Captain Midnight (TV series)

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Television series
Original title Captain Midnight
Country of production United States
original language English
Year (s) 1954-1956
Production
company		 Screen Gems
length 30 minutes
Episodes 39 in 2 seasons
genre Adventure , science fiction
production Fred Briskin
First broadcast September 9, 1954 on CBS
occupation

Captain Midnight is an American adventure - television series with science fiction -elements which produces and 1954-1956 when CBS aired. For the syndication , the series had to be renamed Jet Jackson, Flying Commando for legal reasons (see the section on production history) . The series goes back to the character of the superhero Captain Midnight , who first appeared in a radio play series in 1938 .

action

Intro on opening credits statue:

On a mountaintop, high above a large city, stands the headquarters of a man devoted to the cause of freedom and justice ... a war hero who has never stopped fighting against his countrie's enemies ... a private citizen who is dedicating his life to the struggle against evil men everywhere ...

( On a mountaintop high above a large city is the headquarters of a man who stands up for freedom and justice ... a war hero who never stopped fighting his country's enemies ... a citizen who struggled his life Villains , wherever they may be, dedicated ... )

Captain Midnight, Sergeant "Icky" Mudd (Midnights sidekick ) and Dr. Jones are members of the Secret Squadron (German: Wissens- Schwadron ); a private organization working with the US government to protect the US and its free world allies from gangsters and other villains in the near future . Therefore, Midnight and "Icky" often work abroad, where secret agents of the organization also operate, who can contact the headquarters in the USA at any time with a kind of television telephone. For their travels and missions, Midnight and "Icky" use the Silver Dart ( silver arrow ), a rocket plane .

Nuclear power is the subject of at least two episodes . In Mission to Mexico , Midnight and “Icky” work with the Mexican police to prevent uranium-containing material in the form of clay pots from being smuggled out of the country from a cargo ship in order to be abused by a foreign power. In Isle of Mystery they take out an American criminal who wants to establish sole rule on a South Sea island . However, this island is intended as a test site for American hydrogen bombs , so the population must be evacuated. Thanks to the intervention of the two heroes, the islanders can be evacuated and the bomb dropped.

Production history

The character Captain Midnight goes back to the radio play series of the same name, produced from 1938 to 1949 , which was filmed in the 15-part serial of the same name as early as 1942 . While the radio play's original Captain Midnight was a veteran American aviator of World War I , the character in the television series played by Richard Webb was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War .

The Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket

The series was optically and dramatically based on the parallel broadcasts Space Patrol and Captain Video and His Video Rangers ; from the latter, the opening credits were originally taken over and only given a new intro. The Ray Corrigan Ranch in Simi Valley , California was used as the location for the exterior shots . The series was sponsored by Ovaltine ; During the commercial breaks, Midnight and "Icky" appear in their flight attire, analogous to Captain Buzz Corey and Kadett Happy in Space Patrol . The Silver Dart was a mock-up , based on the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket , of which documentary recordings were also used.

Cooperation with the Pentagon or the US Army and US Navy was not always easy. A first attempt by the producers to have documentary film material made available failed because an army officer in charge took the view that the series gave young people an unrealistic image of the armed forces. Eventually, the producers managed to obtain documentary footage from both the Navy and the US Air Force through the Pentagon . B. from the Air Force-produced color documentary Target Nevada (1951).

Since Ovaltine owned the rights to the character of Captain Midnight , the series later had to be renamed Jet Jackson, Flying Commando during the syndicated broadcast and the corresponding text passages were dubbed.

Lore

  • The series is fully edited on DVD , the episode "Mission to Mexico" is freely accessible in the Internet Archive .

Trivia

literature

  • Captain Midnight , in: Patrick Luciano / Gary Coville: American science fiction television series of the 1950s: Episode guides and credits for twenty shows , Jefferson, NC 1998, pp. 83–95. ISBN 0-7864-0434-5
  • Mick Broderick: Justice through Strength and Courage: Captain Midnight and the Military-Industrial Complex , in: Cynthia J. Miller / A. Bowdoin Van Riper (ed.): 1950s "Rocketman" TV Series and their fans. Cadets. Rangers, and Junior Space Men , New York (Palmgrave Macmillan) 2012. ISBN 978-0-230-37731-8

Web links