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Post by Xenorama ™ on May 24, 2005 11:31:37 GMT -8
anyone else like this cool show? i watched a few episodes back when it was originally aired and thought it was pretty neat then. now that i've seen a few episodes again, i'm pretty impressed for a show that was made to sell toys.
the interesting thing is that the show did really well, but no one bought the toys, so they pulled the backing out of the series and it was cancelled. too bad.
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Post by Torgaman on May 24, 2005 19:04:02 GMT -8
Apparantly it was supposed to be "interactive".The robots in the show[Wannabe cylons]had these chestplates or something that sort of glowed and the viewer at home could sort of play along and aim at these chestplates and get points.Just another LASER TAG type thing.Eventually these things were put out of their misery by the advancements in videogame technology like the SEGA GENESIS,which ironically is now considered an endangered species in itself if it hasn't completely gone extinct.
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Cory
Ultran
Posts: 52
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Post by Cory on May 29, 2005 6:44:14 GMT -8
I practically lived and breathed Captain Power when I was a kid!
For the toys, I had Captian Power, Hawk, Tank, Lord Dread, Sauron, Blastar, and Pilot, the Powerjet XT7 with training video #1, the Interlocker Throne and the Power-Up Generator (I still have all of them, in various states of composure). The main selling feature was, as mentioned, that the toys could interact with eachother and with the TV as a Lazer Tag-esque, light gun sort of thing.
Basically, the sensors in the toys responded to different patterns of light. When interacting with the TV show, flashing red could be shot for points, and flashing white or green had to be shot at to not lose points. So you had red on the chestplates of the bad guys, and green for their laser blasts. Once your points were reduced to zero, your pilot was ejected and game over.
The TV show itself is actually a pretty solid premise. It takes place after the "Metal Wars" where "man fought machine, and machine won". It was a very cyberpunk sort of post-apocalyptic world where human enclaves were flushed out by robot soldiers who then proceeded to either kill them outright or "digitize" them by essentially beaming them into a mainframe for storage. The leader of this Bio-Dread Empire was Lord Dread, aka: Lawrence Taggart, who is more machine now than man... Oh, wrong show... He developed the Bio-Dread technology with the father of the title character.
The title characters themselves were an elite force with special armour that protected them both from weapons and from digitization. Their mission was, of course, to protect humanity from the Bio-Dreads.
The show was one of the first regular uses of CGI technology. Of course, being in its relative infancy, the Bio-Dread supersoldiers (Sauron and Blastar) look pretty artficial. But still a decent accomplishment. The solidity of the premise can probably be attributed to the show's creator, J. Michael Straczynski. And I'll lay down $10 saying that it could be resurrected as a credible new show along with all this retro stuff that's been passing through.
The training videos are supercool though. Instead of CGI and live action, they're seriously all done by anime. The quality is good enough almost to watch on their own, though the effect is kind of lost if you can't interact with it.
Unfortunately, it's not the sort of thing that would really make sense to rerelease on DVD. The best part of the live action show was interacting with it, as was the training videos. Without a Powerjet, what's the point? Now, if they could release a DVD set with some kind of small lightgun or a relrease of the Powerjet... Unfortunately, I doubt that it was popular enough to begin with to be profitable on the nostalgia market.
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Post by Xenorama ™ on May 29, 2005 8:25:55 GMT -8
actually, having watched the first 6 episodes or so, i'm pretty impressed with the writing and the stories. i think a DVD release would work well, since the show was apparently more popular than the toys. but, it never really ended- there were supposed to be 4-5 seasons and it was planned out thus. when cancelled at the end of the first season, lots of plots were left up in the air. i'd hate to see it returned now, like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, where they only use the names and make it brain-dullingly "realistic". and take out all of the color in the show. but that's just me.
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Cory
Ultran
Posts: 52
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Post by Cory on Jun 1, 2005 8:41:44 GMT -8
Well, I wouldn't recommend Battlestarring it! Just doll up the CGI a bit, make it a little more darkly cyber, and have at it.
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Post by tekken1701 on Aug 21, 2005 15:58:47 GMT -8
Actually it was written by J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame! I loved the show as well--he had a 5-year arc written that unfortunately never came to pass.
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Post by Xenorama ™ on Aug 21, 2005 17:15:17 GMT -8
he sure likes those five year arcs, doesn't he?
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Post by tekken1701 on Aug 21, 2005 18:00:43 GMT -8
Yes, he does.He beieves that 5 years is more than enough time for characterization and plot lines to be fully developed and resolved.
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