Above right: The Ruler (Gregory Gaye) and his assistant (Gloria Pall) in their well-supplied but sparsely-occupied laboratory. The series’ low budget still hampers it at times, however as in so many later Republic serials, the cast of characters is almost comically small–the villains rarely manage to put more than two or three henchmen in the field at a time, and the heroes invariably tackle every challenge, no matter how formidable, with a team consisting merely of two men and one woman.Ībove left: Cody (Judd Holdren, in uniform) and his small crew (Richard Crane and Aline Towne) aboard their spaceship. The Lydecker Brothers’ miniature planets and spaceships, an array of colorful and relatively believable life-size props, and the trademark Republic “rocketman” effect give the Cody series a lot more visual strength than most other early attempts at screen sci-fi. General Criticisms: From a production standpoint, Republic was definitely better-equipped to tackle science-fiction subject-matter than most other early TV studios were. The series eventually did wind up on television, though it began airing in syndication in 1955, after the residuals issues were finally worked out. Republic resumed production early in 1953, shooting nine more episodes which brought the series up to the standard movie-serial chapter count the studio then released this quasi-serial to theaters. However, Republic quickly found out that television production entailed dealing with situations that had never arisen during movie-serial production clashes with actors’ unions and technicians’ unions over possible residuals stalled work on the series after three episodes were filmed in 1952. Production Background: Commando Cody was originally conceived by Republic Pictures as a television show the studio was hoping to grab a piece of the action from early sci-fi TV series such as Captain Video, Space Patrol, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. However, I will continue to omit full summations of Cody from my biographies of the serial actors who appeared in it it’s just not serial-like enough to warrant additional mention there. It isn’t a true chapterplay–being composed of twelve lengthy, cliffhanger-free, basically self-contained episodes instead of shorter overlapping chapters–but it’s closely related enough to the genre that it doesn’t seem right to completely ignore it in an overview of the sound serial form. After years of vacillating on this question, I’ve finally decided to give Cody its own review, encouraged by the new availability of an excellent print of the production–but, since its format is different from that of a true serial, the review will be formatted rather differently than my other pieces. Starring Judd Holdren, Aline Towne, Richard Crane, Gregory Gaye, William Schallert, Lyle Talbot, Craig Kelly.Ĭommando Cody, Sky Marshal of the Universe, has always posed a classification conundrum for your editor. The Files of Jerry Blake Movie Serial Reviews and Other Cliffhanging Material
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