You know those 1970's Marvel TV shows? The Captain America ones were both horrible (still got them on DVD though just because), Spider-Man was ok for the half a season it lasted, The Hulk of course was a huge success.
But they did a 2 hour Dr Strange movie as a pilot, and I have to say it was the best out of all of those they did. It followed and stayed true to the comics so much more then the Hulk and Captain America ones. I'm not sure if it was out on DVD or VHS but would be nice to see it again.
Say what?
If I'm grading on a curve, the 1978 Doctor Strange movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't really true to the character at all. Strange was a psychiatrist instead of a surgeon, and his entire origin story of being injured and seeking the Ancient One is set aside. In my mind, that is a far more dramatic departure than the one in the Incredible Hulk because in the Incredible Hulk Banner is still a man transformed into a mindless monster after an accident, while Strange is no longer the rich privileged asshat that bottoms out and seeks redemption and enlightenment. In the 1978 movie Strange is a good guy who has a hidden destiny to become the next Sorcerer Supreme. There's also not a lot of actual sorcery, but of course that's due to the limitations of 1970s television production: its hard to hold that against it too much.
Part of the problem is that there's no Doctor Strange Year One. In the comics we see Strange more or less as the Sorcerer Supreme and his origin is seem mostly in flashback. The pilot for Doctor Strange was intended to follow Doctor Strange during his training to become the Sorcerer Supreme, with his training the backstory to the series. So Strange is not a fully formed character in the pilot: he can't resemble the comic book Sorcerer Supreme because he isn't a fully trained master of the mystic arts at that moment in time, and the Ancient One is a glowing ball of Michael Ansara who was probably going to be his teacher during the series if picked up.
If the pilot resembles anything in all of Doctor Strange continuity, its maybe the graphic novel
Into Shamballa. The visuals have a vaguely similar feeling (as opposed to the more colorful palette the comic books typically had) and the ending of the pilot vaguely resonates with the temptation pages of Shamballa. But
Into Shamballa came out years after the pilot aired.