"I could tell from the way the ongoing story and the characters' back history was outlines that Captain Power was going to be much more ambitious and mature than your normal Saturday morning cartoon show. I mean, they brought Captain Power's former lover back on one show and for my money, they made it very plain what their relationship had been."
- Captain Power lead actor Tim Dunigan discusses the 1987 series, from an interview with March Shapiro in Starlog Magazine (#121).
I was astounded to read a few years ago that "Captain Power" was so well regarded on hindsight by genre fans.
ReplyDeleteThe show originally aired during my senior year of high school. So I was too old for the toys. Nonetheless, my best friend of many years bought me the Captain Power space ship that could shoot at the TV as a 'joke' birthday gift. As a result, I watched the first half dozen or so of the episodes of the TV show, despite being a little 'too old' for it, I thought.
That interactive function of the toy spaceship more-or-less didn't work. And while the dystopian, post-apocalyptic background of the show intrigued me a little, none of the characters or plots really grabbed me, and I thought it was really jarring when the show transitioned repeatedly during each episode between the live action actors and then to this really rudimentary ( by modern standards) computer animation.
When I read a few years ago that the show had achieved 'cult favorite' status, I re-watched the first 8 or 10 episodes on You Tube. But for me personally, that only confirmed the ambivalent impressions I'd formed as a teenager.
I also remember thinking at the time that Captain Power shared a lot of similarities with the contemporaneous "Centurions" cartoon (presumably by sheer coincidence).