In September of 1966 a new space adventure show hit the airwaves about a young, sometimes headstrong, starship captain and his crew. The show was cancelled after a relatively short run but managed to achieve a near cult status and gather a loyal cult following. It also inspired over one hundred spin off novels. The show, of course, is Raumpatrouille: Die phantastischen Abenteur des Raumschiffes Orion (Space Patrol; The Fantastic Adventures of the Starship Orion), broadcast for only seven episodes on West Germany’s ARD network.
Premiering on September 17, 1966, only a few days after Star Trek hit American airwaves, Raumpatrouille had much in common with its more famous counterpart. Set in a future when man had solved many of the world’s social problems and routinely traveled among the stars, it featured more adult oriented stories, a diverse crew (albeit less diverse than Trek), a distinctive spaceship, a great theme song and an opening narration sequence. It is fair, if only due to the fact the shows ran contemporaneously, to call Raumpatrouille the German Star Trek (and some have).
Still, there are many differences between the shows. The Orion’s captain, McLane, is young, headstrong and heroic but unlike Kirk, McLane has gotten into enough trouble to be demoted from the Fast Combat Fleet to lowly patrol duty (this is, in fact, the beginning of the series). Worse yet, a special security service officer has been assigned to his crew just to keep an eye on him. The Orion is basically a flying saucer launching from an undersea base on Earth. It is also much smaller than the Enterprise, with a crew of four men and two women. The crew members come from all over the Earth, but even though one character has a Japanese surname the actors are all Caucasian . It is worth noting, though, not only is the security officer assigned to oversee McLane a woman, so is McLane’s former boss in the Fast Combat Fleet.
Raumpatrouille was never broadcast in the United States, and it is a shame (it can be found, with fan translated subtitles, online). The series is a fascinating companion to Star Trek, with many commonalities but also many fascinating differences. Although the sets are few, with most of the episodes being set on the Orion and the Starlight Casino, a recreation area of Orion’s home base, they are interesting. The Orion’s version of the bridge view screen is a circular, table-like affair and the Starlight Casino, being underwater, has a transparent “ocean view” ceiling. Both are achieved with projection to varying degrees of success. The ocean life surrounding the Starlight Casino, for example, is suspiciously similar to the aquarium at your local Petsmart but the bridge view screen often shows interesting “sensor data” and other shots Star Trek did not attempt. Much (perhaps all) of the space action in Raumpatrouille is animated, probably best described as quaint and not too distracting from the story. One interesting thing about the Orion is that it lands on planets and boasts at least two shuttles (which look something like 1960’s space inspired playground equipment). In many ways, Raumpatrouille feels much like a Star Trek with a fair amount of the Man From UNCLE’s Cold War style and sensibilities mixed in.
Raumpatrouille: Die phantastischen Abenteur des Raumschiffes Orion is a fascinating take on 1960s science fiction but it is far from the only German contribution to the genre. Arguably the first great science fiction film, Metropolis (1927), was produced in Germany. Directed by Fritz Lang, who would later come to work in the United States and make films such as Ministry of Fear (1944) and The Big Heat (1953). The camera work on Metropolis was handled by Karl Freund, who also moved on to Hollywood where he was cinematographer on Dracula (1932), Key Largo (1948) and won the Academy Award for his work on The Good Earth (1937). He also directed The Mummy (1932) and even worked on I Love Lucy (1951-1957).
Although Metropolis introduced one of the most famous robots, it was not the only German robot film released in the United States. 1934’s Der Herr der Welt (The Master of the World) featured robotic miners, an attempt to use them as weapons and discussions of what should be done for the workers displaced by technology. Although it was reportedly released in the US, I have not been able to find a English language version. Definitely released in the United States, though, was1932’s FP-1 antwortet nicht (FP-1 Does Not Answer, also known as Secrets of FP-1). The German version was directed by Karl Hartl but simultaneously English and French language versions were shot on the same sets with different casts. A story of love, sabotage and the attempt to built permanent floating airfield in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the screenplay was by Curt Siodmak (based on his novel). Alarmed by political situation in Germany, Siodmak moved to Hollywood where he got his break writing The Wolf Man (1941). He went on to write several well known science fiction films and novels including Donovan’s Brain (1942) and Riders to the Stars (1952).
After World War II and the rise of television, West Germany made an unexpected contribution to the science fiction genre in 1954 when the televised adventures of Flash Gordon began to be shot in a Spandau brewery turned television studio. His version, starring Steve Holland as Flash, retconned the hero into a spacefaring agent for the Galactic Bureau of Investigation. After about two dozen episodes the show moved production to France for its final 13 episodes. Flash Gordon was syndicated in the United States and carried through much of the country by the DuMont Network. In the 1970s, German and English production companies would join forces to create Star Maidens (1976), which would air on ITV in the UK and syndication in the US. A story of men from a female dominated alien world who escape to present day Earth (and are chased by alien women), it starred Judy Geeson and Gareth Thomas. Tensions between the production companies resulted in Star Maidens only lasting a single season (which freed Thomas to star in Blake’s 7). Twenty years later another German science fiction coproduction, this time with Canada, would hit US television. Lexx is a bit hard to describe and it is probably safest to say the story of a group of misfits on a living spaceship is something you either love or hate. Still, after a “first season” of four film length episodes it managed to last for three more seasons of hour long stories.
East German science fiction was not widely released in the free world, but it did exist. Several movies have made their way to limited release in the United States recently. In 1970 director Gottfired Kolditz released Signal- ein Weltraumabenteuer (Signals- A Space Adventure). A rather serious rescue story, the movie follows a space crew sent to investigate mysteries signals and hopefully rescue a lost ship. It is, in both tone and design, very much like contemporary science fiction from outside the Iron Curtain. Six years later the same director released Im Staub der Sterne (1976, In The Dust Of The Stars), which in many ways was honestly much more reminiscent of late 1950s or early 1960s science fiction.
Perhaps the greatest German contribution to science fiction, certainly the most prolific, came in the form of a weekly Romanheft (“novel magazine”) from Pabel-Moewig Verlag publishing introduced in 1961 called Perry Rhodan, der Erbe des Universums (Perry Rhodan, Heir to the Universe). Each week a new issue shared the adventures of US Space Force Major Perry Rhodan. Commanding Earth’s first attempt to land on the moon in 1971, he discovers a stranded Arkonide spaceship. Befriending the incredibly advanced aliens, he gains access to fantastic technologies which allow him to unify Earth and begin exploring the universe. Most issues were approximately half of a complete novel and the novels interconnected into longer story arcs. 65 years late Perry Rhodan is still in publication!
Although most of Perry’s adventures have not been translated into English, in 1969 the legendary Forrest J Ackerman arranged for Ace Books to begin publishing US versions of the stories. Employing several translators, including Ackerman’s wife Wendayne, Ace released 118 Perry Rhodan novels between 1969 and 1978, although towards the end of the run many of the paperbacks contained two complete novels, and several adventures from the Rhodan spinoff Atlan were also translated.
After Ace ceased publication Wendayne Ackerman produced pamphlet-like editions, similar in length to the German versions, under her own company Master Publications. Her releases stopped in 1979 with the 137th novel. Vector Publishing picked up the Perry Rhodan franchise in the 1990s, releasing four editions which were more or less current with the German releases. In 2011, the series was rebooted in Germany as Perry Rhodan NEO and 13 volumes of it were translated into English by J-Novel Club, a publisher which specializes in Japanese light novels.
There was also a film, Mission Stardust, produced in 1967 and named after the verst first Perry Rhodan novel (although the Ace translation was titled Enterprise Stardust, possibly to tie it in with television’s favorite star ship). The West German/Italian/Spanish co-production starred Lang Jeffires (perhaps best remembered as being married to Rhonda Fleming) and Swedish “exploitation” actress Essy Perrson. It was released throughout Europe, even though most countries were not familiar with Perry Rhodan, and in the United States in 1968. The film is mentioned in much of Forest Ackerman’s early hype for the Rhodan series, but honestly it is not a very good movie.
With contributions across film, television and literature German science fiction is an important part of the overall genre. The Perry Rhodan series alone has contributed thousands upon thousands of pages of adventures and outlasted, so far, both Doctor Who and Star Trek. Best of all, though, German science fiction offers whole new franchises to English speaking fans, such as Raumpatroiulle and Perry Rhodan, after their English language contemporaries have become very familiar.