Category: Television

Television Review: ‘Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future’

All hail to the machine! All glory to my Lord Dread!

This review originally appeared, in a slightly different form, on my previous blog, which is now defunct. I am working to move my redeemable material from there to here. I recently introduced the magical girl to this show, so I think it’s time to bring this review back online.

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, starring Tim Dunigan, Peter MacNeill, and Sven-Ole Thorsen. Created by Gary Goddard and Tony Christopher. Head screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski. Landmark Entertainment Group, Mattel, and Ventura Pictures Inc., . 22 episodes of 20 minutes (approximately 440 minutes). Not rated.

Jim Bawden of the Toronto Star once called Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future “the most ambitious series ever made for television,” and he did not exaggerate. For a short period during my childhood, this show was all the rage, but it lasted only one season: Mattel pulled the money when the toy tie-in sold poorly, so it swiftly fell into obscurity, though it continues to enjoy a cult following. There were VHS releases of all the episodes back in the ’80s, but aside from those, Captain Power was for many years available only on fan-made bootlegs. However, in , VSC produced an official DVD release. This is a great boon, for Captain Power is a show that should not be lost.

Captain Power’s history much resembles that of the similarly ambitious and ill-fated Battlestar Galactica—though Captain Power has yet to see a melodramatic, humorless, and oversexed remake. There were attempts to remake it, and for a while a new show called Phoenix Rising</cite >was in the works, though as far as I have been able to discover, it died in preproduct ion hell.

Funded by Mattel and billed as children’s TV, Captain Power sparked controversy for its high levels of violence. It was expensive, costing a million dollars per episode, with innovative special effects—including the first regular appearances of CGI characters in a live-action TV series. It is of continued interest in part because the lead writer was for a time J. Michael Straczynski, who went on to create Babylon 5. There is even a place called Babylon 5 in Captain Power, so Straczynski had that name in mind even back then.

But what really made Captain Power unique is now hard to appreciate: It was the first and last interactive TV show. The Mattel toy line included action figures and a few other items, but the most important toys were the XT-7 and the BioDread Phantom Striker, both futuristic jet fighters. They were light-sensitive, and they would react to certain special colors on the screen. With the toys, you could shoot the villains, and they would even shoot back. Hitting them earned you Power Points, and getting hit took your Power Points away.

But that’s not even the coolest part: If you lost all your Power Points, the cockpit would eject and send your action figure flying across the room, which was hella cool to an eight-year-old boy. The toys also had a “room mode” that allowed you to shoot them at each other like laser tag. It was good, clean, potentially-put-somebody’s-eye-out fun. Unfortunately, the interactivity hasn’t survived the digital transfer, so don’t expect to dig out your old XT-7, load in the DVDs, and blast away at BioDreads on your flatscreen.

I know it doesn’t work because I’ve tried.

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‘LazyTown’ on the Official YouTube Channel

I am late to this party, but as they say, better late than never.

The television series LazyTown, a show aimed at young kids, ran on Nick Jr. from 2004 to 2007 and later saw a reboot in 2013. I had personally never heard of it, but it enjoyed a surge of popularity after one of its most beloved stars, Stefán Karl Stefánsson, who played the villain, was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, leading to a fundraiser driven in large part by fans making internet memes. The condition ultimately took Stefánsson’s life in August of 2018, resulting, in turn, in multiple homages.

Robbie Rotten eating a large cake
Stefán Karl Stefánsson as Robbie Rotten.

The show LazyTown was the brainchild of Magnús Scheving, an Icelandic aerobic gymnast and motivational speaker who came up with the concept after multiple parents had asked him how to encourage their children to eat well and to exercise. LazyTown appeared first as a book, then as a stage play, and finally as a television series combining puppetry, acrobatic stunts, and CGI, which, at least according to the Wikipedia page, made it one of the most expensive children’s shows of all time.

I have for some time had my eye on the show’s official YouTube channel, which has for the most part posted music videos and homages to Stefánsson. There are a lot of bootlegs of the show floating around the web—unsurprising, given its recent popularity boost. The official channel has within the last week apparently decided that it’s easier to join them than beat them, and has begun to release a selection of free episodes online. Most of those episodes are available on the Full Episode Playlist, though a few strays are lurking elsewhere on the channel.

Unlike many of the fans, I didn’t watch the show as a kid (I was already grown up when it appeared), and I must limit my comments to what is freely available on YouTube, but based on this selection of episodes, I’m impressed. A lot of the kids’ shows that cross live actors with puppets are endurance tests for adults, but LazyTown is an exception. It’s really entertaining; it’s perhaps not quite on the level of classic Sesame Street, but it’s close.

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