Colonel Bleep
| Colonel Bleep | |
|---|---|
VHS cover art for Colonel Bleep
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| Genre | Science fiction |
| Created by | Fran Noack |
| Written by | Robert D. Buchanan |
| Directed by | Jack Schleh |
| Presented by | Narrator |
| Starring | Colonel Bleep Squeek Scratch |
| Narrated by | Noah Tyler |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of episodes | 104 (less than half are known to survive) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 3-5 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Soundac |
| Release | |
| Original network | Syndication |
| Picture format | Color |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | 1957 – 1960 |
Colonel Bleep was the first color cartoon series made for television. It was created by Fran Noack and written by Robert D. Buchanan, and was animated by Soundac of Miami. (Some sources have Joseph Barbera with a hand in its creation as well, although his contribution was short-lived before he rejoined William Hanna to form Hanna-Barbera.) The show was originally syndicated in 1957 as a segment on Uncle Bill's TV Club. 104 episodes, of varying length of between three and six minutes each, were produced. Of these episodes, slightly fewer than half are known to survive today.
The show took place on the fictitious Zero Zero Island, where Earth's equator meets the Greenwich Meridian. There, Colonel Bleep, a futuristic extraterrestrial lifeform from the planet Futura, protected Earth with the help of his two deputies. Representing the present day was Squeek (a mute cowboy puppet boy), and representing the past was Scratch, a caveman of great physical strength who was awakened from a sleep of several thousand years by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the same event that triggered Colonel Bleep's travels to earth. Colonel Bleep, like his fellow Futurans, could manipulate "futomic energy" in a variety of ways; for instance, to propel himself through space (inexplicably, on a unicycle), or as an offensive weapon. The amount of futomic energy Colonel Bleep could absorb at any given time was finite, and in several episodes he runs out of energy and becomes vulnerable.
The series drew heavy influence from the Space Age of its time. Occasionally, the planet Futura and its denizens would be seen; most of the series took place within Earth's solar system, with various intelligent life forms existing on most planets. The actual science was grossly fictionalized and frequently used anachronisms (for instance, Scratch, before his long sleep, is shown to have had a pet dinosaur, even though dinosaurs had died millions of years before cavemen appeared); however, there were moments when actual scientific topics were discussed (a discussion on the moon gave an accurate overview of various then-current theories for the moon's heavily cratered appearance).
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Wikipedia