Arthur Fonzarelli, time traveler: 22 animated extensions of live-action TV series

Eric Knight debuted pop culture’s most famous collie in The Saturday Evening Post in 1938, expanding to a book in 1940, a series of seven films beginning in 1943, a radio show, and starting in 1954, a TV series which would ultimately run for 19 seasons and more than 500 episodes. In an attempt to further expand the franchise, Filmation produced an hour-long episode of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie in 1972 titled “Lassie And The Spirit Of Thunder Mountain,” which placed Lassie in the care of Ranger Ben Turner (voiced by Ted Knight), his wife Laura, and their children Susan, Jackie, and Ben Jr., all of whom—along with Gene Fox, the wise Native American—helped Ranger Ben keep Thunder Mountain National Park safe. Lassie had her own team, featuring Groucho the owl, Old Toothless the mountain lion, Musty the skunk, Robbie the raccoon, among other members of the menagerie. The episode served as a back-door pilot for a series, Lassie’s Rescue Rangers, which premièred in the fall of 1973, lasted only 14 episodes.

As a rule, studios have next to no concern about maintaining continuity between series and their source material, but so little ties Hanna-Barbera’s Jeannie to the 1960s sitcom I Dream Of Jeannie—to the point that Sidney Sheldon, creator of the original series, doesn’t appear in the credits—that it barely qualifies as an extension. (IMDB claims that Hanna-Barbera had overspent on guest stars for The New Scooby-Doo Movies so it couldn’t afford any of the original cast.) Disposing with everyone from I Dream Of Jeannie except the title character—and tweaking her to have red hair and deliver magic by whipping her ponytail instead of blinking—Jeannie is now in the possession of high school student Corey Anders, voiced by Mark Hamill, and is accompanied by Babu, a “junior genie” whose proficiency at magic leaves something to be desired. Although the series only lasted for 16 episodes, Babu returned to appear in Scooby’s Laff-A-Lympics.

Like Hanna-Barbera with Jeannie, Filmation used no original cast from My Favorite Martian in its animated spin-off, which expanded the premise from alien visitor Uncle Martin (voiced by Jonathan Harris of Lost In Space) to include his actual nephew, Andromeda, a.k.a. Andy, and a pink sheepdog-ish pet named Okey. As one good teenage character deserves another, Tim, Martin’s adopted Earth “nephew,” was also joined by his niece, Katy, with the whole bunch living under the same roof. Although My Favorite Martians reportedly repurposed scripts that had been intended for the aborted fourth season of the live-action series, it ended after 16 episodes.

In an effort to emulate Hanna-Barbera’s success with teaming teenagers with animals, Universal greenlit an animated spin-off of Emergency!, its successful series about on-duty firefighters and paramedics. Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe provided the voices of their prime-time characters, John Gage and Roy DeSoto, who were joined by four teenagers—Carol, Matt, Jason, and Randy—whose life-saving training was apparently enough to entrust them with an ambulance. In addition, the teens had a trio of helper animals: Flash the dog, Bananas the monkey, and Charlemagne the mynah bird. Although fire departments around the country requested prints of the episodes to show children during school presentations, and the series regularly offered first-aid instruction, some parents criticized it for placing its young characters in life-threatening situations. Emergency +4 lasted for 23 episodes before the last new episode aired in November 1974, but aired in reruns through 1976.

Relieved of concerns about bad special effects and cheesy makeup, the animated Star Trek series was able to introduce new, more alien crewmembers like Arex and M’ress, and buck continuity with the source material in favor of storylines with more elaborate visuals. In addition to the original cast reprising their roles (except Walter Koenig, whose Chekov didn’t appear in the animated version), several writers from Star Trek: The Original Series wrote for it, resulting in sequels to fan-favorite episodes (“More Tribbles, More Troubles,” “Mudd’s Passion”) and the return of familiar elements such as the Guardian Of Forever (“Yesteryear”) and the amusement-park planet from “Shore Leave” (“Once Upon a Planet”). Although Trek creator Gene Roddenberry viewed the animated series as non-canon, elements from its stories have found their way into other incarnations of Star Trek, including Kirk’s middle name (Tiberius), Spock’s mother’s last name (Grayson), and—in “The Practical Joker”—a rec room that was, for all practical purposes, a holodeck.

Hanna-Barbera’s decision to do a second animated series about a family in the future began as planned spin-off of its first, The Jetsons, with Elroy as a teenager and Judy working as a reporter. Instead the company opted to send the Partridges nearly 250 years into the future, with decidedly Jetsons-esque technology, a robot dog named Orbit, and friends from other planets. Although Danny Bonaduce, Suzanne Crough, and Brian Forster reprised their roles, Susan Dey only returned for a few episodes, and Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, and Dave Madden did not participate at all. Although the series remains unavailable on DVD, two episodes—“My Son, The Spaceball Star” and “Car Trouble”—can be found as bonus material on The Partridge Family: The Complete First Season.

Gilligan’s Island had enjoyed success with a younger demographic in syndication, and the castaways were still on the island when the show was canceled in 1967, so Filmation teamed with ABC to continue the adventures of Gilligan, the Skipper, the Howells, Ginger, the Professor, and Mary Ann on Saturday mornings. Although Dawn Wells was unavailable to reprise the role of Mary Ann and Tina Louise barely acknowledged that she’d ever even been Ginger, the rest of the cast provided the voices of their characters. Aside from the addition of Snubby the monkey, The New Adventures Of Gilligan tended to be similar to Gilligan’s old adventures (not a surprise, given how far-fetched the series had been to begin with), earning the animated series a 24-episode run. After its conclusion, the cast returned to live-action for three TV movies, before the producers took a cue from Robinson Crusoe On Mars and sent the castaways on a rocket ride to another planet. Although the cast returned, this time with Dawn Wells voicing Mary Ann and Ginger, Gilligan’s Planet only lasted 13 episodes.

Considering his cool-guy demeanor and talent for getting chicks into bed, Arthur Fonzarelli would never work as a cartoon, which helps explain why the creators of The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang shifted focus and put him, Richie Cunningham, and Ralph Malph—still portrayed by Henry Winkler, Ron Howard, and Donny Most—in time-travel scenarios. For 24 episodes, Fonz and the gang, plus the Fonz’s heretofore-unmentioned dog, Mr. Cool, traveled through time with a cute girl from the future named Cupcake. Although trying to figure out where the events of The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang fall in relation to original series seems unnecessary, the show’s Wikipedia page helpfully notes that the opening narration by Wolfman Jack references the characters’ efforts to “‘get back to 1957 Milwaukee,’ placing the temporal abduction sometime in late season two or early season three of the live-action series.”