Magnum Mania!

A fourth unfilmed MPI episode has been found (following "Forbidden Island", "Gypsy's Curse" and "Cheapshot")! It's called "Something Borrowed, Something Blue", written by Gabe Essoe. It's a pretty good story involving an extremely rare stamp that has gone missing. The script has lots of TM narration and Tanaka shows up quite a bit. Great twist ending, too. You can download the script here (69 pages). Much thanks to the person (who wishes to remain anonymous) who sent it to me.

Noteworthy events from the story:

1) Magnum gets beat up by a Chinese enforcer, with a spinning back kick, a combo round house, and several front kicks.

2) A policeman named "Dano" is in the story briefly. Tanaka even says to him at one point, "Book him, Dano". I'm not kidding.

3) The script doesn't have a date, but Luther Gillis and his "P.I. book" are mentioned, so this must have been written no earlier than Season Four (Luther's first appearance). Curiously, Magnum says he was 11 when his dad died. The author must not have seen the Season Four opener, "Home From the Sea", where Magnum is clearly younger than 11 when his dad died.

4) I havn't done an exhaustive search, but the missing stamp in this story, the "1856 half-cent Blue British Guiana", appears to be fictional. Interestingly, Higgins mentions the 1856 one-penny black on magenta British Guiana stamp (the British Guiana 1c magenta) which is indeed real, and VERY rare!

5) Magnum gets shot in the shoulder..... again.

6) The author, Gabe Essoe, co-wrote a somewhat infamous 1975 movie called The Devil's Rain. This is one of those movies that's so bad it's good, and features an unbelievable cast of Ernest Borgnine (with goat horns), Tom Skerritt, Eddie Albert, William Shatner, Keenan Wynn, and a young John Travolta (in his first film role)! It's a fun movie to watch, if only for the cast (and Borgnine in horns).


Best quote - Magnum asks Higgins what he has done with his story (Magnum starts to write his "How to be a World-Class P.I." book in this story) and Higgins replies, "If you mean that droll one-page manuscript you've been slaving over, I corrected the spelling and left it with the empty potato chip bags."

That's a good line! So very Magnum and Higgins.

Sounds like it would have been a great episode, there would have been lots to like about it. I feel sad that we didn't get the chance to hear Higgins display his knowledge of stamps.

And I just read all about the British Guiana 1c magenta stamp. Who knew the history of a stamp could be so interesting?

To whomever provided this script, Thank You.

Any Magnum episode that wasn't filmed is always a shame!

Excellent find!

thanks for sharing

I downloaded it last night.... wasn't bad but didn't really wow me.

Magnum seems....off in the episode and is more tempramental than usual.

Overall though, I enjoyed the read!

I enjoyed reading it too. This is another one where they didn't let logic get in the way of the story.

I wonder how accurate to an actual script the filmed episodes really ended up being. Considering how Michael had a lot of shooting scripts and, of the ones I saw, all of them had some different color pages so there were revisions as they went through it. So an initially proposed script is more like an outline of the plot and gets revised and "finalized" as they go through shooting?

Interesting to contemplate . . . .

And this was another one, like many of the filmed ones, that really bothered me when Magnum kept getting beaten in fights. He was a SEAL, for crying out loud! Those guys DO know how to fight! I understand he was supposed to be "bumbling" in some ways, but this is one area that he should have been allowed to excel in. Maybe I have too high an opinion of Special Forces guys (SEALs, Green Berets, Delta Force, etc.), but this particular flaw in his character is one I have a hard time with.

golf

golfmobile wrote:

I wonder how accurate to an actual script the filmed episodes really ended up being.

I have a copy of the script from "The Little Girl Who..." and for example, Lily's name in the version I have is "Leah" and the script differs in several places from the actual episode. It's been so long since I've read it I can't give you particulars, but that's what I remember. (Vaguely!) (It sucks to get old! LOL)

Doc Ibold wrote:.... wasn't bad but didn't really wow me.

You gotta admit though, it was a heck of a lot better than "Smaller than Life"!

golfmobile wrote:And this was another one, like many of the filmed ones, that really bothered me when Magnum kept getting beaten in fights. He was a SEAL, for crying out loud! Those guys DO know how to fight! I understand he was supposed to be "bumbling" in some ways, but this is one area that he should have been allowed to excel in. Maybe I have too high an opinion of Special Forces guys (SEALs, Green Berets, Delta Force, etc.), but this particular flaw in his character is one I have a hard time with.

I don't know golf, I think Magnum gets a bad rap regarding this. Sure, he does get beat up from time to time, but, all-in-all, he wins way more fights than he looses (often times taking out 2 or 3 guys at a time). When he does get schooled, it's usually at the hands of an equally impressive street fighter (or some martial arts master, like in this script). I don't have any hard data to back this up. This would be an interesting thing to track if one had the time and energy to do so.

I think I agree James. I don't remember him losing one on one too often. I'm sure there are some episodes that happens in, but I cannot remember those right off the top of my head.

Golf, I too think he should be able to kick someone's ass in about two punches due to the fact he was a SEAL. I guess the script writers wanted a prolonged fight scene for more action? Who knows?

Maybe James already told it but someone can tell me why there are unfilmed episodes ?

I also would like to know if among forum members someone ever had written an episode only for his personal pleasure ?

olivier wrote:Maybe James already told it but someone can tell me why there are unfilmed episodes ?

I've been wondering the same thing. I had always assumed that the writers submitted scripts and were paid and then the producers decided which ones to use. This would sometimes result in an extra script or two, if a choice on what to film wasn't made early enough. I could be way off base....So, if someone does know how this works, please let us know.

James J. Walters wrote:

Doc Ibold wrote:.... wasn't bad but didn't really wow me.

You gotta admit though, it was a heck of a lot better than "Smaller than Life"!


AGREED!

golfmobile wrote:And this was another one, like many of the filmed ones, that really bothered me when Magnum kept getting beaten in fights. He was a SEAL, for crying out loud! Those guys DO know how to fight! I understand he was supposed to be "bumbling" in some ways, but this is one area that he should have been allowed to excel in. Maybe I have too high an opinion of Special Forces guys (SEALs, Green Berets, Delta Force, etc.), but this particular flaw in his character is one I have a hard time with.

I don't know golf, I think Magnum gets a bad rap regarding this. Sure, he does get beat up from time to time, but, all-in-all, he wins way more fights than he looses (often times taking out 2 or 3 guys at a time). When he does get schooled, it's usually at the hands of an equally impressive street fighter (or some martial arts master, like in this script). I don't have any hard data to back this up. This would be an interesting thing to track if one had the time and energy to do so.

Give me about a month and I can have this taken care of....

Great Doc! I'd love to see Magnum's won/loss record.

Olivier wrote:Maybe James already told it but someone can tell me why there are unfilmed episodes ?

Unfortunately, I don't know the story behind these unfilmed scripts. I do know that the number of episodes in each full season varied from 21 to 23 episodes, so there was some flexibility in the numbers produced for each season. It may have been that these scripts were originally slated to be filmed, but where scrapped because of production delays in other episodes.

Doc Ibold wrote:Give me about a month and I can have this taken care of...

That would be awesome, man!

IKnowWhatYoureThinking wrote:Great Doc! I'd love to see Magnum's won/loss record.

I have been working on this myself....

I dont think TM looses many fights, he just gets in alot of altercations.

Its also hard to dertermine who actually wins.... They (TM and opponant) both land punches.

Most times its TM against 2-3 guys, he gets held down and beat up. But he does walk away.