Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.
Meadowlark Lemon died on Sunday, December 27th. You can read the full story here.
Lemon was a professional basketball player, actor and minister who was best known
as the “Clown Prince” on the Harlem Globetrotters for 22 years. As a
Globetrotter, his name and likeness was used on Hanna-Barbera’s Harlem Globetrotters, for which he
supplied background vocals in the music,as
well as all of the team’s appearances on The
New Scooby-Doo Movies. He also starred and performed in The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine variety
show.
After Disney
acquired LucasFilm in 2012, they quickly set
about cashing in on the company’s biggest franchise: Star Wars. Within the next two years, plans were
put in place to continue the movie saga with a new trilogy. December, 2015
would see the release of the first new movie, Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Directed J.J.
Abrams, the film reunited the surviving original cast with a whole new set
of characters to continue the struggle for the balance of the force in a galaxy
far, far away.
As with Episode II, General Mills and Kellogg’s achieved a shared license to
produce a cereal tie-in to the film; General Mills covering North America while
Kellogg’s released in the United Kingdom. The Kellogg’s
version actually came first, being released in March of 2015. Their cereal
featured a dual-faced box with Darth Vader and R2-D2 on either side. The
cereal itself was chocolate-flavored whole wheat and rice pieces in the shapes
of stars and moons.
General Mills’
version was
first announced on May 4th (also known as Star
Wars Day) and released in June. The cereal featured berry-flavored corn puffs meant to
resemble X-wings
and TIE fighters.
Also included were marshmallow shapes mostly recycled from their Episode II cereal a decade prior,
including red and blue lightsabers,
R2-D2, Yoda and a Jedi
Starfighter. The Clone
Trooper face was redesigned to better resemble a regular Stormtrooper face by
changing up the black areas of the otherwise white piece. The boxes came in two
varieties at launch: one featured Yoda with a quiz on the back panel, the other
Darth Vader with a Star Wars-themed
checkers game on the back.
It was announced that new box designs would initially
be released in October of 2015 before the movie, but they have been pushed back
to February 2016. Instead, General Mills added Star Wars elements to a variety of their other cereals with Droid
Viewers inside.
“Space, the final
frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It’s five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone
before”
These are the words
that opened up every episode of Star Trek, highlighting the overall
theme of the series. Creator Gene Roddenberry conceived of a program that would subtly deal with present-day
issues in an idealized future setting; showcasing what humanity could develop
into if it learned from mistakes of the past. At the center of his idea was the
United
Federation of Planets, or simply “the Federation,” which was a coalition of
planets from various galaxies working together for the betterment of all
sentient beings--like a space-age version of the United Nations. Their exploratory,
peacekeeping and military arm was Starfleet, which
employed a wide range of starships to carry out various missions around known
space. Advanced technology introduced included energy-based phaser weapons,
portable communicators
(imagine a precursor to flip-open cell phones), tricorders that
could read and analyze anything, transporters that
could break anything down to the molecular level and reassemble them in another
location, protective deflector shields
and a warp
drive that allowed starships to travel at great speeds.
The pilot, known as “The Cage,” was
finished and screened for NBC in 1965. While they found it “too cerebral,” “too
intellectual,” and “too slow” with “not enough action,” they were convinced by Lucille Ball, co-owner
of Desilu and believer in the project, to make the unprecedented move of
commissioning a second pilot. Roddenberry wrote two outlines, which became
later episodes of the series known as “Mudd’s Women”
and “The Omega
Glory”, and commissioned Samuel
Peeples to write a third for consideration. Peeples’ script, “Where
No Man Has Gone Before”, was selected by NBC to be the new pilot (parts of
the original were used in the two-part episode “The Menagerie”).
The second Enterprise crew.
The entire cast was
replaced save for Nimoy’s Spock, despite NBC’s petitioning for his removal due
to his “satanic” appearance brought on by his pointy ears and eyebrows. Originally
presented with youthful energy, he was given the emotionless demeanor of Number
One and promoted to first officer. Nimoy would go on to craft much of the
backstory of Spock and Vulcan culture, including the v-shaped hand gesture
accompanying the phrase “live long and prosper.” Hunter was unwilling to
reprise his role as he wanted to focus on a movie career, and he was eventually
replaced by William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk (initially the “T” was an
“R”). Pilot director James
Goldstone cast his friend James Doohan as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott,
who was named after Doohan decided he could best pull off a Scottish accent.
George Takei was cast as Lt. Hiraku Sulu, initially the ship’s physicist but
changed to a helmsman for the series. Rounding out the cast was Paul Fix as the ship’s doctor, Mark Piper, Paul Carr as navigator Lee Kelso,
Lloyd Haynes as Communications Officer Alden,
and Andrea Dromm as Yeoman Smith.
The final Enterprise crew.
Screened almost a
year after the first pilot, NBC was satisfied with the presentation and ordered
it to series. The first regular episode, “The Man Trap,”
debuted on September 8, 1966. Along with new uniforms for the crew, several
cast members were changed. Piper was replaced by Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest
Kelley, who was originally considered for the Piper role) while Kelso’s duties
were taken over by Sulu. Alden was replaced by Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle
Nichols) and Yeoman Smith was replaced by Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney). Barrett
would go on to rejoin the cast as Nurse Chapel in the 4th episode, “The Naked Time”,
as well as portray the ship’s computer voice (a role she had in almost every Trek production that followed), and Sulu
would be joined by Pavel
Chekov (Walter Koenig)
at the helm in the second season.
Star Trek (later known as Star
Trek: The Original Series) enjoyed high ratings at the start of its first
season, but they fell dramatically towards its conclusion. It was sufficient
enough to warrant a second season, but NBC threatened to cancel it after that
year. Science-fiction superfan Betty Jo Trimble
(also known as Bjo) led an unprecedented letter-writing campaign to petition
the network to keep the show (she also led the campaign to have President Gerald Ford
change the name of the first NASA space
shuttle to Enterprise, whose dedication was attended by the Trek cast in 1976). It worked, and NBC renewed it for a third
season but at a substantially reduced budget. Roddenberry protested by
resigning as producer and reducing his direct involvement in the series,
leading to Fred Freiberger
taking over his duties for the season. Despite another letter-writing campaign,
NBC cancelled the show after 79 episodes.
The fan mail just keeps pouring in.
Sometime after its
cancellation, Paramount Studios bought
the show from Desilu and licensed the broadcast syndication rights to recoup
production losses. Reruns began airing in the fall of 1969 and reached over 200
domestic and international markets. As a result, Star Trek was discovered by a new fanbase (soon to be known as
Trekkies) and gradually achieved a cult following that rivaled its popularity
during the original broadcasts. That culminated in the first
Star Trek convention in January
of 1972. While it was only projected to get a few hundred attendees, it ended
up attracting several thousand.
The animated Enterprise.
Paramount took notice
of the series’ newfound appeal and toyed with the idea of bringing it back. Filmation had originally
pitched an idea of adapting the franchise into animation (Lou Scheimer, one of the
founders, was a fan of the original series) shortly after the show’s
cancellation. While giving assurances that the cartoon would look and feel like
original show, Filmation wanted to move the setting to a training ship and pair
up all the crewmen with young cadets in order to have a larger appeal to
children. Paramount passed on that idea, which later became the basis for
Filmation’s Space
Academy, but revisited the notion of turning Trek into a cartoon
series and contracted Filmation to do it. A deal was arranged where Paramount,
Filmation and Roddenberry would each control a third of the program’s rights,
leaving the network out of any kind of creative control. NBC, who desperately
wanted new Trek, readily agreed to the arrangement, as well as ordering
22 episodes up front.
Running a starship doesn't really require much movement.
At Roddenberry’s insistence,
original series story editor D.C.
Fontana was appointed the story editor of the cartoon to best help maintain
the voice of Trek. The writers of the cartoon would follow the same
series bible used for the original series, and the use of animation afforded
them the opportunity to introduce larger alien landscapes and less
humanoid-looking aliens for the crew to encounter. However, like other
Filmation projects, budget constraints and the fact they were producing several
other shows at the same time often led to extreme cost-cutting measures. These included
a liberal use of stock shots both created for the series or from other
Filmation shows, or constantly recycling animation from previous episodes.
While the majority of the animation quality was only fair with a number of
errors, some parts of various episodes would achieve a near-theatrical level of
quality. In many instances, the animators would rotoscope over footage from the
original show for the actors’ likenesses and the ship, helping to keep them all
looking as they should. Typical production turnaround for an episode was three
months, and was one of Filmation’s highest-budgeted at $75,000 an episode.
The animated crew of the Enterprise.
Filmation planned to
only use Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, Doohan and Barrett to reprise their roles and
add extra authenticity, with Doohan and Barrett taking over the voices of Sulu
and Uhura, respectively. Knowing that his fellow cast members were having
trouble finding work since the end of the series and feeling that Sulu and
Uhura were crucial for the proof of ethnic diversity in the 23rd
century, Nimoy refused to lend his voice to the project unless Takei and
Nichols were cast. The budget wouldn’t allow for Koenig to reprise his role, although
he was asked to audition for a small part. He did end up making a contribution
by writing the episode “The Infinite Vulcan”, becoming the first Trek cast member to write a Trek story. The producers liked his work
and invited Koenig to write another episode, but after the arduous process of
rewrites demanded by Roddenberry and his own hurt feelings over being excluded
from the show (he only learned of its existence during a Trek panel at a convention), he declined.
Arex (top) and M'Ress.
In Chekov’s place were two new alien characters: Lt.
Arex (Doohan), an Edosian
with three arms and three legs, and Lt. M’Ress, a cat-like Caitian (Barrett). The
majority of the additional voices were handled by Doohan and Barrett, with
Nichols and Takei providing several themselves. A few guest stars from the
original series did reprise their respective roles for the cartoon, including Mark Lenard as Sarek, Roger C. Carmel as Harry Mudd, and Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones.
While the initial episodes were recorded with an ensemble, other commitments
made it so some of the actors—typically Shatner and Nimoy—would have to record
their dialogue wherever they were and send them in to be spliced together onto
the episode’s soundtrack.
Cyrano Jones returned with even more Tribbles.
The series’ writing
stable benefited from the Writers Guild of
America, West strike of 1973, which
didn’t affect animated projects and allowed them to make use of the freed-up
writers. This meant that Fontana was able to recruit many of the original
show’s writers; either writing new stories or sequels to earlier episodes.
Among them were Peeples, Fontana, Marc
Daniels, Margaret Armen, David Gerrold and Paul Schneider. Because they no
longer had an hour to work with in crafting their stories, many have come to regard
the more-focused scripts as some of the best of early Trek. Science
fiction author Larry Niven even adapted his
short story “The Soft
Weapon” into the episode “The Slaver
Weapon”. James Schmerer
wrote a single episode for the cartoon, “The Survivor”,
on the basis that he was made to understand it would be geared towards adults
like the original show and not to children as his previous dealings in
animation had been strenuous. The scripts for the cartoon featured a lot of
call-backs to the original series, as well as maintained the same kind of heady
storytelling quality with deep stories and morality tales. Other writers
included Larry Brody, Chuck Menville, Len Janson, Joyce Perry, David P. Harmon, Stephen Kandel, Dario Finelli, Russell Bates, David Wise and Fred Bronson (as John Culver).
Despite the number of women on the show, Kirk's infamous romantic life was on hiatus.
Star Trek: The
Animated Series debuted on September 8, 1973; exactly seven years after the
premiere of the original series. While “Beyond
the Farthest Star” was always intended to be the series first episode, some
markets shuffled the airing order to show “Yesteryear” instead. The reason behind that was, at the time, Takei was running for a seat on
the Los
Angeles City Council, and in order to avoid violating the FCC’s equal-time
rule (wherein any radio or television station had to provide the same
amount of air time for any and all political candidates if they requested it)
they chose to stop airing reruns of the original series and aired an animated
episode that didn’t feature Sulu.
The series retained the regular Star Trek naming on its title screen (with The Animated Series or The
Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek added in later
references to distinguish the two shows), but Filmation opted to use a new
opening theme composed by Ray
Ellis (under the pseudonym Yvette Blais) and Norm Prescott (credited as Jeff
Michael). It was the first Trek series
to also do away with the cold open and began with the opening intro (not
counting the United Kingdom airings of the original series, which moved the
cold open to after the credits). An anti-pollution public service announcement
was created in partnership with Keep America
Beautiful and played throughout the series’ run.
Life support belts.
Aside from the new
crewmembers, the cartoon introduced several unique elements to the Trek mythos. It was the first series to
have the holodeck
(called the “Rec Room”), a room on the ship that could create three-dimensional
and interactive holograms of almost anything that can be programmed. It
wouldn’t become a Trek feature until
the follow-up live-action series, The Next Generation. There
was also personal force field technology located in a life support
belt, which allowed the crew to journey out into space. The belt and a glow
were added to the character that wore them, saving the animators the trouble of
designing and drawing environmental suits for the characters. A version of the
belt would be used in an early The Next
Generation novel titled The Peacekeepers. It also became the first Trek
show to show a different class of Federation starship besides the Constitution class of the Enterprise. “The Time Trap”
had the crew come into contact with the first starship to have a warp drive
installed, the S.S. Bonaventure(also its class name), which
resembled the Enterprise except with
bulkier warp
nacelles and a shorter saucer section. Although the ship’s design would
change in later Trek appearances, the name continued to be used. The
cartoon was also the first official use of Captain Kirk’s middle name after
Gerrold blurted it out when asked what it stood for at an earlier Trek convention.
Even giant Tribbles couldn't bring the kids on board.
Although the series was popular with adults
and older teens, the targeted younger demographic that NBC and advertisers
wanted wasn’t tuning in. NBC followed-through with the abbreviated
6-episode second season they ordered, which was padded out with reruns from the
first, but let the series end at its conclusion. The second season premiere, “The
Pirates of Orion”, was written by Howard Weinstein,
a fan who adapted it from a short Trek story
he had published in the fanzine Probe. The script was taken on by agent Bill Cooper, who was a
schoolmate of Weinstein’s father, and sent it to Fontana. However, since she had
left the show, it was returned. The script was resubmitted and Weinstein was
contacted by Scheimer, who would buy the script if the ending could be
modified. Weinstein agreed and the episode was made, making him the youngest Trek writer (19 at the time) and the
episode the first to introduce the male Orions. It also opened the door for Weinstein to work on
future Trek projects. During its run,
the cartoon received critical acclaim as well as a Daytime Emmy Award for the episode “How
Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”; the first of the franchise outside of
technical awards.
After the abandonment
of an attempt to produce the first Trek movie,
The Planet of the Titans, Paramount and Roddenberry began work
on a new live-action series called Phase II. It was intended to be the flagship program for Paramount’s new
television network, the Paramount Television Service, which was hoped to become
the fourth television network (there were only three at the time). However,
when the plan fell through the show was ultimately cancelled (Paramount would
eventually get their own network from 1995-2006, UPN). When Star Warsand Close Encounters of the Third Kindbecame box office successes in 1977, Paramount revisited the Phase II idea and decided to recycle the
pilot’s plot into Star Trek: The Motion
Picture. The entire original series cast was reunited in live-action, and
would be for five more movies.
"See? I told you one day they'd love us."
In the meantime,
Roddenberry was hard at work bringing Trek
back to television. This led to the creation of The Next Generation in 1987 as a first-run syndicated show following
a new crew on a new Enterprise. It would be the first of four new programs, most of them under
the stewardship of Rick Berman
after Roddenberry’s death
in 1991, plus a new series of movies based on The Next Generation. At the completion of The Next Generation’s first season, Roddenberry’s office rendered
the animated series non-canonical in Trek
lore. However, while events from the cartoon were not explicitly mentioned,
elements from various episodes such as character moments, alien races, ship
names and characters themselves found their way into the programs,
novelizations, video games and movies. In 2007, the cartoon was made part of
the official canon when it was included in Star
Trek’s official site library, with both Fontana and Gerrold regarding it as
the long-desired fourth season of the original series.
The complete series was released to VHS
by Paramount across eleven volumes in the United States, while the United
Kingdom got theirs across seven
volumes in 1992 by CIC
Video. An Australian release was planned but never materialized. The
complete series was released on laserdisc
in 1990, and re-released in 1997. The
complete series came to DVD
in 2006 in a special tin package, becoming the last Trek series to be released on that format. The international versions soon followed. In
2011, the entire series was available to stream on Netflix.
EPISODE GUIDE:
Season 1:
“Beyond the Farthest Star” (9/8/73*) – Trapped in the orbit of a dead
star, the crew discovers an ancient ship trapped there with them.
*Aired 9/15/73 in some markets.
“Yesteryear” (9/15/73*) – Spock travels to the past to rescue his younger
self.
*Aired 9/8/73 in some markets.
“One of Our Planets is Missing” (9/22/73) – The crew has to protect
Mantilles from a cloud creature that feeds on planetary energy.
“The Lorelei Signal” (9/29/73) – Investigating starship disappearances
leads to the discovery of a race of beautiful women.
“More Tribbles, More Troubles” (10/6/73) – The crew has to protect two
ships of grain and Cyrano Jones from the Klingons.
“The Survivor” (10/13/73) – The crew discovers a ship manned by a
philanthropist who disappeared five years prior.
“The Infinite Vulcan” (10/20/73) – Sulu ends up poisoned by a plant he
picks up on an away mission.
“The Magicks of Megas-tu” (10/27/73) – The ship ends up stranded
inside an energy/matter vortex until Lucien appears to rescue them and take
them to his planet.
“Once Upon a Planet” (11/3/73) – The crew returns to the amusement
park planet for some rest.
“Mudd’s Passion” (11/10/73) – The crew is ordered to arrest Harry Mudd
for selling fake love crystals.
“The Terratin Incident” (11/17/73) – A message in an ancient code
finds the ship while they observe a burnt-out supernova.
“The Time Trap” (11/24/73) – Investigating ship disappearances leads
the crew to be attacked by Klingons and sucked into a spacetime vortex with one
of the enemy ships.
“The Ambergris Element” (12/1/73) – Argo’s inhabitants turn Kirk and
Spock into water breathers, leaving them needing to capture a snake in order to
revert back.
“The Slaver Weapon” (12/15/73) – The Kzinti attack the shuttlecraft
transporting a stasis box to Starbase 25.
“The Eye of the Beholder” (1/5/74) – The crew investigates the
disappearance of a scientific team near Lactra VII.
“The Jihad” (1/12/74) – The crew has to prevent a holy war by
investigating the theft of a religious artifact.
Season 2:
“The Pirates of Orion” (9/7/74) – The crew must encounter pirates for
the cure to Spock’s illness.
“Bem” (9/14/74) – The crew is taken captive by natives to a
newly-discovered planet.
“The Practical Joker” (9/21/74) – The ship’s computer plays practical
jokes on the crew, which gradually become more dangerous.
“Albatross” (9/28/74) – Bones is arrested for causing the plague that
ravaged planet Dramia.
“How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth” (10/5/74) – The crew has to solve
a puzzle or be destroyed.
“The Counter-Clock Incident” (10/12/74) – The ship is pulled into a
universe where time runs backwards.
The American version of the cereal featured sweetened
oat rings intermixed with marshmallows. The marshmallow shapes were similar to General Mills’ previous Episode II cereal effort which also
included lightsabers
(exchanging a yellow energy blade for the previous blue), R2-D2 and Yoda. New for this edition
were the shapes of Darth
Vader and C-3PO. The
Mexican version of the cereal, however, featured only sweetened corn balls
mixed with chocolate TIE
fighter pieces. It was offered in 780 and 390 gram boxes and 30 gram
bags.
The November-release box advertising the DVD.
With both versions of the boxes featured a choice of
Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen)
or Yoda on the face, the American version initially left the Episode III subtitle off of the cereal
name everywhere but on the backs of the boxes along with a game. It wouldn’t be
until November when the box was redesigned with a new Darth Vader pose to
promote the DVD
release of the movie that it would gain the Episode III titling, as well as a new game on the back. The Mexican
version had a set of 24 collectible
trading cards that could be cut out, with Vader and Yoda’s box each having
a different batch of 12.
When Michael Chase Walker
became the Director of Children’s Programs at CBS,
he wanted to create a Saturday morning line-up that would resemble an
old-fashioned Saturday movie matinee. He had horror with Teen Wolf, comedy with Pee-Wee’s
Playhouse, and a western with Wildfire.
To fill the science-fiction requirement, Walker turned to Tokyo Movie Shinsha’s creative
director Syd Iwanter.
CBS Saturday morning promo for the 1986-87 season.
Iwanter was
developing a show concept called High
School 2525, which would have taken place in a school in the future. He
hired John Kricfalusi to draw a
one sheet pitch featuring the main characters, and Kricfalusi served as the
character designer for the resulting show. Walker, interested in the idea,
bought the show. However, he changed the setting from the future to space, the
name to Galaxy High School, and
convinced then-up-and-coming screenwriter Chris Columbus to develop it
further and attach his name to it for an additional push.
Doyle and Aimee.
The show became about two Earth teens in the 21st Century,
Doyle Cleverlobe (Hal Rayle) and Aimee Brightower (Susan Blu), who were
selected to be the first human attendees of the intergalactic Galaxy High on
the asteroid Flutor as part of a grand experiment to bring various species
together. On Earth, Doyle was a terrific athlete and very popular as a result,
while Aimee was a bookworm and a good student and largely ignored. But, once
they got to Galaxy High, their roles became reversed as the student body valued
brains over athleticism. Aimee became popular and quickly made friends, was
given a full scholarship and a new space car. Doyle was much maligned by his
classmates, given a hard time by a temperamental sentient locker (Henry
Gibson), forced to take a crummy job at Luigi’s Lunar Pizza Parlor to pay for
his tuition, and was given a crappy scooter. In fact, Doyle’s inability to fit
in and his failed attempts at trying became the central focus of the series.
The show adapted common human conflicts with a space twist, as well as made use
of space-themed puns in names like many other similar programs.
The students of Galaxy High were an eclectic collection of various beings
of all shapes, sizes and numbered appendages. The class president and official
greeter, as well as one of Doyle’s only friends, was Milo de Venus (after the Venus
de Milo, voiced by David L. Lander), who resembled a chubby human nerd-type
except for the fact he had six arms; Gilda Gossip (Nancy Cartwright) lived up
to her name, especially with the four extra mouths on the extensions protruding
from her head; Booey Bubblehead (Jennifer Darling) was a girl with a bubble for
a head and an extremely absent-minded disposition to match; Wendy Garbo (also
Darling), the school flirt who could literally turn green with envy (especially
when it came to Aimee) and had a living fur stole around her neck; the Creep
(Danny Mann), a flying yellow ball of fluff with a voice like Frank Sinatra and a massive crush on Aimee; “Flat”
Freddy Fender (Cartwright), a 2-dimensional boy; Beef Bonk (John Stephenson)
resembled a humanoid rooster, was the school bully, leader of the Bonk Bunch,
and made a special project out of tormenting Doyle due to his hatred of
Earthlings (as proclaimed by his shirt); Rotten Roland (Neil Ross) was one of
Beef’s cronies who resembled the thing he loved the most: rotten eggs; and Earl
Eccchhh (Guy Christopher), a slimy green blob with a bad temper that often
hitched a ride with Earl.
Icenstein, McBrain, Katrina and Frogface.
The teachers were also a varied bunch. Ms. Biddy McBrain (Pat Carroll)
was the school’s principal and English teacher whose head resembled a brain with
large funnel-like ears and a nose;
Professor Icenstein (named after Victor Frankenstein,
voiced by Howard Morris) was a science teacher made completely of ice; Coach
Ferdy Frogface (Pat Fraley) was the boys’ coach for zuggleball (similar to hockey
with a living puck), psyche hockey (hockey with psychically-controlled robots)
and rocketball (basketball with jetpacks), and resembled a frog (complete with
a diet of flies); the girls’ coach for outeraerobics and wateraerobics was Coach
Katrina (Carroll), a centaur with a Mohawk; and the school’s janitor was Sludge
(Fraley), who resembled a pink puppy but could change into a giant, muscular
dog-monster.
Hot-rodding with Beef.
The school was a mixture of the familiar with some high-tech space-age
technology. Residents could communicate through Vidiphones, which displayed a
picture of the person being spoken to. There were sentient blackboards and
computerized lockers (all Gibson) designed to help students through their day
(although Doyle’s, having been there since the school opened, had a bit of a
foul temperament and often took it out on Doyle). Even the gymnasium building,
named Jim (Stephenson), had sentience and the ability to change locations. As a
means of travel around the building and to the other surroundings, asteroids the
students used large pneumatic tubes called wooshers.
A trailer for Galaxy High School was premiered at Boston’s Creation Con a few months before
the series debuted on September 13, 1986 on CBS. It was placed between Muppet Babiesand Teen
Wolfat 10 A.M.
Don Felder from the Eagles composed the music for the series,
including its theme song. The theme outlined the premise of the series for
viewers along with some original animation. However, an alternate
instrumental-only version of the intro was created utilizing purely clips from
various episodes. Unlike most shows, the story title and credits were displayed
on a title card at the end of the intro as the music played out with the series
title being chanted, rather than cutting to a shot of a title card. Morris, as
well as being one of the actors on the show, served as the series’ voice
director. It was written by Larry DiTillio,
Ken Koonce, David Weimers, Chris Weber, Karen Wilson, Jina Bacarr, Eric Lewald and Marc Scott Zicree. The episode
“The Brain Blaster” was nominated for a Humanitas
Award in 1987 for its anti-drug message, although it lost out to The Smurfs.
Creep tries to woo Aimee.
Halfway through the season, CBS moved the show to the later 11:30
timeslot between Teen Wolf and CBS
Storybreakin order to give PPee-wee’s
Playhouseits original slot. As
a result, the series began to be preempted by sporting events or other
broadcasting obligations by CBS. This made it difficult for the series to gain
a significant or consistent audience and it was ultimately cancelled. Had it gone on, the budding relationship
between Doyle and Aimee would have been further explored. The series was rerun
in 1988 on CBS, and sporadically from 1994-96 on the Sci-Fi Channel where two minutes of each episode
were edited out to make room for more commercials.
Galaxy High School, the book.
In 1987, Bantam-Skylark Books (now Random House) released a novelized
adaptation of six episodes by Ann Hodgman. In
1989, Family
Home Entertainment released a VHS with the first
three episodes and “Beach Blanket Blow-Up.” In the United Kingdom, Channel 5 Video Distribution
produced two VHS
collections featuring the first four episodes between them. In 2006, Media Blasters released the complete
series across two volumes through their Anime Works division. The box art for Volume
1 featured some early character concept work by Kricfalusi, resulting in
their appearing slightly different than they did on the show. The episodes
“Pizza Honor” and “The Beef Who Would Be King” were also swapped. In 2008, both
volumes were re-released
packaged together in a new cardboard sleeve. The series was made available for
streaming through Amazon Video
and Crunchyroll, and later on The
Roku Channel and Amazon’s Freevee.
Booey laments her cancellation.
Despite the show’s short life, it has developed a cult following among
loyal fans; some of which are employed by Cereal
Geek magazine and have made frequent references to the series. In 1996,
Walker optioned the rights to a film version of the series to John H. Williams of Vanguard Films, with Columbus attached to
help develop. Deals were made with both DreamWorks
and Paramount Pictures, but ultimately
the project had fallen into limbo.
EPISODE GUIDE:
“Welcome to Galaxy High” (9/13/86) – Aimee and Doyle arrive at the
school and find their previous roles reversed as Aimee is popular and Doyle is
picked on.
“Pizza’s Honor” (9/20/86) – Doyle has to make a delivery to a
supposedly haunted planet, and Beef and his crew follow him in order to give
him a fright.
“The Beef Who Would Be King” (9/27/86) – Doyle loses out the chance to
be king of the planet Cholesterol to Beef, but Doyle has to rescue him when he
learns they eat their king.
“Where’s Milo?” (10/4/86) – When Milo loses his friends and job, he
ends up signing a contract to unknowingly become a living mannequin for a
store.
“Those Eyes, Those Lips” (10/11/86) – Mick Magger is coming to perform
at the school, but tickets are sold out before Booey can get in and a pizza
monster kidnaps Wendy.
“Doyle’s New Friend” (10/18/86) – Beef is determined to become king of
the dance and uses new recruit Wolfgang to switch the ballot boxes in his
favor.
“Dollars and Sense” (10/25/86) – Aimee begins dating uber-rich
Reginald Unicycle, whom her friends believe has the ability and plans to
transform her into a golden statute.
“Beach Blanket Blow-Up” (11/1/86) – Doyle ends up missing the beach
party trip due to having to make up an assignment, and ends up learning that
sun is going to go supernova.
“The Brain Blaster” (11/8/86) – In order to succeed at psyche hockey
and pass his classes, Doyle becomes addicted to a mind-enhancing Brain Blaster.
“The Brat Pack” (11/15/86) – Beef ends up in trouble and has to teach
elementary school kids, whom he decides to take on an unapproved field trip to
an amusement park.
“Founder’s Day” (11/22/86) – Accidentally activating a time machine
sends some of the kids back to the days of the founding of the school.
“Martian Mumps” (11/29/86) – A new Martian exchange student brings the
Martian Mumps, which drains everyone’s personalities and makes them only care
about rules.
“It Came From Earth” (12/6/86) – Trying to win the big game on his own
ends up getting Doyle knocked out and waking up 15 years later—on Earth.
