Jason of Star Command 1978 – 1981

Jason of Star Command was a spin-off from Filmation's other show Space Academy which ran from 1977 to 1979. The show states that Star Command was a secretive section of Space Academy, didn't really seem very secretive though seeing as though everybody seemed to know who they were. There were 28 episodes in all, the first series being sixteen 15 minute episodes which aired with Tarzan and the Super 7. Season 2 episodes were 30 minutes in length and just ran by themselves. The episodes were told in chapters, each ending on a cliffhanger for the next episode.
Craig Littler starred as Jason, space adventurer and poor man's Han Solo. During Space Academy Commander Gampu was played by Jonathan Harris from Lost in Space, before he could reprise his role in Jason of Star Command he had a falling out with Filmation, so he was replaced by James Doohan playing Commander Canarvin in series 1 and John Russell as Commander Stone in series 2. Doohan left after just 1 season to film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Aiding Jason was Professor E.J. Parsafoot played by Charlie Dell, Susan O'Hanlon as Captain Nicole Davidoff in series 1 and Tamara Dobson as Samantha in series 2. With them was the pocket sized robot Wiki (W1K1) which looked a bit like a wind up clockwork toy that walked.
The main villain of the piece was Dragos played by Sid Haig, who like most bad guys in shows like this do a lot of plotting and threatening etc... but never win and come back the week after with another crap plan to rule the galaxy.
Considering the show is set on the same base as Space Academy besides the appearance of the robot Peepo from that show and an episode where a Seeker shuttle shows up, being piloted by Lt. Matt Prentiss who was in one episode of Space Academy, no other reference is made to any of the characters or situations in the other show, maybe the guys in Space Academy are oblivious to the attacks every week by Dragos and only those in Star Command can see him ?!
The Visual FX work like Space Academy was handled by Chuck Comisky, John Grusd. The show had some neat stop-motion animation for a kids TV show by Jim Aupperle. I really love the ship designs in this, Dragos' Drone ships were built using a large amount of sections from the Airfix Saturn V rocket kit.
I have a real soft spot for these 1970's early 80's kids shows by Filmation. And as I mentioned in my Space Academy post a while back a lot of these shows used the same sound FX and music, most of which seem to have originated in Filmation's own animated show of Star Trek which ran from 1973 - 74. So when you watch a few of these shows they get a certain familiarity to them because of the stuff that's been re-used.

The Space Sentinels - Live Action

Originally called The Young Sentinels but changed to The Space Sentinels this animated show by Filmation ran for only 13 episodes. The 3 main characters were Hercules, Mercury and Astraea, in charge was Sentinel One and they were helped by the maintenance operator robot M.O.
Below are some Talent Tests for a proposed Live Action version of the show that never happened. Evan Kim who provided the voice of Mercury can be seen here playing Mercury. Evan is known for the Fistful of Yen sketch in John Landis's Kentucky Fried Movie, he also played Tony the camera man in V: The Mini Series.
I imagine had this show gone ahead then the look would have been similar in tone to Filmation's other SF shows like Space Academy, Jason of Star Command and Ark 2.
A while a go I built a CG Model of M.O. he can be seen on my art blog Here

Return of the Jedi - Shield Generator Bunker

Lorne Peterson called the Shield Generator Bunker model as ' Seat-of-your-pants model making at it's finest' in his book Sculpting a Galaxy. But it's hard to show just how cheap these models were until you see photo's of the actual props. Made from drinking cups stacked together, some Airfix 1/144 Apollo Saturn V parts and topped with some stacked medicine cups.

The Airfix 1/144 Apollo Saturn V was one of the most used kits for parts in the original Star Wars trilogy and was also used on Battlestar Galactica widely. On TV shows and films like Space 1999, Blake's 7, Space Academy, Jason of Star Command, Battle Beyond the Stars, Starcrash the kit was used on various miniatures.

The way the background seems to recede of into the distance but with a curve always made me think that this whole thing went full circle like a huge magnetic coil or something, something powerful enough to create a shield around the Death Star being constructed in orbit above the planet Endor.
They must be very eco friendly though the Empire because up above they haven't disturbed the forest to build this huge generator, or where they've build the landing pad or the actual radar transmitter, you'd think the Empire would just level the place but they've left all the trees and shrubs where they were, unless they had a team of Stormtroopers go back in with Charlie Dimmock and re-plant them all.

My Favourite TV Spaceships

These are in no real particular order but above are my 10 favorite TV show spaceships, ships I consider design classics, and I'm sure most would agree, although I think I may have trouble convincing some of my choice with the 'Seeker' from Space Academy/Jason of Star Command, but I've always thought it was a neat ship.

As much as I like the new version of Battlestar Galactica I don't think you can beat the original ship designs, especially the Cylon raider, I'm not a fan of the newer Cylon ship.

If the US had the 'USS Enterprise' then the UK had the 'Liberator', both design classics, the only real shame about the 'Liberator' is the way it was put on screen in Blake's 7, sometimes it looked great, sometimes it looked like a paper cut out and other times it looked like an Airfix kit dangling on wires in a badly lit studio. I've always said I'd have loved to have seen that model filmed properly to give it the right amount of mood and scale.

'Starbug' from Red Dwarf took over from their other ship the 'Blue Midget', 'Starbug' for most of Red Dwarf was always a miniature, it was only in the last few series that some bright spark at the BBC replaced it with a crappy CG version.

The Space 1999 'Eagle' has got to be one of the best SF ships ever, such a great design.

The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century craft known as the 'Earth Directorate Starfighter' was designed by Ralph McQuarrie (Star Wars) and was the original design for the Battlestar Galactica 'Colonial Viper', I posted a bit about this a while back here Battlestar Galactica Concept Work

After the 'Liberator' was destroyed in Blake's 7 they got a new ship called 'Scorpio', kind of a Millenium Falcon type freighter, the model was built by Ron Thornton who went onto do the FX for Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Voyager

The original NCC-1701 'USS Enterprise' from Star Trek was a ship unlike any other ship from a Sci-Fi show that came before it, a really original design for it's time and still as iconic today.

The only really new ship in this list is the 'Earth Alliance Starfury' from Babylon 5 and that's 13 years old now, I thought it was a cool design and I like the maneuvering thrusters that they put on the ship.

The only other ship that sprung to mind for this list is the 'HMS Camden Lock' from BBC 2's Hyperdrive, but I thought that was been a bit cheeky seeing as though I co-designed and built it for the show. Series 2 starts in May.

Space Academy

Space Academy was made in 1977 by Filmation who made shows such as Space Sentinels, Star Trek (Animated), The Ghost Busters (1975), He-Man: And the Masters of the Universe. The show ran for 15, 30 minute episodes. Set in the star year of 3732 it featured the adventures of a group of young cadets at the 'Space Academy' run by Commander Gampu, played by Lost in Space's Jonathan Harris. Like most Filmation shows the story has a moral, 9 times out of 10 any potential bad guy ends up befriending the group at the Space Academy. Music and Sound FX from lots of Filmation's other shows can be heard on a regular basis.
The main cast Ric Carrot, Pamelyn Ferdin, Brian Tochi, Eric Greene, Ty Henderson, Maggie Cooper and Jonathan Harris all seem to be having lots of fun. The DVD includes some recent interviews with some of the cast and crew.

Maggie Cooper who plays Lt Adrian almost beats Buck Rogers in the 25th Century's Erin Gray (Wilma Deering) when it comes to looking hot on a Sci-Fi show, I said almost as Wilma Deering rules.

I never actually seen any episodes of Space Academy as a kid, I don't think it aired in the UK, but I used to watch Jason of Star Command a spin off show. Both shows made in 1977 and 1979 used the same sets and some of the same miniatures, which were built by crew members Paul Huston, Jonathan Seay and David Jones all from ILM who'd not long before finished Star Wars. One of the main ships was The Seeker which used the same nose section as the main vehicle from Ark 2, also by Filmation. The main body of the ship was a section of the Airfix Saturn V rocket, the same parts used on the Y-Wings engines in Star Wars I always thought this was a cool little ship and there's a great studio scale kit available by James Small which he gave to some of the shows original crew as gifts ! SA Seeker