I’m told this was a kid’s sci-fi TV show, from the early days of TV. Does it survive on DVD? Were the sets and props pretty cheesey?
Finally, what did the name signify?
Here’s a summary.
Cheesy by today’s standards? Sure. But for a 1949 children’s sci-fi program it was, by default, state of the art. The name “Video” reflects the new (to the masses) technology of broadcasting moving pictures, which was the method by which the show came into people’s home as well as a tool employed by the hero in exciting, futuristic ways.
I quote from The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows
Here’s a blog entry about it. (Go a bit down on the page.) Alfred Bester, Damon Knight and Jack Vance all wrote for it, and it had a famous effects budget of $25 an episode. We didn’t get a TV until it was dead and gone, so I never have actually seen it myself. For some reason, though “Captain Video” was the generic name for TV space adventures.
TV show
“Captain Video and His Video Rangers” (1949)
Movie
Captain Video, Master of the Stratosphere (1951)
Another TV series
“The Secret Files of Captain Video” (1953)
Cartoon
“Captain Video and His Cartoon Rangers” (1956)
Ah, the cheesiness of the sets and props was part of the show’s charm. I loved “Captain Video” when I was a little kid, but I remember very little of it. One thing that I do remember is that the Captain had an “intergalactic signaling device” with which he sent Morse code to distant galaxies. It was an office stapler. It even said “Swingline” on it.
It was not state-of-the-art, even by 1949 terms. But since it was a show for children, they didn’t need to be state-of-the-art. Even at the time, adults commented on the cheapness of the sets and the use of everyday objects for futuristic devices.
Several great pieces of trivia about the show:
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Captain Video had more original episodes than any other American SF TV show. It ran five nights a week for over six years (six nights a week for one year, and four nights for a year before), with few reruns (the technology wasn’t there in the beginning, which one reason why it’shard to find examples of the show).
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Don Hastings, the Video Ranger for the entire run of the show, is still a TV regular today, working on As the World Turns since 1960 (and working regularly even before that). Next year, he celebrate 60 years in television.
I also think that, for better or for worse, Captain Video was the most influential show ever to appear on American TV, and you can see echoes of it in most SF shows today.
My Dad one gave me his old Radio Flyer, and I was severely disappointed to discover it neither received radio signals nor flew.
First thing after I make coffee at work in the morning, I’m making a label for the stapler that says “ansible”. 
I stand by my assessment.
By default. If another 1949 children’s sci-fi program had higher production values, I’d like to see it.
I’m not old enough to remember Captain Video, but I do recall Ed Norton was a huge fan.
I don’t know too much about Captain Video
You can see a whole episode at archive.org
The overture to Richard Wagner’s Flying Dutchman.
Cool.
There weren’t any, of course. But with a $25 budget for props, it’s hard to get state of the art (if you adjusted for inflation today, what would you get?).
If you want state-of-the-art, see things like It Came From Outer Space or Them!, both of which were produced while Captain Video was on the air. TV would have forced some restrictions, but with a higher budget, Captain Video could have been much better. For instance:
If the show had actually been able to design a gun and have a prototype made, it wouldn’t have looked like something out of a kid’s toybox. Star Trek (one of the Captains most obvious descendants) had a department design phasers that weren’t cobbled together from toy cap guns, and there’s no reason why that couldn’t have been done in 1949 other than budget.
Or, as an even better example, the space ship had cardboard steering wheels (scroll to the next to last photo). A different type of control could have been designed, but even an old air force surplus airplane steering wheel (as shown in Plan 9 from Outer Space) was hardly beyond the technology of the time.
I thought the airliner pilots in Plan 9 were holding paper plates.
Which is my point. It was the first attempt at producing a sci-fi TV show for kids, so it was by default the best and worst of its kind. I’m not sure how that could even be a controversial statement. They could have done the first show in dungarees with a black sheet as a backdrop and it would have been, by default, state of the art. Of course they could have advanced the art by throwing more money at it, but that wasn’t the DuMont way of doing things. What movies of the time or later TV series did is irrelevant. The medium was in its infancy, the financial backers didn’t want to spend a lot of money because they didn’t know what the return might be (the budget was $25 a week, not per episode), sci-fi on TV was brand new, and it was a kids program. This was its main competition.
Not even Star Trek was above saving money. As is well-known, the prop department needed salt shakers for a scene in the Man Trap episode (the one about the salt vampire masquerading as Bones’s old girl friend) in which Rand brings Sulu lunch on a tray with a salt shaker on it and bought several futuristic looking ones. They realized viewers might not recognize the salt shaker unless it was conspicuously pointed out (SULU: Thanks for bringing me salt with my lunch, Janice).
They bought some conventional looking salt shakers and recycled the futuristic ones into McCoy’s diagnostic instruments.
Did you jiggle the knobs?