That is why so many of the first season’s episodes covered benign issues that everyone could get behind, such as the need to protect the planet from pollution. “We tried to take a stance with these things,” Harnage says, “and do it in such a way where we offended as few people as possible because we didn’t want the Catholic church or evangelicals condemning Captain Planet for trying to warp children’s minds." He explains that Captain Planet ran into controversy with its episode about overpopulation, " Population Bomb.” Though his script used mice as analogs for humans in a riff on Gulliver’s Travels, TBS refused to air the episode in the first season because it was worried about the trouble it might cause. But after Cruise recorded the first couple of episodes, Harnage says, “we had to face the unpleasant realization that he did not have a superhero voice.” (David Coburn would later be chosen as the titular hero.)įrom the beginning, Harnage says that the show tried to tackle things that no other cartoon was dealing with: killing animals, genetic modification, and harmful things that humans do to the environment. Then there was the question of who would voice Captain Planet. Turner originally wanted Tom Cruise, because he was the biggest movie star in the world at the time. This included pulling in famous actors to voice some of the characters Whoopi Goldberg was the original voice of Gaia, and the musician Sting played her evil counterpart, Zarm. Turner loved DIC’s approach and decided to commission them with his full support. With nothing to go on except that there were superpowers involved that combined to make an even more powerful character, Harnage and his colleagues came up with a scenario wherein Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, reached out to teenagers from specific global regions - Africa, Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, and the United States - and tasked them with saving the planet from pollution. Harnage says that Turner originally tasked DIC and Hanna-Barbera with creating a concept for the show. Harnage tells SYFY WIRE that the entire production team “had real visions of changing the world by doing something with real social ramifications." Though he feels that the show fell short of its goal, he takes comfort in the fact that it “got kids to step up further and start recycling." Phil Harnage was the senior staff writer of DIC Entertainment when Ted Turner, the billionaire TV producer and founder of TBS and CNN, approached the company with his idea. Today it is perhaps best remembered for its catchy theme song, whose lyrics many millennials still know by heart. Though Captain Planet was never as popular as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it performed well enough to run for six seasons from 1990 to 1996 - with the series run from 1993 to 1996 being retitled The New Adventures of Captain Planet and airing on Turner Program Services - and have a spin-off video game, action figure line, Marvel comics limited series, and promotional crossover with Burger King. 15, 1990, and followed the story of five teenagers with magical rings (the Planeteers) fighting to save the world from pollution with the help of a "superhero" (Captain Planet) who formed when the Planeteers' power came together. The animated superhero series was first broadcast by TBS on Sept. Captain Planet and the Planeteers is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and even though the show looks like a gentle relic now, back then it was hailed for its commitment to educating children about the role that they could play in preserving and protecting the world.
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