I just had a chance to go through this because it isn't often one gets to see such a short-lived series from this era (only three episodes aired and just five produced).
All I can ask is, what were they thinking? I have noted before how many other sci-fi themed shows of the 70s had very shaky premises to sustain and why it wasn't surprising they failed to last past 13 episodes or so, and this one is no exception. When you need a non-stop sixty second narration in the opening credits to explain the premise, you're already asking for trouble. And when you have every episode against a scheme of the same villain week after week, you're also creating a premise in which your threat villain is going to look like an idiot very quickly and not like much of a menace.
Given how Warners has a lot of shows held up due to music clearance issues it's in fact interesting they were able to get this one cleared since one of the five episodes had singer Ronee Blakley as a guest complete with extensive musical performances in songs she wrote specifically. They clearly had to make some kind of deal with her publishing company, and IMO it would have been time better spent to get one of the episodes still not cleared for a more vintage series taken care of instead.
This was interesting only as a curio to me. Like "Logan's Run", "Planet Of The Apes", "Fantastic Journey" and "Future Cop" the show never stood a chance of lasting.
How about a TV series? HBO is set to premiere a series sometime this year. Anthony Hopkins stars as the creative director of Westworld and Ed Harris is the "man in black".
I was considering buying this but having had a quick look at the first episode included on the Westworld Bluray I can't buy it because the picture quality is so poor . Its a regular naff late 70's broadcast master and its awful.
Had new modern standard versions from a decent film source been created it might have been worth it but the quality just helps to make a naff show all the worse
Actually the picture quality of the episodes on the Warner Archive release is pretty good. Warners doesn't release a series unless the elements get some remastering so I think for the Westworld Blu-Ray they used an old transfer as opposed to what they used for this.
I avoided the episode since I'd rather just buy the whole series and start from there. I have enough I'm wanting badly without holding the carrot in front of myself and being broke.
I watched both films blurays last week while vacationing in couch potato land. West looked WAY better than Future. Better film by far.
As a kid I had a nightmare after seeing WW. I was eating breakfast cereal and then noticed I was eating it out of the robot faceplace. The scenes with the gunslinger's face steaming and where he reappears on the staircase in the jail left huge impressions on me. It doesn't get much better than that.