Once Upon a Time … Space

The local cable network is doing a promo for their kiddies channels package, which would not be of much interest to me, if not for one thing. One of the channels involved is repeating episodes of Er Was Eens… De Ruimte, (Once Upon a Time… Space) that was about the only proper science fiction on the telly when I grew up. I last saw this when it was first broadcast, in 1982/83, when I was already reading science fiction but Dutch television had little of interest; Battlestar Galactica was a few years ago, V would come a few years later. So it fell to an originally French cartoon series that was a sequel to a not very good series about The History of Man to fill the gap.

Which it did quite well.

Now compared to a roughly contemporary Japanese series like Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets (or Sj-force as it was also know in Holland) the animation quality was … not quite … as good and the characters somewhat on the stereotypical side (the main bad giuy actually being called “Generaal Naarling” (General nasty)), but it was also much more properly science fiction. Set some 1,000 years in the future, where a dozen or so races including humans have formed a peaceful union, the series follows the adventures of several new members of the union’s space police, as they have to deal with natural disasters as well as intrigues by the bad guys from Cassiopeia, a military dictatorship part of the union but constantly trying to gain ultimate power. The good guys are led by Omega and tend to go for peaceful solutions before grabbing for the laser.

The series lasted twentysix episodes, with the last six-seven or so forming one big story arc, featuring a new big bad manipulating Casseopia, a threat only resolved in the last episode. It was this that made the biggest impression on me, the first sustained space opera I’d seen. And what also made an impression was the music, both the opening theme as featured above, as the incidental background music, which is as burned in my memory as the Star Wars music…