DON MORLEY JUPITER-2 FLIGHT DECK VIDEO

Don and Mary Morley in Jeff Storys basement on January 13, 2001

Don Morley is, most probably, the last person to see and videotape the original Jupiter-2 flight deck console at the residence of Jeff Story on January 13, 2001 right before Jeff stopped offering tours.  Since then, Jeff has sold off the set and it is currently in the hands of a private collector.  The console went up for auction on ebay last month and did not sell.  It might probably never be seen again. Don took the footage that you are about to see for his own personal use.  He loaned the footage to a friend so that he could see what Don taped with a firm understanding that it was not to be copied.

This friend violated that trust by both, copying the footage onto dvd, and then putting up copies for auction and selling them on ebay.  Even though Don had been utterly crushed by his friends betrayal, Negatives can often be accentuated by a positive.  To explain, here is the next part of the story.

A few years ago, I happened to see another copy come up for auction and, not being aware that this DVD was a pirated copy of someone elses labors, purchased it.  This was right before the time when I hooked up with Ronnie Pendergraft and started Pendercrafts. When Ronnie showed me that he could model anything, we started work on the Guy Williams Jupiter-2.  When it came down to modeling the flight deck console, I remembered I had this DVD and took many shots of the panels and we used these to model our flight deck consoles.  Not knowing who the video was actually filmed by, I could not give proper credit at the time.

Just a few months ago, Mike Kickham over at Jup2.com ran a small story featuring the maker of that video, Mr. Don Morley. After getting Dons email address, I wrote to him asking if I could host his video if I came across my missing DVD (My wife managed to misplace it almost a year ago).  I did not get a response, so I took that as a "no" answer.

A few weeks ago, I finally found my missing DVD.  I thought what a shame it was that I could never share it with anyone, so the more I thought about it, the more I was determined to make Mr. Morley wake up and smell the coffee.  I made another email to Don.  I took a stand in that it would be a crime against Lost in Space fans everywhere if he would not allow me to share his footage, and begged him to reconsider.

A day after I sent the email, he responded to it.  He said he never saw the first email and we exchanged phone numbers to discuss the possibility of doing just that.  He was not out to be burned twice so we spent a few hours getting to know one another and Don is just what I expected out of a fellow die hard LIS fan, we talked for hours on everything Lost in Space and Pendercrafts.  He readily agreed to give me exclusive permission to put his video up for public viewing providing I could meet a few provisions of his (which I have).  At that point I asked him to show me proof that it was his video, and not someone elses to make sure.  He sent me back personal pictures that matched the 2 persons in the DVD.  

If you are not a diehard LIS fan when it comes to props and the flight deck console, then you will want to skip this footage, because it focuses only on those specific props.  This is the only post-LIS footage of the flight deck console with the exception of a 15 second clip on jeff storys website.  As Don is the last person to see the console assembled, I believe I am the last person to get the pirated DVD off of ebay (Don has since successfully kept that person from selling anymore copies).  

With that said, I firmly believe that all these elements of fate has brought us to this point.  From a pirated DVD, to a new friend with something unique to share, as it should be ,amongst fellow LIS fans. I hope you enjoy Don Morleys contribution to the genre.  He is now also fully credited with his video to the flight deck consoles on all pendercraft jupiter-2 models.  I am proud to have Don as a friend and I hope you all enjoy the show.  Please click on the picture below to launch the video.

Click on picture to launch video

TDue to the large  file size of the full size video (274 Megs), please make a request direct to me by email, and I will gladly give you a link to download it.  I am trying to conserve as much bandwidth as possible.  Thanks for your understanding