ECP 323: Tom Corbett, Space Cadet - "Seek and Destroy" (November 10, 1950)
We take a look at a very low-budget early sci-fi show
What I watched: An episode of kid-oriented sci-fi serial Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. The series starred Frankie Thomas Jr. in the titular role, as well as Al Markim, Jan Merlin, Edward Bryce, Margaret Garland, and John Fiedler (who we just saw on Burns and Allen.) “Seek and Destroy” first aired on November 10, 1950 on CBS at 6:45 pm.
Starring: The titular role of Tom Corbett was played by Frankie Thomas Jr., who was at this point 29 years old and already had been acting for the better part of two decades. Most of his career seems to have been playing teenaged characters in movies and on Broadway, although his last film role was eight years prior to this episode. Tom Corbett, a smooth-faced young man with his whole future ahead of him, would in fact be Frankie Thomas’s last major role. He was even buried in his Space Cadet costume after his death in the 2000s.
What happened: An excited narrator introduces us to the setting, a space academy during the “age of conquest.” Our hero Tom (Thomas) is in space and waiting on word from Earth as to his mission to divert a fatal asteroid. He gets orders from Captain Strong (Bryce) wearing a bunch of pearls. He’s also bringing aboard a female astronaut, Dr. Dale (Garland), making Tom’s pervert friends Astro (Markim) and Manning (Merlin) very happy.
Strong arrives and has a conversation with the nerdy engineer Higgins (Fiedler). He reminds me a little bit of the “crushing your head” guy from Kids in the Hall. Steve puts the cadet Manning in charge of the controls while everyone else gets some sleep, despite Dale’s objections. As soon as he leaves, Manning starts swaggering around the cabin, and orders Higgins to speed up the ship. He’s drunk on a small amount of power!
After a fade to black and some ominous music, Higgins tries to warn Manning about relying on emergency power, but he doesn’t listen. By the time Tom wakes up, the ship is malfunctioning. Strong chastises him for trying to play the hero, while. Higgins says that the tube providing power is broken, and Strong dramatically says he’s going to have to go out into space and change that tube, a task which Dale thinks may be impossible. And that’s our cliffhanger for today!
What I thought: This is my first look at Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and from all appearances it seems to be of a piece with other low-budget science fiction shows aimed at children. We’ve already seen Captain Video, and ABC had recently launched Space Patrol in an after-school time slot. The action of this episode is set entirely in a “spaceship” which looks like an ordinary room with tin foil on the wall and a decent-looking sliding door effect. There’s a charm to the scrapped-together nature of these programs, though.
From a writing perspective, “Seek and Destroy” is effective in throwing the viewer immediately into the action. The show was serialized, but I didn’t have a feeling of missing out on anything, perhaps because the plot (we have to deal with an asteroid) was so basic. In 15 minutes, there’s not a lot of time to do anything elaborate, so we avoid the padding between the set-up and cliffhanger that affects a lot of serialized shows.
This episode also takes the form of a simple morality play. Manning’s hubris and inexperience lead to him taking a risky course of action, and it ends in disaster. It’s a decent enough idea, but it’s expressed in about as ham-fisted and didactic a way as possible. Manning immediately goes bad the second he’s out of direct supervision, and within ten minutes the script tells us about a hundred times that using emergency power is bad.
Most notably, this episode of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet doesn’t have much of Tom Corbett, space cadet. The central conflict is between Manning and the older Strong, and Tom doesn’t do much except talk on the video-phone. I guess in any show the secondary characters are inevitably going to have their moments of shine, but it’s a little bit of a strange place to come into the story. Well, we have next Monday’s episode available, so maybe Tom will do something then.
And Now, A Word from Our Sponsors: Kellogg’s is the official sponsor of Tom Corbett, and across the fifteen-minute episode we get at least three filmed commercial inserts. It’s very much pitched at the suburban family, with images of kids around breakfast tables and running paper routes. These are the kinds of ads that people would make fun of and subvert for decades to come, but the direct appeal is a little refreshing in the age of irony-soaked celebrity cameos.
What Else Was On: As a 15-minute serial, Tom Corbett was paired on CBS with the Bob Howard Show, in the twilight hours between the news and family programming. NBC aired Tex and Jinx Interviews, with the guest being former Vice President and socialist presidential candidate Henry Wallace. ABC aired The Better Home Show with Norman Brokenshire and Dick Wilson, while DuMont had Magic Cottage. I’ll be honest: I don’t know what any of these shows are. The local New York channels aired local news updates.
Coming Up Next: Stu Erwin gets into some more hijinx on Trouble with Father.