" When ThunderCats first appeared on TV screens in the 1980s, the series debuted on many TV stations courtesy of a special hour-long pilot episode. The footage from this pilot episode would go to make up the first two episodes of the TV series, “Exodus” and “The Unholy Alliance”, once the series went into syndication. This pilot episode was later released on home video, and this home video is often referred to as the “movie version” of “Exodus.”
There were 8 scenes taken out that I feel should have been left in and unfortunately left off the DVD set as well. If you haven’t seen them, you can look at them on YouTube.
I’d have loved to have seen these included in the Warner Bros’ DVD releases as a special feature or something, but to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me if WB didn’t even own the master tapes with these scenes on them…
And when doing the thread on Exodus a while back, I detailed each and every scene missing from the TV/DVD version. Did that for the first four episodes that made up the movie.
One of my favorite quotes if from one of those scenes, “When in doubt, chicken out. I’m not going!”
Yah quality bit…the most emotonal bit for me is when Jaga demands thay all enter the suspension capsules leaving him to pilot the ship. When he strikes the sword into the floor and his theme music kicks in…lump in throat lol
My favorite part of all these are in Deleted Scenes 3 and 4, where it is implied that the different mutant races had not been allied up to this point. This explains a lot of the mistrust that the characters show towards each other in later episodes. It also makes for a potentially interesting prequel story set before the destruction of (old) Thundera.
That’s my favorite part too, and that explains why, as the TCs keep saying throught out the series, the mutants don’t know how to work as a team.
Also, I always wondered if the Thunderians didn’t inhabit in the past (long ago) one of the moons of Plun Darr, thus being mutants themselves (the reptilians, the monkeymen, the jackalmen, the vulturemen, the ratmen -were there any more of these last two groups? I guess yes- and the catmen/felinemen), but they fled their home moon, colonized Thundera and settled there. They do are mutants after all.
What I’ve always wanted to know…Is why does Slithe get his own name, but Jackalman, Vultureman, AND Monkian are all called by the name of their mutant “race.”
Also, the mutants wore clothes (primitive clothes if you want to, but clothes anyway) since the first day, while TCs were naked… does that make mutants more civilized than the TCs?
It’s possible, although based on testimony from the main writers in interviews, it seems like not much more back story was developed beyond what was in the show. However, I do remember an episode confirming that Thunderians were not actually native to Thundera, that they came to Thundera in an event called “the Great Migration.” I’m forgetting the episode if anyone remembers.
If i’m not mistaken, Queen Luna was banished to a moon of Plundarr after trying to overtake Third Earth. So I assume the Lunatacks were not native to the Moons Of Plundarr either, so if Thunderians were there, they may have fled due to the Lunatacks. Supposedly the Lunatacks were so terrible, the Mutants couldn’t even stand them.
Questions I have are where did the Thunderians migrate from? What are the genetic differences between a Thunderian and a Thundercat? Did Thunderians create Thundercats to be a noble warrior race for protection?
Were the Mutants also created by Plundarrians for the same reason?
I agree the deleted scenes do make the episodes better and should have been included either as extras or spliced in on the actual episodes. The movie version of Gargoyles first 5 episodes also included a few new scenes. What makes it worse is that there is no definitive version of either of the above examples, the movie version has more scenes that help explain things a bit better but cuts out a tun of the actual episodes.
The mutants also raise all kinds of questions in the original show, from where exactly do all the mutants from the first episode go to, we see them very few times through out the entire run but most of the time they are just MIA. Same with vultureman, he is missing from plenty of mutant episodes post-introduction, not to mention he had no introduction, and I think you can’t place all the pre-vulture episodes before his first appearance because it causes continuity errors.
Also watching through the original show I’ve noticed at least to me it seems like Mutant is kind of a degrading word, as to why do they call themselves that well black people call themselves the N-word but its not ok for say a white person to say it. I’m just bringing this up because the thats how the Thundercats use it, well at least to some extent with the exception of Panthro, his dialog comes out as outright Xenophobic and racist, I swear I’m not trying to see more into something that isn’t there but every time he mentions mutant sit comes off as “man panthro back of a little”
As far as mutants being more civilized than the Thundercats this is actually said outright that their technology is far more advanced when they ask Mumm-Ra to recover their ship.
