Raumpatrouille - Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion

"Raumpatrouille" was the very first sci-fi series I had the pleasure to watch. My elder brother and me sat in the living room, watching Dietmar Schönherr, Eva Pflug and all the other noble astronauts battling the "Frogs" or renegade robots on a b/w screen.

I was 9 years old, and the whole thing struck me completely. Oh, how i envied a classmate of my brother, who owned Peter Thomas's movie theme on a 12", starting with that unique metallic countdown. For a year I was painting spaceships and foreign planets. Not that i wanted to become an astronaut, but a normal family life with a normal wife, normal kids and a normal job on a normal spacestation would do just fine.

Now that most of us have taken the red pill, passing the outer rims of the known universe in cryosleep, side by side with sigourney, to the proverbial hell and back, the poetry and twinkling of the first days are almost gone.

I got me the series on video, but i can't get back that incredibly "involved" feeling. It was part of the times, i guess. This kind of future really belongs to the past. Yet, none of it's successors made me feel like "orion" again. No, wait: the first "Star Wars" episode (or Episode Four, aargh...) had a comparable impact back in 1977.