Space Academy

If there was one show I wish I could see again, it's this one. This one, and maybe the time that dog took a crap in our back yard while hopping on one leg.

Synopsis: A group of high school kids run missions to save stalled freighters, starving aliens or to get groceries. All the while learning about readin', 'ritin, 'rithmatic, love, friendship, and why it's not a good idea to go in a dark cave on a distant planet without a sidearm.

The Space Academy shuttles were shaped like the Pink Pearl erasers we were issued at my school each September. I would usually spend my mornings flying the eraser between desks, landing on strange and exotic textbooks, and confronting hostile alien pencils.

The great Pam Ferdyn starred in this show, and seemingly everything else in those days (It seemed like Ike Eisenmann was in everything too). Unfortunately, the best actor on the show, 'Peepo' failed to find work after Space Academy. Whatever happened to 'Peepo?' Or, as I liked to call him, 'Peepoo.'

The Space Academy idea is not new to sci-fi and so many independent writers have developed their own "academy" or shared with a previously developed idea and created parallel stories. I find that this series was underdeveloped in character and plot. Boy, would I like to either see more of the same idea (parameters of what a Space Academy "should be")or resurrect this one. The old cast members could be instructors with a new Blue Team...since young and charismatic continues to be the theme of current producers. This series was important to me. Not as a Jr. Star Trek but as a never tried before live action sci-fi series-with child actors. It allowed viewers (like children)to get a taste of sci-fi (and the possible future-I like Ark II for the same reason)that readers have been experiencing for years. As an impressionable young adult at the time, this type of series cemented my love not only for tv but for reading at a time I thought that I did not want to put much time into opening a book. It gave me the world and outer space,too. Can't beat that!

I must agree with the first part of the last reviewer's comments, regarding the budget and props of the show. However, I believe that the reviewer missed the point entirely regarding sending the kid's on missions; this was a kid's show, directed at a younger audience, and the hero's of the show were other kids. The audience could imagine themselves having those adventures and saving the day. What would the point be if adults gave the orders and were the ones who set things right? Realistically speaking, it never made sense on Star Trek that the captain and first officer went on the landing parties/away teams, but they were the lead actors. That does not happen in our modern military. Space Academy was a TV show.

Short lived space series starring Jonathan Harris. In childhood I felt that, in Space Academy, Jonathan Harris was just too unlike his Dr Smith character and I struggled to warm to 1970s Harris...I was a kid stuck in the 1960s! But it was not all bad news, in childhood, I remember being thrilled by some of the low budget alien planets seen in Space Academy. I discovered that the "special effects" guy in charge had no effects experience before Space Academy! Do you also remember Filmation's Ark 11 series? The bus-like vehicle in that series looks like a spacecraft in Space Academy. Space Academy deserves a DVD rental...mainly for the mild Lost In Space connection and the cool always used "Filmation music cues" that fill the series. There was a spin-off series - Jason of Star Command - which, after a bumpy first season, improved in year two.

I remember watching this in my PJs around age 5 but for some odd reason I thought I remembered it running on Saturday late afternoons rather than Saturday mornings. A lot of things I only remember bits and pieces of from that period of time.

Of this show, I only remember a few things with any certainty. One is me thinking "hey, the mean guy from Lost In Space is on the show" and "hey, Scotty is on this show". I also remember thinking why the engine on their ship looked like a television set with an orange screen. And the kids all having some special powers---they'd all get in a circle holding hands and chanting "concentrate, concentrate".

I can remember being well entertained by this show. I'm sure it was cheesy as hell, but hey...what in the 1970s wasn't?