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''The Wild Wild West'' is an American television series that ran on CBS for four seasons (104 episodes) from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969. Two television movies were made with the original cast in 1979 and 1980, and the series was adapted for a motion picture in 1999. Developed at a time when the television western was losing ground to the spy genre, this show was conceived by its creator, Michael Garrison, as "James Bond on horseback." Set during the administration of President Ulysses Grant (1869–77), the series followed Secret Service agents James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) as they solved crimes, protected the President, and foiled the plans of megalomaniacal villains to take over all or part of the United States. The show also featured a number of fantasy elements, such as the technologically advanced devices used by the agents and their adversaries. The combination of the Victorian era time-frame and the use of Verne-esque technology has inspired some to give the show credit as being one of the more "visible" origins of the steampunk subculture. These elements were accentuated even more in the 1999 movie adaptation. Despite high ratings, the series was cancelled near the end of its fourth season as a concession to Congress over television violence. ==Concept summary== ''The Wild Wild West'' told the story of two Secret Service agents: the fearless and handsome James T. West (played by Robert Conrad), and Artemus Gordon (played by Ross Martin), a brilliant gadgeteer and master of disguise. Their unending mission was to protect President Ulysses S. Grant and the United States from all manner of dangerous threats. The agents traveled in luxury aboard their own train, the ''Wanderer'', equipped with everything from a stable car to a laboratory. James West had served as an intelligence and cavalry officer in the US Civil War; his "cover," at least in the pilot episode, is that he is "a dandy, a high-roller from the East." Thereafter, however, there is no pretense, and his reputation as the foremost Secret Service agent often precedes him. According to the TV movies, West retires from the Service by 1880 and lives on a ranch in Mexico. Gordon, who was a captain in the Civil War, had also been in show business. When he retires in 1880 he returns to performing as the head of a Shakespeare traveling players troupe. The show incorporated classic Western elements with an espionage thriller, science fiction/alternate history ideas (in a similar vein to what would later be called steampunk), in one case horror ("The Night of the Man Eating House") and plenty of humor. In the tradition of James Bond, there were always beautiful women, clever gadgets, and delusional arch-enemies with half-insane plots to take over the country or the world. The title of each episode begins with "The Night" (except for the first-season episode "Night of the Casual Killer", which omitted the definite article "The"). This followed other idiosyncratic naming conventions established by shows like ''Rawhide'', where each episode title began with "Incident at" or "Incident of," and ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'', where episodes were titled "The (Blank) Affair." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Wild Wild West」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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