Legend is a sci-fi western with steampunk influences.
Plot[]
Ernest Pratt, a gambling, womanizing, cowardly, hard-drinking writer has created a dashing literary hero, Nicodemus Legend, the main character in a series of wildly imaginative dime novels set in the untamed West. Because Pratt writes the novels in the first person and has posed as Legend for their cover art, many readers believe that Pratt is Nicodemus Legend.
In the pilot episode, when Pratt learns that Nicodemus Legend has been impersonated and a warrant issued for his arrest, he travels to the scene of the incident to clear the name of his protagonist.
Pratt meets up with the impersonator, a great admirer of his tales, the eccentric European scientist Janos Bartok — who had been Thomas Edison's research partner — and his brilliant assistant Huitzilopochtli Ramos, who has taken every single course Harvard University had to offer. Bartok "borrowed" the Legend persona in order to help the townspeople of Sheridan, Colorado.
They enlist the reluctant Pratt to their cause, and show him how their scientific expertise and outlandish inventions (frequently based on ideas from Pratt's books) can bolster the impression that Pratt really is Nicodemus Legend. Bartok says:
- Your celebrity has the power to give our enemies pause. My science can increase that reputation. And together, we will create the real Legend.
Suffering from writer's block, under pressure from his publishers, and inspired, in spite of himself, at the thought of doing real good, Pratt reluctantly agrees to assume the persona of his literary creation and to live as the image he created of an adventurous and heroic man. Together, they adventure throughout the West solving mysteries, capturing wrong-doers, and making scientific discoveries.