Unearthing An 80's Gem

One of my passions is animation.  I love cartoons and like to think of myself as pretty well versed what's been done in movies and television, particularly in the three genres I am particularly in love with, namely sci-fi, super-heroes and fantasy.  Every once in a while, I learn that I don't know as much as I like to think I do.

Enter Galtar and the Golden Lance.

This Hanna-Barbera series came out in the 1985 and seems to have been an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the concurrent Filmation smash hit, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe that had come out a couple of years earlier.  As a too cool for cartoons teen, I studiously ignored the over-muscled, toy-based He-Man and I can only suppose that my fifteen year old self felt the same about a cartoon called Galtar and the Golden Lance, if it ever played where I lived at all.

Chock up another misstep from my youth.

This show is GOLD.  Galtar and the Princess Goleeta have to retrieve the Princess's magic shield from the evil Tormack and his minions.  Galtar wields the Golden Lance which is basically a dual light-saber much like the one Darth Maul famously used in Star Wars - The Phantom Menace 15 years later.  Along the way the pair meet friends and defeat foes, always chasing after a way to reclaim the magic shield.

What's great about the show is that it avoids the overt, silly moralizing that dates and cheez-ifies the He-Man cartoons.  It's a straight swords and sorcery adventure with the odd laser blast thrown in, well voiced, nicely animated and played straight by actors like Lou Richards (Galtar)  and the late, great Brock Peters (Tormack).  Helen Hunt even shows up as the double dealing Rava in a couple of episodes.

Sidenote:  The prolific and expert African-American character actor Brock Peters played another Darth at one time.  In the late 70's and through the mid-80's, the insane popularity of the Star Wars franchise spawned a full length radio adaptation of each of the 3 original trilogy Star Wars Movies.  Mark Hamill actually voiced Luke Skywalker in all 3.  Perry King, an actor who lost the role to Harrison Ford, voiced Han Solo and Brock Peters brought the menace as that Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader.  Each runs far longer than the movies and truly worth hunting up if you're a Star Wars fan at all.

Galtar and the Golden Lance is available from the Warner Bros Manufacture on Demand Archive and more than a few sellers on E-Bay and Amazon.  If you are at all a fan of animation or swords and sorcery, this one should be on your list.  About a buck and a half an episode and very rewatchable.