13 Planet Of The Apes Facts That Will Blow Your Mind

3. There Was A TV Show In The 70s

For several decades before the release of Dawn Of..., the only footnote to Battle was the TV series that supplanted the expired film franchise. Debuting in October 1974, the Planet Of The Apes TV series attracted a whole generation of kids with its menacing theme music (reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith's score for the first film) and its image of a gorilla hunter holding a rifle aloft. But the audience just as quickly fell away again. While its premise was familiar and enticing enough - astronauts Virdon and Burke are time-warped to a future earth 900 years before the first film, where humans are at the bottom of a feudal society and have not yet devolved to the animal state - its individual stories were lacking in imagination. Like the similarly stunted Incredible Hulk, it was another variation on the formats for The Fugitive or Kung Fu, where the characters keep running from town to town without much narrative development. Despite Roddy McDowall reprising his chimp act, the show was cancelled after 13 episodes and is referenced by the Pulp song 'Bad Cover Version', which compares an old girlfriend to pop-culture disappointments 'like Planet Of The Apes on TV'.