If you sit down to watch My Favorite Martian Season 3, you’re going to notice something immediately. It’s bright. Really bright. After two seasons of grainy, moody black-and-white photography that made Uncle Martin look like a character from a noir film, the show suddenly exploded into living color. This wasn't just a stylistic choice; it was a survival tactic in 1965. Television was changing fast, and if you weren't in color, you were basically a dinosaur.
Honestly, the transition was jarring.
The third season is often the one that fans argue about the most because it represents the moment the show went from a clever, character-driven sitcom about an alien and his "nephew" to a high-octane, sometimes exhausted farce. Ray Walston and Bill Bixby were still magic together, but you could tell the writers were starting to sweat. How many times can a Martian’s levitation finger fail before it gets old? Apparently, the answer was "just one more season."
The Technicolor Shift of My Favorite Martian Season 3
Switching to color meant the production moved from Desilu studios over to MGM. This sounds like a minor detail, but it changed the entire vibe. The sets became more elaborate. The props looked more like something out of a pulp sci-fi novel. But while the visuals were popping, the scripts started to lean heavily on gimmicks.
We saw more of the "Machine of the Week."
Uncle Martin’s spaceship was still there, but suddenly he had a time machine—the Crap-it-on-the-Moon or whatever pseudo-scientific name they slapped on it. Okay, it was actually the "Time-Machine," but it felt like a late-game addition to keep things fresh. By introducing time travel, the show opened up a massive can of worms that sitcoms in the sixties usually weren't equipped to handle without becoming totally ridiculous.
One week they’re in the Old West, the next they're in the Renaissance.
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It was a far cry from the first season, where the tension mostly came from Tim O'Hara trying to keep Martin from being dissected by the government. In My Favorite Martian Season 3, the stakes felt lower even though the adventures were bigger. It's a classic TV trap. When you run out of ways to make the characters grow, you just send them to the 18th century and hope the costumes distract the audience.
The Dynamics of Walston and Bixby
You can't talk about this season without mentioning the tension on set. It’s no secret now that Ray Walston was, well, difficult. He was a serious stage actor. He had a Pulitzer Prize-winning pedigree from South Pacific. Being stuck in a costume with antennas that popped out of his head was starting to grate on him by the time 1965 rolled around.
He hated the "stupidity" of the scripts.
Bill Bixby, on the other hand, was the ultimate professional. He was the glue. If you watch closely in My Favorite Martian Season 3, Bixby is doing a lot of heavy lifting. He’s the straight man, but he’s also the one grounding the absurdity. When Martin creates a "personality stabilizer" or whatever gadget of the day, Bixby’s reactions make it feel real. Without that chemistry, the third season would have folded in ten episodes.
Interestingly, this was the season where the show's creator, Jack Chertok, really doubled down on the special effects. They were expensive. Using wires to make things float in color is way harder than doing it in black and white because the shadows are much more unforgiving. You can occasionally spot a wire if you’re looking at a high-def remaster today, but for 1965, this was peak technology.
Why the Ratings Tanked
People often ask why the show was canceled after this season. It wasn't because people hated Uncle Martin. It was because the competition was brutal. CBS moved the show to a new time slot, and it found itself going up against heavy hitters. Plus, the "magic sitcom" trend was getting crowded. Bewitched was a juggernaut. I Dream of Jeannie had just debuted.
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Uncle Martin was the OG alien, but he was being squeezed out by witches and genies.
The network also wanted more control. There were disputes over syndication rights and production costs. Color episodes cost a fortune to produce compared to the earlier seasons. When a show becomes more expensive and the ratings dip even slightly, the "cancellation axe" starts swinging. It’s a shame, because My Favorite Martian Season 3 actually had some of the most creative, albeit wacky, premises of the series.
Take the episode "Heir for a Day." It’s quintessential sixties fluff, but it shows the range the actors had to display. They were doing physical comedy, sci-fi world-building, and social satire all in twenty-four minutes.
The Legacy of the Final 32 Episodes
Despite the behind-the-scenes grumbling and the shift toward "gadget-of-the-week" storytelling, these 32 episodes are what most people remember. Why? Because they stayed in syndication forever. The color episodes were much more attractive to local TV stations in the 70s and 80s than the black-and-white ones.
For a whole generation, this is the show.
The vibrant blues of Martin's suit and the orange hues of the O'Hara apartment are burned into the collective memory of Boomers and Gen X-ers. It represented a specific moment in American culture where we were obsessed with the Space Race but still wanted our aliens to be polite, middle-aged men who wore cardigans.
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There was no series finale.
That’s the most frustrating part of My Favorite Martian Season 3. Back then, shows just... stopped. There was no emotional goodbye. Martin never fixed his ship for good. He never went back to Mars. He just stayed in the spare bedroom, and then the credits rolled for the last time. It leaves the whole series feeling like an unfinished thought, which is probably why fans spent decades clamoring for a revival or the (admittedly weird) 1999 movie.
How to Revisit the Series Today
If you’re looking to dive back into this era of television, don't just binge it mindlessly. You’ll get "laugh track fatigue." The best way to appreciate the third season is to look at it as a masterclass in mid-century practical effects.
- Watch for the matte paintings. Some of the "alien" environments or distant cityscapes are hand-painted masterpieces that you just don't see anymore in the age of CGI.
- Pay attention to the guest stars. This season was a revolving door for character actors who would go on to be huge in the 70s. It’s like a "Who’s Who" of Hollywood's golden age bit players.
- Compare the "Martin" logic. One of the fun things about the third season is seeing how the writers tried to expand Martian physiology. He can speed up his molecules, read minds (mostly), and talk to animals. It’s a bit inconsistent, but it’s charming.
You can usually find the third season on specialized streaming services like MeTV, Tubi, or through DVD collections. If you’re a purist, try to find the remastered versions. The color correction on the older prints can be a bit "neon," but the remasters bring back the natural skin tones and the subtle detail in the sets.
The show remains a landmark. It paved the way for every "stranger in a strange land" story that followed. Without Uncle Martin, we probably don't get Mork & Mindy or ALF. It proved that you could take a high-concept sci-fi premise and turn it into a domestic comedy that families actually wanted to watch together.
Even with the wires showing and the plots getting a bit thin, My Favorite Martian Season 3 holds up as a piece of television history that refused to take itself too seriously. It was colorful, loud, and deeply weird. Just like the sixties themselves.
What to Do Next
- Check the Credits: Look for the name Oscar Rudolph; he directed a huge chunk of these episodes and really defined the visual "snap" of the third season.
- Compare the Pilot: Watch the very first episode in black and white right after watching a Season 3 episode. The tonal shift is wild. It feels like two different shows featuring the same people.
- Look for the 1999 Cameo: If you watch the live-action movie, keep an eye out for Ray Walston. He appears as a government agent, a nice nod to the man who spent three years complaining about his antennas but ultimately became an icon because of them.