Terrahawks (Box Set) (DVD)

...count upon the good old Terrahawks to protect them from Zelda's powers. The Terrahawks are a secret elite space military group in a hidden location on the coast of Brazil (fortunately Zelda doesn't know their location), much like the Thunderbirds they are equipped with all the goods of military hardware and space vehicles and an army of spherical droids- the Zeroids, who can bounce, go into combat and fire inbuilt lasers, increase their weight for ...
...

The Terrahawks make up only a small group in terms of manpower though....

There is Lt Hiro- the Asian character who sits alone on the space station ready to fire the nukes if any of Zelda's ships should try to approach Earth. With a fondness for botany (since there's no-one else to talk to) and an oh-so 'funny' and politically incorrect mispronunciation of words.

Lt Hawkeye and Capt Kate Kestrel who ... more

The Story of the Show:

It is the year 2020 and Earth is under threat from Zelda- an advanced but highly disturbed android from the planet Guk in Alpha Centauri who once led an army of insurrectionist androids to overthrow and exterminate their creators who once treated them like slaves. Now driven by her hatred of all humanoid life, she and her android army have taken control of the Mars colony and have set their eyes on conquering or destroying Earth.

Fortunately the human race can count upon the good old Terrahawks to protect them from Zelda's powers. The Terrahawks are a secret elite space military group in a hidden location on the coast of Brazil (fortunately Zelda doesn't know their location), much like the Thunderbirds they are equipped with all the goods of military hardware and space vehicles and an army of spherical droids- the Zeroids, who can bounce, go into combat and fire inbuilt lasers, increase their weight for maximum damaging impact and more importantly they annoy the hell out of their supreme commander.

The Terrahawks make up only a small group in terms of manpower though....

There is Lt Hiro- the Asian character who sits alone on the space station ready to fire the nukes if any of Zelda's ships should try to approach Earth. With a fondness for botany (since there's no-one else to talk to) and an oh-so 'funny' and politically incorrect mispronunciation of words.

Lt Hawkeye and Capt Kate Kestrel who provide the arial fighter backup and the dated hairdos. Hawkeye is the easygoing kind of guy, whilst Kate Kestrel has to juggle her service for the Terrahawks with her singing career in her dreams of becoming the next Diana Ross.

Capt Mary Falconer who is perhaps personally closest to the Terrahawk's very own commander and chief, since she often flies with him (there is even an air of romantic tension there). She is good natured and often plays the conscience of the Terrahawks group.

And the supreme commander is Dr. "Tiger" Ninestein, a very serious and authoritarive man but who also has a fondness for computer games he never gets a chance to finally clock because Zelda always comes to interrupt his fun. We then learn that he actually is a 9th generation clone of the original Dr. Ninestein.

Together we find that they make a damn good top notch elite team at defending Earth from Zelda's sinister forces- her matter manipulating abilities, and her collection of powerful monsters and warriors held in her cryogenic lair.

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Terrahawks was Gerry Andersen's creation, made in league with Christopher Burr- a show that began in 1983 and ran for two seasons for 39 episodes. Gerry Andersen was of course the man behind the other great futuristic puppet action shows of the 60's and 70's- Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Stingray and Captain Scarlet (as well as doing live action science fiction shows like UFO and Space: 1999).

Terrahawks was actually the first Gerry Andersen puppet show I ever watched. But my recollections of watching the show back in the 80's when I was a mere toddler with my brother and sister are very vague, mainly because the show used to scare me so much that I would only watch little bits of it- at that age I was scared of a lot of things as we used to own the most garishly looking and coloured household items back then- washing machines, vacuum cleaners, even the smoke alarm. Rewatching the series has been something of a trip down memory lane.

"Terrahawks" was Gerry's big 80's comeback and was clearly made in this post-Star Wars climate to compete with Star Wars, Battlestar Gallactica, Buck Rodgers, and Battle of the Planets.

"Terrahawks" was mainly done as an answer to the Japanese puppet space action series "Star Fleet" which came out in 1980- it was one of the few action-orientated puppet shows that didn't have Gerry Andersen's name on it (will they please give Star Fleet the Region 2 DVD release it deserves already!). What Gerry created here is something of a very tongue in cheek version of "Starfleet".

The series Terrahawks had improved on some of the visuals flaws of Gerry's older puppet shows- vocal movements of the puppets was still rather dodgy but any strings were completely invisible from view (making me wonder if maybe they had stopped using strings altogether by this time). there are also far less of the recycling of model shots for the spaceship launches, but they do crop up from time to time.

Even so, some have considered "Terrahawks" to be a victim of very shaky plotting and writing, rather bland characters, and uncertain tone and inconsistent sense of dramatic gravity, and consequently qualifies as Gerry Andersen's worst ever show, and a grand fall from his more mature works of the 70's like "Captain Scarlet" and "Space: 1999". But in my opinion, all this aside "Terrahawks" could very well be Gerry Andersen's most entertaining show.

There's just something about Gerry Andersen's old puppet shows that makes them so wonderfully entertaining- they were blatantly superficial and cliched and dealt in emotionless heroes and motiveless villains, and you could tell by the plots and events that it was written for children, but still they remain classic entertainment, always guaranteed to provide feelgood escapism.

The theme tune is like all other Gerry Andersen puppet theme tunes (except heavily more synthesiser and drum machine driven) it's orchestral and perky, cheesy and overblown, and yet it's so stereo and upbeat and infectious that I can't help but adore its purely feelgood effect (mind you though I like the old Kids Incorporated theme tune too).

Having recently watched Matt Stone and Trey Parker's "Team America: World Police", I've come to be able to appreciate the charm of the po-faced cliches of Gerry Andersen's kind of puppet shows and its alpha male characters, and of course Terrahawks was aimed at being far more self depreciating than previous Andersen creations.

There's something so random and cool about an over-serious adult character like Dr. Ninestein having such a fondness for computer games and getting so uptight when his game is interrupted by the latest threat warning- speaking to the impatient kid in us all.

It is Zelda however who really steals the show, with a certain perspective of her own on the foul vermin that is the human race (let's face it, she *does* have a point), but she's mostly characterised by a simple pyromanic love of violence and destruction, and an infectious cackle that I always remember haunting my childhood! Zelda was like your granny's red-eyed evil twin, who could turn so suddenly from cozy to cruel and manically sadistic (I'm surprised actually how much Zelda still scares me now). It was this personality to her that made her endearing and in some ways made her more redeemable than the more cold and spooky Gerry Andersen villains like the Mysterons, The Hood or Captain Black.

Zelda was voiced by Denise Bryer, who also voiced her counterpart- the villainess Commander Makara in the "Starfleet" series, and she also did the voice of the bag lady goblin in the film "Labyrinth", and of the talking chicken- Billina in "Return to Oz". Overall I don't think anyone else could have played the voice of Zelda with the edgy charisma that Denise did.

As the series goes on, Zelda begins introducing us to her android family- her sister, Cystar, her gluttonous pea-brained brat of a son, Yungstar and the androgynous Itstar with a split personality between the innocent female side and devious but highly intelligent male side of Itstar's mind. At first the domestics of Zelda's family rather irked me, but like so many other elements of the show, they progressively grew on me rather quickly.

I started to really like Yungstar because he reminded me so vividly what an obnoxiously demanding little four year old I used to be, and the concept of Zelda- who was like a wicked witch of an old fairy tale- having her own domestic sitcom, with her as the mean, stick wielding mother raising a dysfunctional family where brothers play malignant practical jokes of the 'hidden landmine in the sandpit' variety on each other was just so entertaining. In a series where humour was the order of the day, Zelda brought the most wicked and ruthless bouts of it and delivered some of the best one-liners to ever come from a children's TV series- it was basically everything that the 80's children's comedy "The Charmings" should have been but never was.

Funnily enough I used to quite like "The Charmings" as a kid too, but I can't see myself liking it now because it was just so twee- right down to the sickening theme tune- that show blew a perfect oppurtunity to use Adam Ant's "Prince Charming" as its theme tune instead, which would have rocked, rather than blowed.

Of course it is always the vehicles that are the real starring characters in any Gerry Andersen series and in this series we are treated to such eye-candy as the large Battlehawk which is the transporter aircraft, and then the Terrahawk, a smaller aircraft which detaches from the Battlehawk and is shaped like a hawk and has a simmilar swooping ability. The smaller fighter jet Hawkwing, the Treehawk shuttle freighter with a capacity for space flight and therefore can take the fight to Zelda once in a while, and the armoured defense space station Spacehawk, completely automated, equipped with nukes and designed to give early warnings of Zelda's advances.

The main boyhood joy of all these vehicles is seeing the elaborate ways in which they are launched in a manner which is supposed to be discreet, but which is in-fact anything but. The gorgeous launching of the Hawkwing is my favourite- a launch that requires perfect timing, which involves being launched from the coastal bed via a large created whirlpool that provides a tunnel for the ship to speed through without getting wet, (whilst simultaneously off-screen causing all the poor fish nearby to die of excessive bubble gas consumption- no wonder Zelda thinks humans are a menace to their own environment)- an absolutely beautiful and musical sequence that really gives me my kicks whenever I see it.

The series was typical Saturday morning entertainment. The reasons to buy this set aren't to do with looking for anything deep or original, and even plausibility frequently goes out of the window. Viewing this show is purely for the feelgood and escapist factor. It is a TV show that is simply 'cool', it's got cool vehicles and Zelda makes a cool villain- it doesn't deal much in emotional development, or in emotions of any kind for that matter. I'd have to say the immediate suspense is actually very well handled, but it's mainly about the eye candy. Not only the vehicles and ships but the very lush and bountiful rural and coastal landscapes that appear bright and detailed in an invigorating way, thanks to the sharp DVD remastering.

Anyhow- time to get down to some plot schematics, a rundown of a select handful of the best episodes of the show:

Expect the Unexpected (Part 1)

Zelda makes her first strike on the Mars colony in one of my favourite scenes of gleeful malignant destruction ever aimed at a children's audience, and then having blasted the colony to smithereens, she sets her android eyes upon Earth, and the Terrahawks are ordered into action- poised and ready for war to defend their planet. Sorry Dr. Ninestein, your high score on the Atari Flashback 2.0 will have to wait, you must face Zelda and verbally spar with her on how her excessive wrinkle look is not pretty and say today's cliche of the week repeatedly at the most inoppurtune moments. Picked by me as one of the best because of the suspense, and because of Zelda's ingenuity at getting to Earth, not to mention the beautiful recreation of rural Tailand where the first kicker of a battle takes place.

Expect the Unexpected (Part 2)

Zelda returns to Earth and offers to try and make peace with the Terrahawks, delivering her sob story about her enslavement. Despite having ruthlessly massacred the entire population of the Mars colony whilst guffawing all the way, the Terrahawks stupidly take Zelda at her word when she uses a matter manipulator to build a long stretch of road out of the rural surroundings of the base- they decide that she's fulfilled her community service for the month and let her go her way, little realising (though its pretty obvious) that she's set a trap for them (involving one of the most unconvincing force-field special effects I've ever seen).

Despite which it's a pretty good resolution and it's the last time we see Zelda as a lone villain with no-one to upstage her before she starts thawing out her family and her monsters. It also makes a refreshing portrayal of a more enlightened human society of the future where the military are more quickly willing to accept that they might have been in the wrong in a given combat and make the appropriate reparations and negotiations sooner as the Terrahawks consider the possibility that one of their soldiers might have got nervous and launched the first strike, in which case Zelda may not have come to Earth with hostile intentions but was forced to retaliate.

Thunder-Roar

Zelda's first monster is unleashed- Sram. A monster with a thunderous roar that can literally crumble mountains. His ability to send spaceships off-course with his roar whilst flying past them in his airtight craft in the vacuum of space in which sound isn't supposed to be able to travel, reveals that plausibility wasn't top of Gerry Andersen's agenda for this series, but even so this is one of the more serious tension driven episodes that works very well. Fortunately we do not see the end of Sram here and he will be back for some rematches.

Play It Again Sram

And whatdya know, Sram's back. As Kate Kestrel enters the solar system's annual song contest with her song "SOS Mr. Tracey" (as an intertextual nod to old "Thunderbirds"), Zelda decides to put together a band of her own and to enter the contest, for which she is accepted (again you can score zero for plausibility but who cares when this plot is just too funny for words) and so Zelda challenges Kate Kestrel to a musical duel in a remote asteroid, hiding a devious plot to kill the Terrahawks during the contest. As a band, even Kate Kestrel has to admit that Zelda and her family are musically quite good, as no-one can encourage you to 'get down with your bad self' quite like the evil Zelda, and no-one can 'bring the house down' quite like Sram.

My Kingdom for a Zeaf

Another pricelessly funny episode where Zelda first introduces the Terrahawks to Lord Tempo- Master of Time. This episode not only introduces us to an indestructible and omnipotent enemy but also sees us to the butt of a few time travel jokes and Shakespeare puns that are genuinely hilarious.

The Ultimate Menace

And now things get much more serious as an invincible battleship ran automatically by a supercomputer that is entirely inimical to all human and humanoid life, including androids, is heading towards the solar system, plenched to exterminate all life. For once Zelda and the Terrahawks are forced to work together in order to survive against a common emeny. Brilliantly directed with a thick air of doom and featuring the most tense and sharp space battle of the series.

Two For the Price of One

Is one of several episodes where Ninestein has a plan to finally take the fight to Zelda and eliminate her threat once and for all. But this battleplan is then complicated by a moral dilemma involving innocent lives within Zelda's base. Within this post-60's discussion of whether collateral deaths of innocents is ever justifiable and about if the moral high ground can ever exist in war, I finally realised that Ninestein's rather unlikeable, emotionless, masculine war-nut qualities were having me at the edge of my seat as I was completely unsure what he would do this time.

First Strike

In this episode there are more moral dilemas ahead (and for once its not quite of the 60's peacenik trend following variety, but one that Gerry Andersen has shown a convicted belief in) as the Earth military decide it is time to launch an all out nuclear war against Zelda. And even the ruthless Ninestein is horrified at the prospect that this could only provoke mutually assured destruction. In a way reminiscent of many of the "Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons" episodes, this can be seen nowadays as a more potent than ever discussion on the threat of terrorism and nuclear war. On how counter-terrorist organisations not only have the responsibility to prevent innocent deaths at the hands of the terrorists, but also to prevent the people in power from being incensed to go to war to settle the terrorist threat, which of course will only lead to far more deaths of innocents than the terrorists could ever have caused alone.

This message is delivered with much more cliche here than it was in the "Captain Scarlet" series, with the characters of the military forces painted as the more stereotypical and antagonistic war mongering types. Of course stereotypes, just like cliches can often be true -particularly when it comes to the military which often shares something of a 'group mentality'-, and often in life you'll find that right wing people (no matter whether they be 16 or 60) who voice pro-war opinion and engage in intellectual arguments with opposing views are less concerned with debating with the more left wing voices of peace and detante for the sake of food for thought and re-assesment for both sides, and are more concerned with showing off in an intellectual, cold hearted, alpha male p*ssing contest- belittling the opposition and showing the 'liberals' up to be bleeding heart emotional cripples. We see this alpha male attitude here and it's actually quite refreshing to see them proved wrong.

This kind of portrayal would be unpopular with the modern audience who are raised on the strictly authentic kind of entertainment, whether it be a Quentin Tarantino script full of conversations about Royale with Cheese and Foot Massages, or an episode of "Big Brother". The modern audience probably would laugh at this and would demand some proper character realism and a sense of real debate, and would consider this episode to be hackneyed and biased. The trouble is of course that whilst 'biased' has become a dirty word, the idea that you must always be objective in your view or presentation when discussing war is something of a catch-22, because being objective means being emotionally detached and uncaring about innocent casualties or consequences or ramifications- which automatically denies you a position of being anti-war, and there is definitely something wrong there, because emotion and compassion very much has a place in discourses on war and kiling.

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Now for the worst of the series (spoilers to follow):

Unseen Menace

The Terrahawks are plagued by one of Zelda's agents that posesses the ability of invisibility. I can't explain quite why but the compelling threat soon descended into a sense of boredom and led to a rather poor and rushed resolution.

A Christmas Miracle

This episode actually has some brilliant spectacular space battles and a very off the wall plot that becomes rather compelling, until it turns out to have all been a dream- which has always been the worst kind of writing if you want to finally empty the episode of all substance and point. A deux ex machina type of conclusion would have at least made it seem like an experience.

Ma's Monster

If you ponder the title above and consider the fact that this was the closer episode for season 1, well- you've guessed it, this one's a clip show. Something all too common in the 80's- even "Star Trek: The Next Generation" did it at the end of Season 2. This kind of episode probably had some merit back in the time when home video was only just coming out and syndicate repeats were less common, and where condensed re-viewings of old adventures within an episode were welcomed by audiences, but nowadays even a little bit of Zelda's grumpiness during the reminisence can't make it worthwhile- it is totally skippable.

Operation Zero

The Spherical cubes are the focus of the story here as the Terrahawks base is attacked by Zelda's forces and the humans are held in a forcefield, so it's up to Zero and his Zeroids to save the day. Except that right off the bat I must tell you this is another "oh it was all a dream" stories, and even this one is far too absurd and idiotic to be redeemed, with the spherical droids being more annoying than ever.

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My Final Recommendation:

I have really enjoyed watching this series, and I honestly think that watching one of these episodes could really cheer me up and lift my spirits, even after a really rough day. It just smothers you in its feelgood, humorous and eye-candy elements. However I also recognise that this kind of stuff is an acquired taste and some won't go for its cheesy, off the wall style and its often poorly thought out plots and dilemas.

And I must point out that the series may have some underlying continuity to the stories but there is ultimately no climax which finally resolves the threat of Zelda, although I had hoped there would be, which is what kept me watching. I believe this might have been an artistic decision on Gerry's part to give an overall message about how there will always be evil and that there are no easily solutions of elimination when it comes to certain threats, and that like it or not, we must be patient and we can't expect quick results and we often have to tread carefully and avoid being the ones to force the enemy's hand and escalate these conflicts in these days of nuclear superpowers and resourceful terrorists- remember this was in the 80's with the Cold War arms race and the IRA terrorist activities. Who'd have thought it would be more relevant today than ever before. 

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