It’s been a few years since I have talked about the TV show
ReBoot. I did a post on it when I heard the announcement of the entire series
being released on DVD. I was very excited as this was one of my childhood shows
that I watched a ton growing up. There were three shows that were done using
computer animation that I watched and loved. ReBoot was the first one, then
there was Beast Wars, which came out on DVD two years ago as well, and it was
about three months after I got ReBoot. Then the last one was Shadow Raiders.
To explain a bit more about me, I lived in Canada for quite
some time, and when I lived there,
there were a few TV channels that I would watch, the big one was YTV
that contained a lot of the big kids shows, and also some of the older ones that
were still fairly popular. YTV was where I caught those three computer animated
shows, as they were all produced by a Canadian company called Mainframe
Entertainment. Therefore I got plenty of exposure to their works. This was how
I became aware of Shadow Raiders when it was first released. Which first aired
on YTV on September 16, 1998. The show lasted for 26 episodes.
To give you a history lesson on Shadow Raiders, it was first
a toy line, just like Beast Wars: Transformers. Shadow Raiders was based on the
toy line entitled War Planet. They were these little planets that would open up
and you would have a station in them that had little men that you could play
with. Think of Mighty Max if you have ever heard of that and you have the idea
of the toy line. It had some cool things to it, but I only had one of them.
Anyway, I first saw a preview for it on TV and realized it
was done by the same people that did ReBoot and Beast Wars, and since I really
liked those shows, I knew that I was going to like this one as well. I got a
blank VHS tape out (which was refered to as a video tape back then, DVD wasn’t
popular yet) and set the timer to record the first episode. I remember sleeping
in my basement in my home and watching the first episode with no sound, as the
TV was mainly left on at that point just as picture noise to help me sleep, but
the visuals were really cool that I really was curious about the dialogue that
went along with it. When I woke up the next morning, I rewound the tape and
watched the whole episode (with sound nonetheless) and I was hooked.
To give you a symopsis of the show, it was about four
planets (Ice, Rock, Fire, Bone) that were divided and would steal resources
from one another. This was done so each planet could survive, as each one had
something of value. This had gone on for many years. All things change when the
Beast Planet arrives. Planet Tek is destroyed by the Beast Planet, and Tekla of
the planet goes out to warning star systems near her home world to warn them of
the threat of the Beast Planet. She lands on Planet Ice, where she is in the
middle of raid by the people of Rock to get the Ice off the planet. She
eventually warns Graveheart, a miner from Planet Rock, and King Kryos of Planet
Ice about the Beast Planet. They realize that they must get to all the planets
to unite them.
You may think that they unite perfectly and things are all
good, actually there are many different complications. Ahead are a few spoilers
for the show, in the second episode, Graveheart and Kryos try to warn Planet
Rock about the threat of the Beast Planet, but Lord Mantle, the leader of the
planet, refuses to join forces with the other planets, and he doesn’t join for
another 11 episodes, it isn’t till episode 13 where Planet Rock joins the Alliance.
There are also many other complications like the leader of Planet Bone ditches
everyone in battle, and his forces retreat with him. The biggest shocker is
when Planet Fire is actually destroyed by the Beast Planet, and the people of
Fire end up living on one of the battle moons of Planet Rock. So this show
doesn’t really have that, “everything is great and everyone lives happily ever
after”. There are things that happen that never get fixed, characters that die,
etc. Were there flaws, of course, but I was able to check out the whole series
again about a year ago, and it brought back all the nostalgia of when I first
watched it. Even appreciated a lot of the story elements in the show.
Why do I share all of this with you? Well, this September
marks the 15th Anniversary of when the show first aired. I was
hoping to hear of a DVD release of the whole show by now, but nothing, I am
happy to have ReBoot and Beast Wars, but was also hoping to add Shadow Raiders
to my collection. My hope with the 15th Anniversary is to hear of a
DVD release. Keep in mind they have released it in the past, but they are long
out of print, and it isn’t a DVD set, but different volumes. It would be
awesome to have a DVD release to accommodate with the Anniversary, and maybe a
few new extra features about the creation of the show. I believe that there are
many fans out there that would want to get the whole series on DVD, and maybe
some that would re-buy the entire series for a new DVD edition. This was an
important show in my childhood and I would hate to see it disappear into
nothing. This is my call for any distributors that are reading this to consider
getting the rights for the show and get a new edition of the DVD out soon. This is a big piece of my childhood for me, and I am sure there are many that feel the same.
