Sky Marshal of the Universe

           

            In Children’s Literature class on Thursday, we spent the whole hour discussing Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “A Little Princess”, whose publication history spanned the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the Edwardian. It began as a magazine serial in one period and finally emerged as a novel in the next. Professor Baker didn’t really lecture this time, but rather engaged us to give our impressions of the story. We compared it to Cinderella. The mean headmistress of the school takes the place of the wicked stepmother and her two favourite students represent Cinderella’s evil stepsisters. The magical transformations of “A Little Princess” are not supernatural, but are nonetheless fantastic. Both are stories of unjust oppression featuring an undervalued heroine with high beginnings to which she returns. Both girls have no mothers at the beginning and lose their fathers early on. Both girls are forced into a life of drudgery. In both stories a man of great wealth seeks the girls out, though they differ in that Sara, of “A Little Princess” is younger and still in need of parental protection so when she is found she is adopted. Both Sara and Cinderella are exceptionally good girls, though Sara shows some slightly more realistic flashes of ego. She is also shown to be unusually intelligent and creative. The moral of both stories is that graciousness is priceless, and without it, nothing is possible; but one must also have intelligence, courage, good breeding, and common sense. In both cases though there is also help from some higher source. Sara’s equivalent to the fairy godmother is Ram Dass, the Indian servant of the wealthy man who is trying to find her. I doubt if it would be considered appropriate in the modern era to have a man watching a young girl constantly in her bedroom through a skylight and claiming that he’s looking out for her best interests.

            Cinderella, in some versions had to live in a basement but in “A Little Princess” the attic is ironically the place in the house where lowest servants were forced to live.

            In some ways the story has more in common with Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”.

            After class I went to Canada Computers to buy another flashdrive, as my old one has mysteriously disappeared. Maybe it will turn up though when I start putting my place back in order, if indeed the bedbugs are proven to be gone as seems to be the case.

            I watched the first episode of the 1955 series, “Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe”. Humanoid aliens have begun to attack the Earth, but to avoid mass hysteria; the government is keeping it a secret while they mount a defence. Commando Cody, a master scientist and a two fisted warrior, has been made the leader of the Earth’s defensive forces. He hires two scientists to assist him, and I was surprised to see that one of them was played by William Schallert, who went on to play the fathers of the two cousins on the Patty Duke Show. In the first episode, “Enemies of the Universe” the aliens, who basically look like regular gangsters and fight with fists, bullets and the odd hand grenade, first try to uncover Cody’s plans to fight them. He has already shielded the planet with a layer of radioactive cosmic dust, which somehow prevents the alien rockets from breaking through. They find the map to an abandoned mining town called Graphite, which is where Cody and his crew plan to set up operations for an undisclosed project. Somehow the aliens manage to set up a secret base inside the walls of Cody’s lab in Graphite and they spy on him through the cut out eyes of the photograph on the wall of a cowboy. When they learn that Cody is building an interplanetary spaceship they send a message to their leader on the home world. Their leader, wearing a comical costume of robes and headgear with earflaps and who of course has a Russian accent, tells them they must destroy the spaceship at all costs.  They first try to set it on fire, but Cody stops them. Then they plant a bomb that is supposed to go off as soon as the ship reaches a certain altitude. Then Cody and Schallert as Tim take the ship for a test run. Meanwhile though they capture the female scientist who activates the badge that Cody gave her, which is a two-way communication device. She is able to let Cody overhear the alien plans before he reaches the height that would cause the bomb to go off. Cody puts on his rocket suit and flies to rescue his assistant and defeat her captors. It was entertaining. I had actually thought I’d only downloaded an episode but it turns out I have the whole season.