The year is 2147. The machines have already won,
and 15 years of the Metal Wars have eradicated nearly all of humanity. But out of the ashes of
defeat, Captain Jonathan Power and his masters of combat have risen up to become mankind’s last hope
of defeating Lord Dread and his Bio Dread Empire. But Captain Power can’t do it without you. He
needs your help. And you are an 8-year-old boy in 1987 armed only with a PowerJet XT-7 to
shoot at your cathode ray tube television. But you’re not just f
ighting
Lord Dread and his Bio-Mech army. You and Captain Power are fighting
nearly every angry mom in America. I was flipping through the January
1988 issue of Popular Science when I found this article touting
the future of interactive TV. Jim Shefter was reporting on a new
show that combined live actors with computer-generated characters…
and somehow it incorporated special signals from the TV that actual
toys could interact with in real-time. For the first time in television history, y
ou could shoot at the bad guys –
and they could shoot back at you. I saw that the show was called “Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future,” and
my immediate reaction was… “What!?” I was a He-Man wielding,
Thundercat-battling boy of the 1980s. I was the exact demographic for a post-apocalyptic robot-war spaceship shooting at the screen
in my parents’ den TV show… and I’d never, ever heard of Captain Power. Not the show
and not the toys. I didn’t have them, my friends didn’t have them,
my cousins
didn’t have them. How is that even POSSIBLE? I had to find out why… or why not. And what
I uncovered is one of the most ambitious, influential, and controversial TV shows
ever created. It had a dream team of talent that seemed to guarantee
success – but outside of a small, dedicated fanbase, it’s
fallen into total obscurity. It’s the story of a great idea, a really
unique show, a groundbreaking toy line, outstanding talent, and a ton of
money. What could possibly go wrong? Well
… everything. You need to know about Captain Power. I started
with the toys – it’s like how you always just started playing an NES game without reading
the manual. I teleported my mind to 1987, which is where it always kind of lives
anyway, and I eBayed the Powerjet XT-7, the Phantom Striker, the Power On
Energizer, the Interlocker, Power Laser, some action figures, some birthday
masks, and all 3 training VHS tapes. After my experience with Butler in a Box, my first
question was, “Does any
of this stuff still work?” First of all I needed two different types of
batteries, a 9-volt and two double AA’s. Which is kind of weird. So I powered up the Powerjet
and popped in the first tape – which threw me into a beautifully 2D-animated future war.
It looks amazing. The Powerjet is also a gun, and I need to shoot the blinking red targets on
the screen and avoid the blinking yellow ones. If you hit your target, it sounds like this …
and if you take damage, it sounds like this… After e
very battle you push a red button
on the back that tallies the enemies you hit minus the damage you received
and reports your score through an ascending scale of tones… that you just have
to count and remember or write down, I guess. You start with 5 points, but if you take
too many hits and your score drops to 0, Captain Power is automatically ejected from the
cockpit of the Powerjet, sending him hurtling down to his doom – which is really the carpet
your mom wouldn’t let you eat snacks o
n. And that’s it. That’s the
1987 future of interactive TV. There had to be more to this
– and there was. A lot more. Because these radical 18 minute
training tapes are not the TV show, they’re standalone VHS games. And the
manual says it works on black and white TVs, which were still prevalent at
the time, so how could the gun even recognize the difference between red
and yellow targets? HOW did this work?! Well, to know Captain Jonathan Power I
had to watch the show – all of it – so I g
ot the series on DVD. And that’s
when things started to get weird. Unlike the training tapes, the show isn’t a
cartoon – it’s live action with a mix of 3D animated enemies. And I kept watching and
watching and… I didn’t really see the toys anywhere? And the Power On Energizer in the show
looks completely different from the toy I have. I was 3 episodes into the show and I still
hadn’t seen a Powerjet, a Phantom Striker, or an Interlocker anywhere. And the
interactive shooting parts seem to
be really short sections of a dark,
serious, and adult-oriented show. None of it made any sense… so I paused the show
and started reading. And virtually all I found was hit piece after hit piece demonizing Captain
Power for glorifying violence for children. WHAT is going on here?! All of this started when Gary Goddard was hot
off the heels of directing Mattel’s Masters of the Universe live action film, the one
where Dolph Lundgren is He-Man and Frank Langella is Skeletor. Goddard had a new
idea and a good relationship with Mattel, so he pitched them a concept based around
a name he loved for its simplicity: Captain Power. He couldn’t believe no one had
used it before, so he trademarked it immediately. “I had the idea that we would maybe call him
Captain Power and that he would wear these suits. These suits that represented power.
And actually I thought well there must have been a Captain Power. Someone must have done
a Captain Power but, in fact, no one had.” Mattel had spen
t years developing
interactive TV toy technology, but they didn’t have any intellectual
property to attach it to. Sales of He-Man toys were slowing down and they
desperately needed the next big thing. So why not marry their revolutionary toy tech with
Goddard’s vision for a live action sci-fi show? Captain Power and the Soldiers of the
Future was looking like Mattel’s future. Goddard got to work on developing the show, which was centered on Jonathan Power and a
small team of specialized so
ldiers wearing powersuits to battle the robot army of Lord
Dread who became evil after merging with a supercomputer called OverMind. 8-year-old
Kevin and current Kevin agree this is cool. Goddard wanted to partner with TriStar Pictures
to handle distribution of the show’s syndication, but Mattel didn’t want to give up any piece of
the money pie. They were confident that they could distribute the show themselves,
and… this ended up being a problem. Goddard and his writers wanted to make
a s
how with serious themes, with deep, nuanced characters and meaningful
story arcs that would appeal to adults while… also selling toys to
kids. This ended up being a problem. Mattel invested heavily in manufacturing toys
that they hoped would storm the market by creating the world’s first interactive show for
kids. And yeah, this ended up being a problem. But those weren’t even the worst parts.
The entire concept of kids getting into gun fights with their TV and effectively
erasing the line
between kids shows, warfare, and toy commercials ended up
being a REALLY, REALLY BIG PROBLEM. In 1968, Peggy Charren was fed up with the
state of children’s educational programming on television, and she felt there were too many
commercials targeting kids – so she founded Action for Children’s Television to make TV
better for kids and families. And her group actually had influence – they successfully
lobbied for the Children’s Television Act, which set out rules for educational
kids’ TV s
hows. And by the late 1980’s, she filed a formal complaint with the FCC
and had an army of over 15,000 moms waging a media war against Captain Power, which she
said, “...teaches children wrong values.” And they weren’t alone. Peace Activist Jerry
Rubin announced at Universal Studios that he was doing a 43-day fast to protest Captain Power.
And self-proclaimed TV Mom Ellen Klein rated the show 1 star, Poor, with a headline declaring,
“Violence is all there is to this show.” The timing of the
Goddard - Mattel - Captain
Power project could not have been worse: “We became the whipping boy for any group out there that wanted to get publicity
for itself by attacking a TV show.” But some people thought it was awesome. Legendary
film critic Gene Siskel of Siskel & Ebert fame gave the show a positive review in their 1987
hour-long Holiday Gift Guide episode – it was a segment that I knew existed, but it was gone.
Nowhere. The video on the official Siskel & Ebert website starts literal
ly the line AFTER the
Captain Power review… which is really suspicious. It was lost media. And then AN HOUR before recording this video,
I heard from a website called PlatypusComix whose dad had recorded the episode on an
unmarked VHS tape more than 35 years ago. So thanks to Peter Paltridge, we can
finally hear Gene Siskel’s review: “When I watched this show… First of all I expected
this, something called ‘Captain Power’ to be a junk show. This is well made. I think you can see
somebody s
pent some money on the special effects, on the dialogue. In fact, there’s some
real drama in the one episode that I saw.” So on one hand we had angry moms across
the country aiming their moral Powerjets at Captain Power, and on the other hand
, one of the most famous movie critics on planet Earth was saying it was actually a
pretty good show. What was the disconnect? Everything. Everything was the disconnect. Captain Power may be the most monumental
disconnect in television history. But fir
st, you need to know
how the toys actually worked. The interactive technology utilized photodetectors
– sensors that measure the intensity of light. The red targets on the enemy robots flashed with a
30hz signal, 1/60th of a second on and 1/60th of a second off, with a 1/30th of a second cycle.
The yellow signal for the enemy’s return fire pulsed at 15hz – 1/30th of a second on and 1/30th
of a second off with a 1/15th of a second cycle. A microprocessor then determined whether you
scored a
point or lost a point based on the rate that the voltage spiked over a period of time
– the color of the light on the screen was just a visual indicator for the viewer to differentiate
between what to shoot and what to avoid. So the photo sensor is constantly looking
for either of the two flashing patterns, and pulling the trigger either registered
a hit or helped you dodge damage. When the crew first got the finished toys
from Mattel and tested them on the show… they didn’t work at all. T
he targets were
way too small, so they had to scramble to completely remake them 4 times larger so their
interactive show was actually… interactive. But surely the interactive
element was naturally woven into the show seamlessly because that is
the whole point of the project, right?! No. The answer is no. The entire gimmick ended up being shoehorned
in after with an extra 3rd production unit filming interactive action scenes that could
be plunked in at the beginning of an episode. And the
writers and producers were totally
blindsided. When they put the show together, they didn’t think the interactive technology
needed to have big ugly targets at all. They were under the impression that it would all be
invisible and not interrupt the show – that way if you had the toys, you could use them, and if
you didn’t, you could just watch a cool show. The show’s developer, Marc Zicree, described
the production nightmare that ensued: “We weren’t sure what could be done, what could be
p
ulled off. How it would all integrate. In fact, when I would say ‘what can we do and what can’t
we do?’ they could never give me that answer. So it was extremely difficult to write episodes that
were within production parameters when no one knew what those parameters were. We knew there were
going to be interactive toys and we would say, as writers we would say well will be seeing the
signal that emanates from the television to the toy and initially we were being told ‘no’ it
would be an in
visible infrared signal. And then when we saw the show and there was this flashing,
ya know, chroma key thing we were going ‘oh no!’” Exactly how much interactivity this show
was supposed to have really depended on who you asked. The instruction manual
states: “There are 3 to 5 minutes of action in each Captain Power television
show THAT YOU CAN REALLY PLAY AGAINST.” A January 1989 Starlog interview with writer Larry
DiTillio said, “We were given parameters of having to have a minimum of on
e minute and a maximum
of three minutes of interactivity per episode.” But a feature in the March 1988 Starlog –
nearly a year earlier – said that creator Gary Goddard, “breaks the show down to
approximately 30 seconds of interactivity…” So the toy integration constituted either 2.3% of
the show or 23% of the show and its creators and its actors – like Tim Dunnigan, who played Captain
Power – just wanted to make a great sci-fi series. Goddard said, “It did bother us that
the interactive to
ys – specifically the Powerjet XT-7 and the Phantom Striker
– would be so closely tied to the show.” Ya think?! And that doesn’t even scratch the surface
of all the complexity and contradictions of Captain Power – because the writers insisted
they weren’t writing a kids’ show at all. A Series Bible is the reference
document for screenwriters that defines a show’s major elements
like characters and setting – and Marc Zicree explained exactly how he
wrote the Bible for Captain Power: “And I
was committed to the idea that this
would be an adult show. That we would create it exactly as if it were an adult show.
That we wouldn’t condescend at all.” Does that sound like a kids’ show?! Meanwhile, Larry DiTillio lamented that Captain
Power “never quite got away from its kid’s show label.” And he called Captain Power “the
worst title for a TV show ever created.” Captain Planet seemed to do alright a few years
later. And Power RANGERS generated over $6 billion dollars in toy sales in
less than a decade. So…
yeah, the name wasn’t really the problem here. The point is: the writers set out to
create a serious drama set in a dreary hellscape that encompassed the enduring
themes of love and loss and betrayal, the delicate intricacies of surrogate families, and
uniquely human values embodied by fully-fleshed out characters whose realistic-but-tangled
arcs wound maze-like throughout the series. Mattel just wanted kids to shoot their TV. The towering 6’5” Tim Dunnigan fully
em
braced his role as Captain Power. He traveled to toy stores, sweating in his
big bulky Powersuit so kids could meet their hero. And 35-years later he’s
still giving back to the fans through podcasts and interviews. He’s proud of
being Captain Power and he should be. It wasn't his fault that it ended
in disaster. So… whose fault was it? The secret here is in analyzing the incredible
risks that Captain Power’s creators took with the show – because they’re seriously astonishing. Yes,
it was t
he first interactive toy TV show – but it was also a live action toy-powered show at
a time when everything was still cartoons… 6 years before The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
proved that live action could sell action figures. It was the first show to ever
use CG-modeled characters as part of the main cast in every episode
in an era with no digital storage – so all of the visual effects had to be
painstakingly layered on video tape. And it was a serialized drama, meaning it
featured a stor
y arc that really had to be followed throughout the season to fully
appreciate the changes the characters went through – it wasn’t a self-contained procedural
show like Batman or He-Man where everything just goes back to normal by the end and you can
watch and enjoy each episode standalone. The most obvious risk was that decision not to
partner with a Hollywood distributor – instead, it was up to each TV station to determine
when the show aired. That could be 6am on Saturday in St. Louis an
d 6pm on
Sunday in Sacramento. Who knows?! Kids needed to know. Kids in the 1980s whose lives
revolved around awesome TV shows needed to know. But even those elements aren’t what
matter most. The real story is that the hidden influence of Captain Power,
this forgotten show, was incredible. You may have noticed something about Lord
Dread at the beginning of this video: he… is kind of reminiscent of one of Star Trek:
The Next Generation’s most infamous villains, the cybernetic organisms call
ed “The
Borg”. And not just their design – but the phrase “resistance is futile” matching
“resistance was futile” from a Captain Power comic book. It launched one of the
biggest debates in the sci-fi fandom, and the liner notes of the Captain
Power DVD address it directly. And I also noticed some things. What about
Captain Power’s mentor, an AI-recreation of his father who appears in a tube at the Power
Base? He’s pretty close to the Power Rangers’ mentor Zordon at their Power Chamber. Oh,
and
one of the main villains was named Lord Zedd. But it’s so much more than those
tangible influences – the talent behind Captain Power helped define
entertainment for a generation. Head Writer J. Michael Stracyznski created the
massively successful space opera Babylon 5, which ran for 5 seasons and spawned 6 TV
films. And in an episode of Captain Power, the character Tank reveals where
he was genetically engineered: Captain Power: “How ya doing?” Tank: “When I escaped Babylon 5…” Captai
n Power assistant animator Rob
Coleman became Creative Director at George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic,
where he worked on Men in Black and all of the Star Wars prequels – and he was
head of animation on The Lego Movie. Captain Power had everything…
so how did it become nothing? Between the live action and all
the visual effects, the show cost around $1 million dollars per episode –
which is nearly $3 million dollars today. And the action figures also just…
weren’t great. They articul
ated less than GI Joes and they were tiny
compared to He-Man and Thundercats. The whole thing was a star-crossed Shakespearean
tragedy before the ink was dry on the contract. Mattel needed a show to sell interactive toys
that no one had ever played with, and that no one even knew they wanted, and the show needed their
money to exist – but the two visions never meshed. I’m convinced that a cartoon like we see in
the VHS game built around the toys would’ve been hugely successful, and a live a
ction show
marketed and distributed properly to adults, one that was completely divorced from the
toys and interactivity, would’ve also been really successful. But combining them just… did
not work out, and both sides share the blame. Even still… a lot of people loved this show, and they still do. As late as 2017 there were
plans to reboot it under the name Phoenix Rising, and a 40-minute animated Captain
Power fan film came out in 2021. But the Phoenix is still languishing in the ashes. Pe
ople also loved the toys. You can find message
boards flooded with fond memories of dads playing together with their kids. But the toy sales never
reached the critical mass that Mattel needed, and when they failed to sell through
their Captain Power stock at Christmas they pulled funding on a Season 2 that
was already planned out and ready to go. The show’s creators had hoped to phase out
the toys completely, and they even blew up the power base in the final episode of Season
1. That was a
power base with a toy Mattel wanted to sell – it really was a poetic nail
in the coffin of the conflict between the two. Gary Goddard spent years trying to
obtain the show’s rights from Mattel, and he eventually did – but it was too late.
The talent had all moved on to other projects, the funding to revive it didn’t exist, and
Captain Power was officially powered off. Captain Power and the Soldiers of the
Future really did have everything going for it. It had the kind of budget creatives
dream of. It had beautiful, unique designs, cutting edge technology, an elite team of talent, and the weight of the Mattel juggernaut to flood
the shelves of every toy store in the world. And it all failed. But Captain Power’s tiny fingerprints
are in so many of the TV shows, movies, and toys that you love. And they’re all
over the science fiction franchises in which millions of hardcore convention-goers
worldwide see both themselves and the future. And those fingerprints were left by
a sho
w you’ve never even heard of, one that you can’t even legally stream anywhere,
and one that’s locked away on out-of-print DVDs. It reveals one of the strangest
phenomena in science, technology, and entertainment – that sometimes the greatest
impact you can have on the world… is to fail. See you in the future.
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