The show stars Ray Walston as "Uncle Martin" (the Martian) and Bill Bixby as Tim O'Hara.

John L. Greene created the central characters and developed the core format of the series, which was produced by Jack Chertok.

A human-appearing extraterrestrial in a one-man spaceship nearly collides at high altitude with the U.S. Air Force's rocket plane, the North American X-15.

Returning home to Los Angeles, O'Hara spots the same silver spaceship coming down quickly, after which it crash lands nearby.

Uncle Martin has various unusual powers: He can raise two retractable antennae from the back of his head and become invisible; he is telepathic and can read and influence minds; he can levitate objects with the motion of his index finger; he can communicate with animals; he can freeze people or objects; and he can speed himself (and other people) up to do any kind of work.

Another device he builds is a "molecular separator" that can take apart the molecules of a physical object, or rearrange them (making a squirrel into a human).

Tim and Uncle Martin live in a garage apartment owned by a congenial but scatterbrained landlady, Mrs. Lorelei Brown (a former WAVE as revealed in the first episode of season one) who often shows up when not wanted.

She later dates a vain, cold-hearted, plain-clothes police officer, Detective Bill Brennan, who dislikes Uncle Martin and is highly suspicious of him and his activities.

Revealed in the episode "We Love You, Miss Pringle", it was heard again when his real nephew, Andromeda (played by young actor Wayne Stam), crash-landed on Earth late in the show's third season.

The Chertok Company retained ownership of all copyrights for the series; Rhino Entertainment held U.S. video distribution rights until August 2008.

In 2018, Pidax Video Germany acquired both streaming and DVD distribution rights for Germany and released the series the same year under its German title Mein Onkel vom Mars; As of early July 2013, Warner Bros. held domestic and international syndication rights for the series.

The theme music for the series was composed by George Greeley and performed in part on an Electro-Theremin by Paul Tanner, a former member of Glenn Miller's band.

It was influential in Brian Wilson's engagement of Tanner in 1965 and 1966 to work with the Beach Boys on their landmark hit, "Good Vibrations".

My Favorite Martian, which premiered in the fall of 1963, was the first of the "fantasy" situation comedies prevalent on American television in the mid-1960s featuring characters who could do extraordinary things, predating My Living Doll (1964–1965), Bewitched (1964–1972), and I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970).

When Martin and Tim get to the junk yard, the Junkyard Manager (Vito Scotti) tells them that the ship has already been sold to a Mr. Carter (Cliff Norton).

All episodes in black-and-white Tim accidentally cuts a live telephone wire while fixing Mrs. Brown's TV antenna.

[6] On October 20, 2015, MPI Home Video released My Favorite Martian- The Complete Series' on Region 1 DVD.

The season 3 release also includes special features, such as an unaired version of the series pilot, behind the scenes home movies, interviews with Stan Frazen, Ted Rich, James Hulsey, and Wayne Stam, as well as audio commentary by James's Hulsey and Chertok historian and licensing manager Peter Greenwood.

Ratings dipped even further in the third season due to repetitive story lines involving Martin's time machine, and the series was canceled.

An animated series, My Favorite Martians, was made by Filmation and was broadcast as part of the Saturday morning programming on CBS from September 8, 1973, to December 22, 1973, for a total of sixteen episodes.

None of the characters were voiced by the original actors; Bixby was at the time committed to his latest project, The Magician, and Walston tried to distance himself from the role.

However, the premise was changed: Martians such as Lloyd's Uncle Martin are now non-humanoids with four arms, four legs, and three eyes who use a gumball (which they call "nerplex") to assume human form.

The "nerplex" comes in a selection that will turn the person ingesting it into assorted life forms, including Martian, Venusian and one to "never use" (Venox 7).

Unlike the Gold Key Comics adaptation, the British strip, in its later run, featured Martin's nephew Andromeda.

The comic rights returned to the Chertok company, who licensed a reprint of the Gold Key title produced by Hermes Press.

Licensing resumed in 2012 on the My Favorite Martian property, resulting in both a scale plastic model kit of Uncle Martin's spaceship and a built up version, both from Pegasus Hobbies.

A still of Uncle Martin holding that scaled space ship was placed on the back of the product carton for the assembled, non-kit spaceship.

They also offered a special edition black-and-white version of their Uncle Martin statue as a San Diego Comic-Con exclusive.

In 2015 Greenlight Collectibles produced a prototype My Favorite Martian boxed set featuring the second season's Plymouth Fury, as seen in the show.

In November 2017 Zynga Entertainment added My Favorite Martian to its cell phone game "Black Diamond Casino".