It was a bit of a surprise that Jason of Star Command was actually spun off from Tarzan & the Super 7 for its 2nd season. Perhaps not as surprising were some cast changes.
James Doohan left the series after season 1 to work on "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". As a result, John Russell (ex-Lawman) became the new Commander. 70's movie legend Tamara Dobson ("Cleopatra Jones") joined the cast as well. Unfortunately, CBS didn't do Filmation any favors by burying Jason at the bottom of the lineup, where few affilates bothered to carry the show.
Let's take a look at the season 2 opener, "Mission to the Stars", in which Dragos (Sid Haig, ex-Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) plots his revenge on Star Command.
No rating. Didn't see any of the season 2 episodes.
6 comments:
"Jason of Star Command" was one of several attempts by the broadcast networks to bring "Star Wars" to the small screen (see also: "Space Academy", "Space 1999", "Ark II", "Battlestar Galactica" and NBC's "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century").
This series has a certain degree of significance for me, since myself and the shows' hero share the same first name. Some kids in my elementary school actually thought that I was named after the titular character of this show, when I was actually named after Jason of the Argonauts fame.
Another change made to "Jason of Star Command" in season 2 was the show's comic relief robot W1K1 (because post-R2D2, all sic-fi shows in the 70's had to have a regulation cute robot character) was given 'voice circuits' and was now capable of full speech. In the previous season, W1K1 only spoke in chirpy hyper electronic gibberish (which was actually the same mock Chinese spoken by the twin pandas Ping and Pong from Filmation's "The Brady Kids" only electronically sped up).
I do remember this show - and I agree with Goldstar in that it was another attempt to cash in on Star Wars.
It wasn't too bad from what I remember. IIRC, the character of Samantha was an amnesiac and couldn't remember who her people were or how to find them.
Silverstar: W1K1 was also known as Peepo, right?
Star Command was Filmation's 3rd attempt at cashing in on Star Wars, and was also a spin-off from Space Academy. The others? Well, how do you explain Flash Gordon getting on the air a year ahead of the movie? And, let's not forget the Space/Young Sentinels.
"Silverstar: W1K1 was also known as Peepo, right?"
Peepo was a different robot; he could already talk from the outset. Peepo played a fairly large role during season 1, not sure if he stuck around for season 2.
Doesn't appear as though he did, now that I think of it.
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