This is the hardest thing to assess because it is hard to deal with in precise. quantitative terms, is like all things, uneven in quality, consists of may parts made of goals, approach and implemnentations and the parts interact in such a way as to make the whole experientially greater than the simple sum of the parts. This is also the part where the viewer's perspecitive has a lot of weight. If you don't like space shows, then don't bother. If you're a hard science kind of guy, I can't help you here, you probably won't like it. But consider this; Ayn Rand, whose pedigree as an intellectual novelist is unquestionably high, used to like Charlie's Angels saying "It was about attractive women doing adventuresome things". I thought it was fair to middling but shallow. She also liked the "James Bond thrillers", which she acknowledged as second-rate but still worthwhile. Ditto Mickey Spillain's work. Go figure!
Since I am the Spsce Patrol hound at Solar Guard Academy and since there will be a book out shortly about Space Patrol and since I was curious about would I still like it, I picked up the first few tapes from Swapsale aka Edge Publisning..
I was not disappointed, If you expect the show to be overdrawn with bombastic dialogue, you will be disappointed, the only over-the-top superspeak is in the Ralston-Chex commercials with Jack Narz. The dialogue is on a par with radio programs of the adventure/detective kind except that some of the futuristic technobabble is a bit whack but we are talking the thirtieth centruy. To be sure they do go over the edge with some of it like the "Atom Harmonizer" for a machine that shrinks things. The scince is by and large OK; Given the fact thet this is really science fantasy/adventure and there are certain things you take as way out going in. They only stunk out the house a few times.The first one I have forgotten, the one I remember is that in order to blow up an atomic rocket motor, Buzz pulls OUT the moderator rods in the reactor to make it reach "critiacal mass". First; a reactor, no matter what you do, shoot, it kiss it or beat it with a knout, will never go critical not EVER, no way, Jose, not gonna happen, f'gedaboudit. Second; the moderator rods are called that becuase they moderate the speed of the flying atomic particles that cause fission. This moderation slows them down and makes each of them more likely to strike another atom and continue the chain reaction. Pulling these rods out would simply shut the reactor down by letting the particles go too fast to hit other atoms. I have to give them a break on that one, because just about everyone blows this one out of their bubble pipe so they are no worse than most. Another place where they blew it out their sleeves was by having Geiger Counters anywhere in the Solar Systme pick up radioactivity anywhere elso. If that were possible, they would be going off all the time. Another place where the science routinely gets mailed in concerns the planets Jupiter and Saturn. These are called "gas giants" for a reason, They are spheres of very densly compressed gas. This dense compression is caused by immense gravity. I am told that, if you could arrange it, Saturn would float on water. Yet, in space stories, these planets are treated as solid bodies upon which persons move about regularly. At least Space Patrol could cover this with some advanced science but, like the rest, did not. The same goes for "planietoids" with earht-normal gravity and breathable air. For those not in the know, a planetoid is a small body like an asteroid both of which have very little gravity and certainly too little to hold an atmosphere. This has been the theme of some hard-core scinece fiction and accomplished by putting a tiny chunk of very heavy matter in the core of small asteroids and living on them. In general, Space Patrol did no worse than anyone in terms of the science as it was understood by most persons. If they did toss it badly, it was esoteric or obscure stuff. In the science department, they get about a B- to a B. Unlike Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, The science was less of an integral part of the stories, and this was set further in the future so you would expect them to have conquered some of the presently insurmountable obsticles via yet-to-be discovered science. Norm Jolley said that in his writing, he did not contradict scientific facts. Nonetheless, they did play fast and loose with science as such, such as "atmosphere locks"and "atmosphere washers" to put breathable air on otherwise uninhabitable moons and planets. I was told by Ben Bova, a Mr. Hard Science, in '99 that SP underpredicted some things and that they would be available quite a bit earlier: Pity we could not have gotten into the detail. In general, it was Poul Anderson-esque.
One thing that you have to realize is that Space Patrol is science fantasy The difference between that and true science fiction is that the former includes yet-to-be-discovered principles of science rather than simple extension of currnetly understood science. Also Space Patrol was fantasy, but it was fantasy not in the usually understood sense of the word, that is sword and sorcery. it was fantasy in the mold of the culture of the middle Twentieth Century. As such, it was almost totally devoid of any supernaturalist content or implication, including religious, which, even at age 8 I found strange and significant: "How come no God?". There is no "Force" or anything even remotely resembling that kind of thing. In that sense it was in line with the rational orientation of the time. Good and evil are taken as self-evident and the mind of Man is the tool of choice to solve problems rather than any appeal to an unknown, "higher", divine or supernatural power. The closest they come to anyting that would be considered "occult" is telepathy, which was becoming part of the sci-fi bag of tricks anyway. Also, there are no (refreshingly) super-heroes, whom I always regarded as a bit phony anyway, more like "If I were all-powerful..." than touching upon something that had anything to do with the way the world works.
Strictly speaking, this is not part of the Age of the Conquest of Space. The time setting is the 30th century. The Solar System is fairly well settled and united and has been so for the past century. The generally used year, in keeping with the actual time of the founding of the show, is 2950 A.D. Like all stories set in the "distant" future there is a utopian element . This serves to make the good guys unquestionably good. This utopia is based on science. This is in keeping with the fact that the United States, as a product of the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment was founded on the idea that the principles of science, applied properly, would generate the good society. This meant that there needed to be some fundamental advances in the human component of the future society. In the case of Space Patrol, it was that, though unstated, man is fundamentally moral with the "criminal tendencies" being abnormal and medically treatable. Thus we see two things; a ban on deadly weapons and the Brain-O-graph that can read minds. Of course what they don't tell you is that the non-lethal weapons are more effective than the deadly weapons of earlier times for police work. It is interesting to note that, at this point in real life, there is the search for, if not non lethal, then less lethal police and military weapons. This no-kill policy is a bit unrealistic as there are times when you would, as a matter of survival, have to kill. Ahyo in "The Exploding Stars" trilogy would have been killed and his ship taken for study by a reasonably prudent United Planets. He simply could not be allowed to retrun to Andromeda alive, having foiled Corry at least twice. He was a communist ("collective minds") advanced-technology threat that was too exotic with which to take any chances (which would also leave the "dwellers of the Prime Galaxy" with something to ponder, which would buy time).
In my pursuit of an advanced degree in Psychology at Rhode Island College, I have seen devices which, if developed further for a few more centuries, would likely produce something very close to the Brain-O-graph. This is a basically flawed model as it ignores the vital role of knowledge and choice in human moral matters, but its purpose is to make a point that this is a utopia supported by science and technology. In real life, for a century and a half, psychologists have been looking for the predictor of criminal behavior and its cure. In this utopia the Space Patorl, under the command of Buzz Corry, is the holder of the technology to both find and cure the criminal tendencies. The fact is that, and this is post Space Patrol, we have suffiicient understanding of the mechanics of behavior that would enable us to so reduce criminal behavior that it would probably fall to the level where it would fail to replicate significantly and that the failure to do this lies in philosophy, will and social work more than psychology. However, this was a representation of an idealized state of affairs to make the point that there had been fundamental advances in civilization.
I get the impression that they were just in the early stages of star travel as they seem to divide the Universe into the United Planets and the Outer Galaxy. This implies that there is not interstellar equivalent of internationl affairs, just randome doings between the UPSS and the Outer Galaxy, with limited forays to nearby Siruis. In fact many of the stories that take Corry outside the orbit of Pluto are "lost at sea" (you really did not think I was gonna say "lost in space", did you? Besides, I'm keeping the explantions in pre-space travel terms to relate the show to its time) stories with no standard interstellar navigational procedures. The only times that this seems not to be true is toward the end of the series when in the android trilogy, there is a threat of interstellar war and in the final "Wild Men of Procyon" series there is reference to an interstellar War Crimes Commission and at the time I did not know if the Procyonains were Earth descent colonists. Also, The "Space Spider" appears to be an eath person who operates in the Algol System, 93 light years away. there were a couple of references to things intergalactic. Thankfully these are too minor to be taken for anything, but still, I did wince.
PRESENTATION
Of the ins and outs of Space Patrol, you will find more in Jean-Noel Bassior's book upon its release. I will concern myself with the manner of presentation.
MISCELLANEOUS
To be sure, there were some things that did not pass muster with me. As I said, the aforementioned fragility of Tonga given her background. Cadet Happy was a bit overdrawn though very likable. In "the Big Impersonation" Corry, in the shape of the person who started the mess tried to convince Robbie (Major Robertson) and Cadet Happy of his identy and they weren't buying. One would think that they would have some code phrase. Also, The bad guys break into the security area so much one would think that Robbie would have been sacked ages ago. In "Uncertain Death", there is the opening scene where Buzz Corry demonstrates to some cadets the underlying reason for space suits. I would think that by the time the civilization had become that spacefaring this would be so elementary as to have been well-known by the time one reaches the equivalent of first grade. Speaking of space suits, I would think that a spacefaring civilization would have developed a more easily-used, less bulky type that could be quickly gotten in and out of, say a body-shaped net, the netting of which conducted an invisible force field, with the appropriate controllers in some kind of black box with the air generator or on a utility belt. This would be ideal for an organization that dealt with space emergencies. I also found the ethnic Irish stuff to be a bit out of place there, One would think that would be passe on a united Earth, let alone a united Solar System and in the 30th centruy. Ditto for some of the Western thingsl like accents. And enough with "That's my Cadet", it stopped being funny the fifth time it was used to punctuate the otherwise good comic endings that were an integral part of the show, although it was cute in "An Uncertain Death" when Corry wrote something out on a peice of paper that he handed to Tonga and she opened it and the last shot is, "That's my Cadet" written out, but by that time the schtick was getting stale. I did not like having the narrator, either (no doubt, a leftover from radio). Overall these are minor annoyances
It has been the habit of the detractors of this type of shows to dismiss them as "outer space Westerns", meaning simplistic tripe (not true even of Westerns). Nothing could be further from the truth. They were so varied as to cut across genres and each had its own niche. whereas Tom Corbett: Space Cadet was almost a West Point with a futuristic setting, you could see the emphasis on the idea that this was the Age of the Conquest of Space. For one thing, you have a kind of Science Officer, Dr. Joan Dale, in the Command structure. Space Patrol resembles more of a modern police beuraucracy in its pre-ossification stages. The predominant sound in Buzz Corry's office was teletypes like in John Cameron Swazy's news program of the same time period. Note that you see precious little of the actual science departments, but one of the major characters is the Security Chief. Although we know that there is some science and exploration done by Space Patrol, we know more about its C3I (Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence), organization and politics. Also, projects like making a planet are not the kind of things done by a frontier civilization. In fact, One sees more stories about being lost in, than about exploration of, space.
Beyond all of this, Space Patrol was not meant to have any significan didactic value as long is it does not really beat up the way the world works. The writer Ayn Rnad had the best handle on the matter when she identified the target of art as what she called "Sense of LIfe" which she defined as "An emotionally integrated, preconceptual equivalent of philosophy; particularlly metaphysics [the way the wrold works]". Further she goes on to quote Aristotle: "Fiction is more important [in humna endeavor] than history. History tells us the way things happened, fiction tell us how things might and ought to be". In that sense, and it may not just be by chance that the space shows were contemporary to the height of Miss Rand's career as a fiction writer. It seems to me that in terms of culture, psychology and implicit philosophy (read sense of life), they were both plugged in to the same things and that these things were central aspects of how we functioned in the middle twentieth century. In fact when I knew enough about Miss Rand's explicit philosophy to pass judgement, I said "Wow; Space Patrol come to life: This will power Man to the stars". That and her explanation of the psychology of childhood, as much as anything else was the key to me buyimg Objectism. This was because it connected the explicitly rational but abstract content with the real world in a way that could be understood empirically rather than abstractly and joined the very intellectaul and logical content of the explicit philosophy to an emotional leitmotif that, by my calculations, fit it perfectly. Of the relationship between Space Patrol and Objectivism, I have said elswhere "One is a beacon from a bright and interesting future; the other is the means for getting there". Whether Miss Rand liked or was even aware of Space Patrol, I do not know.
Overall, for content and presentation, I can give it, bearing in mind its time, a B to an A- Moderns may not make the same connections that we did because the marketing interactivity is gone, and our understanding of the science precludes much of what was believed to be at least possible then. Also the characters aren't as "gritty", vulgar or explicit as today.
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THE SETTING