The Master (American TV series)

The Master is an American ninja-themed action-adventure television series which aired on NBC. It was created by Michael Sloan. The series focuses on the adventures of John Peter McAllister (Lee Van Cleef), an aging ninja master, and his young pupil, Max Keller (Timothy Van Patten). Most episodes focus on the mismatched pair driving around in a custom van, helping people in need along the way, similar to the much more successful, contemporary NBC television series, "The A-Team". "The Master" lasted 13 episodes before cancellation by NBC.
Premise.
"The Master" follows the character of John Peter McAllister, an American veteran who stayed in Japan following World War II and became a ninja master. At the beginning of the series, McAllister, now an old man, leaves Japan for the United States in search of a daughter he did not know he had. This flight from his ninja life is seen as dishonorable by his fellow ninjas, including his former student, Okasa (Sho Kosugi), who attempts to assassinate him. Escaping with a minor wound, McAllister finds himself in the small town of Ellerston, where he believes his daughter resides. Along the way, he meets a drifter named Max Keller, who aids the ninja master in a bar fight, but is subsequently thrown through a window, a recurring event for the hot-headed Keller. Max desires to learn to fight like a ninja, but McAllister is reluctant to train him, feeling him to be too emotional. When Max gets involved in a dispute between Mr. Christensen (Clu Gulager), a ruthless developer, and the Trumbulls (Claude Akins, Demi Moore), a father and daughter who run an airport targeted by Christensen, McAllister decides to train him to survive.
The pair goes on to have many adventures traveling the country in search of McAllister's daughter, although the show is cancelled before she is ever found. Keller and McAllister often get sidetracked by oppressed people, and invariably McAllister uses his ninja skills to help save the day, hopefully teaching Max at the same time.
The character of Teri McAllister triggers John Peter McAllister's return to America by writing a letter to him. She is constantly on the move, and has been spotted in New Orleans (about six months to a year before she contacted her father; she was already using his surname at the time) Ellerston, Atlanta, and New York-working briefly but very successfully as a fashion model in the last city. She is secretive about her personal information, never giving out an address or a phone number. In her modelling career, she rebuffed the villainous fashion designer and jewel thief Simon Garrett when he tried to romance her, and was on friendly terms with Gina, an FBI agent posing as an executive at the modelling agency. After Teri moved on, Gina impersonated her in order to trap Garrett, becoming entangled with Max and the Master in the process. Teri does not appear to have been aware of Gina's profession, and Gina's impersonation is aimed at people who don't know Teri well, so her behavior in the role should not be taken as necessarily typical of the other woman's. Teri herself is only seen in photographs: she appears as a strikingly attractive woman, somewhere in her mid or early twenties (despite dialogue in "Fat Tuesday" indicating her to be 28 or 29), with dark blue eyes and heavy black hair. She is the result of a two-month affair between McAllister and a woman called Laura Kennedy, at the end of the Korean War. McAllister asks Gina with sincere curiosity about Teri's mother, in a way that suggests he still has some interest in the mother of his daughter (even though "nobody could live with Laura Kennedy" for long) and believes her to be alive. In addition to her brief modelling career, she was also a pilot of racing planes for a time (circa her visit to New Orleans). Most information about her comes from "Fat Tuesday" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Priceless", both stories about women who know her vaguely and use her name to trap a villain.
A recurring enemy is Okasa, the rogue pupil of McAllister, who continually tracks his old master down and tries to kill him. In the first episode, the two duel and McAllister wins. However, the old master refuses to kill his opponent, preferring to renounce his ninja ways, allowing Okasa to make further attempts in future episodes.
Opening credits.
"John Peter McAllister, the only Occidental American to achieve the martial arts discipline of a ninja. Once part of a secret sect he wanted to leave, but was marked for death by his fellow ninjas. He's searching for a daughter he didn't know he had; pursued by Okasa, once the Master's student, now sworn to kill him. That Master found a new student. That's me, Max Keller. But we knew Okasa would be behind us, in the shadows, ready to strike again."
Cast and characters.
Main.
Note: Sho Kosugi also served as fight double for Van Cleef, fight choreographer, ninja technical advisor, and stunt coordinator for the series.
Cancellation.
While the early-to-mid-1980s may have been a great period for action movies, TV shows, and video games, particularly ninja or general martial arts-themed ones, "The Master" did not attract a large enough audience to remain on the air and was cancelled after 13 episodes.
Ninjutsu mythology in "The Master".
"The Master" is an exemplar of the ninja of popular mythology, rather than a realistic portrayal of contemporary or historical ninjutsu, but the series also has some surprising nods towards the actual practices of ninjutsu. For instance, most of the series (except the first two episodes) have the heroes using shurikens for a variety of nonlethal tasks-throwing them to disarm an enemy, or using them as hand-held knives to cut through window latches-rather than the more stereotypical and lethal uses of popular mythology. There is also some emphasis on the spiritual or character-building aspects of "ninjitsu", as the series calls it, using the older romanization.
The first few episodes hint at a complicated and intrigue-filled ninja mythos, but this was largely dropped as the series progressed, perhaps out of fear that giving McAllister a constant stream of Asian ninja adversaries (as opposed to just Okasa, whose business with the Master is personal) would be seen as racist.
The series makes reference to the ninja as a "sect" with different "Houses", apparently corresponding to dojos. The only two Houses represented in the series use a butterfly and a snake as their respective emblems. The former animal symbolizes the human soul in authentic Japanese tradition, the latter has no consistent significance. "Master", the title McAllister has, seems to mark him out as a high-level teacher and the head of a House, as does the silver medallion he wears. One succeeds to the headship of a House, by killing the current Master and taking his medallion (this is Okasa's objective throughout the series), but there are presumably less violent methods of succession as well. McAllister's tendency to end duels prematurely by feigning injury or luring adversaries to charge through windows or into dangerous electrical equipment always takes his duelling partners by surprise, implying that his methods are not entirely "honorable" by their standards.
Ninjitsu is represented as having had a dark and violent history, which it had turned away from during the time McAllister was involved. It is implied that the ninja are reverting to this darker and older tradition as of the series' time frame, and this may have been a factor in McAllister's departure from the "sect". Lika, a character from "Out of Time Step" is the only "Snake" ninja encountered in the series, and he preaches a kind of anarcho-nihilism that uses this fictional ninja history as a justification for committing crimes.
All the other ninja seen in the series are trained by McAllister or his pupils, and so belong in a sense to his House, which uses the butterfly emblem. The symbolism of this House's emblem (see above) and McAllister's heavy emphasis on the ki (or chi) and the process of character-building seem to indicate that this House specializes in Seishin teki kyoko, the ninja discipline of spiritual refinement.
Home media.
During the 1980s, the show was re-edited into a series of 90-minute movies, each containing two episodes. Re-branded as "The Master Ninja" for home video, the series was released on VHS in the mid-1980s in seven volumes by Trans World Entertainment (TWE). The first of which was re-released in 1999 on VHS by Platinum Disc Corporation with the original series title. The first two episodes ("Max" and "Out Of Time Step") also appeared in the Martial Arts DVD 50-movie pack produced by Mill Creek Entertainment in 2006.
The entire series was released unedited on DVD and Blu-Ray by Kino Lorber under license from CBS Home Entertainment on February 20, 2018.
Movies.
The series was edited into seven movies that were released on video in 1984 and 1985.
"Mystery Science Theater 3000".
The series was featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000", a show which features a man and two robots forced to watch cheesy B movies. The show featured the first two volumes of the re-edited "Master Ninja" tapes on episodes 322 (originally aired January 11, 1992) and 324 (originally aired January 25, 1992). Notable jokes included jabs at Lee Van Cleef's obvious stunt double and Timothy Van Patten's muffled speech pattern. Both episodes were released on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Volume XX on March 8, 2011.
The third installment of the "Master Ninja" series was scheduled to air as episode 624, but it was eventually replaced by "Samson vs. the Vampire Women". 
"This Movie Sucks!".
The pilot episode of "The Master" was also featured on the similarly oriented show "This Movie Sucks!" which is hosted by Ed the Sock, Liana K, and Ron Sparks. Shown as part of the season two opener and shown as a double feature alongside the film "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter", the showing was notable for Sparks' "Roninja" gag, which quickly became a favorite among fans.