You had to be there, but even if you were, it wasn't much. If you were a twelve year old kid in 1977 who'd been totally knocked for a loop by Star Wars, you were so desperate for any form of outer space-based entertainment , you'd settle for anything. Which is why I watched Space Academy every single week.
It was produced by Filmation, the cheapest supplier of Saturday morning product. They'd started out making incredibly ugly cartoons, but they eventually branched into live action, such as the Larry Storch-Forrest Tucker vehicle Ghost Busters, a program noted for settings and camera work so seedy that you expected Johnny Wadd to appear at any moment, and Uncle Croc's Block, a kiddie show parody showcasing duelling queens Charles Nelson Reilly and Jonathan Harris.
Production values never really improved, but the content of Filmation's live action offerings improved slightly by the mid seventies with the appearances of Shazam and Isis, message heavy superhero outings, and the studio's first venture into science fiction, Ark II. Occasionally, these shows rose to the level of competence.
Space Academy was basically more of the same, and at twelve, I was probably too old to fit nto its target audience. But Star Wars had made me a special effects junkie, and the visuals in Space Academy were lavish by TV standards. One episode even featured a cool stop-motion critter animated by James Aupperle...
...Actually, that flash of stop-motion is one of the few things I even remember about the damn thing. It had a standard multi-culti cast, including seventies mainstay Pamelyn Ferdin, presided over by the ubiquitous preening ham Jonathan Harris, and, um...there was a robot, Peepo, who was at least less annoying than Twikki from Buck Rogers, and...they had adventures...I guess, although again, it's not like I can actually remember any of them. Like so many TV shows of the era, if you saw one episode, you pretty much saw every episode.
Space Academy falls into a dead spot of childhood, something remembered with neither affection nor horror. It was there, I made a point of watching it every week, but it in no way fueled my imagination or enhanced my life in any way. The complete run of the series is out today on DVD, and I suspect if I watched it now, it would have the exact same effect.
