I am shocked to see there isn't a thread for this show. I loved this show and watched it before going to school. I would love for the Cartoon Network to air reruns. I loved the character of Gaia when Whoopi Goldberg was the voice. Not so much when Margot Kidder took over. Does anyone else remember this show?

It does, but you need to be up at 5:30 am.

I love this show so much. Though if anyone asks, I'll insist that it's because I only ever see it when I'm just waking up or am just about to head up to bed so it weaseled it's way into my barely conscious mind when my resistance to crap is at it's daily low. I certainly don't scramble for a tape when I realise one of my favorite episodes is on so I can watch it when I'm wide awake, nor do I spend a certain amount of my spare time thinking things like 'Well, Wheeler might have a crush on Linka, but he's obviously going to end up with Gi.' And I never had a crush on Dr. Blight (except for the first few episodes she's in, where she's voiced by Meg Ryan. Then I'm just caught up in how weird she sounds).

Wow, I suck at hiding how much I love it, don't I? *grins*

Gi and Wheeler? I don't really remember specifics, could you explain your reasoning behind this? I like mix'n and match'n couples from old cartoons I used to watch, so I'm interested. Did Kwame or... the guy with the heart ring ever have possible love interests?

Yay for very earnest socially responsible 90's toons!

My favorite episode is a tie between the one where Linka got hooked on pills and the one where Wheeler traveled through time. He first went back, stopped himself from becoming a Planeteer, then realized that the entire universe was about him because, since he didn't join up, everything went bad, went back in time again and stopped the other version of himself from stopping himself. Yes, it's as confusing as it sounds. The Linka on drugs ep was much more fun, esp. as she was cruelly tricked by her cousin Boris into taking Bliss.

Oh, and Captain Planet's mullet looks really bad now.

The most insane thing about this and other environmentally-conscious cartoons of the time (remember "The Smoggies?" not to mention countless stand-alone episodes of other cartoon shows) is that the pollution was always being caused by people who apparently had no motive except to pollute. I mean, they weren't polluting as part of a money-making scheme or a factory; they were spending huge amounts of money just to pollute. I mean, what was in it for them? (I also think that's what I find so offensive about CP, that it wants to tell the kids that pollution is bad but doesn't have the guts to tell them that there's ever any downside to not polluting. Couldn't they have done an episode where the message was "Yes, Daddy will lose his job at the factory, but the factory has to shut down for the good of our planet." That I could respect.)

There's a lengthy recap of one of the first Captain Planet episodes, that's pretty good. But skip over the rantings about Ted Turner and the UN, and enjoy recalling moments like these:

If you ever want to explain the "PC" era to someone pop in a tape of Captian Planet. I support alot of enviroment causes, but this show was such a Cartoon (in the metphorical sense.) Constant air of extraspecialness, polarized and simplistic view of the issues, one dimensional villians, leaden expository dialouge, talking down to the audiance and the only thing to distinguish CP from the worst dregs of animation was it's high minded premise.

That lime green Boz mullet didn't look good then and could they have made the latin kid more monkey boyish?

Of course all of those things make it worth an ironic view now and then.

Whenever me and the other neighborhood kids played Planeteers (c'mon, you know you did it too) there was always a fight over who was going to be Ma Ti. Man, what a crappy power that heart ring was. The only episode I remember centering on him was when all the others were turned into rat creatures and he had to shut down the factory by himself. Unsurprisingly, he mostly did it through physical actions rather than using the ring's "power."

I also have pretty distinct memories of the first episode, in which the Soviet Union was portrayed as an ecological utopia and America was portrayed as a Mad Max-style wasteland. Real subtle there, Mr. Turner.

I also clearly remember an ep where the four other Planeteers sold out for enhancements of their powers by accepting gifts (gloves to replace their rings I think?) from Gaia's ancient nemesis (y'know how she's the spirit of Earth, I think he was a spirit of some long-dead planet and was her antithesis). Only the gifts predictably ended up controlling them or making them more agressive or something, so the "Heart" kid had to save the day.

Sadly I end up watching this show fairly often (insomniac), so I can remember quite a few episodes. In particular I remember an episode where the kids end up in an inner-city high school and they join opposing gangs in an effort to find out who shot a teacher. I'm pretty sure the episode was intended as a special for Black History month, since it included pictures of Dr. King and Malcolm X and the excepts from the "I have a Dream" speech.

They also recently aired an ep. where the 'teers and a group of Eco-villains are kidnapped by a group of aliens and forced to compete on an alien game show. Memorable, if for no other reason, because the Aliens best option for dealing with pollution was to 'Move to another planet'.


Word. Linka's voice was super annoying.

This episode just ended, and as always I'm struck by how dumb it is. I have no problem with them wanting to make a Black History Month episode, but the way they did it's stupid. At first all the pictures of famous african (mostly) americans are put in at posters and framed pictures and whatnot, which is ok although the drawings don't really fit in with the animation style of the main show. Then they start randomly superimposing the pictures over whatever's on screen. It doesn't explain who they are, or what they did, just throws their pictures up. And the "I Have a Dream" excerpt is just as random, with an added very red black history montage and a vocal song). And the main plot doesn't have a thing to do with Black History Month; it's like the just flipped through the episodes they hadn't shown yet and said "Ok, this one has a large black supporting cast, fiddle with it a bit and it'll do fine for our special." The message at the end doesn't even have anything to do with it, it's about gun violence just with graffiti of Dr. King (and someone else, but I wasn't facing the TV until the very end of the shot that had both of them in it, so I didn't catch who the other was) on the wall behind them. It's a shame, because without the weirdness it's actually an above average episode, with a much better soundtrack then normal. And, as an added treat for the part of me wanting Wheeler and Gi to hook up, near the end he's the one who talks her out of killing the guy who shot her friend then cuddles her when she's crying.

I'd completely forgotten that Shaggy and Velma have several cameos wandering around the school chatting in the episode, which amuses me far more then it should.

I'd also forgotten that this was the episode where I learned that most of the Planeteers are older then I thought they are; in it Wheeler mentions that he never thought he'd have to go back to school again, which I take to mean he's a college graduate. Gi's definately graduated from college, since the official site says she is (or was, hard to keep a job when you're constantly flying around fighting ecovillains) a marine biologist. No clue about Kwame or Linka (I can't remember if anything that hints at their ages shows up in other episodes) except that I assume Linka's at least a high school graduate or else Wheeler would probably hold himself back a bit more when it comes to hitting on her. And, according to the site, Ma-Ti's twelve.



I never minded her voice (it's done by Kath Soucie. I admire her work to much to get very annoyed at her lesser efforts), outside of the crummy accent, but considering the vast number of crummy accents to appear on the show my brain would explode if I let myself get annoyed by them. It's just that I never thought she was interested in him at all as anything more then a friend, the times she did flirt with him a little it always felt to me like she was doing it because she liked screwing with him a bit then because she liked him.

I like the thought of him and Gi getting together mostly just because they always seem to get along really well, judging from past experience their personalities seem to mesh well, and when the team splits up they often team up together. *shrugs* I suppose I might just be a little too influenced by a certain breed of teen dramas; just imagine Wheeler as the male lead, Linka as the sexpot he starts out lusting after, and Gi as the tom-boyish girl next door that he starts out thinking of as only a friend, only to realise by the third act that she's the one he really wants. Cue swelling violins.

Glad, you guys mentioned the gloves things. I thought I had dreamed that.

Another particularly crappy episode I remember: the bad guys decide to destroy the reputation of a high school football star, which doesn't even have anything to do with wreaking the environment. Their entire plan is putting up posters that say the kid has AIDS. It actually works too, as every single person in town seems to think AIDS can be caught like leprosy. Our heroes ultimately restore his good name by...showing up at the school and telling everyone he's fine, and AIDS isn't even that easily catchable, you morons!

I remember a Sly Sludge episode where he was using flying garbage trucks to dump garbage all over a town. Then have them pay him to pick it up just to throw in like 5 blocks away. The people's respondse to it was: "As long as it isn't in my yard." WTF was that about. If anyone was doing that in a town, they city would have arrested Sly's ass for doing that. Sorry, even if someone else doesn't care where it was going, other people would be like: "Why are you just dumping it where ever, that is so illegal and some people would shoot you if you tried that."

Okay, I am petty, but I was always slightly bitter there was no Australian Planeteer. One from every continent, except Australia and frickin' Antarctica. Though it's probably for the best - I can just a see a teenage Steve Irwin type character, who says 'crickey', 'drongo' and 'shiela' a lot.

Gi was always my favourite, without a question. And does anyone else remember Captain Pollution?

Yup! I think he was the only bad guy in the show ever to actually be killed instead of just thrown in jail/stranded somewhere at the end of the episode.

Of course, then I think they brought him back to life awhile later, and I'm not sure if he was killed again or just trapped somewhere after that.

Everybody knows that Ma Ti was the real soul of the group. 'Cause if you put together the other four powers without Heart, you get... Captain Asshole Planet!

"Hey, lay off with the fuckin' hairspray, retardo." (slaps can out of guy's hand) "You tryin' to wreck the goddam ozone layer? Jesus Christ."

Heh! I loved this show. I wasn't allowed to watch it because my dad said it was liberal propaganda (try explaining that to a 5 year old. My dad did) but I totally did anyways. I thought it was awesome. I desperately wanted to be blonde like Linka, but a marine biologist like Gi. Hey, what year did this come out? Any connection between this Kwame and the one of The Apprentice?

*Off to Tivo a couple episodes. Shut up. You do it too*

ETA - Anyone remember an episode about bats that were getting killed or something? Or did I make that up?

Yeah that was on a while ago, (got home from drinking late.) Evil Billionare's nephew was staging bat attacks on his movie set as a publicity stunt. The local bat expert got trapped in the bat cave trying to save them from being gassed. Lots of shoe-horned nature documentary dialouge on the greatness of bats.

MUWAHAHAHhahaha!! My people!! I so loved this show but I have NEVER EVER EVER seen the first episode. Serious!

I always wished Wheeler and Linka would hook up already. C'mon guys!! There could be some environmental thing in that.....


But there was the episode when someone in Linka's family was sick (?) and she had to go back home and gave up being a planeteer. There was some creepy stalker following her around and she got trapped and OMG - it was Wheeler!! And he had her ring!! There was some tonsil hockey action goin on in that episode.

There was another episode a building was on fire, I can't remember the exact details cos it was so long ago I've seen this show, but either Wheeler or Linka (I think it was Wheeler) was trapped in the burning building and the other was shittin themselves with worry.

Wheeler and Linka all the way!!


There's an official site? Where have I been living?? And Ma Ti totally got on my nerves. So being 12 sounds just right!!



Word!! I always imagined myself being the Aussie 'teer who would win over Wheeler...hey c'mon I thought he was cute!!


HAHA!! That would have to be my fave episodes when the baddies stole the 'teers rings to make their own evil equivilants. Muwahahaha they were so evil those guys!!

I guess I should rephrase that, I found her voice annoying because of the things she would say. Especially the way she always called Wheeler "Yankee" in a derisive manner. As a 'Yankee', (who's been called that in a not so nice way), I think it forced me to dislike the character.

I caught an episode the other day ... it was some funny stuff. The 'Teers go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, end up meeting a Cajun who's granny happens to be involved in Voodoo, and they work together to foil a plot to kidnap and stuff Teddy Bears.

There were a couple of Wheeler/Gi moments, at the start of the episode he gives her some beads, which I thought was sweet (of course he then goes off to party with some dancers while she checks the water in a swamp or something). Gi, Ma-Ti, and Cajun-guy, get caught by the bad guys and end up in quicksand, then Wheeler (with help from the Voodoo granny) finds them and pulls her out.

A Voodoo granny?? HAHA!! thouogh I bet it doesn't look as entertaing as i imagine it!!



Oh No!! Sounds serious!!

I didn't like Gi. Don't know why but I thought she was meant for Ma-Ti. They belonged together!! I actually liked Linka. I s wanted to be her (when I wasn't imagining myself to be the Aussie 'teer of course).

And her voice was by Kath Soucie?? Serious? Isn't she Lil and Phil from Rugrats?

What were all the baddies names? The one I remeber most clearly is Duke Nukenm the big yellow guy. HA!! Was it ever explained where the baddies came from?? And was that lady doc Dr Blight? The one with the computer guy? I always thought she should get together with that guy who wore the zebra prints.

Baddies as I remember them:

• Dr. Blight and her computer MAL
• Duke Nukem radioactive guy
• Sly Sludge
• Lutin Plunder
• Hoggish Greedly
• Rat Faced Guy who's name I can't remember
• Mother & Son team of poachers, who's names I can't remember

Good lord. I always I was the only one who did that.



That would be Verminus Skumm who, in the early seasons was voiced by jeff Goldblum



Stalker & Mamie(As in maim, Geddit?) Slaughter. Of course they were only in one episode(That I saw anyway), that orangutan episode.

You left out my personal favorite villain, Zarm.

Muwahahaha!! That is too funny!!


We were sadly left out :( So I had to fill that void!! I can't remeber what my power was though. I know it was better than "Heart" pffft.


He had the pig truck? Bah he was gross. I imagined him to smell llike BO.


Was he a bee or wasp?? Or am I making up my own baddies??

Nflux Forever u watched this on ABC? At 5pm? Do they still show it?? BAH how I miss this show!!

Hell, I wasn't even Austrialian:D



I went with "Ice".



He was Gaia's "brother", the Spirit of Destruction. In season one he was voiced by Sting.



Naw, Cartoon Network right before the new sucky Transformers series



Me neither. She always irritated the piss out of me. Especially every time she said "Water".

Ice was too much like water for me ... I went with "lightening" 'cause electricity is a naturally occurring element.


Gi was the coolest one.

I think Dr. Blythe was cybering with MAL. My sister and I always were freaked out by the way she flirted with her computer. I'm not Australian, but since there was a Planeteer from every other continent but Australia, I wanted to be the Australian Planeteer. They should have had seven rings and had an Australian girl, and the Antarctic Planeteer would be a penguin. Way cooler than the monkey, cause it would be a badass penguin- named Larry. Yeah. Larry the Antarctic Penguin.






hat would be robbing the cradle, dont you think?



I agree. No one else seems to think so, though.

What's with all this talk about Gi and Wheeler? Dosen't anyone remember the episode where Linka comes from the future and almost lest it slip that she's married to Wheeler?...or, I think it was Wheeler who went to the futuer? besides, Gi and Kwame obviously had the hots for eachother.

Kwame was my fav Planeteer, cause he had the coolest power (Wheeler's power was way to excessive). I hated that Wheeler was the star even though Kwame appeared to be the leader.

I used to have a thing for Gi and her various Swimsiuts. and I thought Blythe was hot till they finally showed what the right side of her face looked like.

One scene I remeber vividly is where Captain Planet meets Hitler, and immediatley falls to his knees and says: "Hate and Prejudice is the worst kind of polution."

P.s. were Captain Planet and Gaia supposed to be more than friends?

Well, there was that episode where both the Planeteers, Captain Planet and the bad guys met their future selves. And of course two of the future Planeteers looked like the children of Wheeler and LInka. Gaia sent them back before they could say anything to their "parents" same went with Qwuami, Gi, and Mati.

I don't have cable, but I actually was at my friends house the other day and we saw that New Orleans episode. I'd never seen it before. I was never happy with Captain Planet after the animation duties were turned over from DIC to Hanna Barbara.

As for ages... like, a long time ago, let's say... 1992, Marvel comics actually had a twelve issue series of Captain Planet. I can't believe that I actually bought this, but anyways... in the middle of the sixth issue it had a whole collection of bios for them. Whether or not it's actually considered canon, but the ages were always along the same line of what I always thought (Or perhaps that was Marvel Comics brainwashing me as a child) - Either way, here are those - going from Oldest to youngest.

Wheeler: 17
Linka: 16
Kwame: 16
Gi: 15 - It does note that she was very bright and she started college at 14, hence why she's in college to be a marine biologist.
Ma-Ti: 12

I also had a press kit that had all the bad guys listed for first season, who voiced them.

I never liked Wheeler, since his role was always the idiot that had to have everything explained to him. Whether making the group's American have this role was deliberate I really don't want to think about.

I always liked Kwame as well. Does this show still air at odd times on the Cartoon NetworK? I'd love to still watch it.

I wonder how the makers of this show had so much pull with celebrities. There are tons listed on the IMdB.



These are all the celebrities that I recognized.

Yeah I know, and I could always name all the celeberties the second I heard their voices. I was surprised too who they got for the voices during the course of the series for 6 years.

[QUOTE]Dosen't anyone remember the episode where Linka comes from the future and almost lest it slip that she's married to Wheeler?...or, I think it was Wheeler who went to the futuer? [/QUOTE]

Why don't I remember this episode? I remember most of the series, but not this one...

[QUOTE] Gi and Kwame obviously had the hots for eachother.[/QUOTE]

I remember there was this one episode where they were obviously flirting with each other, I think it was the one where Ma-Ti was upset about the fact that he wasn't tall enough or something.

[QUOTE]One scene I remeber vividly is where Captain Planet meets Hitler, and immediatley falls to his knees and says: "Hate and Prejudice is the worst kind of polution."




There was an episode with HITLER?! I should remember this one, but I can't.


[QUOTE]were Captain Planet and Gaia supposed to be more than friends?[/QUOTE]


All the kids in my class in third grade seemed to think so.

Wooo!! I don't remember this one but Wooo!! Wheeler and Linka for ever!!


Serious? I wouldn't have thought that CP was really the "type" of thing to be considered as serious comic material.


Bahahaha!! I wish I had seen this!! I could have wrote about it when I had to do World War Two in History class!

Did the show have an actual end or was it just canned?

I think that this was during the time that Marvel was going through bankruptcy.

Best captain planet moment IMO. Pregnant Linka in the future is carrying the washing on Hope Island and sees the other Planeteer rings, gives a bored sigh and is like "Wind" whatever.

Their absolute lack of caring is amusing and so wonderfully ... bitchy.

Why I cant I remember those in the future episodes? Why Why Why? I would have loved to have seen Linka and Wheeler actually together! The only episode I remeber the most is the one I mentioned before when Linka gives up being a planeteer to return home and Wheeler stayed behind to protect her.

I want this show on air again!!

One of these days Hitler is going to emerge from the backwater regions of Argentina and start demanding royalties. The guy could probably make enough money to start four or five more Reichs.

This was in my early comic book collecting days. The stories weren't that great, I'll be honest. I wasn't all that impressed with the writing, even back when they first came out. It's really not worth it unless you're a really huge fan, kinda like the Rocky Horror comics. On the upswing, there were some decent artists during it's run like Bryan Hitch and Pat Brodrick.



The bankcruptcy was a few years later (1996ish), while Captain Planet comics were out in 1992. Personally, I was surprised it lasted a whole twelve issues.

The format of the books was very strange. Like they'd have set aside story arcs to be drawn and written by certain people, then they'd cut those up so that half would go in one issue, then the rest in the next - but they were never long enough to sustain a whole issue, so they'd sometimes have two or three separate stories in one issue, but only quarters of stories, not a whole story (or sometime one really short one-shot story). So the continunity was all over the place. There was one issue where Gi met someone who looked a whole helluvalot like Namor, but he was referred to as "Marino" or something like that.

Bump! Bump! Bump! Bump!

Captain Planet. He;s the hero!

Hee...I just found this thread. Ah, memories. I never really liked the show - as a kid, I thought it was stupid, and really, I still do. It continues to bug me that the bad guys never polluted for any reason,as it did when I was a tot. But I watched the show anyway, and now I think I shall be flipping to the old eps on CN, since I'm a horrible insomniac.
Am I recalling correctly that Linka went from being from the Soviet Union to being from 'Eastern Europe'?


*guffaw* It was though, wasn't it? At least somewhat. But...how DOES one try to explain that to a five year old? And really, are kids stupid enough to be brainwashed by cartoons? Especially one like CP that is clearly NOT REAL?

Well, to be honest, some of people in the list weren't that big at the time. Celebrities? yes. Stars? Not all of them.

Yes, after the fall of the Soviet Union you could practically hear the writers' teeth gnashing as they had to make the change.

Here's some really great analyses of the show's later years:

http://jabootu.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1515
http://jabootu.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1572

Hitler and the Cap'n met when Dr. Blight and her future self traveled to the past with atom bombs to sell to Hitler the very first atom bombs. But De Fuhrer (?) betrayed them and tried to take it by force. CP tossed the bomb into outer space.

Love Boat ep. Wheeler is the one who falls asleep and dreams he's married to Linka with like six kids. Its a dystopian future with lazy planeteers, a lazier CP and Linka's a cynical, mean and hunched over old woman and the lesson of the ep is to never have more kids than one can bear. Linka kisses him on the cheek in the end. Not one of their finest moments in terms of writing.

Man, I wish I remembered more about this show. Hee.
I do wish that they'd made the storylines less one-sided, though...had the pollution coming from something like a factory instead of people polluting for the fun of it. But whoever's parent said that it was liberal propaganda wasn't all that wrong. Oh well. The show was just so bad it was good.

So, am I the only one thinking this show needs a Ninja Turtles-style remake?

Or would that mess with the original's (crappy) purity?

Captain Planet...heh. Was a fave way back when, along with Widget: the World Watcher, which from what I remember, where I live took up the same timeslot when they rotated the shows or the time before/after (do people from Australia remember how ABC worked things then? TV really does rot your mind and I just remember that as long as I was occupied with SOMETHING between when I got home from and 6pm life was good). Word to whoever was annoyed there was no Aussie planeteer. Anyway, too young or too stupid to recognise the show for what it was I was very much into it. I had a book and everything.

Does anyone remember the drugs episode? I'm pretty sure they called it "Bliss" because from then on everytime someone said "bliss" I would immediately associate it with drugs. To my young mind it was kinda scary. The bit I always remember is the bit where a girl who's addicted to the stuff (could have been Linka) gets pushed in front of the mirror all: "Look at yourself! Lood at what you've become!" and she's like "I look...beautiful!" *shudder* Did the drugs glow? Or am I, also, on crack?

Man...now I think about it all these half remembered things from the show are coming back to me. I can't believe I watched this! And liked it!

Would people get away with doing a remake of this? I mean, as you've said it's all liberal propaganda. I'm sure it'd be a matter of seconds before something offends someone's parents who happen to walk in the room. And it's not really the same as ninja turtles because violent mutant reptiles are cool, but caring for the planet is lame-o, I don't know that it would be able to pull any sort of audience. It would be fun to see a remake, or even a movie, as they are so prone to doing these days. Anyone willing to place bets on how long it'll take to do an episode on gay rights?

I have very, very vague memories of the drug episode. Not that particular bit, though. That's friggin' scary.
A remake of the series could be good. Really, I'd just kill to see an episode where the baddies aren't polluting just for the fun of it.

It wouldn't be that hard to remade Captain Planet. They could go the way of the He-man series remake couple years ago. Make it a bit more darker and dive into the origins and actually motivations for all the Eco-villains. Sly Sludge is easy, greedy chemical disposer who does illegal dumping or work to make more money. Dr. Blight, experiment made her go insane, thinks the world is imperfect and must fix it. Duke Nukum, easy, mutated, wants everyone to be like him. Lootin Plunder, also easy, just does illegal stuff for money, potching, land buying deals, chemical farms. Scortch, just the oppisite of Gaea, he is the spirit of destruction. Hogish Greedly, kind of a business rival for Plunder, he just goes to even further extremes for money. Verminous Scum is a mutate who hates that the world created him and wants it destroyed. For the Planteers, keep Quime as an african teen who was caught in the middle of his war torn nation, and wants to help the planet, not destroy it. Wheeler could be this tough kid who grew up with out a father, but has a heart of gold. Linka could be a musician trying to make it in post cold war Russia, or Progue now. Gi, is just a marine biologist trying to save the seas. Matee is a young south american who is trying protect his people as drug and land devolopers try to buy and destroy his peoples land.