20170216

MY FAVORITE MARTIAN

Charles Maxwell guest starred in the episode 'An Old Old Friend of the Family' on the TV series, 'My Favorite Martian' first shown in March 1964. As Jakobar, the first president of the newly independent (but make-believe) country of Kobima, his excellency arrived in the U.S. to sign contracts with an American company to build 3 ultra modern oil refineries after oil was discovered in Kobima. The income from the oil would ensure Kobima's future as a model of East Asia democracy. 

As Tim O'Hara, Bill Bixby told the 'Newark Evening News' at the end of the 1963-64 season, "I'm a different kind of newsman every week. One week I'm a police reporter, the next the garden editor. I don't think it has been definitely decided … Next season (1964-65) however we hope to get out of the house more often and maybe we can build some episodes around the newspaper office. That might justify the research I did on reporting before the series started. I spent hours at the 'Los Angeles Times' and the 'Detroit News' brushing up on journalism, but I haven’t used any of it, so far." 

Ray Walston played the 450-year-old Martian who had visited the republic of Kobima 150 years earlier (around 1814) "when it was just a colony and just started its first fight for independence." Uncle Martin proceeded to tell Tim O'Hara, "Did you know that Kobima was named after Jakobar's grandfather. He was the first leader of the rebellion - the George Washington of his people and a very wise and great man." 

Uncle Martin knew this because "we were buddies. I am an old, old friend of the family. Jakobar's great grandfather called me Cokobar - miracle man. Instead of reading tea leaves to tell a fortune, in that part of Asia they drop 4 sticks on the ground - the sign of Cokobar. Whenever I drop the divining sticks I make them form that pattern. They still talk a lot about me there. I’m sort of a legend." 

After listening to Uncle Martin's story, Jakobar remarked, "If the story has been passed down in your family for over 150 years would they not have been changed a little? But they weren’t." What the Martian told Jakobar was "too accurate". In 1885, L.J. Simonin of 'The Brooklyn Daily Eagle' examined the spoken and written words, described as the 4 distinct arts.

"In the process of time and with further progress of civilization, articulate language became insufficient, as it exercised its power in narrow limits of time and place, and, therefore, written language was invented. With speech alone, nations, provinces and towns would have remained isolated; later generations would have succeeded the earlier generations without deriving benefit from their experience. In a word, mankind would have remained in a state of comparative ignorance. 

"The conventional signs of our ideas are then of two sorts – spoken and written words. Spoken words are composed of two elements – vocal sounds and vocal articulations. The combination of the two forms the articulate sound. Written words are likewise composed of two elements corresponding to those of the spoken words; they are the vowels and consonants, which represent respectively the sounds and the articulations. 

"In the study of living languages four different arts are to be attained: 1. To understand the spoken language; 2. To speak; 3. To understand the written language; 4. To write. The first two arts constitute the spoken language; the other two the written language. The perfect knowledge of a language comprehends four distinct arts, by means of which we receive and communicate our ideas: 

1. Reading (understanding written language); 

2. Hearing (understanding spoken language); 

3. Speaking (communicating our ideas orally); 

4. Writing (communicating our ideas by ways of written words, the signs of our ideas). 

"By reading as well as by hearing we are always learning something, and more particularly the language. By speaking we are learning nothing, not even language; the mind is not enriched by a word nor an idea. The habit of following as we read and listen the logical connection of ideas which characterize serious subjects trains the mind to all methods of reasoning and to all the styles of argumentation. There are 4 modes of thinking in a language corresponding to the 4 methods of using it, via reading, hearing, speaking and writing, associating the ideas directly with the words."

Bill Bixby told Jack Major in 1969, "To me, television is where it's at. This is the medium. And don't give me all that stuff about the good old days of 'Playhouse 90.' For every good show 'Playhouse 90' presented, it had nine dogs." On 'My Favorite Martian', Uncle Martin told Jakobar, "I wanted you for that interview but now I worry about you and Kobima. Like a lot of other people who were struggling for something, you have prepared yourself to take failure after failure and keep on fighting.

"The one thing you have not prepared yourself for is simply success. I can see the years of hiding in the hills have left a mark on you. You are still doing things in secrecy - long after the necessity for it is gone. It is also necessary to have a newspaper man on your side. As a friend of Kobima, I would like to bring one here to get the story directly from you. You still have a suspicious mind of an outlaw. All those years of being a fugitive, living in the hills, not trusting anybody. Jakobar, it's time for you to stop being a rebel and start being a statesman."

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