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The Man From UNCLE : The Malthusian Affair (1977 TV movie)

by: Sam Rolfe

Topics: Man from UNCLE,

Collection: comics_inbox; comics; additional_collections

Language: English

The Man From UNCLE : The Malthusian Affair

Unfilmed script written by Sam Rolfe, dated 22nd February 1977.

One of several attempts by U.N.C.L.E.'s creator Sam Rolfe to revive the television series, following its cancellation in 1968. These attempts ultimately succeeded, in 1983, with production of the reunion TV movie, The Fifteen Years Later Affair.

This earlier attempt at a revival, in 1977, revolved around this script, based on the format of the original 1960s tv show, which would also have been a 2 hour TV movie. Alexander Waverly was intended to have his usual role as head of U.N.C.L.E., alongside Mr Solo and Mr Kuryakin. So all three men feature in this script.

The background to this project was that, in the mid-1970s, veteran writer-producers Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts had arrived at MGM. Early in their careers they wrote the classic James Cagney film White Heat (“Top of the world, Ma! Top of the world!”). The studio assigned them to various projects, including The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Goff and Roberts had never worked on U.N.C.L.E. before. Their television work had included creating the series The Rogues, as well as producing seven seasons of the private eye show Mannix. Accordingly, they responded by hiring Sam Rolfe, who had written the original U.N.C.L.E. pilot and had been the show's producer in its first season, generally considered its best.

Rolfe wrote a script for a two-hour TV movie entitled The Malthusian Affair. Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were still the stars of the show, but there was a new U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, new agents, and some science fiction elements, including a high-tech (by the standards of the day) exo-skeleton.

The project never got beyond that point. The script would have been expensive to film, with all the new elements it called for, and that likely was a factor in the project stalling.

On this page you can read the script and judge for yourself.

At this point the show had been off the air for nine years, but the studio still had faith in it, and six years later, in 1983, a reunion TV movie would finally appear. Also in the 1980s its two stars would additionally be re-united on the air in an episode of The A-Team entitled The Say-Uncle Affair.

At that point, more than twenty years after the show's original 1965 debut, it may have occured to someone that the aging Robert Vaughn was no longer capable of portraying a thirty-year-old Napoleon Solo. So no further reunions were attempted. But the ever-youthful David McCallum went on to a long and successful career on the stage and on television.