Operação Resgate

When I saw this show as a young boy I actually worked on building my own craft to go into space. I thought the show was a great how-to and my friends and I discussed the process during every spare moment.

We even went so far as building a capsule out of 2 by 4s and aluminum foil. We thought we could just have one our parents order the rocket fuel we would need for the engines we didn't have.

Those adventures lasted much longer than the series. The movie pilot was excellent but once it got away from the gimmick it wasn't that good.

So there I am, channel surfing, feeling like much of America at the time and saying to myself "nothing's on..." and droning on about why they don't make more adventure shows, or shows about space, or shows about soldiers fighting for us, or even shows about pirates.

Then comes Salvage-1, and it's fairly entertaining, and creates a niche audience, and suddenly all is right with the world. I don't have to wait for Star Wars to hit the theatres again ... I don't have to wait for 2001 to come to KTVU ... I don't have to keep rewatching Kirk and Spock on my TV ... nor watch Battlestar Galactica with a wry expression because it's really a children's program.

I don't recall too much about the show, other than the very technically inaccurate near shootdown by USAF F-4 Phantoms of Salvage-1 (the pilots counting down to launch a sidewinder? Give me a break), but I do recall enjoying the show for what it was, and am terribly sorry that more shows that reached beyond family and law enforcement weren't made, because people liked them. Read that as usually young folks or older folks who were heavily into science and engineering, and wanted to create a better future for themselves, and mankind.

Such was Salvage-1. It also brought a very healthy recycling theme to America, which was still contending with environmental abuse by some sociopathic corporate board members who had to be reigned in through our national and state level legislature. Salvage-1 was just that; a vessel that salvaged, and brought home things that were broken so they could be remade to work again. That applies to people and animals, not just machines. What healthier message could there be for the TV viewing audience? I really liked this show, and I was sorry it got side tracked in non space-oriented stories, and that it was eventually cancelled. Oh well.

If you see it again, then give it a chance. You might like it.

This show was a wonderful show. First of all, Andy Griffith. Maybe his shows are too quaint for some...but I loved them. Andy's soft, wise and yet accessible personae is alive and well in this show. Truly he made the show.

But the premise was great too. A home made rocket ship to salvage space junk. What a great idea. The show worked too. I watched this show with my family (I was in Jr HS a the time) and it proved to be a show that we all enjoyed equally. We were, as a family, very disappointed when this show was canceled.

I imagine that it had more to do with budget or keeping main cast members in place than popularity. While the show did not pull down top rating honors...it was the show that my friends and I would always get together and talk about in school.

This was one of those great little things you'd find on TV at that time: a movie that should have been a laugh-filled schlock-fest - but they actually tried to take it seriously. Surprisingly (and thanks largely to Griffith), they manage to pull it off. There was even a short-lived TV Series - but the writers went with the weird storylines rather than the more A-Team adventurey that it was clearly meant to be.

Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) is a junk dealer who is willing to buy and sell just about anything across the globe. He sees a TV news report and comes up with an idea. He would fly to the moon and retrieve the various scraps left behind by the Apollo missions. He recruits former NASA astronaut Skip Carmichael (Joel Higgins) and rocket fuel scientist Melanie Slozar (Trish Stewart) to create a revolutionary private rocket ship out of a cement mixer. The government would give it the call sign Salvage 1. There's the perfunctory black worker in the group. In the second season, the interfering government agent Klinger goes away and Melanie starts mentoring young orphan Michelle Ryan.

The pilot is a fun movie. The science is crap but the movie is actually good. Andy Griffith is a great TV leading man. The premise is a little silly but good enough for a fun caper. The issue with the show is that it should stay much close to the rocket idea. This should be a series about the trio making a space travel service. They could retrieve valuable asteroids and have tourists go to the moon. The possibilities are endless. A rich benefactor could push for a trip to Mars. NASA should try harder to end the competition from their business. Industrial espionage would definitely try to steal Mel's formula. Instead, the show goes all over the place. The plot gets rather random. The gang literally rescues different horses in two different episodes in two different stories. They're seeding clouds, mining diamonds, and moving an iceberg. There is an alien episode and a robot episode. Granted, I like the robot. The show needs to stay with their revolutionary rocket. It's like somebody invented and owns the internet. Then we watch him do nothing about the internet. Nevertheless, everybody likes Andy and this is a fun short-lived series.