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Starstuff

Starstuff
Starstuff Title Card.jpg
Title card
Genre Science fiction
Children
Written by Dorothy Louise
Don Matticks
Directed by Don Matticks
Starring Todd Porter
Johanna Hickey
Voices of Mark Ritts
Theme music composer Gustav Holst
Opening theme The Planets
Country of origin United States
Original language(s) English
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 18
Production
Executive producer(s) Inez Gottlieb
Editor(s) Frances Harty
Running time 60 minutes
Production company(s) CBS-TV
Release
Original network WCAU-TV
First shown in 1980

Starstuff is an hour-long children's television program taped at WCAU-TV Studios on City Line Avenue in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. It was shown in the Philadelphia television market only. There was only one season of Starstuff with a total of 18 episodes airing on Saturday mornings. While it was first shown in 1980, it was rerun repeatedly throughout the next several years. The opening and closing music consisted of a melange of music from Gustav Holst's The Planets suite, movements four and six, Jupiter and Uranus.

Starstuff centered around a boy named Chris (Todd Porter) and a girl named Ingrid (Johanna Hickey). Chris lived in the present while Ingrid lived in the future on a space colony. Chris's television set was able to pick up video transmission from Ingrid's spaceship and they were able to communicate, often showing each other clips from Laurel and Hardy's Laughtunes as well as snippets of the educational children's news show, Kidsworld.

There was a sub-show within Starstuff titled The Edge Of Space, and was generally the second-to-last segment in the show. Lasting approximately 10 minutes, it was a space-based puppet segment starring Krikles, Zornad, and their robot assistant, Giz, as they explored the universe in their spaceship searching for life.

From puppeteer Mark Ritts: I taped the puppet bits separately, perhaps a half dozen at a time, on a day when the main cast was off learning their lines. So I don't remember even meeting them ... Krikles's voice was a simple, light character voice that I have used years, variously adapted, for a string of characters, including Storytime's "Kino" (PBS). Zornad's voice was a bit of a steal from a favorite comic of mine who used to be a regular on the old Steve Allen Show—Dayton Allen, whose signature line was "Whyyyyy not??!"

In addition, within the hour-long show was a half-hour CBS network children's program inserted. Starstuff would run about 10 to 20 minutes followed by the 30 minute CBS show and then the conclusion of Starstuff. Captain Noah on competing WPVI did something similar with some ABC Saturday morning children's shows.


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