Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Teen Force in Word Star (1981)
Here's another Teen Force short from Space Stars.
In what is probably a knock-off of "Star Wars", the Teen Force must protect one of the galaxy's most important artifacts from Uglor. Here's "Word Star":
Here's what always stuck me curious regarding H-B's "Space Stars": H-B revived Space Ghost and the Herculoids and even gave Astro the dog from "The Jetsons" a job in the segment "Astro and the Space Mutts", but no love whatsoever for The Galaxy Trio? Perhaps H-B wanted the Teen Force on the show and felt that 2 teams of 3 would have been redundant. Or perhaps it was felt the Galaxy Trio concept would have more youth appeal if the 3 heroes were teens.
In other words, Goldstar, you're thinking the Teen Force was a rebooted Galaxy Trio with different powers. Maybe, maybe not, but you did hit the bullseye when you noted the demographic factor.
Factor in also the intermingling of Teen Force, particularly Kid Comet, in the Space Ghost shorts (he was in a relationship with Jan), and, well, I think they wanted to see if they could match Jan & Jace with heroes in their own age group. You might want to credit then-NBC PD Fred Silverman with that idea.
"Teen Force" boasted some notable voice talent: Kid Comet was voiced by Dwayne Hickman, whom folks our age will remember as TV's Dobie Gillis; Elektra was voiced by HB regular B.J. Ward, and the Astro-Mites were "voiced" by the pre-"Police Academy" Michael Winslow, Ofiicer Larvell Jones himself. The narrator of "Space Stars" was Michael Rye, who also voiced King Gregor on "Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears", to name but one of his other gigs.
Michael Rye (Apache Chief to Super Friends fans) was simply the show announcer. Each episode was narrated by Keene Curtis, formerly Bill Bixby's sidekick on The Magician, and would later return to primetime on Cheers.
I definitely agree the Teen Force was meant to be a younger version of the Galaxy Trio, but I still think the Space Mutts segment just did not belong here!
Another one of my hated TV tropes is used here: the "I'm not going to use this great power to destroy the evil guy because that would make me as bad as he is" trope. Uglor would have had no compunctions to destroy the TF and subjugate the rest of the universe if he had his claws on the WordStar first. Would about Ananda's little test then, huh?
6 comments:
Here's what always stuck me curious regarding H-B's "Space Stars": H-B revived Space Ghost and the Herculoids and even gave Astro the dog from "The Jetsons" a job in the segment "Astro and the Space Mutts", but no love whatsoever for The Galaxy Trio? Perhaps H-B wanted the Teen Force on the show and felt that 2 teams of 3 would have been redundant. Or perhaps it was felt the Galaxy Trio concept would have more youth appeal if the 3 heroes were teens.
In other words, Goldstar, you're thinking the Teen Force was a rebooted Galaxy Trio with different powers. Maybe, maybe not, but you did hit the bullseye when you noted the demographic factor.
Factor in also the intermingling of Teen Force, particularly Kid Comet, in the Space Ghost shorts (he was in a relationship with Jan), and, well, I think they wanted to see if they could match Jan & Jace with heroes in their own age group. You might want to credit then-NBC PD Fred Silverman with that idea.
"Teen Force" boasted some notable voice talent: Kid Comet was voiced by Dwayne Hickman, whom folks our age will remember as TV's Dobie Gillis; Elektra was voiced by HB regular B.J. Ward, and the Astro-Mites were "voiced" by the pre-"Police Academy" Michael Winslow, Ofiicer Larvell Jones himself. The narrator of "Space Stars" was Michael Rye, who also voiced King Gregor on "Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears", to name but one of his other gigs.
Michael Rye (Apache Chief to Super Friends fans) was simply the show announcer. Each episode was narrated by Keene Curtis, formerly Bill Bixby's sidekick on The Magician, and would later return to primetime on Cheers.
I definitely agree the Teen Force was meant to be a younger version of the Galaxy Trio, but I still think the Space Mutts segment just did not belong here!
Another one of my hated TV tropes is used here: the "I'm not going to use this great power to destroy the evil guy because that would make me as bad as he is" trope. Uglor would have had no compunctions to destroy the TF and subjugate the rest of the universe if he had his claws on the WordStar first. Would about Ananda's little test then, huh?
As we found out, Elektra did pass Ananda's test by passing on using the WordStar. That seemed to be the moral lesson du jour.
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