Tom Corbit was a
early t.v. series a 90s comic remade it it was pretty good no 90s remake i wonder why
why wasent Tom Corbit remade?
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Tom Corbit was aearly t.v. series a 90s comic remade it it was pretty good no 90s remake i wonder why
I wouldn't mind seeing some new takes on Tom Corbett, Space Patrol and my favorite 50's sci-fi show, Rocky Jones: Space Ranger.
Me too, but I do not want to see jokey/campy/tongue-in-cheek versions playing up their 1950's origins. Let's do it right if we're gonna do it. Also ripe for this sort of thing - the 1970's Filmation Saturday morning SF live action shows: Space Academy, Jason of Star Command, and Ark II.
The thing is, most remakes are driven by what the studio and producers believe to be the recognition factor of the original - people are already interested the day they hear a thing is being remade (some like the idea, some hate it, but many pay attention).
With much older properties, not enough people remember or have an interest. There may be many reasons that The Man From UNCLE movie was not a success, but at least one critic pointed out that it had the problem that almost no one really remembers the show.*
BTW, as a kid I owned the first of the Grosset & Dunlap tie-in novels, Stand By For Mars!, and read it cover-to-cover several times. Later I heard that it borrowed heavily from Heinlein's Space Cadet.
*Almost no one, in screen terms, means "no one under the age of forty."
With much older properties, not enough people remember or have an interest. There may be many reasons that The Man From UNCLE movie was not a success, but at least one critic pointed out that it had the problem that almost no one really remembers the show.*
BTW, as a kid I owned the first of the Grosset & Dunlap tie-in novels, Stand By For Mars!, and read it cover-to-cover several times. Later I heard that it borrowed heavily from Heinlein's Space Cadet.
*Almost no one, in screen terms, means "no one under the age of forty."
There was definitely a Heinlein influence: http://www.solarguard.com/tcrah.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadet#Tom_Corbett,_Space_Cadet
But hey, if you're going to borrow, borrow from the best, right?
Well, Jason of Star Command was just stealing the sets, costumes, and props (and to a degree the SFX) of Space Academy and making a new show to appeal to what was considered an aging audience. 6-8 year olds will watch a show about space school, but 9-12 year olds want to see what the graduates are getting up to.
ETA: did anyone else ever get the feeling that Benji, Zax and the Alien Prince was the same show as The Powers Of Matthew Star, but made for a younger audience?
I'm near 50 and Tom Corbett, Matt Mason and the like are only the smallest of footnotes to me and only then because of my interest in sci-fi and the like. I'm a fairly voracious consumer of media so I imagine there's not a lot of name recognition out there for these things among the public at large.
Well someone did do a new comic a few years ago.
Matt Mason was a big deal for me and my friends when we were 6-9 years old way back in the 60's. The heady days of the Space Race.
For me, that was Star Wars (which might explain a lot) and by that point the moon landings were done.
Major Matt Mason was my favorite set of toys outside of my Remco brand "Lost in Space" Robot in the latter 60s..
Not too long ago, a digital modeler shared some 3D assets that could turn the DAZ Michael 4 figure into reasonable recreation of that rubber encased wire core "bendy" figure inspired by NASA conceptual designs.
I adapted his concepts, allowing me to dress an OC (Lt. Mzzkiti) as a Matt Mason themed astronaut.
Not too long ago, a digital modeler shared some 3D assets that could turn the DAZ Michael 4 figure into reasonable recreation of that rubber encased wire core "bendy" figure inspired by NASA conceptual designs.
I adapted his concepts, allowing me to dress an OC (Lt. Mzzkiti) as a Matt Mason themed astronaut.
Did Heinlein not get paid something for Tom Corbett? I thought he did but I can't find a reference.
Roughly the same age, I got the Tom Corbett book Danger in Deep Space from my elementary school library when I was in probably 3rd grade. I don't know where it came from originally because the school had only been open since 1970. My city library had two more Corbett books. They had little stickers on the spines of a lot of the books, with a rocket for sci-fi, a cowboy for Westerns etc. I looked for the rocket and read every one I could. Some of the other juvenile series I read were Mike Mars, Astronaut and Tom Swift Jr.
The Tom Corbett books were not great but I got a kick out of them. Ideas like dinosaurs on Venus were obviously way off base, but they had a kind of naive charm. They always credited a scientific advisor, but they treated uranium kind of like coal: you want more speed, feed in more uranium. In the late '90s I got a full set of the books online. Now they can be found quite cheaply as e-books, except for the final one, The Robot Rocket, which apparently has a different copyright situation.
I don't know how many were made, but a lot of the Tom Corbett radio shows are available online. They are incredibly corny, with their organ music and constant cereal commercials, but kind of fun, too.
https://archive.org/details/SpaceCadet2
He did indeed. According to William Patterson's Heinlein bio (two volumes, both worth the read if you're interested in Heinlein's work) he did receive payment for the television rights for his book Space Cadet (also a good read). He declined on-screen credit after reading some of the scripts, however.
Good, thanks.
Well he was a smart guy.
Space Cadet is really good, one of the best of Heinlein's YA stories.
Agreed. Most of the Heinlein YA's are still pretty good reads (Farmer in the Sky was my first SF read back in middle school). Just re-read The Rolling Stones this past week as part of the on-going Covid-19 Induced Solitary Program. The great thing about the so-called "juvies" is that he never "dumbed it down" for his readers, although he did have to make editorial concessions to be sure. They're good stories even if you're not a younger reader. Anyone who dismisses them as "just for kids" is missing out.
^What Heinlein did better than just about anybody was throw in casual, everyday details that made the futuristic world seem solid and real. In Space Cadet, the first time Matt goes up in a rocket, the pilot points out where his hometown is. Nobody had ridden in a rocket at that time, of course, but many people had gone up in airplanes. And what did they do when they got up in the air? Tried to find their house. Small things like that that people could identify with were one great strength of his YA/juvenile stuff. Between Planets, Starman Jones, Rocketship Galileo, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Citizen of the Galaxy... I read them over and over.
Well, the Heinlein's that I read were The Starbeast, Between Planets, and Tunnel In The Sky. Admittedly, I didn't read Starship Troopers until well after seeing the film.
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