This was a colour live-action space adventure TV series, produced in 1967, and starred John Garfield, Jr. The Martians are shown as non-human fish people. Starr and Lightning work as security guards to try to uncover the cause.
In this adventure, Starr's boss sends him to Mars where five atomic power stations (used to pump water) have been destroyed by fire. Arthur Provis served as director of photography and co-producer. Besides creating and scripting the series, Leigh also wrote the title song and lyrics (sung by Jerry Dane). Actor Edward Bishop provided the voice of Paul Starr other voices were provided by Patricia English, Dick Vosburgh and Peter Reeves. Realistic mouth movements were used long before the arrival of Gerry Anderson's Terrahawks in the 1980s. The puppets were made by Martin and Heather Granger who, with Joan Garrick, also operated them. The movements of the puppet characters are "less wooden" and there is no sign of strings. The robots of Paul Starr appear to be more developed and fans of Space Patrol will notice the similar sound effects used.
It is armed with various weapons, including nuclear missiles. While jets propel the craft through the air, in space it is powered by " solar energy". They have a squat rocket, SBI-5, which can travel through space, in air and underwater ( SBI uses an undersea base). Agent Paul Starr and his crewman, Lightning, work for the Space Bureau of Investigation (SBI).
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A 25-minute marionette puppet series in the same vein as Space Patrol, it was produced in colour. Though made in 1964, Paul Starr appeared to be a decade ahead of Space Patrol.
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In addition to two tie-in albums for Twizzle, Leigh also reinterpreted the popular stories Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk with original songs, plus she wrote and narrated The Wonderful Story of How You Were Born, a frank spoken-word sex education record. In addition to collaborations on Twizzle and Torchy, Leigh teamed with Barry Gray for three musical compositions ( Riding My Bike, Sleeping Time and Why? ) featured on Vera Lynn's 1955 album "Songs for Children." Her surname appears as Lee on the record, but the proper spelling is featured on the sheet music. She did, however, tinker with electronic equipment to create the opening theme for Space Patrol, after asking a shop clerk for something that made interesting sounds. However, most of her compositions were simply hummed into a tape recorder and translated into a score by a composer. Leigh developed a keen interest in music during childhood, and was credited as the composer for most of her shows. For these two later series, however, only the pilot episodes were filmed. This was followed by Paul Starr (1964) and a live-action colour space adventure series, The Solarnauts (1967). Space Patrol was syndicated around the globe and achieved the highest ratings of any children's show up to that time - chronicled the year 2100 adventures of Captain Larry Dart of the spaceship Galasphere 347. The first two were made with Gerry Anderson. She created eight puppet TV series, including The Adventures of Twizzle (1957), Torchy the Battery Boy (1958), Sara and Hoppity (1962), Space Patrol (1962), Wonder Boy and Tiger, and Send for Dithers. She made a total of 275 cinematic works, becoming the first woman producer in Britain to have her own film company. Following the death of her husband, she stopped writing romance novels but continued to produce serious fiction and children's books while developing various television and film projects. She also published children's books and romances under the pseudonyms Janey Scott, Rachel Lindsay, and Rozella Lake. She published a romance in 1950 as Roberta Leigh, the first of over 160 novels. Leigh wrote her first romantic fiction at age 14, while still a schoolgirl at St Mary's convent in Rhyl. In 1948, she married Michael Lewin, with whom she had one son, and was widowed in 1981. Best known as Roberta Leigh, she was born Rita Shulman in London to sometimes-poor Jewish parents who had emigrated from Russia.