[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power: Final Thoughts

"Might as well just rip the bandaid off fast... Captain Power is not a great show. It is not a lost masterpiece. It is not a show that the networks did wrong by us in cancelling too soon. It's just not."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power: The Original Bible

"And that's the end of the Bible. It sets up a potentially good show, and the foundation of much of what we ultimately got. It's interesting to see what Straczynski and DiTillio changed and what they didn't, bringing some more depth to the characters and richer story arcs, and what was shifted or discarded in the compression from a 65 episode season to just 22. Ultimately, I think the finished version is the better of the shows, and while this certainly would have been enjoyable, Zicree largely lost me with his Story Springboards, which aren't all that interesting for the most part, and I'm not surprised none of them made it into the show."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power: Toys, Merchandise, and Training Videos

"This is where things catch me by surprise. I figured the rail might be a compilation of footage from the show, or a model set like what we see in the closing credits. Instead, this is full on cell animation straight from Japan, and it is exquisitely detailed and fluid, with fully animated background rushing past and enemies zipping about, kicking in afterburners with great kicks of smoke. This is amazing stuff and instantly glued me to the screen."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power: The Comic

"Here's where I make a confession I know a few people will find shocking: I'm not a fan of Neal Adams. He seems like an okay dude, certainly makes for a lively interview, but I just don't get into his comics all that much. I don't hate them, there's just a certain hamminess and clunkiness to them which keeps me from being all that interested in what's going on from page to page. He's a magnificent illustrator, certainly, and his individual panels are gorgeous, but his layouts lack any flow or momentum, and the constant over-wrought emotions strung throughout leaves those emotions, which he's working so hard to convey, feeling forced and insincere. And then there's his writing. He's a freakin' mess as a writer, with choppy dialogue, poor motivations, and scattershot plotting."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, unproduced episode "Face of Darkness"

"Overall, it's not a particularly stunning or game-changing episode, just another of those one-off adventures where we get a little character, a little dark commentary, a lot of action, and our heroes being heroes. But on paper, it's a perfectly fine one, which kept me involved and interested all the way through. If this speaks to the overall quality of the season 2 which never came to be, it's unfortunate that more hasn't surfaced or been officially released."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power: Season 2

"I definitely think they were on the right track with a lot of their ideas. Broader world-view, shake up the dynamics a bit, take each character further down their paths, bring in new characters and new monsters, this is all good stuff. What I'm seeing of the structure, though, that feels messy, like they weren't sure how to map things out, so they'd just squish it into these little clumps before moving on. It feels surprisingly scattershot, given how much other stuff I know was mapped out ahead of time, to the point where I can't even tell if the neat nuggets Straczynski mentioned above were even still on the table."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 22 "Retribution, Part 2"

"Pilot started cold and underexplored, but as we got into her history and realized just how much humanity she'd been deprived of, it gave so much weight to the little moments of her experiencing new little things everyone else takes for granted. And here, she goes out the hero, saving what little she can of what our heroes have fought for, in total contrast to cold service of the Machine (further contrasted by her saving the good machines of the suits and Mentor)."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 21 "Retribution, Part 1"

"The other big change is the early scene in the Power Base, where Tank and Pilot are, in the script, having a watergun fight and pull the others into laughter and merriment. It's a cute scene, but I much prefer the dance we get here, as everyone gets to have a moment that's uniquely them before clearing the dance floor for Power and Pilot to hold each other in their arms, sharing looks of both longing and hesitation. Jorge Montesi has been the second most prolific director of the season and was absolutely the right choice to bring the show to a close, as he knows how to bring out the tender, human moments."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 20 "New Order, Part 2: The Land Shall Burn Them"

"Regardless of how epic and exciting the script to this episode was, the direction was just a very shittily executed job, and Otto Hanus should feel bad for it. It's something which just shouldn't have happened, like getting Vince Colletta to ink Jack Kirby's astounding run of The Mighty Thor."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 19 "New Order, Part 1: The Sky Shall Swallow Them"

"This one didn't click too much with me. It's not that I feel it did much wrong, it just felt flat to me. They certainly kicked up the action, to the point where I felt their 7 minute action mandate had been instead flipped to just 7 minutes of story, as once they fly in, it's nothing but laser beams and explosions. And yet, that's the problem, in that there's really nothing but laser beams an explosions. There's a lot happening in the action scenes, but very little going on. There's no story to the scene themselves, no staging to have dramatic twists and turns and everybody getting something to do as their coordinated effort drives them forward."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 18 "Freedom One"

"I'm left with many questions."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 17 "The Eden Road"

"I love the setting of the ruins in the acid fog, where even Dread patrols fear to tread because any who wander too deeply in go rogue as their systems are corroded. It's neat to see, as Biodreads just drift aimlessly and into their own laser grids, and even their human Overunits just brush it off as a normal occurrence. That's a neat scene, by the way, of Dread actually going out among his human Overunits, and being firm yet fair as he instructs them through performing like machines."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 16 "A Summoning of Thunder, Part 2"

"What's interesting about this episode is how it recontextualizes the entire series, which till now has been a struggle between Captain Power and Lord Dread, to actually being a struggle between Stuart Power and Lord Dread, with Captain Jonathan merely being a legacy extension of his father. I was under the impression that Jonathan had made the Power Suits (a closer listen reveals the opening titles say "master of" not "maker of"), but nope, that was all Stuart. I thought Mentor had been made by Jonathan in memory of his father, but no, Stuart made that, too, crafting the computer's hologram so a piece of himself will always be left guiding his son. Stuart made the Power Base, Stuart established the resistance to the war, Jonathan is merely the ripple rolling out from that initial splash."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 15 "A Summoning of Thunder, Part 1"

"So much of this story hinges on the performances of Bruce Gray and David Hemblem, and both more than rise to the occasion. Gray's Stuart Power is a brilliant, driven man who, nonetheless, has the weight of the world on his shoulders as he feels fully responsible for breaking it and takes it upon himself to rebuild it again. It gives a weight to how much of a shadow of this man the image of Mentor is, even as Stuart activates that computer program in a moment where he knows he's about to face certain death. Hemblem's Taggert has all the cold calculation of Dread, but he's still fully a man instead of being buried himself within the machine, even as Stuart and Hawk talk about how Taggert and Overmind have been fused. They're still seeing it from a distance, not witnessing the struggles Taggert still faces with the machine over his choices and emotions, a struggle which continues to this day as Overmind calls Dread out for respecting Power's annual memorial and cliffhangering us on that pending attack. Taggert doesn't want to be the villain, people just won't accept that he's trying to save them and make everything better, which makes him all the more complicated of a baddie."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 14 "Judgement"

"These are mind-blowing ethical struggles that you never see in a children's cartoon, and is presented here with a maturity and sophistication few adult dramas are even capable of. This episode is everything "Gemini and Counting" was not, most importantly a showcase for Jessica Steen's acting as Pilot's reserved stoicism falls away and you see her pain, her trauma, her guilt and shame, her hope and compassion. So much emotion suddenly pours out that it more than makes up for cold moments we've gotten in the past, and even retroactively gives them weight as you now see what she's kept bottled up all this time."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 13 "And Madness Shall Reign"

"After two weeks of middling misfires, the show regains its footing with another solid episode. We open dark, with yet another refuge hit by Project Styx, leaving its victims sprawled out like corpses. Sure, they're not really dead and the effects will only last long enough for Dread's forces to come in and Digitize everyone, but the imagery they're playing with is hardly subtle, with the dank lighting, people keeled over left and right, Power and his Soldiers checking pulses and looking at one another with grim shakes of their heads, and the few fighting off the plague gibbering in corners as hallucinations drive them to madness."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 12 "Gemini and Counting"

"But sadly, that's all we get as Jessica Steen continues playing Pilot as the ultimate in buttoned-up reserve. There's no real interaction between she and her comrades aside from suiting up for the mission, and even her speeches to Erin sadly fail to move me any more than earlier moments have, like her and Tank looking at the Bible quote or asking Mentor about love. Maybe it's because there's so much frustration in waiting for something to actually happen as she's prowling around corridors."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 11 "Flame Street"

"Alert: we have a full on cyberpunk episode, with slang-spewing youths in leather and mohawks plugging things straight into ports on their skulls and a dank city streets barely lit by the cold glow of a neon haze. This is Tech City, and we're here to surf the CyberWeb. How amazingly silly and perfectly late 80s cyberpunk is that!"

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, Episode 10 "Wardogs"

"These first few minutes are fantastic. Exciting, rich, laying in neat characters and a nice conflict I want to see explored. Then things go wrong."

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[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 9 "The Intruder"

"The story is pretty pointless and doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. I like the brief hints of a moral dilemma, as our heroes wonder if they should kill Jackson just to keep the location of their base under wraps, but it doesn't go anywhere. Not only in their failing to resolve the setup with Tank, but that there's still no real reason to trust Jackson other than Power's just squeamish about having to make any tough choices."

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