In 1949, "Captain Video" started off slowly on the fledgeling television airwaves, but CV soon became the rip-roaring space adventure anthology that is still so well remembered today.
The series' producers, blessed with CV's New York origination, had top Broadway actors with which to work, and scripts by famous playwrights and science-fiction writers. The result was an on-screen synergy of vibrant performances and still-classic storytelling which more than compensated for the stagelike sets from the chronically-impoverished Du Mont Television Network. (In my view, those limited sets were actually a blessing to the series' quality, though it must hardly have seemed that way then.)
Al Hodge, the stolid hero-scientist, and Don Hastings, the trusty young aide, were perfectly cast as traditional role-models in the classic sense.
As the series progressed and matured throughout the early 1950s, adult fan-viewers were as captivated by the CV sagas as the younger audience for which they had been intended. The series developed a huge nightly following, which would have been greater still had Du Mont controlled more airspace than the relatively small number of channels from which it did broadcast.
The demise of the Du Mont Television Network ended the popular series ... and then the tragic destruction of most of the Captain Video kinescopes for their silver content ended any hopes for a rediscovery by younger, newer audiences. The few remaining now-out-of-context CV episodes can only hint at the great on-screen chemistry that was "Captain Video and His Video Rangers".
That the series is still fondly remembered and talked about, even by those far too young to have seen it, can be termed a tribute.
One other thing: many CV scripts and story concepts remain. And I hold the hope that someday, some imaginative producer may latch onto the idea of a revived retelling of the legend of the "master of space and hero of science": Captain Video.
