Premier Collections: The Planet Man, 
            First Generation Radio Archives
            "Preserving Radio's Past for the Future"
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 Liner notes written by Ivan Shreve, Jr.
     

      "Great Jumpin' Asteroids!"

      During radio's Golden Age, science fiction was pretty much relegated to 
      that of kiddie-oriented programming; radio serials like "Buck Rogers" and 
      "Flash Gordon" - both based on popular newspaper comic strips - are 
      examples of the programs that were produced to entertain a non-discerning 
      juvenile audience. On occasion, there would be an experimental foray into 
      programming for adults ("The War of the Worlds," selected episodes of 
      "Lights Out") but for the most part, sci-fi remained the bailiwick of 
      children. But the release of the feature film "Destination Moon" in 1950 
      changed all of this, ushering in a new era of serious, adult 
      science-fiction drama - most notably NBC's "Dimension X" and the later 
      "X-Minus One." Still, the 'old ways' were not entirely abandoned - and 
      "The Planet Man" is one of these stories.

      Produced in about 1950 by Palladium Radio Productions, "The Planet Man" is 
      the golly-gee-whillikers saga of Dantro, an intergalactic troubleshooter 
      for an organization known as the League of Planets - "the law enforcement 
      body for peace and justice in the celestial world." (Think of him as an 
      outer-space version of Marshal Matt Dillon - "It's a chancy job, and it 
      makes a [planet] man watchful...") With their center of operations 
      situated on Planeria Rex, "the capital of the planets," the League sends 
      their water-carrier Dantro out into the celestial world to maintain law 
      and order "whenever danger threatens the universe."

      Dantro is assisted in his quest for law-and-order by the members of 
      Earth's first rocket expedition: Dr. John Darrow, his daughter Pat, and 
      engineer Slats, who are rescued by the Planet Man before their rocket 
      comes perilously close to crashing into the moon. (The explanation for 
      this is that Darrow and crew took on a pair of stowaways before blast-off, 
      namely his nephew Billy and niece Jane - which makes a listener wonder why 
      the heck they weren't in school.) These five individuals join forces with 
      the Planet Man to defeat evildoers like Marston, the ruler of Mars who 
      possesses an insatiable appetite for interplanetary domination.

      Background on "The Planet Man" is sketchy at best - even with the original 
      disks close at hand. Various sources date its syndicated run around 
      1952-53, but specific airdate information remains unknown. Palladium 
      transcribed a total of 78 15-minute episodes for afternoon strip, with 76 
      episodes extant today. (The first and fourth installments, likely 
      contained on a single audition disk, are missing and have never been 
      located.) The cast of the series also remains shrouded in mystery as well; 
      only the announcer (Phil Tonken), organist (Jon Gart, whose theme for the 
      show sounds like a cross between the "Dragnet" march and "Love for Three 
      Oranges," the theme of "The FBI in Peace & War") and voice of the robot 
      characters (Joseph Boland) have been identified.

      "The Planet Man" is a graduate of the Space Patrol/Tom Corbett, Space 
      Cadet school of old-time radio drama, serving up plenty of breezy, 
      not-to-be-taken-seriously adventure fun. Marston is a great megalomaniacal 
      comic villain, very similar to the bad guys in the Columbia Studios 
      serials who were always griping about their bungling subordinates and 
      their inability to follow orders. But the series utilizes other colorful 
      villains as well -- particularly a pair of Brooklynese dese-dem-and-dose 
      space pirates named Slick and Blackie who sound like refugees from a 
      Monogram B-gangster pic. And yet, the show showcases ideas that will be 
      used later in other, classic sci-fi films: one particular story arc echoes 
      the Cold War paranoia of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," in which 
      the nefarious Marston manages to dehumanize Dantro and others with his 
      handy-dandy "Hypno-Ray."

      Oh, heck - who am I trying to kid? It's campy entertainment to the nth 
      degree!