| < ott | DRAMA | COMEDY | FACTUAL | CHILDREN'S | LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT | FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | REVIEWS | BLOG | search > |
| BATTLE
OF THE PLANETS original British TX: Monday 03/09/79, BBC1) reviewed by Iain Griffiths |
August 2001
|
|
|
|
|
Nostalgia, TV producers would have us believe, consists of some dodgy haircuts and talking heads reminiscing about television clips they saw half an hour ago. The point they have missed though is that nostalgia is a totally personal experience. Certain songs mean totally different things to different people. Different TV clips hold more resonance than others. Each fragment of that past is carefully treasured and quietly polished within our memory until it gleams like a gem. I have generally spurned the nostalgia programmes of the past year because they have felt too much like other peoples memories, diluting my own. So what do I do to take me back to eight years old? I shall stay tuned to BBC1 on Tuesday and watch The
Space Sentinels, a new series of science-fiction programmes for older
children. I feel I can fit into that category and shall spend many blissful
weeks in the company of Hercules, Mercury, Astra, Super Computer S1 and
Mo, the maintenance operator 'a small robot with human feelings'. Fair enough Sian, but for pure nostalgic space cartoon action I've been watching Battle of the Planets on Bravo. Probably the first Manga cartoon to reach our shores, BOTP was a sanitised adaptation of an animated space opera that goes under many names but for our purposes we'll settle on Gatchaman. Perhaps you never saw this gem? A little recap is in order at this point ... Sometime in the future, forces from Earth are fighting a war with the planet Spectra located somewhere in the Crab nebulae. The main protagonists are G-Force for Earth who are five orphans given super powers, against the Evil Zoltar who works under an entity known only as "O Luminous One" of Spectra. In between the real action there is some safety in shape of 7-Zark-7 who acts as our narrator, and is a handy device to help string together some of the more outlandish changes of plot or scene. These sections were specially animated for the adaptation of Gatchaman which US producer Sandy Frank renamed ... Battle of the Planets. Watching the programme now the joins between the original cartoon series and the US originated stuff becomes painfully obvious, with laboured attempts to give the (now butchered) programme some form of structure. Great leaps of faith are required to make sense of the show as a whole, and yet underneath all of this I can also see what I loved and still do about the Battle of the Planets. From the beginning the titles invoke memories of sitting in front of the TV as a child, eating a chocolate bar, waiting for the thrill to start. Whole stories are recalled as soon as the Spectra ship appears, yet most of all, it's the voices of the characters that brings everything to life. Casey Casem does a masterful job as Mark the Leader of G-Force and Janet Waldo as the simpering Princess is splendid - but it's Keye Luke who steals the show as the uber villain Zoltar. Outrageously overacted, Keye brought Zoltar to life with his clipped and screeching delivery and for me he is the villain against whom all others must be measured. Looking at the actual quality of the animation you can see that the artwork is reasonably "realistic", although noticeable are traces of manga-esque stylisation, particularly around the eyes. Some details are a feat of painstaking work by the animators, particularly the scenes involving the Phoenix launching out of the ocean. A typical episode involves exotic machines that link together (which seem to be a favourite of Japanese animators), and I remember the frisson of excitement in seeing these vehicles hook up. What makes this programme special for me is the total lack of attention paid to marketing. No toys flooded the market. In the playgrounds the only aspects of G-Force were imaginary, as kids up and down the country played at beating Spectra. Perhaps its not the best cartoon in terms of editing and structure, but the imagery is potent and for me it has that important time travelling quality of a first class nostalgia programme. But I still find seeing Princess's knickers in the opening titles slightly disturbing. "Transmute!" |
|
|