Cartoon Memories: Starblazers
As a kid, I remember trying to stay as late at home as possible until my mom dragged me off to elementary school so that that I could watch Starblazers. All I could remember of the show as an adult were some pieces of lyrics ("We're off to outer space..." and "Star, Starblazers"), a giant battleship shooting a giant laser from its bow, and, well, the sense that it was a great show for some reason. When my wife and I signed up for Netflix, we discovered that the show could be rented on DVD! So far, we've seen about twenty episodes and I can honestly say that my boyhood recollections, or I should say my emotional recollections, were not entirely based on reality. And yet the show was miles ahead of American standards at the time.
It's basically a soap opera about a select group of astroanuts traveling from Earth to reach Iscandar. Why? An alien race known as the Gamillons (who look very much like humans except for the blue skin and for being totally evil) have been bombarding Earth with "planet bombs," preparing to occupy a human-less planet. Humans have decided to move below the surface to survive, but the radiation continues to seep down and will eventually kill everyone in one year. Another alien, from the planet Iscandar, offers the "Cosmic DNA" that will rid the planet of radiation. The United Nations creates a "Star Force" and retrofits the old battleship Yamato into a starship capable of delivering a devastating energy blast. The Yamato, now renamed the Argo, then blasts off into space to battle the enemy, reach Iscandar, and return home. And at the end of every episode, the narrator would countdown how many days the Argo had left to fulfill their mission.
It's unfair to compare contemporary animation to the 1978/79 show, but I'll do it anyway: the animation can be crude and rigid; the plotlines ridiculous and illogical; the episodes can also be dull at times. Despite some of these flaws, the episodes did explore ideas of self-sacrifice, the pain of leaving family behind, characters actually dying and survivors having to bear the agony of living, the ethics of holding back the truth and revealing painful secrets... I actually enjoyed watching the episodes (with more to come, thank you Netflix) and forgave how dated they looked because they spoke of adult themes.
I'm not quite show how they were able to evade American censors and show these episodes back in the late 1970s. Of course, I don't remember any of them in detail, so perhaps they were censored, but looking back on them, the episodes spoke quite gravely of war, environmental concerns and human friendship. Give yourself a chance to watch the show. You'll find yourself quite surprised at how ahead of its time the show was.
It's basically a soap opera about a select group of astroanuts traveling from Earth to reach Iscandar. Why? An alien race known as the Gamillons (who look very much like humans except for the blue skin and for being totally evil) have been bombarding Earth with "planet bombs," preparing to occupy a human-less planet. Humans have decided to move below the surface to survive, but the radiation continues to seep down and will eventually kill everyone in one year. Another alien, from the planet Iscandar, offers the "Cosmic DNA" that will rid the planet of radiation. The United Nations creates a "Star Force" and retrofits the old battleship Yamato into a starship capable of delivering a devastating energy blast. The Yamato, now renamed the Argo, then blasts off into space to battle the enemy, reach Iscandar, and return home. And at the end of every episode, the narrator would countdown how many days the Argo had left to fulfill their mission.
It's unfair to compare contemporary animation to the 1978/79 show, but I'll do it anyway: the animation can be crude and rigid; the plotlines ridiculous and illogical; the episodes can also be dull at times. Despite some of these flaws, the episodes did explore ideas of self-sacrifice, the pain of leaving family behind, characters actually dying and survivors having to bear the agony of living, the ethics of holding back the truth and revealing painful secrets... I actually enjoyed watching the episodes (with more to come, thank you Netflix) and forgave how dated they looked because they spoke of adult themes.
I'm not quite show how they were able to evade American censors and show these episodes back in the late 1970s. Of course, I don't remember any of them in detail, so perhaps they were censored, but looking back on them, the episodes spoke quite gravely of war, environmental concerns and human friendship. Give yourself a chance to watch the show. You'll find yourself quite surprised at how ahead of its time the show was.
posted by Alan at 1:01 PM
1 Comments:
As I read your description of the show, I couldn't help but think of the new Battlestar Galactica with its plotline of humanity struggling to survive and its exploration of similar themes.
Chances are that the show was edited for American TV (you know how the chopped up G-Force into Battle of the Planets). With their release on DVD, it's nice to know they're available in their original glory.
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