If you wait around long enough, apparently every last bit of cathode ray effluvia will eventually make its way to DVD, as evidenced by today's release of Jason Of Star Command: The Complete Series.
Yeah, I used to watch this thing. It originally aired in 1978 as a fifteen minute segment of the Tarzan And The Super Seven program, a grab bag of typically craptastic animated segments from the deservedly-reviled Filmation studio. (The highlight among the other segments was something called Manta And Moray, two superheros with the powers of--wait for it--a manta and a moray. Or some damn thing--I could never stand watching it for more than a minute or so.)
Anyway, Jason stood out among this crap because a) it was live action, and b) it was a total Star Wars rip. Our hero wore a Han Solo-styled white shirt and black vest, and ongoing villain Dragos wore a low-rent discofied Darth Vader ensemble. Plus, you know, there were spaceships and lasers and whatnot.
As these things go, it wasn't bad, and a better Star Wars knockoff than the same year's Batlestar Galactica (though I would never have admitted that at the time, because I was totally all about Galactica...Should I even admit any of this?), and it was much enlivened by the presence of Sid Haig as Dragos.
In fact, my mom made a point of watching simply because of Haig. He was a fairly busy character actor of the day, though he was (and is) best known for his work in the films of Jack Hill--women-in-prison epics like The Big Doll House, blaxploitation favorites like Coffy, and the unforgettable psychological spook show Spider Baby. Presumably Mom didn't know about any of that, but many years later, when Haig starred in Rob Zombie's House Of 1ooo Corpses, she thought it was the greatest thing in the world. So thank you, Jason Of Star Command, for letting me bond with Mom over a shared enthusiasm for Sid Haig.
Unfortunately, for its second season, the show expanded to a half hour and dropped the serialized format that had made it so involving in the first place, and it felt like a slightly more action-oriented version of Filmation's Space Academy series from a couple of years earlier, and even though Sid was still around, Mom and I both lost interest. (Although, in fairness, it should be noted the producers continued to show their appreciation for exploitation movie vets by introducing Tamara Dobson, of Cleopatra Jones fame, into the cast.)
By no rational standards could I tell anyone to run out and buy this collection, but for anyone with fond memories of seventies junk culture, it could be a lot of fun.
