The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
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| The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Animated series Science fiction Western |
| Created by | Robert Mandell |
| Voices of | Robert Bottone Alexander Marshall Maia Danziger Corinne Orr Laura Dean Jerry Orbach Earl Hammond Ray Owens Hubert Kelly Doug Preis Henry Mandell |
| Theme music composer | Phil Galdston John Van Tongeren |
| Opening theme | "No Guts no Glory" |
| Ending theme | "No Guts no Glory (long version) & Rangers Are Forever" |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 65 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) |
Abe Mandell |
| Producer(s) | Robert Mandell Bob Chrestani |
| Associate producer(s) |
Eleanor Kearney |
| Story editor(s) | Owen Lock Christopher Rowley |
| Editor(s) | Ralph Galli Jr. Brian Mattlin |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original run | September 14, 1986 – December 11, 1986 |
| External links | |
| Official website | |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers (1986-1989) was an animated Space Western television series created by Robert Mandell and Gaylord Entertainment Company. The series combined sci-fi stories with a typical wild-west-"feel", elements of a space opera and with the traditional fantasy elements of sword and sorcery. It was one of the first anime-style shows to be primarily created in the US, although the actual animation was done in Japan by the famed Tokyo Movie Shinsha, and at the time it was aired, it was a revolutionary children's show.[1]
When the series originally aired, episodes were aired five days a week until all sixty five episodes were shown, with the episodes largely being aired out of order.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Background
The show is set after the year 2086, when two aliens from the planets Andor and Kirwin travelled to Earth to search for allies against the ruthless and expansionist Crown Empire led by the Queen of the Crown. In return for the help, mankind was given construction plans for an FTL-drive (hyperdrive). After this key-event in human history, interstellar travel flourished and a huge number of colonies were built on distant star-systems. Alongside the growth of human activities in space, criminal activities also grew and the new colonies had to be defended against various threats, including the Crown Empire. BETA (Bureau for Extra-Terrestrial Affairs) was founded to cope with these tasks, the "Ranger"-division being a part of it. Most of the colonies portrayed in the show are either specialized in agriculture (by growing genetically engineered crops or breeding genetically engineered cattle) or mining star stones. Many of the planets have names that evoke Western settings; Nebraska, Mesa, Ozark, Prairie.
[edit] BETA
BETA is shown as the major military and exploratory arm of Earth. The organization is headquartered at BETA Mountain/Earth and sustains several bases on and around Earth like the Longshot Research Facility in the Grand Canyon and the BETA space station in Earth orbit. BETA seems to be in command of a huge spacefleet as shown during the attempted invasion of Earth by the Crown.
[edit] Series Five Implant
The Series-5 Brain Implant is perhaps the closest mankind will ever get to reproducing with cybernetics the abilities that gene engineers can draw out of the human genome[citation needed]. The S5 implant enables dramatic boosting of innate abilities due to its unique conversion of bio-electrical power generated by alpha radiation and stored within the badges worn by the Galaxy Rangers.
[edit] Crown Empire
The Crown Empire, also known as the "Crown", is ruled by the Queen of the Crown. She controls a huge number of planets in a vast section of the galaxy. However, this "mighty and vast empire" is crumbling. It was implied in "Phoenix" that Andor and Kirwin were once enslaved by the Empire, and that that the "help" they were seeking in the opening voice over was a military alliance with Earth to keep their independence.
The Queen uses Slaverlords, creatures powered by the psychic energy of other beings stored in a psychocrystal, with whom she has a psychic link, to control her empire. In order to harness the required energy for the psychocrystals, the Crown almost exterminated the whole Gherkhin race. After the Empire encountered the humans, the Queen found out that they were more suitable for energy-extraction than any other previously encountered species. Through the series, the Queen was driven to get her hands on more humans for her psychocrypt, and the bounty on live humans was obscenely high. She only managed to get two humans into her psychocrypt during the course of the series - Eliza and Zachary Foxx. While Zachary was rescued from the psychocrypt (as seen in the episode "Psychocrypt"), he was unable to recover the other half of Eliza's psychocrystal which is kept by the Queen (Eliza's body remains in stasis in the Longshot facility).
Although the Crown owns a gigantic spacefleet, its ships are an order of magnitude slower than the Andorian designs used by Earth and its allies. It was implied in "Armada" that the Queen relies on these ships to keep order in her domain, and prevent her subjects from revolting, so she could not afford to withdraw a significant number of them for the extended length of time necessary to travel to Earth. When Lazarus Slade equipped her ships with hyperdrives comparable in speed to Andorian designs, the Queen launched a lightning strike against Earth, which would have succeeded, had the drives not been powered by the ersatz, and highly unstable starstones bought from the space pirate Captain Kidd. The implications of the staggering losses the Queen suffered in the battle for Earth were never fully explored, leading some fans to believe[citation needed] that "Armada" should have been the last episode in the series, in terms of internal chronology (like many animated series made at the time, this series does not have a proper "final" episode).
The ranks of the Crown military "appear to be some kind of android" ("Lord of the Sands"), but this is not known for certain. They are known react with fear ("Phoenix"), ambition ("Mindnet"), and other emotions that would indicate that they are sentient beings, but still generally loyal to the Queen.
[edit] Characters
[edit] Episodes
[edit] DVD Availability
Koch Entertainment LP currently owns the rights to Galaxy Rangers[clarify] and distributes it on DVD through Koch Vision.
Four Galaxy Rangers DVDs, each containing four episodes, were released in the United States. However, the entire four disc series can be rented from Netflix, or purchased on the German version of Amazon.com, with both English and German Dolby Stereo and subtitles.
Koch is now releasing the entire series which consists of two boxsets. The first set was released on May 13, 2008. The second and final set will be released on August 5th. [2]
[edit] References
- Marvel Comics: The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers #1-9
- The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers Annual 1989 ISBN 0948936886
[edit] External links
- The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers at the Internet Movie Database
- The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers at TV.com
- The official website of the Galaxy Rangers
- The Hearst Animation Official Galaxy Rangers Website
- Galaxy - Rangers (German)
- Toonopedia - Galaxy Rangers
