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[February 14, 1967] Three Facets of Conan: Conan the Warrior by Robert E. Howard

February 14, 2022 Cora Buhlert 7 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

Winter in the City and the Park

An aerial view of the Bremen Bürgerpark with the luxurious Park Hotel and the Holler Lake.

It's cold a wet February here in my hometown of Bremen, but the first signs of spring are already visible and audible in the form of the red and white pavilions and the shouts of the barkers of the Bürgerpark tombola.

Bürgerpark Kaffeehaus am Emmasee — The modernist coffee house at the Emma Lake in Bremen's Bürgerpark opened only three years ago, replacing a building which was destroyed in WWII.

The Bürgerpark (citizen's park) is a roughly 200 hectare big park in the heart of Bremen, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. The park contains several lakes, a luxury hotel, a restaurant, a coffee house, a theatre, a small zoo as well fountains, bridges, benches, statues and lots of beautiful scenery. Beloved by the people of Bremen, the upkeep of the park is financed almost entirely by donations as well as the Bürgerpark tombola, a charity raffle that has been going on every year since 1953 in the late winter and early spring.

Dromedary Bobby — The dromedary Bobby is one of the most popular inhabitants of the zoo in the Bremen Bürgerpark.

Llamas and Zebra in the Bürgerpark — The llama Chacca and her baby Roland, who was born en route from South America to Bremerhaven, are the newest inhabitants of the Bürgerpark zoo. A longtime inhabitant, the Zebra Timmy, looks on.

Whenever I chance to find myself in the city center at Bürgerpark tombola time, I inevitably buy a few tickets. After all, it's for a good cause and you can win some great prizes such as cars, holiday trips, sports tickets or cruises. Though so far, all I won was a packet of rice.

More from the Cimmerian Barbarian

But even though I only won an underwhelming prize from the Bürgerpark tombola, I did hit the reading jackpot this month with yet another great collection of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories from the 1930s courtesy of Lancer Books.

After Conan the Adventurer, which I reviewed last month for the Journey, I cracked open the purple edged pages of the follow-up collection Conan the Warrior with a mix of excitement and apprehension. For while I was happy to spend more time with the Cimmerian, I was also worried that this collection would be a let-down, compared to the high quality of the previous installment.

However, I need not have worried, because Conan the Warrior is even better than Conan the Adventurer, collecting one good and two excellent stories.

Red Nails

Weird Tales July 1936 — Margaret Brundage's striking cover illustrates a pivotal scene in "Red Nails"

The novella "Red Nails" was serialised in Weird Tales from July to October 1936 and has the distinction of being the last Conan adventure that Robert E. Howard completed before his untimely death in 1936. And what an adventure it is.

Once again, the story opens not with Conan, but with another character, Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, a female pirate and mercenary, who had to go on the run when she killed an officer of the army in which she had enlisted, after he tried to rape her. Now Valeria makes her way through the uncharted jungles of the Hyborian Age equivalent of Africa. Unbeknownst to Valeria, Conan, who served in the same mercenary army, has fallen for Valeria and followed her into the jungle, quietly dispatching any other pursuers.

Weird Tales August 1936 — Not Conan or Valeria, but an illustration for Edmond Hamilton's "The Door Into Infinity"

Valeria is a marvellous character, a warrior woman who is Conan's equal in many ways. "Why won't men let me live a man's life?" Valeria laments at one point. "That's obvious," Conan replies with an appreciative look at Valeria's body. Robert E. Howard is usually considered a writer of masculine fiction and Conan is clearly a man's man, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety and competence of the female characters in these stories. Not every women in these stories is as impressive as Valeria or Yasmina from "The People of the Black Circle", but they are all characters with personalities and lives of their own and every one of them is given a chance to shine.

Weird Tales October 1936 — This hellish scene by J. Allen St. John illustrates not "Red Nails", but "Isle of the Undead" by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach

At first, Valeria is not too pleased to see Conan, but this quickly changes when Valeria and Conan find themselves pursued by what they call a dragon, but which twentieth century readers will quickly recognise as a dinosaur who has survived the extinction of its brethren. Now I was not expecting to see Conan and Valeria fighting a dinosaur, but my inner ten-year-old who loved dinosaurs was delighted.

Red Nails Hugh Rankin — Conan and Valerie fight the "dragon", as imagined by Harold S. DeLay

Together, Conan and Valeria manage to kill the dinosaur, but fearing there might be more in the jungle, they flee into the desert, where they spot yet another mysterious and seemingly abandoned city on the horizon. However, Xuchotl, which is not so much a city but a giant enclosed maze, is far from abandoned. Instead, it is home to two rivalling factions who are engaged in a generations long blood feud to the exclusion of all else. The title refers not, as I had initially assumed, to women's fingernails, but to copper nails which are hammered into a column to keep a tally of enemies killed.

Red Nails Harold S. DeLay — Conan and Valeria meet the people of Xuchotl, as imagined by Harold S. DeLay

In spite of their best efforts, Conan and Valeria cannot avoid getting dragged into that feud. But other dangers lurk in Xuchotl as well, including a treacherous king, a vampiric queen with an unsavoury interest in Valeria and a mad sorcerer.

Robert E. Howard clearly enjoyed writing stories about mysterious cities in the desert inhabited by drugged out or otherwise insane inhabitants and monsters both human and supernatural, since no less than five of the seven stories in these collections include a variation on this theme. "Red Nails" is the best of these and it almost seems as if the previous stories were practice runs for this one.

Red Nail Harold S. DeLay — More "Red Nails" interior art, courtesy of Harold S. DeLay

Howard also contrasts the madness and inhumanity of Xuchotl's inhabitants and their endless feud with the warmth and humanity of both Conan and Valeria. There is a wonderful moment where Conan's interrupts the pompous King Olmec's victory speech with a gruff "You'd best see to your wounded." We also see Conan and Valeria taking care of each other and treating each other's injuries. Fantasy fiction rarely pays attention to the physical cost of battle, but the Conan stories repeatedly show that characters, including Conan, can and will be wounded. Robert E. Howard's father was a Texas country doctor, so Howard knew a thing or two about injuries.

Another amazing (and very bloody) adventure with a heroine who's Conan's match in every way. Five stars.

The Jewels of Gwahlur

This novelette appeared in the March 1935 issue of Weird Tales and finds Conan still (or once again) in Africa, climbing the sheer walls of a cliff surrounding the ruined city of Alkmeenon. Inside this city, there rests a legendary treasure of priceless jewels known as the Teeth of Gwahlur.

Weird Tales March 1935 — Margaret Brundage's evocative cover for the March 1935 issue of Weird Tales illustrates not "The Jewels of Gwalhur", but "Clutching Hands of Death" by Harold Ward

Conan is eager to get his hands on this treasure and has ingratiated himself with the King of Keshan in order to steal the jewels, which happen to be sacred to the people of Keshan.

However, Conan isn't the only one who's after the jewels. There's also his rival Thutmekri and his accomplice, the fake oracle Muriela. Furthermore, the city of Alkmeenon once again is not nearly as deserted as everybody believes, but is still being stalked by the monstrous servants of its former masters.

Jewels of Gwalhur interior art — Muriela is assaulted by an offensive racial stereotype, while an uncharacteristically blonde Conan intervenes.

So far in this collection, we've seen Conan the mercenary, Conan the warlord and Conan the pirate. This story adds a new dimension to the Cimmerian and gives us Conan the con man, who is literally running a long con to get his hands on the jewels. The city of Alkmeenon, located in the center of what a modern reader will recognise as an extinct volcano, is a very evocative setting. Though unfortunately, the descriptions of the black characters who appear in the story are once again dated and no longer appropriate to the civil rights era. The heroine Muriela is no Valeria either, but closer to the stereotype of the clinging and whimpering damsel.

A fun heist story starring Conan. Four stars.

Beyond the Black River

Weird Tales May 1935 — This rather dull Margaret Brundage cover for the May 1935 issue of Weird Tales illustrates "The Death Cry", an adventure of scientific detective Craig Kennedy by Arthur B. Reeve

This novella was originally serialised in the May and June 1935 of Weird Tales and is set on the northern edge of Aquilonia, the Hyborian age equivalent of France and also the kingdom Conan will eventually come to rule. Aquilonia has recently expanded its borders northwards into the wilderness inhabited by the barbarian Picts. The Picts are understandably not happy about this.

Beyond the Black River interior art Hugh Rankin — A giant snake wreaks havoc on a Pictish village that is seemingly inhabited solely by naked women in the interior art by Hugh Rankin for Part I of "Beyond the Black River"

The historical Picts were a people who lived in what is now Scotland during the late Roman era and the early Middle Ages. Little is known about them and so Howard uses a lot of poetic licence to turn his version of the Picts into analogues for American Indians, setting up a frontier conflict. The Picts are very much depicted as offensive stereotypes here, though Howard also wrote several stories chronicling the struggles of a Pictish chieftain named Bran Mak Morn with the Roman Empire, where the Picts are portrayed in far more sympathetic light.

Once again, the novella opens not with Conan, but with a young man named Balthus who has come to Aquilonia's newly opened frontier, lured by promises of cheap and abundant land. However, Balthus quickly encounters the Picts and is saved by none other than Conan, who has come to Fort Tuscelan to serve as a mercenary. Since Conan's homeland Cimmeria borders on Pictish territory (though the Cimmerians and the Picts are ancestral enemies), the Fort's commander puts Conan's wilderness skills and knowledge of the enemy to good use by sending him on scouting missions.

Weird Tales June 1936 — Margaret Brundage is back on form with this striking cover for the June 1935 issue of Weird Tales, which illustrates "The Horror in the Studio" by the unjustly forgotten Dorothy Quick.

Conan is convinced that Aquilonia's expansion plans will eventually fail, when the various Pictish tribes rally together to kick out the invaders. After all, that was what the Cimmerians did when Aquilonia attempted to annex their territory. Balthus has heard stories of that legendary battle for the Aquilonian Fort Venarium and asks Conan if he was there. "Yes," Conan says and calmly tells Balthus that he fought on the Cimmerian side as a fifteen-year-old. So Conan fought the very people at the age of fifteen that he will come to rule as a king some twenty-five years later and sees absolutely no contradiction in this.

Conan's prediction proves to be accurate, for the Pictish wizard Zogar Sag has rallied the tribes and is gearing up for an assault on Fort Tuscelan. Conan and a party of scouts, including Balthus, sneak into Pictish territory to take out Zogar Sag. But they are ambushed and only Conan and Balthus survive. However, the attack on Fort Tuscelan has already begun and all Conan and Balthus can do is to warn the Aquilonian settlers, so they can flee before they are slaughtered.

Hugh Rankin Beyond the Black River — Conan fights a demonic creature in Hugh Rankin's interior art for part 2 of "Beyond the Black River"

Of all the Conan stories I've read so far, this one is the bleakest, since it literally ends with everybody except for Conan dead. This includes Balthus who makes a heroic last stand together with a feral dog named Slasher to allow the settlers to escape to safety.

Now I'm very much not a dog person and Slasher, who went feral after the Picts murdered his owner and now takes revenge on the slayers in his own fashion, is very reminiscent of the slobbering and barking menaces that chased after me behind much too low fences when I rode my bicycle to school as a kid. That said, Slasher is a marvellous character in his own right and the mix of total savagery towards the Picts and affection towards Balthus rings so true that I wonder if Howard owned a dog. I'm not someone who cries at movies or books and managed to sit through all of Doctor Zhivago without shedding a single tear. However, the heroic sacrifice of Slasher and Balthus made even me misty-eyed.

"Beyond the Black River" also showcases Howard's versatility, since he plops Conan into what is basically a western. And considering Howard grew up in Texas at a time when the so-called Old West was still within living memory, it seems only natural that he would draw on the frontier era in his fiction.

To someone from West Germany, the Old West is just as exotic as the Hyborian Age. Nonetheless, I connected to this story, because I noticed many parallels between the Cimmerians and later the Picts kicking the Aquilonians out of their respective homelands and my own ancestors, led by the Cherusci chieftain Arminius, kicking the Romans out of Northern Germany in the battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD.

"Beyond the Black River" also ends with what is probably one of Howard's most famous lines: "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural; it is a whim of circumstance… And barbarism must always ultimately triumph!"

A bleak and grim story that will stick in your mind for a long time. Five stars.

A Multi-faceted Barbarian

So far, I have read a few of the Conan stories in scattered reprints in magazines and collections as well as two of Lancer's new paperback collections and I'm struck by the variety of settings and themes in the stories that Robert E. Howard wrote about this character. But even though the various stories reveal different aspects of the Cimmerian, Conan always remains recognisably the same character.

Those who have heard of Conan, but have not read the actual stories featuring him, inevitably cite Conan's violence, his physical strength and his womanising as his most notable characteristics. Nor are they wrong, because Conan is clearly a violent man. Those at the receiving end of his sword or his fists usually deserve their fate, but it's also difficult to overlook that Conan outright murders the pirate captain Zaparavo in "Pool of the Black One" to take over his ship and also murders a rival in "Drums of Tombalku" to usurp his position.

A lot of people also think that Conan is stupid, an illiterate Barbarian, big of muscle and small of brain. They could not be more wrong, because the Conan depicted by Robert E. Howard is actually a very intelligent man. He speaks, reads and writes multiple languages. He is a also a brilliant military strategist and tactician and – at least in "The Jewels of Gwalhur" – a clever con man.

As for the womanising, like many men, Conan does think with the dangly bit on occasion. In "Red Nails", Conan literally walks across half a continent in order to go after and protect the woman he has fallen for.

In the seven stories collected in Conan the Adventurer and Conan the Warrior, Conan is without female companionship in two of the stories and with a different woman in the each of the remaining five. And even though most Conan stories end with Conan walking off into the sunset with his current lover, the woman in question is usually nowhere to be seen in the following story. This is a pity, for while some of the female characters in these stories are insipid non-entities like the woman clinging to Conan's leg on Frank Frazetta's cover for Conan the Adventurer, Conan is also paired with some remarkably strong women like Valeria from "Red Nails" or Yasmina from "People of the Black Circle".

But then, Conan is extremely charismatic. He may be a loner and wandering outlaw for much of his career, but Conan never has problems persuading people to follow him. In "Drums of Tombalku", Conan goes from prisoner marked for death to leader of the warriors who have captured him within the space of a few days. And in "Pool of the Black One", Conan steals the crew of the pirate captain Zaparavo from under his nose by gaining their loyalty. Even though those stories haven't been reprinted yet, it's easy to see how Conan will wind up becoming King of Aquilonia, the very country whose warriors he helped to kick out of his native Cimmeria at the age of fifteen.

Though for Conan, loyalty is not a one way street. In fact, the most notable of Conan's traits that appears in story after story is his deep loyalty towards friends, lovers, comrades in arms and people he feels responsible for. In "People of the Black Circle", Conan's main goal throughout the story is freeing the seven of his men who have been captured by the authorities of Vendya. Nor will Conan abandon the people he has adopted, even after they try to kill him. And when one of his friends is killed, as happens in "Drums of Tombalku" and "Beyond the Black River", Conan swears bloody vengeance on the killers.

Closely linked to Conan's deep loyalty towards people he feels responsible for is a trait that is not often brought up in connection with a violent Barbarian warrior, namely his compassion. For these stories demonstrate again and again that Conan deeply cares about people, whether it is his budding friendship with Balthus and Slasher in "Beyond the Black River", his protectiveness towards Valeria in "Red Nails" or Conan freely foregoing the great treasure he has been chasing after for the entire story in order to save a life at the end of "The Jewels of Gwalhur". Indeed, it is when pitted against a merciless and utterly inhuman opponent, whether it's the wizards of Mount Yimsha in "People of the Black Circle", the blood-mad inhabitants of Xuchotl in "Red Nails", the apathetic pleasure seekers of Xuthal in "The Slithering Shadows" or the murderous Pictish warriors and wizards in "Beyond the Black River", that Conan's humanity shines most brightly.

Now that Lancer is reprinting all the stories, you owe it to yourself to get to know the real Conan, this fascinating and multi-faceted character that Robert E. Howard created more than thirty years ago.

Three fabulous tales of the Cimmerian Barbarian. Five stars for the collection.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 22, 1967] The Return of the Cimmerian: Conan the Adventurer by Robert E. Howard

January 22, 2022 Cora Buhlert 4 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

1967 is off to a cold and wet start here in West Germany, so it's the perfect opportunity to stay indoors and read. Thankfully, I have a plethora of magazines to keep me company.

Bravo January 1967 — Teen magazines Bravo profiles Uwe Beyer, who plays Siegfried in the upcoming fantasy epic The Nibelungs, this month.

Für Sie January 1967 — The women's mag Für Sie offers costume and make-up tips for the upcoming carnival season.

Das Motorrad January 1967 — Motorbike magazine Das Motrrad tests the new Honda CB-250.

What is more, during my latest visit to my local import bookstore, the trusty spinner rack yielded not one but two treasures: Conan the Adventurer and Conan the Warrior by Robert E. Howard.

The Cimmerian Barbarian and the Texas Pulpster

The untimely death of Robert E. Howard thirty years ago is one of the great tragedies of our genre. The lifelong Texan Howard had his first story, the prehistoric adventure "Spear and Fang" published in Weird Tales in 1925, when he was only nineteen years old. In the following eleven years, Howard published dozens of stories in Weird Tales as well as in long forgotten pulp magazines such as Oriental Stories, Fight Stories, Action Stories, Magic Carpet Magazine or Spicy Mystery. In the introduction to Conan the Adventurer, editor L. Sprague de Camp calls Howard "a natural story-teller, whose tales are unsurpassed for vivid, colorful, headlong, gripping action."

In 1936, tragedy struck, when Howard's beloved mother was about to succumb to tuberculosis. Overcome with grief, Howard took his own life. He was only thirty years old.

Howard's most famous creation is undoubtedly Conan the Cimmerian, a barbarian warrior whose adventures in the so-called Hyborian Age some twelve thousand years before our time Howard chronicled in eighteen published and several unpublished stories in Weird Tales between 1932 and 1936. At the time, the unique mix of pseudo-historical action, adventure and supernatural horror that Howard pioneered in the Conan stories had no name. Some thirty years after the appearance of the first Conan story, Fritz Leiber finally bestowed a name on this nameless subgenre: sword and sorcery.

It was the fate of many pulpsters, including popular and prolific writers, to be forgotten as the pulps faded. Howard, however, was never forgotten in the thirty years since his untimely death. His fiction has inspired authors like Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock and Lin Carter. There is a club devoted to his works, the Hyborian Legion, and the popular fanzine Amra started out as a Howard fanzine before branching out to cover the entire subgenre now known as sword and sorcery, a subgenre Howard created out of whole cloth in his parents' house in Cross Plains, Texas.

However, until now the actual stories of Robert E. Howard have been unavailable outside the yellowing pages of thirty-year-old copies of Weird Tales. There have been occasional magazine reprints, and Gnome Press reprinted the Conan stories in several hardcover collections in the early 1950s, but those editions are almost as difficult to find as vintage copies of Weird Tales.

Luckily for all of us sword and sorcery fans, Lancer Books has decided to reprint all the Conan stories in paperback format with striking covers by last year's Hugo winner Frank Frazetta. I was a little sceptical about Frazetta's Hugo win last year, since at the time he was mainly known for his Edgar Rice Burroughs covers. However, now that I've seen his take on Conan, I'm a fan.

Howard wrote the Conan stories, which follow the Cimmerian from his time as a thief in his late teens to his time as King of the Aquilonia in his forties, out of order, but editor L. Sprague de Camp has rearranged them into chronological order for the Lancer editions. For reasons best known to themselves, Lancer began its Conan reprints with two volumes set in the middle of Conan's career, during his time as a mercenary and warlord.

The People of the Black Circle

Weird Tales September 1934 — Margaret Brundage's take on the Devi Yasmina and the Master of Mount Yimsa

Conan the Adventurer begins with "The People of the Black Circle", a novella that was serialised in the September, October and November 1934 issues of Weird Tales.

The story opens not with Conan – and indeed, it is a pattern with these stories that they open with other characters, before the Cimmerian appears – but with the King of Vendya, the Hyborian Age equivalent of India. The King is dying. In a moment of clarity, he tells his sister, the Devi Yasmina, that wizards have drawn his soul out of his body. Should he die in this state, his soul will be doomed forever. However, now that his soul has briefly managed to return to his body, the King begs Yasmina to kill him to save his soul from eternal damnation. Sobbing, Yasmina stabs him.

After a beginning like that, who could not read on? And so Howard leads us into a fabulous adventure that follows several competing factions as they vie for control over the Hyborian Age equivalents of India, the Himalaya and Afghanistan (thankfully, there is a handy map at the beginning of the paperback).

Weird Tales interior art — Hugh Rankin's interior art for Weird Tales feature Yasmina, Conan and a giant snake.

The Devi Yasmina, unsurprisingly, wants revenge for the death of her brother and her chosen instrument of vengeance is none other than Conan. The mercenary Kerim Shah wants to kidnap Yasmina and conquer Vendya on behalf of his employers, the neighbouring kingdom of Turan, and has conspired with the wizards of Mount Yimsa to murder the King. One of those wizards, Khemsa, is not satisfied with being merely a tool. He wants to overthrow both the wizards and the Devi with the aid of his lover Gitara, one of the Devi's handmaidens. Conan, finally, who is a warlord of the Afghuli hill tribes at this point in his life, merely wants back seven of his men, who have been captured by the forces of Vendya.

Weird Tales October 1934 — The second installment of this story appeared in the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales, whose striking cover by Margaret Brundage illustrates C.L. Moore's story "Black God's Kiss", which I'd love to see reprinted.

Things come to a head, when Conan infiltrates the palace to negotiate the release of his seven hill chiefs with the governor of the Vendyan province of Peshkauri. Yasmina happens to blunder into the governor's study at just this moment and Conan winds up kidnapping her and going on the run. Conan intends to use Yasmina as leverage to secure the release of his men, while Yasmina still hopes to use him to avenge herself on the wizards of Mount Yimsa. Only one of them will get their will.

What follows is a glorious adventure. Conan finds himself faced with treachery from those he thought his allies, as well as unexpected alliances with enemies, as he takes on the wizards of Mount Yimsa and falls for Yasmina in the process.

Weird Tales November 1934 — Margaret Bundage's striking cover for the November 1934 issue of Weird Tales.

After reading "The People of the Black Circle", I understand why Lancer and de Camp chose this particular story to reintroduce us to Conan. This story has it all, adventure and romance, political manoeuvrings and the blackest of magics. Conan's loyalty to the people whose leader he has become and his determination to rescue his captured men make him an incredibly likeable character for all his faults. And even though she was created more than thirty years ago, Yasmina is the sort of strong woman that is still all too rare in contemporary fantastic fiction. One of the most story's most memorable scenes occurs as the Master of Mount Yimsa forces Yasmina to relive all her previous lives, subjecting her to the violence and pain that women have suffered across time. I was surprised to see such insight from a male author.

Fellow traveller Victoria Silverwolf reviewed this story, when it was reprinted in the January 1967 issue of Fantastic and gave it three stars. I enjoyed this story a lot more than Victoria did.

A fabulous adventure by a writer at the height of his powers. Five stars.

The Slithering Shadow

Weird Tales November 1933 — Margaret Brundage's illustration of Thalis whipping Natala, while the slithering shadow lurks in the background, was Weird Tales' most popular cover of all time.

This story originally appeared in the September 1933 issue of Weird Tales, which featured one of the most popular covers Margaret Brundage ever created for the unique magazine. But even though Brundage's predilection for painting scantily clad women in suggestive poses is well-known, the cover accurately illustrates a scene from this story.

"The Slithering Shadow" opens with Conan staggering through the desert of Kush in the Hyborian Age equivalent of Northern Africa, after the mercenary army in which he fought was defeated and wiped out. He is accompanied by Natala, a blonde woman he rescued from the slave market and made his companion.

Conan is at the end of his line and he knows it. He and Natala are out of water and there is no end to the desert in sight. Conan considers mercy-killing Natala to spare her the pain of dying of thirst, when they spot a mysterious city on the horizon.

However, the city Xuthal turns out to be just as deadly as the desert. And so Conan and Natala face Xuthal's drugged out inhabitants and the treacherous Stygian (the Hyborian equivalent of Egypt) Thalis who takes a liking to Conan and subjects poor Natala to the whipping that Margaret Brundage so memorably illustrated for the original Weird Tales cover. Finally, there's also Thog, a Lovecraftian horror (Howard and Lovecraft were pen pals) and the Slithering Shadow of the title who preys on the people of Xuthal…

Another great adventure. Not quite as good as "The People of the Black Circle", but then what could be? Four stars.

Drums of Tombalku

This novella is brand-new, based on an incomplete draft that was found among Howard's papers after his death and was completed by editor L. Sprague de Camp according to Howard's outline.

Like "The People of the Black Circle", "Drums of Tombalku" opens not with Conan, but with a young mercenary named Amalric. Conan and Amalric were comrades, until their mercenary army was wiped out (the armies in which Conan enlists sure tend to be unlucky). They fled into the desert, were attacked by raiders and separated. Amalric believes Conan dead, though the reader knows that the Cimmerian is still alive.

The novella opens with Amalric resting at a water hole with two bandits whose band he has joined, when the leader appears, bearing a young woman he found unconscious in the desert. The bandits plan to rape the young woman, but Amalric discovers his sense of chivalry and kills his companions.

This opening scene, which was presumably written by Howard, is the one point in Conan the Adventurer where the fact that these stories were written more than thirty years ago becomes apparent. For the bandits are black men and the physical descriptions of these characters are dated and downright uncomfortable to read in this era of progressing civil rights. And the fact that these bandits want to rape a (white) woman is unpleasantly reminiscent of Southern fears of sexual violence committed by black men. Though it is notable that Conan himself does not seem to suffer from racial prejudices and befriends people of all races. Indeed, both Conan and Amalric explicitly state in this story that white people are just as capable of both good and evil as black people.

Amalric attempts to return Lissa, the young woman he rescued, to her home and finds himself in yet another mysterious city in the desert whose hopped up inhabitants are stalked by the monstrous god Ollam-Onga. Clearly, this was a theme Howard loved, since it appears several times in his Conan stories.

Amalric slays Ollam-Onga and makes his escape together with Lissa, the god's worshippers in mad pursuit. He is reunited with Conan who is not dead after all. Instead, Conan was captured by the raiders of the desert metropolis Tombalku, but has risen to their captain by now, since Tombalku's king is an old friend of Conan's from his days as a pirate on the coast of what is now Africa.

Conan takes Amalric and Lissa to Tombalku, where racial tensions between the vaguely Middle Eastern and black population come to a head. The fact that Amalric slew the god Ollam-Onga, who is worshipped by Tombalku's inhabitants, does not help either.

Sometimes, stories are left unfinished for a reason and this was probably the case here. For Amalric is simply not as interesting as Conan and the first half of the story is very reminiscent of "The Slithering Shadow" (and Howard may well have reused ideas from this unfinished story).

As evidenced by his novels Lest Darkness Fall and The Tritonian Ring, L. Sprague De Camp is a very different writer than Robert E. Howard. He makes a decent effort to match Howard's style, but while Conan's dialogue does ring true most of the time, De Camp's action scenes don't have the energy of Howard's. Nor does De Camp have Howard's poetic sensibility and some of his word choices like "condottiere" don't match the prehistoric milieu of the Hyborian Age.

The weakest story in this collection, but nonetheless entertaining. Three stars.

The Pool of the Black One

Weird Tales October 1933 — Margaret Brundage's stunning cover for the October 1933 issue of Weird Tales

This story originally appeared in the October 1933 issue of Weird Tales and opens quite spectacularly with Conan clambering dripping wet aboard the pirate ship Wastrel in the middle of the Western Sea (we call it the Atlantic Ocean) after a fallout with the Barachan pirates. The Wastrel's captain Zaparavo is not particularly pleased with the mysterious stranger who boarded his ship, though he grudgingly makes him part of the crew. Meanwhile, Zaparavo's lover Sancha is fascinated by Conan.

As we've seen in "The People of the Black Circle" and "Drums of Tombalku", Conan is very charismatic and a natural leader and so he quickly wins the respect of the Wastrel's crew. He is also clearly aiming to become captain of the Wastrel, just as he became warlord of the Afghuli hill tribes and captain of the raiders of Tombalku.

Conan gets his chance to take over the Wastrel, when the clearly insane Zaparavo takes the ship to a mysterious island far off the coast in search of some great treasure. What he finds instead is death at the business end of Conan's sword.

But the island is not as deserted as it seems and soon Conan has to defend Sancha and the pirate crew against its inhuman inhabitants and their strange and terrible rites…

"The Pool of the Black One" starts off as a pirate adventure-–and indeed, this makes me question De Camp's chronology, for in "Drums of Tombalku" it is clearly stated that Conan's pirate days are in the past-–but takes a turn into Lovecraftian territory, once the Wastrel reaches the nameless island. The horror of the island, a mysterious pool which turns people into figurines, is certainly a unique idea, but Howard never fully explores it.

Another enjoyable adventure of the Cimmerian barbarian. Four stars.

There's Gold in Them Pulps

Sword and sorcery has been undergoing something of a revival ever since Michael Moorcock introduced Elric of Meniboné in the pages of Science Fantasy and Cele Goldsmith Lalli rescued Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from oblivion and also gave the world John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian and Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned in Fantastic. Furthermore, the enormous success of Ace's (unauthorised) paperback editions of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings has shown that fantasy has the potential of being just as successful as science fiction.

However, until now it has been very difficult to read the original stories of Robert E. Howard as well as other sword and sorcery writers of the 1930s such as C.L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry Kuttner or Clifford Ball that started it all.

I have read a few of the Conan stories in scattered reprints in magazines and collections and my own Kurval sword and soccery series was directly inspired the novel The Hour of the Dragon a.k.a. Conan the Conqueror, which features Conan as King of Aquilonia. But in spite of scouring used bookstores, I have never been able to track down all of the stories. Therefore, I'm grateful to Lancer and L. Sprague De Camp for reprinting the Conan stories, including the ones that Robert E. Howard never got to finish. I hope that sales are good enough that they will complete this project.

Furthermore, I hope that the Conan reprints are only the beginning of a movement to bring the fantasy of thirty years ago back into print. For while there was a lot of dross published in the pulps, there also were a lot of wonderful stories that deserve rediscovery. For example, I would love to see some of the other characters Robert E. Howard created for Weird Tales such Kull of Atlantis, the Puritan avenger Solomon Kane or Bran Mak Morn, last King of the Picts, back in print. C.L. Moore's stories about the interplanetary outlaw Northwest Smith and the medieval swordswoman Jirel of Joiry from Weird Tales also deserve to be rediscovered as do the lyrical and truly weird fantasy and horror stories of Clark Ashton Smith. Finally, I also hope to see all of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories collected eventually, including the early ones that were published in Unknown some twenty-five years ago.

Conan the Adventurer is an excellent collection of what we now call sword and sorcery fiction and also serves as a great introduction to the author and the character who gave birth to the subgenre.

Four stars for the collection.

But what about Conan the Warrior, the second Lancer Conan collection, you ask? Well, stay tuned, cause I will be reviewing that one next month right here at Galactic Journey.

Snow in East Berlin in 1967 — Winter has come to East Berlin, giving children the chance to get out their sleds.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 18, 1966] The Manchurian Colonel: Space Patrol Orion, Episode 7: "Invasion"

December 18, 2021 Cora Buhlert 1 Comment

by Cora Buhlert

Tragedy in the Aegean Sea

On the North and Baltic Sea as well as on the Mediterranean Sea, dozens of ferries shuttle people, vehicles and cargo across the waves every day. By now, they have become such an integral part of the transport network that envelops Europe that we often forget that these ships are not without risk.

On December 7, 1966, the ferry SS Heraklion left the port of Chania on Crete, Greece, en route to Piraeus. In spite of harsh winds and heavy weather, it was to be a routine trip for the seventeen-year-old vessel and the 264 people aboard.

The Heraklion is a so-called roll-on/roll-off or RoRo ferry, i.e. it has been fitted with two doors in the hull, allowing cars and trucks to drive via a ramp directly into the hull. This is much easier than hauling vehicles on board by crane and allows for quicker loading times. However, such vessels have the drawback that there are large cargo doors in the hull near the water line, which can easily sink a ship, when not properly secured and watertight. And it was this feature which doomed the Heraklion.

According to witnesses, one of the vehicles aboard the Heraklion was a refrigerated truck. The truck was late to arrive and was loaded hastily and likely not properly lashed. Due to the heavy storm, the truck tore itself loose and shifted around inside the hold, until it banged against one of the cargo doors. The door failed, the truck fell into the ocean and water flooded the cargo hold, causing the Heraklion to capsize and sink within thirteen minutes.

The crew sent out an SOS and began passing out life vests and lowering the lifeboats, but several boats could not be lowered due to the vessel's heavy list and mechanical problems. There are also reports that the captain abandoned the ship early contrary to tradition. Furthermore, the heavy weather impeded the rescue efforts. In the end, only forty six of the 264 people aboard survived. Ironically, the refrigerated truck which caused the disaster was found floating in the Aegean Sea the next morning.

SS Heraklion lifeboat — A lifeboat carrying survivors of the SS Heraklion disaster.

This is not the first time a RoRo vessel has sunk in heavy weather. In 1953, the British ferry MV Princess Victoria sank during a storm with the loss of all 133 souls aboard and one year later, typhoon Marie sank five RoRo vessels in Japan, causing the loss of more than a thousand lives. RoRo vessels are practical, but we will need to rethink their safety, particularly during storms.

Disaster in Space

"Invasion", the final episode of series 1 of the West German science fiction TV series Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (Space Patrol: The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion) also starts out with a desperate SOS call. The space cruiser Tau en route to the outpost Gordon is battered by a severe lightstorm, and the crew are about to abandon ship. The Tau is a ship of the Galactic Security Service GSD, and on board is none other than GSD head Colonel Villa (Friedrich Joloff) and his staff.

Commander Lindley of the GSD cruiser Tau

Just before the crew abandons the Tau, Colonel Villa manages to send a message to Commander McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) and General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach). Villa believes that Tau did not fall victim to an ordinary lightstorm but to alternating gravitational fields. Something similar happened to the Orion 7 in episode 1 during a run-in with the Frogs. Contact with the Tau breaks off and all on board are believed lost.

Villa aboard the Tau — Colonel Villa (Friedrich Joloff) aboard the Tau

At the Starlight Casino, McLane and security officer Tamara Jagellovsk (Eva Pflug) raise a glass to the memory of Colonel Villa, "a pacifist among generals", as McLane calls him, when they receive word that Villa and his staff have been found alive, though the crew of the Tau perished.

Tamara and McLane — Tamara (Eva Pflug) and McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) raise a glass in memory of Colonel Villa

What Happened to Villa?

McLane is summoned to a meeting with the general staff to discuss the fate of the Tau. Colonel Villa remarks that he and his staff were lucky to survive the lightstorm that destroyed the Tau. McLane points out that Villa himself reported that the Tau was attacked by alternating gravitational fields.

Colonel Villa, however, claims not to remember any alternating gravitational fields. He also claims to have been suffering from shock – a diagnosis confirmed by psychiatrist Dr. Requardt (Konrad Georg) – so he may well have been babbling nonsense.

Dr Requardt — Psychiatrist Dr. Requardt (Konrad Georg) confirms that Villa is suffering from shock.

Regular viewers know that Colonel Villa is not given to babbling nonsense. Not to mention that he seemed completely sane when he sent the final message from aboard the Tau. And so McLane is sceptical of Villa's explanation and requests permission to take the Orion to Gordon to investigate. However, he is denied permission and the Orion is ordered to do routine maintenance work on the sensor satellites of the early warning system instead.

Orion reflections — Mirrored generals: General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach), Colonel Villa and their reflections.

It is difficult to make "talking head" scenes visually interesting – and Orion has a lot of those. However, this particular boardroom scene is brilliantly shot with Villa's face reflected in the glass conference table, creating a mirror effect and making Villa appear sinister. Many West German directors working today are still influenced by the expressionist cinema of the Weimar Republic era and Space Patrol Orion uses the visual techniques pioneered forty years ago to great effect.

Suspicious Minds

Just before the Orion 8 is due to launch, their order is cancelled. A GSD vessel will perform the maintenance of the sensor satellites, even though this falls outside their scope of responsibility.

Orion McLane and Tamara — Tamara informs McLane that their mission has been cancelled.

The Orion crew laughs, because resident womanizer Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz) has just been rejected by a young lady as "too old for her". Mario is not amused.

Tamara and McLane share a drink at the Starlight Casino, where they meet Colonel Mulligan (Wolf Rathjen), the officer in charge of the undersea launch bases. Mulligan had been commended for his exemplary service only days before, but now he was relieved from duty without any warning. Instead, the GSD will take over control of the launch bases.

Orion Colonel Mulligan — Tamara and McLane meet Colonel Mulligan (Wolf Rathjen)

All this is very suspicious. Why does an intelligence agency like the GSD suddenly take over routine but vital tasks like maintaining the sensors of the early warning system or controlling the launch bases for space fleet vessels?

"If I didn't know better…" McLane muses, "…I'd say that Villa was planning a coup."

The idea that the staunchly loyal Colonel Villa might be planning a coup seems ridiculous. On the other hand, Villa has been acting strangely ever since his return from Gordon. And there are unanswered questions about how Villa and his staff managed to survive the disaster that destroyed the Tau. What if Villa was captured and brainwashed by the Frogs, like Alonzo Pietro in episode 4?

These suspicions are disturbing. But luckily, McLane has a direct line to the GSD in the form of Tamara. And so he asks Tamara – who clearly was hoping for something more exciting from an evening in McLane's bachelor pad than discussing conspiracy theories – to go to Villa and request a meeting for McLane. And while Tamara is already at GSD headquarters, she can take the opportunity to snoop around a little.

Spy Trap

Tamara is not happy about spying on her boss, but she agrees to do it for McLane's sake. Villa seems his usual self and also agrees to see McLane, which is a good sign. Villa also implies that he knows that the relationship between McLane and Tamara is no longer purely professional, but then Villa is smarter than the average general in this show.

After her meeting with Villa, Tamara sneaks into an empty office and calls up the files from Villa's trip to Gordon on the computer. However, before she can access the files, Villa's face suddenly appears on the screen. He knew all along what Tamara was planning and let her snoop around to see what she and McLane know. As I said, he is smarter than the average general.

Orion Tamara — Tamara is caught while snooping around GSD headquarters

Tamara is arrested and interrogated. "So it's true?" Tamara exclaims, "You are planning a coup." In response, Villa laughs and it is a truly bone-chilling laugh. "Coups are for little boys and military officers," he replies, "I have much bigger plans such as an invasion, so Earth can finally be ruled by truly intelligent lifeforms." These truly intelligent lifeforms are of course none other than the Frogs.

Villa and Tamara — Villa and one of his subordinates interrogate Tamara.

Over the past seven episodes, we have come to know Colonel Villa. During the many scenes featuring the general staff, Villa was invariably the smartest person in the room. Thankfully, he also had a conscience. When war-mongers like Sir Arthur (Franz Scharfheitlin) and Marshall Kublai-Krim (Hans Cossy) wanted to shoot first and ask questions later, Villa was truly "a pacifist among generals" to quote McLane.

Evil Villa, on the other hand, is terrifying. He is still as smart as ever, but utterly without scruples. When his subordinates want to kill Tamara, he icily orders them to lock her up instead, because she might still be of use as leverage against McLane.

Brainwashing and turning a previously loyal person into an enemy agent is one of the great fears of our age, expressed in works such as Richard Condon's 1959 thriller The Manchurian Candidate and its 1962 film adaption or this year's brilliant science fiction thriller Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany. Orion already addressed this theme in "Deserters", but for "Invasion" the show dials up the paranoia inherent in such tales.

We watch Villa and his robot-like staff discussing the invasion plans, which involve disabling the deep space sensors, disrupting communications with Space Patrol headquarters, recalling all space cruisers to Earth and blowing up the undersea launch bases, so no ships can start.

A Traitor on Board

Villa and McLane — Villa meets with McLane.

In order to maintain his cover, Villa meets with McLane and also authorises him to take the Orion to Gordon. Moreover, Villa helpfully sends along the engineer Kranz (French actor Maurice Teynac) to equip the Orion with a forcefield to protect it against Frog attacks.

Orion Kranz — Engineer Kranz (Maurice Teynac)

However, Villa also informs McLane that Tamara will not be along for the mission, since she is attending a training course. McLane is once again suspicious, for Tamara never mentioned a training course.

On their way to Gordon, Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig) detects a fleet of Frog ships headed for Earth. The Orion attempts to hail Space Patrol headquarters to warn them, but due to Villa's machinations neither the Orion nor any other space cruiser can reach them, because all calls are rerouted to the GSD.

Orion Helga — Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig) makes an alarming discovery.

Orion Frog fleet — A Frog invasion fleet is headed for Earth.

McLane also disarms Kranz – just to be on the safe side. One of his calls finally reaches Colonel Villa's office, but of course Villa is now working for the Frogs. He orders McLane to relinquish all weapons to Kranz or he will kill Tamara. "And just in case you're thinking that the greater good justifies some sacrifices…" Villa says chillingly, "…I will order my men to use the HM3 gun which will cause a particularly painful death."

If the past six episodes have shown one thing, it's that McLane's first priority is always saving lives, especially when someone he cares about is in danger. Nonetheless, McLane does not make the decision alone and asks his crew for advice. Everybody immediately agrees to surrender and save Tamara – even Helga, who doesn't particularly like her. This scene illustrates better than anything how Tamara's role on board has changed since the first episode. She is one of the crew now and they will do everything in their power to save her.

Spring-Brauner to the Rescue

While Villa threatens Tamara, she manages to press the intercom button, so that Villa's conversation with McLane is broadcast directly to Space Patrol headquarters. General Wamsler's aide Liteutenant Spring-Brauner (Thomas Reiner) is dozing on duty, but the word "invasion" wakes him up and he raises the alarm.

Wamsler sends a squad led by Spring-Brauner to arrest Villa and his staff and rescue Tamara, but it is too late. Villa's plan has entered the next phase. His goons have recalled all space cruisers to Earth and also blow up the undersea launch bases in an impressive special effect. The Supreme Space Command can't launch any ships to stop the invasion.

Meanwhile, the Orion is still on course to Gordon, but now under the control of Kranz. "It will be like falling asleep," Kranz describes the fate that will befall the crew on Gordon, "And when you wake up, you will see everything in a completely new light."

Kranz may be an engineer, but he has no experience with space drives. And so Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm) fakes an engine problem that requires the Orion to fly at half speed.

Stop the Orion

Back on Earth, the assembled generals, Spring-Brauner and Tamara watch the invasion fleet closing in. Automated ray gun batteries decimate the fleet, but there are still too many Frog ships and Earth has no way to stop them.

Orion frog invasion fleet — Automated ray gun batteries cannot stop the Frog fleet

Eventually they realise that the Frog ships are powered via a beam from Gordon station, which is why they don't deviate from their course even when faced with heavy fire. Take out Gordon station and the invasion fleet will be left adrift.

However, the only spaceship which has a fighting chance to reach Gordon is the Orion and she is still under Kranz's control. Tamara notices that the Orion is flying at half speed and deduces that Hasso must have sabotaged the drive to stall Kranz. A distraction would give the crew the chance to take out Kranz and regain control of the ship.

So the space cruiser Hydra under the command of General Lydia Van Dyke (Charlotte Kerr) is ordered to attack the Orion and provide that distraction. The ploy works, too, because once the Hydra fires on the Orion, McLane and his crew use the confusion to overpower Kranz. The Orion heads for Gordon and destroys the outpost with the Overkill device, which was introduced in episode 4.

Happy Endings

The episode ends as it began, with a meeting of the general staff. Luckily, only Villa and his staff, Kranz and the Gordon crew were under Frog control, but psychiatrist Dr. Regwart has no idea how to fix them. And though the invasion was repealed for now, the Frogs are still out there, waiting and biding their time.

However, the first series ends on a hopeful note. Due to his repeated heroism in fighting the Frogs, McLane's demotion is rescinded and he is assigned to the Fast Space Fleet Command under Lydia Van Dyke again. Even better, McLane has been promoted to Colonel, as General Wamsler gleefully lets McLane know, though he is clearly loath to lose his best man.

The generals file out of the conference room and the Orion crew heads to the Starlight Casino to celebrate McLane's promotion with Wamsler and Lydia Van Dyke. Only McLane and Tamara linger behind. For now that McLane has his old job back, there no longer is any need to assign a GSD officer to the Orion to keep him in check. However, to McLane's surprise – though not to anybody else's – McLane does not wish to leave Tamara behind. She is part of his crew now… and more than that.

McLane and Tamara discuss their initially rocky relationship, while McLane declares that he will not accept his promotion unless Tamara can stay aboard the Orion. They also address the kiss they shared on Chroma back in episode 5, when they thought they were about to die, a kiss never mentioned again afterwards. However, it was a good kiss, so McLane promptly kisses Tamara again.

Their smooching is interrupted, when the big viewscreen in the conference room activates and Helga's face appears. She informs McLane that she bet with Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz) that McLane wouldn't even wait until they'd left the general staff's conference room to kiss Tamara. Helga has won a crate of champagne, though she still thinks McLane is a scoundrel. Mario is disappointed as well – after all, he lost his bet.

McLane and Tamara don't care; they kiss again.

West Germany Makes its Mark on Science Fiction

Raumpatrouille Orion is certainly the best work of filmic science fiction I have ever seen come out of West Germany. Not that this is a high bar, for until now West Germany produced very little in the way of science fiction.

However, Raumpatrouille Orion is also one of the best works of filmic science fiction I have ever seen, period. Maybe Doctor Who or the new US show Star Trek will eventually eclipse it, but for now Orion is my favourite science fiction TV show of all time. I love everything about it – the visuals, the actors, the characters and their interplay. Who would have thought that West Germany was capable of producing something this good?

TV seasons are shorter in West Germany and so the first series had only seven episodes. Though unlike many other TV shows, which tend to forget what happened only a week ago, Orion actually refers to previous episodes and works as a serialised whole.

So far, there has been no word if there will be a second series of Raumpatrouillle Orion, but I hope that we will see the Orion 8 and her valiant crew again. After all, series 1 ends with so many questions unanswered. Will Earth ever fully defeat the Frogs? Will Colonel Villa be restored to his old self? What adventures will the Orion have, now they are part of the Fast Space Fleet Command again? And how will the relationship between McLane and Tamara develop?

I hope the answers will soon come to a TV set near me.

An amazing capstone to a great series.

Five stars

Bravo Pieree Brice 1966 — How will you celebrate the holidays? Maybe with French actor Pierre Brice, star of the Winnetou movies, seen here on the cover of a teen magazine Bravo.

Fix and Foxi Christmas 1966 — Or maybe you'd rather celebrate with comic characters Fix and Foxi?

James Last Christmas Dancing — How about some swinging holiday music courtesy of James Last (real name Hans) and his latest record, "Christmas Dancing"?

Weihnachten mit Rudolf Schock — Or maybe your taste runs more towards the traditional such as Christmas with tenor Rudolf Schock (my father calls him rabbit face).

My Aunt Metel from East Germany sent me the record Weihnachten im Erzgebirge (Christmas in the Ore Mountains) and I will certainly give it a listen.

Jacobs Kaffee Christmas ad — But however you celebrate, always make sure to have enough Jacobs Coffee at hand.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 6, 1966] Welcome to the Space Prison: Space Patrol Orion, Episode 6: "The Space Trap"

December 6, 2021 Cora Buhlert 2 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

A New Government and Ghosts of the Past

Since December 1, West Germany has a new government and a new chancellor after the coalition government between the conservative CDU/CSU and the liberal party FDP broke apart in October.

The new chancellor is 62-year-old Kurt Georg Kiesinger, an unremarkable and not very intelligent man. What makes his election problematic is that Kiesinger was not only a member of the Nazi Party, but high-ranking official in the foreign ministry during the Third Reich. Considering that West Germany was not very thorough about purging former Nazis from public life, having an ex-Nazi occupying the highest office in the land sends a disastrous signal.

Ludwig Ehrhard and Kurt Georg Kiesinger — The new West German chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger (on the right) with his predecessor Ludwig Ehrhard (left).

We can only hope that this government will not last long, because it is a so-called great coalition between the conservative CDU/CSU and the social-democratic party SPD, whose political aims are normally diametrically opposed. Besides, two SPD members of the new government, foreign secretary Willy Brandt and secretary for inner German issues Herbert Wehner, were driven into exile by Nazi persecution. I can't imagine them putting up with a former Nazi chancellor for long.

Space Spores and Droning Bores

Compared to the political situation in West Germany, "Die Raumfalle" (The Space Trap), the latest episode of Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (Space Patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion) was much more enjoyable.

Space Patrol Orion episode 6 — Paperwork is the bane of McLane's life.

The episode starts with Commander Cliff Alister McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) receiving his latest orders from General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach). It's yet another routine mission (and we all know how well those tend to go for the Orion 8): Collect space dust in order to investigate the panspermia theory, which causes Wamsler's aide Spring-Brauner (Thomas Reiner) to drone on and on about the panspermia theory, i.e. the theory that life did not originate on Earth, but is distributed through the universe via spores hitching a ride with space dust, asteroids, meteorites, etc… The theory is the brainchild of Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, who also developed the theory of a global greenhouse caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions, which played a role in the Orion episode "The Battle for the Sun". One of the writers is apparently a fan.

"Are you sure you want us to go on this mission?" McLane interrupts Spring-Brauner's monologue, "After all, we might disprove the theory and what would you talk about then?"

Raumpatrouille Orion episde 6 — Lieutenant Spring-Brauner (Thomas Reiner) drones on about the panspermia theory, much to the annoyance of General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach) and Commander McLane (Dietmar Schönherr)

General Wamsler has another mission for McLane as well. Science fiction author Pieter Paul Ibsen (Reinhard Glemnitz), winner of the Utopia Award (no reference to the Hugo Awards, alas), wants to accompany the Orion on a mission. And since Ibsen is the future son-in-law of the secretary of interplanetary affairs, he gets his wish. McLane is as thrilled about this as you can imagine.

Raumpatrouille Orion — The Orion 8 receives clearnace for take-off by a traffic control officer (Christine Isensee).

An Unwanted Passenger

Raumpatrouille Orion episode 6 — Ibsen meets the Orion crew.

No one aboard the Orion is keen on having Pieter Paul Ibsen – nicknamed Pie-Po by the crew – along for the ride. Hasso Sigbjörnson threatens bodily harm should Ibsen enter the engine room, and Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus) complains about Ibsen's novels, where no one lands on planets anymore, they just de- and rematerialize. I wonder if this is a reference to Star Trek's transporter, though both shows probably debuted too close together to have influenced each other.

Only Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig) seems quite taken with Ibsen and flirts with him. And once security officer Tamara Jagellovsk (Eva Pflug) notices McLane's reaction, she decides to join in to make him jealous. The kiss between McLane and Tamara at the climax of episode 6 is not addressed in this episode, though the relationship between these two has noticeably shifted. General Wamsler remarks that the Orion crew believes that Tamara is a sophisticated android, but her behaviour towards McLane suggests that she is a lot more human than that.

Ibsen wants to pilot one of the Orion's Lancet shuttles. After all, he has completed a training class. Worse, Ibsen insists on flying alone without backup. McLane is not happy about this, but finally relents. Besides, Ibsen's flight will be controlled by a guide beam, so what could go wrong?

Everything, it turns out. To begin with, Ibsen switches off the guide beam, insisting that he can fly the Lancet on his own, and promptly drifts off course. Worse, spatial disturbances interrupt communications between the Lancet and the Orion. Finally, Ibsen is forced to land on a barren asteroid. He tries to take off again twice, but each time, the Lancet cannot leave the asteroid's gravity field. Ibsen leaves the craft to determine what's wrong and is promptly captured by armed men.

Meanwhile, the Orion is desperately trying to contact Ibsen, while back on Earth, General Wamsler and Lieutenant Spring-Brauner are desperately trying to hail the Orion to satisfy the secretary of interplanetary affairs (Hans Epskamp) who is worried about his future son-in-law.

He is absolutely right to be worried, too, for when we next see Ibsen, he is tied to a chair, being interrogated by an unseen voice and threatened with two glass bulbs emitting so-called "omicron rays" on either side of his head. The unseen voice is very interested in the Orion and her crew. Ibsen, who is not the sort of person to withstand interrogation for long, spills the beans. He is then ordered to hail the Orion, tell them that he was forced to land on the asteroid Mura and ask them to pick him up.

Prison Asteroid

The Orion crew are relieved to hear that Ibsen is alive and well, but surprised that he ended up on Mura, because he was nowhere near Mura when they lost contact.

However, picking up Ibsen will pose a problem, because the only ships authorised to land on Mura are supply ships and the vessels of the Galactic Security Service GSD. Luckily, McLane has a member of the GSD on board in the form of Tamara who authorises the mission. McLane's brief conversation with Tamara not only demonstrates that McLane is still jealous of Ibsen, much to Tamara's amusement, but also gives us some additional worldbuilding details.

Mura, it turns out, is a prison asteroid, which is why it's off limits to everybody except the GSD. McLane is appalled at banishing people to a barren asteroid for the rest of their lives, whereupon Tamara replies that Mura is really quite humane. After all, they used to imprison or execute offenders, so Mura is surely an improvement. McLane asks if the inhabitants of Mura are all criminals; Tamara replies that a lot of them are malcontents and some actually used to be celebrities.

The opening narration of every episode (courtesy of veteran actor Claus Biederstedt) presents Space Patrol Orion as a utopian fairy tale from the future, but this brief conversation between Tamara and McLane adds some anti-utopian notes. For not only is the Earth government perfectly willing to let its own citizens die, as demonstrated in episode 2, and willing to launch a preemptive strike against anybody they perceive to be a threat, as seen in episode 6, they also dump malcontents, criminals and troublemakers on barren asteroids in deep space. Combined with the hints last episode that Earth suffered widespread environmental devastation, these new revelations put some wrinkles in the image of a democratic utopian future.

Unfortunately, the episode promptly undermines these hints that life on Earth and its space colonies in the year 3000 AD is not as pleasant as it has been presented so far by making the prisoners on Mura irredeemable villains. For at least the prisoners we see are no mere malcontents, but criminals and murderers.

Behind Bars

As soon as the Orion lands on Mura, they receive a call showing them Ibsen strapped to a chair and about to have his brain fried by omicron rays. The same sinister voice that interrogated Ibsen informs the Orion crew that Ibsen will be killed unless they surrender.

Ibsen is a pain in the backside and no one aboard the Orion likes him, but as McLane points out, they can't just let him die either. So the crew surrenders and is immediately surrounded by armed men and taken to the command center. The male and female crew members are locked up in separate cells, while McLane is taken to meet the leader of the prisoners.

This leader – and unsurprisingly also the owner of the sinister voice we heard before – turns out to be a man called Tourenne, a scientist who developed a devastating weapon known as paralysis rays, and decided to test it on human subjects, killing countless people. Tourenne is utterly unrepentant of the crime which got him exiled to Mura. In many ways, Tourenne is reminiscent of the Nazi scientists who conducted experiments that killed hundreds of people and were still allowed to continue their work after the war.

But while Tourenne may not be repentant, he is certainly furious at the Earth government that sent him to Mura. Therefore, he and his followers plan to hijack the Orion and defect to the Frogs. McLane is horrified; surely not even an archvillain like Tourenne would side with the Frogs against humanity. Tourenne, on the other hand, hates the Earth government so much that he would side with the devil himself.

The Return of Dr. Mabuse?

So far, Space Patrol Orion hasn't offered any memorable villains. The Frogs usually remain off stage and are only briefly glimpsed. She, leader of Chroma, was not a villainess but rather someone whose legitimate aims collided with those of the Earth government. Indeed, the closest thing to evil we've seen in Orion so far are unscrupulous generals like Marshall Kublai-Krim or Sir Arthur.

Tourenne, on the other hand, is not only memorable, but also a true villain. Played by Wolfgang Büttner with a sinister air, Tourenne is a monster who delights in inflicting pain and wants to kill the entire Orion crew. In his megalomania and sadism, Tourenne reminded me of Dr. Mabuse, the supervillain who starred in eight films between 1922 and 1964. The cinematography with its sharp black and white contrasts, which keeps Tourenne in the shadows with only part of his face visible, is reminiscent of the heyday of German expressionism in the 1920s and makes the Mabuse parallels even more notable. And considering that Dr. Mabuse is a malevolent spirit who jumps from body to body, it's quite possible that Tourenne is his latest host.

Though strapped to a chair, McLane tries to persuade Tourenne that killing him and the rest of the Orion crew would be a big mistake, because no one but the crew can fly the ship. Tourenne reveals that there are space fleet officers incarcerated on Mura, including a commander who murdered his astrogator in a fit of jealousy.

McLane insists that technology has progressed so quickly that even a spaceship commander won't be able to make heads nor tails of the Orion's controls after a few years on Mura. Tourenne, however, isn't buying it. He threatens to murder Ibsen in front of McLane's eyes, because he certainly doesn't need a science fiction writer. Then he'll kill Tamara, who as security officer isn't required to fly the Orion either. And then Helga and so on…

Women in Prison

Meanwhile, Tamara and Helga find themselves locked up together in a cell. Both initially assumed that they were the reason the prisoners captured the Orion, since a prison asteroid will have a severe lack of women. The look on Tamara and Helga's faces at this prospect suggests that they found Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as unappetising as I did. But since they haven't been sexually abused yet, Tamara notes that the prisoners appear to be more interested in the Orion than in any of her crew.

Raumpatrouille Orion 6 — Locked up: Helga and Tamara on Mura

However, the chronic lack of women on Mura gives Tamara and Helga an idea. And so Tamara hides out of sight, while Helga proceeds to hail the guard on the intercom system to flirt with him and also to inform him that Tamara has escaped. When the guard enters the cell to investigate, Tamara and Helga overpower and disarm him. Thus far, the two female members of the Orion crew have often been shown at odds with each other, so it's good to see them working together. Furthermore, Helga, who has often been sidelined, gets plenty to do in this episode.

Tamara and Helga force the guard to open the cell in which Hasso, Mario and Atan have been imprisoned. Together, they make their way back aboard the Orion. Hasso hails Tourenne and informs that he has overloaded the energy system. If Tourenne does not release McLane and Ibsen, Hasso will blow up the Orion and Mura along with it. There are shades of the recent Star Trek episode "The Corbomite Maneuver" in Hasso's bluff, but Hasso manages to sell it convincingly, because few people manage to put more contempt in the word "swine" than Claus Holm.

Tourenne seemingly relents and lets McLane and Ibsen go, but of course he still has an ace up his sleeve. For once the Orion tries to take off, it is pulled down to the surface of Mura again. The same thing happened to Ibsen's Lancet earlier. The prisoners have set up a magnetic dome, which absorbs any energy that is deployed to break through it.

Reaction and Counterreaction

A gloating Tourenne hails McLane and demands to be let aboard the Orion. He also informs McLane that his men took all weapons, so the crew are helpless. The crew still has the one ray gun that Tamara took from the guard she and Helga overpowered, but Tourenne forces McLane to relinquish the weapon, after he threatens to strip-search the crew, "which the ladies would find quite unpleasant".

So McLane is disarmed. He gives coded instructions to his own crew, while keeping Tourenne and his men in the dark. And because the Orion crew are so well attuned to each other, they understand just what McLane plans. Mario launches a Lancet against the magnetic dome, briefly breaking open the dome and allowing the Orion to escape. The ship is badly shaken and the crew uses the resulting confusion to take out Tourenne and his men with impressive judo skills. Helga and Tamara actually hold their own better than their male comrades.

Once all the villains are sedated, the Orion makes her way back to Earth and also calls space patrol headquarters who have been frantic to reach them. The secretary for interplanetary affairs immediately demands to talk to Ibsen, only to be informed that Ibsen got so drunk when the Orion crew celebrated their escape that he can't talk right now. The secretary is indignant and we suspect his daughter, Ibsen's fiancée, will be furious. Let's hope it's not to late to call off the wedding.

A Prison Thriller in Space

I know I'm repeating myself, but Raumpatrouille Orion really keeps getting better with every episode. If the final episode of this series manages to keep the promise set by the first six, it promises to be stellar.

Star Trek and Raumpatrouille Orion have no way of influencing each other due to airing too close together, but both shows tackle similar themes. And so Star Trek had a space prison episode with "Dagger of the Mind" some three weeks before Orion followed suit with "The Space Trap".

Though very different, both episodes managed to comment on the ethics of prisons, punishment and rehabilitation. I suspect that two different science fiction shows airing on two different continents tackling the same theme is due to the fact that in the real world, prison system still rely on facilities and procedures developed in the 19th century and are in dire need of reform.

Both Star Trek and Raumpatrouille Orion assume that the death penalty will no longer be an issue in the future (though Star Trek apparently threatened a character with the death penalty in "The Menagerie"), but then the death penalty thankfully seems to be on its way out. West Germany abolished the death penalty in 1949, though East Germany still executes people on occasion, most recently concentration camp doctor Horst Fischer who was guillotined in July of this year. In the US, many states retain the death penalty, though executions are increasingly rare. The last US execution to date was that of James French, a murderer who was eager to die and was granted his wish in August 1966. He cracked a joke about "French fries", before he was electrocuted.

Trial of Horst Fischer — Concentration camp doctor Horst Fischer, the last person executed in East Germany, at his trial earlier this year.

Murderer James French, who went to the electric chair with a joke on his lips in August.

Unfortunately, Orion undercuts the criticism of the ethics of exiling criminals and troublemakers to Mura by making Tourenne not a misunderstood malcontent, but a sadistic villain. We don't learn a lot about the other prisoners; the only one whose crime is described is a murderer.

But even though "The Space Trap" misses an opportunity for social criticism, it's still an excellent episode. Let's see if the last episode of this series can uphold the high standard set by its predecessors.

Five stars

Taptoe Magazine — December 6 is St. Nicholas Day, celebrated here on the cover of the Dutch magazine taptoe.

Sinterklaas — St. Nicholas greets children during a parade through the town of Horn in the Netherlands.

St. Nicholas kindergarten — St. Nicholas visits children in a West German primary school.

St. Nicholas presents — And in the morning, many German and Dutch children will find a gift from St. Nicholas on their doorstep.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 18, 1966] Environmental Disasters and the War of the Sexes: Space Patrol Orion, Episode 5, "Battle for the Sun"

November 18, 2021 Cora Buhlert 2 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

Of Geese, Saints and Lanterns

November 11 is St. Martin's Day or Martinmas, a popular holiday in many parts of West Germany.

For those of you not familiar with Roman Catholic saints, St. Martin was a Roman soldier who converted to Christianity and became bishop of Tours in the fourth century AD. According to legend, he cut his cloak in half with his sword to share it with a naked beggar.

In West Germany, St. Martin's Day is traditionally celebrated with a procession of children singing and carrying paper lanterns. In some regions, the children go from house to house to ask for sweets similar to trick or treating in the US. In other regions, the night ends with a St. Martin bonfire.

At home, the family enjoys a roast goose, traditionally served with dumplings and red cabbage, in reference to another legend associated with St. Martin, namely that he hid in a goose shed in order to avoid being elected bishop. However, as anybody who has ever encountered them knows, geese tend to be very noisy and so St. Martin was found and elected bishop anyway.

Traditionally, the roast St. Martin's Day goose is served with dumplings and red cabbage. However, more modern recipes such as this one with stuffed tomatoes and another one with baked apples with cranberry sauce and croquettes are also becoming more common.

A Mysterious Discovery

However, West German science fiction fans were a lot more excited about the day after St. Martin's Day, because the latest episode of Raumpatrouille: Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (Space Patrol: The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion) aired.

"Der Kampf um die Sonne" (Battle for the Sun) plunges us right in medias res, when the Orion makes a remarkable discovery. The planetoid N116a has uncommonly high temperatures, a breathable atmosphere and lower forms of plant life, all of which should be impossible, since N116a is supposed to be a dead rock in space.

Security officer Tamara Jagellovsk (Eva Pflug) points out that the general staff has been conferring for weeks now and wonders whether the Orion's discovery might have anything to do with this. At any rate, it's a mystery worth investigating, so Tamara officially authorises Commander Cliff Alister McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) to land on N116a (once again portrayed by a spoil tip in Peißenberg, Bavaria) and take samples.

Space Patrol Orion — The Orion crew stares very intently at the planetoid N116a on the screen.

Tamara and McLane still banter and argue a lot. However, by now the banter is a lot friendlier and – dare I say it – flirtatious. This is not lost on the rest of the Orion crew, who watch the sparks fly with a mixture of amusement (Hasso and Mario) and jealousy (Helga Legrelle). Indeed, Helga (Ursula Lillig) decides to tease Tamara by elaborating in great detail about all the time she spent with McLane while on leave. Though McLane is not a good dancer, Helga notes, because he refuses to let himself go.

Orion Helga and Tamara — Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig) teases Tamara Jagellovsk by detailing all the time off she'd spent with McLane. Tamara, however, is not very impressed.

Putting the Science in Science Fiction

The scene switches to Earth, where familiar faces such as General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach) and Colonel Villa (Friedrich Joloff) are conferring about an alarming phenomenon. The activity of the sun and the frequency and duration of solar flares have increased dramatically, causing the Earth to heat up. The majority of humanity lives on the ocean floor and are insulated from the intense heatwaves. But the polar caps are about the melt, causing the sea levels to rise, which will lead to massive floods. Furthermore, the intense heat will turn Earth's surface into desert. The Orion's discovery on N116a confirms those theories. The big question is, who or what is causing the increased solar activity? Is it a natural phenomenon or is someone manipulating the sun? And if so, who? The Frogs are out, since they live in a distant star system. So are there other unknown extraterrestrials out there?

Orion may emphasise the "fiction" in "science fiction", but there is solid science behind the Earth heating up. Earth's climate tends to oscillate widely from ice ages to warm periods. Charles Greeley Abbot theorized that changes in climate are linked to sun spot activity – a theory that Orion borrowed for this episode. However, a far more likely culprit is the so-called "greenhouse effect", i.e. carbon dioxide in atmosphere functioning like the glass panes of a greenhouse, causing the Earth to heat up, which was discovered by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. In recent years, Roger Revelle and Charles David Keeling have proven that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, due to emissions from industry and traffic, and that the greenhouse effect is real. Edward Teller warns that if carbon dioxide emissions keep rising, heatwaves, melting polar caps and rising sea levels will become a genuine problem in our future and not just a plot for a TV series. [The threat of a catastrophic heating on a global scale was the topic of one of our earliest articles (ed.)]

The generals need more data, so the Orion is sent to take more samples. On the planetoid N108, the Orion crew makes an even more remarkable discovery: a shuttlecraft of a type unknown to them. When Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus) investigates the mysterious craft, he finds himself faced with two human-looking men in spacesuits. The strangers hold Atan at gunpoint and force him into their shuttle, but Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz) manages to disable the shuttle with a well-placed shot. McLane and Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm) overwhelm the strangers and take them prisoner.

Orion Chroma scientist — One of the mysterious strangers the Orion crew takes prisoner.

The Hour of the Generals

Interrogations reveal that not only are the two men human, but they are scientists sent to investigate the same phenomenon that attracted the Orion's attention. The two scientists come from Chroma, a distant world that was settled by refugees from the Second Galactic War. The earthly authorities had no idea that Chroma even exists and the Chromans, disillusioned after finding themselves on the losing side of the Second Galactic War, like it that way.

However, Chroma has emerged from hiding in the most dramatic way possible, since they are behind the increased solar activity. The why is still a mystery.

Naturally, the assembled generals are willing to assume the worst. After all, the Chromans were rebels and enemies in the Second Galactic War, plus they managed to hide from Earthly intelligence services for centuries. And they are heating up the sun, so of course they must be hostile. "This means war," Marshall Kublai-Krim (Hans Cossy) declares.

However, not everybody is quite as war-mongering as Kublai-Krim and Sir Arthur (Franz Scharfheitlin). Colonel Villa is a lot more cautious, because if the Chromans have the ability to heat up the sun, they could have other unknown technologies as well. "If we threaten them, they might press the button first," Villa says, "And we don't know what buttons they have."

A Secret Mission for McLane

McLane is relaxing in his swanky undersea bachelor pad, when he receives a call from a scientist named Dr. Stass, who wants to know if the soil samples the Orion crew took may have gotten mixed up or contaminated. Because the samples contain solar matter, which means that the planetoids could be transformed into mini suns. Sigh. The episode was doing so well with regard to scientific accuracy, but now we're back to imaginary science.

Orion McLane's bachelor pad — McLane is relaxing in his very swanky bachelor and shows off his chest hair, even in colour.

McLane believes that this new discovery might persuade Chroma to leave our sun alone and transform the planetoids instead. However, he can neither reach General Wamsler nor Colonel Villa, so he calls Tamara to ask her to use her clout to get him an interview with Villa. McLane catches Tamara in the shower and in the process gets a glimpse of what she looks like below the neck. Personally, I'm far more interested in how her beehive survived the shower.

Colonel Villa no more wants war than McLane does and agrees to send the Orion on a secret mission to Chroma, supposedly to return the two captured scientists, but in truth to negotiate. He also warns McLane that if anything goes wrong, the government will deny all knowledge of this mission. And if Earth decides to launch a preventive strike against Chroma, no one will care about the Orion and her crew.

Orion McLane and Chroma scientist — One of the captured Chroman scientists watches McLane very intently.

McLane is not deterred and so the Orion sets off for Chroma. The Chromans are hostile initially, but direct the Orion to a landing area. When the crew gets their first glimpse of Chroma, they are stunned how lush and green the planet is. "Looks like they also have nature preserves, just like us," Mario muses, "But why are they telling us to land our ship here?"

The Orion lands on Chroma, portrayed here by a golf course in Feldafing, Bavaria.

One thing I like about Orion is how the show casually imparts information about the wider world, even though ninety percent of it takes place either aboard spaceships or in the general staff's conference room. Not only do we learn more about the two galactic wars (briefly mentioned in the first episode), but we also learn that Earth has a serious pollution problem and that unspoiled land is apparently at a premium.

Planet of Women

After landing on Chroma, the Orion is surrounded by a magnetic field. Only McLane is allowed to leave with one of the captured scientists. The other scientist remains behind aboard to assure the ship's safety.

Chroma turns out to be not at all what McLane or anybody else expected. The world is not only lush and green, but also remarkably peaceful. The turreted government building (portrayed by Höhenried castle on the shores of the Starnberg lake) with its crystal chandeliers, shag carpets and wrought iron gates, is a far cry from the austere modernity of the conference rooms on Earth.

Even more remarkable is that every single Chroman official McLane meets is an attractive woman (one of them portrayed by Danish actress and singer Vivi Bach, Dietmar Schönherr's real life wife). For it turns out that Chroma is a matriarchal society. Men, as one of the Chroman women notes, are useful as gardeners, scientists and parade soldiers, but way too warlike for anything else.

Raumpatrouille Orion Chroma — McLane enjoys the company of two attractive Chroman officials.

Orion Chroman official — One of the attractive Chroman officials (Rosemarie von Schacht). Even though Chroma has not been in contact with Earth's for centuries, they share the preference for beehives.

Orion Chroma official No. 2 — The second of the attractive Chroman officials is played by Dietmar Schönherr's real life wife, Vivi Bach.

Orion Chroma — A Chroman official offers McLane coffee, but McLane is tired of being kept waiting. We hope for the sake of Vivi Bach that Dietmar Schönherr is better behaved at the coffee table than his alter-ego.

Orion Dietmar Schönherr and Vivi Bach — Dietmar Schönherr and his wife Vivi Bach in costume on location at Höhenried castle.

The planet controlled by women is an old science fiction cliché, found in "The Last Man" by Wallace G. West, "The Priestess Who Rebelled" and "The Judging of the Priestess" by Nelson S. Bond, "Consider Her Ways" by John Wyndham, "The Feminine Metamorphosis" by David H. Keller, "Virgin Planet" by Poul Anderson and many others. Such stories are born out of men's fear of female equality and often offensive. So how will Orion handle this timeworn plot?

When McLane finally gets to meet Her, ruler of Chroma, (played by Margot Trooger, whom Journey readers may remember from her role as Cora Ann Milton in The Ringer and Again, the Ringer), he reacts like men always react in such stories, namely with incredulity and outrage, for how can these women not recognise or respect male superiority?

Orion Chroma She — She, ruler of Chroma, is seated behind her desk.

She, on the other hand, gives as good as she gets. At one point, when an outraged McLane is out of words, She suggests that he could try yelling some more. We also learn that Chroma's sun is fading, which is the reason for the attempt to heat up our sun. And no, the Chromans did not consider the effects their experiments might have, but then Earth scientists don't particularly care about that sort of thing either. However, She is willing to stop the experiments, should the data from the planetoids turn out to be promising.

Orion Margot Trooger — No matter how urgent McLane's pleas, She (Margot Trooger) will not budge.

McLane tries to convince Her of the urgency of his mission and point-blank tells her that Earth will launch a preventive strike, if the experiments are not stopped at once. "That is so typical of Earth – and of men," She replies.

The scenes between McLane and Her are a delight. Dietmar Schönherr is excellent at balancing McLane's occasional macho outbursts with the fact that he is a good man and wants to stop a war and save lives. Meanwhile, Margot Trooger is so radiant and commanding as Her that you have no problems believing that She rules an entire planet.

McLane and She on Chroma — McLane seems uncommonly fascinated by Her shag carpet. Or maybe he has dropped something.

A Very Average Kiss

Things heat up, when the Orion receives a coded message that a preventive strike is imminent. Atan and Hasso are confident that they can break through the magnetic field, but they are no more willing to leave McLane behind than he would abandon any one of them.

So Tamara sets off with the remaining Chroman scientist to warn McLane. Unlike her male comrades, Tamara talked to the scientists and realised that the Chromans are more likely to listen to a woman.

Tamara is arrested and thrown into a cell together with McLane. Since they both believe they're about to die, the normally so uptight Tamara loosens up and tells McLane that she's sorry that they spent so much time arguing. And then Tamara does something she always wanted to do and kisses McLane.

"Well, now I'm relieved," Tamara says, once their lips part, "'Cause that was a very average kiss." McLane is about to sputter in outrage, but before he can Tamara decides to put McLane's kissing abilities to the test once more.

Orion A very average kiss — Tamara and McLane share "a very average kiss"

Tamara McLane kiss — And once more in colour.

Our genre is not very good with emotions, romance, kissing and all that mushy stuff – see the uncomfortable kissing scenes in Forbidden Planet. But even if the bar is not very high, McLane's and Tamara's kiss is probably my favourite kiss in all of science fiction and Tamara's comment about McLane being a very average kisser made me love her even more.

Tamara's ongoing examination of McLane's kissing abilities is interrupted by Her, who shows up to inform them that She ordered the solar experiments stopped. When McLane wants to know why She waited until the last instant, She replies that She knew Earth would declare war as soon as she heard about the devastating effects of the experiments. However, She was playing for time, because She did not expect Earth to attack while the Orion was still on Chroma. But what can one expect of men?

However, while She may still not be a fan of men in general, She has developed a liking for a particular member of the male sex, namely Cliff Alister McLane. And so She has requested McLane to remain on Chroma as a special envoy. General Wamsler finds this hilarious, while resident womaniser Mario de Monti pouts that he was not chosen to stay on Chroma with all those attractive women. Helga and Tamara, meanwhile, are not amused at all.

It's a Women's World

Space Patrol Orion keeps getting better and better. "Battle for the Sun" took a cliched science fiction plot and did something interesting with it. Unlike most "Planet of Women" stories, the Chromans are actually in the right, while Earth – or at least the generals – comes off pretty badly.

The portrayal of the generals mirrors the general scepticism towards the military, particularly the higher ranks, in post-WWII West Germany. For people have not yet forgotten that it was war mongers like Sir Arthur or Marshall Kublai-Krim who sent out thousands of soldiers to die in a war that was already lost. Orion doesn't fall into the trap of portraying all military commanders negatively, either. Colonel Villa, General Wamsler, General Van Dyke, and of course McLane himself are all essentially good people who want to save lives. Meanwhile, the worries about pre-emptive strikes are inspired by contemporary fears about nuclear war, which would devastate West (and East) Germany.

Even though the focus is on McLane and Tamara, the rest of the Orion crew as well as the supporting cast like Villa, Wamsler, Spring-Brauner or Lydia Van Dyke all have distinct personalities. The show also tends to reuse the same characters in supporting roles. For example, the two scientists explaining the plot in "Battle of the Sun" are both characters we've seen before.

But what I love most about Space Patrol Orion is that the show gives us so many great and varied female characters. Our genre is not good at portraying women and one decent female character is often all we can hope for. Orion, however, gives us three female main characters in Tamara, Helga and Lydia Van Dyke as well as female guest characters such as Ingrid Sigbjörnson or Margot Trooger's Her.

Another great episode with a lot to say about war, gender and the environment.

Five stars.

Das Magazin November 1966 — The latest parcel from my East German aunt included the November 1966 issue of "Das Magazin" with a striking cover.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 8, 1966] Paranoia and High Treason: Space Patrol Orion, Episode 4: "Deserters"

November 8, 2021 Cora Buhlert 4 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

In Unquiet Times

Here in West Germany, October was a month of protests, some of which sadly ended in violence.

In Frankfurt on Main, more than twenty thousand people protested against the proposed emergency powers law, which would allow the West German government to suspend the constitution in case of wars or disasters. Since the emergency powers laws of the Weimar Republic are considered to have paved the way for Hitler, this is not a popular proposition, and indeed no one seems to want or need these laws except for the government.

1966 emergengy powers law protest — This protest in Frankfurt/Main against the proposed emergency powers laws drew a crowd.

Meanwhile in Cologne, the public transport authority plans a significant increase of tram and bus fares, particular for student tickets. As a result, more than eight thousand high school and university students blockaded the tram tracks on the Neumarkt in Cologne. These so-called "umbrella protests" (it was raining, so many protesters carried umbrellas) lasted for four days until they were violently broken up by the police.

Cologne umbrella protests 1966 — Students block tram tracks on the Neumarkt in Cologne to protest a fare increase.

Umbrella protests Cologne — This aerial photograph shows why the Cologne fare increase protests have been nicknamed "umbrella protests".

Umbrella protests — The police holds back student protesters in Cologne.

West Germany is not officially involved in the Vietnam war, but anti-war protests nonetheless happen a lot. In Munich, several people were arrested during an unauthorised protest against a visit by US ambassador George McGhee. And in the West German capital of Bonn, two hundred fifty Lutheran priests protested against the war in Vietnam, proclaiming that supporting the war means betraying the Christian faith.

Priests protests Vietnam war — In Bonn, 250 Lutheran priests protest against the Vietnam war.

War in Space

While the streets of West Germany were shaken by anti-war protests, "Deserters", the latest episode of Raumpatrouille: Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (Space Patrol: The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion) showed us what warfare might look like in space. Because humanity is fighting the mysterious aliens known only as the Frogs, and that war is not going well: the Frogs have developed a shield that repels energy weapons, rendering them useless.

In response, Commander Cliff Allister McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) and the crew of the Orion 8 conduct a test of the Overkill device, a weapon as impressive as its name that can blow up entire planetoids. The striking effect was created by filling a plaster sphere with pantry staples like rice, raisins, ground coffee and flour and then blowing everything out of a small hole via pressurised air. Anybody who is familiar with the writing advice of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov will know that we can expect to see the Overkill weapon in action again before the episode is over.

Orion episode 4 — Commander McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) confronts weapons scientist Rott (Alfons Höckmann).

Orion Overkill — The Overkill device in action.

Meanwhile back on Earth, the general staff is conferring, including familiar faces like Colonel Villa of the Galactic Security Service (Friedrich Joloff), General Wamsler of the Space Patrol (Benno Sterzenbach) and General Lydia Van Dyke of the Fast Space Fleet Command (Charlotte Kerr). I like that Orion makes the various generals recurring characters rather than having interchangeable uniforms issuing commands.

Orion Generals — Grimly glare the generals: General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach), Marshal Kublai-Krim (Hans Cossy) and Sir Arthur (Franz Scharfheitlin)

Colonel Villa and aide — More grim generals: Colonel Villa (Friedrich Joloff) and aide (Nino Korda)

The reason for the conference is that Alonzo Pietro, commander of the spaceship Xerxes, attempted to defect to the Frogs and was only stopped at the very last instant. Pietro is fully sane, though he claims not to remember why he tried to defect. However, shortly before Pietro's defection attempt, the Xerxes landed on the space station M8/8-12, a station whose human crew experienced a breakdown, went mad and were replaced by robots.

Orion Alonzo Pietro — Commander Alonzo Pietro (Wolf Petersen) under suspicion of treason.

Sparks fly in the Starlight Casino

Meanwhile, Orion security officer Tamara Jagellovsk (Eva Pflug) is relaxing in the Starlight Casino with an unnamed officer. It's nice to see the normally so uptight Tamara on a date and enjoying a life outside work. Though this will not last, for Tamara spots McLane and Lydia Van Dyke having a drink at the bar, which causes her to promptly forget all about her date and instead scrutinise what McLane and Van Dyke are doing.

What they are doing is discussing the attempted defection of Alonzo Pietro. McLane is friends with Pietro (is there anybody in the fleet McLane is not friends with?) and cannot believe Pietro would turn traitor. However, McLane is quickly distracted, when he spots Tamara… with a man. So McLane and Tamara spend the rest of the evening glaring at each other across the dance floor, to the amusement of General Van Dyke and the dismay of Tamara's companion. Finally, McLane disrupts Tamara's date for good by sitting down uninvited at her table and sending her would-be suitor away on a false errand.

Sparks are flying between Tamara and McLane, and I wouldn't be surprised if half the fleet was taking bets on when those two will get together.

A Routine Mission

After this interlude, the crew of the Orion 8 head for space station M8/8-12 to install the Overkill device as a first line of defence against a potential Frog attack. It's a routine mission, but we know how well those tend to go for the Orion 8 and her crew. Especially since M8/8-12 is the very space station whose crew went mad and which Alonzo Pietro visited before attempting to defect to the Frogs. Uh-oh.

Luckily, Space Fleet Command is aware of the problems on M8/8-12 and sends along a psychiatrist named Professor Sherkoff (Erwin Linder) to observe the Orion crew. McLane takes this about as well as you can imagine.

Trouble finds the Orion crew as soon as they reach M8/8-12. The robots manning the space station do not respond to hails and neither does any other space station in the area. When the Orion finally lands, one of the robots attacks McLane, even though this contradicts the First Law of Robotics (invoked for the second time in the series after episode 3). Worse, the robots were specifically deployed to man the station because they were deemed more reliable than humans. Once again, the biggest proponent of replacing humans with robots is Colonel Villa, who also happens to be Tamara's direct superior, which supports the theory that Tamara is a highly advanced android herself.

Orion robots — The Orion crew warily observe the malfunctioning robots.

Both McLane and Professor Sherkoff suspect that something is wrong on M8/8-12 . However, the Orion crew still has a job to do and proceed to install the Overkill device. Tamara was left behind aboard the Orion to watch the ship, but since she is the crewmember with the most robotics experience (maybe because she is one herself), McLane calls her in to examine the malfunctioning robots and sends Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm) back instead.

Orion McLane — McLane calls Tamara via his handy wrist communicator

Tamara Oion — Tamara conducts some tests.

A Traitor On Board

While the Orion crew installs the Overkill device, which involves a lot of silver and translucent glass baubles that look like Christmas tree ornaments, Hasso falls asleep in the command chair and is only roused when McLane calls and tells him to program the coordinates for their next destination.

Orion Maria and Helga — Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz and Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig) install the Overkill device.

Orion: McLane and Atan — McLane and Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus) install the Overkill device.

Orion Atan — Atan tests the Overkill device. For reasons unknown, this requires a clothing iron.

So Hasso approaches the computer – a plain egg-shaped device with one big light rather than the light-studded computer of the destroyed Orion 7. This sole light begins to pulse like a malevolent evil eye, and Hasso gets a thousand-yard stare, as he punches the coordinates into the computer.

Orion Hasso — Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm), asleep on the job

Before taking off, McLane checks the course again and realises to his horror that the course entered into the computer would take the Orion into space sector AC 1000, a sector held by the Frogs.

There's a traitor aboard the Orion, so as security officer, Tamara takes command to conduct the investigation. "This will not take long," she tells McLane, because there is only one likely suspect: Hasso Sigbjörnson.

McLane doesn't believe that Hasso is a traitor – after all, they've known each other for ten years. However, McLane isn't in charge, Tamara is. And so she proceeds to interrogate Hasso, who claims not to remember anything. Hasso Sigbjörnson truly must be the unluckiest man in the fleet, because in four episodes so far he nearly got killed twice and was accused of treason once.

Space Patrol Orion has excellent actors, and their skills are on display in this scene. Particularly, Claus Holm shines as the bewildered and increasingly defensive Hasso, who's even sweating visibly. Meanwhile, Professor Sherkoff is watching with an ever so slightly sinister smirk on his face.

Tamara proceeds to arrest Hasso and calmly informs him that regulations require that she stuns him. Interestingly enough, McLane does not try to stop Tamara. However, another member of the Orion crew intervenes on behalf of Hasso, namely Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig).

So far, the scripts haven't given Helga much to do except utter the occasional line of gizmo speak, but she finally gets to shine when she takes on Tamara. It's obvious that Helga doesn't like Tamara because of McLane's interest in her. However, Helga also points out one important fact: Hasso was not the only crewmember who was alone aboard the Orion and could have reprogrammed the course. Tamara was also alone on board and could have done it.

Helga Legrelle — Helga points out another suspect.

While Helga and Tamara fight it out, Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz) is watching from the sidelines, when he suddenly gets that thousand-yard stare as well. Like a sleepwalker, he begins to punch coordinates into the Orion's computer. Coordinates, which will take the Orion deep into Frog territory. When confronted with what he has just done, Mario also claims not to remember anything.

The Manchurian Mule

Before Tamara can arrest even more people, Professor Sherkoff intervenes and points out that both Hasso and Mario were standing directly in front of the computer when they suddenly felt compelled to enter the coordinates for the Frog base. The Professor then proposes an experiment and tells Tamara to stand in front of the computer. And indeed, the malevolent light starts to pulse again, Tamara goes blank and begins to punch the coordinates for the Frog base into the computer.

Orion — Tamara programs the computer, watched by Professor Sherkoff (Erwin Linden), Atan and Helga.

Since Tamara most definitely is not a traitor and neither are Hasso and Mario, the Professor explains that the Frogs are using telenosis (a portmanteau of "telepathy" and "hypnosis") rays emitted via the Orion's computer to manipulate the crew. The same thing happened to Alonzo Pietro and the M8/8-12 crew.

A note of context: The Cold War is a game of spies, some of whom occasionally change sides and defect. And indeed, there have been several high profile defections in recent years, including British double agent Kim Philby who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.

The Cold War also breeds paranoia, including fear of perfectly loyal men and women brainwashed into unwittingly aiding the enemy. There has never been a documented case of a brainwashed agent in the real world, but they abound in fiction whether it is in spy thrillers like Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate or science fiction novels like Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17.

"Deserters" cannot be influenced by Babel-17, because the show was already in production when the novel came out. The Manchurian Candidate is a possible influence. However, I suspect that the inspiration for the Frogs and their telenosis ray is "The Mule", a malevolent mutant who uses his telepathic powers to bring the Foundation to its knees in Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire. After all, the repeated references to the Three Laws of Robotics prove that the writers have read Asimov. And indeed, the talky boardroom scenes featuring the various generals are reminiscent of the equally talky early Foundation stories.

Hunt the Orion

However, the Mule never had to deal with the Orion crew. And so McLane devises an ingenious plan. Since the Frogs clearly want the Orion to head to sector AC-1000, the Orion will go there, letting the Frogs believe that their attempts the hypnotise the Orion crew into defecting were successful. Once the Orion crew is in range of the Frogs' base, they will use the Overkill device to blow it up.

There is only one hitch. The Orion can't inform Space Fleet Command of their plan, because the Frogs might be listening. Therefore, once the Orion's unauthorised course is detected, the general staff assumes that the crew are planning to defect. General Wamsler points out that he really cannot imagine McLane of all people turning traitor, while his aide Lieutenant Spring-Brauner (Thomas Reiner) gleefully sends the entire fleet after McLane to shoot down the Orion.

The ship closest to the Orion is none other than the Hydra under the command of Lydia Van Dyke, who no more believes that McLane would turn traitor than Wamsler does. Therefore, she delays the chase, until a swarm of Frog ships forces her to return to Earth. McLane, meanwhile, manages to destroy the Frog base as well as a squadron of Frog ships with the Overkill device.

Back on Earth, the Orion crew and Alonzo Pietro, who is no longer under arrest for treason, celebrate. Tamara dances with Professor Sherkoff much to McLane's dismay.

Orion Starlight Casino — Dances in the future still look exceedingly strange.

Orion Tamara and Sherkoff — Tamara dances with Professor Sherkoff. McLane is not pleased.

Paranoia in Space

"Deserters" is a low-key episode of Space Patrol Orion, but nonetheless an effective story, which succeeds in generating a paranoid atmosphere throughout.

I have to admit that I suspected Professor Sherkoff of being the traitor from the moment he first stepped aboard the Orion. For it was obvious that no member of the Orion crew would turn out to be the traitor and Sherkoff was the only one who didn't belong. Besides, Erwin Linder's ever so slightly sinister smirk just makes him look suspicious.

This was a nice bit of misdirection, because in the end Sherkoff turned out to be exactly what he was introduced as, namely a psychiatrist supposed to examine the Orion crew, whereas the true villain was a computer with a malevolently pulsing light.

The Frogs have been hovering in the background of every single episode so far, though we have only briefly seen them twice. Personally, I like keeping the main antagonists off stage, because the unseen menace is so much more terrifying than a goofy rubber monster.

A taunt science thriller pregnant with paranoia.

Four and a half stars.

Oktoberfest 1966 — The 1966 Oktoberfest in Munich may be over, but the poster is still striking.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 19, 1966] Routine Missions and Asimovian Robots: Space Patrol Orion Episode 3: "Guardians of the Law"

October 19, 2021 Cora Buhlert 4 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

A Routine Mission

After pulling out all the stops in episode 2, what would Raumpatrouille Orion do for an encore? Well, instead of threatening the entire solar system this time around, writer Rolf Honold and W.G. Larsen have opted for a more low-key adventure for the Orion 8 and her brave crew.

And so episode 3 "Hüter des Gesetzes" (Guardians of the Law) opens with that most routine of situations, namely a robotics training course for Space Fleet personnel, including the Orion crew. The Orion crew seems bored, but my interest perked up once robotics specialist Rott (Alfons Höckmann) mentioned the Three Laws of Robotics. Yes, Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics exist in the Space Patrol Orion universe.

Space Patrol Orion Rott — Rott (Alfons Höckmann) is lecturing.

The Alpha CO work robots seen in this episode are a far cry from the clumsy humans in spray-painted cardboard boxes that we have seen in so many science fiction films. These robots are curious floating (thanks to the magic of bluescreen technology) ovals with multiple arms equipped with tools, among them an ice cream scoop and a forceps, so the robots can both serve ice cream and deliver babies. The fact that these robots don't even look remotely human imbues them with a subtle menace.

That menace becomes not so subtle when Rott makes a robot go berserk and trash the classroom, before fixing it with a small adjustment. At this point, the Orion crew are called away for what turns out to be a dull routine job retrieving readings from space probes.

Once the Orion 8 reaches its area of operations, Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus) and Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig) get into a Lancet for the first work shift. Meanwhile, the Orion receives a message from the ore freighter Sikh 12 under the command of Commodore Ruyther (Helmut Brasch), an old friend of McLane's. Ruyther has a problem. The Sikh 12 is supposed to haul ore from the asteroid Pallas to Earth, but upon its last trip the sealed ore rockets turned out to be filled with spoil instead. Furthermore, the miners on Pallas are not responding to Ruyther's calls. Ruyther reported this, but true to form Space Fleet Command only cares about the missing ore, not the miners.

Space Patrol Orion Commodore Ruyther — A call from Commodore Ruyther (Helmut Brasch)

It doesn't take long to convince McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) to head to Pallas to investigate. Security officer Tamara Jagellovsk (Eva Plug) unsuccessfully tries to overrule him, but gives in, when McLane points out that human lives might be in danger. Once again, McLane violates regulations and ignores orders and once again, he does so to save lives. I'm sensing a pattern here.

So far, most interactions between McLane and Tamara consist of arguing and sniping, but you can see the growing respect between these two. And the knowing grins on the faces of Hasso and Mario show that they know that McLane and Tamara will kiss before the season is over. Helga Legrelle knows it, too, and is less than happy about it.

Tamara also points out that if Space Fleet Command finds out that the Orion 8 has left its area of operations, McLane will be in trouble once again (apparently, gratitude for saving the Earth wears off fast). However, McLane has the perfect solution to this problem, namely an old spacer's trick named "Laurin" after the dwarf king with the invisibility cap from medieval legend. And so McLane orders Helga and Atan to project an energy field the size of the Orion with their Lancet to fool sensors, while the Orion leaves for Pallas.

Orion Does Asimov

The Orion lands on Pallas (portrayed by a pitch coal mine in Preißenberg, Bavaria) and cannot hail the miners either. So McLane, Tamara, Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm) and Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz) explore the mine and find it deserted, the crew gone.

At last, they encounter signs of life, two Alpha CO work robots like the ones in the opening scene. However, these robots are armed – with ray guns, not ice cream scoops and forceps. They capture and disarm the Orion crew and take them to the mines, where they finally find the miners, held prisoner and forced to work. The Three Laws of Robotics forbid robots to harm humans, so what is going on here?

Space Patrol Orion robots — The robots hold the Orion crew at gun point.

From this point on, "Guardians of the Law" plays out very much like Isaac Asimov's stories about Dr. Susan Calvin or robot troubleshooters Powell and Donovan from the 1940s. A robot is misbehaving in dangerous ways, so our heroes try to figure out what has gone wrong and how to fix it. The answer usually lies in the Three Laws of Robotics.

And this is exactly what happens. McLane and Tamara, who displays a surprising amount of knowledge about robotics, question the miners and learn that the robots malfunctioned after they witnessed a shoot-out between the miners and drug gang. Humans shooting humans caused a conflict regarding the First Law of Robotics and fried the robots' brains.

Unfortunately, the resident robot specialist was killed in the shoot-out, so the miners have no one to solve the problem. Tamara thinks she can reprogram the robots, but first she needs to get close to them. So McLane devises a plan to lure the robots into the mine and cause a cave-in to immobilise them long enough for Tamara to reprogram them. The plan is successful, too. The reprogrammed robots return the Orion crew's weapons, which they use to shoot the remaining robots. This part is very reminiscent of Isaac Asimov's 1944 Powell and Donovan story "Catch That Rabbit!"

Tamara was sidelined in "Planet Off Course", but she gets plenty to do in this episode (ditto for Helga) and her robotics experience saves the day. There are also more hints that Tamara might be a robot herself, when she responds to Hasso and Mario's jokes by telling them that she is a sophisticated Epsilon android. So is Tamara just pulling their legs or is she telling the truth?

The New Yardstick for Spaceship Captains

Meanwhile, a different drama is unfolding in space. For the "Laurin" illusion that Atan and Helga are projecting is draining the shuttle's energy reserves. Atan has absolute faith that McLane will return before their energy runs out. Helga has faith in McLane as well, but points out that the crew might have run into trouble, because McLane takes too many chances. And so she wants to deactivate the Laurin illusion and head for Pallas to see if the rest of the crew need help. Atan eventually agrees, but it's too late. The Lancet's energy reserves are used up and their shields and life support are failing.

Luckily, the Orion shows up in the nick of time. Helga has passed out and Atan is babbling incoherently. McLane first makes sure that Helga gets medical attention. Then he turns to the incoherent and understandably angry Atan and he asks him why the hell he didn't switch off the Laurin illusion. "I didn't have an order to switch it off," Atan replied, whereupon McLane tells him not to wait for orders, but use his own damned brain. McLane even uses a strong swearword – not aimed at Atan, with whom he's uncommonly gentle, but referring to the Laurin illusion – I have personally never heard used on West German TV to date. I predict complaints and angry letters.

After three episodes, I am liking McLane more and more. Yes, McLane may be a maverick, he may occasionally act like an anti-feminist towards Tamara and he may be overly emotional at times, but he clearly cares about people and breaks rules and ignores orders to save lives. Nor does McLane expect blind obedience from his crew, but wants them to think for themselves. The Orion crew may be fanatically loyal to McLane, but he has earned that loyalty.

Science fiction is full of spaceship captains, but McLane is quickly becoming not only my favourite, but also the yardstick against which all other captains shall be measured. I'm pretty sure that I will ask myself, "What would Commander McLane do?" for a long time to come. For example, imagine how different Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" would have played out with McLane in charge.

Back on Earth, Colonel Villa and General Wamsler investigate the mystery of the missing ore shipments and finally decide to do something about it. Wamsler wants to hail the Orion and send McLane to Pallas, whereupon his aide Lieutenant Spring-Brauner (Thomas Reiner being delightfully swarmy once again) confesses that he has mislaid the Orion and can't hail her. Unlike Spring-Brauner, Wamsler knows the Laurin trick and also lets McLane know that he knows, but is willing to cover for him.

Space Patrol Orion Wamsler and McLane — Wamsler lets McLane know that he, too, knows the Laurin trick and has seen through him.

"Guardians of the Law" does not have the edge-of-your-seat suspense of "Planet Off Course", but is nonetheless another excellent episode of Raumpatrouille Orion with a plot straight from an Asimov robot story and lots of great character moments for both the crew and supporting characters like Villa and Wamsler.

After three great episodes, I can't wait for what the final four will offer.

Four stars

Bremer Freimarkt 1960er — Balloon and toy vendor at the 931st Bremer Freimarkt.

Bremer Freimarkt 1960s — The popular Calypso ride at the Bremer Freimarkt.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 18, 1966] Moral Dilemmas and Earth in Peril: Space Patrol Orion Episode 2: "Planet Off Course"

October 18, 2021 Cora Buhlert 6 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

Critical Voices

Last month, I wrote about the premiere of Raumpatrouille: Die Phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (Space Patrol: The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion), West Germany's very first science fiction TV show. Since then, two more episodes have aired. But before we get to that, let's take a look at some reactions to the show, courtesy of both TV critics and viewers.

So far, science fiction had had no presence on West German TV, so professional TV critics were mostly baffled, to put it politely. The Berlin tabloid B.Z. called Orion "pseudoscientific nonsense" set in a "brainless utopia". The magazine Kirche und Fernsehen (Church and Television) lamented that the dialogues were too complicated for the viewers to understand, at least viewers not used to science fiction and gadget speak.

Hörzu October 1966 — The latest issue of the Tv listings magazine Hörzu

Letters to the TV listings mag Hörzu show a range of audience reactions. Rolf Sch. from Bad Homburg declares that Orion is more suspenseful than Alfred Hitchcock and The Fugitive. Sebastian T. from Hamburg called Orion a milestone in the history of West German television and notes that Germany has not produced anything comparable since Fritz Lang's Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon) in 1929.

Horst B. from Hamburg and O.R. from Constance both lament that a TV show set in the year 3000 still focusses on war and military themes, since they hope that humanity would have overcome its destructive impulses by then. Gerhard B. from Heilbronn correctly points out that according to current demographic trends, it's extremely unlikely to have an all-white spaceship crew in the year 3000 AD. Peter H.R. from Ottenbronn complains about scientific issues and notes that faster-than-light travel is not possible and that the Orion crew is unaffected by zero gravity.

Letters to Hörzu — Hörzu readers comment on the first episode of Space Patrol Orion

Dieter L. from Neuhede believes that science fiction is only suitable for children and Heiner S. from Bielefeld calls the series a waste of money. For Jupp W. from Degerloh his dislike for Space Patrol Orion at least has a silver lining, namely lots of time to read. We here at the Journey certainly have some recommendations for him, though I suspect he would not like them.

A Thriller in Space

Episode 2 "Planet Außer Kurs" (Planet Off Course) opens with my favourite supporting character from episode 1, General Lydia Van Dyke (Charlotte Kerr) in deep trouble. Her spaceship, the Hydra, is battered by a magnetic storm and has just made an alarming discovery. A planet that has been thrown out of its orbit and is now headed straight for Earth. The footage of the fiery rogue planet, supposedly a ball coated with fire gel and set alight, is certainly impressive. Unfortunately, the script proves Hörzu reader Peter H.R. from Ottenbronn right and insists on calling the rogue planet a "supernova".

Space Patrol Orion rogue planet — The rogue planet on the Hydra's viewscreen

The Hydra crew intercepts a transmission in an unknown code. Turns out that the Frogs, those dastardly aliens from episode 1, are back and busily hurtling random planets at Earth. In the first episode, "Frogs" was a merely nickname that Hasso Sigbjörnson and Atan Shubashi gave the aliens, but by episode 2 the moniker seems to have been universally adopted. General Van Dyke manages to send a warning to Earth, before contact breaks off.

General Lydia Van Dyke (Charlotte Kerr) aboard the Hydra

While his former superior is fighting for her life aboard the Hydra, Commander Cliff Alister McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) of the Orion 7 is relaxing in the Starlight Casino and showing off his chest hair, when he is summoned to a meeting with the Supreme Space Authority.

Shirtless Commander McLane (Dietmar Schönherr) is summoned to a meeting with the Supreme Space Authority

Space Patrol Orion kids — These two little moppets in their miniature spacesuits only make a brief cameo appearance in this episode, but they're certainly cute.

Military Men and Moral Dilemmas

The various high-ranking military officials we met in episode 1 are arguing what to do about the rogue planet headed for Earth. For there are not nearly enough spaceships available to evacuate the population and besides, an evacuation would cause panic. Not that it matters much, because the civilian government, represented here by an official named von Wennerstein (Emil Stöhr), has no intention to evacuate Earth, even though the government itself is relocating to Mars.

Space Patrol Orion Generals — The Supreme Space Authority holds a tense meeting.

These moral dilemmas are familiar from works like J.T. McIntosh's 1954 novel One in Three Hundred or the 1951 movie When Worlds Collide, but there are real world parallels as well. Space fleet commander-in-chief Sir Arthur's comment that "Politicians will always find something to govern, even if everything is already gone" brings to mind that – should there ever be a nuclear war – governments will hide out in their bunkers to rule over a nuclear wasteland, while the population burns. The flat-out refusal to evacuate Earth in the face of overwhelming peril is also reminiscent of the final months of World War II, when the Nazi government forbade the evacuation of civilians from regions like East Prussia and Silesia, which were about to be overrun by the Red Army, because they wanted to keep the roads clear for military operations.

As for how the Frogs managed to establish a base and throw a planet out of orbit under the very noses of the space fleet, Colonel Villa of the Galactic Security Service (Friedrich Joloff) points out that a committee of scientists and military officers was formed to analyse the alien threat, but was way too smug and convinced of human superiority to achieve any results. I can't help to wonder whether Villa's remark isn't a barb aimed at John W. Campbell of Analog and his insistence on human superiority at all times. Especially since episode 3 shows that the writers are familiar with Astounding/Analog.

The civilian government is portrayed as cowardly and inefficient in this episode. However, when Sir Arthur (Franz Scharfheitlin) wonders whether it's time for a military coup, Colonel Villa promptly informs him that this is not only treason, but also not the solution to their problem. Even though the focus of Space Patrol Orion is on the military, the show is nonetheless committed to democracy.

More Moral Dilemmas… in Space

The assembled generals finally decide that the best course of action is to locate the Frog base and destroy it. Two hundred ships are dispatched, including the Orion 7.

The Orion crew detects the Frogs' signal, but can't triangulate the location of their base without another signal. This is supplied by General Van Dyke aboard the stricken Hydra, once the Orion manages to hail them.

This leads to another of the moral dilemmas so beloved by philosophy undergraduate classes, for McLane wants to rescue General Van Dyke and the Hydra crew before destroying the Frog base. General Van Dyke, however, orders McLane to destroy the base, because the fate of Earth outweighs that of the five people aboard the Hydra. The interactions between McLane and Lydia Van Dyke (with whom he is on a first name basis) suggest that their relationship more than just professional.

Space Patrol Orion General Lydia van Dyke — General Lydia Van Dyke orders McLane to save the Earth rather than her.

Because McLane will never listen to just one woman, Tamara Jagellovsk also orders him to forget about the Hydra and destroy the base. In order to emphasise her words, she even pulls a gun on McLane. McLane isn't really the type to be intimidated either by guns or by Tamara, but he eventually relents. The fate of Earth really does outweigh that of five people, even if McLane is close to one of them.

This tense moment not only gives Dietmar Schönherr and Eva Pflug the chance to show off their acting skills, but it also demonstrates that McLane's emotions are both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. Because McLane cares about people and will not casually abandon them. During the meeting with the generals, McLane is the only one who actually seems to care about the fate of the Hydra.

Try, Fail and Try Again

The Orion fires at the Frog base and manages to destroy it in another impressive special effect. However, it is to no avail, because the rogue planet is still headed for Earth. So the Orion crew decide to destroy the rogue planet with antimatter bombs, a risky manoeuvre which might get them all killed.

After some calculations made on a futuristic Etch A Sketch type writing tablet, the crew get to work. However, the engineering and weapons consoles explode, wounding chief engineer Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm) and weapons officer Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz). As a result, Mario releases the bombs too late and the explosions fail to destroy the rogue planet.

There's only one course of action left. Crash the Orion into the rogue planet. So the Orion crew pile into the two Lancet shuttles and watch as their ship explodes in a fiery inferno along with the rogue planet. The Lancets are too small and underpowered to reach the nearest starbase, so they try to make it to the damaged Hydra.

Space Patrol Orion episode 2 — Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus), Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz) and Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig) aboard Lancet 2

Space Patrol Prion episode 2 — Hasso takes a spacewalk.

They find the Hydra without power and not responding to hails, so Hasso takes a risky spacewalk and manually engages the Hydra's landing clamps. However, Hasso passes out before he can complete the manoeuvre, so McLane has to race through the airless and overheated ship without even a spacesuit, as Hasso is wearing the only one they have. Since McLane is the hero, he succeeds and also rescues the General Van Dyke and the Hydra crew, who had retreated to the ship's cryogenic chambers.

Space Patrol Orion Hasso and McLane — Hasso has passed out in spite of his spacesuit, so McLane has to finish the job – without a spacesuit.

Back on Earth, the assembled generals are overjoyed that the rogue planet has been destroyed, though they assume that the Orion crew perished in the process. The only ones who seem to be bothered by this are General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach), McLane's direct superior, and Colonel Villa. Meanwhile. characters like Sir Arthur and Marshal Kublai-Krim (Hans Cossy) bring to mind World War II generals who happily sacrificed thousands of lives for questionable victories.

The episode ends with McLane signing paperwork regarding the destruction of the Orion. We also learn that the ship's designation was Orion 7, because this was already the seventh Orion, suggesting that McLane has already trashed six previous ships.

I loved the premiere of Space Patrol Orion, but episode 2 managed to be even better, a taut thriller that alternates between the tense general staff scenes on Earth and the equally tense scenes aboard the Orion and Hydra. Besides, you have to admire the guts of a show, which almost destroys the Earth and blows up the titular ship in the second episode.

Five stars

Stay tuned for my review of episode 3 "Hüter des Gesetzes" (Guardians of the Law) coming tomorrow

The impressive Sputnik ride on the Bremer Freimarkt

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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 26, 1966] All that glitters: in praise of Cele Goldsmith Lalli

September 26, 2021 John Boston 22 Comments

by John Boston

Gone but not Forgotten

SF editors come in highly assorted makes and models and evoke equally varied reactions. Some are revered as movers and shakers (though not always unanimously); a few are reviled as debasers of the field; some are barely noticed at all. A few have earned sympathetic respect for making something out of nothing, or close to it. Before World War II, Frederik Pohl edited several pulp magazines with a budget of zero, and he had to beg for stories from his friends. Robert Lowndes had little more than zero to work with, but managed to publish three at-least-readable magazines through the 1950s, occasionally coming up with something excellent. (And he’s at it again with Magazine of Horror.)

Another in this mode was Cele Goldsmith, later Lalli, who joined Ziff-Davis in 1955, straight out of Vassar. First, she was editorial assistant to Howard Browne, then to Paul Fairman when Browne left, with promotions along the way to associate editor and managing editor. At the time she was hired, she had read no SF beyond Verne and Wells. When Fairman left at the end of 1958, she inherited the editor’s mantle. During that time, the magazines were firmly, and intentionally, stuck in a rut of formulaic stories. Most of them were produced almost literally by the yard by a small number of regulars (among them Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Stephen Marlowe (nee Milton Lesser), and Howard Browne, joined in midflight by Harlan Ellison and Henry Slesar) under various pseudonyms and house names as well as their own names. Though more outright fantasy did appear in Fantastic than in Amazing, overall there was not much difference between their contents, and in fact the label Science Fiction appeared on Fantastic at times.

Things changed quickly under the new editor. (Hints of these changes were already apparent in the last months under Fairman, when Goldsmith was assuming progressively more responsibility). The contents pages gradually became more various, with respectable middle-grade writers from outside the regular crew appearing more and more frequently—some of whom, like Cordwainer Smith and Kate Wilhelm, became much more prominent later. Though some of the regulars—Silverberg, Garrett, Slesar, Ellison—continued to appear, the pseudonyms vanished.

Goldsmith’s most audacious coup in her first year as editor was the November 1959 Fantastic, which consisted entirely of five stories by Fritz Leiber. No SF magazine had previously devoted an entire issue to one author (though some issues of Amazing and Fantastic had probably come close, with authors’ identities obscured by pseudonyms.) Most notable among the stories was "Lean Times in Lankhmar," the first new entry in a number of years in Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, which signaled a revival of a style of fantasy that had fallen badly out of favor.

By 1960, the magazines had been reestablished as having some claim to merit, a welcome counter-trend to the rapid disappearance of other SF magazines. (No fewer than 15 magazines ceased publication from 1958 to mid-1960.) Amazing’s and Fantastic’s roster of contributors quickly became more impressive. Frank Herbert, James Blish, James E. Gunn, Damon Knight, and Clifford Simak all appeared during 1960, and Fritz Leiber made multiple contributions to both magazines. Other signs of an enterprising editor included the resumption in Fantastic of Sam Moskowitz’s articles on early figures in SF and fantasy, which had been running in Satellite when it folded; pieces on Lovecraft, Stapledon, Capek, M.P. Shiel and H.F.Heard, and Philip Wylie appeared in 1960. (The series was later continued in Amazing with more recent writers as subjects.) Amazing began a selection of reprints from its earliest days, selected and introduced by Moskowitz. Fantastic published a “round robin” story titled "The Covenant", with chapters by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Robert Sheckley, Murray Leinster, and Robert Bloch, modelled on similar stories published in the 1930s. On the outside as well, the magazines improved, with the covers of Fantastic in particular becoming steadily less cheesy and more imaginative.

Goldsmith’s most often recognized achievement is the significant number of excellent writers whom she discovered and who went on to considerable success. The list speaks for itself: Keith Laumer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Roger Zelazny, Sonya Dorman, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Phyllis Gotlieb, Piers Anthony. She also provided a home for David R. Bunch, who had been publishing in semi-professional and local markets throughout the ‘50s, but who became a regular in Amazing and Fantastic, albeit to decidedly mixed reception. Similarly, she was the first American editor to publish J.G. Ballard, who had made a substantial reputation in the British SF magazines but had not previously cracked the US magazines. Lalli’s lack of background in SF before she came to Ziff-Davis may have served her well by leaving her more open than other editors to departures from genre business as usual.

That’s the good news—the straw-into-gold part. But the magazines were not all gold by any means. Being at the bottom of the market in terms of pay rates meant that the stories Goldsmith received from the most prominent writers would be those that had been rejected everywhere else. She could (and had to) take a chance on new writers who might or might not pan out, and in some cases she had to take work that she probably would rather have avoided. Many of the serialized novels were quite weak. Jack Sharkey’s disastrous Amazing serial The Programmed People comes to mind. Overall, the bag was especially mixed in Amazing. Most issues of the magazine included some stories that were variously crude, inane, or otherwise barely readable. Reading Amazing month by month was a perpetual bait-and-switch game, with expectations raised by impressive issues and dashed the following month.

Nevertheless, by the end of the Ziff-Davis era, the Goldsmith/Lalli Amazing had put up an enviable score of memorable stories. There are too many to list here, but the highlights include Arthur C. Clarke’s Before Eden (June 1961); J.G. Ballard’s startling run including The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista (March 1962), Thirteen to Centaurus (April 1962), and The Encounter (June 1963); Mark Clifton’s scarifying Hang Head, Vandal! (April 1962); Roger Zelazny’s Moonless in Byzantium (December 1962); Keith Laumer’s It Could Be Anything (January 1963) and The Walls (1963); and Philip K. Dick’s The Days of Perky Pat (December 1963). The last half-dozen issues amounted to a crescendo towards oblivion, featuring Zelazny’s serial He Who Shapes (January-February 1965), Frank Herbert’s Greenslaves (March 1965), Clifford D. Simak’s brief and elegant Over the River and Through the Woods (May 1965), and Zelazny’s exuberantly shameless performance The Furies (June 1965). Fantastic offered among others Jack Vance's The Kragen (July 1964), Thomas M. Disch's chilly Descending (the same issue!), Ursula Le Guin's April in Paris (her first story!), and the renewed series of Gray Mouser/Fafhrd stories by Leiber.

It’s not clear whether Lalli had the option of staying with Amazing and Fantastic when they were sold, but if so, it’s just as well she didn’t take it. Life under the Sol Cohen almost-all-reprints, negligible-budget regime, shortly to be compounded by a boycott by the Science Fiction Writers of America when Cohen refused to pay for reprints, could scarcely have been anything but miserable. She wisely slipped sideways into Ziff-Davis’s Modern Bride, there to purvey a different sort of fantastic literature, while the Sol Cohen magazines’ editorials and letter columns rang with surly bad-mouthing of her time at the helm of Amazing and Fantastic. Something tells me that her decade’s foray into SF and fantasy will be well remembered long after her successor is forgotten.

Cele Goldsmith and the Sword and Sorcery Revival

by Cora Buhlert

When Cele Goldsmith took over editing duties at Amazing and Fantastic in 1958, sword and sorcery was not just dead – no, the type of historically flavoured adventure fantasy with a good dose of horror that was pioneered by writers like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner or Nictzin Dyalhis in the pages of Weird Tales some thirty years ago did not even have a name. A few stalwarts were holding up the flame in the fanzine Amra, but commercially the subgenre was dead and those who'd written it during its brief flourishing in the 1930s had either passed away (Howard, Kuttner, Dyalhis) or had retired from writing (Moore and Smith).

One of the few writers from the genre's heyday who was still around and still writing was Fritz Leiber, who had published several stories about a pair of adventurers called Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in Unknown and other magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. The last Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "The Seven Black Priests" appeared in Other Worlds Science Stories in 1953. For all intents and purposes, the two rogues from the city Lankhmar, though dear to Leiber's heart, were permanently retired, as the market had moved away from the sort of swashbuckling fantasy that characterized their adventures.

Enter Cele Goldsmith and the Fritz Leiber Special Issue of Fantastic in November 1959. Of the five stories Leiber wrote for that issue, two were part of his Change War series (a novel in that series, The Big Time, had just won the 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novel), two were standalones and one, "Lean Times in Lankhmar", was the first new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story in six years.

Fantastic May 1961 — The May 1961 issue of Fantastic, illustrating a memorable scene from Fritz Leiber's "Scylla's Daughter". There's also a reprint of a Robert E. Howard story.

"Lean Times in Lankhmar" is one of the best and definitely the funniest story in the entire series, a satire of organized religion that manages to be sharp but not offensive. The story must have struck a chord both with Cele Goldsmith and the readers of Fantastic, for over the next six years eight new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories appeared in Fantastic, more than had been published in Unknown, where the series originated in 1939.

Fantastic October 1962 — Ed Emshwiller's striking cover illustration for Fritz Leiber's "The Unholy Grail".

In 1961, the still nameless genre that was about to undergo a revival finally got a name, when Fritz Leiber proposed "sword and sorcery" in an exchange with Michael Moorcock in the pages of the fanzines Amra and Ancalgon. The alliterative term stuck, so now there was finally a name for stories like the adventure of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Robert E. Howard's Conan.

Fantastic May 1964 — Ed Emshwiller's portrait of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, patron wizard of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, adorns the cover of the May 1964 issue of Fantastic, which reprinted Fritz Leiber's "Adept's Gambit".

Cele Goldsmith had only just been born during sword and sorcery's first heyday in the 1930s and certainly did not read Weird Tales in the crib, but she knew a rising genre when she saw one. So she began publishing more sword and sorcery stories by other authors.

Roger Zelazny is one of Cele Goldsmith's great discoveries. His first professional story "Horseman!", which appeared in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic, was a sword and sorcery story. It wasn't even the only sword and sorcery story in that issue. The title story "Sword of Flowers" by Larry M. Harris a.k.a. Laurence M. Janifer as well as "The Titan," a reprint of a 1934 story by P. Schuyler Miller, were sword and sorcery as well.

Fantastic August 1962 — Roger Zelazny debuted in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic which also featured sword and sorcery by Laurence M. Janifer and P. Schuyler Henstrom. The cover is by Vernon Kramer.

Zelazny has since branched out, but he keeps returning to sword and sorcery once in a while, for example in the haunting Lord Dunsany-inspired stories of Dilvish the Damned, three of which have appeared in Fantastic to date.

Fantastic June 1965 — Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned story "Thelinde's Song" is the cover story of the June 1965 issue of Fantastic, which was also the last issue edited by Cele Goldsmith-Lalli.

Though only in his thirties, John Jakes is already a veteran writer who has been publishing across various genres since 1950. An admitted fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories from the 1930s, Jakes created his own Conan-like character in Brak the Barbarian, who has appeared in four stories in Fantastic between 1963 and 1965.

January 1965 Fantastic — Ed Emshwiller's iillsutration for "The Girl in the Gem" by John Jakes.

Fantastic March 1965 — Gray Morrow's cover for the March 1965 issue of Fantastic illustrates "The Pillars of Cambalor" by John Jakes.

British writer and editor Michael Moorcock has been a prolific contributor to the fanzine Amra and also pushed the sword and the sorcery genre into new directions with the adventures of Elric of Melniboné, an albino elven warrior who depends on drugs to survive and fights evil with his cursed sword Stormbringer. The majority of Elric's adventures have appeared in the pages of Science Fantasy, but "Master of Chaos" appeared in the May 1964 issue of Fantastic alongside a reprint of Fritz Leiber's 1947 Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "Adept's Gambit."

Since Amazing and Fantastic were sold to Sol Cohen and Cele Goldsmith Lalli left for the greener pastures of Modern Bride, the appearances of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dilvish the Damned and Brak the Barbarian have become rare in the pages of Fantastic (and what stories there did appear were likely leftover from Goldsmith's tenure). However, the sword and sorcery revival is still in full swing and Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, which started it all back in 1932, are set to be reprinted later this year.

One day in the future, when the history of sword and sorcery is written, Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock and John Jakes will be remembered as pivotal figures in the revival of the genre in the sixties. However, I hope that any history of sword and sorcery will also make room for Cele Goldsmith, who championed the genre when it had neither a name nor a market and without whom the sword and sorcery revival may well have been strangled in the crib.

Modern Bride, December 1965 — No more mighty muscles in Cele Goldsmith Lalli's new stomping grounds, though at least the gothic castles and maidens in white gowns remain.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[September 24, 1966] Science Fiction TV from West Germany: Space Patrol: The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion: Episode 1: Attack From Space

September 24, 2021 Cora Buhlert 9 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

Through the Wall with a Bulldozer

Bulldozer breaks through Berlin wall — The aftermath of the daring bulldozer escape

Five years after the Berlin Wall was built, East Germans are still trying to overcome it and escape to the West, often with lethal consequences.

A particularly daring escape attempt happened last week in Staaken just outside Berlin. Four adults and a three-year-old child broke through the East German border fortifications – the so-called "death strip" – in a stolen bulldozer armoured with steel plates. The bulldozer flattened fences, concrete and barbed wire, until stopped by a tree.

Luckily for the five refugees, the tree was on the western side of the Wall, where the two families were rescued by western border guards.

Attack from Space

Meanwhile, on Saturday, September 17, West Germany's first science fiction TV series debuted on the broadcaster ARD.

The series has the unwieldy title Raumpatrouille – Die Phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (Space Patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion), which viewers have already shortened to Raumpatrouille Orion or just plain Orion.

Like the new US series Star Trek, Space Patrol Orion starts with an opening narration, courtesy of veteran actor Claus Biederstaedt, which promises us a fairy tale from the future. In the year 3000 AD, nation states have been abolished. Humanity has settled the ocean floor and colonised far-flung worlds. Starships, including the titular Orion, hurtle through space at unimaginable speeds.

An impressive title sequence and a spacy and very groovy theme tune follow, courtesy of Peter Thomas, who also supplies the music for the Edgar Wallace and Jerry Cotton movies.

Then the show plunges us directly in medias res aboard the fast cruiser Orion 7 and introduces the five person crew: Commander Cliff Allister McLane (Austrian actor Dietmar Schönherr, who is the German dubbing voice of both James Dean and Sidney Poitier), chief engineer Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm), weapons officer Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz, who's best known for comic roles), astrogator (that's Orion speak for navigator) Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus) and space control officer Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig). As the names and the opening narration indicate, the series is set in a multicultural, postnational future, though so far, all characters are played by white actors.

When we first encounter the Orion crew, they are trying to land on the Saturn moon Rhea, while orders telling McLane to stop and return to base echo from the communication system. McLane, however, chooses to ignore those orders.

Most dialogue in the opening scene is gadget speak (and not even regular gadget speak, but a lot of Orion-specific terms), yet it tells us a lot about the characters. Right away we learn that McLane is a Maverick who views orders as strictly optional suggestions. We also learn that his crew trusts him and that they are very competent at what they do.

Where Clothes Irons Control Space Ships

Orion take off — The Orion 7 rises from the ocean in an impressive special effects sequence

This is as good a time as any to talk about the Orion herself. Unlike the silver rocketships that still abound in visual science fiction, the Orion designers decided to go with a saucer shape, enhanced with fins and a transparent dome.

The Orion command bridge set on the soundstage of Atelier Bavaria.

The Orion has an impressive command bridge – courtesy of set designer Rolf Zehetbauer – with boldly curved control stands, flashing lights, beeping oscilloscopes and a massive, egg-shaped computer. Every available surface is covered with futuristic looking bits and bobs. If you look closely, some of those bits and bobs seem oddly familiar, since they are repurposed household objects such as pencil sharpeners, bathroom tabs, plastic cups and in one memorable moment, a Rowenta clothes iron.

Orion clothes iron — Is this clothes iron truly a part of the Orion's engineering control stand or does Hasso simply use it to iron his uniform pants?

Zehetbauer also makes copious use of the kind of modern furniture I discussed in my article on interior design last year. In fact, you can spot several of the pieces featured in that article in the show.

Women in Command

The scene shifts to an anonymous office, where one General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach) is expecting a fellow general, General van Dyke of the Fast Space Fleet Command. I'm sure I'm not the only one who did a double-take when General van Dyke entered, because the General is a woman, portrayed by theatre actress Charlotte Kerr.

Generals van Dyke and Wamsler — General van Dyke (Charlotte Kerr) confronts General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach) and his swarmy aide Lieutenant Spring-Brauner (Thomas Reiner)

We still see way too many all-male spaceship crews and all-male future militaries, so the presence of a female general was a breath of fresh air. Nor is General van Dyke the only female character of note in this episode. Indeed, there are four named and one unnamed women with speaking parts in this episode alone. Alas, all the women in the future have the exact same beehive hairstyle, only in different colours.

We already met Lieutenant Helga Legrelle, the sole female member of the Orion crew, though so far the script doesn't give her much to do. In this scene, we meet another female character, Lieutenant Tamara Jagellovsk (Eva Plug) of the Galactic Security Service, who promises to play a prominent role in the series.

McLane's flagrant disregard for orders has caught up with him, so General Wamsler demotes him and the Orion to space patrol service – against the wishes of McLane's direct superior General van Dyke. There are hints that McLane and General van Dyke have history – on professional and private level.

McLane and the crew — The disgraced Orion crew reports to be demoted. From left to right: Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig), Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz),Commander Cliff Allister McLane (Dietmar Schönherr), Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus) and Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm)

As if being demoted isn't humiliation enough, McLane is also assigned a watchdog, the above-mentioned Tamara Jagellovsk. Based on the first episode, the interaction between those two promises to be very interesting.

Dancing under the Sea

Before the Orion and her crew set off on space patrol duty, they relax in the grooviest nightspot in town, the Starlight Casino. The name is something of a misnomer, because the Starlight Casino is located on the ocean floor and instead of stars, oversized fish can be seen swimming beyond the transparent ceiling dome.

The Starlight Casino is a stunning set and I have no idea how Bavaria Atelier was able to build something like this on a West German TV budget. The set is not really underwater, but on a soundstage, while the fish are swimming in the aquarium of the Munich zoo and were copied into the scene via the magic of bluescreen technology.

McLane and Hasso share a drink, while some very unique dancing is going on in the background

The nightclub scene also adds some characterisation and worldbuilding. We learn that astrogator Atan Shubashi is worried about his dog 264, one of the last 376 poodles on Earth. We also learn that chief engineer Hasso Sigbjörnson has promised his wife Ingrid (Lieselotte Quillig) to retire, but wants to go on one last mission and ropes McLane into breaking the news to Ingrid.

Ingrid Sigbjörnson — Ingrid, Hasso's long-suffering wife (Lieselotte Quillig)

During all this, extras are performing a fascinating dance routine to electronic music in the background. Science fiction tends to assume that people in the future will dance the same way we do and probably to the same music, too, but Orion does not make this mistake. And so the background extras perform an oddly formal dance (created by choreographer William Millié), where couples dance back to back. I suspect this dance will be a big hit in dance classes throughout West Germany.

One thing that impressed me about Raumpatrouille Orion are the many little worldbuilding hints dropped into the story. Why exactly do people in the year 3000 AD dance like that? Why are poodles almost extinct? What was the Second Interstellar War and for that matter, what was the first? When did people of European origin start eating with chopsticks, as many of the characters do, when using chopsticks in present day West Germany will have people staring at you as if you were a unicorn?

A lot of science fiction worlds end at the bulkheads of a spaceship or the atmosphere of a planet, but in Orion, there clearly is a world and culture beyond the little slice that we see. I hope that future episodes will explore that.

Trouble in Space

Once the Orion takes off and emerges from the ocean in a stunning special effects sequence, trouble soon find McLane and his crew.

For starters, McLane and his watchdog Tamara Jagellovsk don't get along at all. McLane alternately ignores Tamara, sends her to her cabin like a naughty child and snipes at her. Tamara, however, is no pushover and gives as good as she gets, while Hasso and weapons officer Mario de Monti watch in amusement. Mario, who's something of a womanizer, clumsily attempts to flirt with Tamara – without success. Meanwhile, Hasso wonders whether Tamara is actually a robot. Considering that there are references to robots being more efficient than humans scattered throughout the episode, I wonder whether this isn't foreshadowing a later revelation.

Helga, Atan and Tamara — Helga Legrelle and Atan Shubashi explain Orion technology to Tamara.

Mario and Tamara — Mario de Monti unsuccessfully attempts to flirt with Tamara.

But whether she's human or a sophisticated android, I really like Tamara, especially when she dresses McLane down for his patronising behaviour such as calling her "My dear child".

The Orion runs into a solar storm (another impressive effect) and then into a dead satellite. McLane wants to blow up the satellite, because it's a hazard to space traffic. Tamara countermands him in what will become a pattern.

Atan Shubashi reports that he cannot raise the satellite relay station MZ-4 on the radio and only receives nonsense code. McLane wants to investigate, because the MZ-4 crew are friends. Tamara tries to override McLane again, but McLane points out that if they don't fix the transmitter problem, an automated space cruiser will crash into MZ-4. And no, they cannot contact the cruiser themselves, because the dead satellite that Tamara would not let McLane to blow up is disrupting communications in the region. "Shall I send them a postcard?" an impatient McLane snaps.

So Hasso and Atan get into a Lancet, a spherical shuttle that looks very much like a modern lamp, to investigate. McLane also orders Hasso and Atan to wear space suits, because when a transmitter fails, a life support system may fail as well.

Atan and Hasso in their bulky space suits

If a character announces they will retire after "one last mission" like Hasso did, this is often a death sentence. And Atan is the only other crewmember who has someone waiting for him at home, so I became seriously worried about those two.

The Mystery of MZ-4

And not without reason, for once Atan and Hasso reach MZ-4, they find the station without power and oxygen. The crew is dead, frozen in mid movement, and the transmitter is set to a frequency not used by humans.

The scenes of Atan and Hasso exploring the darkened station, their heavy footsteps echoing on the metal floors, are genuinely spooky. Though the discovery of the dead crewmen is marred by the fact that one actor blinks at the crucial moment.

Atan, Hasso and Clarence — Atan and Hasso find MZ-4 commander Clarence dead, frozen in mid movement.

Two dead MZ-4 crewmembers — Two more MZ-4 crewmembers frozen in mid movement. The guy on the right blinks.

Atan and Hasso are still trying to figure out what the hell happened, when they spot a curiously glittering, elongated humanoid shadow. Aliens – or "exo-terrists" in Orion speak – have taken over MZ-4 and they turn out to be immune to rayguns.

Frog alien — One of the "exo-terrists" that have taken over MZ-4.

In filmic science fiction, aliens are all too often humans in rubber masks. However, Orion's exo-terrists – or Frogs, as Hasso and Atan nickname them – look truly alien. The glittering shadows were created via bluescreen technology.

Hasso and Atan call McLane who orders them to get the hell out of there. However, more trouble is coming, for Helga Legrelle detects seven unknown spaceships heading for the Orion. Worse, Hasso and Atan find that their Lancet has been sabotaged and cannot take off.

Space Battles and Moral Dilemmas

McLane promises to come back for them and goes off to fight the alien ships, only to find that the Orion's weapons are as ineffective as Hasso's raygun. The only course of action left is to return to Earth and warn everybody of the impending invasion.

However, Hasso and Atan are still stuck on MZ-4. McLane doesn't want to leave his friends behind. Tamara points out that Atan and Hasso are most likely already dead and the station is in the hands of the aliens. She orders McLane to destroy the station. McLane grudgingly agrees, but can't bring himself to press the button that will kill his friends. Not that it matters much, because the Orion has no firepower left after the encounter with the alien ships.

McLane may be a Maverick who ignores orders, but his first priority is to save lives. Therefore, I was disappointed that the convenient power failure took the decision whether to kill his friends and potentially save humanity out of his hands.

A Good Old Astounding Solution

But Atan and Hasso are still very much alive, though about to be overrun by aliens. They figure out that reason the aliens shut down the life support system is that oxygen is toxic to them. So Hasso uses the oxygen cartridge from his spacesuit to kill the aliens.

Hasso and Atan wait for the aliens to enter, so they can flood the station with oxygen.

As solutions to cosmic mysteries go, this one was pretty clever. It feels like something that John W. Campbell might have published in Astounding twenty years ago. And indeed, the entire MZ-4 sequence with its try and fail cycles feels very Campbellian.

Hasso's cunning plan works. The aliens are overcome by oxygen and reduced to a pile of glitter on the floor. However, there's still the automated cruiser Challenger, which is headed straight for MZ-4 and will crash into the station, if not given a course correction. And Atan and Hasso can't hail the cruiser. What saves them in the end is ironically the aliens, who have placed a forceshield around MZ-4, blowing up the Challenger before she can hit the station.

A Meeting of Generals

The episode concludes at a conference table, where several military men – and this time around, they're all men; General van Dyke is presumably away on a mission – discuss what has just transpired.

General Wamsler, whom we already met, as well as the delightfully named Marshal Kublai Krim (Hans Cossy) and commander-in-chief Sir Arthur (Franz Schafheitlin) want to blow up MZ-4 in a pre-emptive strike against the aliens (at this point, they don't yet know that Hasso and Atan managed to take them out). The lone dissenting voice is Colonel Villa (Friedrich Joloff), head of the Galactic Security Service and Tamara's boss, who points out that maybe it would be better to find out what the aliens want first. Joloff is best known for playing villains, so it was nice to see him in a more nuanced role.

Colonel Villa (Friedrich Joloff), head of the Galactic Security Service and the lone sensible military man.

The "shoot first and ask questions later" policy very much matches postwar West Germany's view of unscrupulous generals who will do anything to eliminate a perceived threat, regardless of the loss of life.

The reunited Orion crew heads to the Starlight Casino to celebrate, including Tamara who has made peace of sorts with McLane and the rest of the crew. Tamara also reveals that she knows that McLane lied about the dead satellite disrupting communications and tells him never to lie to her again.

"This was just a nightmare, wasn't it?" Hasso, who's still shaken from his ordeal, asks Atan.

"Worse," Atan replies, "That was science fiction."

Science Fiction for Grown-ups

When my fellow Travellers here at the Journey raved about the new American show Star Trek, I was jealous, because Star Trek seems to be exactly what filmic science fiction so rarely offers, namely serious stories for adults that can compete with written science fiction. Little did I know that I would get my wish fulfilled only nine days later in the form of Space Patrol Orion.

Because Orion is exactly that: a serious science fiction story for adults and one that looks amazing, too. The beginning is a little slow and the MZ-4 plot is taken straight from a 1940s issue of Astounding. But comparing Raumpatrouille Orion to stuff like Familie Hesselbach (The Hesselbach Family), Stahlnetz (Steel Web) or Hafenpolizei (Harbour Police), which dominates the West German airwaves, is like comparing a Volkswagen to a Mercedes. Honestly, I had no idea that West Germany was even capable of producing something like Orion.

I hope that writers Rolf Honold and W.G. Larsen (a joint pseudonym used by Hans Gottschalk, Helmut Krapp, Oliver Storz, Theo Mezger and Michael Braun) will lay off the gadget speak, which is sure to scare away the mundanes, and focus more on the characters and their interactions. Because Orion has intriguing characters played by some of our best actors, so let's make use of them.

Episode 2 will air in two weeks and I for one can't wait.

Four and a half stars.

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction