DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH! Appreciation AND Continuity Order

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Never was much of a fan of the Beetles. They had a couple songs I liked but I just never could get really into them. Oddly enough I liked a few songs some of the members released as solo artists.

It seemed to be a common trend in 80’s cartoons having evil doppelgangers or evil and good characters switching bodies.
I recall Transformers, G.I. Joe, He-Man and Kissy Fur all having evil doubles.

In the newest Transformers series Prime they had episodes with an evil doppelganger and body swapping (kind of).

I have also been watching the odd episode of Starcom now and then, not even half way through, but surprisingly it is quite enjoyable.

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I had an online friend in America once who had the same opinion. Weird.

It seemed to be a common trend in 80’s cartoons having evil doppelgangers or evil and good characters switching bodies.
I recall Transformers, G.I. Joe, He-Man and Kissy Fur all having evil doubles.

Ah. Two shows I never saw, one I only saw a few episodes of, and one that I did watch on saturday mornings on BBC1 but had forgotten all about. I don’t remember Kissyfur having an evil double at all.

No wonder I could only think of two!

I have also been watching the odd episode of Starcom now and then, not even half way through, but surprisingly it is quite enjoyable.

Surprisingly . . . you’re the one who recommended it to me in the first place! That said, it took a couple of episodes to get going. It’s a bit like C.O.P.S. in that we only see two or three of the villains in each episode, and while we do see all three main heroes every time, the sidekicks shown are varied in much the same way.

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Oh yes, there definitely was an episode where to crook bears arrive that bear striking resemblances to Kissyfur and his Dad, who are away on a fishing trip or something, and are shocked to see how much their friends have turned against them after all things the imposters have been doing. If I recall right the other characters start calling the imposter Evilfur.

If I am not mistaken I had it recorded on the same tape that had ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ from DOTE was on. A lot of my tapes had the weekly mix of Kissyfur, DOTE, Thundercats, Gummi Bears, Chip n Dale and various cartoons taped after school like Ghostbusters, Ewoks, He-Man and Scooby Doo etc. I several episodes of Kissyfur recorded.

You just worked through Starcom faster than me. I have now watched 7 of the 13 episodes and I must say it is quite good, still probably not in my top 10 80’s action cartoons but the concept of the show had a vast lot of potential. It would be really interesting to see it re-do now as a new animated show or even live action. Interestingly what I notice about Starcom so far is that the heroes are not like super human in the sense that they are amazing pilots or super strong or anything they are just pretty normal and get into jams with air tanks and fuel running out etc.

I noticed Stephen Perry wrote some episodes of Starcom along with Spiral Zone and Real Ghostbusters. But this is not the Stephen Perry who wrote some Thundercats episodes.

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OK, that rings a vague bell now . . .

If I am not mistaken I had it recorded on the same tape that had ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ from DOTE was on. A lot of my tapes had the weekly mix of Kissyfur, DOTE, Thundercats, Gummi Bears, Chip n Dale and various cartoons taped after school like Ghostbusters, Ewoks, He-Man and Scooby Doo etc. I several episodes of Kissyfur recorded.

Same here. My tapes tended to just work through the weekly mix of these shows. I still find it weird how both times “Cold War” was on, it got to the end of the tape and started rewinding to the start . . .

You just worked through Starcom faster than me. I have now watched 7 of the 13 episodes and I must say it is quite good, still probably not in my top 10 80’s action cartoons but the concept of the show had a vast lot of potential. It would be really interesting to see it re-do now as a new animated show or even live action. Interestingly what I notice about Starcom so far is that the heroes are not like super human in the sense that they are amazing pilots or super strong or anything they are just pretty normal and get into jams with air tanks and fuel running out etc.

Agreed. I found episode 2 particularly interesting, where Malvanna implanted that bug into Crowbar, and began to empathise with him more and more as she monitored his actions - that was an angle that was worth pursuing.

I noticed Stephen Perry wrote some episodes of Starcom along with Spiral Zone and Real Ghostbusters. But this is not the Stephen Perry who wrote some Thundercats episodes.

It’s not? I didn’t know that, I assumed it was the same one!

There’s one or two other recognisable names on some of these credits. There’s at least one Starcom episode written by Arthur Byron Cover, who wrote a couple of DotE episodes including “The Sleeper Awakes”.

David Wise also wrote an episode of Spiral Zone, “Zone Train” - which oddly one of the weakest episodes of the series, certainly the dodgiest. Also Francis Moss wrote a few of Spiral Zone as well as DotE. Main writer Mark Edens co-wrote The Necklace Of Oros, I’ve mentioned before, and later went on to write Exosquad.

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The Thundercats Stephen (J) Perry pretty much only did Thundercats and Silverhawks and various comics.

The other Stephen Perry did Star Wars novel, Batman TAS, Spiral Zone, Strarcom, Ghostbusters and Centurions etc.

Speaking of cartoons, did you ever see Conan the Adventurer or Highlander the animated series?

My Mum and Dad also have no great liking for the Beatles either. Although oddly enough they have a Reel album of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band which was given to them by someone they used to work with.
I am pretty sure we still have it somewhere although I know the old Reel player was given away. Here is a link to the one they have.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rare-THE-BEATLES-034-Sgt-Pepper-039-s-034-Reel-To-Reel-MONO-Tape-Record-PB-H15-/371108645210?nma=true&si=GDV3iKYwNtKMvwIrn%252BpW4zChpBQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

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Ah. And neither of them were the Steve Perry who sang lead for Journey back in the glory days!

Speaking of cartoons, did you ever see Conan the Adventurer or Highlander the animated series?

No. I’ve seen the title sequence for the former, but I never saw the show. I think it was around the time I started secondary school, and that was a long walk away from where I lived, so I never got back in time for my shows. I remember having to get mum to record “Round The Twist” for me!

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I remember ‘Round the Twist’ I liked it. Well the several episodes I saw of it. I remember bits about it and the theme tune but I haven’t seen it in many years.

Conan was okay, I liked what I saw of it because it reminded me of Thundercats and He-Man. Highlander was okay, what I remember of it, but it was vastly different to the films. It’s set after the first three films in an apocalyptic future and it’s all about a descendant of Connor’s clan called Quentin who is being guided by Rameriz (who died in the first movie and was in the second but I can’t recall what happened to him at the end). The leader they are trying to defeat who is in charge of the world was called Kortan (a bit like Krotan from DOTE) and he is still beheading the various immortals although there is another for their power just to be passed by letting Quentin hold their sword with them allowing them to be mortal again. I must try tracking these shows down again LOL.

First time I ever heard Journey was in an episode of the Simpsons about Mr Burn’s son Larry.

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What scares me is that there are people out there who believe the Glee cover of “Don’t Stop Believin’” to be the original. When I heard that cover for the first time, I did stop believin’!

Round The Twist was fun. At least, the first two series were, the two that I saw as a kid, the two that were based on the stories by Paul Jennings . . . around the turn of the millennium, there were another couple of series, which were completely new ideas, and did not work. At least, most of them didn’t. There was the odd good episode (Tears Of Innocence, about a rainmaker, was the best the bunch), but largely it did for kids’ TV what Barry White did for rhyming slang.

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The name Paul Jennings sounds familiar.
I was just looking through Round the Twist episodes and I definitely remember some of them, especially the first one. But I didn’t see it on its original run, I believe I seen it around 95. I recall the first episode and the bit of the boy going tot he toilet.
It’s odd you should mention that show as now that I think of it I do recall I used to look forward to it after school. I think it was on Fridays…I know some of the later repeats and series 3 or 4 was on Fridays.
I didn’t really like live action shows when I was young but I did like Round the Twist and Mike and Angelo and the Chuckle Brothers. Also The Demon Headmaster was quite good.

There was another Australian show I remember me and my cousins used to Half Way Around The Galaxy And Turn Left.

I finished watching Starcom. It really left me wanting more. It was very good and had so much vast potential for stories and character building but sadly left undone. We still didn’t learn who Emperor Dark is and why he wanted to destroy Starcom etc. For what it was it was pretty grounded and had believable characters and situations.
The toys and vehicles were great, I sold my collection of them to a guy in Denmark. They were really great toys. Starcom would really have also benefited with a line of figures Like Spiral Zone with cloth uniforms and the various space suits and helmets. Star Wing, Star Command and Star Marines. Having the small figures with the vehicles and more detailed larger version of the main characters.

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Paul Jennings wrote the original stories that RTT was adapted from. I think he actually wrote the scripts in the first season; season 2 was still based on his stories, but seasons 3-4 were “originals” that didn’t work as far as I was concerned, when I saw them back in 2003.

1995 sounds about right for those afternoon repeats.

Ah, The Demon Headmaster - I saw the first episode of that back during its original run, but then kept forgetting it. My memory is normally superhuman, so this was odd. I finally saw it all for the first time about 18mths ago, I made a conscious effort to look it up on youtube. Tessa Peake-Jones was of course recognisable as Raquel from Only Fools & Horses, while the first three episodes also included Danny “The Cat” John-Jules. As for the titular villain, Terrence Hardiman has been in many things over the years, the first thing I ever saw him in (although I didn’t realise this until I looked him up on wikipedia) was an episode of “Goodnight Sweetheart” in which he effectively played Sgt Wilson from “Dad’s Army” (Gary’s time-travel back to WW2 took him in one episode to this bank, and he met Mainwaring and Wilson). More recently he was in “The Worst Week Of My Life” in a part about as far removed from the DHM as you can get! He also had a very small part in the film of “Death Train”, the film loosely based on a book that was itself based on a film treatment that Alistair MacLean wrote in the late 1970s (but in between the book in 1988 and the film in 1993, the USSR collapsed, necessitating huge changes in the plot), and that’s not the only MacLean collection, as he did the audiobook for one of my favourite MacLean novels, “South By Java Head”, and a very good reading it was too.

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There was an offer with Tetley Tea Bags back in the late 90’s where each pack came with a free book and one of the books I got free with it was the Demon Headmaster. I had already seen the series so I never bothered with it but I read it back around 05 and it was very good.

Another show I remember was Aquila, a show about two boys who find a spaceship.

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I read the first two books when I was about 10. I’ve not read any of the others.

Never seen Aquila, although I remember hearing the name back when it was on.

Oh yes, forgot to say, saw episode 12 of Avatar last night - good, as you say, very important for backstory purposes on both sides. And Mark Hamill on the guest cast, interesting!

I haven’t had much sleep the last couple of nights, so I’m resisting the temptation to work on the story as I don’t think I’d do too good a job on it. Admittedly, the scene that’s next is just a talky one to establish the agenda for the next couple of days (for some reason I rather like giving my Visionaries a 48hr timespan, with the exception of Foreign Eyes, they all seem to take place over approximately two days, or maybe a fraction longer).

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You should like tonight’s episode. 14 is a little slow but builds more character and expands on the relationship of the group, as does 15. 16 is also important for character building. 17 is interesting and expands on some history. 18-20 are just great. Three great very solid episodes to finish the season.

I also watched DOTE The Men Of Frost which was quite a good episode. Also I noticed Mandrake uses hypnosis on one of the frost men but later is shown using good bit of his magical power using telekinesis to put the wires back together but as soon as he does so, the draining affect it has on him is evident.

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The Men Of Frost is a good episode, it’s a bit like “Cold War” and “Root Of Evil” in terms of what Ming is trying to achieve, and I think it works better than both of them.

Another point, which I’ve mentioned before, by chance the TV people positioned this episode beautifully on a continuity front.

Firstly, it follows “Diamonds Are A Ming’s Best Friend”, in which Kshin is learning judo for the first time, and in this episode he uses it to successfully throw Zikry.

Secondly, it is immediately followed by “Battleground”, which begins with Dynak being offline. After what happened to her in this episode, it makes perfect sense that Rick would want to take her offline and give her the once-over as soon as possible.

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Watched Panther Peril and re-watched One of the Good Guys.
Panther Peril isn’t one of Ming’s best plans. I wouldn’t say it’s a great episode but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad episode either.
One of the Good Guys isn’t one of the best episodes but I liked the way they handled the handicap storyline and talked about peoples perceptions of others. I really liked the way LJ spoke to Kshin about it.

Just about 12 or 13 episodes to go of DOTE and that’s the full series watched.

Btw in Men of Frost I noticed a couple of times that Flash’s sword ship is coloured like one of Ming’s ships.

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The trouble with Panther Peril is the fact that they left that keycard at monitor in Kshin’s custody. If Phantom and Mandrake didn’t want Jedda letting Kisa out, why not take it with them and stop her getting her hands on it at all!?

One Of The Guys is a decent episode, yes. It’s the old story of just because someone is handicapped by either physical disability or old age, doesn’t mean they’re completely useless; my friend copied the He-Man episode “Not So Blind”, with the same lesson in it regarding a blind boy, who has to guide He-Man and Ram-Man out of the crystal caves when they are blinded, and of course Visionaries has “The Power Of The Wise” in which Leoric is decayed by Darkstorm’s staff, and there’s an episode of Spiral Zone where a girl’s disability is more than just “not a setback”, it actually proves to be a major advantage. I think there might be another episode of Spiral Zone with a moral like this too.

Not forgetting Lynx-O in Thundercats!

I’ve just seen episode 13 of Avatar - I guessed it was Zuko, who else would need to wear a mask! Plus, the fact that everything he values depends on his being the one to capture Aang, meaning he’ll actively thwart someone else’s attempts to do it. Interesting conflict of interests with that character. I think Zuko has the most interesting journey ahead of him of all the main characters.

Then again, that’s hardly unprecedented. In Prince Valiant, the most interesting character journey is that of Duncan Draconarius (voiced by Neil “Leoric” Ross). His ideology shifts exactly 180 degrees during the course of the series. First he is opposed to all that Camelot stands for, then when he’s on trial there, and their legal system spares his life, he realises there is some merit in it, and subsequently becomes a very strong ally to Arthur and Valiant.

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All the characters have a truly interesting journey ahead of them.

Coincidently enough, there is a couple characters with disabilities in the Avatar series. One you will be introduced to in episode 17 and another in season two.

The name Duncan Draconarius sound familiar.

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I guess that was another common cartoon storyline, people overcoming disabilities and suchlike, a useful lesson to kids.

Then again, most cartoons tended to recycle the same story types from each other. Thundercats, DotE, TMHT, Pirates Of Dark Water and animated Star Trek all had “shrinking” episodes. Evil twin/body swap stories, we’ve covered already, there were a few takes on the “amnesia” story, and of course the underdog with low self-esteem making good has been done in every single one - “Snarf Takes Up The Challenge”, “The Sleeper Awakes”, “The Good, The Bad And The Clumsy”, “Feryl Steps Out”, “Assault On Castle Morgana”, and plenty more besides!

Yes, Duncan Draconarius first appeared in episode 3 of Prince Valiant, same as Rowanne. He appeared about four or five times during the course of that first season, a dyed-in-the-wool baddie for the first two, and then after his third appearance, his character started really developing. By the end of the second season he was Camelot’s staunchest ally.

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I vaguely remember what Duncan looked like. I still remember seeing episode 3 one Friday after school.

Even Transformers had a shrinking episode. Other recycled stories were the one or two good and bad guys having to team up together to accomplish a common goal/get themselves out of a jam (Starcom, Thundercats, Transformers, G.I Joe and He-Man). And characters either turning really young or old (Transformers, Thundercats, G.I Joe, Ghostbusters, Visionaries and TMNT).

I used to always call TMNT, TMHT. They changed Ninja to Hero in the UK as ninjas were deemed a bit controversial. The use of martial arts weapons for crime was also not popular in the UK so they edited out a lot of the use of Michelangelo’s nun chucks in the cartoon and the live action movie.

The handicapped character they meet in season two is not hindered by disability. The character is one of the most powerful Earthbenders they encounter…if not the most powerful and gifted Earthbender.

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There was quite an age gap between the two brothers. Although Robert was never seen again after about episode 14.

Even Transformers had a shrinking episode. Other recycled stories were the one or two good and bad guys having to team up together to accomplish a common goal/get themselves out of a jam (Starcom, Thundercats, Transformers, G.I Joe and He-Man). And characters either turning really young or old (Transformers, Thundercats, G.I Joe, Ghostbusters, Visionaries and TMNT).

That first one doesn’t really happen in Thundercats. I know it’s sort of meant to be the point of “The Mountain”, but there’s no evidence of any real co-operation.

It does happen in Visionaries though, two or three times.

I used to always call TMNT, TMHT. They changed Ninja to Hero in the UK as ninjas were deemed a bit controversial. The use of martial arts weapons for crime was also not popular in the UK so they edited out a lot of the use of Michelangelo’s nun chucks in the cartoon and the live action movie.

Including the title sequence, when we see the other characters gripping their weapons individually.

Panthro was a victim of this, too - on the few Thundercats VHS tapes I picked up a few years ago, they replaced the clip of him wielding his nunchakus in the title sequence with a clip of him from that episode.

And yes, I remember it as TMHT as well, even now I find myself saying “hero” rather than “ninja”. The interesting thing here is that I saw TMHT and knew they were ninjas before I saw “The Thunder-Cutter”. It was there that I found out that ninjas were baddies . . .

The handicapped character they meet in season two is not hindered by disability. The character is one of the most powerful Earthbenders they encounter…if not the most powerful and gifted Earthbender.

Well, I’ll find out for myself when I get to that episode. Note I say when and not if, I’m pretty much decided on sticking with the series.