Johnny Chase, Secret Agent of Space was a space opera radio serial that was broadcast for two seasons on CBC Radio between 1978 to 1981. The show was set 700 years in the future, and was created by Royal Canadian Air Farce comedian Don Ferguson along with Henry Sobodka. The show ran a fine line between being a serious space opera and being an over-the-top spoof of them.
The main character is a secret agent (voiced by Neil Dainard), who works for Earth Empire, and traverses through space in the Aleph-9, a spaceship accompanied by his talking computer, the insufferably brilliant (and equally arrogant) Dante (voiced by Chris Wiggins). Together they battle a range of enemies of the empire, including pirates, vampires, and the Thorks, an alien race bent on the destruction of Earth Empire. Other regular cast members included Mrs. Mulligan Jones, an "ancient psychic and Head of Empire Security" (voiced by Mary Piri), and Percy (voiced by Louis Negin), who was Johnny's direct boss at Empire Security.
The first season, broadcast during 1978-1979, consisted of individual episodes detailing the life of the principal character and setting the stage for the workings of Earth Empire and its enemies.
In the second season, the sun was destroyed by the Thorks, and Johnny ends up leading a rag-tag fleet of ships to a new home, very much like Battlestar Galactica.
The show's distinctive theme music was by the Canadian progressive-rock band FM.
Famous quotes containing the words johnny, secret, agent and/or space:
“Wha lies here?
I, Johnny Doo.
Hoo, Johnny, is that you?
Ay, man, but a’m dead noo.”
—Anonymous. “Johnny Doo,” from Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, Faber & Faber (1977)
“The only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, accepting the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature, work and live, work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the answer are one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.”
—Philip Freneau (1752–1832)