On Facebook, a bunch of friends were talking about the tv shows we watched in the good ole days. Shows like The New Masquerade, Some Mothers Do Ave Em, Cock Crow at Dawn, Sura the Tailor, Ripples, Fraggle Rock, ThunderSub, Voltron etc.
For some reason I can’t believe we were all exposed to the show TerraHawks.
Remember the muppets that were not so cute? Zelda, Cystar, YungStar, and BirlGoy the (half male and half female)? What were the producers thinking allowing young Nigerian Minds to watch these puppets?
To get you the skinny on the storyline I shall do what every blogger does. Steal from wikipedia.
Gerry Anderson & Christopher Burr (I don’t know if they escaped from prison for the criminally insane but I digress) had this British puppet show called Terrahawks in the 80s.
Set in the year 2020 (that is like eight years from now), the series followed the adventures of the Terrahawks, a taskforce responsible for protecting Earth from invasion by a group of extraterrestrial androids (Wow…I knew Battlestar Galactica’s plot sounded so familiar) and aliens led by Zelda.
In 2020, after an alien force destroyed NASA’s Mars base (obviously post Rover-era) and earth is under threat, The Terrahawks are formed to defend the planet. They managed to do all this from Hawknest, their secret base in South America (What? What happened to Texas? or Nevada?) where they develop sophisticated weapons to prepare for the battles to come.
The good guys were:
Doctor “Tiger” Ninestein: Terrahawk’s pilot and the team’s leader
Captain Mary Falconer: Battlehawk’s pilot. Ninestein’s second-in-command.
Captain Kate Kestrel (she kinda looks like Nicki Minaj or Lil Kim during better days): The pilot of the Hawkwing fighter aircraft.
Hawkeye is Hawkwing’s gunner. Due to a track-and-field accident, his eyes have been replaced with micro-computers that enhance his targeting abilities.
Lieutenant Hiro: He is the commander of the Spacehawk and has a thick Japanese accent.
Zeroids: Spherical robots that perform ground operations and serve as the firepower for the Spacehawk. Some well known zeroids include Sergeant Major Zero and Space Sergeant 101. There others like Dix Huit (18) and 55.
And now for the Bad guys. I hope you’ve had breakfast/lunch/dinner.
The bad guys are androids from the planet Guk. Their leader Zelda hopes to conquer Earth and make it a home for her Family of Androids and non-humans. They need to consume only small amounts of silicate (greenish goo) minerals a month to sustain their functions.
The main villain of the series, Zelda is the wicked and scheming would-be conqueror of Earth. She has power over matter, mainly used to teleport her servants to and from Earth and to manipulate the size of any of her ships or aliens. She also looks like this:
Cy-star, pronounced “Si-ster.” Zelda’s “sister” is not very bright, but is endlessly bubbly and optimistic. Frequently she gets so excited her hair slides around her head, leading Zelda to shout, in one episode, “One of these days I’m going to nail that to your skull!”
Yung-Star. Zelda’s “son,” Yung-Star is, like his “aunt,” not very intelligent. However, he is also cowardly, lazy and greedy, although he is occasionally sent to accompany a monster (Zelda possesses a collection of monstrous servants, outcasts from various world or Civilizations, who she keep’s in cryogenic storage until needed).
It-Star is also known as “Goybirl” or “Birlgoy.” It-Star is a “baby” android mothered by Cy-Star near the end of the series. It-Star is a clearly schizophrenic hermaphrodite with two minds and voices, a young girl’s voice when “innocent,” and a male voice with a German accent when plotting. His plotting personality is highly vicious and clever, compared to the childish, infant-like one.
Cuboids are to androids as Zeroids are to humans. They can combine into large machines such as guns and force field cubicles.
This show was entertaining to say the least. I think we liked it because we had few options back in the day. Tv time was from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and after that came NTA news and late night soaps. We did not have Nickelodeon. And Channels TV was years away. Life was either you were playing outside, sitting with your evening tutor or watching kiddie shows like TerraHawks. Kids these days have it soooo good.
Man…i can’t believe i forgot how scary looking those terrahawk characters were even the good ones look weird sef. From time to time i reminisce on how “non child friendly” our nursery rhymes were too like “old roger is dead”, “georgy porgy”, “ring a roses”, “humpty dumpty”, and most especially “goosey goosey gander”
I think we were the ones who had it good. Shows like this made those of us oldies who watched more ‘exposed’. Now everyone is so conservative. I didn’t see itstar though …looks like Hitler, sounded like him too, it seems
Lucid! Thanks for the beautiful card. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you and Turtle.