The bizarre TV series that asked kids to fire guns at the screen
As someone with a genuine love for stories on the sci-fi and fantasy side of the spectrum, I can’t help but be in awe of the immensely talented people who make these pieces of film and television, but also wonder what they truly think of their creations.
After all, they are immensely privileged to work in that sector, and they’d be the first to tell you that. However, I imagine many fostered ambitions to bring works from Shakespeare, Pinter and Sondheim to the screen. Then, they tell the world their big break is going to come from a TV show called Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.
Especially when it seems like the whole project, ostensibly the kind of profoundly 1980s-coded Saturday morning kids series that was hastily constructed to promote a toyline, smacks of desperation. Look a little closer at Captain Power, and you’ll find nearly its whole creative team trying their best to elevate a series that they otherwise thought was beneath them. While at its core, this was essentially ‘what if Transformers was GI Joe‘, the actual show itself fancied itself as a post-apocalyptic action-drama series. A show that just so happened to be fronted by a guy called Captain Jonathan Power.
This was a series quite far ahead of its time. One that balanced the sci-fi action with romance subplots and metaphors for serious subjects such as fascism. While the creative team, which was led by famed sci-fi writer J Michael Straczynski, were aiming to be in the mould of family-friendly series like Doctor Who or Star Trek, they ended up alienating both sides. With adults finding the kids’ stuff cloying and kids finding the adult stuff off-putting.
Sometimes, you’ve got to just embrace what you are, and Captain Power, surprise surprise, was a kids’ show at heart. So much so that the toyline was considered such a huge part of the show that it was intended to be part of the show itself.
A five-minute part of each episode was meant to be played along with at home, with one of the show’s toys corresponding to each episode – for example, if viewers had the right kind of toy blaster, they could join in with one of the climactic action sequences, shooting at the robot villains of that story.
In the paper, this seems like a slam dunk. This was the ’80s, the decade of He-Man, Transformers and My Little Pony – toy lines with a TV show tacked onto it were all the rage, and this seemed like an attempt to deepen the medium. It was a show that actually had something to say and a toy line that made kids live out their dreams and actually become part of the show. Captain Power looked set to become one of the biggest things in kids’ TV and thus, make everyone extremely rich from toy sales.
The issue was, of course, that the technology needed for the show made the toys profoundly expensive. Even if you were rich enough to get them, said technology was so hit-and-miss that they often didn’t work. The sales were down, and satisfaction among those who actually bought the toys was even lower – combine that with the backlash against the show’s violent and sexual content (yes, you read that right), and the show lasted for one season before being swiftly cancelled.
Partially thanks to its novelty, and partially due to the presence of a legend like Straczynski as head writer, Captain Power has a cult following that continues to this day. A few attempts have been made to reboot the property, but if it ever sees the light of day, the toys will almost certainly stay back in the ’80s, where they arguably belong.