Captain Video and His Video Rangers

Here is an anecdote from the Captain Video show, as told to me by an elderly relative: The Captain Video studio was in a building wherein the legendary Wanamaker department store was also housed. One episode of the series called for a doctor to examine a severely injured astronaut, and due the proximity of the department store and time constraints, at the last minute a hapless staff member was sent to the department store to obtain a prop stethoscope. Unfortunately, the store did not have an actual stethoscope, but the staff member was able to obtain a toy doctor kit as a substitute.

Captain Video was aired live, of course. When the actor portraying the doctor tried to use the toy stethoscope, he found that the instrument was sized for a child's head, and that it could't fit into both ears of an adult. The actor playing the severely injured spaceman looked up and saw his compatriot struggling with the prop, and exploded into laughter for several minutes.

This is the testimony that was given unto me, and though I cannot authenticate it, it seems credible.

It is well known and documented that this program was truly a mass phenomenon, just as it is well known that only a paltry few hours of kine-scope footage remain of it. I personally have seen some of that footage, and I can state for the record that if Captain Video were broadcast today, I would watch it regularly. It was great stuff, and the world needs Captain Video now more than ever.

A former Capt. Video scripter named Carey Wilbur wrote the first draft of the classic Star Trek episode 'Space Seed.' As we know now, that episode, besides being excellent in its own right, was the springboard for 'Star Trek 2, Wrath of Khan,' universally known as the best of all Star Trek films and one of the all time greatest scifi movies.

Carey Wilbur later said that his story for 'Space Seed' was a reworking of a script he wrote for the Captain Video show, but changing a villain with Greek mythological powers into a genetically superior human. So we can see that history traces a line from Capt. Video to the most popular space opera of the 20th century.

Here is what happened to the most of the kinescopes of the show, per Edie Adams (widow of the legendary Ernie Kovacs):

'In the earlier '70's, the DuMont network was being bought by another company, and the lawyers were in heavy negotiation as to who would be responsible for the library of the DuMont shows currently being stored at the facility, who would bear the expense of storing them in a temperature controlled facility, take care of the copyright renewal, et cetera.

'One of the lawyers doing the bargaining said that he could "take care of it" in a "fair manner," and he did take care of it. At 2 a.m. the next morning, he had three huge semis back up to the loading dock at ABC, filled them all with stored kinescopes and 2" videotapes, drove them to a waiting barge in New Jersey, took them out on the water, made a right at the Statue of Liberty and dumped them in the Upper New York Bay. Very neat. No problem.'

Perhaps someday, when mankind has conquered the solar system and our space ships exceed the speed of light, some intrepid astronaut will overtake the old Dumont Network broadcast signals, now many years outside Earth's solar system, and record the good Captain's adventures for posterity.

Captain Video and His Video Rangers is one of the many television series that the "forgotten" fourth network Dumont is most notable for. First airing in 1949, it may be the first popular science fiction show in North America, if not the world, predating Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and the two shows that begun as a result. When Captain Video was broadcasted, it was an unbelievable success. Both children and adults associated with the show and it gave Dumont an audience for once. The show was filmed live, giving way for improvisation, about five or six days a week. This provided >1500 episodes in the shows six year run, which sounds daily considering there were only about 2130 days in that time. This statistic is also unfortunate as it gives way to the fact that almost none of those episodes may ever be seen, but maybe it wasn't too disappointing. Even with the attention the show got, the show was made on a shoestring budget. Some later science fiction shows like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica showed how heavy budgets may defeat audience reception, but Captain Video persisted despite several difficulties. The original actors who played Captain Video and his nemesis Doctor Pauli left due to the low wages obtained and the stress produced from working on such a frequent show. In many of the early episodes, there is a moment where the camera zooms into a monitor that then shows, a western, in a science fiction show! These were taken from films that Dumont had purchased and decided to splice in in order to make the most of their purchase, despite having nothing to do with the story's plot. The show is not very cohesive at all but it may provide enjoying at times. Some later episodes were written by figures synonymous with the science fiction genre such as Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, but it is very unlikely those episodes still exist. As a result of Dumont's successor wiping, less than a hundred(or even half a hundred) episodes of Captain Video exist. Most surviving episodes are held in the UCLA Film and Television Archive but they have yet to release all of them. Currently, only four episodes from the show are available to be seen, all that is left so far of such a pioneer and forerunner of television history. Those episodes may be seen either on DVD or on the Internet, but their lack of quality and perhaps continuity leaves little to obtain from watching. There was also a movie serial produced by Columbia but that's another story. Overall, Captain Video is an interesting show when it comes to television history but it has little to show with its cheap quality and few episodes.

Who would have thought that a space adventure show could be done with (1) no special effects budget, (2) no prop department, (3) no wardrobe department, (4) sets that generally consisted of blank walls, (5) no space suits or space ships, and (6) a minimum of action? Well, Captain Video for its first year fit these conditions precisely! Yet it became wildly popular. It was more like radio than television, with the active imaginations of the young viewers having to fill in the many blanks. It would have probably continued to be broadcast indefinitely, 30 to 15 min per day, 3 to 5 days per week, if the always underfunded DuMont network had not gone bankrupt in 1955.

Captain Video, flying fearlessly from planet to planet, protecting the universe from evil, introducing a little child to space ships, exotic peoples and worlds, robots, science, and science fiction. What a legacy to the world! Captain Video is the pioneer who made possible Star Trek and Star Wars and countless other flights of the imagination.

The stories were hokey, the special effects were nonexistent, even the Polaris and the Galaxy were obviously little plastic models with sparks coming out their exhausts, but none of that was important. The courage and the excitement of traveling to strange places and meeting exotic people and bravely defending the weak and the helpless were the things that mattered, the things that lasted through the years, the things that inspired the future.

As a little kid, I remember taking the Radio City tour. We walked through a studio where Captain Video Al Hodge, and Ranger Don Hasting, were rehearsing a show. It was supposed to take place under water. The two actors were sitting on barstools, scripts in hand for the read through. The camera was shooting them through a fish tank, with goldfish swimming around. No special effects budget, indeed! All us kids watched the show, which was very imaginative.

In those early days of TV, the first family in a neighborhood to get a TV would often have to host the neighbors' kids, especially for popular shows. As has happened with flat screen TVs, and the first color TVs, they went through the "tavern stage," where bars would buy the first expensive sets most families couldn't afford, to attract customers with sports events, etc. As sets became more affordable, families bought their own. Today's sports bars seem derivations of the tavern stage.

Also interesting to note, in the early days of TV, there were only a few channels, so audiences pretty much all saw the same shows. With today's proliferation of satellite and cable channels, each has a much smaller share of audience. Except for major sports events, and things like the JFK funeral, presidential inaugurations, etc., we share fewer common experiences than in those days.