Captain Midnight

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

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."

Like the previous commentator, I vividly remember Captain Midnight's mountaintop base, and his scientist assistant "Tut", as well as the great Sid Melton as his mechanic, Ikky (for Ichabod)Mudd "with two Ds". I never understood the reason for the name change to Jet Jackson before I read the trivia note above. It says the Jet Jackson name was used in Australia, but I know it was also used here in the US as well, so I'm still a bit puzzled. Anyway, I am glad of the opportunity to reminisce about one of my favorite childhood TV shows. I believe Sid Melton is still alive, and was still working as of 1999. Some may remember him as "Alf Monroe" on Green Acres.

Does anybody remember what kind of plane Captain Midnight flew in the 50's show? They used to identify it in the closing credits--as I recall it was a Douglas aircraft. I barely remember the show from it's run as "Captain Midnight". I watched it quite a bit when it was syndicated as "Jet Jackson".

Looking back, the convenient appearances of Secret Squadron members whenever and wherever Captain Midnight got into trouble was pretty contrived. I remember an episode where the Captain and Icky were locked in a basement. A sweet little old lady was toddling by, saw them through the window, reached into her little bag, and pulled out her Squadron communicator to call SQ 3. From the perspective of the paranoid 21sr century it seems sort of creepy. Loved it at the time, though.

For a kid in the 1950s, this show was cool. Over the passage of 50 years, only a few general images have endured, hopefully unaffected by the nasty tricks that memory plays on a person! Captain Midnight's base of operations was perched atop a mountain or plateau and included a landing strip that extended over a precipice. His jet plane, with the short, straight wings, might have been modeled after one of the Bell "X" planes (such as the ones flown by test pilot Chuck Yeager). I think there were circles on the plane's wings, and they reminded me of the popular breakfast cereal "Cheerios." Captain Midnight's goofy sidekick, Ichabod Mudd, was an idiot, but his white-coated laboratory technician/inventor, played by Olan Soule, was a technical genius.

Yes, I proudly wore my secret decoder ring---ordered by mail, perhaps with coupons obtained from jars of "choclaty" Ovaltine---but it disappeared long ago. I wonder how many messages I decoded with it. Ovaltine, a drink powder resembling the kind used to make hot chocolate, was sold in a dark brown glass jar with a yellow label and a wide opening (for easy spooning of its contents). Its flavor was unlike that of any other drink and I never enjoyed it much.

The "Jet Jackson" dubbing later on amused and confused me but I took it in stride, not having a clue as to the legal requirement for the name change.

When I was a kid watching this show, the names of the actors meant little to me. Today, though, I like to see who played what on the shows I enjoyed as a kid and try to see the context of their careers at that time. Although it's interesting to see what Richard Webb did before the show, it is simply amazing to see all the movie and TV work that Olan Soule did over the years---he was everywhere! No doubt I saw him back then in other shows, but I can't remember if I recognized him as Captain Midnight's lab person.