In early 2026, the Star Trek franchise will boldly go where it’s never gone before: An entire TV series devoted to the institution known as Starfleet Academy. By its very nature, a show about a space academy will, of course, focus on space cadets; people training to become futuristic types of astronauts. But, Star Trek, of course, did not invent this idea, nor did that famous franchise even popularize the notion of a “space cadet.” Instead, that perennial sci-fi trope had a circuitous route into the zeitgeist, first as an unsold comic book, and then as an unsold radio show. And strangely enough, the success of one book, called Space Cadet — written by Robert A. Heinlein — is what actually helped get Tom Corbett, Space Cadet on the air.
But Heinlein didn’t create Tom Corbett; writer Joseph Greene did. And in dreaming up this specific future-tense world, Greene was prescient in one specific way: sci-fi stories that were also about groups of adolescents would always have an audience.
Why Tom Corbett was so important in sci-fi history
While it’s tempting to assume that the TV show Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, was based on a book, that’s not exactly true. Greene had first imagined his future-tense world as a comic book called Space Academy, but in 1945, he was unable to sell it. Then, he tried to rework it as a radio show, which was also unsuccessful. Instead, it was only the runaway success of Heinlein’s novel Space Cadet that allowed Greene to convince Rockhill Studios to take his idea and turn it into a TV show. Later, there were Tom Corbett books published by Grosset & Dunlap, and credited to an author named Carey Rockwell. Basically, these books were some of the earliest examples of a sci-fi TV show creating books, rather than the other way around. (Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers both came from print before jumping to the screen.)
So, in a sense, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet was an original idea from Greene, but also piggybacked on the success of a popular YA-ish science fiction novel, from one of the most influential sci-fi writers of all time. As a TV show, this means that Tom Corbett has quite a bit of homage and influence floating around, both to sci-fi of its own time, and now, retroactively, demonstrates several hallmarks that would feel very familiar later.
Is Tom Corbett decent science fiction?
When it premiered October 2, 1950, Tom Corbett was unique among early sci-fi TV insofar as the production bothered to hire a technical advisor. In this case, that person was Willy Ley, a German-American who wrote and researched various emerging theories about rocketry. Ley was a strictly scientific person, and later in life would claim that the rise of Nazism in his home country was directly connected with beliefs in pseudoscience.
Did Ley’s hardcore scientific background mean that Tom Corbett was a super-realistic science fiction show? Of course not. But, again, unlike Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers before it, Tom Corbett at least tries to rationalize the various spaceflight technologies of the far future. In fact, even by setting the show in 2350, Tom Corbett has the guts to suggest that everyday space travel will still be difficult and complicated 300 years in the future.
Like many early sci-fi shows, Tom Corbett had an irregular airing schedule, and it lasted for five years, popping up at different times on all the major TV networks. Featuring young people trying to explore space, but also, fight back against enemies like pirates (many of whom were drop-out space cadets), Tom Corbett laid the foundation for what bigger budget productions would look like just a few years later. If you squint, you can see the beginnings of 1956’s Forbidden Planet in the costumes and vibe of Tom Corbett.
It may not be the greatest sci-fi series of all time, but it’s hard to imagine the history of various science fictional futures without this rough-and-tumble group of space cadets.
Tom Corbett episodes can be found on YouTube.