Lessons Learned from Thundercats

[Ajax]

Over the past couple months I have been indulging in some nostalgia and broke out the Thundercats Season 1 DVD Boxsets. Yes boxsets. Season 1 was 65 episodes. Upon learning this I cursed at the heavens, not cause the season was long, but because current cartoons are ripping us off. Spectacular Spider-man after two seasons only has 22(?) episodes. At this rate it will take six seasons just to roughly equal that of one season of Thundercats. That is sad.

BTW spoilers abound and I'm not so much complaining here as amused. I love Thundercats too much to hold any of this against it

Now to the meat of the actual cartoon. First of all, when Lion-o gets out of his stasis pod, how the heck is he buff? I can understand the aging thing, heck that is freaking clever and adds a dimension to the show (forcing Lion-O to have to grow up faster than he normally would have etc etc), but he comes out like he was weight lifting for five years.

Mumm-Ra wants to be a woman. Thus far whenever he turns into something to trick the Thundercats, it has been into a female. A fairy, a female plant, a witch, and so on and so forth. He has yet to turn into anything else, save for a bug in his first appearance. This obviously has some sort of deep meaning that I can't quite place.

There was an anti-drug episode. It was the one where Tygra gets addicted to magic fruit offered to him by the female plant (Mumm-Ra in disguise). The episode progresses with his addiction getting worse to the point where he lets down his team mates, which ultimately serves as the catalyst for him overcoming his addiction. Lesson: Drugs are bad mmmkay.

Smex 101: An episode involving Mumm-ra summoning a woman from another dimension (Toshi I believe), who had a power called "Doom Gaze". Essentially it gave her control over men. When Lion-O confronted her, all he could do was go "She is so pretty". She tried to use her power on Cheetara and was shocked when it didn't work. To which Cheetara responded "I'm a woman, your powers have no effect on me". Lesson: Female wiles are the most powerful force in the world. Not even the Eye of Thundara can match it

Science: This has been the best part of the series mostly because alot of the science is laughable. Selective Gravity for instance. I've gotten to the episodes where they have traveled through space. One scene had Lion-O jumping from his spaceship down to another one as if there was gravity. And lo and behold he fell downward and even implied to Snarf if he missed the ship he would have continued to fall down into infinity. Yet in the same episode, they jumped out of an exploding space ship only to float weightlessly until they were picked up by Cheetara in the Feliner.

Air in Space: There is air in space, everybody can breath unaided. No spacesuits, nothing. Just good ole ever present O2.

Thunder Tank only works right side up. One episode had Panthro admitting to Lion-o that nothing on the Thunder Tank even the most basic of electronic equipment, (Radio waves only respond to right side up receivers I guess) works when the tank is upside down. A flaw he is going to correct.

There is probably more I'm missing, but meh. Oh and also. Was I the only one who didn't know this was animated in Japan? I mean watching it again it's obvious especially the way they draw the eyes. Oh wells, here is hoping the new Thundercats movie they are making is a reality and not just some random post on imdb. THUNDERCAT'S HO!

Edit:

Everything shoots lasers. Everything! Tygra once pointed his whip, and it shot a laser. The mutants pointed weapons they called "stone age weaponry" and they shot lasers. Even cheetara's staff shoots lasers.

The Sword of Thundara can do anything and everything. It can fly, reverse gravity, shoot lasers, make shields, make bridges, and clean your toilet.

[Talavar]

A Thundercats movie existing is a good thing?  Huh.

I also dispute fewer episodes of a show being a bad thing.  10 episodes of a great show is better than a thousand episodes of a terrible show, and any show compelled to create an extremely high number of episodes will reduce the quality of those episodes due to rushing, filler, overuse of ideas, etc. 

[Ajax]

I will admit that 65 is a bit too much for a single season, but 11 is too little (Spectacular Spiderman). The sweet spot for where a series should be is around 20. I like Spectacular Spiderman but it feels like they are jipping us with these short seasons.

Thundercats movie can be a great thing if it's animated. Though I doubt it will ever see the light of day since for a movie that is going to be coming out next year there is very little (no) information on it other than that it supposedly exists. Oh wells. Here's hoping it also launches a new cartoon show. *fingers crossed*

[detourne_me]

Actually Spider-man has 13. but has broadcast 2 seasons so far.
If you think about it, most TV shows have episodes in multiples, or in relation to 13.
Think of Thundercats,  65 episodes means you can have episodes on 5 days a week for thirteen straight weeks.
Thirteen weeks of shows is just over three months usually stretched out to four with sports and other special programming. really, in terms of animation that gives them about 8 months to do the writing and production for a season, usually two. but in broadcast it's two seasons and the summer for reruns.

When you think about the quality gap between Thundercats and Spectacular Spider-man, are you really surprised that there are only 13 episodes a season of spider-man?

The original season of Transformers was only 13 episodes too (after the 3 part pilot)

[Talavar]

Or take Wolverine & the X-men - they made 26 episodes for their first season, but at least half of those episodes are inferior to every episode of Spectacular Spider-man.

Justice League Unlimited ran three 13 episode seasons (despite what the DVD sets claim), while Justice League ran two 26 episode seasons (though mostly 2-parters that are essentially 1 forty minute episode).

[Glitch Girl]

Ajax, this is frickin'  hillarious.  Especially the part about Mumm-Ra.  Maybe sometimes he just wants to feel pretty. 

On Tygra... they never really knew what to do with his character.  If memory serves, weren't there TWO addiction episode with him?  And for the trials 5 parter, suddenly he has mental powers which he NEVER uses again? 

BTW: I think it was animated in Korea. 

[The Troll]

I was talking about the Thundercats to my wife the other day...The reason why it was  so great is because TC contains every aspect of fantasy/sci-fi a boy could ever want:

Superpowers? Check.
Medieval armor and weaponry? Check.
MAGIC weaponry? Check.
Lasers? Check.
Spaceships and other high tech vehicles? Check.
Fantastic monsters? Check.
Robots? Check.
Uber villians (although none too bright)? Check.
Values (Code of Thundera - truth, justice, honor, loyalty)
Huge variety of guests? Check. It seems to me like they tried to write an episode any time something fantastic popped in their mind. The giants with the red shirts, the crab people, the shark-spider, the space pirate, the walrus man with the flying steed...They would all appear for like one episode. It's like the Thundercats were written by Michael Scott..."We need something with the head of a walrus and the body of a sea lion."

The only thing I never understood about all these 80s cartoons is the villains would have a plan that would just almost finally defeat the heroes. Some bit of luck would happen and the heroes would live to fight another day. So the bad guys would completely abandon that plan forever. I mean come on...Mumm-Ra should have at least tried to get Tigra addicted to drugs at least one more time. And Cobra should have had Cold Slither: the reunion tour.

[Ajax]

Ajax, this is frickin'  hillarious.  Especially the part about Mumm-Ra.  Maybe sometimes he just wants to feel pretty. 

On Tygra... they never really knew what to do with his character.  If memory serves, weren't there TWO addiction episode with him?  And for the trials 5 parter, suddenly he has mental powers which he NEVER uses again? 

BTW: I think it was animated in Korea. 

I just watched that episode! I thought the same thing too. Though after so many episodes of Thundercats you get used to the random "oh yea I can do this too" bit. Remember when they gave Cheetara ESP? Or when Lion-O suddenly remembered he, being the Lord of the Thundercats, had the power to command all cats, which he used to tame a white sabertooth tiger. I think they only used it once or twice.

Also, Vultureman, where the heck did he come from. Originally it was just the three mutants Slythe, Jackalman, and Monkian. Then all of a sudden there is Vultureman in one episode, at which point he disappears for a several episodes only to come back semi-regularly throughout the series. But everynow and then he disappears and the mutants seem to not even notice. Oh wells. The thunder-kittens are the same way. Some episodes it feels like they aren't even on the team, cause it's only Panthro, Cheetara, Tygra, and Lion-O. Heck even snarf has more air time than those two.

The Thundercat signal has been bothering me. I'm starting to think it's some sort of mind control cause whenever Lion-O uses it, it will cut to the rest of the team doing something seemingly important, but they just without question drop whatever it is they are doing to go save Lion-o. They do this only after their eyes glow as if put under a spell. Support for the signal being more than just a bright light in the sky is the fact that it amplifies their powers, no matter what they are up against, as soon as the signal goes up they suddenly have the power to overcome.

Thanks for mentioning the Black Widow Shark Troll cause when I saw that thing all I could do was shake my head. I mean of all the changes one can make to a shark, adding spider legs seems a bit odd.

The episode with Excalibur was funny, mostly because the Lady in the Lake obviously didn't want to guard the sword anymore. She just threw it out to the first person who said "I'm Arthur give me my sword" and you see her hand just throw the sword. Doesn't even check to see if it's actually Arthur. At which point Mumm-ra uses said sword to stab the Sword of Omens in the eye! This of course causes all the Thundercats to lose their powers, even Snarf. (The power to annoy?)

Speaking of Snarf, the episode where they find out the only other survivors from Thundara were a bunch of Snarfs made me gag. What made it worse was they now have their own planet! Holy freaking crap talk about the worst planet in the universe. Please mutants, blow it up. Snarf decided to leave to go to his kind I cheered and then two seconds later the ship lands and Snark goes "I changed my mind!". My cheering turned into "No!". Also, the end of that episode, Snark and Lion-O had a Bishonen moment. Lion-o's eyes got all shaky like he was about to cry and the two embraced with the setting sun in the background.

[BentonGrey]

One of the greatest cartoons of all time....no questions about it.  Haha, yeah, it has its weird parts, but there has rarely been a show with as much imagination as that one.

On the mutants, if you remember, when Slythe and co. first crash on 3rd Earth they have an entire CREW of other mutants.  In the first episode tons of them attack the downed Thundarian ship.  However...very shortly after this, they pretty much never show up again.  I figure that is a bad choice since you can always use more fodder, right?

Mumm-Ra DOES finally dress up like a man when he impersonates Arthur...that's something.   Cheetara's ESP was used a couple times, a lot more than Tigra's mental powers. 

Yeah...Snarf's annoying...but he's also endearing at times.

[Alaric]

Now to the meat of the actual cartoon. First of all, when Lion-o gets out of his stasis pod, how the heck is he buff? I can understand the aging thing, heck that is freaking clever and adds a dimension to the show (forcing Lion-O to have to grow up faster than he normally would have etc etc), but he comes out like he was weight lifting for five years.

I never understood why he aged, but the Thunderkittens didn't. Was that ever explained?

[Viking]

There was also an episode where Mumm-Ra disguised himself as a pseudo-amnesiac Thundercat named Pumm-Ra.  He then set up a scenario where he "rescued" Cheetara so that he could infiltrate the Thundercat fortress.

Pumm-Ra definitely SOUNDED male, but he wore a toga, which looked vaguely dress-like, so maybe it fits in with the general theme of Mumm-Ra just wanting to look pretty...

[Ajax]

Now to the meat of the actual cartoon. First of all, when Lion-o gets out of his stasis pod, how the heck is he buff? I can understand the aging thing, heck that is freaking clever and adds a dimension to the show (forcing Lion-O to have to grow up faster than he normally would have etc etc), but he comes out like he was weight lifting for five years.

I never understood why he aged, but the Thunderkittens didn't. Was that ever explained?

If I remember correctly they mention that there was something wrong with Lion-o's pod it malfunctioned or something.