Line #17 Series/SpacePatrolUS


1	[[quoteright:336:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sptitle.jpg]]
2	''Space Patrol'' is a 1950s American series that was created to deliver the same thrills to kids that ''Series/{{Flash Gordon\|1954}}'' delivered to their parents. The stories focused on Kit Corry (and later [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute his brother Buzz]]), CIC of the futuristic Space Patrol, an intergalactic police force. Each episode often featured recurring villains, such as (most famously) Prince Baccaratti. At its peak, it ran concurrently as a 15-minute weekday series, a half-hour Saturday series, and a weekly radio show, ''all featuring the same cast'', and ''all transmitted live''. Now ''that's'' commitment. Ran for 5 seasons (1950-1955) and a total of ''1239'' episodes: 210 30-minute episodes, 900 15-minute episodes and 129 radio shows. Not to be confused with the 1963 British puppet series ''[[Series/SpacePatrolUK Space Patrol]]'', which was released in America as ''Planet Patrol'', to avoid confusion.
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5	!!Tropes:
6	* AnachronismStew: The controls on the spaceship came from surplus [=WW2=] bomber parts.
7	* AsYouKnow: Cadet Happy is ''absolutely astounded'' by the size of the Solar System. Buzz and Carol bring him back down by reminding him that there are a ''lot'' of stars in the Milky Way, with our sun being only one of them. To be fair, this was a 1950s show aimed at children (who might not understand the concept of big distances), but it seems unrealistic for someone who was born in the 30th century, with ''interstellar'' travel being commonplace, to be astounded by this.
8	* CatchPhrase: ''"SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE PATROOOOOOOOOL!"''
9	* CityPlanet: Terra, the man-made planet (although that's more of a "Space Canberra").
10	* DarkActionGirl: Tonga started as a villain, but some BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood enabled her HeelFaceTurn.
11	* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Native Martians carve tiki masks, but arrange those masks into totem poles.
12	* NegativeSpaceWedgie: Episode 1, "The Hole in Space," deals with a Black Hole-like anomaly that leads to AnotherDimension and uses magnetic waves, rather than gravity, to draw in spaceships. Captain Corey is able to stop it by commandeering a superconductive ring to trap it in, then fires up the ring with a like charge to the anomaly, crushing it into nothing.
13	* ProductPlacement: Like many shows of the period, the show was basically MerchandiseDriven. Thus, for two Quik lids or a tracing of the label, you could get something like a miniaturized X-RC lookalike. More notably, there was also a Space Patrol watch featured in at least one episode.
14	* RetroRocket: The Terra IV (aka the [[ProductPlacement Ralston]] Rocket).
15	* SpaceCadet: Cadet Happy, although he was more like some sort of 2IC. Some of the Chex commercials, however, followed this trope a little better, with kids dreaming about being on the Space Patrol.
16	* SpacePolice: The Space Patrol.
17	* {{Stripperiffic}}: Long before the famous miniskirts of ''Star Trek'', Carol Carlisle was showing that women in space would wear short skirts heedless of the perils of zero gravity.
18	* SubspaceAnsible: The Space-O-Phone.
19	* ThreeDimensionalEpisode: The first ever 3D television broadcast in the United States was conducted on April 29, 1953 with a special edition of the show. Polarizing technology was used to achieve 3D in black-and-white. This, however, required purchasing special expensive TV sets at a time when many had just bought their first-ever TV, which meant that one-off broadcast was pretty much it for 3D TV until the broadcasting of red/cyan anaglyph 3D onto regular color sets was made possible during the 1980s.
20	* UnrealisticBlackHole: The very first episode of the radio play series dealt with a black hole that ate a Space Patrol ship. They're still able to get a radio signal out.

Context Series / SpacePatrolUS