Jason Of Star Command!

I've wrapped up watching all of the Filmation live-action shows I found for tiny money a few months ago.

This latest one, Jason of Star Command is the series I actually do remember from all those Saturdays so very long ago. I'm older than Filmation's target audience, but as a sci-fi geek, I was interested in this old-fashioned adventure series still.

It's a throwback to the old serials starring Buster Crabbe and Crash Corrigan. The series is set in the same Space Academy that had aired the previous season, but this time the action if focused not on the Academy and the young cadets, but on a more military section of the base full of adults who are actively engaging the threats that are in space, specifically a villain in the classic Ming style named Dragos.


Jason (Craig Littler) and his partners Professor Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) and a beautiful chick named Captain Nicole Davidoff (Susan O'Hanlon/Pratt) detect and fight episode after episode, each ending in something of a cliffhanger in the classic fashion. They are led by Commander Canarvin played by Star Trek vet Jimmy Doohan. Sid Haig plays Dragos to the hilt with his booming laugh becoming almost the signature for the show.

The first season is a lot of fun and briskly paced as each episode is only ten or eleven minutes long. The second season offers up full half hour episodes and in place of Doohan gives us a blue-skinned alien named Commander Stone (John Russell). Davidoff is replaced by a statuesque black lady named Samantha (Tamara Dobson). Dragos and Jason and Parsafoot are still around and slugging out each week.


The has that Filmation look, being shot exclusively in a warehouse where Filmation had its sets and special effects sections. So they were able to really crank out these things quite quickly. That's the thing about Filmation that has really impressed me as I've been watching these, is the way they were able to accomplish so much in really small time frames with relatively small money. Looking at the some of the bloated movies of the last few years which have been dripping in costly special effects but bomb in the area of story and character, it's refreshing to get material that's rich on character and done for a relative song, but very effective.

These aren't perfect by any means, but they are fun and offer up more than a smidge of mystery if not actual suspense. Although I will say that Jason does seem to rely on his pocket robot "W1K1" a bit too much from episode to episode to save his bacon.
But that's a small cheat and still clearly within the traditions of the classic serials.

If you can find them cheaply, I'd heartily recommend these.

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