T
he Baby Boom, television, and space exploration all got started at roughly the same time. By the sixties, astronauts had already gone up in rockets, and the spaceman hero was gradually replacing the cowboy as the dream job for most young people.
Riding that wave into the cosmos was a beloved television series that debuted on NBC in the fall of 1963, Fireball XL5. Produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson in a process they dubbed “Supermarionation” (combining marionettes and animation with “super” tacked on in front to make it sound even more impressive), the show followed the adventures of Colonel Steve Zodiac, boldly going where no puppet had gone before! Steve flew the giant spaceship Fireball XL5 (apparently, there were 30XL ships in the fleet) for an outfit called the World Space Patrol (WSP), perhaps the successor to our own Space Force currently patrolling the galaxy to keep us safe from… well, from something or other.
The series took place just 100 years in the future – 2062, 1962 being the year it went into production. Based on what it promised, we have a lot of catching up to do in the next 30 to 40 years! WSP was headquartered at Space City on an unnamed island in the Pacific Ocean because, why not? What little we saw of its crew, all seemed to be Americans, making one wonder if somehow the U.S. had conquered the world, or no other country was good at producing spacemen. By the way, Fireball didn’t launch like your average, everyday rocket. No sir. It ran along some train-like tracks and then took off like a plane. How it stayed aloft on its way out of Earth’s atmosphere without any wings was never explained.
The crew of the massive XL5 was also pretty small for such a large ship. Besides Zodiac, there was the lovely Doctor Venus (who was French, the sole non-American amongst the main characters – her appearance based on the woman who provided her voice, co-producer Sylvia Anderson) and Dr. Matt Matic (“matt-a-matics,” get it?), your standard, slightly doddering old scientist. Non-human characters included Zodiac’s robot co-pilot, Robert, and Venus’ pet alien, Zoonie the Lazoon.
Among the recurring villains were the nefarious couple, Boris and Griselda Space Spy. You’d think in their line of work, perhaps a legal change of last name might have helped them on their missions.
You’ll be pleased to know that, according to the show, Earth in 2062 has reverted to a lot of the language and gender roles of 1962. As a medical doctor, Venus’ (no, her family couldn’t afford a last name) main duties consisted of making coffee for her male co-workers and worrying about Steve Zodiac’s ability to escape danger. There are no other women employed in Space City. Also, the slang term “boss,” meaning outstanding, seems to have resurfaced in this future time. That was especially weird as “boss” had already passed out of usage among earthlings well before the end of the first season in 1964.
Somehow, we will solve the problem of faster-than-light travel as Fireball XL5 was patrolling different worlds outside our solar system on a weekly basis, almost always taking off from Space City and reaching their destination before the first commercial.
Steve and Venus are also able to roam outside of their spaceship when it’s in outer space without helmets or space suits, so we’ve got that to look forward to, which is pretty nice. The duo also traveled outside the ship on what looked like space scooters. Actually, pretty cool-looking devices that were dreamed up by the producers as they thought the marionettes looked pretty clunky when walking, so this way they could move around in a more realistic-looking way.
Actually, the show was lots of fun and proved popular. 39 episodes were produced in black and white. It ran for two seasons as part of NBC’s Saturday morning line-up. It ran for 11 years on British television. Since then, it has reappeared on various cable channels and is currently part of the line-up of retro programming at MeTV.
The entire series is available on home video in DVD or Blu-Ray formats. You should check it out. It’s boss!
