You remember Rocky Jones, the TV Space Ranger. A lot of early US sci-fi TV was pretty low-budget and full of silly clichés like that: space food, space guns, space chairs…radio microphones and back-room surplus.

One of the pioneer efforts in TV sci-fi was the DuMont network's risible venture, called Captain Video and His Video Rangers. It started back in 1949, when few people had sets, and ran into the mid-1950s. Even back then, people mocked its live action flubs and non-existent production values. But you know, it was influential and had an effect on the sorts of things we see today. I'll show you, and you might enjoy this.

Captain Video had all this:

• Live acting, corpsing, and dropped cues.
• Moral messages celebrating Star Trek-type values, beamed anviliciously at the watching 'Video Rangers' as Public Service Announcements.
• Falling props, supplied by Wanamaker's Department Store, which was downstairs from the New York studio.
• A raft of writers who should have been ashamed. The Role of Embarassment includes:
  
  Damon Knight
  
  James Blish
  
  Jack Vance
  
  Arthur C. Clarke
  
  Isaac Asimov
• A robot named 'I Tobor'. The prop people got the stencil on backwards.
• Interspersed footage from old cowboy movies, representing the actions of 'Video Ranger agents' in the field. Apparently they hadn't heard of the Prime Directive. Of course, the cowboy movies' plots had nothing to do with the space story.

You get the idea. Alas, these gems are mostly lost, but there's a rare episode from 1949 on archive. Go and enjoy it. Tip: If the picture won't play for you – it wouldn't for me – try the OGG video. It will come out tiny, but be readable. You'll get the idea. Warning: it's only half an hour, but the pace makes it seem longer. What were they thinking?

Now comes the good part. Lots of people remembered Captain Video. American newspaper columnist Dave Berry did, and pointed out that the tchotchkes he collected – yes, they had collectibles – had higher production values than the show. (They would have had to.) The best tribute of all, to my mind, was the episode of the 1990s series Quantum Leap made in honour of Captain Video and its video cousins. Courtesy of Youtube, you may watch the episode, entitled Future Boy. Obviously, the modern series has the superior technique. But it's still a great homage to the old show, and its influence on television and science fiction. Just think, a captain of the Enterprise, wearing tinfoil like that. It boggles the mind and tickles the funnybone.

I hope you enjoy this little excursion into what Captain Galaxy would no doubt call 'the futuristic past'.