Captain Video and His Video Rangers is one of the many television series that the "forgotten" fourth network Dumont is most notable for. First airing in 1949, it may be the first popular science fiction show in North America, if not the world, predating Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and the two shows that begun as a result.
When Captain Video was broadcasted, it was an unbelievable success. Both children and adults associated with the show and it gave Dumont an audience for once. The show was filmed live, giving way for improvisation, about five or six days a week. This provided >1500 episodes in the shows six year run, which sounds daily considering there were only about 2130 days in that time. This statistic is also unfortunate as it gives way to the fact that almost none of those episodes may ever be seen, but maybe it wasn't too disappointing.
Even with the attention the show got, the show was made on a shoestring budget. Some later science fiction shows like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica showed how heavy budgets may defeat audience reception, but Captain Video persisted despite several difficulties. The original actors who played Captain Video and his nemesis Doctor Pauli left due to the low wages obtained and the stress produced from working on such a frequent show. In many of the early episodes, there is a moment where the camera zooms into a monitor that then shows, a western, in a science fiction show! These were taken from films that Dumont had purchased and decided to splice in in order to make the most of their purchase, despite having nothing to do with the story's plot. The show is not very cohesive at all but it may provide enjoying at times. Some later episodes were written by figures synonymous with the science fiction genre such as Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, but it is very unlikely those episodes still exist.
As a result of Dumont's successor wiping, less than a hundred(or even half a hundred) episodes of Captain Video exist. Most surviving episodes are held in the UCLA Film and Television Archive but they have yet to release all of them. Currently, only four episodes from the show are available to be seen, all that is left so far of such a pioneer and forerunner of television history. Those episodes may be seen either on DVD or on the Internet, but their lack of quality and perhaps continuity leaves little to obtain from watching. There was also a movie serial produced by Columbia but that's another story. Overall, Captain Video is an interesting show when it comes to television history but it has little to show with its cheap quality and few episodes.
