Captain Video
Encyclopedia
Captain Video and His Video Rangers is an American science fiction television series. It was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network
, and was the first series of its kind on American television. It aired between June 27, 1949 and April 1, 1955.
s sewn on.
The Captain had a teen-age companion who was known only as the Video Ranger. Captain Video received his orders from the Commissioner of Public Safety, whose responsibilities took in the entire solar system as well as human colonies on planets around other stars. Captain Video was the first adventure hero explicitly designed (by DuMont's idea-man Larry Menkin) for early live television. "I TOBOR" the robot
was an important, semi-regular character on the program, and represents the first appearance of a robot in live televised science fiction; the character's name was actually supposed to be "ROBOT I", but the stencil with its name was applied to its costume backwards.
The show was broadcast live five to six days a week and was extremely popular with both children and adults. Because of the large adult audience, the usual network broadcast time of the daily series was 7 to 7:30 p.m. EST, leading off the "prime evening" time-block. The production was for most of its existence hampered by a very low budget, and the Captain did not originally have a space ship of his own.
Until 1953, Captain Video's live adventures occupied 20 minutes of each day's 30-minute program time. About 10 minutes into each episode, a Video Ranger communications officer showed about 7 minutes of old cowboy movies
. These were described by the communications officer, Ranger Rogers, as the adventures of Captain Video's "undercover agents" on Earth
. During the 1953-1954 broadcast season, there was a spinoff series, the Secret Files of Captain Video (5 September 1953 to 29 May 1954), alternating Saturdays with Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
. Each of these 30-minute Saturday broadcasts told a complete story.
Captain Video's early opponent was Dr. Pauli, an inventor who wore gangster-style pinstripe suits but spoke with the snarl of a movie Nazi
or Soviet
. Like the last few theatrical serial
s, the TV series' plots often involved inventions created by Captain Video or the evil genius Dr. Pauli, but obviously made from hardware store odds and ends, with much double-talk
regarding their fantastic properties. The series was originally broadcast from a studio in the building occupied by Wanamaker's
department store
, and the production crew would simply go downstairs for props, often just a few minutes before air-time. Originally, only three Rangers were seen on camera: The Video Ranger; Ranger Rogers, the communications officer; and Ranger Gallagher. (These were also the only Rangers seen in the 1951 film serial version of the series.) As the budget increased, a larger roster of Rangers was briefly seen on TV.
Captain Video eventually had the use of three different space ships. In the first ship, the X-9 (later replaced briefly by the X-10), the crew at takeoff lay upon tilted bunk bed
s on their elbows, a posture based upon space-travel theories of the time. Later, the V-2 rocket
-like Galaxy had an aircraft-style cockpit with reclining seats. The Captain's final spacecraft, after early 1953, was the Galaxy II.
The other space-adventure series of the period were Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
, also broadcast live from New York City, and Space Patrol, broadcast live from California. There were some suspicious plot similarities between the three — at times, Space Patrol seemed to be doing a West-Coast recreation of Captain Video's latest adventure.
Al Hodge
, who had created the role of Britt Reid, The Green Hornet
on radio, is the Captain Video most original viewers of the series remember (1950–55). However, the original Captain Video was Richard Coogan
, who played the role for 17 months. The Video Ranger was played during the entire run by teen-aged Don Hastings
, who later became a soap opera
star.
During commercial breaks, DuMont aired special "Video Ranger messages". These ranged from public service spots on morality and civics to advertisements for Video Ranger merchandise. Many premiums were offered by sponsors of the show, including space helmets, secret code guns, flying saucer rings, decoder badges, photo-printing rings, and Viking rockets complete with launchers. A clip of in-show advertising can been seen on YouTube
.
In the early days of the series, scripts tended to be somewhat incoherent, and often were derided by critics of the day, but many of the scripts after 1952 were written by major science fiction
writers active at the time, including Damon Knight
, James Blish
, Jack Vance
and Arthur C. Clarke
. These late scripts displayed more intelligence, discipline and imagination than most of the other children's sci-fi series scripts of the era. Other well-known authors who occasionally wrote for the program included Isaac Asimov
, Cyril M. Kornbluth
, Milt Lesser, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
, Robert Sheckley
, J. T. McIntosh
and Dr. Robert S. Richardson.
Few special effects were seen on the series until the team of Russell and Haberstroh was hired in September 1952. For the rest of the program's episodes, they provided surprisingly effective model and effects work, prefilmed in 16 mm format and cut into the live broadcast as needed.
The show's theme song was Richard Wagner
's Overture to The Flying Dutchman
(Der Fliegende Hollaender).
The TV series is mentioned in the first of the 39 independent episodes of The Honeymooners
, "TV or Not TV". Honeymooners character Ed Norton was supposedly a fan of the show.
made a movie serial, starring Judd Holdren
, under the name Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere
(1951). However, it displayed only marginally better sets and props than its TV inspiration. Some special effects were accomplished with cel animation, inspired by earlier use in another, successful serial from the same studio, Superman
.
Six issues of a Captain Video comic book were published by Fawcett Comics
in 1951. The rival space adventure programs Tom Corbett
and Space Patrol shortly thereafter had their own comic books as well. Some of these comics were used as the basis for a British TV Annual, a hardcover collection produced in time for Christmas, which also made the claim that man would venture into space in 1970 and would reach the moon by 2000. Tom Corbett in addition had a syndicated daily newspaper strip, and a set of juvenile series books published by Grossett and Dunlap. Columbia Pictures
made a theatrical film serial
, Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere
, the only instance of such a production being based on a television program. Tom Corbett and Space Patrol were also heard on ABC network radio; however, since DuMont
had no affiliated radio network, DuMont never provided a radio version of Captain Video's adventures.
and two featuring Al Hodge
, have been available to the public on home video.
DuMont's film archive, consisting of kinescope
(16 mm) and Electronicam
(35 mm), was destroyed in the 1970s by Metromedia
, the broadcast conglomerate that was the successor company to DuMont, thus nearly dooming nearly all of its pioneering TV series to oblivion. To date, the person or persons responsible for ordering the destruction of the kinescopes and other recordings remains unknown.
The UCLA Film and Television Archive
has 24 episodes of Captain Video; some prints also contain an episode of Marge and Jeff
, a weekday sitcom which aired after Captain Video during the 1953-1954 TV season. As with all of the rest of the archive's holdings, the episodes are only viewable as part of a showing within the archives building.
Alpha Home Entertainment released a DVD containing four of the publicly viewable episodes on November 25, 2008. This marked the first release of a Captain Video and His Video Rangers retail DVD .
As a result of there being so few surviving episodes, it is not clear what time period the series is set in. The Fawcett
comic adventures are supposed to take place during the time of publication, in 1951. However, the stories in the surviving kinescopes could take place in 1950, as when Dr. Pauli plots to rob a bank in Shanghai, or centuries into the future, as when Captain Video seeks to establish a reliable mail service for far-flung interstellar (or at least interplanetary) colonies (depicted in a surviving episode generally called "Chauncey Everett") — or struggles to prevent the many space stations circling Pluto
from being destroyed by an approaching comet. Later episodes' television listings would seem to indicate that Captain Video and other characters on the show were indeed capable of routine interstellar travel.
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network, also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont, Du Mont, or Dumont was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling NBC for the distinction of being first overall. It began operation in the United States in 1946. It was owned by DuMont...
, and was the first series of its kind on American television. It aired between June 27, 1949 and April 1, 1955.
Overview
Set in the distant future, the series followed the adventures of a group of fighters for truth and justice, the Video Rangers, led by Captain Video. The Rangers operated from a secret base on a mountain top. Their uniforms resembled US Army surplus with lightning boltLightning bolt
Lightning bolt may refer to* Lightning discharge, electrical discharge within clouds or between clouds and the ground* Thunderbolt, a traditional expression for a discharge of lightning or a symbolic representation thereof...
s sewn on.
The Captain had a teen-age companion who was known only as the Video Ranger. Captain Video received his orders from the Commissioner of Public Safety, whose responsibilities took in the entire solar system as well as human colonies on planets around other stars. Captain Video was the first adventure hero explicitly designed (by DuMont's idea-man Larry Menkin) for early live television. "I TOBOR" the robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
was an important, semi-regular character on the program, and represents the first appearance of a robot in live televised science fiction; the character's name was actually supposed to be "ROBOT I", but the stencil with its name was applied to its costume backwards.
The show was broadcast live five to six days a week and was extremely popular with both children and adults. Because of the large adult audience, the usual network broadcast time of the daily series was 7 to 7:30 p.m. EST, leading off the "prime evening" time-block. The production was for most of its existence hampered by a very low budget, and the Captain did not originally have a space ship of his own.
Until 1953, Captain Video's live adventures occupied 20 minutes of each day's 30-minute program time. About 10 minutes into each episode, a Video Ranger communications officer showed about 7 minutes of old cowboy movies
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
. These were described by the communications officer, Ranger Rogers, as the adventures of Captain Video's "undercover agents" on Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
. During the 1953-1954 broadcast season, there was a spinoff series, the Secret Files of Captain Video (5 September 1953 to 29 May 1954), alternating Saturdays with Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
Tom Corbett is the main character in a series of Tom Corbett — Space Cadet stories that were depicted in television, radio, books, comic books, comic strips, coloring books, punch-out books and View-Master reels in the 1950s....
. Each of these 30-minute Saturday broadcasts told a complete story.
Captain Video's early opponent was Dr. Pauli, an inventor who wore gangster-style pinstripe suits but spoke with the snarl of a movie Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
or Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Like the last few theatrical serial
Serial (film)
Serials, more specifically known as Movie serials, Film serials or Chapter plays, were short subjects originally shown in theaters in conjunction with a feature film. They were related to pulp magazine serialized fiction...
s, the TV series' plots often involved inventions created by Captain Video or the evil genius Dr. Pauli, but obviously made from hardware store odds and ends, with much double-talk
Double-talk
Double-talk is a form of speech in which inappropriate, invented or nonsense words are used to give the appearance of erudition and so confuse or amuse the audience. Comedians who used this as part of their act included Al Kelly, Cliff Nazarro, Danny Kaye, Irwin Corey, Jackie Gleason and Stanley...
regarding their fantastic properties. The series was originally broadcast from a studio in the building occupied by Wanamaker's
Wanamaker's
Wanamaker's department store was the first department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the first department stores in the United States. At its zenith in the early 20th century, there were two major Wanamaker department stores, one in Philadelphia and one in New York City at Broadway...
department store
Department store
A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
, and the production crew would simply go downstairs for props, often just a few minutes before air-time. Originally, only three Rangers were seen on camera: The Video Ranger; Ranger Rogers, the communications officer; and Ranger Gallagher. (These were also the only Rangers seen in the 1951 film serial version of the series.) As the budget increased, a larger roster of Rangers was briefly seen on TV.
Captain Video eventually had the use of three different space ships. In the first ship, the X-9 (later replaced briefly by the X-10), the crew at takeoff lay upon tilted bunk bed
Bunk bed
A bunk bed is a type of bed in which one bed frame is stacked on top of another. The nature of bunk beds allows two people to sleep in the same room while maximizing available floor space...
s on their elbows, a posture based upon space-travel theories of the time. Later, the V-2 rocket
V-2 rocket
The V-2 rocket , technical name Aggregat-4 , was a ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Germany, specifically targeted at London and later Antwerp. The liquid-propellant rocket was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first known...
-like Galaxy had an aircraft-style cockpit with reclining seats. The Captain's final spacecraft, after early 1953, was the Galaxy II.
The other space-adventure series of the period were Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
Tom Corbett is the main character in a series of Tom Corbett — Space Cadet stories that were depicted in television, radio, books, comic books, comic strips, coloring books, punch-out books and View-Master reels in the 1950s....
, also broadcast live from New York City, and Space Patrol, broadcast live from California. There were some suspicious plot similarities between the three — at times, Space Patrol seemed to be doing a West-Coast recreation of Captain Video's latest adventure.
Al Hodge
Al Hodge
For "Big" Al Hodge, the Cornish rock musician, see Al Hodge Albert E. Hodge was an American actor best known for playing space adventurer Captain Video on the DuMont Television Network from December 15, 1950 to April 1, 1955...
, who had created the role of Britt Reid, The Green Hornet
The Green Hornet
The Green Hornet is an American radio and television masked vigilante created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, with input from radio director James Jewell, in 1936. Since his radio debut in the 1930s, the Green Hornet has appeared in numerous serialized dramas in a wide variety of media...
on radio, is the Captain Video most original viewers of the series remember (1950–55). However, the original Captain Video was Richard Coogan
Richard Coogan
Richard Coogan is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Captain Video from 1949-1950.Born in Short Hills, New Jersey, Coogan worked in radio for some time, including appearing as Abie Levy in Abie's Irish Rose...
, who played the role for 17 months. The Video Ranger was played during the entire run by teen-aged Don Hastings
Don Hastings
Donald Francis Hastings is a longtime American actor, singer, and writer best known for his 50-year role as Dr. Robert "Bob" Hughes" on the soap opera As the World Turns...
, who later became a soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
star.
During commercial breaks, DuMont aired special "Video Ranger messages". These ranged from public service spots on morality and civics to advertisements for Video Ranger merchandise. Many premiums were offered by sponsors of the show, including space helmets, secret code guns, flying saucer rings, decoder badges, photo-printing rings, and Viking rockets complete with launchers. A clip of in-show advertising can been seen on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
Production
The quality of the show is often considered crude or low-budget, owing much to the fact that the show was done live and DuMont had a meager budget to work with. A laudatory review by referenced the Captain Video Rocket Ring, a promotional tie-in piece of merchandise, that was distributed via Power House candy bars, says that the ring "seemed to have a higher production value than the actual TV show."In the early days of the series, scripts tended to be somewhat incoherent, and often were derided by critics of the day, but many of the scripts after 1952 were written by major science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writers active at the time, including Damon Knight
Damon Knight
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...
, James Blish
James Blish
James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...
, Jack Vance
Jack Vance
John Holbrook Vance is an American mystery, fantasy and science fiction author. Most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance. Vance has published 11 mysteries as John Holbrook Vance and 3 as Ellery Queen...
and Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
. These late scripts displayed more intelligence, discipline and imagination than most of the other children's sci-fi series scripts of the era. Other well-known authors who occasionally wrote for the program included Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
, Cyril M. Kornbluth
Cyril M. Kornbluth
Cyril M. Kornbluth was an American science fiction author and a notable member of the Futurians. He used a variety of pen-names, including Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner and Jordan Park...
, Milt Lesser, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Walter Michael Miller, Jr. was an American science fiction author. Today he is primarily known for A Canticle for Leibowitz, the only novel he published in his lifetime. Prior to its publication he was a prolific writer of short stories.- Biography :Miller was born in New Smyrna Beach, Florida...
, Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and...
, J. T. McIntosh
J. T. McIntosh
J. T. McIntosh was a pseudonym used by Scottish writer and journalist James Murdoch MacGregor.-Biography:Born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, but living largely in Aberdeen, MacGregor used the McIntosh pseudonym as well as "H. J...
and Dr. Robert S. Richardson.
Few special effects were seen on the series until the team of Russell and Haberstroh was hired in September 1952. For the rest of the program's episodes, they provided surprisingly effective model and effects work, prefilmed in 16 mm format and cut into the live broadcast as needed.
The show's theme song was Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Overture to The Flying Dutchman
The Flying Dutchman
The legend of the Flying Dutchman concerns a ghost ship that can never make port, doomed to sail the oceans forever. It probably originates from 17th-century nautical folklore. The oldest extant version dates to the late 18th century....
(Der Fliegende Hollaender).
The TV series is mentioned in the first of the 39 independent episodes of The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners is an American situation comedy television show, based on a recurring 1951–'55 sketch of the same name. It originally aired on the DuMont network's Cavalcade of Stars and subsequently on the CBS network's The Jackie Gleason Show hosted by Jackie Gleason, and filmed before a live...
, "TV or Not TV". Honeymooners character Ed Norton was supposedly a fan of the show.
Other media
ColumbiaColumbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
made a movie serial, starring Judd Holdren
Judd Holdren
Judd Holdren was an American film actor best known for his starring roles in the serials Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere, Zombies of the Stratosphere, The Lost Planet and the semi-serial Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe during 1951 - 1953.- Early life :He was born near...
, under the name Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere
Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere
Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere is a 15-chapter serial released by Columbia Pictures in 1951. It was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and Wallace A. Grissel with a screenplay by Royal G. Cole, Sherman I. Lowe and Joseph F. Poland, based on a treatment by George H. Plympton...
(1951). However, it displayed only marginally better sets and props than its TV inspiration. Some special effects were accomplished with cel animation, inspired by earlier use in another, successful serial from the same studio, Superman
Superman (serial)
Superman is a 15-part black-and-white Columbia film serial based on the comic book character Superman. It stars an uncredited Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill as Lois Lane. It is notable as the first live-action appearance of Superman on film and for the longevity of its distribution...
.
Six issues of a Captain Video comic book were published by Fawcett Comics
Fawcett Comics
Fawcett Comics, a division of Fawcett Publications, was one of several successful comic book publishers during the Golden Age of Comic Books in the 1940s...
in 1951. The rival space adventure programs Tom Corbett
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
Tom Corbett is the main character in a series of Tom Corbett — Space Cadet stories that were depicted in television, radio, books, comic books, comic strips, coloring books, punch-out books and View-Master reels in the 1950s....
and Space Patrol shortly thereafter had their own comic books as well. Some of these comics were used as the basis for a British TV Annual, a hardcover collection produced in time for Christmas, which also made the claim that man would venture into space in 1970 and would reach the moon by 2000. Tom Corbett in addition had a syndicated daily newspaper strip, and a set of juvenile series books published by Grossett and Dunlap. Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
made a theatrical film serial
Serial (film)
Serials, more specifically known as Movie serials, Film serials or Chapter plays, were short subjects originally shown in theaters in conjunction with a feature film. They were related to pulp magazine serialized fiction...
, Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere
Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere
Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere is a 15-chapter serial released by Columbia Pictures in 1951. It was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and Wallace A. Grissel with a screenplay by Royal G. Cole, Sherman I. Lowe and Joseph F. Poland, based on a treatment by George H. Plympton...
, the only instance of such a production being based on a television program. Tom Corbett and Space Patrol were also heard on ABC network radio; however, since DuMont
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network, also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont, Du Mont, or Dumont was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling NBC for the distinction of being first overall. It began operation in the United States in 1946. It was owned by DuMont...
had no affiliated radio network, DuMont never provided a radio version of Captain Video's adventures.
Legacy
Captain Video comes close to being a lost series. Only five 30-minute episodes, three featuring Richard CooganRichard Coogan
Richard Coogan is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Captain Video from 1949-1950.Born in Short Hills, New Jersey, Coogan worked in radio for some time, including appearing as Abie Levy in Abie's Irish Rose...
and two featuring Al Hodge
Al Hodge
For "Big" Al Hodge, the Cornish rock musician, see Al Hodge Albert E. Hodge was an American actor best known for playing space adventurer Captain Video on the DuMont Television Network from December 15, 1950 to April 1, 1955...
, have been available to the public on home video.
DuMont's film archive, consisting of kinescope
Kinescope
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor...
(16 mm) and Electronicam
Electronicam
Electronicam was a television recording system that shot an image on film and television at the same time through a common lens. It was developed by James L. Caddigan for the DuMont Television Network in the 1950s, before electronic recording on videotape was available...
(35 mm), was destroyed in the 1970s by Metromedia
Metromedia
Metromedia was a media company that owned radio and television stations in the United States from 1956 to 1986 and owned Orion Pictures from 1986-1997.- Overview :...
, the broadcast conglomerate that was the successor company to DuMont, thus nearly dooming nearly all of its pioneering TV series to oblivion. To date, the person or persons responsible for ordering the destruction of the kinescopes and other recordings remains unknown.
The UCLA Film and Television Archive
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of...
has 24 episodes of Captain Video; some prints also contain an episode of Marge and Jeff
Marge and Jeff
Marge and Jeff is an early American sitcom broadcast on the DuMont Television Network during the 1953-1954 television season.-Broadcast history:...
, a weekday sitcom which aired after Captain Video during the 1953-1954 TV season. As with all of the rest of the archive's holdings, the episodes are only viewable as part of a showing within the archives building.
Alpha Home Entertainment released a DVD containing four of the publicly viewable episodes on November 25, 2008. This marked the first release of a Captain Video and His Video Rangers retail DVD .
As a result of there being so few surviving episodes, it is not clear what time period the series is set in. The Fawcett
Fawcett
Fawcett may refer to:*Fawcett City, a fictional DC Comics city*Fawcett Comics*Fawcett Publications*Fawcett Society*Fawcett Stadium*Fawcett Street, Sunderland*Fawcett...
comic adventures are supposed to take place during the time of publication, in 1951. However, the stories in the surviving kinescopes could take place in 1950, as when Dr. Pauli plots to rob a bank in Shanghai, or centuries into the future, as when Captain Video seeks to establish a reliable mail service for far-flung interstellar (or at least interplanetary) colonies (depicted in a surviving episode generally called "Chauncey Everett") — or struggles to prevent the many space stations circling Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
from being destroyed by an approaching comet. Later episodes' television listings would seem to indicate that Captain Video and other characters on the show were indeed capable of routine interstellar travel.
See also
- List of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network
- List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts
- Space CadetSpace CadetSpace Cadet is a 1948 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about Matt Dodson, who joins the Space Patrol to help preserve peace in the Solar System. The story translates the standard military academy story into outer space: a boy from Iowa goes to officer school, sees action and adventure,...
, a 1948 novel by Robert A. HeinleinRobert A. HeinleinRobert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of... - List of film serials
- TV or Not TVTV or not TVTV or Not TV is the first album by the comedy duo Proctor and Bergman. It was originally released in 1973 by Columbia Records.-Side one — act one:#"Insert Here"#"Channel 85 Sign-On"#"Escaping From The Declining Fall Of The Roaming Umpire, Chapter XIII"...
External links
- Captain Video Fans
- DuMont historical website
- 1950 Kinescope of "Captain Video" at the Internet Archive, with commercials and DuMont ID
- Space Hero Files: Captain Video
- Roaring Rockets: Captain Video
- ATOMX13 Captain Video Pages
- Who Killed Captain Video? How the FCC strangled a TV pioneer. Glenn Garvin, Reason, March 2005.
- "Captain Video, Television's First Fantastic Voyage," by David Weinstein, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Fall 2002
- Very incomplete log of daily broadcasts
- Media Reviews of Captain Video
- Captain Video Memories!
- The Fawcett Captain Video comics
- Database and complete cover gallery of the Fawcett Captain Video comics
- Everything2 entry on Captain Video
- Time magazine article on Al Hodge's problems in finding acting work after Captain Video (Kinescope of a 1949 episode)