Countdown X - Alarm im All

The Cape was a good show but never given the chance to find an audience or should I say the audience couldn't find the show. In my area it played at 1:30am on Saturday nights. The networks probably would have done it in even faster. Later I saw one of the actors selling real estate on HGTV House Hunters. With a large cast and a lot of location shooting it was probably and expensive show to do. The success of SPACE COWBOYS (AWFUL) tells me that a show about the US space program could have been successful if it had been given a good time slot. I wish the one season was available of DVD. Since it involved NASA the show had a real feeling about it. The theme music was also very good. One of the final shows that involved a Russian capsule with dead Cosmonauts aboard was excellent.

Unfortunately for viewers, their votes don't count. Shows get canceled due to studio politics. The producers don't invest enough time & money selling new shows to generate enough sponsor support. And, residuals aren't paid on new shows (not in the contract). Thus, great shows get canceled. If production executives, network presidents & studio owners cared about the viewers more than their own paychecks, shows might last long enough to generate a supportive audience. Instead, new shows are launched with limited fanfare, the shows creators are already working on their next big thing, and viewers are left wondering what just happened. Network execs. don't care when a show gets canceled. They just want the bottom line on profits. Thus, we (the viewers) are cheated out of great entertainment. Too bad the networks aren't owned by the viewers...things would change for the better. But, that will NEVER happen. Too bad. I miss The Cape and all other great shows like it, that are systematically replaced by less-appealing shows that cost less to produce. Follow the money, and you can prove this to yourself.

Some professions lend themselves better to television than others, and that of the pilot (let's face it, astronauts are little more than uber-pilots) is one of them - unless it involves adventure, that is. If it involves straight drama, the problem is that you're challenged to be just as involving when you're grounded as when you're in flight; the only thing anyone remembers about "Spencer's Pilots" is its stirring theme music*, and "Call To Glory" was similarly forgettable.

"The Cape" was no more successful in that respect; to be fair it wasn't really a BAD show - from Corbin Bernsen onwards nobody's acting stunk up the place, and the writing was okay (plus the sight of Bobbie Phillips post-"Murder One" and pre-those "Chameleon" TV movies was never a minus) - but it never really overcame the basic problem of what to do with the characters, and it played far too much like a soap for comfort, except when it launched into space... of course, it would have been too implausible to have a crisis occur every week (in real life, thankfully, accidents in the US space programme are rare), and they didn't. But it was at the expense of making the show more attention-keeping.

Mainly notable as one of the last shows produced by MTM before Twentieth Century Fox swallowed the cat whole - a sad comedown from the days of "Rhoda" and "Hill Street Blues."

"I mean, come on.. an astronaut attempting suicide because of unrequited love of other astronaut who she slept with in 90210 fashion. Give us a break, this would never happen in the space program and this is an insult to the real NASA employees and Air Force Men and women who do there jobs with the Space program with professionalism and great respect."

In light of recent events in the astronaut corps this 7 year old comment is something the author may wish to take back...

Yes, the show could be unrealistic (well totally unrealistic at times) but it was a fun show to watch regardless. I would love to have it available on DVD at some point.

The Cape was a great show for those of us who lived in the same community in which it was filmed or for those who wanted to but could not. I am guessing that the drama was set to be soap opera like to show us that even astronauts were people too. It obviously was not supported by NASA as the agency can only provide footage to all interested parties not actually produce a commercial (for profit) program. For me it was exciting to see venues I recognized including Cocoa Village, Cocoa, Florida, in the grocery store shopping scene of one of the episodes. Quick spoiler: No such kind of store there in the mid 1990's or now in 2019.