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jake-head-shot.jpgJake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.

Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.

Jake is joined periodically by two wonderful guest bloggers: Kara Contreary and Kate Seip. See the About Page.

DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own or those of my co-bloggers. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments we currently attend.

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1952...When Scientists Fought Crime

Category: TV
Posted on: June 25, 2007 11:50 AM, by Jake Young

So I don't know if other people were into this show, but since college I have been a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was a show on Comedy Central and then on SciFi that made fun of old bad movies. The show itself was hysterical.

Anyway, I was watching one of the old episodes (a substantial number of which are now on YouTube), and I saw this one where they made fun of a clip of Commander Cody -- a serial from the 50s about this scientist who flies around in a rocket suit fighting crime and the like.

The plots of these things are just ridiculous. Like in this one entitled Radar Men from the Moon some dude from the moon wearing a unitard is blowing up stuff with a atomic ray gun to wear down the Earth's resistance for eventual colonization. Commander Cody goes and steals their ray gun in a gun fight. (I don't know why they didn't just shoot him with the ray gun.)

Then Commander Cody comes back to examine the ray gun in his lab, and a bunch of hired thugs arrive to retrieve the ray gun. Thus ensues possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen: scientists fighting hired thugs in their lab to retain vital research materials. Because that happens every day in our lab...

You can view the video here.

Unfortunately it is unedited, so the scene I am talking about is about 9 minutes in. (I would actually recommend watching the whole thing. It is pretty funny.) More clips of Commander Cody can be obtained at the Internet Archive.

Second favorite part of this clip: the horizontal take off rocket ship.

Third favorite: that Commander Cody does not light himself on fire with his rocket suit and perish in a ball of flames.

Comments

Yay for Mystery Science Theater! Man I miss that show.

Posted by: Neurontic | June 25, 2007 7:44 PM

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