Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe

Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe is a bit of an oddball. It started life as a proposed TV series from Republic, spun off from their Rocket Man serials, and the first 3 episodes were filmed. The networks turned it down, so nine more episodes were filmed and it was released to theaters in 1953. Then it showed up as a TV series with different music in 1955. So what is it? Is it a serial? Is it a TV show? Is it a semi-connected series of shorts? The world may never know.

The simple answer seems to be that Cody is a serial. It runs the traditional 12 chapters that the majority of Republic serials run. But, every episode is the same length, roughly 30 minutes (the TV version runs 26 minutes an episode). Anyone who knows anything about Republic serials of this timeframe know that the longest episode--the first--ran 20 minutes and all the rest ran 13 minutes 40 seconds. So the Cody episodes are a lot longer than any typical Republic serial. You theoretically have to watch them in order, but there's no cliffhangers. Every episode is a complete stand alone story. In fact, only the last two episodes are really connected. So it's a serial that isn't a serial. Some have defended it as being a serial due to the fact that early silent serials like The Perils of Pauline didn't have cliffhangers, either. But Perils of Pauline was made before serials actually took on the cliffhanger sensibilities. I guess we could call it a miniseries and call it quits at that. Otherwise, we'll be on this entire blog trying to decide what this is.

To make matters more confusing, Cody is intended as a prequel to the 1952 serial Radar Men From the Moon. That serial starred George Wallace as Cody with Aline Towne as his girl Joan Gilbert and William Bakewell as his sidekick Ted Richards. Episode one of Commando Cody has Joan (Towne again) and Ted (William Schallert) getting their jobs working for Cody (Judd Holdren). But Ted drops out of the show after the third episode to be replaced by Dick Preston (Richard Crane). So if Ted quit after episode three, how does he show up in this show's sequel? We might as well skip that question, too.

The overall plot of the series is that an insane alien dictator known as The Ruler (Gregory Gaye) wants to conquer the Earth. He uses some Earth minions and a variety of plans, most of which are calculated to use the maximum amount of stock footage of disasters, to attempt this. Cody and his team hop in their rocket every episode and fairly easily defeat the plan until they get sick of playing this game and capture and ultimately kill him on the planet Mercury.

I admit that I always kind of liked early 50s Sci-Fi, especially when it involved space travel. There was a certain level of imagination to it, mostly due to a complete lack of knowledge of what was out there. A lot of early 50s Sci-Fi that involves space travel got some things hilariously wrong, but were still fun. This particular show, like Radar Men From the Moon before it, gets things wrong left and right. But you have to give them points for imagination and trying. For instance, no matter where you are in space--the moon, for instance--the sky is blue. Or more specifically, there is sky and atmosphere. And clouds. And Mercury is not only inhabited, it has plants and trees. But that's okay. This is from the time when Abbott and Costello discovered that Venus was inhabited by nothing but beautiful women and Victor Jory, Sonny Tufts, and Marie Windsor discovered that the moon had Catwomen on it. It's actually a shame those two things didn't come true. I'd be the first to go if they did and I hate flying.

Okay, so the writers at Republic had no idea about outer space. But is it good? Well, not in the way you would call something good. It is, however, fun. It's certainly better than any of the serials Republic was doing at the same time. It has a bit more zip to it than they do. Not much, but just enough. They also managed to give the episodes great titles like Robot Monster of Mars and Captives of the Zero Hour, even if the episodes themselves didn't full live up to the titles.

Holdren does well as Cody, though he's forced to wear a Domino mask all the time, to keep his identity a secret from everyone--even his co-workers. This is another inconsistency with Radar Men, by the way. Towne doesn't get to do much but look pretty, but at this point, she was probably used to that since that's what most of her serial roles consisted of. The two sidekicks are pretty interchangeable. Not bad, but interchangeable. As for Gregory Gaye, he had previously played another alien bent on destroying the Earth in the serial Flying Disc Man From Mars. He wasn't a particularly intimidating villain there and he isn't here. Fortunately, Lyle Talbot--the first actor to play Commissioner Gordon as well as Lex Luthor onscreen (as well as the only actor to play both)-- pops up in six episodes as one of his Earth agents. Unfortunately, Talbot isn't given much to do and his story goes unresolved as he just disappears from the show in the last two episodes. Gaye was also given his own Pretty Background Scenery, as played by Gloria Pall. She doesn't get to say much--most episodes she just stands there and looks pretty.

Holdren and Towne were supposed to play the characters again in another serial, Zombies of the Stratosphere, best remembered today as the serial Leonard Nimoy made (and doesn't talk about). However, at the 11th hour, Republic changed their minds and changed the names of all the principal characters, even though Holdren is again wearing the Rocket Man outfit and Jetpack. But that's okay. After all, Tris Coffin, the first Rocket Man, played a different character than Cody in King of the Rocketmen in 1949.

Despite the dodgy science and the plot holes you could get Cody's rocket ship through, Commando Cody remains a pleasant and fun little outing, from a time when we didn't really know what was out there, but could dream big about it.