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Raumpa­trouille – Die phan­tastis­chen Aben­teuer des Raum­schiffes Ori­on [known in Eng­lish as Space Patrol Ori­on] was a Ger­man sci­ence fic­tion series that pre­miered the same week that Star Trek did in North Amer­i­ca. It had a sim­i­lar premise — an ensem­ble dra­ma in which the crew of a space ser­vice met up with var­i­ous alien per­ils. Star Trek was not to be broad­cast in Ger­many for sev­er­al years to come, and there is no indi­ca­tion that either pro­duc­tion was aware of the oth­er, but there are a num­ber of remark­able sim­i­lar­i­ties. In both cas­es, there was an inter­na­tion­al crew and a future in which human­i­ty is polit­i­cal­ly uni­fied, at peace, and explor­ing space.  But the Ori­on is not near­ly as much of a hap­py fam­i­ly as the Enter­prise: the crew seems to be con­stant­ly bick­er­ing and turn­ing on each oth­er, espe­cial­ly Cap­tain Cliff McLane (Diet­mar Schön­herr) and Secu­ri­ty Offi­cer Tama­ra Jag­ellovsk (Eva Pflug). Cap­tain McLane is usu­al­ly dis­obey­ing orders from above, while out­wit­ting the neme­sis aliens called “frogs”, and get­ting him­self and his crew rep­ri­mand­ed in every episode. Between adven­tures, the crew relax in a dis­co, in the Space Patrol’s under­sea head­quar­ters. There, they drink heav­i­ly, attempt to seduce each oth­er, and dance bizarre dances devised by some very strange stu­dio chore­o­g­ra­ph­er. Only sev­en episodes were made, but the show made a tremen­dous impres­sion on a gen­er­a­tion of Ger­man kids, and a fan-base was built that was able to sup­port 145 nov­el­iza­tions. Pre­sum­ably the pro­duc­tion costs were unsus­tain­able. At any rate, in Ger­many, the series pro­duced much the same fan loy­al­ty and long-term nos­tal­gia that Star Trek did else­where. Both shows tapped into the same zeitgeist.

Weird dances in the Under­sea Disco

Raumpa­trouille  com­pares quite favourably with Star Trek. The sets were more elab­o­rate, and more imag­i­na­tive. The robot designs, for instance, were real­ly cool. The act­ing, as far as I can tell fil­tered through trans­la­tion, was as good. There was a seri­ous attempt to equip it with back-sto­ry, a spec­u­la­tive soci­ety, and plau­si­ble sci­ence. It was more con­ven­tion­al “space opera” in that it focused more on space bat­tles than did Star Trek. The series used some quite imag­i­na­tive elec­tron­ic music by com­pos­er Peter Thomas, as well as some quick-tem­po jazz, in con­trast to Star Trek’s plush orches­tral stuff. The women, of course, wore those 1960’s hair­dos that now look far more alien than they did at the time.