 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A CAPTAIN VIDEO PHOTO GALLERY, Part 2--- |
|
|
|
One day in mid-December 1950, Captain Video (Richard Coogan) called in the Video Ranger (Don Hastings) for a very serious talk. It turned out the Captain had discovered a criminal conspiracy so vast, so well-hidden, that the only way to fight it was for the Captain to leave the Rangers and work completely undercover. But the Video Rangers would not be leaderless during this indefinite interval, because the Captain had been foresightedly training a replacement. Captain Video (Coogan) indicated a door. The door opened, and in walked--- Captain Video (Al Hodge)! The next day, and from then on, Captain Video WAS Al Hodge, and the original Captain was never heard from again.
Similar approaches were used in giving the Captain a new space ship, whenever the model-makers had come up with a new design. The old ship was wrecked in some mishap, and Captain Video promptly invented a new and better space vehicle for future adventures.
When the X-10 was wrecked (not for the first time) in mid-March 1952, it was replaced by the Galaxy, which for the first time gave the Captain and the Ranger airplane-like seats and an airplane-like cockpit. The most distinctive features were a rear hatch shaped like an upside-down U, and an art-deco-style porthole on the side of the cockpit behind the Captain's right shoulder. (There was no porthole on the left side, strangely.) According to producer Olga Druce, interviewed in later years, Arthur C. Clarke had a hand in the design of the Galaxy I set!
Here are some screen shots from the Galaxy's second adventure, involving a comet headed for Pluto. These shots are from the only available video tape known to me which shows the Captain and the Ranger at the (mainly invisible) controls of the Galaxy. |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Another view of the cockpit, with Video and the Ranger fighting the controls (almost all conveniently out of sight at the bottom of the screen in all shots). |
|
|
Captain Video and the Ranger are taking the Galaxy perilously close to a giant comet! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Meanwhile the renegade Ranger (center) and other members of the Galaxy's crew are escaping in the space jeep, which in these early days was represented by a strange, one-sided airplane-like canopy, as seen in this shot from the same comet episode. (Click on this photo to see the Galaxy II, Captain Video's mightiest spacecraft.) |
|
|
Flaming fragments from the giant comet menace the Galaxy, but even worse, unknown to Captain Video and the Ranger, a renegade Ranger has activated that self-distruct system we find on all science-fictional space ships from that day to this one! Double jeopardy! If the comet doesn't get them, their ship will explode anyway! What hope is there for our heroes? |
|
|
|
|