fruit: November 2007 Archives

Dr. Apple, MD was a short-lived medical drama that ran for just sixteen episodes between 1989 and 1990. Barely remembered today, the mediocre series was notable for two reasons: firstly, it ran on 24-hour news channel CNN, and secondly, it featured a talking apple that could do operations.

In pretty much every respect, Dr. Apple, MD was like any other medical drama, aside from the fact that it featured a talking apple that could do operations. The show was originally written for a human actor, James Eckhouse, but when he turned out to have a phobia of hospitals, an apple was brought in at the last minute to replace him. The orginal scripts were used with a few minor modifications - sequences involving things that would be difficult for an apple to do, such as driving or horse riding, were cut, and there were more scenes set in baskets.

Dr. Apple, MD fared reasonably well in the ratings and only ended when its star, perhaps inevitably, began to rot. At first, the writers tried to stave off the process but it wasn't long before they ran out of plausible reasons for their lead character to spend most of his time in a fridge. Then they built the process of decay into the storyline - the doctor's wrinkled skin and coat of mould, it transpired, were symptoms of a rare disease caught from one of his patients, a Mexican priest who had married a vampire in Las Vegas by mistake.

The apple disintegrated under the studio lights before the final planned episodes of Dr. Apple, MD could be filmed. Screen tests with Patrick Stewart as a replacement talking apple that could do operations proved unconvincing, and so the series was cancelled.
 
While the show left little impact on popular culture, the number of apples applying to medical school in the US rose by 0.3% in the early nineties.