Due to a teleporter malfunction, time traveller Captain Z-Ro's (Roy
Steffens) favourite sidekick Jet (Bruce Haynes) is stuck somewhere in
mid-Atlantic sometime late in the 15th century - fortunately though not in
the sea, but on a ship called Santa Maria (name rings a bell?). There he
has to overhear a bunch of crewmembers plotting mutiny, simply because
they don't want to go on and follow Christopher Columbus' (Edward
Sterlingson) pipe dream of a round earth. They capture Jet, and figuring
him a stowaway, they force him to cooperate. However, instead of
sabotaging the whole journey, Jet actually warns Columbus, and with the
help of Captain Z-Ro's teleporting tricks, he holds the mutineers off
until Columbus finally sets his sights on America - and all his crew
become one big family again ... After two seasons (1951 and
1953) doing live action skits, the time travelling show Captain Z-Ro
became a videotaped and syndicated series for the 1955 season. The result
is a somehow cute example of early sci-fi television - but nothing really
memorable, basically because it's a bit too simplistic even for its time
and (kiddie-)audience, too low budget to bring any real sense of wonder to
its historical adventures (for example, you never even really see
Columbus' ships as a whole in this one), and neither the characters nor
actors offer much in terms of depth or charisma. Forgettable (and also
largely forgotten as a matter of fact).
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