TITLE	YEAR
Objective Moon Espionage	?
The Crab with the Golden Claws	1963
The Secret of the Unicorn	?
Red Rackham's Treasure	?
The Shooting Star	?
Black Island	?
The Calculus Case	?

Notice that some of the titles have been changed: Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon were changed to Objective Moon Espionage, even though some video boxes for that episode show Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon as the title- for example, the 1987 Virgin Video edition. Some of the episodes were directed by Jose Dutillilieu, others by Charles Shows.

As a point of interest, in 1956, Belvision also produced two "semi-animated" films: King Ottokar's Sceptre and The Broken Ear.

The style of the art is very different from the original albums, as is visible from the screenshots below. I will also try and put an excerpt on the site, but since I don't have a "firewire" then I'm not sure how I'll do it... anyway, I'll give it a shot.

It is an interesting point to note that Hergé did not have a great interest in these cartoons, and stayed a certain distance away when they were being produced (not literally). He did not have a great amount of input into the storylines of these episodes- the same can also be said for the two Belvision movies. This is often the case with many comic book artists, who did not identify with their audio-visual counterparts. The reason for this is they regard them simply as a means as furthering the popularity of their books- and sometimes, this can cause major problems. This is not the case with the Tintin series, but it is worth mentioning: Morris (the creator of Lucky Luke) was upset with his publisher, Dupuis, who was not very aggressive on the advertising/commercialism front of Lucky Luke. Morris therefore allowed international businessmen to use his characters, to help make his books more popular (by the way, Lucky Luke is very popular now, all over the world, with the final album having recently been released). The result of this? Morris had very little control over the use of his characters, and this is the reason why a certain group of fans, called "purists", do not like these adaptations. But this is really nothing to do with the Belvision series.

The cast for this series, in English, is:

CHARACTER	VOICE ARTIST
Tintin	Larry Harmon/Dallas McKennon
All others	Paul Frees

And in Swedish (with thanks to Anders Karlsson for these):

CHARACTER	VOICE ARTIST
Tintin	Tomas Bolme
Haddock	Åke Lindström
Thompson twins	Bert Åke Varg
Other characters	Lars Edström, Fredrik Ohlsson, Mathias Henriksson

 

The changes between this series and the original books are numerous. In fact, there are so many, the best way to catalogue them all would be to put them in a table:

EPISODE	CHANGE
Objective Moon Espionage	Tintin's clothing changes- white shirt (sleeves rolled up), yellow tank-top, dark brown pants (that appear black in some scenes), black socks and brown shoes, as apposed to white shirt, blue crew-neck pullover, brown pants, white socks, brown shoes in the book
Objective Moon Espionage	Snowy wears a red collar (!)
Objective Moon Espionage	The plane Tintin, Haddock and Snowy travel in is "buzzed", as Tintin puts it, by a fighter jet before coming in to land
Objective Moon Espionage	XFLR-6 (X [secret] FUSÉE LUNAIRE 6) becomes XM-1 (X [secret] MOON 1) , and is painted plain white instead of red-and-white checked. Similarly, the Moon Rocket becomes XM-2 (X [secret] MOON 2)
Objective Moon Espionage	The Thompsons' moustaches are identical in shape- in the books, it's the only way to tell them apart!
Objective Moon Espionage	Snowy gets trapped inside the XM-1, and it is blasted off. This means that a quick rescue is needed, and prompts Calculus to launch the XM-2
Objective Moon Espionage	Haddock leaves the rocket not because he is drunk, but because of stupidity- he removes his magnetic boots whilst he and Tintin are checking the rocket for damage, and he floats away.
Objective Moon Espionage	Jörgen cuts Tintin's rope when he and Haddock are outside the rocket, prompting Tintin to use his magnetic boots to get back to the rocket
Objective Moon Espionage	Wolff is made more "evil"; the book allows Wolff to show a bit of character, but this series just gets rid of it, only allowing Wolff to do a good deed by stopping Jörgen sending Tintin and co. into space
Objective Moon Espionage	Wolff no longer commits suicide by jumping out of the rocket- his act of heroism is cut from the cartoon, and he returns to Earth, albeit in handcuffs, with Jörgen

BLACK ISLAND SCREENSHOTS:

All images on this page copyright © Belvision 1963