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From: leeper@ahuta.UUCP (m.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Commander Cody  and Flash Gordon
Message-ID: <475@ahuta.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Feb-85 18:50:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ahuta.475
Posted: Thu Feb 14 18:50:21 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Feb-85 06:02:19 EST
References: <582@topaz.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
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REFERENCES:  <582@topaz.ARPA>


 >Hey, out there in netland, do anyof you remember the 50's TV
 >show Commander Cody.  I don't remember much from it, but as
 >I recall it was a show that was way ahead of its time.

Do I remember Commando Cody, Sky Marshal of the Universe???  I was a
little tyke in kindergarden and the week split neatly in two parts.
There was the hour on Saturday morning when they showed Commando Cody
and Captain Midnight.  Then there was the dull part of the week that
lasted 167 hours!  Judd Holdren wore the Republic serials rocket suit
and fought the minions of The Ruler from the planet Saturn.  I just
loved to see the spaceships that took off horizontally like planes and
to watch Cody fly between them with his rocket suit.  If you want to
see the props again, watch for serials on TV.  The suit is in KING OF
THE ROCKET MEN, the suit and the spaceships were in RARAR MEN FROM THE
MOON and ZOMBIES OF THE STRATOSPHERE.  The TV series was not so much
ahead of its time as it was the serials of a year or so earlier brought
to the tv screen.

Captain Midnight, incidently, was a scientist who had a secret
super-scientific laboratory on top of a mountain.  He was played by
Richard Webb and his sidekick was Ichobod Mudd (Sid Melton, later of
the Danny Thomas Show).  He lab also had a sceintist at his beck and
call, Tut -- short for Aristotle Jones, played by Olan Soule.  His
personal jet was the Silver Dart ("Fire up the Silver Dart, Ikky!").
He also had a secret army of kid helpers called the Secret Squadron.
The code of the Secret Squadron was "Justice -- through strength and
courage."  In various episodes he dealt with a good scientist turned
into a monster called "the electrified man" whose touch was deadly.
Also there was a guided missile that looked like a cannister vacuum
cleaner and rolled sinisterly along the ground guided to its victim.
Both were pretty scary to my kindergardener mind.  In syndication, the
name was changed to Jet Jackson.

 >There was also a TV show, Flash Gordon, not the Buster Crab

That's Crabbe.

 >thing, that was a half hour weekly show that lasted a year
 >or two.  Anyone recall, or have any info on who starred,
 >produced, etc.  any of these?

I liked it, but not as much as the above two.  The series was produced
in Germany.  I remember Flash on Earth in a VW bug with a sun roof and
I thought a sun roof was a science fiction idea.  Flash was played by
Steve Holland, Dale Arden by Irene Champlin, and Alexis Zarkov by Joe
Nash.  I liked the space ship a lot.  This series was shown in 1957,
the previous two in 1955.

Portions of my memory on the above were aided by TOTAL TELEVISION by
Alex McNeil.

Now let me ask a really obscure one.  I remember around 1955 or 1956
watching a show with someone having a machine with a window that could
see the past (or future?) I think that they could also step through the
window.  I vaguely remember the show, but have never seen a reference
to it anywhere.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!ahuta!leeper