"Space: Above and Beyond" Ray Butts (1995)

Director:

Charles Martin Smith

Writers:

Glen Morgan (creator) and
James Wong (creator) ...

TV Series:

"Space: Above and Beyond" (1995)

Original Air Date:

22 October 1995 (Season 1, Episode 5)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Morley Cigarettes | Marine | Space Carrier | Fictional War | Cult TV

Cast

Morgan Weisser	...	Lt. Nathan West
Kristen Cloke	...	Lt. Shane Vansen
Rodney Rowland	...	Lt. Cooper Hawkes
Joel de la Fuente	...	Lt. Paul Wang
Lanei Chapman	...	Lt. Vanessa Damphousse
James Morrison	...	Lt. Col. T.C. McQueen
Steve Rankin	...	Lt. Col. Raymond Thomas Butts
Tucker Smallwood	...	Commodore Glen van Ross
Lar Park-Lincoln	...	Bowman
John Voldstad	...	Sailor
David Prudhomme	...	Cochran
John L. Bennett	...	Master of Arms

Makes you want to eat some pancakes and listen to Johnny Cash

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

A spoiler doesn't really follow, but I've outlined the plot a little. To me, "Ray Butts" marks the point where this series gained its legs. A viewer can see in the pilot episode and the first couple after the show debuted, that the actors were getting to know each other and the writers were kind of figuring out how the military works. By "Ray Butts," the production had settled in pretty well. "Ray Butts" is about one Lt. Col. Raymond T. Butts. He's a hard charging, hard drinking and well, just hard, person and Marine who spouts off funny sayings like "Easy as eating pancakes." A lifer who holds some sort of Recon or special forces "black" (meaning he doesn't exist) position within some command or other, Butts comes along and spirits off the 58th on a special mission. The mission is pretty standard fare. Recover some "Hammerheads," the show's spacecraft/aircraft combo that they use to fight the "Chigs" (insect type bad guys the Earth is at war with). Butts has his own ideas and his own mission. Of course, those wiley "Chigs" are out there trying to stop them. Throw in a black hole that could pull everybody apart in space during a dogfight, and you've got some pretty good tension and drama. Mostly the plots of Space Above and Beyond are World War II driven. It's pretty much the Pacific in space. That's cool. Lot's of interesting drama and heroism happened in the Pacific theater. So it's a rich vein to mine. "Ray Butts" isn't entertaining or classic television because of the plot, though. It's the performances and the characters that drives this episode. Vansen comes to Butts cabin after a pretty bad day of Butts' specialized training and confronts him about his intentions with the 58th. Butts is tired, drinking and sitting in his cabin like a man who doesn't care who lives or dies (something Lt Col. McQueen has just told him a scene or two before). Vansen: (With Johnny Cash's "So Doggone Lonesome" in the background) What do you think about in the dark? Butts: (Swallows his shot of whiskey and breathes a tired sigh) I think about the first man I ever killed. Vansen: What about him? Butts: I wonder what he's doing now (looks at his whiskey he just poured) . . . and if he got the better end of the deal. Now that's good writing anyway you slice and dice them pancakes. The special effects of the 58th fighting the "Chig" fighters is pretty good. Still holds up today more than a decade after this episode was created. For a television show that says something, to me. The DVD's of Space Above and Beyond are out now, and this episode, along with the two about "Chigi" Von Richtofen are worth the price of the set. These war dramas are mini-movies and marks a time when Fox programmed good television. I wish this production team (actors, writers, producers) would reunite and produce a television mini series or show about World War II in the Pacific.