I watched the available 24 episodes of Captain Z-Ro and mostly enjoyed them. Years before Doctor Who started meddling in time and space Captain Z-Ro was sticking his nose into the time stream and changing the course of history. Turns out a lot of people got to be where they are with a bit of help from the Captain and his sidekick Jet. That's the Captain and Jet below.
Captain Z-Ro is played by Roy Steffans and he's pretty much the guy behind the program. He created the series with Friedrich Schiller and he wrote all 26 episodes. His other credits on the IMDb list him being an art director on TV productions from 1976 to 1981. He lived to be 98 years old and was married to the same woman for 75 years. Jet is played by Bruce Haynes and that's the only credit he gets on the IMDb. They guys are passable actors and the stories are ok. You get a bit of history, some fake science blather, and a bit of melodrama. Occasionally there's a bit of danger but with a time machine you can always get out of any scrape.
That's the Captain hidden base somewhere on Planet Earth.The series started locally on KRON in San Francisco in 1951 and the episodes were 15 minutes long. They produced a half hour long nationally syndicated show in 1955 and it only lasted for 26 episodes. There are two missing episodes but the rest are all up on the Internet Archive in the Video Cellar Collection. Why they all aren't in the Classic TV section is one of the things wrong with the IA. I like the site but their file arrangement sucks.
The stories have some interesting figures from history, like Columbus, Daniel Boone, Washington, Marco Polo, King John, you get the idea. Three episodes have a more space orientated story and my favorite was the one with the Roger the robot.
He's the Captain's invention and he's intended for exploration on the surface of Venus. Something goes wrong and Roger winds up in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. He runs about the streets of San Francisco and visits Coit Tower, helps turn a cable car and peeks around a corner.
It's mostly good fun but kind of low key. I'd watch them again but probably I won't ever bother. There's already so much to see piled up here, who knows if I would ever get the time to get to it again. I'd watch the couple of episodes with Roger in them at the least. You might like them.
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