The First Sci-Fi TV Series Is Still Lost to Time
Nobody ever made them like this.
Where does science fiction history begin? It all depends on who you ask and what medium we’re talking about. In the world of literature, many experts will cite the 1805 French novel The Last Man by Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville or Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic Frankenstein. Film gets much trickier, though the 1927 classic Metropolis still feels like a safe bet in terms of the true birth of sci-fi cinema. But what TV? Is there a specific moment we can pinpoint when science fiction television, as a subgenre, began?
In a sense, if we don’t count the fact that various 1930s Flash Gordon film serials were broadcast on TV in the 1950s (those are the ones George Lucas watched as a kid) there are only a handful of early TV series that can truly claim that title of “first sci-fi TV show.” And in the U.S., you’ve basically just got two: Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and another series, which aired around the same time, Captain Video and His Video Rangers. Although Captain Video traded timeslots with Tom Corbett on the DuMont Television Network, this series preceded Tom by one year. Starting on June 27, 1949, Captain Video became the first new live-action science fiction TV series to air regularly in the US. And, six years later, after airing roughly 1,500 episodes, the series ended on April 1, 1955.
But here’s the thing: 70 years later, the impact of Captain Video is evanescent. It historically is relevant, but unlike the very formative narratives of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and John Carter, its true relevance is debatable, partly because it’s basically impossible to watch today.
Described as a “master of time and space” as well as “guardian of the safety of the world,” Captain Video (Al Hodge) operates from a mountain base sometime in the future, and basically deals with defeating villains that are one-step removed from caricatures found in comic books from 20 years prior. A clear knock-off of similar heroes like Flash and Buck, Captain Video was created by Jim Caddigan in an attempt to capitalize on what was perceived as a kind of new craze in space-themed stories. Because of the way certain TV series were made, in the model of radio serials, several different Captain Video installments aired weekly, which is why the episode count is so high. Toward the end of the show’s run, a focus on outer space was made more prevalent in an attempt to compete with a 1950s reboot of Buck Rogers, which is even more forgotten than Captain Video. (Only one episode of that series still survives.)
Like the famous erasures of various Doctor Who serials from the 1960s, it was common in the 1950s for US networks to not save old TV series. This is why hunting around for Captain Video episodes is harder than finding 1930s and 1940s versions of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers; those Buster Crabbe-led productions were films first, whereas things that were TV shows first weren’t regarded with the same kind of reverence. (Arguably, the modern-day equivalent of this is streaming-native TV series being scrubbed from streamers without a physical release or digital purchase option.)
But the legacy of Captain Video is not entirely irrelevant. Because the show was relatively successful, it proved that science fiction on network TV could work. The popularity of the show was referenced in other shows, too. The Honeymooners referenced Captain Video, which in a roundabout way connects to Back to the Future, in which Marty McFly sees Lorraine’s family watching an old episode of The Honeymooners. The 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow also has serious Captain Video vibes, as do aspects of The Incredibles.
In short, though Captain Video wasn’t among the most original, daring, or even well-written of early sci-fi TV, it was still technically first. And that means that even when other sci-fi TV started to become more sophisticated and better throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, it owed some debt to this strange, wayward series.
Still, what remains strange about Captain Video all these years later is the way that it actually looks older than its 1930s counterparts in the form of the original Flash Gordon serials. Today, prestige sci-fi TV has become the norm, to the point where sci-fi TV shows are often much higher in quality than some films. But in 1955, when Captain Video ended, that future in which sci-fi TV would become a dominant and essential medium for the genre was harder to predict than future space travel.
