In the mid-1960s, CBS offered "My Favorite Martian," a sit-com series of domestic life with a twist. Uncle Martin, a Martian anthropologist who studied earthlings, crash-landed his spacecraft in newspaper reporter Tim O'Hara's backyard. Throughout the three years of episodes, Martin, looking humanlike but for the antenna extending from his head, attempted to repair his spaceship and return to Mars. His abilities--he was telepathic, telekinetic, and can disappear at will--often led him into troubles that O'Hara helped him resolve. Uncle Martin was one of the first portrayals of Martians in popular culture that assumed the inhabitants of the Red Planet were smart, friendly, and similar to earthlings--something other than war-obessed "little green men." Some critics saw in the series the beginnings of mass culture's embracing a tolerance for those who were different--a valuable and heady lesson in the years when African-Americans fought hard for their civil rights.