Raumpatrouille - Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion

Brilliant "space patrol" series complemented by Peter Thomas' famous soundtrack.

Incredibly, even today (2020) the special effects and sci-fi environment - though dated and in 60s style - don't seem absurd and are still fairly convincing. This speaks for the visionary achievement of the series' creators at the time of production during the "space race" years, ahead of the 1969 moon landing.

Raumpatrouille and the Orion's rebellious commander Cliff Mc Lane are obvious templates later copied to create StarTrek and captain Kirk. The series is a genre-defining masterpiece with quirky dialogues and enjoyable plots. Highly recommended for sci-fi fans!

The series was shown on TV before Star Trek had appeared. If you compare the special effects of Raumpatrouille to those of the first Star Trek pilot (which had not been aired until the early 90s), they were very much alike. Of course, today most people just laugh at such effects. But unlike Star Trek, the plot of Raumpatrouille and its political contents was far more symbolic and, I think, more interesting. Unfortunately, the series never evolved any further and stopped after the seventh episode for some reason. The German TV station Pro7 announced a continuation of Raumpatrouille in the 90s, but I doubt that it will ever be finished. And if it was, it will most probably not have the same taste as the original series.

"Raumpatrouille" was the very first sci-fi series I had the pleasure to watch. My elder brother and me sat in the living room, watching Dietmar Schönherr, Eva Pflug and all the other noble astronauts battling the "Frogs" or renegade robots on a b/w screen.

I was 9 years old, and the whole thing struck me completely. Oh, how i envied a classmate of my brother, who owned Peter Thomas's movie theme on a 12", starting with that unique metallic countdown. For a year I was painting spaceships and foreign planets. Not that i wanted to become an astronaut, but a normal family life with a normal wife, normal kids and a normal job on a normal spacestation would do just fine.

Now that most of us have taken the red pill, passing the outer rims of the known universe in cryosleep, side by side with sigourney, to the proverbial hell and back, the poetry and twinkling of the first days are almost gone.

I got me the series on video, but i can't get back that incredibly "involved" feeling. It was part of the times, i guess. This kind of future really belongs to the past. Yet, none of it's successors made me feel like "orion" again. No, wait: the first "Star Wars" episode (or Episode Four, aargh...) had a comparable impact back in 1977.

This series were my first contact with science fiction and after 30 years it's great to see them again. The series are repeated in Germany from time to time and it's a lot of laugh to see a flat-iron or a faucet, which are used as ship-controls. After the mission the crew met in the bar, which was deep underwater and you can see the fishes through the windows. IMHO there were two things, which made this mini-series successful. First, the crew-members were from different countries which was explained by their names (it was the time of the cold war). On the other side, there were extraterrestrial enemies, the "frogs", who wanted to slave the earth. And all the things were "sciene-fiction", they had video-phones (in a time where only a handful of people had a phone), they lived on the ground of the sea, they were flying with space-ships through the universe.

This series is fun. Released before Star Trek it has a great storyline about the future of mankind. But as usual it was canceled by the german TV despite of its success. Rumor has it, that there are plans to relaunch the series with Roland Emmerich as producer. Lets hope and see!!