Space Patrol Orion

What sounds like a fairy tale today may be reality tomorrow.

Hier ist ein Märchen von übermorgen. Es gibt keine Nationalstaaten mehr, es gibt nur noch die Menschheit und ihre Kolonien im Weltraum. Menschen siedeln auf fernen Sternen. Der Meeresboden wird als Lebensraum erschlossen. Mit heute noch unvorstellbaren Geschwindigkeiten eilen Raumschiffe durch unser Milchstraßensystem. Eines dieser Raumschiffe ist die Orion. Winziger Teil eines gigantischen Sicherheitssystems, das die Erde vor Bedrohungen aus dem All schützt. Begleiten wir die Orion und ihre Besatzung auf ihrem Patrouillendienst am Rande der Unendlichkeit und entdecken wir in den nächsten Wochen einen ganz wichtigen und entscheidenden Eckpfeiler in der Karriere von Peter Thomas: Seine Musik für die erfolgreiche TV-Serie “Raumpatrouille Orion”.

The musical world of Space Patrol Orion

Wir geben Ihnen einen Einblick in die musikalische Welt von Orion, werfen einen Blick hinter die Kulissen der TV-Produktion, stellen Ihnen die Protagonisten vor und erzählen die Geschichte auf eine neue Art und Weise.

Space Patrol Orion läuft derzeit auf Netflix – hier können Sie die Serie noch einmal sehen. Der Rechteinhaber Bavaria Film bereitet ein Reboot vor. “Orion” ist der schlichte Titel der Gemeinschaftsproduktion von Uncharted Territory und Bavaria Fiction. Die Handlung wird sich an der der Originalserie orientieren, im Vorfeld hatte das renommierte amerikanische Branchenmagazin Variety bereits über die Pläne berichtet.

Doch nun tauchen Sie mit uns ein in die unendlichen Weiten, die Commander McLane und seine Crew entdecken und bei denen sie von der großartigen Musik von Peter Thomas begleitet werden.

The recordings of Raumpatrouille Orion

Peter Thomas needed only five days for the recordings. The financial resources were limited, but he was able to act freely musically. Thomas recalls, “the producers had a certain budget and said, ‘Do somethPeter Thomas had the ambition to write music “from the moon”, i.e. to compose music as it might actually be played in the future, using the existing musical and instrumental possibilities. Thus, apart from the vocoder for the countdown and the Hammond organ (apart from the electric guitar and electric bass), no electronic instruments were used. Peter Thomas did not intend to create a symphonic sound world like John Williams did for Star Wars. He also did not have the financial means for this production. He made a virtue out of (financial) necessity: in lean but refined arrangements he combined the instruments of a beat or rock band with a few characteristic orchestral instruments. As the central instrument running through the entire composition, however, he used the Hammond organ, which at the time was still – musically speaking – a “foreign body” for the general public. With its diverse sound possibilities and the floating and vibrating Leslie sound, it was perfectly suited to musically underscore eerie, dangerous or dramatic scenes. At the same time, it fit ideally into the band context.
ing with it.’ It was very important to finish on time, but otherwise I had every freedom. “The recordings were then made in Munich, at the Bavaria Tonstudio in Schornstraße. One of the best sound engineers, Hans Endrulat (who later also recorded the music for “Cabaret”), was there. The technical possibilities at that time only allowed a two-track recording (technical term: “shoestring”), so everything had to be recorded in one go. Thomas remembers: “Everything was recorded live. That way I knew immediately how it sounded, and each musician also played better. He wasn’t allowed to make a mistake. One mistake is okay, the second he gets a warning, and the third he gets fired. You play better with fear.” Often, the music was played directly to the film in progress.

Broadcast

“The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion” is the first and best-known German science fiction television series. It was broadcast by ARD in seven parts every fortnight on Saturday evenings after the Tagesschau from 17 September 1966. The series, which cost an immense DM 480,000 per episode for its time, was created as a Franco-German co-production between WDR and the public broadcaster ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française), where it was shown under the title “Commando Spatiale”. Although there were only seven one-hour episodes, the black-and-white series has enjoyed cult status for decades. When it was first broadcast on ARD, it achieved ratings of up to 56% and was therefore often referred to as a street sweeper. In Germany, the series was repeated more than 35 times on German television and by various regional broadcasters such as WDR, NDR Fernsehen, hr-fernsehen and the then Südwest 3 as well as the private broadcaster Sat.1.

In addition, there were special film screenings in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in arthouse cinemas, where the seven episodes were usually shown in two runs. In 2003, the 90-minute compilation Raumpatrouille Orion: Rücksturz ins Kino was even edited with newly filmed scenes in which, among others, the well-known writer Elke Heidenreich reported from the future as newsreader Helma Krap.

TRICKS

The use of everyday objects inside the spaceship, such as irons, pencil sharpeners or taps, which served as technical controls, is still exemplary for the series today, while the greatly enlarged ornamental fish of the Berlin Aquarium formed the backdrop for the Starlight Casino. The navigation computer in the shape of an elephant-shaped Fabergé egg is unforgettable. It is precisely this ingenuity that gives Space Patrol Orion its special charm to this day.

Even back then, the Orion spaceship was filmed as a model using the bluescreen process. This process was also used for the light storm scene. One might be amused by the fact that grains of rice were scattered around to simulate the storm. But the high-speed shots still look convincing today.

A marvellous example of the ingenuity of the time was the overkill of the experimental moon. This consisted of a plaster ball filled with rice, coffee, flour and sultanas, which was heated so much by a high-powered fan that the ball burst, was torn apart and the air turbulence ejected the contents from its interior. The supernova, which consisted of a wooden sphere coated with fire paste and set on fire, still looks impressive today.

An absolute highlight is, of course, the launch of the Orion. A photo of the Orion attached to a board was dipped upside down into a glass container filled with water and an effervescent tablet and filmed. The bubbling air bubbles of the tablets visually represented the launch from underwater base 104. When entering the launch base 104, the launch scene was simply played backwards, creating the backwards spinning vortex.

The whirlpool from which the Orion rises is often referred to as a bathtub river, but this is incorrect. In fact, the pictures of the whirlpool were taken at the Test Centre for Water Dynamics at the Technical University of Munich. The water ripples were created with the help of fans.

Galyxo – dancing on the seabed

The Starlight Casino, a futuristic bar through whose glass dome you can watch fish swimming by, is located on the seabed, which humans developed as a habitat in the year 3000. This is where McLane and his crew recovered from their work as space patrolmen and celebrated successful adventures. They had fun, relaxed, talked, laughed and flirted together. On rare occasions, differences of opinion were also settled there.

On the dance floor, people shook a leg to the Galyxo dance after wondrous choreographies. For the scenes in the Starlight Casino, Peter Thomas composed two pieces, “Ballet” and “Piccicato in Heaven”, which could not be more different, but have one thing in common: a futuristic strangeness. Dance and entertainment music of the future could be heard in the Starlight Casino. Peter Thomas had to provide the music for the dance scenes before filming, as the ballet had to rehearse the pieces beforehand. The unusual dance figures of the futuristic fashion dances were developed by the choreographer William Miliè.

The music pieces for Starlight Casino can therefore be regarded as the most original and futuristic pieces of the Space Patrol, all other pieces were only finalised after filming. Even the dance Galyxo was only named after the fact for “Raumpatrouille Orion”: Falling Back into the Cinema”.

The Space Patrol from a Cold War perspective

Here is the text that Philip Thomas was allowed to read on the occasion of Peter Thomas’ retrospective in February 2024 in the run-up to the long “Orion Night”: As today’s audience is likely to be mainly Orion specialists, I’m not going to go out on a limb and explain Space Patrol to you. Instead, I will try to place the Space Patrol in the context of the time and draw parallels with the Star Trek series. And don’t worry, no more than 7 minutes! The scripts for the 7-part series were written by Rolf Honold. The series was accused of having reactionary and militant tendencies when it was first broadcast. The constellation of characters in Raumpatrouille was also controversial, such as Commander McLane’s relationship with Russian agent Tamara Jagelowsk. According to Dietmar Schönherr, the relationship was “the East-West conflict in a nutshell at the time”. If the commander with an American-sounding name is supposed to listen to a control officer with a Russian name, there must be tensions. A total of three sci-fi series began in the mid-1960s – Space Patrol, Star Trek and Dr Who. And that was no coincidence: it was the golden age of (manned) space travel, between Sputnik 1, the Russian satellite (1957), the first manned space flight with Yuri Gagarin (1961) and the first manned moon landing by the Apollo 11 team (1969). However, the 1960s were not only the decade of the beginning conquest of space, but also the decade of a race between the USA and the USSR and the Cold War. Space Patrol” premiered on 17 September 1966, just nine days after the first “Star Trek” episode, and at first glance they had a lot in common: both are set in the distant but not entirely dissimilar future; both series focus on a spaceship and its multi-ethnic crew; both are about military conflicts as well as personal stories; both begin, to images of space and the respective spaceships, with the combination of title music and voiceover that introduces us to the fictional world. However, the voiceover and music also make it clear how radically different these stories are. While we learn that the Enterprise is to find “strange new worlds, new life and new civilisations”, the Orion serves as a “tiny part of a gigantic security system that protects Earth from threats from space”. Five of the seven episodes have to do with the fight against the extra-iridian “Frogs”. The military focus of the series, along with the production costs, was the reason why Bavaria did not renew it; audience reactions were positive, but the criticism was harsh with what Helmut Krapp, a member of the production team, described as “almost fascist traits” (quoted from Kastner 1995: 85). Another interpretation would probably be more correct, namely to understand Raumpatrouille not as an ideological relapse into bad old times, but as an attempt to determine the place of the FRG in the new era, and in this it was indeed part of a gigantic security system, even if this was not directed against threats from space, but against those from the Soviet Union and its satellite states, a threat that had taken on a new dimension with the space race. The raison d’être of the FRG was Western integration, ideologically, economically and militarily. The Space Patrol and, symbolically, the crew of the Orion are an example of this symbolic integration and the comparison with “Star Trek” is interesting. The Enterprise is commanded by an American, who is assisted by a team including another American, a Scotsman (Scotty), an African officer, a Japanese-American helmsman, a Russian navigator and, beyond humanity, the half-Vulcan science officer Spock. The crew of the Orion is similarly international, with American, Italian, Swedish, French and Russian members, i.e. as in “Star Trek”, the current enemy in the East is symbolically integrated into the new community and a new one, the Frogs, is put in its place. But while in “Star Trek” US-Americans make up the majority and provide the captain, in “Raumpatrouille” the only undoubtedly German character, Lieutenant Spring-Brauner, is the caricature of an over-correct, inflexible civil servant, while Dietmar Schönherr Major Cliff Allister McLane is American, signalling West Germany’s subordination to the new hegemon. And while the national origins of the characters are clear in the names of the Enterprise crew, “Raumpatrouille” disguises these origins: Helga Legrelle, Hasso Sigbjörnson (French or Swedish surnames, but German first names), Colonel Henryk Villa (Polish/Italian). In “Raumpatrouille”, national identities dissolve into an overall identity in which the old, bad Germany has lost its contours. And when it comes to music, Raumpatrouille makes more exclusive use of contemporary popular music than “Star Trek”. Peter Thomas, already known for the music of Edgar Wallace, Jerry Cotton and Melissa, was used to working quickly and with a small ensemble: For “Raumpatrouille”, it was supplemented by brass players, bassists and a small choir. Characteristic of Thomas’ music is the use of textless voices as a colour in the ensemble sound, as he aspired to make music that was in tune with the times (the term “New Astronautic Sound” suggests contemporaneity in the context of the space race. An all-purpose modernity that corresponds perfectly to the function of “Raumpatrouille” as a projection of a new Germany and perhaps also because it toned down the militaristic aspect of the series and avoided traditions of heroic war film music. While in the original “Star Trek” series a large part of the running time is accompanied by music in a way that is not stylistically – but methodically – reminiscent of Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s and often takes on a cartoon-like clarity, “Raumpatrouille” is musically sparse. Only a good 18% of the series’ running time uses music, with the title music being one of the longer elements. The 56-second “Raumpatrouille” opening credits are a model of musical economy and essentially consist of variations on an A minor chord. And I would like to conclude here with an example of Vater’s creative working method: The normal sound of the piano was not very suitable for a science fiction series. So Vatern took an amplifier and a microphone, put the microphone on the piano strings, turned the knobs a bit and suddenly it was like an underwater piano. And Vatern’s conclusion: that’s how it should actually sound in a spaceship. Source: ZUKUNFTSMUSIK, Star Trek, Raumpatrouille, Dr Who und der Soundtrack zum Wettlauf ins All by Guido Heldt; in Berliner Debatte Initial 32 (2021)

Cover Versionen & Samples

Today there are more than 50 cover versions of the title song from “Raumpatrouille” alone (including Helge Schneider, The Beatsteaks, The Mocambo Astronautic Sound Orchestra and many more. Almost all musical genres are represented.

In addition, the title melody has also been sampled by DJ Spinna, Swollen Members and Too Strong.