Mr. Lawrence did admit that he never liked Tygra.
Tygra was the man. I use to get so mad as a kid that safari Joe captured him. Even when that episode was on I would so Tygra turn invisible that way SJ can’t see you and your save Cheetara and beat SJ. But know the writers Mess that up because of Lion-O. Or was I missing something why Tygra never even try to turn invisible.
Yes, I know. I’ll never understand why though. And him not liking Tygra and neglecting him because of that was childish to say the least. He should have made a focus or something. He should admit his shortness of mind now,
And I admit I don’t like Lawrence (refuse to call him a “Mr.”) ;):tygra
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The Thundercats writers can be likened to the rock band Styx. Leonard Starr is Dennis DeYoung and Peter Lawrence is Tommy Shaw. Both members wrote and sang. Dennis was the main songwriting genius, Tommy was a good support but not capable of running the show on his own. Then the band had a cataclysmic fallout which ended up with Dennis being kicked out, they continued with Tommy as the main creative force, and they’ve not been anywhere near as good since, while Dennis’s solo material maintains a high standard. Both are good live, but in terms of new songs and albums, it’s clear that the bulk of the talent lay with Dennis.
Equally, when Leonard Starr left Thundercats, Peter Lawrence was now the main writer, and it just didn’t have the same clout.
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Since Lawrence didn’t really like Tygra and didn’t think he was that interesting etc rather than neglect him and try and replace him the common sense thing would have been for him to make changes to the character to make him more interesting etc.
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Starr departed fairly early, in terms of head writer responsibilities. He wrote the bible and built the world, yes, and the vibe of the earliest episodes can be attributed to his influence; but once Peter Lawrence was brought on as editor, every script crossed his desk. Stephen Perry clocked the shift at around “Safari Joe”, which feels about right.
I, for one, am not onboard with the Lawrence-bashing; he steered the show ably for most of its life. While I agree that the show felt different in the earliest episodes—darker, mostly, and more mysterious—most of the storytelling stayed strong until the kooky streak of late Season Four. The continuity of the later seasons is also entirely Lawrence’s doing.
As for the topic at hand, I think it’s worth actually enumerating the defeats. I never got a holistic sense of Tygra as a designated victim, but clearly I’m missing something. Honestly, I identified most strongly with Tygra growing up (I’ve no idea why), and was shocked to discover that he was the butt of so much mockery online. My screenname in the late 90s was actually “Tygra”, and I changed it pretty early on for that very reason. Even Larry Kenney made fun of me once—it was that ingrained in the fandom culture! [emoji33]
So about halfway through season 1. Fair enough. In some ways it’s easier to put the divide at the end of season 1, because Starr was still writing episodes, mainly the 5-parters, that is to say the Anointment Trials, the Movie, and the opener to season 2.
If Lawrence took over halfway through season 1, that effectively means that he turned the catchphrase into a fix-all, the single worst decision made in the series.
I, for one, am not onboard with the Lawrence-bashing; he steered the show ably for most of its life. While I agree that the show felt different in the earliest episodes—darker, mostly, and more mysterious—most of the storytelling stayed strong until the kooky streak of late Season Four. The continuity of the later seasons is also entirely Lawrence’s doing.
In a nutshell, Lawrence gave us New Thundera at the start of season 3, and that’s the second worst decision in the show, this is the point where the show went wrong for me. Here in the UK we only had season 1 back in the 1980s, when the later stuff was released on DVD here, I was seeing it for the first time, and was really excited at the prospect . . . then was rather let down.
Season 2 is palatable enough if you can stomach the Lunataks - yes, technically it was Starr who introduced them, it was his swansong, but that’s nitpicking. The season is otherwise watchable enough, if still not a patch on the first season.
Season 3 gives us New Thundera, and I’ve made my feelings on that subject known many times. It was at this point that Jaga started to get really toned down, and his appearances seemed to be more and more just telling Lion-O to say the catchphrase. It’s not without its decent moments, but it’s got too many dodgy moments - Chain Of Loyalty, The Jade Dragon and The Circus Train in particular, and the whole New Thundera concept in general - to be worth my time and effort.
Season 4 is almost total dross. The only episode I can really stomach in the whole of this season is Shadowmaster. Other than that . . . ugh. Going back to live on New Thundera defeats the original point of the show, they just upped and left their home of many years just like that. Not only that, they left permanently before even starting on the new Cats Lair there! WTF? At least when they crashed on Third Earth and started building the original lair, they had no choice in the matter. But this was a pre-planned decision. And of course leaving Tygra and Pumyra behind . . . I get the feeling that if Peter Lawrence had had the option to, he’d have killed them off.
As Mark put it, Lawrence was the writer/script editor, if he doesn’t like a character than he has the power - and the responsibility - to make the character more engaging.
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I did get that designated victim thing while watching the show as a kid, only that I wouldn’t call it that way back then LOL. But I did feel Tygra was mistretaed and felt his loss of importance as the series progressed (he was a main character in the earlier episodes). I felt it when the bad guy of the day mocked or dismissed him, or how fast he seemed to fall compared to Panthro and Cheetara, or how limited his lines (and appearences) got in the second half of season one forward, up to be left behind in Third Earth.
I was surprised though, just like Zax, to find out as I grew up that he was so mocked among fans… I always thought it was only me resenting it because he was my favorite TC.
I agree with Mark in that season 2 was the beginning of the end, especially the New Thundera plot. Not only because of all the reasons that have been exposed over and over again, but because it made the TCs look like hypocrites. They kept talking about family, bonds and home, and then left the planet and people that embraced them at the first chance they got, and even worse, leaving two of their own behind! Not caring how would they feel or anything.
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Lawrence wrote some good episodes but Thundercats wasn’t his thing as Starr had done all the foundation work for the series. Around season 2 he was more interested in working on Silverhawks.
In some ways seasons 3 and 4 just look like they are deliberatly trying eradicate the mythos Starr created. Getting rid of Tygra, Pumyra, the Mutants, the Lunataks and reforming Thundera.
Tygra may have been the designated victim but all the Thundercats suffered as there was far to much emphasis on Lion-O. Instead of having him in every episode fixing everything with his catchphrase they should have focussed more on different Thundercats. The shows was called Thundercats, that was all of them, it should not have always focussed on Lion-O. Even shows like He-Man and Bravestarr named after the title hero didn’t always have them saving the day or being the main focus as they gave the supporting characters a chances to shine and be the stars, Bravestarr especially. 
TMNT, Defenders of the Earth, Visionaries, Dungeons & Dragons, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Centurions, Galaxy Rangers, Real Ghostbusters etc were all about the group as an equal team, not making one hero the main star.
A bit unrelated but it would have made more sense for Thundercats Ho or Mumm-Ra Lives to focus on The Berserkers as the new main bad guys for season two and give them a bit of an origin story and show how they got created/revived with the cyborg parts. They had made and released the toys so with the focus on them surely that would have also greatly helped toy sales.
I know Leonard Starr wrote the episodes that introduced the Lunatacks but I don’t know how much of that was edited/changed by Peter Lawrence. I am really not a fan of the Lunatacks.
Like Liam, living in the UK (Northern Ireland) I had never seen any episodes beyond Thundercats Ho which was only released on VHS here, never on TV. Around 2003 I read an episode guide about the future episodes and I was so excited to finally get to see them and I also found them very underwhelming. Seasons 3 and 4 especially. I really must re-watch season 2-4 and see what I think of them now.
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Funny that you mentioned SilverHawks in the beginning of your thread, but didn’t include that show in the list of shows that didn’t made the hero the center of every episode. Unlike TCs, SHs didn’t have a main hero. You could point Stargazer or Quick Silver as the leaders, but they didn’t always save the day. Stargazer usually -except for a couple of eps- remained in his office, and Quick Silver himself had to be rescued from time to time by his teammates; he even was absent from some eps.
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I never saw Tygra as a “designated victim” in that sense. I always saw it as a Lion-O-centric format:
Mumm-Ra or guest villain hatches a plan.
Other Thundercats all get captured/hypnotised/pinned down etc individually
Villain goes after Lion-O, they fight for a time, then Lion-O uses his catchphrase, the others magically extricate themselves from their peril, end of episode.
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There is a few other shows I could have included but the reason I didn’t include SilverHawks is I have only seen a few episodes so I couldn’t say if they always worked well as a team in the majority of the episodes. Of the few episodes of SilverHawks I did see I wasn’t overly impressed. It just seemed a really confusing mix numerous ideas from other shows.
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I’ve been thinking of what Liam said about not seeing Tygra as the designated victim and he might be right. Maybe “weak link” is a better term for what producers and writers did to him and how they presented Tygra to the fans.
As growing up, I used to think of scenes like this…
At Cats Lair, Lion-O and Tygra in the main control room.
- Lion-O “There’s something wrong out there and neither the monitors nor the Sword can see what it is”.
- Tygra: “I’ll check it out!”
- Lion-O: “Errr… Let me approach Panthro or Cheetara first. They’re outside anyway.”
- Tygra_ “Don’t bother them. I’ll go…”
Tygra leaves before Lion-O can stop him. Lion-O communicates with teh other TCs. - Lion-O: “Guys, Tygra just left to investigate a strange event in the Forest…”
- Panthro: “Oh boy! Why did you let him go?!”
- Cheetara: “Did he go alone?”
- Lion-O: "Yes. Sorry, guys. I tried to stop him. So be ready to be summoned for a rescue mission in about twenty minutes… "
- Cheetara: “You bet. We should just tie him up to his chair at the Council room every morning. Safer for him and easier for us.”
- Wilykat: “Hope he doesn’t cross path with an anygry Bolkin looking to take it out on someone because his Bolkin grilfriend broke up with him.”
- Wilykit: “Yeah, that could mean some serious trouble for him…”
Everybody laughs and right then the Eye warns Lion-O of a TC in danger…
So Tygra is the Thundercats equivalent of Daphne Blake from Scooby Doo lol. She always ended up getting captured in a lot of episodes.
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I’d say he’s the equivalent to Aquaman from SuperFriends (not the “real” Aquaman unknown to most people)… they both even are identified by the color orange LOL.
Aquaman is a pretty cool character. I don’t know too much about the SuperFriends cartoon as I only seen a couple episodes.
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Aquaman is my favorite Justice Leaguer, and probably my fav superhero as well
Sadly, he’s the butt of many jokes (like Tygra) mainly because of the SF TV series and comics, where he was usually portrayed as useless outside water and because of that he became -yeah, you guessed right- the designated victim of the show. He’s way underrared… Again, just like Tygra.
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I never saw anyone as a “designated victim” in Thundercats - for the reasons I described above.
There were a number of episodes that followed the formula I described above, notably:
Fond Memories
Dream Master
Tight Squeeze
The Superpower Potion
Monkian’s Bargain
The Mumm-Ra Berbil (although I’ve always had a soft spot for that one)
Mongor and Safari Joe are borderline cases, because when Lion-O uses the catchphrase the others aren’t able to come to his aid.
But the worst offenders - in season 1 at any rate, have got to be:
Mechanical Plague
Return To Thundera
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Not a massive comic superhero fan as such. I grew mostly reading and watching Thundercats, Transformers, TMNT, Bravestarr etc, theyu were my favourtes but I did enjoy some of the various superhero comics and TV shows.
Although the first action figure I ever got were Secret Wars Captain America and Hobgoblin and one of the first superhero cartoons I ever seen was Shazam (Captain Marvel) so I class Captain America and Shazam as my two favourite comic book heroes. I also quite like Spider-Man, Thor, Isis, Batman and the X-Men.
I need to read some Aquaman comics. I liked him in Justice League and Young Justice and The Throne of Atlantis. I thought his 90’s re-design with the beard was pretty cool.
Yes the constant Thundercats Ho battle cry and the sword sorting out what ever peril they were in etc became quite boring.
I can just imagine the writers thinking of all the ways they could solve the solution to that episode only for the writer or editor to change it and simplify it to Lion-O getting the sword, shouting the catchphrase, problem solved.
After Transformers The Movie could you imagine how boring and formulaic the episodes would have been if every episode had involved Rodimus Prime opening the Matrix and shouting ‘‘Light Our Darkest Hour!’’
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Exactly. THAT is what I hold against Peter Lawrence.
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