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Where are you in the series? I think she's a bit of a hothead early in the series but she matures and grows into her role as XO over the course of the series.
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Random TV Show Thoughts
- Thread starter Heinrich
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As a kid, I watched reruns of Star Trek: TOS and thought it was pretty fun, though I didn't get the headier Sci-Fi concepts until a rewatch marathon when I was older.
My bread and butter was Star Trek: TNG, which was a perfect blend of more mature drama with creative Sci-Fi.
I tried to make the switch over to Star Trek: DS9, but for my age, it was just all these people walking around talking about BS, and I got bored of it and couldn't last through Season 2. Where was the adventuring? Where was the action? This was clearly not aimed at me.
I did a marathon of TNG a couple years ago and realized/found out a couple things. Firstly, DS9 was being developed as the successor to TNG, and originally the former was going to end and then DS9 start, but executives were concerned the audience wouldn't migrate and that TNG wasn't ready for films and so extended TNG so that its broadcast was actually overlapping. But they were setting up characters and plotlines on TNG to transition over to DS9.
A big one was "Ensign Ro" and the whole Bajoran conflict. This was going to be the sort of politically complex anchor point to kick off DS9, with Ro at its center. However, actress Michelle Forbes could not be convinced to sign a multi-season contract for DS9, so they decided to rewrite her character: Kira was born. On TNG, Ro is hot-headed and cocky, opinionated and a bit self-righteous. But she is also very, very good, and is proven right several times. She grows during the last couple seasons, and I think if she had been on DS9, the character would have come across very differently. The audience would already have been invested, and she would have earned the right to have all those feelings and to be so antagonistic. We had seen episodes showing why. The producers' decision to switch to Kira ignores all that and hamstrung the actress who took over that plot point (Nana Visitor, who did a great job).
I know DS9 is really respected among adults and fans of slower, talkier Sci-Fi, shows like Dr. Who and Babylon 5. I've always thought that some day I should try to really give it another shot, but I think I'll always see those first couple of seasons as floundering in the wake of massive changes from producers.
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My brother has said he always struggled to get into ds9 and said something about the first couple seasons. I personally prefer the earlier seasons rather than the later couple of seasons, but I do sympathise. There is a lot of intermeshing story elements throughout later seasons whereas the earlier seasons are more episodic. it really give the grounding for the characters though. I mean you need to see the beginning of Bashir's relationship with Garak, to really appreciate the later stories about them. that's just one example.
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This is a problem with TNG too. It really hit its stride in Season 3, but a lot of important character moments happen in the first two seasons that make the later ones stronger. And both Q and the Borg are introduced all the way back in Season 1.
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Oh wow, I was never struck by that in TNG. I loved the first normal episode, with all wild antics? So much fun! Couldn't believe how much I knew and loved all these characters within like 4-5 episodes. They still had room to grow of course, but I absolutely love S1 of TNG, and S2 might be my overall favorite.
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^Sorry, I meant the first episode after the movie premiere. Called "The Naked Now", it's the one where everyone acts crazy and almost possessed, and Data gets freaky with Tasha. I was conflating it with a later episode where people also act out of character. Post corrected!
(But yes, the premiere movie, "Encounter at Farpoint", is of course beyond reproach. One of the best intros in TV history for a series, which I thought was a given.)
(But yes, the premiere movie, "Encounter at Farpoint", is of course beyond reproach. One of the best intros in TV history for a series, which I thought was a given.)
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Voltron: Legendary Defender (2016-2018)
So, as a child who worshipped Voltron back in the diz-ay -as all the cool kids say- I was skeptical as always that yet another of my beloved childhood properties was having its corpse dug up and exploited for nostalgia/cash-in purposes. Big corporations will just never get tired of making bad iterations of GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man, or virtually any other property that was a hit '80s cartoon. So Voltron seemed like another to add to the list with this new Netflix series. But a few things stood out...
1. This series was actually delivered like premium TV by Dreamworks, in "seasons" of 13 episodes, bit by bit over 8 seasons. That's a lot of stopping to check in, not the typical "churn out new characters for new merch" methodology.
2. A lot of the people involved in making it were the same people who had made some DC Animated Universe stuff I've really liked, as well as my beloved series The Legend of Korra.
3. There is a surprising metric ton of critical praise for this series, a supposed kids' cartoon!
So okay, fine, I threw it on as a lark one day to see how they were updating Voltron. And here I am a few months later, having watched all 76 episodes. Truly, the show is worth the hype.
Some "random thoughts":
-One of the things I loved about the show as a kid (I mostly watched the Japanese import on satellite) was how surprisingly raw it could get. Like, these space guys are on an adventure, but suddenly they're in a place where people get into sword duels. And one of the main guys just gets flat-out stabbed and dies! This was like no American cartoon I had seen (and indeed they make it seem like he just "retires from his injuries" in the US edit). But this new Voltron show fully embraces that, with moments of real-world darkness and drama and death that creep in, and much more frequently!
-The downside of the original show, once you're a bit older, is that it's very much a formulaic cartoon. Basically every episode, a new monster comes, the good guys struggle with it, then they "form Voltron" to a lengthy montage sequence, I'd jump up on the couch and celebrate, and Voltron defeats the monster, err, "Ro-Beast". Okay, as an adult, that would get boring quick. Thankfully, the new show subverts that! The crew often has narrative reasons why they can't just form Voltron, and even doing so is not the ideal solution to every problem. You see a lot of teamwork, a lot of them in and out of the Lions, and then various iterations of Voltron, too.
-That's not the only way in which the show is very self-aware and makes smart choices about how to adapt the original material. It plays on the differences between the original US and Japanese shows, and around "season" 5, it incorporates elements from the sequel Voltron series (the one with all the spaceships that form another Voltron). It's also great about sort of dealing with Voltron as a legacy that has multiple iterations.
-Downsides of the show: admittedly, the final season is my least favorite. It escalates to a point where all the stakes are so huge, and so rushed into, that the story becomes "a lot of magic stuff merged with science and yadda yadda, somehow this is happening now!" It's so macro level so all the time that it doesn't feel adequately developed. It's unusual for a show that would take multiple episodes to lay out plot points in the past. There's also a lot of virtue-signaling. I'm not against any of the virtues they're signalling, I just wish they would actually build them instead of just paying them lip service. This comes into play with the romances, too. The show has a surprising amount of romances hinted at or shown, but it's not great at developing them. This could be a particular weak note in the way the show ends for some people.
All that said, Voltron is easily a huge improvement over not only the old anime/cartoon, but over virtually every Japanese giant robot anime ever made. (Yeah, an American, Netflix production did it...I'm as shocked as anyone). Moreover, the episodes are often surprisingly creative, and FUNNY. Sure, some of it is kind of kiddie humor or anime otaku humor, but a lot of the show is just very cleverly written. This is technically approved for kids to watch, but it feels honestly aimed at teens and those in arrested development like me. If you're a 20-something who ever partakes in anime, this is kind of ...well, a must-watch.
So, as a child who worshipped Voltron back in the diz-ay -as all the cool kids say- I was skeptical as always that yet another of my beloved childhood properties was having its corpse dug up and exploited for nostalgia/cash-in purposes. Big corporations will just never get tired of making bad iterations of GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man, or virtually any other property that was a hit '80s cartoon. So Voltron seemed like another to add to the list with this new Netflix series. But a few things stood out...
1. This series was actually delivered like premium TV by Dreamworks, in "seasons" of 13 episodes, bit by bit over 8 seasons. That's a lot of stopping to check in, not the typical "churn out new characters for new merch" methodology.
2. A lot of the people involved in making it were the same people who had made some DC Animated Universe stuff I've really liked, as well as my beloved series The Legend of Korra.
3. There is a surprising metric ton of critical praise for this series, a supposed kids' cartoon!
So okay, fine, I threw it on as a lark one day to see how they were updating Voltron. And here I am a few months later, having watched all 76 episodes. Truly, the show is worth the hype.
Some "random thoughts":
-One of the things I loved about the show as a kid (I mostly watched the Japanese import on satellite) was how surprisingly raw it could get. Like, these space guys are on an adventure, but suddenly they're in a place where people get into sword duels. And one of the main guys just gets flat-out stabbed and dies! This was like no American cartoon I had seen (and indeed they make it seem like he just "retires from his injuries" in the US edit). But this new Voltron show fully embraces that, with moments of real-world darkness and drama and death that creep in, and much more frequently!
-The downside of the original show, once you're a bit older, is that it's very much a formulaic cartoon. Basically every episode, a new monster comes, the good guys struggle with it, then they "form Voltron" to a lengthy montage sequence, I'd jump up on the couch and celebrate, and Voltron defeats the monster, err, "Ro-Beast". Okay, as an adult, that would get boring quick. Thankfully, the new show subverts that! The crew often has narrative reasons why they can't just form Voltron, and even doing so is not the ideal solution to every problem. You see a lot of teamwork, a lot of them in and out of the Lions, and then various iterations of Voltron, too.
-That's not the only way in which the show is very self-aware and makes smart choices about how to adapt the original material. It plays on the differences between the original US and Japanese shows, and around "season" 5, it incorporates elements from the sequel Voltron series (the one with all the spaceships that form another Voltron). It's also great about sort of dealing with Voltron as a legacy that has multiple iterations.
-Downsides of the show: admittedly, the final season is my least favorite. It escalates to a point where all the stakes are so huge, and so rushed into, that the story becomes "a lot of magic stuff merged with science and yadda yadda, somehow this is happening now!" It's so macro level so all the time that it doesn't feel adequately developed. It's unusual for a show that would take multiple episodes to lay out plot points in the past. There's also a lot of virtue-signaling. I'm not against any of the virtues they're signalling, I just wish they would actually build them instead of just paying them lip service. This comes into play with the romances, too. The show has a surprising amount of romances hinted at or shown, but it's not great at developing them. This could be a particular weak note in the way the show ends for some people.
All that said, Voltron is easily a huge improvement over not only the old anime/cartoon, but over virtually every Japanese giant robot anime ever made. (Yeah, an American, Netflix production did it...I'm as shocked as anyone). Moreover, the episodes are often surprisingly creative, and FUNNY. Sure, some of it is kind of kiddie humor or anime otaku humor, but a lot of the show is just very cleverly written. This is technically approved for kids to watch, but it feels honestly aimed at teens and those in arrested development like me. If you're a 20-something who ever partakes in anime, this is kind of ...well, a must-watch.
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Amazon Prime's subtitles are atrocious. They're full of errors and often out of sync.
I recognise a lot of the issues they're having from my experiences with WhisperAI. Using AI tools for subtitles is great, but it's kind of pointless when you don't even bother to check the subs afterwards.
I'm surprised they've managed to get away with it for so long given how famously cantankerous the deaf community is, and with how many people are saying they need subtitles these days due to mumbling actors and poor sound mixing.
I recognise a lot of the issues they're having from my experiences with WhisperAI. Using AI tools for subtitles is great, but it's kind of pointless when you don't even bother to check the subs afterwards.
I'm surprised they've managed to get away with it for so long given how famously cantankerous the deaf community is, and with how many people are saying they need subtitles these days due to mumbling actors and poor sound mixing.
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The Crown: Season 1
Alright, I hope I don't trigger any Brits when I say this, but-- I'm just failing to see the point of this series. Like, it's quite well-made, great acting, visually splendorous and all that, but ...what is the point? It's all so incredibly low stakes.
Season 1 covers the post-WWII period where King George is reaping the public adoration for essentially rallying England and giving hope in the darkest times. Meanwhile the government is kind of floundering and lacks a strong, effective point of view, so they fall back on Churchill, who seems effective as a cornered bulldog but less so in times of peace. However, all this interesting stuff is just background set dressing while we are stuck with the lives of a few royals as they bite their fingernails over matters of presentation and routine. "This is the dress I'm supposed to wear at this event every year...dare I wear a slightly-different colored one?" or "Do I dare invite the Archbishop of Canterbury to tea? I'm supposed to visit him for tea!"
The season accurately conveys the sense of stress that everyone involved feels over these trifling matters, but I as a viewer never felt it. It simply reinforced the point of view that the monarchy is and has for a long time been hopelessly outdated, out-of-touch, and rather inconsequential. And the series itself delves into that point of view; it seems to rather come down on the side that sticking to all these old traditions is pretty unfair to everyone involved, and paints those who adhere to them as on the wrong/tragic side while those who try to change them as being on the right side. Just listen to the music and look at the camera angles.
So at the end of season 1, I'm left to conclude that Queen Elizabeth was under a lot of pressure to uphold tradition as much as possible, and this had several knock-on effects, all of which were probably bad for the UK. The royals were a bunch of sheltered, entitled, catty people, and British leaders in the '50s were a bunch of outdated colonialists hanging on to the ashes of a rapidly crumbling empire built on ideas of racism and cultural superiority. In short: no surprises, and not pleasant to watch.
Any big fans of this show out there? Can you enlighten me as to what the appeal is besides it being well-made? I found the narrative to be almost like torture porn.
Alright, I hope I don't trigger any Brits when I say this, but-- I'm just failing to see the point of this series. Like, it's quite well-made, great acting, visually splendorous and all that, but ...what is the point? It's all so incredibly low stakes.
Season 1 covers the post-WWII period where King George is reaping the public adoration for essentially rallying England and giving hope in the darkest times. Meanwhile the government is kind of floundering and lacks a strong, effective point of view, so they fall back on Churchill, who seems effective as a cornered bulldog but less so in times of peace. However, all this interesting stuff is just background set dressing while we are stuck with the lives of a few royals as they bite their fingernails over matters of presentation and routine. "This is the dress I'm supposed to wear at this event every year...dare I wear a slightly-different colored one?" or "Do I dare invite the Archbishop of Canterbury to tea? I'm supposed to visit him for tea!"
The season accurately conveys the sense of stress that everyone involved feels over these trifling matters, but I as a viewer never felt it. It simply reinforced the point of view that the monarchy is and has for a long time been hopelessly outdated, out-of-touch, and rather inconsequential. And the series itself delves into that point of view; it seems to rather come down on the side that sticking to all these old traditions is pretty unfair to everyone involved, and paints those who adhere to them as on the wrong/tragic side while those who try to change them as being on the right side. Just listen to the music and look at the camera angles.
So at the end of season 1, I'm left to conclude that Queen Elizabeth was under a lot of pressure to uphold tradition as much as possible, and this had several knock-on effects, all of which were probably bad for the UK. The royals were a bunch of sheltered, entitled, catty people, and British leaders in the '50s were a bunch of outdated colonialists hanging on to the ashes of a rapidly crumbling empire built on ideas of racism and cultural superiority. In short: no surprises, and not pleasant to watch.
Any big fans of this show out there? Can you enlighten me as to what the appeal is besides it being well-made? I found the narrative to be almost like torture porn.
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There is no value in that show. It styles itself as dramatised history, but it's really historical fiction. Barely anything in it actually happened and none of it happened the way its shown.
It's also not actually that popular in the UK. I don't know anyone who watched it.
It's also not actually that popular in the UK. I don't know anyone who watched it.
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What If...? (2 seasons)- So I wrote a longer review of this here, but basically I'm just kind of bummed because I had probably 150 What If comics from their 2 first runs, and I loved those. They basically started out with some microscopic change, like Peter Parker sneezing at the right moment, or one of Steve Rogers' buddies writing a passing medical exam grade for him when a doc turned his back, and next thing you know, we never had Spider-Man or Captain America. And then the stories continue unfolding from there. If we never had Cap, would the Red Skull have won the war for the Nazis? If we never had Spidey, who would have helped out the Avengers and the X-Men all those times? Might some of them have died? If so, might we be under an alien thumb? Might the modern Avengers be a resistance group avenging the loss of WWII?
Mostly the Disney+ series doesn't seem to do this. There's little to no butterfly effect. It's more like "What if Happy Hogan became a Hulk?" and then next thing you know he's inexplicably a time traveler. And Steve Rogers is for some reason Robin Hood. And the Scarlet Witch is a zombie queen. It's not a chain of consequences, it's all the movies and characters you know, put into a Slap Chop, then separated back out into little piles for Vince to say "You're gonna love these nuts!" The stories don't actually use the premises to reveal more depth about the original characters, like the old comic series. Mostly, they just say "watch me slap these troubles away!" It strikes me as harmless enough fun, but a real wasted opportunity.
Mostly the Disney+ series doesn't seem to do this. There's little to no butterfly effect. It's more like "What if Happy Hogan became a Hulk?" and then next thing you know he's inexplicably a time traveler. And Steve Rogers is for some reason Robin Hood. And the Scarlet Witch is a zombie queen. It's not a chain of consequences, it's all the movies and characters you know, put into a Slap Chop, then separated back out into little piles for Vince to say "You're gonna love these nuts!" The stories don't actually use the premises to reveal more depth about the original characters, like the old comic series. Mostly, they just say "watch me slap these troubles away!" It strikes me as harmless enough fun, but a real wasted opportunity.
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They don't even really seem to understand what is interesting about the concept. The first episode of this season is titled "What if Nebula Joined the Nova Corps?" but the answer is just "she would act like a member of the Nova Corps". But the episode starts with a much more interesting premise of "What if Ronan deposed Thanos before he found any Infinity Stones?" and then goes off on the Nova Corps tangent instead of following where that story went.
addiesin
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Waste is the right word. I think we each could sit here for five minutes and individually come up with several seasons' worth of better episode concepts than The Continuing Adventures of One Particular Captain Carter (cause remember we saw another one in a movie but she died, so not that one).
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Yeah the Nova Corps one is a great example of the oddness of this season, where if they're not rehashing an MCU movie, then they're just doing the MCU version of another film. Bladerunner. Die Hard. The Adventures of Robin Hood. The Fountain. But the actual story is just an excuse to copy the major tropes of that genre using Marvel's supporting characters. So Nebula's story has Ronan turn on Thanos and so the Infinity Stones are not gathered. So Howard the Duck is then still sitting in the a glass case in Knowhere, imprisoned by the Collector, right? Oh, except no, he's not, he has apparently for many years run a gambling den on Xandar. Along with Korg, who is not in the Grandmaster's arena, because obviously Nebula being in the Corps has ... done something? Oh and Groot is there, but he has never met Rocket apparently, because reasons. And Nebula can just slap an apparently easy-to-come-by Yondu fin on her head and is immediately an expert with his arrow. Because if she's not, then we don't get to rehash that GotG V2 arrow scene that was a big hit. 
Nevermind that they turn a heroic character into a villain, not because there was the slightest hint that she wasn't willing to nobly die for her principles before, but just because "what a twist!" in M. Night Shyamalan's words.
I mean, if I was at the age where I had dolls and wanted to take off their outfits and put on outfits from other toys, ignoring the rules about what went with who, then I'd see the appeal to this. The ethos seems to be "It's the multi-verse! There are no rules!" But that sort of story logic just doesn't appeal to me.
Nevermind that they turn a heroic character into a villain, not because there was the slightest hint that she wasn't willing to nobly die for her principles before, but just because "what a twist!" in M. Night Shyamalan's words.I mean, if I was at the age where I had dolls and wanted to take off their outfits and put on outfits from other toys, ignoring the rules about what went with who, then I'd see the appeal to this. The ethos seems to be "It's the multi-verse! There are no rules!" But that sort of story logic just doesn't appeal to me.
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Les Mystérieuses Cités d'Or (1982)
Did anyone else ever watch this?? I had seen this series in fits and starts on Nickelodeon when I was a wee tike, and could never even remember the name, much less recall how it ended, or if it had an ending. But it stuck with me for years and years, remembering these kids flying around in this golden condor machine, looking for lost ancient cities and the main boy's lost father.
Thanks to a nostalgia resurgence, they finally put together a DVD release of this about 10 years ago, and just recently I ran across it and it felt like a lightning bolt hit me. Oh my god, I could finally find out what happened? Did they find the cities of gold? Did they find the kids' parents (they're all orphans!)?? Did it turn out that the Spanish soldier/navigator Mendoza was Esteban's dad all along? I had to know!
At 39 episodes in one season, this is a pretty long kids' show, and I had only ever seen maybe half of it. It's distinctly different than most cartoons, where it really takes time to convey the realities of exploration and encountering new cultures. One whole episode is spent just sailing through Drake's Passage. Another several episodes on the Galapagos islands. The early third of the series is hardcore 16th century conquistador shit, and there is a lot of factual basis in the episodes for a kids' show.
Then they run across the first instance of what the show is really about, the ol' Ancient Alien Civilization on Earth theory. I had to read up on this a bit, since the show changes some names and places, but basically it's this idea that there was another huge continent that sank, but this one in the Pacific Ocean (Mu, or Lemuria). And the show posits that they essentially made 7 amazing cities (colonies) across the world which survived. The proof of this is when the Spaniards find a giant metal ship that runs on solar power and even has an Archimedes-type death ray. The next third of the show sees them explore further northward using this ship mostly. By the final third, they've gotten the flying condor machine instead, and moved up into central Mexico where they face off against the Olmecs, a real-life lost pre-Mayan civilization.
The show has all these cool semi-historical details, but I remembered that as a kid, I always wanted to skip the ending part because it would go into a live-action sort of documentary coda. As an adult though, these little mini-docs showing some actual ruins or cultural practice from across South and Central America (where I'm currently living) are the main draw. Dammit, I just love my edutainment. And yeah, the cartoon slaps, too. I finally know what happened to Esteban's dad, and Zia's, and where the mysterious city of gold is. Sure, there are meant to be 6 more, but the series feels fine to end here. (The DVD sales hit hard enough that they revived the series to follow the kids as they look for more cities. There are 3 more seasons so far, but they're in French only and I haven't seen them. It's a new voice cast, new animation, so...hmm, might just end things right here.)
Did anyone else ever watch this?? I had seen this series in fits and starts on Nickelodeon when I was a wee tike, and could never even remember the name, much less recall how it ended, or if it had an ending. But it stuck with me for years and years, remembering these kids flying around in this golden condor machine, looking for lost ancient cities and the main boy's lost father.
Thanks to a nostalgia resurgence, they finally put together a DVD release of this about 10 years ago, and just recently I ran across it and it felt like a lightning bolt hit me. Oh my god, I could finally find out what happened? Did they find the cities of gold? Did they find the kids' parents (they're all orphans!)?? Did it turn out that the Spanish soldier/navigator Mendoza was Esteban's dad all along? I had to know!
At 39 episodes in one season, this is a pretty long kids' show, and I had only ever seen maybe half of it. It's distinctly different than most cartoons, where it really takes time to convey the realities of exploration and encountering new cultures. One whole episode is spent just sailing through Drake's Passage. Another several episodes on the Galapagos islands. The early third of the series is hardcore 16th century conquistador shit, and there is a lot of factual basis in the episodes for a kids' show.
Then they run across the first instance of what the show is really about, the ol' Ancient Alien Civilization on Earth theory. I had to read up on this a bit, since the show changes some names and places, but basically it's this idea that there was another huge continent that sank, but this one in the Pacific Ocean (Mu, or Lemuria). And the show posits that they essentially made 7 amazing cities (colonies) across the world which survived. The proof of this is when the Spaniards find a giant metal ship that runs on solar power and even has an Archimedes-type death ray. The next third of the show sees them explore further northward using this ship mostly. By the final third, they've gotten the flying condor machine instead, and moved up into central Mexico where they face off against the Olmecs, a real-life lost pre-Mayan civilization.
The show has all these cool semi-historical details, but I remembered that as a kid, I always wanted to skip the ending part because it would go into a live-action sort of documentary coda. As an adult though, these little mini-docs showing some actual ruins or cultural practice from across South and Central America (where I'm currently living) are the main draw. Dammit, I just love my edutainment. And yeah, the cartoon slaps, too. I finally know what happened to Esteban's dad, and Zia's, and where the mysterious city of gold is. Sure, there are meant to be 6 more, but the series feels fine to end here. (The DVD sales hit hard enough that they revived the series to follow the kids as they look for more cities. There are 3 more seasons so far, but they're in French only and I haven't seen them. It's a new voice cast, new animation, so...hmm, might just end things right here.)
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Reading this post was so confusing, "so this is a Spanish show... The title looks like it's French though... Why does the picture look like anime? But if I bring up that it looks like anime, THAT will get confusing because anime is also a French word... There's plenty of modern French shows in an anime style, but this is from the 80's, surely that wasn't a common thing back then"Les Mystérieuses Cités d'Or (1982)
Did anyone else ever watch this?? I had seen this series in fits and starts on Nickelodeon when I was a wee tike, and could never even remember the name, much less recall how it ended, or if it had an ending. But it stuck with me for years and years, remembering these kids flying around in this golden condor machine, looking for lost ancient cities and the main boy's lost father.
Thanks to a nostalgia resurgence, they finally put together a DVD release of this about 10 years ago, and just recently I ran across it and it felt like a lightning bolt hit me. Oh my god, I could finally find out what happened? Did they find the cities of gold? Did they find the kids' parents (they're all orphans!)?? Did it turn out that the Spanish soldier/navigator Mendoza was Esteban's dad all along? I had to know!
At 39 episodes in one season, this is a pretty long kids' show, and I had only ever seen maybe half of it. It's distinctly different than most cartoons, where it really takes time to convey the realities of exploration and encountering new cultures. One whole episode is spent just sailing through Drake's Passage. Another several episodes on the Galapagos islands. The early third of the series is hardcore 16th century conquistador shit, and there is a lot of factual basis in the episodes for a kids' show.
Then they run across the first instance of what the show is really about, the ol' Ancient Alien Civilization on Earth theory. I had to read up on this a bit, since the show changes some names and places, but basically it's this idea that there was another huge continent that sank, but this one in the Pacific Ocean (Mu, or Lemuria). And the show posits that they essentially made 7 amazing cities (colonies) across the world which survived. The proof of this is when the Spaniards find a giant metal ship that runs on solar power and even has an Archimedes-type death ray. The next third of the show sees them explore further northward using this ship mostly. By the final third, they've gotten the flying condor machine instead, and moved up into central Mexico where they face off against the Olmecs, a real-life lost pre-Mayan civilization.
The show has all these cool semi-historical details, but I remembered that as a kid, I always wanted to skip the ending part because it would go into a live-action sort of documentary coda. As an adult though, these little mini-docs showing some actual ruins or cultural practice from across South and Central America (where I'm currently living) are the main draw. Dammit, I just love my edutainment. And yeah, the cartoon slaps, too. I finally know what happened to Esteban's dad, and Zia's, and where the mysterious city of gold is. Sure, there are meant to be 6 more, but the series feels fine to end here. (The DVD sales hit hard enough that they revived the series to follow the kids as they look for more cities. There are 3 more seasons so far, but they're in French only and I haven't seen them. It's a new voice cast, new animation, so...hmm, might just end things right here.)
The Wikipedia page further confused things by mentioning DIC, which I had assumed was an American company.
I think I get it now though, it's just a French-Japanese co-production, with Spanish characters.
Now to answer the question, no, I haven't seen this, but I'm now fascinated. It sounds like something I would've heard of at some point, but I definitely haven't.
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Yeah, that's essentially it. It was developed to air on the French-Canadian arm of the BBC I read, whereas in Japan it ran on NHK as "Esteban, Child of the Sun". Actually some different edits in that version, and different dialogue with Japanese voices. I caught the show on Nickelodeon (a Canadian network), which aired on satellite or cable TV in the US, if you had it.
But yeah, part of what fascinated me I think was that almost all the characters in the show are different ethnicities. There are some "white" Spaniards, but all the names are authentic and they don't do the anime thing of making everybody look whitewashed. The kids are also voiced by actual kids, and you can tell. There's all just so much authenticity to this show, it's awesome.
That said, watching this so soon after Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water definitely does it no favors. That show clearly draws a lot of inspiration from this one, I mean, basically Tarantinos it. The whole island portion of that series that they wedged in towards the end is like a really crappy fanfic of the Galapagos islands stuff here, merged with two characters that came at the end of this series. But still, Nadia has a lot more action and is generally more engaging. The fanedit trilogy that trims all the fat is kind of the ideal version of this story.