Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990)
First episode title: A Hero for Earth
How familiar with the show am I?: I was aware of the concept, but I'd never seen any of it.
This show is about a team of kids fighting to save the planet from pollution, and the superhero Captain Planet that they are able to summon. In other words, it is no surprise that a whole generation of us who grew up on media like this turned into environmentalists as adults! I don't remember what specific shows it would have been for me - certainly not this one - but there was a trend.
The opening sequence is the type with a narration that explains the concept of the show. The first line is "Our world is in peril", at which I can't help but be reminded of Transformers Cybertron's "Our worlds are in danger!" All of the actual details the opening gives you about the concept and the characters are introduced in more detail in the episode itself, so I'll skip over those for now.
The episode opens in a forest, with a cute little white bunny rabbit hopping about the place - but the peace is immediately interrupted by a huge four-legged robot, stomping through the place and knocking down trees. A giant metal foot descends over the rabbit, and on first viewing I thought the implication was that it actually crushed it, but from a closer look I see that it is just visible running out of the way in an overhead shot. Phew!
Then we hear an evil, snorting laugh from inside the machine, and we meet our main villain for the first time - a large, oddly pig-like man with a mohican haircut who we'll later learn is named Hoggish Greedly. He's accompanied by a sycophant with a cap and a ponytail, simply called Rigger.
Greedly: Ha ha ha! With this giant land-blaster, I'll be able to drill for oil anywhere!
Rigger: He-he-he-he-he! Yeah boss, yeah! Even in the wildlife sanctuary!
God I love this. Absolutely no subtlety.
The robot marches out into the water and starts drilling using an attachment on one of its many arms. Greedly declares that this will make him rich enough to be in "hog heaven", so he's clearly self-aware of his pig-like appearance. There doesn't seem to be any unnatural reason that he looks like a pig - he's a human, but that's just how he looks somehow.
Due to his drilling, a fissure opens up in the ground, revealing some lava, which the water then starts flowing into. Cut to what looks like an artificial underground structure with walls made of crystals, and a crack starts to form in its roof, with a single drop of water coming through. And that drop drips onto the face of a sleeping woman, who's lying on a stone slab down there... and it wakes her up! What kind of woman would live in a place like this, do you ask?
She gathers her wits just in time to jump out of the way when more water starts to pour through the crack, and that's when we find out what she is exactly - she emits some kind of magic power from her hand, sealing up the crack, as she says:
Gaia: My goodness. Can't the spirit of Earth take a little nap?
Yes, this is Mother Earth herself! Then the whole room shakes, and she needs to find out what's causing all the commotion, so she uses her magic to activate a nearby monitor of some kind. Well, the magical kind, I suppose. It shows her the machine drilling for oil, and she makes a comment about the "poor silly humans" messing with her world. Hey! There might be humans watching this!
It turns out she's been napping for a whole century (doesn't she have a job to be doing here?), so she decides to see what the humans have been up to in that time. The screen then displays a montage of all kinds of pollution and un-eco-friendliness from around the world.
If it's only been a century, surely she would have already had some idea of what was going on? That's well after the Industrial Revolution started. Still, she's shocked to discover that "Earth is dying", in her words. I'm pretty sure Earth goes on even if the humans' damage kills off themselves and a whole bunch of other species along with them, but I get the point.
Gaia says that it's time for the rings, as she magically lifts a crystal containing five rings that hover out of their container. The rings each have different coloured gems with symbols clearly marked on them, and Gaia says that they will go to five special kids from across the world. She doesn't clarify the criteria she's using to designate them as special, which is good because it means the writers can just go with "five kids with a dynamic that works well for the show".
Five kids, five parts of the world. So we start in Africa, where we meet Kwame (Gaia is giving us the locations and names of these children, as narration). He's dressed for the heat and is in the middle of planting crops, which he's doing by making a small hole in the ground with a stick as long as his whole body, putting the seedling in the hole, and then pushing the soil back into place with the stick. I can't claim to know enough about farming techniques to know if this is realistic, if this is specific to Africa, or anything.
Then he makes another hole with the stick, but this time, the stick comes back with something on it - the first ring! His one is green and has a kind of globe emblem on it, which weirdly focuses more on the lines of longitude and latitude rather than the continents, despite what you might expect from something created by Mother Earth!
Next is Asia. A girl called Gi is in a wetsuit, underwater, swimming with a dolphin! It looks like she's having a lot of fun.
She gets out of the water but continues to play with the dolphin, throwing a hoop for it to jump through (or just catch?). But then it comes back with the next ring! This one's light blue with a picture of a wave. Noticing any kind of theme?
The next kid on the list is Wheeler, of North America. But his scene opens with two other guys having a fight on the street. One of them seems to be homeless and is next to a flaming rubbish bin, and the other guy looks like a punk and has grabbed him, and is about to whip him with a chain. That's when Wheeler, our red-headed teenager, comes in - he kicks the chain out of the guy's hand and makes himself look intimidating enough that the bully just randomly flees!
As Wheeler and the man he saved celebrate, there's a sudden streak of flame from the nearby fire, and a red ring with a flame symbol flies out, landing perfectly in Wheeler's hand. Yes, these definitely seem connected!
The next part of the world is explicitly the "Soviet Union". We're in 1990 so it hasn't quite fallen yet, but I'm more amused by the fact that Gaia even knows to call it that. And here we meet Linka, a girl in a quite military-looking outfit, standing on a cliff edge and playing music on a portable keyboard.
A small bird flies onto her keyboard, and sings, apparently joining in. And then another little bird arrives, with a ring around its beak! This ring is dark blue with some wavy lines on it, so is probably the hardest to tell what it represents, but it can probably be inferred. And if not, we'll see it in action later!
Lastly, South America, where we're about to meet Ma-Ti. But just like in Wheeler's scenario, we witness a conflict first - this time, a small monkey is stuck in some vines in a forest, and a jaguar is growling menacingly at it. But then Ma-Ti, a boy in shorts and not much else, swings down on a vine, blocking the leopard's path!
The leopard appears scared and flees, leaving Ma-Ti to untangle the monkey. When he's done so - can you guess? - the monkey hands him a ring! It's got a big red heart shape on it, which might be a big surprise unless you already know the show.
It's kind of weird how vague they are about where each one is from, although I get that they're trying to represent as much of the world as possible. We're going to get a much more specific place of origin for one of the team soon, but the rest will remain as vague for the rest of the episode.
As the five children put on their rings for the first time, Gaia dramatically declares them "my first Planeteers". I wonder if she ever got any more? The kids (and Ma-Ti's monkey) are magically teleported to the island, and Gaia, hovering in front of them, welcomes them to "Hope Island". Her whole crystalline palace place seems to be above the water level now, unless that room where she was sleeping was something separate. And then:
Wheeler: Say lady, you wanna explain what's going on here?
Gaia: Hm. So much for drama.
The episode then does that thing where it skips to a bit later, after Gaia must have given the five of them an explanation of what's going on here, but then has the characters say "Let me get this straight" and repeat what must have already been said, saving us no time at all! We're given Gaia's name for the first time here, anyway.
Linka asks what five kids can possibly do to help save the Earth, and, since it's the first time she has spoken, Wheeler comments on the way she speaks, invading her personal space as he does so.
Wheeler: Hey, love your accent, babe. You Russian?
Linka: Soviet. Please, go away.
With these last words, she pushes him away from her. Wheeler is not making himself very likeable so far!
I wonder, are they all actually speaking English? Gaia wouldn't naturally speak a specific human language, and you wouldn't expect all the characters here to necessarily know English, so you might think Gaia would be using magic to allow them to communicate, but if people can hear each other's accents then surely they're not just getting a translation? I would say the implication is that they do, for some reason, all know English. I suppose English had already become the most spoken language in the world before Gaia's nap? Maybe? Perhaps not.
Next, Gaia starts to explain what the rings are. They allow each of the five kids to have some control over each of the five powers of nature (don't the rest of us call those elements?). First she tells Linka that she can control wind, and Linka seemingly instinctively knows that the way to call upon it is to hold out her beringed hand and say "Wind!"
Well, I say she instinctively knows what to do - a small tornado springs up and immediately lifts her off the ground, causing her to scream for it to stop. It does stop, with her still in the air, so she crashes to the ground and lands on her butt - ow. She exclaims something in Russian, which some Googling indicates is "Chert voz'mi!", meaning "Damn it!"
Then Gaia tells Kwame that his power is earth. He summons it in a similar manner to Linka, causing a fissure to appear in the ground nearby. He seems much more casually able to undo what his magic has done, his ring seeming to activate almost by itself while he talks about the potential applications of his power, such as planting trees and stopping bulldozers.
Wheeler: Hey, what's my element? Water? Fire?
Wheeler, your ring is red and has a flame on it and literally jumped to you out of a pillar of flame. Why is water your first guess? And as he says "Fire" while waving his ring around haphazardly, he inadvertently starts a fire right nearby!
He asks if anyone has an extinguisher, but that's when Gaia reveals that Gi has the power of water. She uses it, and a wave of water jumps up from the ocean nearby and onto the land, putting out the fire but drenching our heroes! The monkey, which the Internet tells me is called Suchi, is especially annoyed. And Wheeler is also initially annoyed at Gi, until Linka reminds him that it was his fault the water was necessary in the first place.
Kwame asks Ma-Ti if he knows what his power might be. He addresses him by his name, which Gaia hasn't mentioned yet, forcing us to imagine how the part we skipped could have gone if everyone learned each other's names but Wheeler hadn't heard Linka's accent yet. Anyway, Ma-Ti is already able to tell that his power is heart, immediately demonstrating by talking in everyone's minds without moving his mouth, saying that he can feel all of his friends' feelings and hear their thoughts, and incidentally calming down Suchi.
Gaia declares Ma-Ti's power to be the greatest of all. I mean, it's good, but we're not going to see it surpass the others, at least in this episode. Still, she does say that it's the power of heart that will guide them all, and that all the Planeteers will be linked through Ma-Ti. So, the sentiment is nice, and it does sound like it would have its uses outside of superhero shenanigans.
Wheeler says that this is going to be "hot" - ah, 90s slang - and accidentally burns his hand in the process. But when Kwame says that they are going to need some more practice with their powers, Gaia says there's no time as they already have a mission. Wow! Not even a little practice?
Gaia shows them the current crisis on that magical monitor - animals on a seashore covered in oil, the oil being pumped out through the sea by Greedly's big machine. This is where Greedly and Rigger are first named. Actually, Gaia specifically says "the evil Hoggish Greedly", and on my first viewing of the episode I misinterpreted that as "the evil, hoggish Greedly". It's made clearer later on that Hoggish is his first name, though. The Planeteers all look shocked, either at the suffering animals or at Greedly's appearance!
On board the robot, no longer as part of what the Planeteers are seeing on their screen, Rigger is celebrating at how full of crude oil the wildlife reserve is. But he's concerned about whether the animals are going to get hurt by the oil that's leaking out - so, he's not exactly an evil minion, then. Greedly grabs Rigger by the collar:
Greedly: Who cares? There's only one thing in the world worth caring about, and that's me!
As always, I love an over-the-top villain. Greedly's role requires him to just not care about dying animals, so he doesn't, at all!
Meanwhile, the Planeteers seem to have very quickly gotten ready for their mission. They're flying along in some kind of hi-tech plane or sky ship, and they're all wearing a consistent uniform, each in their own colours. Wheeler is complaining that he isn't the one that gets to fly it, and Gi, who is flying it, asks whether he even has a driver's licence, which he admits he hasn't. You would think this job would call more for a pilot's licence than driver's, but then I suppose it wouldn't be very realistic for Gi to have one otherwise.
Then Wheeler starts ranting about what a weird day he's having - in the process, he mentions he's from Brooklyn, which means for him we can now pin down his place of origin to a specific borough of a specific city, whereas everyone else still has a whole continent to choose from!
Linka wishes that Gaia could be with them, and Ma-Ti uses his power of heart to project Gaia's face in the sky ahead of them. She reassures them that, even though she has to stay at Hope Island, she will still be guiding them. This, to me, implies the room she was sleeping in was on Hope Island, if she can't leave, so I'm left quite confused by the geography of the situation.
Wheeler (why is it always him?) complains that wouldn't do them any good in a "firefight", and his ring reacts to the word "fire", setting off a small blaze on the floor of the plane! What, are they not even allowed to say the names of their elements out of context? That's going to make it hard to talk, fast! Gi quickly uses her water power to make an onboard fire extinguisher put out the fire. For some reason, her power seems to require water nearby, whereas Wheeler can make fire come out of nowhere.
Gaia's face appears again, without seemingly being summoned, telling them all to have faith in themselves. Kwame asks them what to do if they can't handle the situation, and so Gaia tells them to use all their powers together, but will only say that they'll be surprised, without telling them anything about Captain Planet - the opening sequence makes it pretty clear, so it's not like any suspense is being preserved!
In fact, Wheeler even jumps out of his seat to complain about her vagueness:
Gi: Sit down, Yankee!
Linka: And fasten the seatbelt, for your safety.
Wheeler: Didn't know you cared.
They approach the area where the robot is causing all the destruction, and remark on the sight of the poor animals. Kwame suggests they should try to land on that "derrick", meaning the robot - I think I would describe it as a bit more than just a derrick!
Rigger points out the plane to Greedly, asking him if it could be the coastguard. Greedly is much less of an idiot and recognises that they've attracted the attention of something greater - or in his words, they're in "deeper slop than that". (You can say "shit", Greedly, I won't tell anyone.)
Greedly's first idea to stop them is to direct the machine to spray them with oil. Well, if he doesn't care about the amount that's spilling into the water, I suppose he can spare some for this too!
The Planeteers react with shock at being hit, Gi specifically saying that the controls are jammed. Would that make sense for being covered in oil? Depends what sort of vehicle this actually is, I guess. As it spins out of control, Greedly says that's what they get for interrupting "the polluted plans of Hoggish Greedly". This man has no shame. Anyway, ad break.
When we return, the kids leap into action - Kwame points out that Linka's wind power could help here, so Linka tells Wheeler to use his power to remove the door of the vehicle. You would think that playing with fire here would be a problem with all this oil around, but the door just burns safely off the plane, and Linka uses the new opening to put a small tornado underneath the plane, slowing its descent.
Gi says they'll land safely now, but Linka despairs that they still aren't going to make it to land before the vehicle hits water and sinks. She does seem a little bit more liable to panic than the others. Kwame reassures her they won't sink, as he uses his power to raise some land right out of the water, and the plane lands on it safely.
I love the Planeteers' teamwork and the way they use their powers to solve problems, even if some of the physics here is a bit dodgy!
Rigger is stunned by what has just unfolded in front of them, but Greedly is unflapped. He uses what looks like a walkie-talkie to broadcast his voice to the Planeteers, calling their vehicle a "strange ship" and asking who they are.
As Linka and Kwame set up a boat, apparently out of parts of the vehicle that are designed to reconfigure in this way, Wheeler uses a megaphone to introduce the team as the Planeteers and to tell Greedly he'll kick his "curly pig tail". He also threatens to vaporise all the oil with his fire powers if Greedly launches any more of it at them - again, the writers don't seem to know how fire interacts with oil!
Anyway, Greedly is cleverer than Wheeler is giving him credit for. Instead of aiming the oil at the kids, he points the nozzle in the other direction and says that he'll blast the animals on the shore with it, if the Planeteers don't stay out of his way! So now they have a dilemma - or as Wheeler puts it, "We got problems." If they don't do anything about the derrick, it will continue spilling oil, but if they attack it, Greedly will attack the animals.
And so, this is when they recall Gaia's advice, that they should combine their powers in a situation they can't handle. The summoning sequence is so epic that I had to put the whole thing in a gif:
Everyone activates their powers, one by one. Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Heart. The powers gather in a swirl of light, forming the shape of a flying man with blue skin. And not much in the way of clothing.
Captain Planet: By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!
Planeteers: Go, Planet!
I love this. I love this kind of thing so much. It makes me want to have my own summoning / transformation / power-up sequence. And a catchphrase too. This is what cartoons are about.
Rigger is even more shocked than before, but Greedly just comments that this will be "trouble". One has to wonder what he's seen in his life. Greedly orders Rigger to go and man the arms, while Greedly pulls a lever to make the robot start moving, hoping to make an escape. In doing so, the pipe that's connecting the mech to the seabed breaks, spilling even more oil.
Ma-Ti asks Captain Planet what they should do, triggering a bit of exposition about how this new situation works. The Planeteers' rings are useless while Captain Planet is there, because he is the combination of all their powers. So he tells them to try and help the animals while he deals with the baddies and the oil spill. The kids give another cry of "Go, Planet!" - when did they decide on this catchphrase, anyway?
Captain Planet's method of putting the oil back where it came from is interesting. He makes a whirlpool around the leaking pipe, causing it to get sucked back in! Again, not sure about the physics, but you can see how he's combining the powers that were used to create him - I would guess this makes use of both water and wind.
Then he "seals off" the spill by dropping a big boulder on top. I think that might just add more pressure, actually. He goes off to deal with Greedly but then remembers about the cut-off portion of the pipe, and, saying "Mustn't litter!", he picks it up and flies out with it!
The robot steps out of the water, Greedly commenting that they can fight better on land. They happen to pass a rubbish bin just as Captain Planet flies overhead with the pipe, and it's clear from Rigger's reaction that he thinks the superhero is about to throw it right at them, until he drops it safely into the bin instead.
Then the Captain starts flying towards the robot. If you thought "Man the arms" meant "Man the weapons", it's more literal than that, as Rigger starts using two levers to control the robot's largest pair of arms. One arm grabs Captain Planet, spinning him around, and then the other arm uses a giant wrist-mounted knife to repeatedly stab him, which... has no effect at all!
Which one of those elemental powers makes him immune to stabbing, again? Maybe this is part of the nebulous abilities of heart. Also, Rigger remarks that the "drill" isn't affecting him, but it definitely looks more like a knife to me!
When we cut back from Rigger to Captain Planet, he has already managed to tie the two arms together in a knot, completely wrecking them. He's so powerful, we don't even need to see him do something like that - it's nothing to him! Then he remarks "But enough fun, there's trash to take out", which, if it was spoken by a guy like Spider-Man, would sound like typical witty superhero banter - but Captain Planet delivers it so sincerely! It's hard not to like him.
The Captain flies over to the control room where Rigger is sitting, tears the door off, and tells him he knows where to put "garbage like you", before flying him over to that same rubbish bin as before and dumping him in, right next to the pipe! Rigger just starts squealing for someone to let him out. Rigger is a little pathetic.
Then Captain Planet bursts into the part of the robot where Greedly is, but Greedly is prepared. He uses some kind of handheld launcher, wired up to the controls, to spray toxic waste at the Captain! Are anti-environmentalist villains just required to have toxic waste lying around? It doesn't even have anything to do with Greedly's plan!
This is one thing Captain Planet isn't immune to, and, spluttering in pain, he falls backwards through the hole he made, all the way down to the ground! One cool detail: the score is otherwise a quite ordinary superhero cartoon soundtrack - but, the moment he begins to fall, the music cuts out completely to be replaced only with the whooshing noise of his descent, and then instantly starts up again as soon as he hits the ground. It certainly makes the fall feel more dramatic!
The children, concerned, all rush to Captain Planet's side. I suppose they've been travelling to this shore in the boat in the meantime. The Captain says that the toxic waste is draining his strength. It makes sense for toxic things to be the weakness of an environmentalist hero, but also seems to be something the kind of enemies he'd be fighting could exploit way too easily!
Kwame tries to lift him - really? On his own? - and fails, but in doing so he accidentally clears a little bit of the waste off of the globe logo on Captain Planet's chest. The visible part starts glowing, as Wheeler helpfully points out, and Kwame says that they'll need water, evidently hoping to clear the rest off.
Interestingly, Gi's first instinct is to try to use her ring to provide water, forgetting that she can't use it while the Captain is around, even though she's only had that power for less than a day! How many times has she even used it, again? So Linka and Gi go off to get some water the traditional way instead.
Then the robot starts moving again - Greedly is at the controls, lifting up one of the legs and preparing to crush Captain Planet! The three boys' only plan is to roll a nearby boulder next to him, to stop the foot before it touches ground. I would think the massive metal foot would be strong enough to defeat a rock, and indeed, after a few seconds it does start to crack, as the boys watch from afar.
But then the girls are running back from the shore - Linka has removed her jacket, and the two of them are carrying some water in it. They splash a load of it over the Captain, and his globe begins to glow brighter - Wheeler remarks that the Sun is charging him up. Of course! A solar-powered superhero! What else?
The Sun finishes charging him up, and he's able to then teleport away from the foot, moments before it finally crashes down. What element is teleportation?!
Captain Planet says he feels like a brand new hero, and Wheeler points out that he is! Well yeah, it's been like five minutes! And the Captain then calls the Planeteers brand new heroes, before flying back up the robot to deal with Greedly. Nice to show a little bit of humility before making use of your superhuman powers!
He's punching right through the legs of the robot, with no regard for where Greedly might land. He must have had enough - if you make Captain Planet mad he apparently will try to kill you. And so the robot collapses, with Greedly inside!
The kids all cheer "Go Planet!" one more time, as Captain Planet flies inside the robot to look for Greedly. But he can't find him! We cut to a nearby pipe sticking out of a cliff, where Greedly is making his getaway, declaring that he'll be back for revenge. It does seem like he stays around as the main villain of the show.
Later, the kids all talk to Captain Planet, who warns them that Greedly might come back and tells them to call on him when he does. Yes, please do! I wanna see that summoning sequence again! He tells them to remember that "the power is yours" as he turns back into the five elemental powers and returns to the rings. You see the message they're going for.
And then the five Planeteers are using their powers to clean up the oil-covered animals. They've thought this through - Gi is summoning water using her power, Wheeler is heating up the water with his fire, Ma-Ti is using his heart power to attract the animals to him, Linka's wind is giving the animals a blow-dry, and Kwame's earth power is helping to clean up the sand itself.
Wheeler is complaining, though, that they have to clean this mess even though they weren't the ones who made it and they aren't getting paid for it. I wonder if Wheeler stays this much at odds with the rest of the group, throughout the series? Linka politely tells him that they do it because of how much they care, while also calling him an "imperialist dog".
Linka: Some rewards are greater than money.
As the walrus Wheeler is cleaning starts licking his face, he can't help but agree!
Then there's a PSA-style pre-credits sequence where the characters themselves tell you the ways you personally can help fight pollution - by turning off lights, carpooling or not using a car if you don't need to, and that sort of thing. Well, it takes growing up to realise there are more important ways in which you can fight back.