TOM CORBETT: SPACE CADET

   US tv series (1950-55). CBS TV, later ABC TV, and then NBC TV for season 5. Prod Mort Abrahams. Writers included Albert Aley, Alfred BESTER, Jack Weinstock. Dirs included George Gould, Ralph Ward. Starring Frankie Thomas, Jan Merlin, Al Markim, Michael Harvey. 5 seasons. 3 15min episodes weekly for first 4 seasons; weekly 30min episodes in season 5. B/w.

   This was one of the earliest US children's-sf tv serials (CAPTAIN VIDEO was earlier, but TC:SC got into space first). Very loosely based on Robert A. HEINLEIN's Space Cadet (1948), it concerns teenaged Tom Corbett (Thomas),who is a cadet in the Solar Guards, an interplanetary police force in AD2350 that helps maintain the Solar Alliance of Earth, Mars and Venus.Later in the series the cadets leave the Solar System and go out into the Galaxy. The scientific adviser was Willy LEY. As with other sf serials of the early 1950s, the concept was on a grand scale but the visual effects were severely limited by budget and by the necessity to broadcast live: much had to be described in dialogue or merely suggested. Nevertheless, the show was hugely successful - it introduced the phrase "Blast off!" into popular speech - and was followed by comic strips, comic books, toys, etc., in one of the first examples of the merchandising power of televised sf. 8 Tom Corbett: Space Cadet hardcover books by Carey Rockwell (a pseudonym) were published 1952-6, beginning with Stand By For Mars! * (1952).

   PN/JB