Side Note

Trump’s Space Force promises to be as dumb as the TV show ‘Space Force’

Fred Willard, Maureen Mooney, and Joseph G. Medalis in 'Space Force.'

Fred Willard, Maureen Mooney, and Joseph G. Medalis in 'Space Force.'

The announcement of the Space Force, a planned sixth branch of the military, is one of Donald Trump’s most incomprehensible ideas yet. Amazingly, we don’t even need to watch for a new season of SNL to see how it’ll be mocked, as a picture-perfect satire already exists, in the form of a failed ‘70s television pilot. On the would-be TV show Space Force, which Fortune first brought up, a space ship led by an idiotic commander, his war-hungry second in command, and a lazy captain (played by a familiar face, comedic actor Fred Willard) and their crew are tasked with saving a hostage and preventing the breakout of all-out universal war. Sexual harassment is commonplace on board; everyone is incompetent at their jobs (a running joke being that one crew member has no idea what the hostage’s name is); the life or death stakes for the rest of humanity are discussed with the levity of The Office-level workplace mishaps.

Like Trump’s Space Force, Space Force was a bad idea, though the television show’s most egregious sin was being kind of corny even by 1970s standards. The pilot aired on NBC in 1978, but didn’t go on to become a full series. NBC network executives saved TV audiences, opting to pick up the sci-fi sitcom Quark instead. You can watch the pilot on YouTube, revisit the Kimmel retread (starring Willard!), or simply wait an indeterminate amount of time and see it happen live in our fucked up reality.