[Nick Zwar]

Raumpatrouille is about as old as Star Trek and shares many similarities with that show (the name means “space patrol”, but of course it didn’t have the budget of Star Trek (though Roddenberry never thought Star Trek had an adequate budget), but made up for it with inventive set design (like using an electric clothes iron for spaceship navigation) by Rolf Zehetbauer, who was later responsible for the set design of such movies as Das Boot and The Neverending Story.

Peter Thomas’ music was one of the most outstanding features of the show. For me, the show will always be unforgettable because of its ludicrous and totally silly dance choreographies.
Take into consideration that it was a science fiction show at a time when no one really knew how to do a science fiction TV show or what it could be or do. So they tried to make everything “futuristic”. The main characters (who often race through space with the spaceship “Orion”) regularly relax in a Casino (which was under the sea!… talk about a place less suitable for casual evening visits and drinking alcohol if you have to steer a submarine/spacehip to get there and leave!), and there they had the most hilariously funny dance scenes in the background. I guess the idea was they couldn’t use classic dances like “waltz” etc, because it is “the future”, but also not just 60s dance movies (that’s the present), so they made up totally ludicrous dances. I don’t know to this day how the actors could do these scenes with straight faces, but it’s just great. The music, of course, was always by Peter Thomas.

Here is an actual scene from the show: