Tim TeeVee: Starblazers

When I was (much younger), my parents did their best to encourage my brother and me to read. And it worked, to an extent. I was a voracious reader from the age that I learned how (thanks, Bro) to the point in my postgraduate studies where it seemed like all I ever did do was read, and none of it for fun. However much I enjoyed reading, though, I love television more. Given the choice of reading Encyclopedia Brown or watching the Muppet Show, I'd pick the Muppet Show every time. It got to the point that when my parents felt the need to punish me - they didn't prevent me from going outside, they encouraged it by putting me on 'Restriction'. In other words, I could ONLY watch so much TV a day, and it was up to me to choose how I spent that precious time with my ever-faithful best friend. I remember being so desperate to watch TV that I used to just listen to the TV through the air-conditioning vents in our house (that is, when my brother and I weren't filling them up with baby talc or Old Spice to make our rooms smell 'nice'). It was no great surprise, then, when my parents took to calling me Tim TeeVee, and began to employ what can only be called 'fear mongering' tactics and outright guerilla warfare to lure me away from the box. And that was BEFORE we got HBO, and that was before HBO starting putting PINs on their boxes so media-starved little nerdlings like me could see stuff we really weren't meant to be seeing. But that fact, and my adolescent relationship with Darryl Hannah, is probably stuff for another post, if not another blog altogether.

It was also before Japanese anime was anywhere near as mainstream in the West as it is now. There were no little Pokemon to be gotten, no Dragonballs to be found; even the Transformers were only in their infantile state as the still insanely awesome and kick-ass Shogun Warriors. Even if Japanese animation was popular, I wouldn't have known it - as  8-year old, the only thing that mattered to me was that whatever was on the screen could take me places I didn't think books could - and my favourite pre-teen cartoon, 'Starblazers' certainly filled that bill.

The original series was released in the US in 1979. It told the story of a group of soldiers (probably rag-tag... aren't they all?) who have to race from Earth to a far-off planet to retrieve a weapon to help them defeat an alien force that has all but destroyed their home world. The catch? They only have a year to get there and back before Earth is totally wasted. Every episode began with 'Previously, on Star Blazers...' and ended with 'Only xx days left before the Gamilons  destroy Earth! Will (xx get out of dilemma xx) in time? Tune in next time...' Classic serialisation at its cliffhanging best. But why write a synopsis when the theme song tells you everything you need to know...?

Man, just hearing that again gets my juices flowing. The show created timeless characters like the cheeky 'Dash' Jordan, swashbuckling Derek Wildstar, plucky heroine Nova and, of course, the ever-present (until he dies), ever-wise Captain Avatar (we didn't even know what an avatar was back then!) and pitted them against the evil Gamilons and Comet Empire (season 2) , each hell-bent on Earth's destruction. Yeah, looking back, the animation isn't amazing - but that's more a factor of the media it was written to than the style or skill of the animators. It's so clearly beyond the scope of the Dragonball and Pokemon that it frustrates me to know that Starblazers is relatively unknown thanks to the mass appeal of its inferior posterity.

Recently, I've been made aware of a live-action reboot into a feature film, and I am at once excited and scared. Will it recapture or ruin the magic of my single-digit days...? Will Nova still make me go to bed at night dreaming of the stars? And most importantly, will the sound of Boomer's voice uttering his immortal command to 'Fire the wave motion gun' still send shivers down my earth-bound spine? Man, I hope so. If not, I'll have to begin a year-long quest to uncover some original series on DVD before it's too late...