Battle of the Planets Vol.1

• Cert:
• Cat.no: 902 554 9
• Running time: 285 minutes
• Year: 1978
• Pressing: 2002
• Region(s): 2, 4 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 64
• Sound: Mono
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English for the hard of hearing, Dutch
• Fullscreen: 4:3
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: 2 * DVD 9
• Price: £19.99
• Extras: None
  

  ---

  Director:

  David E. Hanson

Cast :

Keyop/7-Zark-7: Alan Young
Zoltar: Keye Luke
Jason: Ronnie Schell
Princess: Janet Waldo
Mark: Casey Kasem
Tiny: Alan Dinehart

There are fewer theme tunes better than that for Battle of the Planets.

“G-Force: Princess, Tiny, Keyop, Mark, Jason and watching over them fromCentre Neptune their computerised co-ordinator, 7-Zark-7, watching, warningagainst surprise attacks from alien galaxies beyond space.

G-Force: Fearless young orphans, protecting Earth’s entire galaxy. Always five,acting as one. Dedicated, inseparable, invincible!”

There’s a distant, dying planet miles away called Spectra and their leader,The Great Spirit, is sending evil aliens to plunder the Earth’s naturalresources for their own good, controlling his troops through his henchmanZoltar.

This double-disc set runs for nearly five hours and contains twelve episodesas our intrepid heroes don strange bird-like costumes and fly about in theair-bound equivalent of a De Lorean, which, when hitting its fastest speed,is known as the Phoenix, because of how it looks when it gets “fired up”.

The characters are made up of the leader Mark (Casey Kasem), his right-handman Jason (Ronnie Schell), the fat one, Tiny (Alan Dinehart),the bird-like-sounding Keyop (Alan Young), the girl, Princess (Janet Waldo)and the aforementioned computerised R2D2-a-like, 7-Zark-7 (Alan Young, again).For those who used to watch those late night “Movies, Games, Video and BoxOffice America”, etc. and were told to “put your hands in the air andkeep reaching for the stars”, it is the very same Casey Kasem whopresented that and also played the voice of Shaggy in the original ScoobyDoo cartoon.

None of the episodes listed below actually make much sense – for example, “TheSpace Serpent” shows a metal bug-like creature rising out of the sea tosteal all the crude oil from an oil tanker, before burrowing back underground,but all are hugely enjoyable to watch and it’s a must for anyone brought up on the series as ayoungster.

It wasn’t until I saw one of the episodes of “I Love the 70s”, that Ifound out that we were actually given a censored version of this show, withviolent scenes removed and filled with extra waffle from 7-Zark-7. Given theU-certificate, we must have the same episodes on this disc.

Transmute!

As you’d expect, the programme is presented in 4:3 fullscreen and mono sound.However, both fare better than you’d expect. The video isn’t particularlyscratchy and is very watchable, while the sound is as effervescent as it everwas and the theme tune still rocks.

On the down side, there’s no subtitles or extras. Strangely, the number ofchapters vary from episode to episode – anything from four to seven apiece.

The episodes presented here are :