From the warped imagination of Paul Fusco (ALF) comes a largely forgotten adventure series that mixed puppets with traditional line animation and special effects. Regrettably, Space Cats is largely forgotten because it aired on NBC for its lone season in 1991.
The series is a send-up of science fiction tropes, among other things. The Cats came to Earth from Triglyceride-7, and get their assignments from a disembodied human head (Charles Nelson Reilly). Fusco voiced Capt. Catgut, whose vocal mannerisms were similar to that of ALF himself. Space Cats was a co-production with Marvel Productions, and thus goes down as Marvel's last sale to NBC.
Following is the opener:
Ever notice that each of the Saturday morning shows Reilly worked on lasted just 1 season? Uncle Croc's Block & Lidsville were the same, though Lidsville was kept alive in reruns for an extra 2 years. Reilly also took over as Frankenstone for the 2nd Flinstone Comedy Show, and, yep, that also was dumped after 1 season.
Rating: C.
6 comments:
To be fair though, most Saturday morning shows only lasted one season.
Even though it didn't look that way with reruns cycling through an extra year or two.
Yeah, I didn't realize how few episodes there were until about a dozen years ago when I got into researching the history of Saturday morning shows for my own amusement. Not only did they have few seasons (in most cases only one), but the seasons were a little less than half the length of a prime-time show's at the time. There really were only a handful of shows with a significant number of episodes: Superfriends, Fat Albert, Scooby-Doo, Land of the Lost, and the Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Show (in all of it's incarnations). But that last show didn't include any original animation, all of it having been recycled from the theatricals and the prime-time Bugs Bunny Show.
The way things are now, SatAM's back in the dark ages on broadcast networks, all because the FCC thinks they have to have 3 hrs. a week of "educational" programming. They're defeating their own purpose by driving potential viewers, who don't want a 6th day of school, off to cable or online.
Only if their purpose was to "educate" kids. If their real purpose was simply to see much governmental overreach they could achieve in the broadcast industry, then mission accomplished.
You'd think they'd realize folks today can see through the "lip service".
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