The Delphi Bureau

Note: all you guys who think G^3 had a photographic memory, you're not getting it: he could understand and master a topic just by reading about it. If he read about flying, he could fly an aircraft by the seat of his pants, if he read about soccer he could juggle a soccer ball (or whatever those kickball players call it when you keep tapping a ball into the air). It's the same plot device as when Chuck had programs uploaded, then he could master new Kung Fu moves.

The Delphi Bureau was THE oracle for the Prez. If he needed an answer, he called Sybol, and she called G^3, who was the antithesis of the 70's action hero. Whereas other detectives would punch and shoot, G^3 used his brain, and the episodes flowed a bit smarter than anything else on the air at the time.

I was so enamored the first time I saw this movie that when the rerun came I wrote down the recap. That was forty years ago. Here goes, to the best of my memory:

From Washington came a young man, to uncover some worms in a can. They con him, they frame him, for murder they blame him. In turn he eludes them, pursues, then eschews them, till he holds all the keys to their plan. The End, more or less, Delphian.

Saw one episode, and for a spy series, it's quite uninspiring. The photographic mind could have been a good concept, but the hero is drab and irritating (the particular episode I saw involve him being escorted by Chinese martial arts expert; the sexual tension between could have been developed. Instead, the whole thing turned into a bad standup/straight woman routine). Yes, there was a fight scene, a chase scene and shooting scenes. still, the hour wasn't worth it.

Wow! The commenter who called this show "dull" based on viewing a single episode was way off base.

This was one of the first intelligent series! It had a highbrow star, Laurence Luckenbill, who was *supposed to be* not your typical action hero. He was a genius with a photographic memory, but he had little experience in the ways of the world, the ways of spies, and certainly the nefarious ways of Bad Guys.

Not only was the concept intelligent, the execution was all that and funny, too. I remember clearly the hero getting into as much trouble as any action hero ever can, being chased around a field of crops by a guy in a harvester whose blades threatened to chew him up. He kept dodging around until finally he ended up hanging from the undercarriage, bumping along while the driver tried to figure out where he'd gone. Suddenly his perfect memory kicks in as he examines the machine from below. Technical diagrams go through his head and he sees a hydraulic line within easy reach. Aha! He can disable the threat! So he gets out his pocket knife and cuts through the rubber hose. But when he does the black liquid squirts out and gets him right in the face! Sure, he was brilliant, but he couldn't think things through with any kind of common sense.

They had a lot of fun with the concept, and Luckenbill was just the right man to star in the role. The rest of the cast and the guest stars each week, as you can see here on IMDb, reads like a who's who of the top actors of the time.

This was a first rate, light hearted TV show, and I think it helped pave the way from Dragnet and Gunsmoke to the modern era of much better programming.