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Thursday, February 01, 2018

The Lookback: Power Pack

The Flashback 


         This is probably the first time we've written about something related to comic books, that means this must be an accomplished day.   This  day (if you are reading this in 2018)  TV series and movies based of comic superheroes have littered our media for sometime now  (if you are reading this after the collapse of this , than well thanks for reading)  , but there was a point that superhero TV and movies kind of were spaced out a little bit.  The 1990's did bring us a great animated super hero TV but live-action was  different story.



   Now First a little history related to our topic.  
          Power Pack  is a team of super heroes by Marvel.  In  1984 the comic book series started. It's about  children super heroes created by Louise Simonson and June Brigman (who did the drawing) . They are a group of 4 children super heroes  with Alex at age 12 , the oldest,  Julie at age 10 , Jack at 8, and Katie at age 5.   
random shot from a comic cover, guess which characters are which. 

          The interesting things about this series are 1) the aren't orphans their parents are alive and well (and we don't mean Superman style adopted parents)  2) the parents don't know.  So the origin story (spoilers)  we are going to keep it short here,  the kids' father is a scientist named Professor Power, who is making a machine that an alien horse like thing named Whitemane warns him that he shouldn't do it.  Chopping some stuff out, he eventually is dying and hands his powers over to kids to save their parents and the day and they do!  So now they have powers. (We really zoomed through that)   The original comic book series lasted from 1984 to 1991  and again I am stopping there because the whole comic's life is not the point of our lookback.  

       In 1991 even though the comic book series ended,  Marvel deiced to maybe see if they could try it in a different medium. The idea was to have a Saturday Morning (because that's how things end up on this blog) live-action children's TV series.  What they made was a TV for NBC but it didn't make it as a TV series. 
  
   so join us after the jump as we look at this movie. 


        It starts with a narrator talking about power and how if it's in the wrong hands it's bad in good hands it's good and that when it came time to give his powers up  and gave them to children. (what?)  Then it goes to a house where it's  a school day morning and the children are getting ready for that thing.  This scene does help us know which character is which, and also their powers. Like Alex having the power to lift heavy things (hence his super hero name of Zero-G because he can manipulate gravity)  Julie being fast ,  Jack's power of being able to shrink. and Katie's power to project things.   Unlike the comic books, apparently the parents here do know of their kids' powers. Which for the 1990's is  a twist not done even much now. 

Honey, I didn't shrink the kid. 


        So the family just moved and Katie misses her old home.  The movie takes us to school because children end up there.  There's a good amount of time devoted to them just having their first day of school and I guess trying to fit in and normal things like that. That means not a lot of that super hero thing yet. (or will there be at all?)  A girl asks Alex for his phone number (guess she likes him) , Jack and a couple boys  break into a house. Jack uses his shrinking power to get in and unlock the doors. 
pictured: Jack, Alex, Julie, and Katie left to right. 


       Later on, Julie wants to go meet some girls to hopefully make some new friends ,so she asks Alex to cover for her, he wants her back real quick though. (get it super speed, quick?)  Anyway this medallion like thing that Jack found at the spooky house, he decided to take it home because why not? It starts glowing and well that's not good.  A shadowy  figure shows up saying "return it to me"(Guess he wants it back) 
Shadowy 

                                

       So Alex decides to open the door for the shadowy figure but he leaves. (rude)  The Power kids , well 3 of the 4, decide to go back to the spooky house with the amulet thing. The house decides to be creepy  So they put the thing back , then they found out that they have to put the medallion on the painting itself so they have Katie do it, and eventually they get back home.  

Strange house 



   The parents are unknowing of what happened because Julie took care of their mess at the house. Katie apparently makes a couple friends, Alex gets called by that girl and well that's it.  

       Since usually pilots are used to show potential distributors what the series would be like before the order a full series and or  many times when it makes the network's OK, then it might be used for the audience to get a feel for the series,  this at least makes a feel for a theory of what the series could have been like.   

    It doesn't seem to have been doing for  a go to school , save the world thing, at least this episode. So it seems the series is going for a grounded world where the kids happen to have super powers, but it looks to be the beginning so they maybe un sure of what to do with their powers. So in theory future episodes could have set that up more.  

   As a pilot it does it's job it shows us our characters, and their powers and for kids with powers it shows us how normal kids would act if they happen to have powers.  The parents knowing is a different touch I wasn't expecting,usually in these kind of series  the parents don't know, which goes for wacky hijinks of what do they have to tell Mom they've been doing when they've been saving the world.  I like they went for a different direction than normal. 
    
        If you were expecting an action super hero series, the first episode really doesn't have that, and maybe the budget didn't allow excessive effects , but who knows.   The episode has Jack get in trouble for using his powers wrongly (trespassing) and stealing something and he gets in trouble and they have to resolve that for the episode.   

     Did I like the pilot?   I do like it,  though I can't really say how the series would have done but it does make me want to see more episodes (that again, don't exist) so it did it's job.  


  Tune in next time , when we find out what happens when you give  a bunch of older people super powers. 



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