Leaving Space Academy!

Space Academy is an old Filmation live-action TV show that I have some minor memory of. Jonathan Harris is the "star" of this one-season series, and he's surrounded by a bevy of young actors.

The premise is pretty simple. Space Academy trains youngsters to work in space, and has organized them into teams, each with a color designation. The focus of the show is the "Blue Team" led by Chris Gentry and his sister Laura Gentry. This brother-sister act have various mental powers, mostly when they hold hands and work together. They can use telepathy, generate astral projections, and even use telekinesis before the show runs its course. Also on the team is Adrian Pryce-Jones who is mostly Chris's love interest though little comes of this sideplot by season's end. She doesn't seem to have any special talents beyond adding a bit of sexy to the show, especially when they adopt a mini-skirt uniform mid-season. Tee Gar Soom is an Asian who is super-strong and a medical expert, and who from time to time seems to show some martial arts training. Paul Jerome is the tough black kid from the wrong side of the solar system, with giant smarts and chip on his shoulder, but this personality is too dropped by the middle of the season.

Jonathan Harris plays Isaac Gampu, the 300-year old mentor for these kids and the one they go to for wisdom and guidance. He is especially close to Loki, an alien they discover in the first show, an orphan apparently who has blue hair and is played by a nine-year old kid. He can teleport and has various sorts of special eyesight powers. His best buddy is a half-pint robot named "Peepo", who is less annoying than most of these creations from this period.

The show started out as somewhat of a harder edged science fiction tale, but as most of these things go unfortunately became more of a fantasy driven thing by season's end. It's all in the scripts and TV sci-fi shows seem always to end up with writers who talk down to their audience, and who seem not to have much real science knowledge. A story about these reasonably interesting kids facing real science-based threats would've been a neat show, and likely was the premise. But it fell into the Lost in Space-goofy mode or close to it, by the end of the run.

That said, it's still a better show than I expected based on the glimmers of memory I had. The unfolding story of each Academy member is set up to offer real potential, but unfortunately that gets abandoned for a rotation of guest-stars, each increasingly offbeat. The special effects, done by the same guys who did Star Wars, are better than you'd expect and when adjusted for the time, are really great for kids television.

Space Academy is a fun show, but just not one that lives up to some interesting potential. I got a mild Legion of Superheroes vibe off the very early episodes, with each youngster possessed of powers and skills, each unique. But sadly little is made of this and the kids all blend into an indistinct mob by the end.

Rip Off