Jason of Star Command

Perhaps the biggest budget 1970s Saturday morning series. And set in space.

Without Youtube, it is hard to find this series today, what was it like? Despite Star Trek's James Doohan being present in the first season, it is actually the second season (when he is gone) that the show really comes together.

The whole series is partly damaged by a constantly laughing villain - Sid Haig as "Dragos" - who acts like he is in a High School play. Thankfully, he seems to get less screen time in season two and we have newly introduced characters in the second year to focus on (blue faced John Russell as The Commander and "Samantha").

The second season also has the episodes expanded to 25 minutes but still in the serial format. You can totally follow year two without seeing year one, so if you don't wish to invest time into watching the whole series - I would just jump right into the second year.

This show was a great kids show. Sure it maybe wasn't the most original serial type show, but look at how well the classic movie 'Star Wars' did by copying the standard serial action adventure theme. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century continued the concept and even used names like 'Twiki' for a robot, where JOSC had already used the name WIKKI as a flying mini robot gadget. Like most posts this show was a fun show, Dragos was one of the greatest bad guys in any kids show.

The 28 episodes of the Saturday morning sci-fi series "Jason of Star Command" were originally broadcast on CBS from 1978-1980. The first season's 16 episodes (15 minutes each) were the live action portion of "Tarzan and the Super 7". The 12 episodes from Season Two had their own thirty-minute time-slot.

The series was a "Space Academy" spin-off with a number of "Star Wars" features. It may remind contemporary viewers of the "Buck Rogers" series, or at least a low budget version targeted at pre-teen boys. Craig Littler plays the title character, a space pilot assigned to defend Star Command (a Division of Space Academy) from a "Ming the Merciless" type, the evil "Master of the Cosmos" Dragos (nicely overplayed by Sid Haig). Dragos commands a legion of mumbling creatures with moth heads, mostly they just sit around a table and listen to him rant about Jason. Littler is pretty much devoid of any real acting talent but at least knows enough to not look directly into the camera when speaking his lines.

Littler and Haig are about all that links the two seasons as the show was recast when it was renewed. You are unlikely to find a more extreme example of producers shooting themselves in the foot between seasons than what happened with this series. The show's original draws were James "Scotty" Doohan (who attracted to "Star Trek" fans) and Susan O'Hanlon (who filled out her costume so well that male viewers kept tuning in).

For Season Two Doohan was replaced by John "The Lawman" Russell, a decent actor who must have needed work very badly because he let them paint his face blue; although this make-up arrangement had no vital link to the storyline. O'Hanlon was replaced by Tamora "Cleopatra Jones" Dobson, who might actually have been a worse actor than Littler; which might account for the perception that his acting improved during the course of the series.

Also of note during Season Two was the three-episode appearance of an aging Francine York as Queen Medusa (a character probably based on her guest role as Queen Niolani ten years earlier on "Lost in Space"). Queen Medusa looked like my cub-scout den mother, but dressed in purple spandex and wearing way too much make-up.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Jason of Star Command is one of my favorite shows. As a young teenager, I had already enjoyed earlier related Filmation shows, Tarzan, and Space Academy both of which were great stuff. When Jason came out as part of the whole Tarzan and the Super 7 package, the whole 90 minutes worth of action just about blew me out of the water, and Jason was one of my favorite segments.

Jason was packed to the gills with great special effects produced on a shoestring budget. The whole production moved along at a brisk, sledgehammer pace, with solid stories, and reasonably good performances, in particular those of Charlie Dell (as Professor E.J. Parsafoot) and Sid Haig (Dragos), both of whom obviously had a great time filling their roles.

The whole thing was reminiscent of the old science fiction movie serials of the 40s, such as Undersea Kingdom and the Phantom Empire, as well as its contemporary serial like films Flesh Gordon and Starcrash.

The show (deservedly) earned its own half-hour time slot, but faded all to quickly, for my money.

Filmation did two other fine science fiction serials, both animated, in 1979, following Jason: Mighty Mouse: The Great Space Chase (as part of the New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, and later repackaged inaccurately for home video as Mighty Mouse's first "feature legnth movie") which was camped up to the hilt, and the beautifully animated (New Adventures of) Flash Gordon.

I remember watching "Space Academy" as a kid, and not being overly impressed, but still interested enough to watch a few episodes. But I eventually gave up on it. It was a bit too sugary for this young sci-fi fans taste.

Then "Space Academy" gets yanked. And suddenly, in its place, comes a new iteration of the franchise, but with some tweaks. The "effeminate" John Harris is replaced with the more masculine Jimmy Doohan from "Star Trek" in the Commander role. The perky, knowledgeable and tough female characters played by Pamela Perdin and Maggie Cooper are replaced with Susan O'Hanlon, who played a less proactive sidekick. And instead of various imagined mysteries and wonders that might be found in space, the production ripped a page out of "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers" serials (more likely reminded by way of Star Wars' Darth Vader, who played a version of "Ming" the merciless in the Star Wars films) and stuck in Dragos, an archfiend. The icing on the retool cake was of course Jason himself, sporting a Han Solo look and attitude. Other minor tweaks to props and set design smooth out the reworked Space Academy show to make "Jason of Star Command".

Well, Star Wars it ain't, but it served as a passable kiddy sci-fi entertainment back in the 70s. Looking at the series today through adult eyes I can still grin at it. The violence in the show is more abstract and non-threatening. Where ships exchange LASER fire, and where circuits are fried and ships are knocked about, no one actually gets hurt. And unlike Space Academy this show has no real apparent social message, but nor is it preachy. It is, in essence, just a show.

The DVD set is out, and should offer some good nostalgia for those who remember both Space Academy and Jason of Star Command. The "Making of..." documentary shown when the shows first aired is not on the DVD set, but it's not that much of a loss as the featurettes included cover most of the basics on the shows' productions.

Enjoy :-)