A Roberta Lee Production

Nip (National Interest Picture)

Space Patrol was born from the imagination of one the first innovators of sophisticated TV puppetry, Roberta Lee.

I remember watching Space Patrol as a child every afternoon at 5pm on channel 2 in Melbourne. To me it was great science fiction, with imagination that is lacking in today's world.

Space Patrol was set in Earths' future, the year 2100 to be exact. New York, was the headquarters of Space Patrol, where men from Earth, Mars and Venus lived & worked together as guardians of peace. This is the story of those men, whose courage & daring make the universe a safer place to live.

Col Rayburn is the Commander of Space Patrol, an elite group of spacemen who patrol the solar system keeping the peace and catching bad guys. They travel in spaceships called Gallispheres, which use electricity as their main power source. This electrical energy is then used to power the Meson unit which gives the Galisphere its lift & acceleration through space.

Communications between Earth, the Gallispheres and the other planets, is via the Sonar beam, which allows instantaneous communications, much like the later discovered subspace communications method in Star Trek.

Even though the Gallispheres can travel at enormous speeds of around 300,000 MPH, journeys to the distant planets of Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus & Pluto still take months to complete. To avoid the obvious boredom of 6 month trips etc, our Space Patrollers are frozen for most of the journey. If an emergency arises, Headquarters  use their Zergon ray to switch off the time freezer control.

Cast

Colonel Rayburn:

Head commander of Space Patrol. Rayburn's rank of Col is equivalent to that of a General in the normal military. Col Rayburn directs all missions from New York HQ.

Marla:

Marla hails from Venus and is Col Rayburn's Secretary and assistant. As a Venusian, Marla has the ability "never to forget", which is why she constantly amazes Col Rayburn with her efficiency. Actually, without Marla, Space Patrol would probably come to a standstill. She directs the liftoff and in flight operations of all Gallispheres

Captain Larry Dart:

Capt Dart is the Space Patrol's top Captain. Larry has command of Gallisphere 347 and its crew.

Husky the Martian:

Husky hails from Mars and is endowed with great strength, though his use of the English language is lacking. Husky is the systems officer of the Gallisphere.

Slim the Venusian:

Slim is the communications and navigation officer. As Slim is from Venus, he likes warmer climates and is quite small in stature. The intellect of Venusians is far greater than Earthlings or Martians. Here is Slim with Marla in a monobile

Professor Haggerty:

The brains trust of Space Patrol. Prof Aloisious O'Brien O'Rourke Haggerty is on call to solve all sorts of problems encountered by the Space Patrol. The Professor also creates a lot of inventions, like the time watch and a machine to teach birds to talk english

He also hates being called Pop by his daughter Kathy.His signature saying is " And don't call me Pop!"

Kathy Haggerty:

The Professors daughter and lab assistant. Kathy constantly upsets her father when she calls him pop. Poor kathy is often the guniea pig for the Professors' crazy gadgets. In one blunder Kathy ended up talking backwards.

Gabbler The Martian Parrot

Gallber is Husky's pet parrot and was taught to speak english by Professor Haggerty. As a result Gabbler now hangs around with the professor and annoys him constanly by reminding him that he is the cleverest martian parrot on earth.

Gabbler is short for Gabblerdictum.