Afterlife
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was canceled mid-way through its fourth season in 1968. McCallum reprised the role of Kuryakin for a 1983 TV movie The Return of the Man from UNCLE: The Fifteen Years Later Affair.
The character has enjoyed a rich afterlife in the U.N.C.L.E. fandom particularly in fan fiction. Kuryakin has been the subject of several popular songs including Alma Cogan's Love Ya Illya and Ilya Kuryakin Looked at Me penned by Cleaners From Venus. The Argentine rap duo Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas were named after him. In the 1988 comic Shattered Visage, made as a sequel to the spy show The Prisoner, Kuryakin and Solo both make cameos at the funeral of a spy, along with John Steed and Emma Peel. Kuryakin also inspired the name and character of Simon Illyan in Lois McMaster Bujold's award-winning Vorkosigan Saga science fiction series
Since 2003, McCallum has been playing Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard in the TV series NCIS. In the Season 2 episode, "Meat Puzzle" around 20 minutes, 50 seconds into the episode, when Agent Jethro Gibbs is asked, "What did Ducky look like when he was younger?," Gibbs responds, "Illya Kuryakin".
In an interview for a Man from U.N.C.L.E. retrospective television special, McCallum told of a visit to the White House during which, while he was being escorted to meet the President, a Secret Service agent told him "You're the reason I got this job."
Read more about this topic: Illya Kuryakin
Famous quotes containing the word afterlife:
“What art can paint or gild any object in afterlife with the glow which Nature gives to the first baubles of childhood. St. Peter’s cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed. How the imagination cleaves to the warm glories of that tinsel even now! What entertainments make every day bright and short for the fine freshman!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Man is so muddled, so dependent on the things immediately before his eyes, that every day even the most submissive believer can be seen to risk the torments of the afterlife for the smallest pleasure.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and ere long it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)