905-Wild

Emergency! 905-Wild. Jack Webb wanted to show and praise some other public servants. The Animal Rescue squads with a TV Show of their own.

It wasn't to be, but the pilot appears to have been chopped up and turned into an Emergency! episode. I just saw it and many of the edits show up as what reminds me the way torn film splices from old movies looked.

Getting to see a very young Mark Harmon as one of the stars was really cool. The Emergency! regulars look a bit uncomfortable at times. Probably cause they didn't understand what was going on.

Jack Webb, R.A. Cinader and guys like that who wanted TV shows that really showed how some of our First Responders worked and even their domestic issues, was something I have always thought as valuable. Many mocked his Dragnet deliveries, but he really didn't want the actors to be the stars. Just wanted to show people 'The Facts, ma'am, just the facts'

This episode was very awkward. According to the other review, it might have been pieced together from a longer sequence, but it was awfully cheesy in a lot of respects. The premise would be interesting (wildlife personnel), but I don't think it would have been a good regular series (i.e., week-to-week).

{{Wow, they want these reviews to be at least 10 lines long!}}

Anyway, it's always interesting to watch shows featuring wild animals, as the filming is often choppy... the star of the show rarely being seen with the wild animal, it's usually just hands, or from the back, etc., and you know it's not the star. Like I said, I like the idea of a show like this, but I'm glad it didn't get made. Nowadays we can watch "Animal Cops" on Animal Planet.

It's not good form to comment on other reviewers but I make a brief exception here. It's one thing to dislike something for articulable reasons, but quite another to characterize it as 'creepy' (one of the most egregious but casually tossed around deprecations made these days) without stating why. For me it says more about the commentator than the target.

Not to mention that reducing Harmon's role as a 'dog catcher' illustrated the point of the episode! That said, this episode was formulaic, predictable and looked very much like a pilot for a spin-off. Nevertheless I found it fun and informative. Though I love them, Jack Webb's public service shows tend to be clunky in dialog but this one was better than usual. It was corny, but when the injured firefighter at Rampart gave up his place in line, so to speak, for treatment of the goat, I gave him my applause.

If nothing else, watch this one for the by-play between all the ER professionals, Brackett and Dixie in particular. David Huddleston makes a great case for DVMs as well, and humanizes Brackett in the process.

This was easily THE BEST episode on EMERGENCY! And I need like 5 seasons of animal rescues! It was definitely ahead of its time. But I'm gonna need them to find a way to recast this, and shoot it in today's time with that 70's flair! I need tiger rescues, and little dogs saved from terrible humans and sent to good homes!

I loved every second! I can't even begin to emphasize how fun this episode was, maybe it is improbable, as I saw someone else say, and maybe a bit cheesy, but that was the 70's! With quick wit humor, and the writing, and whatnot, but under it all, 905-Wild held so much potential and I am so sad that it didn't get its own show! I would've watched it.

Whether a separate project edited into an episode of "Emergency!", or an episode of "Emergency!" meant from the start as a backdoor pilot, this clearly*was* a trial run for another series idea, in this case about animal services.

Unfortunately, it fails on several levels.

First and foremost is dramatic jeopardy. The tension seems forced throughout this very long, slow hour. It's impossible to imagine sustaining a level of interest through multiple episodes of a series.

Then there's dialogue. There's a certain timbre and cadence to a "Joe Friday" lecture. Jack Webb had it (obviously), because he originated it. So did Robert Fuller. David Huddleston simply did not.

Finally, there are the production values. The level of OBVIOUS stock footage breaks the feeling of continuity, without adding anything.

Taken all together, an interesting concept tgat fails in both execution and viability.