalgiacon. “For starters, the producer of Dallas, when he was creating the original show, was filming a different one, right next door to me on Man From Atlantis. He requested me to play the part of Bobby; I never auditioned for it. Had he not been there, next door to where I was doing Atlantis, that opportunity may never have presented itself to me. So Atlantis is very important in my career.”

patrick-duffy-dallas — Lorimar/Kobal/Shutterstock

Airing first as four TV movies and then 13 one-hour episodes between 1977 and 1978, Patrick plays an amnesiac given the name Mark Harris who everyone comes to believe is the only survivor of the lost city of Atlantis. Endowed with extraordinary abilities — including the ability to breathe underwater, able to withstand extreme depth pressure and super strength — he eventually comes to work along with the Foundation for Oceanic Research, a government agency doing deep sea studies and dealing with issues that arise that could threaten the world. Also starring is Belinda J. Montgomery as Dr. Elizabeth Merrill, who is also the one that found Mark and nursed him back to health.

Please scroll down for more of our interview with Patrick on Man From Atlantis.

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Strange Visitor

Thematically there are similarities between Man From Atlantis and author Robert A. Heinlein‘s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. In it, the focus is on Valentine Michael Smith, sole survivor of a Mars colony who is brought to Earth in his early childhood after having been raised by Martians. What follows is an exploration of the way that he interacts with humanity and the impact he has on our culture.

Original Creation

“Man From Atlantis wasn’t an adaptation,” Patrick emphasizes, “but, basically, it’s a recurring theme throughout most science fiction. The Man From Atlantis was that and I loved the opportunity to examine things with virginal eyes. In other words, we get so used to saying, ‘This is a plastic cup’ or ‘This is a recording device,’ but if you were from Planet-X, you had no idea what that was. You have to learn everything, and that’s what Man from Atlantis was.”

Early TV Superhero

“It was fun to play a superhero. On top of that, obviously it was before almost all special effects, very little green screen, so everything we had to do was invented at the time,” he adds. “Now I look at all the tentpole major features like X-Men and all these other things and the special effects are phenomenal. Because we didn’t have the technology, if I was going to fly up somewhere, they had to hoist me up with a crane. It was fun.”

Memories of the Show Live On

A unique element of the show was the fact that it arrived at a time before people really recognized the power of comic book-like superheroes on film. “There was the original George Reeves series where he was playing Superman,” he says. “There was, simultaneous to Man from Atlantis on the air, The Six Million Dollar Man. But we were one of the first to not just be a strong detective or policeman, but someone with actual superpowers and tried to make that on a weekly television show basis. It was obviously difficult, because we only lasted two years, but I think we were pioneers in that sense. And there’s a clique of people who will never forget Man from Atlantis. Usually men come up to me and say, ‘I was 8 years old and tried to swim like you in the pool.’ So at an impressionable age, young people saw that show and never forgot it.”

Man from Atlantis is available on DVD from Warner Archive Video.