Yesterday the 2 part season 7 finale of Ironside aired. Jessica Walter was the star getting even more screen time than Raymond Burr. Her character was promoted to the chief of detectives when the previous one died. It was because of a seniority rule and the all male squad was very resistant to a female boss, partly because of her totally unhelpful assistant chief played by William Shatner. I thought during it that Jessica should have gotten her own spin-off. Found out she did, but it had a too short run as one of NBC's rotating mystery movies. Never made it to full fledged long running series like Columbo and McCloud, they could have tried just a traditional hourlong format after the movies. In the Amy Prentiss spin-off, a very young Helen Hunt was her daughter. The daughter was not in the backdoor pilot on Ironside.