I'd put Supercar and Fireball XL5 on my NetFlix queue but wasn't planning to get to them for a while. There are a good number of other programs and movies on the list first. I mentioned my interest in the two shows that I remembered fondly from my youth in passing at Friday Night Movies a while ago and Mike said he had a dvd of a later Gerry Anderson production. I had only read a bit about Lavender Castle while I was reading about the 2 Anderson shows I put on my queue. Those two series started in 1960 & 1962 and Lavender Castle is from 1999. I will nearly always take a gander at something I haven't seen before and last week Mike dropped the 2 disc dvd set into my lap. Today I plowed through the short series. The whole thing is about 4 and a half hours. It was created by Rodney Matthews in the mid 1980's. He took it to Anderson who figured it would be too costly to produce. The show sat in limbo for 10 years until the cost of CGI dropped to a point it might be workable. The characters are all stop motion puppets and the interiors of the ships and some scenery are physical models but the full size ships flying in space, and the planets they fly to, are all CGI. Some of it is pretty nice looking and some less spectacular. The episodes are short, ten minutes long, and there are only 26 total stories in the whole series. It's really aimed at a younger end of the kid crowd and the stories are pretty simple. It's a noisy and colorful space show with a lot of action, some comedy and little danger.
Left to right around the table we have Captain Thrice and his talking and thinking Walking Stick, Roger, Lyca, Sproggle, Isambard and Sir Squeeksalot. The Captain's ship is the Paradox and it looks like an English half-timbered, thatched roof cottage. The Captain is on a quest for the fabled city of peace Lavender Castle. He'd been there once and that was where the Walking Stick went from being a piece of carved wood to a sentient critter. The Captain rescues Lyca and Roger from a space pirate who was just about the sell them as slaves to Captain Thrice's enemy Dr Agon. Sir Squeekalot and Sproggle were crew on the pirate ship and they went with the Captain too. Since everyone is a puppet and the series was so short there are only 14 characters on the show. They all cross paths pretty reguarily. You can see the first show below and it will lead you to others on YouTube.
I found the show fun to watch but the stories are pretty much the same thing over and over. There are a lot of repeated plot devices that move the story along. The overly clumsy and timid Sproggle tends to become annoying after a while. It does look nice, if you like the Rodney Matthews style of fantasy and science fiction art or his music covers you might like the look of the show. It's hard to say if the story would keep people interested for long. At least people who aren't little kids who like the same thing over and over again. I know I was flagging and loosing attention about the 20th show. I started fast forwarding through the opening credits theme song. I wouldn't recommend it to most people. It's something for smaller kids and some art enthusiasts. I wouldn't feel I need to buy one now that I've seen it.
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