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Miller, Cynthia J. and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, eds. 1950s "Rocketman" TV Series and their Fans: Cadets, Rangers and Junior Space Men. New York: Paigrave Macmillan, 2012. 270 pp. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-230-37731-8. $90.
During the 1950s-especially the first half of the decade-American television programming for children was dominated by sundry space opera and superscience adventurers, including Buck Rogers (1950-51), Captain Midnight (1954-56; aka Jet Jackson, Flying Commando), Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949-55), Captain Z-Ro (1954-60), Clutch Cargo (1959-60), Commando Cody: Sky Marshall of the Universe (1955), Flash Gordon (1954-55), Johnny Jupiter (1953-54), Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (1954), Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers (1953-54), Space Angel (1962-64), Space Patrol (1950-55), and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (1950-55). Despite their massive popularity, they remain relatively neglected in the study of sf and early television. However, in the decade since Patrick Lucanio and Gary Coville first mapped the terrain in American Science Fiction Television Series of the 1950s (1998) and Smokin' Rockets: The Romance of Technology in Film, Radio and Television, 1945-62 (2002), not only has sf television become more central to our understanding of the genre but also many of the surviving episodes and more of the series' spinoffery have become widely available via DVD, YouTube, and eBay. The time, then, is ripe for Captain Video and his kin to be restored to the history of sf.
Following Henry Jenkins's foreword and the editors' introduction, 1950s "Rocketman'' TV Series is divided into a prologue, four three-chapter sections, and an epilogue. Roy Kinnard's Prologue outlines the history of the 1930s Flash Gordon movie serials which, retitled as Space Soldiers, were frequently broadcast on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Section One is concerned with the ways in which rocketman television series articulated social values towards young audiences. Section Two traces the impact of these technological fantasia on baby boomers. The third section turns to the series' sponsorship and advertising, their spin-off games and toys and the play they inspired among young viewers, and the active fan cultures the series and their sponsors recruited. The final section examines the series' Cold War contexts. Gary Hughes' epilogue recounts his half-century-long fascination with Commando Cody, which resulted not only in the creation of a replica flying suit and The...