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The Centurions (1985-1987) was a syndicated 30 minute science fiction American animated television series produced by Ruby-Spears and animated in Japan by Sunrise. The series began in 1985 as a five-part miniseries and was followed in 1986/87 with a 60 episode series. There was also a line of tie-in toys made by Kenner and a comic produced by DC Comics.
Premise In the near future, an evil genius, the cyborg Doc Terror, seeks to conquer the earth; he is assisted by Hacker, the cyborg sidekick and an army of Doom Drones. There were two types of drones: Traumatizers, the most commonly seen drones, were walking robots with several guns, while the Doom Drone was a flying robot with a phallic main gun, and multiple other guns. Dr Terror and Hacker were able to fly by swapping their purely robot half for a Doom Drone missing one set of wings. They were joined on many occasions, starting with the first episode, by Doc Terror's daughter Amber. At each turn their evil plans are thwarted by the heroic Centurions. The Centurions are a team of men dressed in specially created exo-frames that allow them (upon shouting "Power Extreme") to fuse with 'incredible' assault weapon systems, becoming what the show calls man and machine, Power Xtreme! The end result is a weapons platform somewhere between a hard-suit and a mecha. Originally there were three Centurions: The Centurions are based on an orbiting space station called Sky Vault where the token (but very smart) female, Crystal Kane, uses a transporter (similar to the transporters in Star Trek) to send the Centurions, and the requested weapon systems, to where they were needed. To stop Crystal from getting lonely, she is kept company by Shadow the dog and Lucy the orangutan. Crystal plays a similar part in the Centurions' adventures to the operators of the Matrix, suggesting tactics and sending equipment as required. Later in the series, two more Centurions were added to break the monotony and perhaps add some racial diversity. These were: Rex Charger, the energy expert, and John Thunder, the Apache infiltration expert. Assault weapon systems Each of the Centurions was specialised for a particular domain, originally land, sea or air/space. They all had multiple weapon systems that could be 'charged' to their exoframes. Typically each started out with the basic system and later in an episode would upgrade to a larger and more powerful system. The exoframes must act as a kind of exoskeleton, because no matter how large the system got, the Centurions never seemed to get weighed down by the equipment. They also never seem to take the suits off. On rare occasions, one of the Centurions might use another's weapon system. The results were usually comical as they were unfamiliar with controlling the weapon system. The three main Centurions and all their weapon systems, along with Dr Terror, Hacker, Strafer and Traumatizer were available as toys. There was also a wind-up power pack meant to add "power to all centurions heroes and hero assault weapons systems." Themes As well as the adventure side of the show, the series considered various science-fiction themes. In particular, the fusion or relationship between humans and technology was a focus throughout the show's run. A number of episodes also revolved around ecological themes, mainly involving Dr Terror's attempts to extort money from the governments of the world by threatening to destroy some aspect of the environment. Many of the plots were also genre parodies, including "Zone-Dancer's" take on film noir/Blade Runner, and "An Alien Affair's" take on Alien. Even the subject of magic was explored when Ace became involved with a woman named Cassandra Cross, who was a practitioner of white magic. Her evil twin sister, Lilith joined forces with Doc Terror in "Return of Cassandra". Both characters were voiced by B.J. Ward. Opening titles voice-over
Voice acting credits Episode guide 5-Part mini-series (Apr 1986) 1st season (fall 1986-fall 1987) | ||||||||
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