Space Patrol - The Complete Series (DVD 2003)

Remember the 1960s? Programs like Supercar and Fireball XL-5 created a huge market for children's SF, and even Gerry Anderson couldn't fill it. One of the programs that tried to bridge the gap was Space Patrol, a puppet show made by Frank Goulding, Roberta Leigh, and other defectors from the Anderson empire. Filmed on a shoestring in black and white, it had some interesting ideas that could have usefully been transferred to later series; spaceships used antigravity, not rockets, and took weeks to reach the outer planets, aliens weren't always humanoid and had their own languages and customs (and it took several days to program the translating computers), and gadgets took time to develop and tended to be reused once they'd appeared. There were even vague signs of a story arc occasionally, something singularly lacking in most of its rivals. It's an acknowledged source for several programs including Babylon 5 (whose director talks about the show in one of the extra features).

For many years it was believed that most of the episodes had been lost, with the rest in very poor condition, but in the nineties Roberta Leigh found that she had a complete run of the series on 16mm film in her garage. Eventually the episodes were transferred to tape and later DVD. This set collects all of the episodes and includes all of the extras from the tapes; interviews with animators, cast, and fans of the show (most notably Joe Michael Straczynski), samples of the other programmes made by the company, advertising, and so forth. It's an extraordinarily complete archive.

Today some of the ideas in the show seem a little odd - the treatment of female characters will seem sexist to a modern audience, for example - and some of the tricks used to save money, such as recycled footage and reused puppets which give the impression of a very small cast of actors, seem very crude by the standards of modern CGI. But it's still an entertaining show which stands the test of time at least as well as most of the Anderson series, and has a loyal fan base who can still recite lines from the show at the drop of a hat.

I'm obviously biased - I bought the whole run of tapes and paid again for the DVDs - but I can still whole-heartedly recommend this collection. One word of caution - make sure that you're buying the complete series, not the earlier "best of" collection (2001), which omits many episodes and most of the extras.

See Wikipedia for a guide to the series and episodes.

American buyers: This programme was shown as "Planet Patrol" in the USA; it isn't the same programme as the earlier American live-action "Space Patrol". The DVDs are Region 0 (all regions) and should be compatible with American DVD players and computers. When this set was more readily available I bought a couple as presents for American friends and nobody has had problems.