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Battle Of The Planets

Battle of the Planets (1978) is the 4th Westernized (after AstroBoy, Speed Racer, and Starblazers ) adaptation of the 1972 Japanese animated television series known as Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman. more...

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Of the 105 original Gatchaman episodes, 85 were used in the Battle of the Planets adaptation, produced by Sandy Frank Entertainment. The adaptation is generally faithful to the plot and character development of the original Gatchaman series, but significant additions and reductions were made in order to increase appeal to the North American juvenile television market of the late 1970s.

As of February 2007, Sandy Frank's 30-year license to Battle of the Planets is expired. It is not clear how this will affect the future of the series.

Summary

Battle of the Planets casts five young people as G-Force, consisting of Mark, Jason, Princess, Keyop, and Tiny. The question has been raised whether or not the characters were cyborgs due to their super-human agility and demonstrations of power such as the whirlwind pyramid. G-Force protects Earth from planet Spectra and other attacks from 'beyond space'. Their main ship is the Phoenix, which can deploy four smaller vehicles, each operated by one team member. A regularly featured deus ex machina was the transformation of the Phoenix into a flaming bird-shaped craft able to handle virtually any exceptional situation by functioning as something like a large blowtorch. The Phoenix’s primary weapon was a large supply of rockets. It also occasionally flaunted a powerful solar-powered energy blaster, although the team had the misfortune of choosing very cloudy days to use it.

Subsequent versions

In 1986, Gatchaman was re-worked in the US as G-Force: Guardians of Space by Turner, with a good deal of the original content that had been edited out of Battle of the Planets put back in to the show. It followed the plot of the original Gatchaman much more faithfully than Battle of the Planets because of this. However, the lack of Hoyt Curtin's original score and inferior voice acting prevented this series from attaining the high praise given to Battle of the Planets.

Two soundtrack albums and several DVDs have also been released.

The two Japanese follow-up series (Gatchaman II and Gatchaman F) were combined into 65 episodes and released as the Saban-produced show Eagle Riders. All 65 episodes aired in Australia, but in the United States only 13 episodes were aired.