The series was popular enough that a spin-off series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., ran for one season, starring Stefanie Powers as agent “April Dancer” (a character name credited to Ian Fleming). There was some crossover between the two shows, and Leo G. Carroll played Waverly in both programs, becoming one of the first actors in American television to star as the same character in two separate series (a feat later repeated by Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks on The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman).
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. rated so highly in America and the UK that MGM and the producers decided to film extra footage (often more adult to evoke Bond films) for two of the first season episodes and release them to theaters after they had aired on TV. The episodes with the extra footage that made it to theaters were the original pilot, “The Vulcan Affair,” retitled To Trap a Spy, and also from the first season, “The Double Affair” retitled as The Spy With My Face. Both had added sex and violence, new sub-plots and guest stars not in the original TV episodes. They were often released as an U.N.C.L.E. double-feature program first run in neighborhood theaters, bypassing the customary downtown movie palaces which were still thriving in the mid-’60s and where new movies usually played for weeks and even months before coming to outlying screens.
A selling point to seeing these films on the big screen back then was that they were being shown in color, at a time when most people had only black and white TVs (and indeed the two first-season episodes that were expanded to feature length, while filmed in color, were only broadcast in black and white). The words IN COLOR featured prominently on the trailers, TV spots, and posters for the film releases.
Subsequent two-part episodes, beginning with the second season premiere, “Alexander The Greater Affair,” retitled One Spy Too Many for its theatrical release, were developed into one complete feature film with only occasional extra sexy and violent footage added to them, sometimes as just inserts. In the case of One Spy Too Many, a subplot featuring Yvonne Craig as an UNCLE operative carrying on a flirtatious relationship with Solo was also added the film (Craig does not appear in the televison episodes).
All of the films were successful in many parts of the world, even those where the TV show did not air, sometimes surpassing box office receipts of the most recent Bond film. The later films were not released in America, only overseas, but the first few did well in American theaters and remain one of the rare examples of a television show released in paid theatrical engagements.
Among the films in this series:
- To Trap a Spy (1964)
- The Spy with My Face (1965)
- One Spy Too Many (1966)
- One of Our Spies is Missing (1966)
- The Spy in the Green Hat (1966)
- The Karate Killers (1967)
- The Helicopter Spies (1968)
- How to Steal the World (1968)
The U.N.C.L.E. fad also inspired a related series of books, the best of which, in most opinions, were written by David McDaniel.
Other spin-offs included a Man from U.N.C.L.E. digest-sized story magazine, board games, action-figures, and toy pistols. The show also inspired the naming of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.
Several comic strips based on the series have been published. In the US, there was a Gold Key Comics comic book series (one based on the show), which ran for about a dozen issues. Entertainment Publishing released an eleven issue series of one- and two-part stories from January 1987 to September 1988 that updated U.N.C.L.E. to the Eighties, while largely ignoring the reunion TV-movie. A two-part comics story, “The Birds of Prey Affair” was put out by Millennium Publications in 1993, which showcased the return of a smaller, much more streamlined version of Thrush, controlled by Dr. Egret, who had melded with the Ultimate Computer. The script was written by Mark Ellis and Terry Collins with artwork by Nick Choles, and transplanted the characters into the present day.
Two Man from U.N.C.L.E. strips were originated for the British market in the 1960s (some Gold Key material was also reprinted), the most notable for Lady Penelope comic, which launched in January 1966. This was replaced by a Girl from U.N.C.L.E. strip in January 1967. Man from U.N.C.L.E. also featured in the short-lived title Solo (published between February and September 1967) and some text stories appeared in TV Tornado.
