The Series:

A show that was far ahead of its time both technologically and thematically, Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future was created by Gary Goddard, the man probably best known for bringing The Masters Of The Universe to the big screen in live action form with Dolph Lundgren on board as He-Man. Shot on a massive soundstage in Toronto, Ontario to keep costs down, the series lasted only one season, showcasing twenty-two episodes that aired on syndication between 1987 and 1988 when it was eventually cancelled. While it was a short lived affair, there are those of us who were kids when it aired who remember it fondly as Mattel, who bought the series to base a toy line off of it, came up with a pretty neat gimmick for it. See, if you bought the right Captain Power toy, you could shoot at specific light targets that appeared on screen during each and every episode, which made it sort of an interactive experience. Many of these toys would also come with VHS tapes, so you wouldn't necessarily have to sit in front of your TV and wait for an episode to air before you could play, instead you could pop a tape in your player and blast away to your heart's content.

As to the show itself, it's set in the year 2147 where, in the last fifteen years or so, robotic soldiers called Bio-Mechs have made human soldiers obsolete and with wars being fought entirely by machine, they became more and more common. In order to stop this and override the machines that control the Bio-Mechs, Dr. Stuart Gordon Power (Bruce Gray) and his associate, Dr. Lyman Taggart (David Hemblen), work on a supercomputer called the Overmind - but Taggart soon decides to take charge of the project and attach himself to it in order to speed up the project. The results are disastrous and Taggart leaves the experience a changed man, now obsessed with the concept of perfecting machinery by merging man and machine together as one functional being. He tries to use Overmind to make this happen but it winds up sending humanity into a massive conflict with the Bio-Mechs leaving Doctor Power desperate to stop his former partner. To do this, he creates 'Power Suits' - which are basically some fancy suits of armor - which are incredibly powerful when worn by the right people. Taggart tries to stop Power from doing this during a fray in which Gordon has to save his son, Jonathan, from Taggart. Gordon dies in the process, Taggart gets severely injured and becomes more machine than man after the bout, and Jonathan is left to use the Power Suits to assemble a team good enough to stop Taggart from destroying what's left of the world. As Taggart takes on the new identity of Lord Dread, Jonathan Power leads a team of four soldiers dubbed 'The Soldiers Of The Future' against him using the Power Suits and their own supercomputer, Mentor, which Gordon Power designed in his own image and with his own intelligence to help his son save the planet from certain doom.

So those Soldiers Of The Future mentioned above? They are Maj. Matthew "Hawk" Masterson (Peter MacNeill), an air operations specialist; Lt. Michael "Tank" Ellis (Sven-Ole Thorsen), a heavy weapons specialist; Sgt. Robert "Scout" Baker (Maurice Dean Wint), a communications expert; and Cpl. Jennifer "Pilot" Chase (Jessica Steen), the pilot of the Soldier's specially designed ship and Captain Powers' love interest. These four, along with Powers himself, will run into various players from Powers' past and their own pasts that will complicate things, have to deal with the effects of Lord Dread's tactics on civilians, and be wary of the schemes that Dread will put into place in order to stop them. Imposters and traitors will rear their ugly heeds and interference from would be Soldiers Of The Future will put many lives in danger. As the series reaches the end of its twenty-two episode run and Lord Dread comes closer to finalizing his 'Project: New Order' plot to do away with humanity once and for all, it all comes to a head, but sadly, the cancellation of the show means it'll never properly run its course.

The twenty-two episodes that make up this series are:

DISC ONE:
Shattered / The Abyss / War Dogs / Final Stand / Pariah / A Fire In The Dark / The Mirror In Darkness / The Room / The Ferryman

DISC TWO:
And Study War No More / The Intruder / The Rose Of Yesterday / Flame Street / Gemini And Counting / And Madness Shall Reign / Judgment / A Summoning Of Thunder Part I / A Summoning Of Thunder Part II

DISC THREE:
The Eden Road / Freedom One / New Order Part I: The Sky Shall Swallow Them / New Order Part II: The Land Shall Burn Them / Retribution Part I / Retribution Par II

Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future was one of those rare shows that tried to appeal to adult and children viewers alike, which proved to be both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing in that it let the writing team play with some interesting themes and ideas and this made for some fairly intelligent sci-fi TV viewing, but it was a curse in that by letting some mild adult themes into the show, it wound up coming under heavy criticism. The series was widely criticized for being too violent for kids and the use of mild cursing like 'Hell' and 'damn' ruffled some feathers, as did some sexual innuendo, some bits being more subtle than others. On top of this, there was the use of Nazism as an allegory (Lord Dread has a crew of young people who further his cause who are referred to as the 'Bio-Dread Youth'!), which didn't sit well with certain parties. These criticisms, which were really increased in so far as how the series was marketed to kids more so than adults (particularly with the toy line tie in), would ultimately wind up hurting the series and coupled with increasing production costs for the live action series, well, you can see in hindsight why it was a short lived affair.

As to how the series holds up by modern standards, well, technology has changed a lot in the last twenty plus years, especially in terms of computer animation where things are now leaps and bounds ahead of where they were when this series was made. Thankfully, if the graphics look dated the live action aspect of the show (which constitutes the large majority of the footage) holds up quite well. Yes, there are times where the constraints of the budget come into play and not everything here looks perfect but the set design was done well and that holds true today. The costumes are also still interesting to see, a product of late eighties sci-fi envisioning if ever there was such a thing, and hey, you've got to appreciate how Lord Dread was so obviously the influence on The Borg who would, a few years later, become such a big part of the mythos for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The acting, too, is a few notches above your average kids' show, with the stand outs being Timothy Dunigan as the titular Captain Jonathan Power and David Hemblen as Lord Dread. Dunigan plays his role with noble conviction, while Hemblen seems to relish in playing his character with as much sinister influence as possible.

Video:

Each and every episode of Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future was broadcast in 1.33.1 fullframe and that's just how each and every episode is presented on this DVD set. Though the series was shot on film, it was mastered on tape and it's from tape that these transfers were taken. As such, the image can be soft and there are minor roll issues here and there. Whether or not it could have looked much better than it does here is debatable, as it's impossible to know what sort of source elements were available but don't expect this material to look pristine, because it doesn't. Thankfully there aren't any compression artifacts to worry about or anything like that - but these do basically just look like good quality VHS tapes.