Captain Midnight

We in Australia knew Richard Webb's series as 'Jet Jackson - Flying Commando' and wondered why the characters' lips moved strangely when 'Jet Jackson' was uttered! It would be years later before we realised that the character name had been changed (and thus dubbed) in syndication and obviously also for overseas sale. Maybe my favourite 'character' was the Bell 'Silver Dart' but this, along with 'Rocky Jones, Space Ranger' was my favourite after-school entertainment in the early 1960s.

I've picked up a few episodes of 'Captain Midnight' but it's just not the same as hearing.....'JET JACKSON.....FLY - ING COMMANDO' echo out from the TV speaker. For that I have to resort to a 40 year-old reel to reel tape. Ah, nostalgia.

Addendum: Four and a half years after my original comment, I'm still waiting for this series to appear on DVD. Here's hoping it happens before I pass on!

Further addendum: I've now acquired the 3 DVD set which includes about 30 episodes, a mixture of original 'Captain Midnight' and 'Jet Jackson' prints. The quality is variable although the soundtracks have been pretty much 'cleaned up'. Even the poorer prints are entertaining because, surprisingly, the stories are, for the time, entertaining and soundly constructed. Jim Albright, CM/JJ's alter-ego, never talks down to children which is probably why fans remember the show with affection. Our hero treated us with respect. Here's hoping that better quality prints, plus copies of the missing episodes, come to light in the future.

I would rush home from school to watch Jet Jackson. I loved it. He always had the best fist fights (actually his stunt double looked like a real boxer) - Icky was also a treat in these fights as well ! Now I'm trying to collect videos of the series (can anyone help out there ??). Watching the episodes now seems almost as satisfying as 40 years ago - it takes me back to more simpler times when : landing a jet plane on a flat stretch of beach was easy, anything scientific was fabulous and atomic power was the next big thing. There was even an episode where Jet takes a traumatised young boy into his bedroom for the night. The Captain Midnight episodes are a real eye-opener from the point of view of the pervasive use of advertising (Ovaltine). "Be the first in your gang to have a Secret Squadron Emblem" (courtesy of a jar of Ovaltine). I can't get enough of Jet Jackson

Captain Midnight was based on a WWII era Radio Show of the same name (just updated for TV). The Radio show and the original TV Airing was sponsored by Ovaltine which marketed "Secret Decoder Ring" and Badge tie-ins during the Radio show (and I think the TV Show). There was also a fan club that allowed you to be a member of Captain Midnight's "Secret Squadron". They owned the character name. When the show went into syndication, they were no longer the sponsor so the syndicated versions had to have the name altered (to Jet Jackson). One of the changes that was made in the TV Show (from the Radio Version) was the alteration of the Secret Squadron serial numbers from SS-X (Captain Midnight was of course SS-1) to SQ-X due to the SS reference being in poor taste due to WWII Nazi associations.

One of my favorite shows from my youth, in the 1980s I was bought some tapes of it, watching them took me back 30 years. I note the plane was the Doulgas Skyrocket, not the Bell X-1, even as a 5-7 year old I recognized it. I have an older brother who built a model of it, and we had a neighbor who was a pilot and knew the various aircraft. No, I never did get my decoder ring, the show premiered in September, 1954, I had just turned 5, that was a little above my head. And yes I was puzzled when I few years later I saw an episode of "Jet Jackson" and was puzzled as to why the program I knew as "Captain Midnight" was being aired under another name. Richard Webb said that was the strangest syndication deal in TV. The programs hold up, like most quality children's entertainment, it tries to introduce its young viewers to adult (in the older sense of that word) concepts, in my favorite episode "The Secret Room" the Captain plays along with a phony medium, telling Ikky "He's a crook. And a very clever one. I want to find out what he's really up to."

Captain Midnight was a crime fighter, a jet pilot, a scientist and a super role model for kids. He gave me an early desire to become a jet pilot when I grew up. I never did though, become a jet pilot I mean. I was a fan from the beginning of the TV series and never missed an episode when we lived in Los Angeles. I had a secret squadron decoder ring too. If I remember it right, I sent in the paper seal on the inside of the cap of a bottle of Ovaltine plus 25 cents and I got the ring in the mail. Pretty cheesy little gadget that fell apart quickly but it was a symbol of the show and I liked having it. I believe he had a slick special car too to go along with the streamlined theme of the base and the jet. Yeah, really good entertainment for kids of the day IMHO.

-bm