30 Days of Telly Meme - Days 12 & 13

[thisbluespirit]

And I'm still catching up.

Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times:

Well, if I like things, I do tend to rewatch them a scary amount. However, if I think about one episode of something in proportion to how much I've watched the rest of the series, then Buffy's musical episode 'Once More With Feeling' probably wins. I don't think that needs any explaining, does it?

Day 13 - Favorite childhood show:

Oh, my, this is going to be a long post. Both for honorable mentions and for the extent of the love I still have for the show in question and the rambling reminiscences it brings in its wake. (No, it’s not Doctor Who. When I was small I was too busy sticking my head under a cushion and begging my parents to turn it off because of the scary music, so I missed that.) I have pics and vids, though.

Firstly, pre-school shows. It’s a bit hard to be clear, but I remember hating Rainbow, but loving Mr Ben. (So my favourite pre-school show was about an ordinary man who walks into a small changing room and steps out into new worlds, and adventures in space and time. Not that I’m at all consistent, or anything…) I also liked Bric-a-Brac (this had Clive Dunn, and was about a scatty old inventor type who owned a bric-a-brac shop. Hmm. Again…) and Let’s Pretend (although it could be dull) where they started with an object and built a story around it. (I’m a bit unclear on that one, but I think that was how it went.) I did like Camberwick Green but I can’t count that due to my childhood trauma at the suspense of fearing that Windy Miller would get his head chopped off every time he went in the door. It never did happen, but I was sure it would one day. This clip is from an advert, but you see what I mean. It’s an accident waiting to happen.)

And then there are lots of other things. Press Gang came too late – it was very definitely a teen show, and I came late to the party. I watched a scary, scary amount of cartoons. I think it was the decade for it or something. The Mysterious Cities of Gold was almost my life for a year, and I was very upset at missing the last Ulysses31 not once but twice. I also liked daft stuff like Rentaghost and Galloping Galaxies, some creepy show called The Gemini Factor on ITV and lots I’ve probably forgotten, but one show was definitely my childhood love, and also a teenage obsession when they repeated it: the cartoon Dungeons & Dragons. (It was about six (mostly) teenagers who went on a D&D ride at a fair and wound up in the Realm, trying to get home, being helped (probably) by Dungeon Master and hindered by Venger, who was after the magical weapons that DM had given them. The Intro pretty much sums things up.)

Edit: Look! Philip Schofields sings along to Cities of Gold theme This actually is my childhood, right here. The broom cupboard and Cities of Gold... :lol:

It seemed to collect a group of writers who were fed up with writing The Get-Along-Gang and used this to do something interesting, especially character-wise. Almost ever since what I look for in books and TV is something like I got in this – that mix of proper characterisation, with humour, action and danger, and I adored the fantasy element. I only watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer initially because it reminded me of this. (Yes, I’m strange). Obviously, that show is a lot more sophisticated, but it’s that same sort of mix. It’s quite scary, either how much it chimed with me, or how much it’s influenced me ever since.

Plus, between the two occasions BBC ran this show, I watched He-Man, Thundercats, She-Ra, and many, many others, and got annoyed by a) one boring hero doing everything (while his/her friends were so useless they couldn’t even spot the not so secret identity. I like to think He-Man’s friends were humouring him, because, really…) b) the moralising. It was obvious in some, and He-Man and She-Ra even used to pop up at the end and explain the moral. *bangs head* (Sorry, more childhood trauma). I’d even given up on Thundercatsbecause Liono had come of age and now no one else could do anything… yawn yawn yawn. (It had the best solution to the cartoon bad guy problem, tho’, in that Mumm-Ra did nothing most weeks, so when he got up… Eek. Good thinking. Nice backstory stuffs, too.)

And then they repeated Dungeons & Dragons when my little sister was the right age to love it, and I rewatched it, and was obsessed by the hints they dropped about what might really be going on. (It was one of those shows that never finished, and there were theories that the kids were actually dead and in hell or something…) Besides, you’ve got to admire a cartoon that tackles the issue of the heroes beating the bad guy and then letting him get away with an episode in which they decide to kill the villain. (”We ought to get rid of Venger!” Clip in which Hank takes up Eric’s suggestion in a way that Eric really didn’t mean… (It comes to the same conclusion, but it’s done properly, not shoved in as a throwaway excuse for having another fight next week.)

So, when it came out on DVD, I bought it, and watched it anxiously, and while the inital run is fun, but cartoon-y, pretty much all the later eps really were as I remembered. And finally watching it in order was interesting – it was impressive how consistent the character development was – there were even quiet story arcs.

It has lots of the usual cartoon limitations (and some blatant Star Wars *cough* homages in places) – but compared to the other shows, many of which were great in their different ways, this was the one that caught my imagination, and I can’t think of any other cartoon that pulled off this mix so well. I can think of others which had ‘emotional’ aspects, but not combined with the fun and action, and episodes like The Girl Who Dreamed Tomorrow, The Dragon’s Graveyard, Citadel of Shadow, The Last Illusion and Child of the Stargazer remain examples of how good a children’s cartoon can be when thinks around the restrictions of its format. And Eric is probably one of the best cartoon characters there’s ever been, and, what’s more, there was a five-headed dragon called Tiamat, and Presto finally getting the girl must be one of the cutest things ever seen in the genre. (I’m completely biased, but that’s how it is with childhood things.)

YouTube vids:
Hearts & Flowers
My New Drug
Trailer for The Dragon’s Graveyard Teaser
Oh, and YouTube also has the 'lost' second intro. (It's not only 60s Who TV companies can't keep track of - apparently this version of the opening no onger exists on any mastercopy anywhere!)

Oh, yes, pics:

Everybody, minus Eric. (I took these screen shots for something else, and I don’t have everyone all together, or, sadly, Venger.)


Also, gotta love Diana for exchanges like this:
Eric: “We’re outnumbered twenty to one!”
Diana: “Okay – you take two, I’ll take eighteen!” (and best of all, her sly girl’s jibe at Eric – “Ignore him, Sheila – he’s just having one of his days.”)


And Hank/Sheila is completely canon. Honestly… (My DVDs came with the show’s ‘bible’ and it states that their friendship is very close but just platonic, except that Hank was about to ask her out before they wound up trapped in the Realm… so… um… actually not platonic at all, then? :lol:)


“But, Dungeon Master, it was another riddle. How were we supposed to know that was what you meant?”


“Do you think anyone saw us?”


Obviously, animation is luck of the draw, but there were some nice bits quite frequently – I like the full screen on Sheila waking up here, for instance.


Days of Telly Meme:
Day 01 - A show that should never have been cancelled: Blake's 7
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching: Spooks
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season): The West Wing
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever: Doctor Who
Day 05 - A show you hate: Big Brother/ Who Wants to be a millionaire?
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show: Robots of Death / Ghostlight
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show: 42.
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch: Life on Mars
Day 09 - Best scene ever: DW - Ghostlight "I can't stand burnt toast."
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving: Star Trek Voyager
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you: Heroes
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times: BtVS 'Once More With Feeling'
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show: Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series: BBC North & South
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death

Comments

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I missed D&D, but I totally agree with you about both Mr Ben and Rentaghost!

Also, I note you didn't stick to the "doing the meme out of order" rebellion for long!

[thisbluespirit]

Heh. There were a lot of fun TV shows. And D&D was only on for a short time. It was very hard to catch in the UK.

Oh, I'm only doing it out of order when it suits me, and the days I'm on now work well to be posting over the weekend. But I am swapping the last one for one of the others, come what may. Saddest death is no way to end a meme!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I almost did Day 30 today, but I chickened out at the last minute and went for Day 1 instead.

[pitry.livejournal.com]

D & D! I haven't seen it in literally years.

As for Thundercats, I don't know, I rewatched a couple of episodes several years ago and it was still fun. When WASN'T fun was Captain Planet. You think the moralising in He-Man and She-Ra was bad....



(This is painful for oh so many reasons).

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, my goodness! We had a Captain Planet computer game, which was fun, but I never knew until recently there was a show it came from. Either I was too old, or it somehow flew right past me. Erm. Thankfully, by the looks of things. That really is painful.

Oh, I wasn't having a go at Thundercats. If I had the chance to see an ep, I'd be curious. I just remember that it got to a point where it seemed keener on trying to make Liono into a bigger hero than all the good things it had going for it. Plus, D&D got me at a younger age, on so many levels.

And, ahahaha, another of my flist has knows what D&D is!! :-)

[john_amend_all]

(So my favourite pre-school show was about an ordinary man who walks into a small changing room and steps out into new worlds, and adventures in space and time. Not that I’m at all consistent, or anything…)

It's one of those things, isn't it? I remember, at the age of 5 or 6, loving Maths-in-a-Box, about a strange man who travels in a magic box and has two human children for companions. And this was long before I'd so much as heard of the Doctor...

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. I'm trying to understand what I saw in it when I was a kid, but nothing comes to mind. You should be thankful you missed it!

Thundercats - I remember they definitely lost the plot somewhere. My memory insists they all moved to a different planet at some point, and adult me goes "HUH?!" And of COURSE I know D&D! It's my childhood, even without being a role-player! :D

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, but I have trouble remembering that I need to explain that I'm not talking about the film, or the role-playing game, because it never occurs to me that D&D could refer to anything other than the 1980s cartoon. *ahem*

Well, I really wouldn't like to risk watching most of the cartoons I was addicted to at the time, either. The game was good. I could actually get to other levels on it, which was unheard of for me.

[thisbluespirit]

Wow, I've never even heard of that one. And those sorts of things usually stayed around for ages, but that rings no bells at all. If it were Words and Pictures and Look and Read, now... Look and Read was brilliant! Badger girl, the fairground one and that freaky Mr Magus is Watching You. I think that prepared me nicely for the McCoy era. I should have added in educational programmes here, clearly. :-)

[thisbluespirit]

So I saw. Cruel TV chiefs and their bad habit of cancelling things...

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

That's the trouble with liking quirky shows!

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

OMG, "Once More with Feeling" is brilliant, isn't it? I'm only a moderate Buffy fan -- the violence tends to turn me off, although I appreciate the wit and the characters -- but that's on my list of favorite TV episodes.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

OMG...OMG!!! I, I can't tell you how much this post has reminded me of...

Thunder, thunder, thunder, thundercats!!! "Ancient spirits of evil...transform this decayed form...into Mumm-Ra, the Ever Living!!!" My God, but that was terrifying to my however-old-I-was-then self!

"By the power of Grayskull...I have the Power!!!!"

And lest we forget:

"Naaahh...nah-nah-nah-naaahhh...nah-nah-nah-naaahhh...Cities of Gold..." Which was one of those weirdo multi-multi-episode Euro-cartoons that if you missed it for just one week...would make absolutely no sense whatsoever when you picked it up again, so complex and densely-plotted was it. I can't honestly say I loved it more than Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, or Around the World with Willy Fogg, but it was definitely in the same ballpark. Is it available on DVD??!!

As for Venger, quite possibly the most terrifying baddie ever to be clad in a floor-length skirt. And didn't it turn out that he was Dungeon Master's SON or something??!!

As for Mr Benn...yes, his Doctor-like qualities were noticeable (and he used to dress like Harry Sullivan in "Robot"), but that fancy dress shop owner was totally Satan, or the Black Guardian, or something...

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I think that Words and Pictures was, at once point in the 90s when I was much too old to be watching it, presented by Sophie Aldred. Before she opted for the by-all-accounts-much-more-lucrative career path of doing advert voiceovers.

[pedanther]

Yes, Mysterious Cities of Gold came out on DVD quite recently. My brother ordered his copy so fast I could hear the sonic boom. (I haven't ordered a copy myself, yet. I'm kind of worried that it won't be as awesome as it was when I was little.)

I don't believe that Venger's parentage was ever confirmed in the series itself, although there's a persistent rumour that it was going to be revealed in the series finale if the series hadn't been cancelled. (And the writers don't try to squish it when it pops up, the way they do with the other persistent series-finale-revelation rumour.)

[pedanther]

Oh, I used to love Mysterious Cities of Gold.

(Heh. I remember looking out a window, daydreaming about the Golden Condor flying overhead and wondering if the characters would like me if I somehow got to meet them; I thought there might be problems because of the whole white-men-oppressing-the-native-populations thing. Then I thought I'd maybe be all right, because strictly speaking I'm not actually *white*, more kind of pale brown...)


You can count me as another person who knows about Dungeons and Dragons -- I've never seen it (not even sure it aired here), but I know about it.

[thisbluespirit]

I know she did Corners, and there was something later I never saw, but I don't think she ever did Words & Pictures. I'd have to go check. Did Words and Pictures have a presenter? I vaguely remember Crow and Alice and other things, but not that. It was a looong time ago! :lol:

And she reads audiobooks, too, you know.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, I know. Some of the YouTube vids led me to clips of other things & I got all excited about the broom cupboard clip, because obviously nobody repeats links anywhere... :lol:

I realise I sounded negative about the other cartoons - but really, I loved so many of them at the time, I worry about myself. I'm not going to make a list. Oh, but I watched Dogtanian a lot, but it wasn't anything like Cities of Gold. I can't think of anything else that went on so long as just one story that was so complex. And there was that guy Mendosa who kept reappearing after being killed. And, yes, I've seen it on DVD in HMV. I wouldn't dare though. I'd caught a couple of D&D eps since being grown up & knew it wouldn't destroy my childhood illusions by purchasing the DVDs.

And, yes, Venger was meant to be DM's son. (He hints in an earlier episode that people make mistakes and 'Venger was mine'. And in The Dragon's Graveyard, he says 'my son' when talking to him.) The final episode (or actually, the season finale - by all accounts they wanted to redeem Venger, have the kids decide not to go home, and stop relying on their weapons and still carry on with the series! I can't imagine any other cartoon of the time even contemplating that sort of thing?) had got as far as a working script and the writer Michael Reaves (who wrote the majority of the stand-out episodes) put it online several years ago. It's typical D&D, basically, and not hard to imagine. It's here if you wanted to take a look.

And, given that we also meet Venger's sister - and, presumably, DM's daughter - in another episode, I can't help but think that was one seriously screwed up family. And whether or not the mother is the dwarf magician lady stuck in a box in an earlier episode, and, if so, where Karina and Venger got their height from. Although, whatever happened to Venger, the implication is that he took the wrong turning for good reasons, as happens to Hank a couple of times. There's a few times when parallels are drawn between the two. (If Karina's anything to go by, they probably even look a bit alike, when Venger's not all fanged.) It's those sort of things that are interesting - I can see why I loved it so much back then. (And also, the first couple of episodes where the villain is Venger in disguise, like Scooby Doo with no surprises - it's a good thing they realised that wasn't going to work for long! :lol:)

If I'm sounding scary, forgive me. My first fanfic was a D&D serial I scribbled in my diary in 1991 (I know this because, well, it was a diary!) and when they repeated the episode The Traitor when I was a teenager, I went upstairs and wrote out the script from memory, because I didn't think I'd ever get to watch it again. Sighting a lost cartoon in those pre-DVD days was like gold-dust, worse by far than trying to get your hands on DW. :lol:

My sister would agree on Venger being the scariest. I vote for Mumm-ra, because he was seriously creepy.

I did like He-Man, I was just old enough by then (and too imaginative??) to start getting frustrated by the format. And, unforgivably, just because I wanted a Skeletor action figure that came with a dragon that was also a water pistol, my parents thought this meant I would like a He-Man lunch box. It took many, many playtimes for me and my best friend to scratch the picture off it and until then, oh, the shame, and childhood scarring of a ten year old girl with a yellow and red He-Man lunch box. :-(

[thisbluespirit]

It was quite something, wasn't it? I remember my friend went into hospital and I was under instructions to write to her and tell her what happened in Cities of Gold.

Okay, although having seen it, is better. ;-D You are remarkably well-informed about Requiem and things, if that's the case, though! Believe me, I don't even know how Ulysses 31 ended, and I watched that. In fact, I can't remember what on earth happened at the end of Cities of Gold. I have a feeling that wasn't really the point of the thing.

"With golden condor in flight... la la la!" :-)

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, I have to say I rarely find Buffy-violence a bit much, squeamish though I am generally, but it is a really great piece of work. I was going to link to clips, but someone's had a thorough clean-out of actual clips from it on YouTube. I'll just have to watch the video again...

:-)

[thisbluespirit]

Wait... the shopkeeper was a magician! Satan???!!!

:lol:

I suppose, to be fair, I was terrified of Windy Miller's windmill, so what can I say? (MILLER GETS HEAD SLICED OFF IN CAMBERWICK GREEN!)

[pitry.livejournal.com]

The Mysterious Cities of Gold! I loved it! I need to rewatch it to realise how awful it really was and stop going all "WHEEEEEE!".

Also, I was sure as a kid it was in Spanish because it was dealing with South America. And then I was re-exposed to the theme song and realised it's in FRENCH. That was a shocker.

[john_amend_all]

Oddly, I have no memories at all of watching Look and Read at the age I would expect to have been watching it. But I know much more than I should about the 1989 serial Through the Dragon's Eye, because my mother was an infant teacher and needed it video-recorded.

[pedanther]

I am remarkably well-informed about D&D generally, for someone who's never seen it -- it comes of hanging around interesting people on the internet. :)

(And come to think of it, I think I've read that preface page before, although I know I never got around to reading the script itself.)

It may have been that I saw it on Mark Evanier's blog; Mark was another of the writers who worked on D&D (and also, since you mentioned The Get-Along Gang in the OP, once wrote a savage parody of The Get-Along Gang in which the moral of every episode was "If you ever disagree with the crowd, an anvil will fall out of the sky and hit you on the head".)

[thisbluespirit]

It's a funny thing, but I also watched that, because I was home ill and there wasn't much else worth watching on daytime TV, so I saw most of that, too, despite being a bit old for it. :-)

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, yes, Mark Evanier wrote the pilot and then went off. I think he was responsible for a lot of the setting up, though. He helped write the show's 'bible' (and there were some bizarre things in that - which are actually noticeable in the pilot). The others who came along and developed it seemed to be mainly Jeffrey Scott, Michael Reaves, and Kathy Lawrence.

Interesting people are into D&D? Heh, well, obviously... :-D

[thisbluespirit]

But you could buy it and find it was great, and then you'd be still obsessed with a 1980s cartoon and have people look at you strangely, just like me with D&D... :lol:

I know - it seems to have been a French/Japanese thing, which does boggle the mind a bit!