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DVD: Terrahawks - The Complete Series
(A&E Home Video) 39 episodes on 5 DVDs
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
Gerry Anderson's television series', particularly Thunderbirds and Stingray, are legendary in England and maintain fairly significant cult followings in America. Though the stars are puppets, you don't have to be a kid to get into them. Well, not all of them.
Terrahawks, which ran on British television in 1983, had several entertaining elements, but watching it now on this 5-DVD set, some adults are apt to have a difficult time staying tuned. The Terrahawks' mission, as far as I could tell, was to protect the Earth from alien attack. The lead character, a clone named Dr. Ninestein, is essentially unlikable. He spends most of his time being unreasonable and even cruel to his army of "Zeroids," which are basketball-shaped robots that bounce and roll from place to place, shoot laser beams, have personalities, nationalities and foibles and are much more likeable than Ninestein. Capt. Mary Falconer, Ninestein's flying partner, is as one dimensional as the other characters. Her single purpose seems to be gasping and showing shock over Ninestein's mean spirited attacks on the Zeroids. A Zeroid makes a crucial mistake, Ninestein avoids waiting for the whole story and commands that it be scrapped, Mary is shocked... for some reason.
Perhaps the most difficult part of this show, from an adult viewer's standpoint, is the villain. Zelda is the leader of a colony of androids, each more horrible looking than the last. That's not the problem. In fact, that's a funny story device in the show. Seems the androids saw pictures of monsters and thought that was the human ideal of beauty. (I wonder if that's what happened to Marilyn Manson.) She sends a different "monster" to try to destroy the Terrahawks every episode, but we always see her, too, and she has the world's most cliche and obnoxious "witch laugh," which makes it close to unwatchable for adults and too frightening for children.
I could plug my ears through Zelda's laugh and enjoy some of the other bits on the show if it weren't for Ninestein. You just can't have a fundamentally unlikable star and expect a successful show. It's known as the Dabney Coleman Principle. Works with puppets, too. Had they made the Sgt. Major (the head Zeroid) the star and Ninestein a bitter bit player, it would have been so much better.
© 2004 - DJ Johnson