Home Entertainment Power on! 80's sci-fi series CAPTAIN POWER is being rebooted

Power on! 80's sci-fi series CAPTAIN POWER is being rebooted

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Or to be more precise and give it its full name – Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future – but I think we’ll stick to Captain Power from here on out.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about or need a refresher, Captain Power was a sci-fi action series that ran for a single season back in the late 1980’s – it even aired locally on our very own SABC.

The series was set on Earth during the 22nd century following a devastating war between humanity and an A.I. known as Overmind (voiced by Tedd Dillon) and its Bio-Mech forces, known as the Metal Wars, which didn’t go so well for us. It followed the adventures of five guerrilla fighters, lead by Captain Jonathan Power (Tim Dunigan), who were equipped with prototype Power Suits that enabled them to go toe-to-toe with the Bio-Mechs.

Lead writer on the series was J. Michael Straczynski, who later went on to create Babylon 5, and while essentially a children’s series it touched on many dark and/or mature themes – the rise of fascism, implied sexual relationships between characters and even the violent death of one of the main characters.

As per Deadline Gary Goddard, who created the original series alongside Tony Christopher, is developing the reboot with ex-Syfy channel executives Thomas Vitale and Craig Engler. Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (Primeval: New World, Star Trek: Enterprise) have penned the pilot.

Vitale and Engler said when announcing the reboot:

As fans of both science fiction and the Captain Power series, we’re excited to help re-imagine this iconic TV show for today’s viewers. Although the surprisingly dark themes, serialized storytelling and shocking character deaths featured within the series were well ahead of their time in 1987, they’re exactly the kind of story elements a modern viewing audience craves.

The rebooted series is titled Phoenix Rising and they’ve released a brief announcement teaser for our viewing pleasure:

Well… crap. At least the super-suit isn’t green or animated, right? They’ve also released a concept of the new, very sleek looking, Power Suits via Twitter:

I remember the original series quite fondly so, while I can’t say I’m all that impressed by the above, I’m interested to see what happens with this reboot. If it can recapture the tone of the original series and deal with more adult themes again, it could just be worth a watch.

What do you think?

And for those of you looking for a blast of nostalgia, here’s the intro from the original series:

Last Updated: July 19, 2016

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