It’s funny how life gets in the way of website content updates. I was supposed (I say supposed, but that’s so self-imposed) to have this posted last week (as well as the 13th commentary on the D&D cartoon), but it had to wait until today. Hopefully I’ll have the next on up later, probably on Wednesday, and then it’s on to another show for awhile; something much, much different, say a comedy set in space for instance. Today though we’re going to keep trudging along with the dragons, fantasy, and underwear jokes. Wait, I think we are blissfully devoid of underwear in this episode…
The title of today’s show is The Lost Children, which originally aired on December 3rd, 1983, and was yet again written by Jeffrey Scott who took a stab at really pushing the envelope as far as some of the story elements go. I would have to call this the de facto Star Wars reference episode as we get everything from almost direct quotes, creature name dropping, similar plot points, and above all else a mixture of fantasy and science fiction.
The basic gist of this episode involves the gang, on instructions from a very oddly animated Dungeon Master (he appears very mischievous, almost evil at times), going on a quest to find a ship that can take them home. The key to finding the ship lies with a group of lost children, aliens from another world, who are also on a quest (to find their elder Alfor, who is being held prisoner by Venger.) Together they set out to free Alfor and, who they hope can use his spaceship to get everyone home.
Like I mentioned above, some of the sequences with DM at the beginning are weirdly animated, so much so that he also appears to be sort of villainous…
After the gang sets out to look for the lost children, they very quickly get their wish, though it takes them completely by surprise as the ‘children’ are a strange alien race that appears to be some sort of amalgamation between Willey Kit and Willey Kat from the Thundercats, and the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. At first I figured the kids were painted up in some sort of tribal war paint, but I believe that this might actually be their real skin…
So one of the interesting aspects of this episode is the mass amount of more modern technology that shows up, the first bit of which is a blowtorch used by a mystery prisoner of Venger. What struck me as kind of odd is the design of the device, which was very fantasy influenced (the tip of the torch is shaped like a dragon.) I’m wondering how much this was thought out in the script? We later learn that the mystery prisoner is Alfor, the elder of the lost children, so he’s obviously from another more technologically advanced planet and could very well have brought the device with him on his spaceship. Yet since it looks so fantasy oriented in it’s design, I’m wondering if it’s something Venger conjured up to assist his prisoner in fixing his ship. This question pops up again later as well…
Along with all of the weird technology in this episode, we also get a look at Castle de la Venger (mark IV.) His castle was shown again in the last episode, though I didn’t mention it because it was again one of the hanging stalactite abodes from before. Why he keeps castle hopping is beyond me, unless he really does like to spread himself out among the realm, maybe to keep all the indigenous people in line.
Another thing I noticed is that either Scott, the storyboard artists, or the animators decided to do the whole "see the footsteps of the invisible Sheila as she walks" gag when she decides to sneak into the castle by herself to free Alfor. I didn’t realize that they did this again in the series…
So getting back to the oddly advanced technology, Sheila stumbles upon a trap along one of the halls of Venger’s castle, a hanging cage that will fall down on top of you if you step through a laser tripwire. I mean, this is straight out of Mission Impossible or something (well maybe not the cage part), and it’s very out of place in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Like the blowtorch, it begs the question of where it came from. Are these enhancements that Alfor has been forced to make on the castle, or is this simply the work of Venger? Personally I’d like to believe that Venger made Alfor install this stuff as it would really enrich the story and not come off as convenient writing.
Speaking of convenient scripting, when Sheila makes her way down to the dungeon to try and free Alfor (she has no idea what he looks like) she instead finds a guy who just happens to be Venger in disguise. How in the heck did he know to hide in the dungeon like that, or that she’d even come to the particular cell? It makes for a dynamic reveal (as most of Venger’s transformations do), but it really doesn’t make all that much sense…
Again, like in episode #8 (Servant of Evil), I though the obligatory dragon of the episode was going to have to be something that really stretched the concept of dragons in every episode, like the tip of the torch (or the prison gate locking mechanism in SoE), but again I wasn’t let down as a little while later we get a true dragon appearance. This one is pretty cool as it’s possibly another reference to the Lord of the Rings series (something we get surprising very little of in D&D) in the form of the steeds of some very Ring Wraith looking fellas.
Seriously, besides their one glowing yellow eye, they are very Ring Wraith-ish and very awesome looking minions of Venger. I don’t think we ever see them again in the series, which is sort of a shame as I’m insanely curious about their origins and I’d love to see a little more characteristics as they end up being dispatched in a very odd way (well actually in a very unseen way.)
Right about the time that the episode cuts for a commercial, the plot all of a sudden gets all wiggy. The Ring Wraith-like riders end up besting most of the kids, and it’s left up to Presto to literally pull something out of hit hat to save them all. Well, nothing comes out of his hat and then the episode fades to black to go to a commercial. This is very common in the series thus far, usually fading to black on a villain as they trudge towards the kids, and then as it fades back in it sort of backs up a couple seconds to pick up where the episode left off. In this episode though, the timeline jumps forward about ten minutes with the gang having defeated the riders, and are now posing as them (in the rider’s garb) to sort of Trojan Horse their way into Venger’s castle with Bobby and the Lost Children as prisoners. It’s a very Star Wars thing to do by the way, though it’s also a trick as old as time itself. There is pretty much no explanation as to what went down, only an off hand comment by Presto that he couldn’t believe that his hat saved everyone (or something to that effect.) Though it bugs me that there is a gaping plot hole like this, it’s also sort of a fun allusion to the way such cliffhangers were handled during the serialized movie shorts of the 30s and 40s. In a lot of those serials the hero would be in a very dire position as the episode ended, and then when it picked up next week the situation was re-written to be a little more in favor of the hero so that he could escape, triumph, etc. Probably not intentional in the D&D cartoon’s case, but I still found it a little neat.
Apparently, I opened my big mouth too soon as far as stating that the phase of having zombies pop up in the cartoon was over. There are just no more purple-ish zombies with white hair. In the next sequence as the gang smuggles themselves into the castle Presto mistakenly opens the wrong cell and a zombie-like creature jumps out and plays pro wrestler with him for a bit. There’s also a bit of anime-esque animation to the scene, what with the odd art on Presto’s teeth as he’s being lifted for the beat down.
The kids find the correct cell and release Alfor, who at first bore a striking resemblance to Ookla the Mok from the Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon…
…but upon closer inspection looks more like the lost older (more hairy) brother of Lion-O from the Thundercats. Eric also drops another Star Wars reference here, referring to Alfor as a wookie.
Alfor leads the kids to his ship, which turns out to be a spaceship with a design that reminds me of a cross between the H.G. Wells time machine and the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea sub from the Kirk Douglas Disney movie. It’s pretty snazzy in a 50s sci-fi sort of way, though very unrealistic as it has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. I have to admit that I really like the whole romantic notion of space craft that have open canopies (or ones that lift up so that the crew can just jump out), it’s very much in line with the 60s Hanna Barbera adventure cartoon, or comic books from the same time.
There’s yet another Star Wars reference as Alfor explains to Eric that he needs to fix a bad motivator on his ship ("Hey Uncle, this one’s got a bad motivator…"). I’m not a technically inclined type of guy, but I’m pretty sure that this is just some weird techno babble from Star Wars.
Apparently it’s completely kosher to feature violence against the lizard men in the D&D cartoon (as far as standards and practices go) as this is the second episode to feature a direct energy bow bolt hit from Hank (there was one in the Servant of Evil episode as well.)
I wonder if this is sort of a double standard because there are obviously no real lizard men, they’re more like monsters and therefore it’s cool to have violence directed at them. It’s sort of like the robots on Samurai Jack, or how all of the blood and guts where allowed to be every color except red in Evil Dead 2 to avoid an X rating. I noticed a similar scene in the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s Stardust, where a character had his throat slit yet the blood was blue…
One of the rumors that has followed the cancellation of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon around to this day is that it went off the air because of the supposed ‘demonic’ content or the evil connotations that the tabletop game has been accused of having. A scene that a lot of people point involves Alfor’s ship as they gang and the kids pile in to escape from Venger’s castle. There’s a set of engravings on the ship which could be mistaken for three sixes, the sign of the devil, but I think that this is really reaching…
As the ship takes off, there is an odd reference to a port hole in the room (one which Venger brings to life with two sets of chomping teeth) as a garbage masher, which again seems to be a reference to Star Wars if only because a ‘wookie’ is flying them out on a spaceship with a bad motivator, blah, blah, blah. Add to this the escape (in the garb of the enemy) from the dungeon (read detention level) and it makes one wonder is Scott was watching Star Wars as he wrote the script…
To top all of this off, Venger ends up blasting the ship out of the sky, which appears to crash in a huge ball of flames…
When in fact the ship just sort of crashes nose first into a nearby swamp (an Empire reference perhaps) and every one is fine and dandy. Well, fine and dandy health-wise. I’m sure they’re all depressed and pissed that their ticket home is lying damaged in the swamp…
All in all, I thought that this was a really odd direction to take the show in, especially in it’s first season, as the writers hadn’t really yet explored the full potential of the fantasy themes and environments. Nonetheless it’s an interesting addition to the cannon and continuity.
Next time on Cartoon Commentary we’ll look at the episode P-R-E-S-T-O Spells Disaster.
