After more than 12 years and almost 90 shows, Bill Bixby has finally killed off David Banner and his mutant alter-ego, the Incredible Hulk. Or has he?
"The outcome is exactly as the title implies. I'm not a politician," says Bixby, who produced, directed and, as usual, stars in the latest saga of the green superman, The Death of the Incredible Hulk (Sunday at 8 p.m., Ch. 2)."The title is the truth of the story. Does the Hulk die? Yes. Do I die? Yes."
But is it permanent? Here, Bixby waffles a bit. "In this modern world, almost anything is possible. They brought back Frankenstein from a block of ice. But this story is complete in itself."
It also contains a few firsts. This is the first time the Hulk ever makes a controlled appearance, contained for awhile by a magnetic force field. It's also the first time Bixby's character, David Banner, gets to see the mutant creature within him.
But, asks the 56-year-old Bixby, "Why not kill him off? This is a tragedy. It's good theater, good entertainment. If we make more shows, we'll have to be more clever."
So the Hulk ends up dead, but who knows? He might not be gone.
One thing for sure, the source of rage, anger and hurt within Bixby himself - a kind of analog to the Hulk - is certainly not dead. The actor-director's strong emotions emerge in plain view the instant the subject of his dead son comes up.
Bixby only had one child, Christopher Sean, who died of a curable ailment while in the waiting area of a hospital emergency room.
"My son suffocated while the doctor inside was literally removing a splinter from the finger of another doctor," Bixby said of his son's 1978 death. "We had some fun times. But I have the pain buried in me. It was rage for the first two years, for this having happened as casually and carelessly as it did. I was almost vengeance-seeking.
"But I came to realize you have to move on with life. Now I have anger over it, but not hatred. It's really hard to let that feeling go. I also have remorse over the long hours I was working at the time."
The long hours he was putting in during the late `70s were on "The Incredible Hulk" series, which ran four years before moving into the realm of occasional TV movies.
Divorced before his son's death, he has never been willing to remarry.
"Most women want to have children out of marriage, but I've had to ask myself if I would be willing to risk losing another child," he said. "I'm always afraid that if I had another one, I would be so overly protective, it would be bad for the child. Maybe I'm just a coward."
His work on the Hulk shows is very physical.
"It's really intense and it has really cost me," he says. "I've had broken ribs, broken fingers, I have no cartilage any more in my left knee. Over 80-some shows, the odds are you're going to get hurt. Remember, the Hulk only emerges when David is really threatened."
Bixby, leaning back in a chair in his garden office in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, remembers comparing injury stories with James Garner, whose dressing room was next to Bixby's when Garner was making "The Rockford Files" and the Hulk was in the midst of its run as a series.
"We'd get together every Friday and have a drink and talk wounds," Bixby recalls. "He'd point to a laceration on his knee and I'd say `That's nothing.' Action shows are always strenuous and you know as David is the target on the Hulk that there are going to be some injuries. In my next show, I want to drive a nice car and wear nice clothes. I'm tired of thugs. It's only because of sports surgery and modern techniques that I have my knee back."
Bixby may get the kind of role he wants, in a proposed new program tentatively called "The Oath," whose pilot is now in the works.
But Bixby has always pushed himself to show his ability to handle a diversity of roles.
"When I was doing `My Favorite Martian,' I tried to play heavies in all the guest shots I did," he says. "The idea was to remind people that I'm an actor, not confined to one role. "When I did `The Magician,' I did only comedy guest shots for the same reason."