Return to the Orion

1965/66, around the same time at which the Star Trek phenomenon was started with TOS, the Bavaria Studios of the ARD (first country-wide public station in Germany, composed of all local stations) produced a seven-part Sci-Fi series called “Raumpatrouille Orion” (“Space Patrol Orion”), the adventures of a spaceship crew made up of people from all over the world (who all happened to be played by white people, because we’re talking about middle-Sixties Germany here) who were dropped into a new adventure every episode.

The adventures of Commander Alistair McLane and his crew were diverse. In one episode, they’d drop down on a mining colony to find out that the robots had confined the human settlers below ground after their programming had been overloaded. In another episode, they sacrificed their ship (then the Orion 7) to destroy a planet-turned-supernova before it could reach and destroy Earth.

As enemies, introduced spookily in the first episode, served the mysterious extraterrestrial species known as ‘Frogs.’ (Yes, they were called that even in German.) The Frogs were introduced as a species of energy beings who couldn’t endure oxygen (which saved two crew members of the ship in the first episode) and were technologically far more advanced than mankind (they had pushed the planet mentioned above out of its system).

But it wasn’t always about the Frogs, some episodes, like the mine colony example above, dealt with self-made problems. The robots developed a neurosis while watching several humans kill each other - rule one and two of the robotic laws were at odds for them - and decided to lock the humans, sans weapons, below and take over the station.

The series was far less well-funded than Star Trek, of course. In the Sixties, not all that many households in Germany had their own TV sets, so the reach wasn’t that high (not to mention Germany had and has far less population than the US). That led to several changes which have their own good and bad sides.

Instead of the huge crew the Enterprise sported, the Orion had only six crew members and one of them was not a regular member, but a security officer from the secret service, supposed to keep an eye on the commander (who was an excellent commander, but a bit of a rogue). The ship was considerably smaller and more than capable of making planet-fall, even though it also had shuttles, but not transporter.

A lot of the insides of the ship couldn’t deny they’d come from your regular household. A clothing iron served as a scanner of sorts, the robots had ice-cream scoops for ‘hands’ to use the controls, and every base very much looked like the others (although that could be explained with pre-fabricated parts for quick assembly, of course). The aquarium of a member of the TV crew served as backdrop for the living quarters below Earth’s oceans. And they were dancing the weirdest dance I’ve ever seen anyone perform, but who am I to judge people’s dancing style?

Nevertheless, the storytelling was excellent, despite of the rather bad effects (small budget, as mentioned), and the actors had a good chemistry, especially the commander and his ‘babysitting’ security officer, who displayed the right amount of love-hate-relationship for things to stay interesting. As an afterthought, the space uniforms for men and women were rather similar: dark overalls (a lighter one for the security officer who, as mentioned, isn’t part of the regular fleet). Women wore skirts outside of duty, but not on duty, making them much more versatile during the adventures. Also, the skirts were no mini-skirts, but ended shortly above the knee.

The shorter run and much smaller crew allowed to put more focus on each crew member during the one-hour episodes of the series and to establish their relationships - including that of the security officer whose behaviour towards the crew changed slowly, the longer she was a team member.

Some episodes, like the aforementioned planet-turned-supernova one, also put quite a bit of focus on things happening on Earth while the crew was away. The discussions between secret service, politicians, and military about how to proceed if the planet couldn’t be stopped were a vital part, showing just how pressing the Orion’s mission was.

Other episodes, like one where the Orion seemingly deserted, showed that there is a huge difference between orders and actual actions, as the ship ordered to follow and destroy the Orion didn’t exactly hurry itself, since its commander, a good friend of McLane, wasn’t exactly hot on killing him without any talks beforehand.

Diversity - introduced through the ‘there are no local governments on Earth any longer’ part of the introduction - was mostly achieved by using a partially horrible combination of names. McLane got off easy, other characters went around with names like Tamara Jagellovsk, Mario di Monti, Hasso Sigbjörnson, Atan Shubashi, or Helga Legrelle (Lieutenant Jagellovsk being the security officer in question). That problem, of course, would have been much easier to solve in the US, but there were hardly any non-European actors available to the studio at that time.

Nevertheless, the series was successful, which was partially due to the good writing, to the good actors, but also to the inherent humour which was achieved by adding actors with comedic backgrounds (like Wolfgang Völz) to the crew. That made up for the rather low budget - especially as Germans weren’t really used to better effects at that time (Star Trek TOS didn’t run here until the early Seventies).

In 2003, the series was cut together to form a movie which actually was moderately successful in theatres, introducing a whole new generation of people to the “Raumpatrouille Orion.” The series was eventually released on DVD (including the 2003 movie) and can still be seen on German TV (usually at local stations) on occasion.

The series is nice to watch and still entertaining, even when seen with today’s eyes. The stories are good, the effects bad in a good way (if, like me, you also like B-movies), and the other shortcomings (like the diversity problem) excusable.