71-year-old Mark Evanier is a legendary comedian e book/TV author. In the present day he posted on his private weblog that “Forty years in the past, I spent about six days (cumulative) of my life writing the pilot script and small-b bible for a Saturday morning cartoon collection referred to as Dungeons & Dragons…
“I really feel like I’ve now spent greater than six days (cumulative) being interviewed about this collection.”
It went on CBS on September 17, 1983 and lasted three seasons. Don’t imagine those that declare it was pushed from the airwaves by stress teams who noticed satanic subtext within the collection. It went off for a similar cause most exhibits go off: As a result of the rankings had been declining and — rightly or wrongly — the brass on the community did not assume it might have sufficient viewers to maintain one other season. Sure, there have been protests about its content material however not many and CBS, a minimum of in these days, was fairly good about ignoring such outcries if — and that is all the time a Huge If — the viewers appear to need no matter is being outcried about.
From Wikipedia:
The extent of violence was controversial for American youngsters’s tv on the time, and the script of 1 episode, “The Dragon’s Graveyard”, was virtually canceled as a result of the characters contemplated killing their nemesis, Venger. In 1985, the Nationwide Coalition on Tv Violence demanded that the FTC run a warning throughout every broadcast stating that Dungeons & Dragons had been linked to real-life violent deaths.
The present finally ran for a complete of 27 episodes. The weblog submit continues:
It was a great present due to good writers, good producers, good artists, good voice expertise, good all the pieces…and I used to be largely a spectator to all that goodness, having opted to not keep it up. Nonetheless, because of the gent who was my agent on the time, my title was seen for a micro-second within the credit every week so I get extra kudos than I most likely earned…
Fairly not too long ago, I sat for this video podcast with a high-quality interviewer and a significant fan of the collection, Heath Holland. It is virtually an hour and we talked about another issues but it surely’s largely about Dungeons & Dragons…
The podcaster notes that the cartoon’s six adventurers even made a cameo in 2022’s live-action Dungeons & Dragons film, Honor Amongst Thieves — and a number of other different firms are nonetheless celebrating the cartoon. Hasbro not too long ago launched a line of motion figures primarily based on the cartoon, whereas IDW has launched a comic book e book mini-series referred to as Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures.
Within the collection six youngsters are transported from an amusement park’s Dungeon’s & Dragons experience into the sport’s realm, the place a kindly Dungeon Grasp helps them battle numerous villains and monsters as they seek for a means house. Extra lore concerning the collection from Wikipedia:
A closing unproduced episode would have served as each a conclusion to the story and as a re-imagining of the present, had it been picked up for a fourth season. Nevertheless, it was canceled earlier than the episode was made. The script has since been printed on-line and was carried out as an audio drama as a particular function for the BCI Eclipse DVD version of the collection… A fan-made animated model of the finale appeared on-line in 2020 [according to TheGamer.com].
