Thanks - I don’t know what it says about me, but in the same phone call that I learned of her passing last year, I made a joke to do with the subject. You need to know for this that she died the night before Sarah Millican was the subject of BBC1’s “Who Do You Think You Are” that week, and my mother watched that show all the time, but couldn’t stand Sarah Millican. So I said:
“I knew she didn’t like Sarah Millican but I didn’t think she’d go to this length to avoid her.”
I know I seen the Book of Enigma series and The Necklace of Oros series on TV. I had Flesh and Blood and The Drowning World on a bought VHS.
I don’t recall the Prince Krotan series although I did see some episodes with him in it and one with Ming’s daughter.
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The Book Of Enigmas, as I’ve mentioned before, is labelled as a “movie adventure” within the series, but the individual episodes are pretty stand-alone, there’s no continuous plot running through them as such. Parts 2-4 could be in any order.
The Necklace Of Oros is a bit more continuous, although part 3 is a bit random, you could leave it out and the “movie” storyline as a whole would not really be missing anything. Part 3 does include an appearance from Prince Kro-Tan though - he only appeared in seven episodes; this, the very first episode (Escape From Mongo), and his own 5-part movie adventure. Speaking of which:
The Prince Kro-Tan movie is the only true 5-parter of the series. All 5 parts further the ongoing story. It’s also one of the high points of the series, perhaps THE high point. With the exception of LJ, everyone has their moment in this adventure, unlike either of the other two “movies”, where some characters have little or no importance whatsoever - which is fair enough in individual episodes sometimes, but if you’re doing a big adventure like this, you want to maximise the use of as many characters as possible.
For example, The Phantom and Jedda are completely absent from one segment of the Book Of Enigmas adventure, and have little or no moments of importance in the rest; Lothar doesn’t have that much to do either. Lothar also has little to do in The Necklace Of Oros, but does at least have some moments there - like when he’s holding the walls apart while Rick and LJ escape through the vent, and he’s desperately trying to say what might be one final “I love you” to his son, but he can’t because he’s using all his strength to stop the room from crushing them all. Kshin also has pretty much nothing to contribute in The Necklace Of Oros, and if he’d been written out of it completely, you’d hardly notice his absence.
About 7yrs ago, I picked up an old VHS of the show, containing three episodes: Battleground, The Panther Peril and Fury Of The Deep. I put the tape on, and wasn’t impressed. I thought “and this show used to be one of my favourites?” - but then, I did remember that none of these episodes really got me going even as a kid. About a year later, I happened across another video of the show, this time “The Movie” - which was the Prince Kro-Tan story. I remembered quite a bit from this, and decided that as I remembered the 3 episodes I had seen as an adult the previous year were not ones I remembered with that much affection anyway, that the show deserved a second chance. So I got this tape, and my faith in the show was restored. The movie adventure was that good.
So at the end of 2008 I got the limited DVD releases of the series (the first eight plus the very last episode in one box set, the three movie adventures in the other); and then snapped up a few other videos of the show online. This included, when I ordered “The Mind Warriors”, the seller accidentally sending me “The Story Begins” instead - she subsequently sent me the correct tape and said not to worry about the other one, that I could keep it, which was nice. Anyway, “The Story Begins”, was not quite the first five episodes edited together into a single movie adventure, for some reason they replaced “A Demon In His Pocket” with “The Mind Warriors, part 1” - odd, using just one part of a two-parter. Still, as I’ve already shown with my continuity notes, it has more claim there than “A Demon In His Pocket”!
And then of course, the complete DVD finally came out last year, so I was ecstatic, and snapped it up!
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I like the Defenders toys but I think the diecast forearms ans the lever on their back spoiled them.. I also wish they had made more than just 6 figures and 5 vehicles.
It would have been good if they’d made the kids, Octon, and some generic Ice Robots & Men Of Frost.
My favourite shows growing up were Thundercats and Bravestarr.
A friend made a copy of some Bravestarr episodes for me a few years ago (I copied what I had of DotE for him in return). Hit and miss for me. For one thing, being made by the same lot that did He-Man, it suffered from the same problem at the end of each episode, the way the characters talked to the audience in a somewhat patronising way, explaining the moral of the story. As for the main episodes themselves, there were some very good ones, but there were equally some awful ones. Been over 3yrs since I last watched any, so my memory isn’t perfect on the subject.
I used to have a MASSIVE collection of toys and DVD’s. A couple years ago one night lying in bed I started thinking about all that I had in my collection, how much I spent and all the room it was taking up. I just decided I need to make a change there and then so I set to work selling a lot of my stuff off. I didn’t touch the Thundercats or Bravestarr stuff but I was heavily into G.I. joe and Transformers at the time and stupidly I sold off a lot of other stuff in order to keep them which I really regret. I have since sold off the TF and Joe collection of over 700+ figures and now have 6 TF and 2 Joes. I really wish I had kept my Defenders… and Galaxy Rangers.
I gave all my action figures & vehicles away many years back, to school fetes as I recall. Although I still have all my Lego. And a few years back I put my memory and imagination into gear and made approximations of all the Visionaries vehicles and characters (complete with staffs and approximate weapons). They’re still made up today. I’m rather proud of them.
When I get a bit more money saved up, I have to tax my car, I may get the official DVD set.
Last year just when my beard was getting the way I wanted it I got my passport photo rejected as it omitted too much of my face/neck area for identification purposes so I had to trim it down.