Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Forgotten TV Heroes: Captain Power & the Soldiers of the Future

Clipped from Wikipedia: Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future is a 1987–88 Canadian-American science fiction/action television series, merging live action with animation based on computer-generated images, that ran for 22 episodes in Canadian and American syndication. A toy line was also produced by Mattel, and during each episode there was a segment that included visual and audio material which interacted with the toys. A production of "The Landmark Entertainment Group," Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future was created by Gary Goddard and Anthony "Tony" Christopher (neither of whom actually wrote any of the stories) and developed by Marc Scott Zicree, with J. Michael Straczynski becoming de facto head writer.
 

Plot: The storyline was set on Earth in the 22nd century following the Metal Wars, a cybernetic revolt that resulted in the subjugation of the human race by intelligent machines. Captain Jonathan Power and a small group of guerrilla fighters, called "The Soldiers Of The Future," oppose the machine forces that dominate Earth.
 

Cancelled: J. Michael Straczynski commented about the show's cancellation and the planned second season.

"...Yeah, that's a show that is an example of what to strive for, and how sometimes good intentions can get derailed. We genuinely wanted to come up with a long-term story, and by and large, we succeeded. The problem was the marketing in front of the show, and the merchandising behind the show...we got killed from both sides. There's an entire second season of unproduced CP scripts, story edited by Larry DiTillio, in which he follows up on the arc that I and others established during the first season. You would have found out what Dread became, what happened to Power's mother, where Eden was (and there would be direct contact), what the secret was in Soaron's programming, and so on."

Fun Fact: In 1987, Captain Power was one of the targets of anti-toy related children's television advocates who claimed that the series focused on selling children expensive toys for full participation.

Fun Fact: The show also spurred a short-lived comic-book of the same name, published by Continuity Comics in 1988–1989, illustrated by Neal Adams with stories by J. Michael Straczynski, who was also the series story editor, writing half the episodes and providing stories or outlines for many more.

Release: On 2011-12-06 the complete series was released on a 4 disk DVD set in region 1. The set contains all 22 episodes plus much bonus material including interviews and commentaries with cast members


1 comment:

Kal said...

I loved this show as a kid. The characters were toy ready and I like the way they tried to inportate computer effects into the stories. Underrated for it's time.