You’d be forgiven for thinking that Captain Power & The Soldiers Of The Future was aimed squarely at children. After all, it was a merchandising phenomenon that sold a ton of kid’s toys, including action figures and vehicles. The show’s biggest draw was a basic level of interactivity between the toys and the special lighting effects used on-screen in each episode.
Despite the focus on moving a lot of merchandise, Captain Power’s story was very mature both in tone, and subject matter. Here are 10 reasons why Captain Power was not actually a kid’s show, but one better suited for older audiences.
GROWN-UP STUFF
Aside from all the rest of the items on this list, Captain Power was infamous for introducing sexual plot elements and cuss words into a daytime TV show supposedly aimed at a younger audience. It wasn’t rare to see characters engaging in romance, flirtation and even implied sexual relations, and the dialogue was no less forgiving.
It may seem tame by today’s standards, but hearing a character yell “Go to Hell,” before committing suicide and taking an entire legion of bad guys out in the process was extremely out of place as far as children’s shows went.
THE POST-APOCALYPTIC TONE
Captain Power hit the scene just a few short years after James Cameron’s The Terminator was released. This, combined with fears of a possible nuclear exchange between world powers would create a climate for this kind of storytelling.
The show takes place after a devastating future conflict known as The Metal Wars, where a branch of humans embraced technology as a religion and set out to dominate the planet. This left destruction on a global scale, turning Earth into a wasteland with millions dead.
SINS OF THE FATHERS
The incidents which led to The Metal Wars began with the best of intentions. This is touched on during the 2-part episode A Summoning Of Thunder, where Captain Jonathan Power visits the grave of his father Stewart while the episode flashbacks to his younger days.
Stewart’s own guilt bubbles to the surface, forcing him to confront a pre-Dredd Lyman Taggart to save the life of his young son John. As Taggart attempts to convince Stewart to join his cause, John’s life remains in the balance. Stewart’s actions are bred from desperation to save John, and to atone for his role in the eventual downfall of mankind.
THE STRUGGLE TO MAINTAIN HOPE
Captain Power is exciting, and its main characters were inspirational. They served as beacons of light in a world gone very, very dark, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the bleak narrative. Many episodes focused on the importance of maintaining hope when it seems all is lost.
This element would pop up several times before the series’ unfortunate cancellation, which is ironic given how absolutely devastating the final episode was. To date, it has been left unresolved.
BIO-DREADS
Bio-Dreads were fearsome machine creations that were created using a mechanical variant of DNA. They were designed to be terrifying villains that even Power’s team had trouble taking down, and their ability to regenerate themselves meant they kept coming back for more.
Whether on land or in the sky, the Bio-Dreads Soaron and Blastarr were mechanical nightmares designed by a madman and given birth by the ice-cold calculations of the wicked supercomputer Overmind.
DIGITIZING
A popular plot element of the show was digitizing, a process where Soaron and Blastarr could convert living matter into digital storage. Though it didn’t sound so bad on paper, it was far more insidious in practice.
Digitized humans were fed into the wellspring of the Machine hive mind where they were stripped apart layer by layer, while subjected to unimaginable psychological tortures. To most humans, this form of imprisonment was a fate many times worse than death.
BETRAYAL
Several episodes of Captain Power focus heavily on betrayal. In each case, the character in question had his or her reason, but together they created a sense of immense danger and distrust. While Power and his team fought for the liberation and freedom of humanity, others didn’t share their views.
Multiple betrayals would sting the team more than once, which made it difficult for them to maintain their optimism in the face of Lord Dredd’s rising threats. The final betrayal would lead to a catastrophic first season end, leaving fans to wonder whether Jonathan Power would succumb to revenge, or once again take the high ground.
WAR CRIMES
The Bio-Dread Empire was not above utilizing a variety of evil methods to achieve its goals, but they weren’t as clear cut and dry as a Saturday morning cartoon. The show touched on the use of chemical, technological and biological weapons being used against people, which once again raised a direct parallel with Nazi Germany’s behavior during WWII.
In one particularly noteworthy episode, Hawk Masterson fights to protect the life of a young boy who carries a dangerous plague thanks to experiments performed on him by Lord Dredd’s scientists. As the plague begins to affect him, he’s offered a deal - give up the boy or die trying to save him.
A CRITIQUE OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM
Lord Dredd’s Bio-Dread Empire is inherently fascist in nature, with himself as a cybernetic Fuhrer. Under his direction, Dredd indoctrinates new initiates using a direct parallel of the Hitler Youth, while spreading a campaign of violence and subjugation.
This kind of thing wasn’t the easiest for children to digest, but parents were very quick to recognize what the writers were trying to say, and it worked well enough to push the show into very mature territory.
REGRET AND REDEMPTION
Captain Power’s team was not above processing feelings of regret from past actions. In the case of the show’s main female protagonist Jennifer Chase, this took on a whole new meaning. Before joining Power’s team as a freedom fighter, Chase was a member of the Dredd Youth and bought fully into the Empire’s propaganda.
After partaking in a brutal massacre against innocent civilians, she fled the Dredd Youth before being taken under Power’s wing. The incident would come back to haunt her later in life when she was put on trial by the survivors of the incident, forcing her to face her tremendous guilt and sorrow for what she’d done in the past. This was perhaps the series’ most powerful and poignant episode, not to mention difficult to watch.
