Salvage 1

When I saw this show as a young boy I actually worked on building my own craft to go into space. I thought the show was a great how-to and my friends and I discussed the process during every spare moment.

We even went so far as building a capsule out of 2 by 4s and aluminum foil. We thought we could just have one our parents order the rocket fuel we would need for the engines we didn't have.

Those adventures lasted much longer than the series. The movie pilot was excellent but once it got away from the gimmick it wasn't that good.

This was one of those great little things you'd find on TV at that time: a movie that should have been a laugh-filled schlock-fest - but they actually tried to take it seriously. Surprisingly (and thanks largely to Griffith), they manage to pull it off. There was even a short-lived TV Series - but the writers went with the weird storylines rather than the more A-Team adventurey that it was clearly meant to be.

The movie-length pilot of "Salvage 1" concerns a salvage man, an ex-astronaut and a few friends who build a rocket out of junk and launch it to the moon to retrieve gear from one of the Apollo sites to pay off a tax debt. Despite obviously cheap special effects, it does a great job of capturing the excitement of spaceflight, and also has some wonderfully funny moments, such as Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) phoning the FAA to lodge their flight plan. Highly recommended for space buffs. The weekly series, in which Broderick attempts other salvage operations, was watchable but never re-captured the highs of the pilot telemovie.

Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) is a junk dealer who is willing to buy and sell just about anything across the globe. He sees a TV news report and comes up with an idea. He would fly to the moon and retrieve the various scraps left behind by the Apollo missions. He recruits former NASA astronaut Skip Carmichael (Joel Higgins) and rocket fuel scientist Melanie Slozar (Trish Stewart) to create a revolutionary private rocket ship out of a cement mixer. The government would give it the call sign Salvage 1. There's the perfunctory black worker in the group. In the second season, the interfering government agent Klinger goes away and Melanie starts mentoring young orphan Michelle Ryan.

The pilot is a fun movie. The science is crap but the movie is actually good. Andy Griffith is a great TV leading man. The premise is a little silly but good enough for a fun caper. The issue with the show is that it should stay much close to the rocket idea. This should be a series about the trio making a space travel service. They could retrieve valuable asteroids and have tourists go to the moon. The possibilities are endless. A rich benefactor could push for a trip to Mars. NASA should try harder to end the competition from their business. Industrial espionage would definitely try to steal Mel's formula. Instead, the show goes all over the place. The plot gets rather random. The gang literally rescues different horses in two different episodes in two different stories. They're seeding clouds, mining diamonds, and moving an iceberg. There is an alien episode and a robot episode. Granted, I like the robot. The show needs to stay with their revolutionary rocket. It's like somebody invented and owns the internet. Then we watch him do nothing about the internet. Nevertheless, everybody likes Andy and this is a fun short-lived series.

This show was a wonderful show. First of all, Andy Griffith. Maybe his shows are too quaint for some...but I loved them. Andy's soft, wise and yet accessible personae is alive and well in this show. Truly he made the show.

But the premise was great too. A home made rocket ship to salvage space junk. What a great idea. The show worked too. I watched this show with my family (I was in Jr HS a the time) and it proved to be a show that we all enjoyed equally. We were, as a family, very disappointed when this show was canceled.

I imagine that it had more to do with budget or keeping main cast members in place than popularity. While the show did not pull down top rating honors...it was the show that my friends and I would always get together and talk about in school.