Space Patrol (radio series)

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There are other series with the name Space Patrol (disambiguation).

Clarence Doore's cover painting for Space Patrol, a Ziff-Davis comic book tie-in with the radio series

Space Patrol was an old-time radio science fiction serial aimed at juvenile audiences. It ran for 129 episodes from October 1952 to March 1955, though a version of the series was broadcast as early as 1950. Patterned unabashedly after Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Captain Video, the show had the distinction of being one of the few radio programs to have a concurrently running ABC television counterpart. The same cast of actors performed on both shows. The writers, scripts and adventures were quite different in radio versus TV incarnations.

The stories followed the adventures of Commander Buzz Corry (Ed Kemmer) of the United Planets Space Patrol and his young sidekick Cadet Happy (Lyn Osborn) — yes, Cadet Happy — as they faced nefarious villains with diabolical schemes. Not surprisingly for the time, some of these villains had Russian- or German-sounding accents. Cmdr. Corry and his allies were aided by such nifty gadgets as "miniature space-o-phones" and "atomolights." Episodes had such pulp-type titles as "Revolt of the Space Rats" and "The Menace of Planet X."

The special effects used in the half-hour TV episodes had to be in real time. For example, pistols that shot invisible rays necessitated pre-positioning a small explosive charge on the wall. An actor would point the prop at that spot, whereupon the special effects worker would throw the detonation switch. These effects could not have been superimposed on film for the series was done live. For distribution to distant stations, an image of a tiny, bright TV monitor was filmed; these films are called kinescopes and most of the Saturday half-hour TV broadcasts are still available in this form today. There was also a 15-minutes-every-weekday version of the program, at first seen mainly in the Los Angeles viewing area, but also later distributed nationwide via kinescopes; it was never carried by the network.

The show played directly to kids, and each episode shamelessly merchandised various toys and mail-order premiums tied into the series during their commercial breaks. Even the ads for corporate sponsor Chex Cereals used the show's space opera motif in their pitches.

Naturally, the series lacked the adult sophistication of such shows as X Minus One, which focused on adapting short fiction by notable genre names as Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. But as a throwback to the sort of Golden Age space opera popularized in the 1930s, the days of science fiction's infancy, by pioneering magazine editor Hugo Gernsback, Space Patrol is prized by OTR collectors today as one of radio's most enjoyable adventures.

A comic book tie-in, Space Patrol, published by Ziff-Davis in 1952, ran two issues. It featured cover paintings by Norman Saunders and Clarence Doore. Bernard Krigstein illustrated the scripts by Phil Evans.