Film / Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe

Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (or, informally, Commando Cody) is a 1953 twelve-chapter Film Serial from Republic Pictures, which began life as a proposed syndicated television series (it did screen on NBC a couple of years later).

It reintroduces the Jet Pack-wearing Science Hero first seen in Radar Men from the Moon, though it's meant as a prequel with Commando Cody meeting his associates Joan Glibert, Ted Richards and Dick Preston for the first time. Here our heroes fight the The Ruler, an interplanetary Emperor Scientist intent on subjugating or destroying the Earth as the first step in his plan to conquer the Universe.

Another "Rocketman" film serial, Zombies Of The Stratosphere, was filmed in the lengthy production hiatus between episodes 3 and 4, but for some reason the characters names were changed, making this the last of the Commando Cody films. Richard Crane who played Dick Preston (something of a comic relief character in this serial) would go on to play the title hero in Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

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This film serial has the following tropes:

• 2-D Space: Cody says Planet M-27 is "the first planetary system west of ours." He also plots his course in Outer Space on an ordinary map laid out on his desk.
• Aliens Speaking English:
  • The Ruler boasts of speaking all languages with equal skill. "One day I will rule the Universe. I must be able to communicate with my subjects."
  • Even the crates of Saturian are labelled in English. They helpfully inform Cody that the contents are VOLATILE and therefore not to be shot with at, which of course he does.
• All Planets Are Earthlike: There's no effort to make Venus or Mercury look like popular conceptions of those planets, let alone what they're actually like. People on Venus wear spacesuits, while those on Mercury don't bother. Other than that everything looks like Southern California.
• The Anticipator: Justified as a sentry has warned the Ruler that Cody has landed, and has been ordered to keep him under surveillance.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The Ruler's men drop bombs containing a radioactive gas that reacts with water vapor in the clouds, causing torrential rain. As it's The '50s, apparently radiation can do this.
• Artistic License – Military: Cody makes the "over and out" mistake when signing off a radio transmission, instead of just saying "Out."
• The Bait: In the last two chapters, Balin is a Fake Defector who pretends to be a captured Mercurian scientist who escaped to ask Cody for his help liberating their planet, which the Ruler has just invaded. The invasion turns out to be real, but it's a trap to lure Cody and his rocketship there so it can be captured along with the dispersal ray used to get through the cosmic dust cloud. When Cody discovers this, he uses his rocketship to lure the Ruler to him so he can be captured instead.
• BBC Quarry: Even though we're repeatedly shown a still photo of the Ruler's Greco-Roman city, we only ever meet him and his mooks hanging about in caves. Justified in some cases as they happen to be mines for unobtainium.
• Big Electric Switch: A staple of both alien and Earth technology.
• Binary Suns: Weaponized in "Chapter 9: Solar Sky Raiders" when a second sun in the sky threatens drought, forest fires, skin cancer and melting icecaps. As more suns appear, Cody realises the Ruler is using a refractive forcefield to duplicate the sun until Earth either surrenders or is burnt to a cinder.
• Biological Weapons Solve Everything: In "Chapter 5: War of the Space Giants", the Ruler uses germ warfare to subjugate our world. Presumably "War of the Microscopic Space Bugs" wouldn't have been an impressive title.
• Building Is Welding: The electro-thermal torch, used for alien sabotage or Midair Repairs alike.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: In "Chapter 6: Destroyers of the Sun", the Ruler—who up to now has operated from Venus—decides to put out the Sun and kill everyone in the Solar System. Naturally this means he's operating from a planet in another system, so Cody casually takes his rocketship there without the slightest mention of him having invented Faster-Than-Light Travel.
• Catch a Falling Star
  • Anytime a jetpacking Cody needs to board his rocketship in midair, it involves him making a desperate leap onto the hull, catching hold of a guidance fin and crawling inside the decompression chamber hatch.
  • In "Nightmare Typhoon", Cody catches a falling bomb before it detonates.
  • In "Destroyers of the Sun" Cody runs out of fuel for his rocketsuit, forcing Joan and Dick to fly the rocketship underneath him so he lands on top.
  • In "Lost in Outer Space", Cody uses his Jet Pack to catch Balin after he pretends to escape by jumping off his rocketship. Balin tries to murder Cody by Cut the Safety Rope; Cody isn't wearing a jetpack so once again they have to fly the rocketship underneath so he falls on top.
• Cliffhanger: Averted as this was originally to be a television series. This has caused some to question whether it should be regarded as a proper Film Serial, despite the ongoing story of Cody's conflict with the Ruler.
• Colony Drop: In "Chapter 8: The Hydrogen Hurricane", the Ruler has his minions repeatedly explode an underground sea of hydrogen to blast the Moon towards the Earth and destroy it. A forcefield is used to prevent a Detonation Moon (even though the latter would have the same effect of killing everyone on Earth).
• Comm Links: Cody's assistants are given an insignia badge to wear on their chests the same as what Cody wears, to show that they work for him. They're actually two-way radios with a special frequency reserved for Cody, which comes in handy when his assistants are captured and want to let him know what's going on by secretly turning on their radio.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Cody wears a black uniform, presumably to match his Domino Mask.
• Decontamination Chamber: Averted; after climbing inside the exhaust vent of the atomic-powered rocket for a Midair Repair, Cody says they'll need to contaminate themselves. As it's The '50s, they just cut to the next scene instead of providing the audience with scrubdown fanservice.
• Deflector Shields: Earth is being bombarded by missiles from another planet, so Cody surrounds the Earth with a cloud of radioactive dust which will overheat the missiles as they pass through the cloud and destroy them (let's hope none of that dust fell to Earth!) Plans to get through this cloud so he can invade Earth form much of the Ruler's motivation. Cody has a device that disperses the dust when he has to fly through in his rocketship, and a smaller belt-mounted device for his rocketsuit, and in the final chapter uses this as The Bait to lure the Ruler into a trap so he can be captured.
• Domino Mask: Cody wears a cloth mask under his helmet because his true identity is a government secret, even to his trusted associates. This is despite Cody not needing it in Radar Men from the Moon (actor Judd Holdren suspected it was so he could be replaced with The Other Darrin if he made unreasonable pay rise demands).
• The Dragon: Dr. Varney commands the Ruler's spy network on Earth, and after his capture in Chapter 2 is replaced by Baylor.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: At the end of Chapter 4 after New York City has been flooded killing who knows how many, everyone has a chance to laugh at Dick Preston when he accidentally inflates the life jacket he's shown to have been hiding under his clothing. After that it becomes a Running Gag to crack a joke at his expense at the end of an episode.
• Evil Plan: The Ruler wants to take over the Earth and use its resources to build the forces he needs to conquer the Universe. His plans either involve removing Cody's cosmic dust blanket so he can invade, forcing Earth to surrender via an Appeal to Force, or destroying Earth for having the impertinence to resist his evil design.
• Explosive Instrumentation: Sparks fly on several occasions, though it's not overdone.
• Fanservice Extra: The Ruler has a blonde beauty with a vapid smile and off-the-shoulder dress who helps him pour beakers and take down his instructions. She's referred to in the credits as The Moon Girl (despite never appearing on the Moon) and played by Gloria Pall, who worked as an aircraft mechanic during World War II.
• Fishbowl Helmet: Worn by the Ruler's henchmen on other worlds. Cody of course wears his streamlined helmet.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Cody has no problem putting together The Little Detecto needed to find out where the enemy is mining unobtainium on a planet, or lurking in outer space. And in the chapter where he makes the below Badass Boast, Cody converts his insignia radio into a ray to cut through the lock on his chains.
  Preston: If there anything you can't put together?
  Cody: I had trouble with a broken egg, once.
• Ghost Town: To maintain secrecy Cody's rocketship is assembled in Graphite, a ghost town that's clearly Prop Recycling from a Western film serial. Which is probably why a shootout with six-shooters occurs, until someone brings it to a halt with an anachronistic hand grenade.
• "Good Luck" Gesture: Dick does a double finger cross when Cody says he hopes to intercept Rocket R-7 before it can flood New York City. They fail, so it clearly didn't work.
• Handy Cuffs: Balin has Joan cuff Dick's hands behind his back, then he handcuffs her hands in front, allowing her to secretly turn on her insignia radio to warn Cody what's happening. When Balin is captured again Dick cuffs his hands in front, so he's able to set off a gas grenade while they're waiting to ambush his friends. At the end of the episode all the villains are handcuffed to each other.
• Hard-Work Montage: Whenever Cody and his associates have to do science stuff, a montage of them pouring powders and liquids into flasks and beakers is shown.
• Hollywood Science
  • Cody realises that Preston is trying to contact him when he hears static, saying "There's no static in space." Well there is, actually.
  • After landing on the Moon, Cody does a radio check to see if communications were effected by the "low gravity". One would think the lack of atmosphere would be a greater factor influencing radio waves.
• Human Aliens: The inhabitants of the planets under the Ruler's rule look entirely human. Cody even uses a thermal detector to detect 'human' life to find where an enemy base is.
• Improperly Placed Firearms: Guard Post One protecting Cody's rocketship has a Vickers water-cooled machine gun, instead of the Browning model you'd expect US troops to be equipped with. Perhaps they loaned it from U.N.I.T.?
• Inertial Damping: The counter-inertia room used to protect those doing a Detonation Moon. Cody is left chained up outside the room to die when the bomb goes off. Needless to say, he gets free and foils this plan, and the blast instead buries the mooks alive while Cody escapes.
• Joker Immunity: The Ruler survives a mountain being turned to lava on top of him in Chapter 3. However he did have time to escape if there was a tunnel leading in the opposite direction, which was quite likely.
• Just Following Orders: The crew of Rocketship R-7 grumble that there won't be enough of the world left to conquer when the Ruler orders first the United States, then Europe flooded out of existence. "But orders are orders."
• Les Collaborateurs: The Ruler has men working as saboteurs and spies on Earth. Here Evil Does Not Have Standards—even when the Ruler's intentions toward Earth turn genocidal, their only concern is to whether the Ruler will allow them to escape.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: The Ruler has one given that he's an Emperor Scientist; with obligatory bubbling beakers, Jacob's Ladder and Lovely Assistant.
• Monumental Damage: The Mayor of New York City's vow to rebuilt it at the end of King Of The Rocket Men was all in vain, as once more that city is destroyed by Stock Footage from Deluge.
• No Endor Holocaust: When Cody breaks the Tractor Beam holding Earth off its tilt, it causes an avalanche but there's nothing mentioned about the worldwide earthquakes this should cause when the Earth snapped back into position (assuming it ever did).
• No Seat Belts: Averted as everyone buckles up in Cody's rocketship, but they happen to be sitting in swivel chairs that never get locked into place.
• Oddly Small Organization: Cody has his two assistants and a few guards working for him, though he liaisons with Commissioner Henderson and is shown communicating via radio with police and other government organizations.
• Outside Ride (often involving a Midair Repair)
  • In "Chapter 2: Atomic Peril", the villains steal Cody's Retro Rocket and fly it to Venus, so Cody sabotages it so they're forced to release him so he can strap on his rocket suit and go outside the rocket to repair it. While he's there he manually seals off the port steering jet so they'll fly around in circles forever, forcing the villains to surrender. After handing over their guns, they ask why Cody doesn't go outside to repair the damage, only to be told he can open the jet again just by using the controls in the cabin.
  • In "Chapter 3: Cosmic Vengeance", has to go outside again to fix a plugged rocket vent.
  • In "Chapter 5: War of the Space Giants", Cody jetpacks over to a Venusian rocket and plugs the vent of their atomic pile, forcing the crew to shut it off so Cody can tow the now-powerless rocket back to Earth, capturing it intact.
  • In "Chapter 11: Lost in Outer Space", a Fake Defector sabotages the rocketship so he and Cody will be forced to go outside and repair it. While doing so he tries to Cut the Safety Rope and kill Cody, who isn't wearing his jetpack for once.
• Portrait Painting Peephole. Used by the mooks spying on our heroes in Graphite, who hide behind a sliding door on which a cowboy picture is mounted. Why they'd bother when they are later shown to have alien technology that can listen in on Cody's plans from a distance...
• Race Against the Clock:
  • In "Nightmare Typhoon", the Ruler gives the usual 24 hour deadline for Earth to surrender. Cody suggests stalling by claiming the floods have knocked out their communication lines and so it will take time to contact the leaders of other nations. They ask for four days but the Ruler only gives them two, suspecting correctly that they're up to something.
  • In "War of the Space Giants", Cody tells his associates to launch a rocket bomb at the Saturian mine on his signal, saying he intends to wait ten seconds before impact before jetpacking off to ensure the radio beacon isn't removed. Needless to say he gets into a fight with some mooks right at this point, and leaves Just in Time before the rocket hits and brings down the mountainside right where he was standing.
  • In "Destroyers of the Sun", Cody sets a nuclear Time Bomb and is about to leave when a mook appears and starts wrestling with him as the timer ticks down.
• Ray Gun: What atomic unobtanium doesn't achieve, rays do!
  • Cody uses an ordinary revolver at first, but then switches to an atomic blaster.
  • The Ruler proudly shows off a pintle-mounted Death Ray that can melt solid stone. Cody knocks out his guards and runs off with the weapon, using it to melt the mountainside on Ruler's lair. As it's only Chapter 3, he survives.
  • There's a midair battle with ray guns in Chapter 4. Cody wins by firing a continuous beam with the ray on his rocketship, overheating the Venusian rocket. He also uses a Freeze Ray to fog up the plastic gun turret of the enemy rocketship.
  • Rays are used by both sides to disperse or blast through the cosmic dust cloud surrounding Earth.
  • A "thought control ray" is used to Mind Control Dick Preston (even though it looks like a chair with flashing lights). He's captured using a "nerve gun" that acts as The Paralyzer, and a "shock ray" is later used to capture Cody.
  • A deflection ray is used to hold Cody's rocketship in place, stopping him from landing on the Ruler's planet. Cody has to fly down and blow up the ray so he can get moving again.
• Recurring Extra: Clancy, the security guard keeping an eye on Cody's rocketship. Whenever the heroes turn up to use it, he drives their car away so it won't be damaged by the takeoff blast.
• Repeat to Confirm: Dick does this all the time, except when Cody asks him to repeat some Techno Babble Dick has just spouted off. Dick admits that he can't.
• Rocket Ride: In "Atomic Peril", one of the Ruler's henchmen lands on Earth in a one-man rocket small enough to penetrate the cosmic dust blanket (though why this is the case when their missiles can't get through is another question).
• Science-Fiction Writers Have No Sense of Scale: It's right there in the title, with Cody being called the Sky Marshal of the Universe before he's even left the planet. At least when the Ruler talks of conquering the Universe you can put it down to megalomania.
• Science Hero's Babe Assistant: Downplayed with Joan Gilbert who dresses appropriately, is shown working in the lab and acting as the rocket's copilot, and helps out where she can during a crisis though she's not an Action Girl.
• Sdrawkcab Speech: The 'scrambled' message on the Ruler's interplanetary communicator is clearly just played backwards.
• Sidekick: Joan Gilbert and Ted Richards, who helped Commando Cody in Radar Men from the Moon, are shown applying for their jobs for the first time. After Chapter 4, Ted is replaced with Dick Preston, who's something of a Plucky Comic Relief character.
• Space Clothes
  • Whenever she crews the rocketship Joan wears a surprisingly pragmatic coverall, with a skullcap to cover her hair.
  • The Ruler wears flowing robes with a fish-like skullcap. His slave mooks have medieval-like costumes with spiked helmets and Excessive Evil Eyeshadow.
  • The Queen of Mercury has the requisite short skirt that Space Patrol (US) and later Star Trek: The Original Series would reveal are mandatory for hot space babes with lovely legs.
• Space Mask: When doing a repair in space, Cody just has Ted put on an identical jetpack helmet like his own and they climb outside the ship without out even wearing gloves or any other kind of spacesuit.
• Space Police: Cody is after all the "Sky Marshal of the Universe" though it's a bit vague as to what this means. In early episodes his interplanetary rocketship is a new invention that's only just left Earth, but later episodes portray him as being familiar with other planets and their inhabitants as if he's visited them between episodes, or at least communicated with the inhabitants by radio.
• Space "X": The Ruler threatens to send his rocketships of space slaves to conquer Earth.
• Spinning Newspaper: Averted in the headlines announcing sabotage in the first episodes, but one appears to announce MYSTERIOUS CLOUDBURST SWEEPS EARTH! in "Chapter 4: Nightmare Typhoon". Presumably it was the typhoon that spun it up.
• Star Killing: In "Destroyers of the Sun", the Ruler decides to put out the sun and kill everyone in Earth's solar system to Make an Example of Them for defying him.
• Stock Footage: The scene were Cody leaves his office and gets saluted by a guard as he leaps off his hidden springboard into the air, or when he's entering the decompression chamber of his rocketship. There's also an occasional scene reused from King Of The Rocket Men, including the tidal wave swamping New York City taken from the 1933 disaster film Deluge.
• Stock Scream: The Wilhelm Scream is heard in a couple of chapters when a mook dies.
• Suspiciously Small Army:
  • Despite planning to conquer the entire Universe, the Ruler only has a few soldiers around him at any time. Given the number of times Cody has to resort to his fists, the Ruler should have been able to overwhelm his Arch-Enemy by sheer weight of numbers.
  • Justified with the Queen of the Mercurians, as the few soldiers she has are all that remain alive and uncaptured after the Ruler invaded. Yet again though, we see no sign of the vast invasion force that would be needed to conquer another planet.
• Tank Goodness: The lunar tank from Radar Men from the Moon reappears to chase off Cody when he tries to bring down the mountain on The Ruler.
• Techno Babble: It didn't start with Star Trek, as our Science Hero spouts this at various points when he's expected to use his brain rather than brawn to solve the Crisis of the Week.
• Tidally Locked Planet: In "S.O.S. Ice Age", the Ruler uses a Tractor Beam connecting the North Pole to Saturn to pull Earth off its axis, freezing one side of the planet and boiling the other.
• Tin-Can Robot: The famous Republic Robot makes an appearance in "Robot Monster from Mars" (even though it doesn't come from Mars). It's Immune to Bullets but not Ray Guns, and proves more of a menace to the Ruler once Joan gets hold of its control unit.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Cody is threatened with being thrown out the decompression chamber hatch of his rocketship if he doesn't help its hijackers fly it. "We will simply throw you overboard when we're out of Earth's gravity. You won't fall, you will simply...float around in space, from now on."
• Title Drop: Commissioner Henderson explains that "Commando" is a reference to Cody's service in the commandoes during the war. Ted Richards says it's an appropriate name for the "Sky Marshal of the Universe".
• Took a Level in Badass: Cody is portrayed as a masked superhero rather than just a backyard rocket scientist who's good with his fists.
• Tractor Beam:
  • Cody uses a "magnetic drag ray" to tow a captured rocketship.
  • A "magno-force ray" connecting Earth to Saturn is used to pull Earth off its axis.
• Unobtainium:
  • The radioactive material "Venusium" is used as bait by Dr Varney and his Venusian cohort to infiltrate Cody's organisation. By combining it with uranium, they're able to increase the power of Cody's rocketship.
  • "Saturian" is used to power the Ray Gun mounted on the Ruler's rocketships. It comes only from one of the moons of Saturn, though how Cody is supposed to know this when he's never been there is a mystery.
• Vehicular Sabotage:
  • In "Chapter 3: Cosmic Vengeance", the villains place a metal that's sensitive to radiation inside the rocket tube so it will melt and block the vents when Cody flies through the radioactive dust cloud.
  • Plugging the exhaust vent of the atomic pile is an effective way of stopping a rocketship, as the crew need to shut down the pile before it blows up.
• Weather Control:
  • Newsreels of floods and Stock Footage of disaster movies imperil the Earth in "Nightmare Typhoon". Turns out the aliens have been cloudseeding to create mass flooding.
  • In "The Hydrogen Hurricane", the orbit of the Moon is changed causing worldwide storms.
  • In "Solar Sky Raiders", the appearance of multiple suns causes heatwaves, forest fires and drought.
• We Will Meet Again: Subverted; after the Ruler is captured, he says it's not over as his followers will tear Earth apart to free him. Commissioner Henderson then calls on the radio, saying the other planets want to commence peace negotiations with Earth, showing they're rather glad to be rid of him.
• When Things Spin, Science Happens: The scrambled transmitter that the Ruler uses to communicate with his minions, and the antennae of his sun-extinguishing tower.
• Women Drivers: Averted; Joan is a bit nervous the first time Cody tells her to take the controls of his rocketship, but she does a good job and regularly helps out as copilot when required after that.
• You Monster! + You're Insane!: When the Ruler says he intends to turn the Moon into the largest guided missile designed by Man, Cody retorts, "You're not a man—you're an insane monster!"