Ok, before we go into a synopsis & commentary on the individual episodes that made up the series, there are a few things I need to bring up.

If you can’t tell from the name of the author of this site, I’m a girl ^_^

This posed quite a few problems between my mother and me when I was growing up. My mother never left the fifties, and still lives there to this day. Anyhoo, she had this bizarre belief that little girls should not play with anything deemed as being “boys” toys. “Why don’t you play with dolls like normal little girls,” she would ask. “I do TOO play with dolls,” I would screech back in a high pitched voice while clutching an arm full of Star Wars figures to my chest. Mind you, I have nothing against people who liked baby dolls growing up. For me, I thought they were boring and I couldn’t envision them as being the center of my childhood existence…but that’s just me. If that worked for you growing up that's cool!

OK, so I was heavily into Star Wars. As I got older, my palette expanded to He-Man, Voltron, GI Joe, Transformers, Shera, and Jem (the only two “girls” shows). Now I had this terrific grandmother (grammy) who was more than willing to provide me with almost anything I wanted. So she was the one I turned to for my endless craving of action figures. I mean, we’re talking grammy saved the UPC symbols so she could get me the special mail order action figures like Boba Fette and Admiral Ackbar (the woman should be nominated for sainthood). 

Then there was Sectaurs…

I didn’t even bother to ask, because I knew how my mother would react. Let’s face it, my mother had a problem with Ponda Baba (Walrus Man, from Star Wars), saying it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. Could you imagine me trying to sneak in Spidrax and Spiderflyer? Trust me, she’d put her foot down in a second. So I never had any Sectaurs action figures. I couldn't really get my hands on any of the books or comics either.

Then came the mini-series…

When the mini-series aired, I missed parts one and two, and came into things in the middle of the story. I loved it, and became an instant fan of Zak and Pinsor. Of course, Sectaurs was never turned into a series, and the mini-series never made it into repeats. Then Sectaurs disappeared altogether. I hadn’t taped the mini-series (I also didn’t have any of the comics or the books), so years went by with me trying to remember certain aspects of the series, what were the episodes about, why did I like “X” character so much. The best I could do was write some fan fiction to keep me amused.

A few more years passed, the internet was born, and suddenly Sectaurs material was popping up all over the place, particularly ebay. I got my hands on all 8 issues of the Marvel comic series, read them, and could remember why I liked Zak so much, but couldn’t remember why I liked Pinsor, especially when Mantys/Mantor was far more interesting. Then the moment of truth arrived. I came across a website that distributed eighties cartoons, among them the Sectaurs mini-series. I wrote to the owner, she warned me that the tape was pretty bad in some parts (let’s be realistic here, it was taped off of tv in 1986. I didn’t have very high expectations of the condition of the episodes, I just wanted to see them again…and it was at least watchable). I popped the tape in, and was just stunned. On first viewing, you’d think the episodes really sucked. Continuity was bad, editing was very, very bad, the characters had absolutely no depth (with the exception of Pinsor which is probably why I liked him). After watching the first two episodes I was desperately trying to remember what attracted me to this series so many years ago. Then I saw episode three, and then I remembered (sorry, you’ll have to wait for me to write up episode three to tell you why). Once again I was hooked and began watching the series repeatedly for a while. It was on repeated viewings that I began to notice something. The series wasn’t actually bad it’s more like it was unfinished. Anyone out there remember Fox’s X-Men a couple of years back? Remember the teaser episode they released when it first aired? It was filled with goofs (like Jubilee appearing in the war room when she was actually being held captive by Gyrich), really bad continuity between scenes, and really uneven editing. That’s what watching the Sectaurs mini-series again reminded me of. In fact the series seemed unfinished in both the storyboard and the cartoon translation to screen. For instance in terms of story, it seemed like all the good guys did was fall down a hole in every episode. It’s like, bad guys launch surprise attack, good guys try to defend themselves, bad guys drive good guys over the edge of hole/crevice/cliff/whatever. Good guys spend time trying to find their way out of the hole/crevice/ravine to beat bad guys to the Hyve. The character portrayals were also pretty bad. With the exception of Spidrax (played brilliantly by Arthur Burghardt, aka Destro from GI Joe), the bad guys seemed to exist only to provide lines outlining their reasons for finding the Hyve. The good guys were just as bad. Dargon got all the clichéd hero lines, Zak’s brashness in battle was there but his sarcasm wasn’t. In fact, Zak seemed to exist primarily to whine “I’m tired” just so the story would have an excuse for the characters to stop somewhere. The only role Mantor was given was to issue some croaking of doom like “If we don’t do this, universal Armageddon will occur.” The only one who was given any depth of character was Pinsor, and his actually deviated from the Coleco character designation. In the toy line, books, and comics, Pinsor was portrayed as this slow witted, superstitious, loyal old warrior with super strength and no brains. The cartoon Pinsor was the exact opposite. He was this seasoned old salt of a warrior always ready to dispense valuable advice to Dargon or spin on about some old war yarn of long ago. In the cartoon, Pinsor was more the mentor/father figure to Dargon whereas in the toy/comic series Mantor held this role. Pete Renaday, who played Pinsor in the series, got the best lines and in my opinion, the best character to play. Stellara appeared only briefly for a few moments in episode one and never appeared again. In fact, I didn’t even know Stellara existed until later on when I got a hold of the comic series (remember I missed the first two episodes). There is no mention of Belana, Regent Galken, King Markor, Slikk, or Scorpia anytime during the series. I have no clue if that’s due to unfinished writing or if they were to appear later on in the series. In terms of trivia, whenever any of the characters went into battle, they made this reverberating sound deep in their throat. In one of the episodes it sounds like Laurie Faso's (Zak) voice cracked while trying to make the war cry. I have to wonder how many times he had screech like that over and over again and did Ruby-Spears have a glass of water for him nearby (did he develop laryngitis afterwards)? One thing that was really cool with Laurie Faso's voice acting was Bitaur. Bitaur wore a spiked collar and was the equivalent of a military attack dog. In the series, Bitaur actually makes a barking sound much like a dog (Arf, arf, arf).

But still, despite all the problems there were some excellent ideas that were trying to emerge, some pretty far ahead of their time. Problem is, they were buried under some unfinished work. That's really a major loss. This could've been a great series with some great character interactions and concepts! So, as I write the commentaries, I'm going to try to bring those wonderful ideas to life, and, unfortunately point out the weak portions too. But overall, I think the series is worth watching (hey, I wouldn't be trying to get the mini-series up if it was terrible. This series had fantastic potential). 

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