Sorry if this is something that’s come up before, but it’s something that has been niggiling in the back of my mind.
I was reading a review of the Thundercat dvd releases (season 1 part 1 in particular) and the person mentioned that the first two episodes were cut down versions of the original one hour pilot episode and that there was some bits missing.
Now I always considered that Exodus and Unholy alliance, were part of the 130 episode series and that they were complete. Simply put I’d always thought that the pilot episode was just those first two put together and for the show they split them apart to make two episodes.
Now am I wrong in this assumption? was the original pilot episode slightly longer and that bits got cut out to make the first two episodes fit their time slot.
A bit of clarification on the matter would be great.
(The specific comment i’m referring to it “Note: The first three episodes are the syndicated versions. These feature several cuts integral to the story and were originally a movie length pilot.”)
Yep, the original ThunderCats “pilot” actually features scenes that were cut from the stand-alone versions of the episodes - we used to actually host a couple of the missing scenes as video files on this site, I took them down to move them to a new location and have never gotten round to getting them back up! :oops:
Some of the contents to these cut scenes are actually mentioned in our Episode Guide pages for those episodes - to quote myself:
“For the original presentation of “Exodus”, where it was edited together with “The Unholy Alliance”, the “Exodus” portion of the pilot ran several minutes over the standard length for a ThunderCats episode. By virtue of this, the stand-alone version of the episode has several scenes cut from its original presentation - amongst those missing are scenes of character interaction between the ThunderCats and Mutants, as well as a declaration by Tygra that they assumed the Eye of Thundera was a myth.”
Hope that helps - and, thanks for reminding me that those videoclips need to go back online on this site!
EDIT: Just to add too, the reviewer from DVD Times is wrong in one respect, in that only the first two episodes of ThunderCats, “Exodus” and “The Unholy Alliance”, made up the pilot episode. The following two episodes, “Berbils” and “The Slaves of Castle Plun-Darr”, were subsequently edited on to the end of the pilot and released on home video as what is commonly known as the “movie” version of “Exodus”, however “Berbils” was subjected to some quite heavy edits. So, the defintive version of that episode, at least, is the one that was released on DVD!
Chears bro, glad to have that clarified, however it does leave me with a burning desire to see these clips. Good to know that some of them are here, but now starts my quest to find the remaining ones.
Your best bet is to go on Ebay and pick up a copy of the Video Collection release of Exodus on VHS That’s where I got all the ‘cut’ scenes from that were on the site.
Not to sound cheeky, but would it be possible for you to upload the deleted scenes. I’m not going to say the episode as that’s piracy, but a download collection of just the deleted scenes would be mint.
Ultimately the video clips that we had up will be back on the site - I wouldn’t like to give an exact time frame but it is on the “to do” list! That said, there were some more small deleted scenes that were deleted from the stand-alone episode that (at least as best as I remember) never made it into video clip form - I don’t have the technology here to do that, but maybe someone here will…?
Well, as far as I’m aware, those scenes were broadcast when the original ThunderCats pilot was broadcast - they were subsequently cut from “Exodus” and “The Unholy Alliance” to make those episodes standard length for broadcast in syndication…
I’ve never heard of anyone owning a taped-from-TV copy of the original ThunderCats pilot itself, but as has been stated the pilot was widely available on official VHS, just with “Berbils” and “The Slaves of Castle Plun-Darr” edited onto the end!
If your tape player was bought anytime within the last 15 or so years, then it’s a 99.99% certainty that it plays VHS. When home video began (certainly this is how it was in the UK, which, BTW, is where I’m based as well), there were two main formats of video tapes, VHS and Betamax - the situation was very similar to the one you have now between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. VHS won the “format war” between the two, and so VHS is the standard format of tape that you will see in this country…
When you hear folks talk about tape players in the UK only playing tapes that are in PAL format, PAL is basically the type of signal that is broadcast in the UK, as well as many parts of Europe and Australia. The US, Canada, and some other parts of the world use a different type of TV signal known as NTSC. It’s a very complicated thing to explain, but basically the difference between PAL and NTSC is the number of lines that are used to make up the picture - PAL uses more lines than NTSC, and thus is a stronger signal…
I probably haven’t explained this very well, so my best advice would be to check out Wikipedia:
The “movie” version of “Exodus” was released on official home video in both the UK and the US - it has to be said that the US version is arguably superior to the UK version, as the UK version features a couple of minor edits that were made to Panthro martial arts scenes (probably to appease UK censors), but that survived on the US version. Hope that helps!
hey i knwo what your talking bout, i have the pilot ep on tape that has the footage not on the dvds. its a shame really that they couldnt put those on dvd since it has the four eps together and it some scenes the music for each is different then that of the toons that r on dvd
I’ve got one of the deleted bits from Exodus up on my page for download (need to do more, and get clips from Berbils, as well). This is from an encode someone made of their Exodus movie tape, so it’s been around a while and the quality isn’t wonderful but you’ll get the idea.
In the clip that’s up, basically all they cut there was some conversation between Panthro and the Thunderkittens but I found it amusing nonetheless.
it’s those missing clips that i wish they’d kept in the re-released dvds. it shows so much more personality & character interaction, which is what i remembered as a kid watching the original episode.
Unfortunatly I don’t know the entire procedure myself. I know it has something to do with plugging your computer into a tv and then recording what’s on screen, but that’s it. I think some dual vhs/dvd players can record themselves (as in have the dvd on record and the vhs side playing), but again I’m not totally up on the procedure.
