Our “Lost Episodes” feature has been examining the stories of Maljardin that no one knows because series co-creator Ian Martin never got to tell them. But how about the little-known story he did get to tell — his covert return to Maljardin a half decade after his departure from Strange Paradise? You see, unbeknownst to Steve Krantz, Jerry Layton, and Robert Costello, Ian Martin crept back into the Garden of Evil in 1975 — and he did it on radio. For a single hour, he made the world of Strange Paradise live again, through the ethereal auspices of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Oh, he couldn’t call the familiar characters by the names we know them (copyright being what it is, and all), but they’re all quite recognizable. And though he re-titled the story “To Die is Forever,” it’s evident enough that the tale is familiar to any Strange Paradise fan.
The production’s announcer sets the stage with these words:
The island looms high out of the sea, like a mailed fist. Between it and the mainland, massive waves whip the calmest sea to whitewater. Since the days of the Spanish Main, it has belonged exclusively to the Richard family, bought with the blood money and booty of a hundred pirated ships. Silhouetted high above the harbor, a great mansion stands, built some three hundred years ago by Richard the Red-Hand to house the dusky princess he stole for his bride from the island of Martinique. But that’s ancient history. Today, three hundred years later, we are concerned only with a descendant of his, unlike him in every way, save for his looks and the name he bears.
So, while the family’s name may not be Desmond, the story is theirs. Their great mansion stands atop the cliffs, cut off from the mainland by an impassable channel. Its modern day inhabitant is the image of his own 300 hundred year-old piratical ancestor, and he is desperate to preserve his beloved wife through the science of cryonics. No superficial alteration of names can disguise the fact that this IS the story of Maljardin. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to it yourself, and make up your own mind:
“To Die is Forever”is not the only instance of Ian Martin revisiting his work on Strange Paradise for adaptation to The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, but it is by far the most blatant of his forays back to the shores of Maljardin. To die may be forever, but perhaps in the eyes of Ian Martin, so was Strange Paradise.
The Conjure Doll – 4/27/16
MALJARDIN 
That ad is a cool find! “To Die is Forever” even includes a Raxl-like character. The title makes one think of a line from one of Ian’s early Maljardin scripts, subsequently used in some of the publicity to launch SP: “The Devil is Eternal.”
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And “Who disturbs my rest has the devil to pay.” BTW, I just realized there’s a curious coincidence in timing here. Even though it was unofficial, Ian Martin revived STRANGE PARADISE in 1975. About the same time, Metromedia (one of SP’s original financial backers) was trying to launch a fourth television network, Metronet. Though they never managed to make the network a reality, one of the projects they wanted to bring to the air was a prime-time serial from Dan Curtis, with the working title DARK SHADOWS REVISITED. Intriguing to realize that by the mid-1970s both STRANGE PARADISE and DARK SHADOWS were were already struggling to “rise from the ashes.”
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