The Power Is Yours... to clean up First-Person Writing, Natter, and Complaining that's polluting this page.
Why does Linka get mad at Wheeler in "I Just Want to be Your Teddy Bear" when he offers her a necklace?
It was a beaded necklace, given during the Mardi Gras festivities. Linka most likely was aware of what was traditionally expected from her under such circumstances.
Why wasn't there a Planeteer from Australia? The dynamic of the four Western elements plus heart is better aesthetically, but they couldn't have come up with a sixth element like lightning or something? Especially since Americans were obsessed with Australia during the eighties. He would have been the Breakout Character!
Probably for the sake of diversity, by means of a quasi-Five-Token Band. The majority of the Australian population is white and/or of European descent, with a minority of Africans, Asians and people of Aboriginal origin. Choosing any one of those would imply repeating an already depicted minority, and there were already two white characters. It wasn't about the geography, it was about the demographics. Of course, they could've chosen a non-aboriginal mestizo character for South America, and then gone with an aboriginal Australian, but the call of the Amazon tribe was too strong to resist. Ma-Ti needed to talk to animals, after all...
There are only 5 Aristotelian elements. Heart wasn't one of them, though — the fifth Aristotelian element is Aether, which makes up stars and planets, and doesn't represent life. A better comparison would be the Wiccan elements of air, earth, fire, water, and spirit. The Chinese and Japanese systems comprise five elements, too.
There's a joke that there should've been two other Planeteers to make sure all the continents were covered: an Aussie with the power of Electricity (who, of course, just happened to be a young clone of Paul Hogan), and a talking penguin with the power of Ice (yes, it's stupid; but Stupid = Funny, right?). And adding those two would expand the Five-Token Band to a Magnificent Seven!
Better yet, just get a sheep from Australia or New Zealand. With the power of Wool. Or, y'know, just pick a sheep up from Animal Farm so it can be Linka's pet. Or at least let the Planeteers have a kangaroo Team Pet.
Unfortunately, ice is frozen water, so it's already under the dominion of the Water Ring. Or at least it would, if the ring actually worked on ice.
Don't think of the characters as representing all continents, but rather those regions of the Earth that are in greatest need of environmental protectors. Australia's low population density means it doesn't produce anywhere near the level of pollution of the other continents, and Antarctica's pollutants all wash up or blow in from elsewhere. But North America, Asia, and eastern Europe have all had ugly environmental records, and Africa and South America are focal points for overexploitation of natural resources.
What do all the villains actually, y'know, do besides just pollute? Do they actually produce anything, or do they just pollute for the sheer flying heck of it? How do they actually make money?
Carbon credits.
Verminous Skumm was a radical, crazed anarchist, creating chaos simply because he wanted to see the world burn. Nolan's Joker, pretty much.
Looten Plunder got rich by running clear-cutting operations, poaching endangered species, and so forth. He wasn't exactly consistent, however, as he'd sometimes do things like set things on fire or hire an army of special operatives to steal all the world's resources, which is actually very counter-productive to making money.
Likewise, Doctor Blight was supposed to be using her Morally Ambiguous Doctorate to do amoral research for varied companies (cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, aerospace). But again, a lot of the time her motives would stay unexplained and she'd just be causing oil spills and forest fires for the heck of it.
Money was usually the motive. Aside from the main Eco Villains, there were also: a scientist manipulated by Greedly who used dolphins to loot a sunken Nazi warship, exposing them to dangerous chemicals in the process; a wild horse smuggler/poacher/whatever-that-would-be-called; rhino poachers who were after the ivory; exotic pet smugglers; several who attacked Gaia directly; and several times they just had to help people in general (homeless, school gangs, overpopulated third-world countries...)
Apparently... "Given the fact that we dealt not only with real-life issues, but also with children, our challenge lay in the concern that children might come to the conclusion that if their parents worked in a polluting industry, they were somehow villainous. Our answer to that issue was to create villains who were intentionally exaggerated, plainly operating outside the law in an otherwise realistic setting. The eco-villains emerged as characters symbolic of the planet's environmental problems rather than representative of the actions of individuals."
It's a series from the 1990s aimed at children. The baddies pollute because they're jerks.
Then again, almost all villains, even children's ones from the 1980s, have a discernible motive, even if that motive is as simple as "acquire money/power by whatever means I feel like." According to their profiles on the website, most of them do have some kind of reason, but apparently the show wasn't so good about making sure they had one every time.
Hoggish Greedy seemed to be more a lower-grade Looten Plunder, an amoral entrepreneur with a tendency to mess with the environment. Which makes one wonder: if he realized there was money in eco-friendly ventures, performed a Face–Heel Turn... would he become an equally amoral Eco-entrepreneur?
It seems that most of the villains just liked polluting for the heck of it, and used money to rationalize it to themselves. Given a choice between getting money by polluting and getting an equal amount of money by not polluting they would doubtless go the former route.
They might have been doing it out of sheer villainous spite. At first, they were just amoral, environmentally unfriendly jerks, but having the spirit of the Earth and her pet superhero wrecking their operations ticked them off enough to start using pollution as an actual weapon. "Oh, so Captain Planet thinks he can demolish my multi-million dollar oil rig because it hurts the animals? Well let's just see how he likes it when I MELT THE POLAR ICE CAPS!!!"
There are some real world people who operate on that Captain Planet level of ridiculous "fuck the environment to show those environmentalists who's boss" bullshit, too.
Possibly also Writer Revolt, taking a heavy-handed idea and going to Anvilicious levels with it.
Duke Nukem definitely seems like an interesting case, because he's basically a walking nuclear battery. His motive was to spread radioactivity so he could feed on it, but that's definitely an ability that he could have used for tremendous good (like cleaning up all the acreage in Belarus that to this day is unlivable), so his motives are definitely more evil than some of the others, because he could have gotten what he wanted and saved the world in the process.
The answer is no, the villains don't really do anything a real businessman would do, which is usually the main complaint against the show. In real life, pollution is an unintended byproduct of industry and transportation. It's created when companies manufacture items for mass consumption or individuals wish to travel somewhere. Which is why it's wrong to tell children that polluters are all evil megalomaniacs who are committing a sin against Planet Earth For the Evulz, because in real life, anyone who ran their business like Hoggish, Looten, Blight or the rest would be out of business.
Verminous Skumm wants to wipe out humanity so that his people can be the dominant species; he believes that coexistence between his species and us is impossible, and considering that he and his thrive best in conditions unlivable to us, he's probably right.
Doctor Blight is brain-damaged and belongs in a high security mental hospital.
Hoggish Greedly is a bluntly stupid man with far too much inherited wealth and power, who gleefully runs polluting and destructive operations as his way of flipping off the rest of the world.
Looten Plunder is into large, short-term profits and doesn't care at all about the effects of his methods.
Duke Nukem is a sociopathic mutant who thrives on ionizing radiation and so seeks to increase the availability of his "food," again without caring what happens to anyone or anything else.
Sly Sludge is lazy, stubborn and short-sighted. In his focus episodes, he was typically using some quick disposal scheme for fast cash and work that would blow up in his face (literally in the episode where he tried dumping all the trash into a volcano), because he didn't think the environmental problems the Planeteers would confront him about were a big deal. Or he'd find out about some experimental technology, steal it and try to use it to clean up garbage before it was ready and it would inevitably go out of control. Then he'd try to bail and leave everyone else to deal with the problem while trying to save as much cash as he could. He was almost as big a threat to himself, as almost every one his episodes has him needing rescue by Captain Planet. It's telling that in his final episode, he decides to just start a recycling business and go legit because he'd finally caught on that his schemes never worked, never got a profit and nearly killed him almost every time.
Zarm wants revenge on Gaia, he is not For the Evulz.
It kept the conflicting elemental forces of the other rings in balance when Captain Planet was formed, and it could technically let you communicate with and command animals with your mind. However, it only works if both its user and the animal it's used on isn't in a drugged-induced, brainwashed, or highly agitated state, and it can't be used for offense or other aggressive intent (for example, Ma-Ti can use it when he's tied up to get some squirrels to come in and chew through the ropes, but he can't command a pride of lions to chew on some poacher meat). This doesn't seem to make sense, since all of the other rings could be used for attack. In the comic, though, he actually got some forest animals to fight with him, including a wolf and a bear. The problem is that he is morally conflicted, not that he can't use his powers aggressively. In the comic example, he asked the animals if they wanted to fight, instead of just commanding them; most probably, the wolf and bear had no reason to fight, but did it because Ma-Ti asked them to do so. It's like helping someone carry something – you would likely assume they can handle it, but would help them if they asked.
Useful doesn't always mean explosions. Ma-Ti got most of the All Up to You episodes due to the Heart Ring's telepathy, which also bailed everyone out even if it was theirepisode. Plus, part of the power seemed to be immunity to the Idiot Ball.
Heart is actually one of the most useful powers. Instant telepathic communication with anyone on Earth, the ability to calm angry people and animals down, limited telepathic control, one would assume it would include mind-reading and deception detection. Not sure if they ever showed this, but it makes sense it would be part of his power set. The problem is that Ma-Ti never found anything original or useful to do with it, because he had no imagination.
Heart is the power that gives Captain Planet his love, emotions, morality; without Heart, Captain Planet would have no humanity. Imagine what would happen if they forgot Heart...
It's hard to keep on laughing at Ma-Ti once you realize: (a) He's Latino and probably going to be the hottest guy in school once he finally hits puberty, and (b) He has the power of heart over girls. That kid's gonna get more than you ever dreamed possible. NOW ask what kind of a lame power is Heart. The answer is: one that would be useful for someone withnoscruples. In any case, being one of the Planeteers would be enough to make sure he gets a girlfriend. Also, would it be that hard to find someone who'd volunteer for that? Love is the point of being in a relationship. All the better if it's not balanced on your finicky emotions.
On a more probable note, Ma-Ti doesn't need his ring to get girls... but he can certainly use it to know if a particular girl is interested in him, and if it's more than just celebrity infatuation, and why. Not to mention, if any of the Planeteers went evil... sure, Wheeler could go into arson, and Gi could flood everything, but Ma-Ti has mind control. He could create an army of followers, or convince herds of elephants to trample you, or tell you to go kill yourself. That's a pretty impressive power. Think of him as having the potential of Dark Phoenix without all the deaths and resurrections.
Heart could be a much better power, but Ma-Ti has to keep it muted most of the time. Otherwise he'd tune into Linka and Wheeler's thoughts, and that's not the sort of thing you want in your head all day.
Out of all the elements, Aether, Lightning, Wood, Life, Light, Time, Space, Sun, Moon, Spirit, Ice, Sound, and so on, it had to be HEART. They get flamethrowers, earth-movers, water, and wind, and he gets HEART of all things.
It really should have been Aether, which is the traditional fifth element. It would have been pretty useless though, given that it can only exist in space.
Thematically, Heart fits pretty well for the Anvilicious lessons the show liked to go for as well. The team uses the powers of the earth's elements (which would get completely negated by something like Sun, Moon, Space, etc, since they're technically extra-terrestrial) to protect it from pollution. But what binds it all together is Heart - that is, the compassion of living beings towards one another and their world. Also, it fits with the themes of the Planeteers representing aspects of the environment which need protection; Ma-Ti is wildlife, Gi is the oceans, Kwame is soil/minerals/etc, Linka is air and atmosphere... in fact the odd-one out by the reasoning is actually Wheeler, which works with him being the team's Butt-Monkey as well...
Why does the titular cap'n look so much like a repurposed toothpaste mascot?
He looked and acted a bit like Mark Summers of Double Dare. Which raises the question - why does the defender of the earth brought to life by the spirits of the elements look like an artificial 1980s television personality?
Possibly to appeal to viewers who were raised on artificial 1980's television personalities.
While the show was on, there was a rumor that in the last few episodes, Gaia made two more rings for two more Planeteers: one for electricity, one for magnetism. However, it's false. The closest thing were evil versions of the rings created by Dr. Blight in "Mission To Save Earth". Plunder got a Deforestation Ring, Nukem got a Super Radiation Ring (naturally), Sludge got a Smog Ring, Skumm got a Toxics Ring, and Dr. Blight got stuck with the Hate Ring, which it's about as useful as that Heart Ring.
Hate is evil's most powerful tool. It was hate that caused the Hatfield-McCoy feud. It was hate that the Capital from the Hunger Games uses, by having the District's kids kill each other driving a wedge to keep them from rising up (again). It was hate for the white man that had Crazy Horse lead his tribe to slaughter Custer's men. It was hate towards the natives that caused said rage in Crazy Horse. It's hate that has lead to so many murders, assassinations and massacre. The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Brotherhood and groups like that RUN on hate. A burning hate for sharks (be it from Jaws or something else) has caused thousands of sharks to GET THEIR FINS CUT OFF by angry fisherman. A long hatred of wolves by many cultures almost drove wolves extinct. The settlers of Tasmania HATED the Tasmanian Tiger, and now it's gone (unless the sightings of them in the last few years was true)! Hell, just look at Hitler! The guy sent millions to their deaths and started the DEADLIEST WAR IN HUMAN HISTORY by using hate. In fact, Captain Planet was rendered useless by just how EVIL Hitler was. Hate is to evil is what Heart and love are to good.
What is the use of Deforestation Ring, though? You point it at trees and they vanish?
In "Greenhouse Planet", when Kwame and Ma-Ti got shot into space, their powers were unable to return to their rings, and thus re-created Captain Planet in a substantially weakened form, composed only of Earth and Heart. He only had those powers, and a pink-and-green color scheme. It was interesting, since we got to see some interaction between him and Gaia, but the question is: if this happened with everyone but Ma-Ti being shot into space, wold it produce a "Heartless" Captain Planet? Would this Cap'n go around tearing up forest-encroaching farms, sinking oil rigs, throwing power plants full of people into the sun and so on? And most importantly: would this have made the series better?
No, he'd fall apart. Heart unites and stabilizes all the other powers (Perhaps that's supposed to make up for its inherent lameness, not only in this but other cases like W.I.T.C.H.).
Yet, in one of the comics, it seems Captain Planet has shown up whilst Ma-Ti was unconscious (thus unable to provide heart in the summoning) and turns out A-OK.
Going off the two-parter that introduced Captain Pollution and the "opposite" rings, and thinking that Not-Heart != Hate, assuming CP could still be formed without Heart, and he'd probably still be good, but he wouldn't be able to control his powers all that well.
Ever seen what happens when someone's heart stops working? It would be kind of like that.
Captain Planet: Captain Planet, motherfucker. The power is mine, bitches!
How lame is Captain Planet anyway? Any high school kid could defeat him by tossing an empty soda can in his direction!
For its "lame" reputation on this wiki and elsewhere, there's no resistance to be fascinated by an animated American kids' show that has actually depicted drug use and death and actually used the words "dead", "AIDS" and "sex" (among others). Not that they could get away with that today...
How lame? Hitler once nearly dropped the big boy in seconds just by staring at him with all the "polluted" hate and bigotry in his heart. So, if you glare at Captain Planet with enough contempt, he'll keel over and die as quickly as pouring salt on a slug. That, or you have to be so evil in nature that the devil himself would piss himself in fear of you. Honestly, it's a surprise to me he even survived his first calling; the moment he sprung forth from the Planeteer's rings, he should've croaked by Reaganomics, the gay scare, Neo-Nazis, etc, and God only knows what would happen to him nowadays...
Some anti-environmental people here are in for a lesson — it's only very high level of pollution of any kind including hate, toxic, smog, and etc. To recall in one of the Marvel Comic issue of Captain Planet that two of eco-villains attempt to waste the superhero with toxic waste — but it didn't work — and they blamed Dr. Blight for giving them low grade toxic waste.
That never happened in the cartoon - he went down constantly. And seriously, how good is your pollution-fighting superhero if you can take him out by dumping the massive amount of pollution on him that he needs to be fighting in the first place? It sounds like the Marvel writers were at least trying to make that weakness workable. The show writers never did. Captain Planet's powers were not well defined. Oh, and seriously? Why the assumption that the only people who hate this show hate the environment? Being anti-bad-writing is not equivalent to being anti-environmental.
Then you have the fact that oil harmed him as well. Considering it's natural, that shouldn't have been a problem. There may have even been en episode where he was harmed by a forest fire...
Petroleum occurs naturally, but it's still toxic to... well, just about everything. Except for a few artificially created bacteria that can't even survive outside a lab.
However, consider that oil may stop Captain Planet from getting energy from the sun, especially when hit in the globe area. Also, it may be toxic, but so is sulfur, various kinds of acid, and oh yeah, for something that was shown to not only heal Captain Planet but hurt Captain Pollution, hot lava. Captain Planet being hurt by oil was just Turner herpaderping "oil is evil". Captain Planet is essentially the embodiment of SUV Environmentalist thinking... what is actually good and bad and "natural" is not as important as what all your friends you see at the coffee shop and the organic food mart think is good and bad and "natural".
Why didn't they just have Captain Planet incarnated permanently? Why were the five kids and their rings even needed?
Obviously, he can't just live on his own outside the rings. The rings are needed because he can't exist permanently. Why? That's like asking why saying "Wingardium Leviosa" causes objects to float. That's just the way the magic works. Also, his existence presumably depends on that of the kids, since he's made of their combined personalities and physical features. They don't have him out all the time because summoning him renders the rings inert of their elemental powers while he's out, and they don't want to leave themselves vulnerable. He's used mainly as a last resort.
Because the power was theirs.
It can be bugging that considering it was a kids show, Linka and Wheeler had tons of UST, but that it never lead anywhere. So many possibilities, so little payoff.
In "Numbers Game", they flashed forward to a possible future where Wheeler married Linka and had eight kids and another one on the way, which turned into yet another Anvilicious Aesop about how waste is bad.
"Frog Day Afternoon" was pretty hilarious in this department — lots of opportunity, everything left unsaid. At the beginning, both Linka and Wheeler got shrunk. Later, Wheeler gets big again, but Linka's miniaturization hasn't worn off yet, so he puts her in his shirt pocket... and takes off the towel she was using to cover herself.
Why is Wheeler, the sole American who could've been the voice of reason, relegated to Butt-Monkey status, while one of the strongest characters on the team (who frequently sets said American straight) is a communist?
For some, it's preferable to the American guy being always right and always there to save the day. It can be listed as one of the reasons why the show was so good, actually - you have G.I. Joe if you need American heroes.
Ted Turner, the show's creator, did multiple interviews where he advocated communism. Also, note that in the opening - the US is a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-style wasteland and that Soviet Russia is depicted as a sylvan forest of purity.
Captain Planet advocates eco-capitalism, and the show is far from socialist. In fact, it shows Linka's home country run-down as well. This show is far from communist, and not so liberal either. Many of the heroes are corporate people who do the right thing, or green entrepreneurs. Also, watch "Missing Linka", and you will find out that the show does portray the former USSR's pollution problems. And in "Bitter Waters", she takes her country's unemployment problems hard.
Is there a stereotype about communists having something against maintaining a habitable world we should be aware of? The Soviet Union had its own variations on the same theme as Captain Planet, with no less ridiculous plots. It makes sense that it would have a certain percentage of kids dedicated to environmentalism.
The problem is that at the time of the show, the Soviet Union had one of the worst environmental records on the planet. Russia is still recovering from the effects to this day. Depicting the Soviet Union accurately could have shown Linka disgusted with the effects of the callousness of her society and trying to change things. Not pretending that the Soviet Union was a mystical land of environmental perfection while America is a bombed-out wasteland (something viewers of the show in its target audience of Americans would immediately call foul on). The show's bizarre myopia did not present an accurate picture of the world, which is particularly damning since the show was theoretically attempting to educate.
Many areas of Soviet Union really did look like that, though. The country was simply too large to foul up all at once.
Communists are usually depicted as industrious people who organize together to exploit the land of its resources in order to make things for everyone. They are on the discipline side.
Although they could've afforded Wheeler being right once in a while, him possibly being "the voice of reason" has nothing to do with his nationality or his home country's form of government. It doesn't have anything to do with Linka being Russian either. It was just the personality they gave him, regardless of where he was supposed to come from. As far as the nationality issue goes, considering how often Communists (or Russians in general) are portrayed as the bad guys in fiction, it was a refreshing inversion if nothing else, although Linka certainly wasn't always right. All the characters in these series are sole examples of their races or nationalities — in a case like this, it's not racist to have one of them be the captain of the Idiot Ball team. It is bad writing, though.
Except that showing Wheeler as a pompous, moronic, always-wrong dumbass was purposeful and the whole point of his existence. Everything in Captain Planet is views held by Ted Turner, its creator, and he is VERY anti-American. This is why Wheeler is the way he is, why he alone of the entire cast is only identified by his last name, why America is portrayed as a post-apocalypse wasteland while the rest of the world is shown as a garden.
Wheeler's tendency to be "pompous and moronic" is rather a plot point to showcase the day's behavioral "lesson" — admittedly, most of our world's environmental problems could be salvaged or lessened if people change their attitudes, and there's a lot of people who are "pompous and moronic" about the environment out there, just like Wheeler, independent of their nationality. Yes, it could've been much better written, perhaps shared among the other Planeteers, but it shouldn't really be chalked that up to his nationality; he simply was the one who had the brash, impulsive personality. And regardless of his thick-headedness, Wheeler had a lot of positive qualities that kids could emulate, as well. Of course, if one is determined to be anti-Ted-Turner from the beginning, it will seem like the United States are always presented in a bad light in the show. Probably the only "post-apocalypse wasteland" in the show would be Brooklyn, and that was, again, for plot purposes. And in quite a few episodes, the country was presented in a good light.
Maybe that's why the show was popular outside the US. Presenting the American as the Butt-Monkey is very uncommon - or was then, now is more common - and many people in other countries probably felt that the change was refreshing and for some people, accurate (that's not to say Americans are dumb, though is probably the stereotype, especially in the case of a teenager), for many people in other parts of the world the typical American teen would indeed act like Wheeler: unaware of other's peoples problems, ignorant of other cultures and basing his knowledge on television. Wheeler feels like the stereotype of the "improve the world" American who thinks the answer is always "America is great, make the world more like us". Whether you are American or not, if you fundamentally disagree with some of America's ideas, you are going to find a character like Wheeler to come off as annoying at times. If you are someone who agrees with that statement, then the other characters not thinking like Wheeler can come off as just as annoying.
In "101 Mutations", why did Dr. Blight have a puppy mill operation when she is more interested in scientific progression than anything? Puppy mills are sources of money, and I don't think breeding dogs in mass numbers will get too much progression in research. She also has other ways to get money that seem to suit her preferences more than watching dogs being born among their own feces and urine. It's more like a Hoggish Greedly plot.
You can never have too many animal test subjects. And you save money by doing the breeding in-house.
Speaking of Mr. Greedly, why is he the most commonly seen villain? If he's a slovenly, porcine tycoon who is a leader in dirty industry and resources, why does he do things like hosting monster truck races, or rounding up horses for slaughter, or even driving motorboats in manatee habitats?
He's an evil entrepreneur, always looking to expand his business empire. I always thought he's always moving on to a new scheme after Captain Planet screws up the last one. Eventually he decides to go into green business (probably with exactly the same (lack of) ethics) probably just so the Planeteers don't send him broke.
Huh, Greedly going green, but not going good. His son and grandfather probably wouldn't be happy if he did anything truly wrong, and he really does care about his family, so he'd probably listen to them and turn a new leaf, for good.
He could also be behind stuff like "Carbon Offsets" and whatnot. Appearance of being green without actually HAVING to do anything.
The real answer is probably that Ed Asner (the voice actor for Greedly) was mostly retired by the time Captain Planet rolled around and was thus the most likely to have a free schedule all the time.
Doesn't Captain Planet himself go against the message of the show? "THE POWER IS YOURS!!! ...to sit back and do nothing while the man does all the work for you."
There really is no good explanation for that, but it does show what teamwork really means. Sitting back and watching your friends do all the work.
In one episode, they shut down a nuclear power plant, and Captain Planet drilled a hole through the Earth's crust so they could build a geothermal plant in its place. If you can summon a superhero who can eliminate pollution and give everybody clean alternatives at no cost, why isn't he doing that all over the place?
If Captain Planet's just going to go around giving people alternative energy sources and cleaning up their trash, humanity won't learn not to destroy the environment - they'll just sit around waiting for Captain Planet to fix everything. He's supposed to be used sparingly.
Don't geothermal plants pollute more than nuclear? That's not pure water they're getting.
Fridge Logic - The Power is YOURS... to summon Captain Planet to save the day for you?
Since he always says that when he's done fighting pollution, the catchphrase may have had a more literal meaning; he was returning the rings' elemental control to the wielders. Less an inspiring thing to say and more along the lines of "I'm done with it, so...!" Further evidence occurs during "Two Futures" when Captain Planet is too weakened by the pollution Blight caused to dig out her and Wheeler. He tells the others that having friends like them means Wheeler still has a chance, just before using that Catchphrase and returning their powers.
In "Two Futures", Wheeler uses time travel to keep himself from taking the ring (and having to spend all his time with a bunch of superior kids who give off a condescending aura towards him). This means Hoggish Greedly, Rigger, and Blight win because you can't summon a fully-charged Captain Planet with only four Planeteers. ... So Gaia couldn't just give the ring to somebody else who did want to join?
That episode gets worse when, in later episodes, it is revealed that you don't need all five Planeteers to summon Captain Planet; you just need all five if you want him at 100% power and "personality". As few as 2-3 Planeteers are needed to summon Captain Planet, as one episode had half the team divided on another planet; he simply is weaker if less than five Planeteers combine their powers to summon him. If he is summoned without Heart, he acted like a jerk. Therefore, one could argue that even if Wheeler was incredibly hard to replace, such a future should not have happened unless Capt. Planet being unable to control Fire when summoned weakened him too much to be of use.
Considering a random kid stole the fire ring once and used it successfully, it isn't even locked into needing a specific kind of person for use, so why not let one Planeteer carry two rings temporarily? Not forever, as it would upset the power balance of the group, but if it's an end of the world scenario, screw it, let somebody put two on and summon Captain Planet. If there's some in-universe explanation for one person being unable to use two, grab someone out of a crowd. "Do this or life as we know it might end" is a fairly motivating, I would think.
There's one episode where Wheeler was kidnapped by Dr Blight. The gang later finds him bound and gagged with tent pegs. What makes this fridge logic is that he wriggles around and the gag comes off. How is that possible?
Captain Planet might have been supposed to represent our ability to escalate issues. Yes, in the show it was a lot more concrete, they would find themselves put in a situation like "Oh look! The nuclear reactor is about to blow up! We puny humans cannot possibly hope to contain this on our own! We need Captain Planet!", which of course does not happen in real life. Also, these situations were much more of an immediate threat than environmental issues generally are in real life: people would get sick now, animals would die now, the land would be left barren now. In real life, however, it's also very unlikely that five teenagers will take down issues of that much impact on their own. They can work on the small things— cleaning beaches and organizing recycling rallies and convincing other people to live green. When it comes to things like fighting corrupt corporate conglomerates or the abuse of technology, however, there isn't much they can do by themselves, unless they decide to go eco-terrorist, design bombs in their spare time and then plant them on these conglomerates' HQs— which is not something the show (or anyone) should advocate. In real life, people who are aware of these transgressions usually look for support, signatures, sponsors, go to the authorities, go to the legal system, you name it, in order to take on these massive corporations and actually win. Yes, a lot of the time it seems like the characters just sit back and let Captain Planet do the hard work, but the idea is that the rest of the episode is there to show you that these characters actually learn a lesson and resolve to behave better in the future when it comes to the environment. Captain Planet was supposed to be a metaphor for the idea that humanity is stronger as a whole. They have to give the kids an avatar to look up to, and superheroes are especially effective in calling kids' attention. Erin Brockovich would probably not be very effective to keep the show's intended demographic entertained.
"The power is YOURS! to watch someone else do all the work" actually fits quite well into the style of activism the show is born from. It often advocates everyone else but the one doing the advocating getting to work and fixing things up. Basically, "You can make the world a better place with lots of hard work and dedication! I'll supervise."
Is there any difference between Looten Plunder and Hoggish Greedly other than their personalities?
Greedly aspires to be Plunder, but loves his family, and ultimately his schemes are all motivated by his desire to provide for them. Plunder loves money, and seeks wealth for it's own sake.
Also, while Greedly enjoys getting rich, that always seems to be a secondary motive. He seems to have the most fun just being out there, digging up resources and "consuming."
Looten Plunder has a lot more money at his disposal than Greedly.
Probably censorship. However, the show never really seemed to state who the character actually was, because his name was never mentioned, just his intentions.
Pseudo-Hitler nearly killed Captain Planet just by hating him. The real Hitler would make him explode, leaving us with Captain America or someone else capable of Hitler punching as the hero, and we couldn't have that!
It's regular Hitler. It was just a pre-toothbrush-'stache Hitler. Shortly after the events of the episode he decided the Fu Manchu required too much maintenance and he went for something a little simpler.
The mustache is Stalinesque, and Josef Stalin was no less dangerous than Hitler. Sort of two villains for the price of one.
In "The Littlest Planeteer", Wheeler got his right hand injured. For some reason, this means he can't use his ring. It's not a bad injury either. It's a first-degree burn. Couldn't he have just switched hands?
Maybe Gaia just hates left-handed people.
Perhaps the effectiveness of the ring has something to do with handedness? A lot of people, both right- and left-handed, have difficulty performing tasks with their non-dominant hand. It would make sense that Wheeler, being right-handed, would feel awkward handling the ring with his left hand (maybe there's more to it than just pointing it at stuff and Calling Your Attacks?), and his feeling awkward would make the ring less effective. Perhaps he had tried before and knew it wouldn't work with his left hand, or it would work less effectively and couldn't risk it?
If you think of the ring as something like a gun (which for the fire ring is the most true of the ring), it kind of makes sense. If your partner injured the hand he shoots with, you'd wouldn't exactly want him to try it with his other hand without at least A LOT of practice.
Which... police do. For that reason. Though this is Wheeler we're talking about, and my response to "maybe he's already tried and knew it wouldn't work" was "that's giving the butt monkey American A LOT of credit..."
If Kwame has complete power over earth, then he is EFFECTIVELY GOD OF THE ENTIRE PLANET!!!!! Seriously, he can manipulate entire continents if he really wants to, but instead he can't even realize to simply pull up a pair of rock hands to grab the terrorists surrounding him and the Planeteers. Heck ALL of the Planeteers are pretty much loaded with the potential for being utter badasses if they considered the sheer scale of what they can do: Linka could have tornadoes pop up wherever she wants, Gi could control the water in people's bodies and make them do her bidding, Wheeler could bring up a firestorm (a large fire that effectively fuels itself, and is nigh unstoppable), and Ma-Ti of all people could Mind Rape people into submission.
As Gaia said in "A Hero For Earth", the Planeteers control the elements to a limited degree - and for a good reason. Otherwise, they might have accidentally ripple-effected the world into pieces; just imagine the environmental damage Kwame would do if he started moving continents around. Thus, Kwame can only move so much earth at once, Wheeler can only summon a limited amount of fire, etc. Captain Planet has each of the powers to a considerably greater extent. But something of this nature did happen when Zarm tricked them into wearing his fists instead of their rings, making them far more powerful.
The villains of Captain Planet all represent or personify traits, mindsets or actions that hurt the environment or people. Hoggish Greedly represents resource abuse and greed, Looten Plunder represents unethical or illegal corporate actions and screwy capitalism, Dr.Blight represents overuse of technology and unethical scientific research and actions, Duke Nukem represents ozone damage and the dangers of nuclear power and radiation, Verminous Skumm represents crime, urban decay, and disease and epidemics, and Zarm represents fascism, war, hatred, and bigotry. So what does Sly Sludge represent?
Chemical pollution in general, maybe?
It might as well be apathy and never looking for a long-term solution... or just short-sighted greed. He's like the people who say we can't have environmental regulations because they'd damage the economy.
Laziness, primarily. His schemes are all centered around finding quick fixes to big problems, like when he dumped Hawaii's trash into the volcanoes, or conspired with Plunder to dump a company's toxic waste in an abandoned salt mine, or stole a special microbe designed to eat garbage as a solution to a garbage strike in France.
In "Volcano's Wrath", Sly Sludge has a garbage disposal business where he gets rid of the trash by dumping it in a volcano. It seems like a good idea! What's the harm?
Sly Sludge represents ignorance and laziness, both on the part of executives in power and also communities, and also the problems with irresponsible waste disposal. As such, instead of trying to recycle or properly dispose of the trash, he just opted to set up a phony garbage shrinking operation that would instead lead the rubbish into the (active) volcano, just for some quick and extra buck.
Also, volcanic soil is supposed to be fertile. So, the garbage might screw up the volcanic soil.
It depends on what's in the trash, but you'd get toxic gases and acid rain-producing gases coming out of the volcano, and the toxic chemicals left behind would come out in the lava and then into the soil with each eruption. The eruptions would become much more frequent if you're pouring in huge quantities of stuff, too. Basically, you'll get all the environmental problems that incinerators present, but on a larger scale, less controllable, and without the benefit of generating electricity.
Except active volcanoes are generally already belching various gases that are toxic and/or can produce acid rain. And anything toxic in the trash itself would probably be destroyed by the sheer mind-blowing heat of the molten lava.
The Planeteers don't seem to be doing all they can to save the environment. We have Wheeler, with the power of fuel-less fire that produces no gases. Kwame, with the power of purifying soil and building homes. Linka, with the power to create extremely localized hurricanes in wind farms. Gi, with the power to simply eject runoff and garbage from oceans and to irrigate. Ma-Ti, with the power of hyper-diplomacy and empathy, and able to make bigots, animal abusers, and apathetic political leaders feel the pain of others. And all they do is battle villains who could be much more easily stopped by cutting their funding or getting them in prison. Zarm would still be a problem, but that's all. Why isn't the planet saved yet?
For stopping the eco-villains, Hoggish Greedly, Looten Plunder, and Sly Sludge (to a lesser extent) have loads of money. They can easily bail their way out of jail and bribe or threaten the police, and the Planeteers don't really have any way to attack their budgets, either. Dr. Blight has a fair amount of money too, and she has enough technology to evade the authorities of the world. Verminous Skumm and Duke Nukem don't require too much money for their schemes, and can't be arrested by any normal human or be put in any existing prison. The Planeteers can't just clean up the entire world either. There's about 6 billion people on Earth, and five kids can't clean up all the problems they start, even with magical rings. Even Captain Planet would have trouble doing so.
Greedly and Sludge didn't have any money, they were always trying to get more of it because of that. Looten Plunder had a lot of money, but wasted it on things like trying to blow up his rivals for having green technology or buying armies to steal natural resources, so presumably the governments of the world could not possibly be out-bribed by him when he's openly hostile to themselves and other industries that presumably have as much or more money than him (seriously, how does Looten Plunder Industries stay in business?!). Dr. Blight could evade the authorities, but the Planeteers presumably have enough power to deal with her (they have super powers and she doesn't) and they often refuse to do things like send her to prison when they're clearly captured her and stripped her of her technology. Verminous Skumm could be arrested, why not? He's just a rat humanoid, he doesn't have super powers. And Duke Nukem is radioactive, but shove him in a lead-lined cell and he's not going anywhere. And again, the Planeteers have super powers. And a freaking GODDESS. The only guy that's actually a threat is Zarm. The rest of these guys would be easily dealt with if the characters tried. As for the rest of the pollution, again, the Planeteers have superpowers. Why haven't they made even so much as a dent? Reed Richards Is Useless indeed.
Perhaps Zarm is The Man Behind the Man for the villains,in the same way Gaia sponsors the Planeteers? It would explain some of the supertech that Blight has.
Wheeler's fire isn't fully fuel-less. He can probably release heat, light and sparks from his ring, but whenever he uses the ring, it's mostly to set something else on fire— and that something else is the fuel, conceivably a flammable material, and when this something else burns, it does produce gases. In that sense, you couldn't burn trash or such with Wheeler's ring, because it would release exactly the same amount of CO2 regular incineration releases in real life. I seem to remember him generating small fire tornadoes out of his ring a couple of times, without gas emissions most likely, but what are the practical applications of fuel-less fire? It could be used to produce energy, but Wheeler would have to stand there and emit it permanently, and he is only one person, hardly enough to produce enough energy to run a decent household. Perhaps warm up a room for a night, but not give the house electricity for an extended period of time.
Why is humanity put on trial in one episode for the extinction of animals, while there have been 4 or 5 extinctions beforehand that had no part to do with humanity, but Gaia wasn't to blame for those?
Perhaps because were natural extinctions? Like in Jurassic Park, when Jeff Goldblume points out that it's one thing to bring back a species of animal that went extinct at the hands of humanity but another to tamper with a species that went extinct naturally (or at least not to environmental screwing at the hands of people).
This natural/unnatural distinction is extremely arbitrary. Lots of species have gone extinct because another species popped up that ate them all or ate their food source and caused them to starve, but it is somehow special when humans cause another species to go extinct? Sure, we are one of the few guys who have caused a mass extinction event all by ourselves, but we are not alone... the great oxygenation extinction event, for instance, was caused because a certain kind of bacteria released enough oxygen into the atmosphere to kill pretty much everything else. They didn't plan it or anything; it was just a byproduct of their existence, and it is the same when we cause most species to go extinct (with a few planned exceptions, like the eradication of smallpox).
It depends on the byproduct, though. The biggest cause of extinction in recent times is loss of habitat. When we tear down green areas to make furniture or build giant supermarkets, effectively leaving some species without homes, it's not exactly a byproduct. Humans could and have lived without wooden furniture or without processed foods, while cyanobacteria cannot stop producing oxygen. Theirs is a biological imperative, while we just want to have a better quality of life even if it is at the expense of the environment. That's what makes the difference, and technically that was the reason why humanity was being "judged" in that episode.
Take eutrophication as an example. One of the affects of humans fertilizing their lawns with unnaturally high levels of phosphorous and nitrogen is that the excess phosphorous and nitrogen runs-off into bays and lakes. This limiting nutrient causes the phytoplankton and zooplankton to grow too much, too fast, which therefore clouds the bay, which therefore causes the fish to die off, which therefore causes birds and other animals that depend on the fish and crustaceans for food. If humans did not introduce the massive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous to the bays and lakes via sewage, than the entire deadening of a body of water and in some cases, a whole biosphere, simply would not have occurred.
If humanity tried to "go without" wood products, processed food, fossil fuels, and etc. millions (perhaps even billions) of human beings would die. The same thing would happen if cyanobacteria tried to not release as much oxygen. Large numbers of them would die. Humanity in that episode was being "judged" for doing exactly what every single living species in the history of existence had ever done. Namely propagate itself and manipulate its environment to its own advantage. Humanity has dominated the Earth because we expanded and consumed the environment in the process. But again, because humans are the ones doing it this time it magically becomes an "unnatural" extinction. Besides, not all species responsible for wiping out another species were doing so due to a "biological imperative". If a rat hops on a piece of driftwood and finds its way to an isolated island where it wipes out an indigenous species of small flightless birds, is this an "unnatural extinction"? Of course not, because it wasn't eeeeeevil humans who did it.
Those species before us which killed off other species ultimately caused humans ancestors to win over the other creatures and therefore their victory (existence) which means it was a good thing. Us killing off other species now is limiting humans resources, making the world harder for humans and could possibly cause more change than humans can handle and kill them off. This makes us killing off other species bad.
In the same Trial episode: the Planeteers just roll over and say "Go ahead and kill us all"?! THANKS, MA-TI. KNEW WE COULD COUNT ON YOU IN A PINCH.
So... Why did the creators think a relationship between the stereotypical American capitalist idiot Wheeler, and the tightly-wound communist soviet Linka would work out at all?
You think he'd go for Gi, the Asian chick who has practically no personality or flaws? That wouldn't be fun enough. Also, Wheeler was never stated to be a capitalist outside of an incredibly awesome insult from Linka, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, the show stopped saying Linka had anything to do with it. And what's so hard about depicting a relationship between an American and a Russian after Cold War times, anyways?
Gi definitely has flaws and personality... hell, she is the Planeteer closest to killing somebody.
Uptight Loves Wild (and the inverse) has been a thing in media for generations.
Why is Captain Planet's weakness the same thing he's fighting against? It'd be like if Batman had a weakness against clowns, or Superman was allergic to bald people.
OK, maybe this is a minor thing, but they had a jet that could hold all of them as well as supplies, fly anywhere in the world in seconds, and ran ENTIRELY on solar power. I get the idea that it was meant to aim at present day people but when you have apparent super-tech I always sort of wondered why they didn't share the technology with the people of the world (as easy access to energy would solve a lot of problems)
Generally the excuse the show gives is that humanity "isn't ready for the technology". Apparently they are ready for superheroes?
This is sort of Fridge Logic, but didn't Duke Nukem technically NEED radiation to live? If so it gets to an odd issue, as they were basically tormenting someone who was desperately trying to keep himself alive.
Well, it's probably that he wants to make the whole world radioactive. He could conceivably decide to defy Bad Powers, Bad People and live / work in a nuclear reactor or as a radioactive waste cleanser. He potentially represent a huge plus to the use of nuclear energy by removing one of the bigger downsides. If he'd been anywhere near moral or smart he could sell his services handsomely as a "walking nuclear waste disposal" agent by eating the radioactive waste.
Of course the only reason he wasn't smart enough to think of that is because Ted Turner would never allow his environmentalist propaganda show to depict nuclear power in a positive light.
Which is where we wrap back to the whole "impression and propaganda is more important than reality" thing as studies have shown, again and again, that overall nuclear power would be far far better for the environment than all the other stuff we're using. Yes, even solar and wind farms, since those tend to have a rather painful impact on natural environments just by nature of existence rather than in the off chance of malfunction.
As Wheeler is always portrayed as "off-page" with the rest of the Planeteers and seems disinterested in social issues, why did Gaia even recruit him in the first place? Even if he really is the most environmentally conscious American in Ted Turner's world view, couldn't she have gone to Canada?
Presumably because he was street smart and understood inner city issues. He might not be the most environmentally-aware person but in the AIDS and gangs and drugs episodes, he actually understands what going on ("Nobody made him take the drugs, he did that himself" or "They don't see a future for themselves, territory is all they feel they have") while the other Planeteers are shown to be unable to comprehend the situation at all.
Wheeler is the only protagonist who lived in any place other than a tiny village or a research lab for most of his life. This is made quite clear in the first episode, where the other Planeteers are enjoying their lives and helping out animals and nature in their lush natural homes during the day, while Wheeler fights a thug in a dark, borderline cyberpunkish New York.
There's also the fact that the Planeteers are supposed to serve as role models for others; people are likelier to listen to role models who they feel understand their position (e.g., Linka would be the best member of the group to handle something for an event raising awareness about drugs). Wheeler is uneducated, but he's relatively compliant once he finds out why you should do or not do these things. He's the only city kid in the lot; when the team is doing work in urban environments (particularly in the USA, where his accent would be easily recognized), he probably is much more convincing than the other Planeteers, who all grew up in the country.
In "Jailhouse Flock", the gang and a fully formed Cap were framed and arrested. The gang busted out, while Cap basically said "Nope! I'm going to stay in jail till you guys prove our innocence!" Um... why? He's an elemental spirit created by a goddess. How can the US Law do anything to him? If he was so uptight about the law, why didn't he have the gang stay while he went and saved the day?
This was stated in that episode. Captain Planet didn't want to bust out because he already had his name tarnished enough simply by landing in jail. He could easily bust out easily with his powers, but he would be setting a bad example in addition to breaking the law, and a guy like him really can't try and pull that stuff even if he's framed.
It was explained more cleanly in that they were all in jail, and it was Hoggish Greedly who had the Planeteers released by dropping the charges against them, but specifically not against Captain Planet (not certain if that's legally possible),to both make him look better and keep the Planeteers powerless (no powers with Captain Planet summoned and Planet himself stuck in jail).
Why does no one make a big deal about the existence of Gaia and Captain Planet!? They are gods! But everyone just sees them and thinks "Cool! Let's go green!" Whaa-?
Actually, the characters do get rather surprised by the appearance of Gaia. Captain Planet is a superhero, though, and is known through the entire world, so locals probably wouldn't be too shocked to see him stopping pollution or natural disasters. Also, they both probably don't accept worship or call themselves gods, though both of them are quite clearly divine.
What kind of Russian name is "Linka" anyway?
It's a name that exists in Georgia and Bulgaria, although it's not very common. Línka Gérgova is a quite famous Bulgarian singer.
The later seasons even state her as being from Eastern Europe rather than Russia.
It never said she was from Russia, it said she was from the Soviet Union, which dissolved midway through the series, so they had to change the intro narration. Also, at one point in the first episode, Wheeler asks if she is Russian, and Linka insistently states she is Soviet, all implying she was from one of the non-Russian USSR nations; while it is never specified which, many fans believe she is from Ukraine, given that the Chernobyl disaster happened only a few years prior to the series starting.
"Linka" has been confirmed to be a nickname for "Anjelika". Also, there is a model from the Czech Republic called Lenka.
In one episode, the characters are on a farm with lots of pollution. They're about to be run down by farm equipment like tractors, and they can't use their superpower rings because apparently they don't work when there's too much pollution around. What the crap? They have the rings so they can FIGHT pollution. If the rings don't work when there's a lot of pollution around, they're not going to be very effective, are they? Same thing with Captain Planet's weakness being pollution. It's stupid. Did the characters (and the writers) even think that through?
The writers did think it through. Captain Planet is weak against pollution because Gaia is weak to pollution. Remember all their powers come from Gaia. If Gaia dies or is affected, their powers are gone or weakened, and so is Captain Planet.
How in the high holy hell did Verminous Skumm get his hands on Nuclear Weapons?
So many people complain that the characters could sell their eco-friendly tech but... it's stated early on that it's 'future tech', so it was to be invented eventually (hence the use of not selling it, time paradox and all) but exactly HOW FAR into the future we talking??? A hundred, thousand, or million years?
Far enough that the non-polluting dilithium crystals powering the things are still rare enough that people would feel it necessary to stick solar panels on the outside so as to gather enough energy to run the coffee maker and thus consider it "a green hybrid".
Is "Wheeler" a nickname or did his parents just hate him that much?
It's his surname, actually. Not that it's much better, but there are worse last names.
Why did the Planeteers bother summoning the Big Blue Mullet all the time? Sure, he's powerful (variably), but he can be taken out with a bag of dirty diapers. The Planeteers' rings grant them control over the elements that is never completely defined. They always acted like they were utterly boned if they were separated and couldn't summon, but they were far from helpless. Surely they could realize that they are more than capable of taking out the poorly conceived schemes of stereotypical industrialists on their own every once in a while. They never even attempted to use their rings to their full potential. What's the point of giving the kids powers if they never use them right and completely lose them just to make somebody else fight for them? It's like we never see the kids use their rings. They give up quickly, making one wonder why Gaia chose them for the job. It's also a bit jarring that we never get to see the rings used to their full potential. Come on, there are ELEMENTAL POWERS here, surely they could've done some cool things.
"The Conqueror" episode explains why the kids do not have superpowered rings.
Captain Planet can fly and is semi-invulnerable. And really the flying thing is pretty much the more useful of those two. Most of the rest of the stuff he does could be replicated by the rings, but flying around quickly on his own power to put the elemental abilities into action was pretty useful. Of course, Gaia could have just stuck a flight effect on the rings and accomplished the same thing. But at that point you loop back around to out-of-universe explanations... Captain Planet is much more marketable than the Planeteers are. Without summoning Captain Planet, avowed communist Ted Turner could not make millions of dollars by selling "Earth Armor Captain Planet" action figures. Although, to be fair, some episodes show that using her ring, Linka can just barely sort of fly herself but it takes massive focus and any jolt will send her plummeting to her death. Planet doesn't have that limitation. And even if he gets weakened by pollution, keep in mind a regular non superhero will probably take it just as badly if they get toxic waste sprayed on them. Captain Planet at least just needs it washed off and he's good to go.
They were trying to say hate was as effective as pollution. Unfortunately, they also showed racists in one episode having zero effect on Cap (one of Hanna-Barbera episodes) and so it really didn't work. What Cap was reacting to was kind of unclear because of this.
Perhaps Captain Planet being "change the world" via environmentalism is powerless against someone who is "change the world" via genocide?
In the Hitler episode, why did Hitler have a fu man chu instead of his Chaplin-esque mustache? That's weird, random, and not very understandable.
Some countries (Germany especially) might have censored the episode or prevented it from airing entirely if they made it too obvious who he was supposed to be.
One could make the case that the "Leader" could refer to Josef Stalin, as that is his mustache. Was Hitler's name even mentioned in this episode?
When the USSR fell apart, they changed Linka's origin to "Eastern Europe" instead of the Soviet Union. Why didn't they just change it to say she was from Russia?
Or better yet, just "Europe"? Why say "Eastern Europe" If there are no Planeteers from Western Europe? By the way, Russia isn't a continent. Just a very, very big country.
Is Linka actually from Russia? All this would seem to point to her being from a country in Eastern Europe that was part of the U.S.S.R., rather than Russia.
Heh, would have been pretty hilarious for Ted Turner's love of the Soviets if Linka was actually Georgian.
She was from the USSR, which had 15 republics, Russia been only one of them, she could easily be from any of the other 14 and not just Russian you know?
Well, not any of the other 14 — per the intro, it has to one of the Eastern European ones. So she strictly can't be from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistanm Tajikstan or Kyrgystan.
The whole thing about Captain Planet's existence just bugs me. He's summoned for each crisis, fights pollution, surrenders his power back to the kids and with it his existence. Where does he go? A few possibilities. 1) He ceases to exist until the next crisis so that he is only aware of an endless string of crises he's been summoned for. 2) He returns to some life in another place meaning that no matter what he's doing, he can vanish in a moment against his will which would be a major life disruption. It would either be that he knows he's being summoned and keeps his memories each time which would be maddening or he has these mysterious blackouts when summoned and loses time which would be difficult to live with AND his other persona in his summoned state would perceive his life the way example one does, as an unending string of crises. 3) He's sitting in some limbo realm waiting to be summoned or has at least arranged his life around the fact that he can be summoned without notice. No matter how you slice it, it sucks to be Captain Planet.
And yet he seems happy enough!
Simple, he's chilling in the Earth's core, drinking Mojitos and watching each and every work that has Puns on its page.
The sensible answer is that Captain Planet does not exist except when he's summoned... or rather he only exists as part of the Planeteers, as he's made up of bits of them. That would explain why he acts differently if he's summoned incomplete, his personality only exists as a composite of the whole. But I think the in-universe explanation is that he goes into stasis in some chamber on Gaia's island, I recall them making a reference to it or even showing him inside a crystal there at some point. Could just be my faulty memory. Either way, the series is inconsistent about this, what else is new.
He has to be conscious somehow when he's not summoned, because often when he's summoned, he seems to know what's going on without being told. That would seem to imply that he (along with Gaia) keeps an eye on the missions. Of course, if the Planeteers are getting into trouble, that could create its ownFridge Horror...
One early episode shows that, whenever he's not summoned by the rings, he's sleeping in some crystal structure Ma-Ti calls "the crystal matrix," recharging and (if necessary) healing like a gargoyle in stone sleep.
What exactly was Verminous Skumm again? Was he some sort of rat that became sentient when it was mutated by toxic chemicals, a man who became mutated into a rat by toxic chemicals, or what?
According to what Gaia said in "Rain Of Terror", he was born and raised in toxic waste. Most likely, he was a human who gained rat-like attributes from a childhood in the sewers.
He was an anti-Semitic strawman. ... Everyone's thinkin' it, I'm just sayin' it.
In "Trouble On The Half Shell", why don't the JASON Project scientists do anything to help? They can see what the robot's cameras are showing just as well as the boy piloting it can, why don't they give control back to one of the engineers who presumably has more experience piloting it? I mean, if a research robot is the only thing that can help the Planeteers defeat villains, I want a trained person piloting it, not some random kid at a science center.
Because everyone on Turner Earth is a moron until the last couple of minutes when it's time to start the aesop lecture.
That thing at the end of "Planeteers Under Glass"...just...what was that?
A visual metaphor for all of humanity and/or modern civilization.
What, don't the villain have origin stories? It would be nice to see how Skumm came to be.
Why would anyone make deals with the villains? Their names scream "I'm the villain". That's like me getting married to a woman name Goldie Golddigger or trusting a guy name Sleazy McFraud.
The series is all about rescuing and conserving life on Earth from pollution, but what does that say about the wildlife that explicitly feed on pollution to survive, or who've adapted to living in tainted environments long enough that cleaning up those environments could threaten their survival, like the Killifish now thriving in Virginia's creosote-loaded Elizabeth River?
This is more the thinking in people critical of the humanist part of conservation and natural selection. Namely that no matter how hard we try to "protect" our human interests other parts of the life tree will survive and one day watch our branch whither and die like we have watched others, and that's exactly how it should be.
The reason Gaia doesn't use her Earth goddess powers to end pollution is because she wants humanity to learn how to do it. Okay, but why doesn't she help stop the eco-villains who are clearly taking their polluting up to eleven just for the fun of it and are way more dangerous than the rest of humanity?
For the same reason Ted Turner doesn't use his vast fortune entirely to fund all these environment-saving projects he seems to think would be so cheap and easy to do: they want someone else to do it for them.
Related to the above comment. I've not seen the show for years and the most I remember besides some scenes is an episode about that 1992 summit but if Gaia is a goddess why, instead of using the show's premise, she manifests in the UNO, Europarlament, Wall Street, and other places of power and wealth and urges everyone to change and fight eco-villains?. There could be in that scenario planeteers albeit with different roles, even if the plot is totally different. Also, what will happen to her when this planet gets messed up by the Sun's evolution?
I was wondering about Zarm's "Power Gauntlets"; after the Planeteers rejected them, why didn't Zarm just get his own bunch of "Planeteers" to wear them and battle Gaia's? He's all for competition.
Maybe the rings the eco-villains use to summon Captain Pollution are reformed power gauntlets?
Shouldn't most of the eco-villains be serving life in prison for the crazy stuff they pulled? Why are people hiring these creeps? No amount of money should keep their butts out of prison. They committed terrorism, vandalism, kidnapping, and murder, to say nothing of multiple incidents of attempting to murder minors, one of them not even a teenager yet.
Except it does. The world's governments are so corrupt in this universe that they (offscreen, of course) fund the eco-villains, and have even declared the Planeteers a terrorist group seeking to sabotage the global economy.
Maybe the prison system they go to is like Arkham Asylum?
Even though Wheeler comes from a working class background, why do the writers constantly treat him like he comes from a place of privilege? Even if he's white American dude, he was homeless before he was summoned by Gaia.
Related to that, did the writers make up Wheeler's backstory as they went along, or did they just ignore it as they saw fit? For instance, in "A Twist of Fate", Wheeler has to learn how hard homeless people have it, yet in "A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste", he reveals that he was homeless for a while growing up.
Probably nicknames; Hoggish Greedly's grandfather is named Don Porkaloin, which doesn't sound quite as sinister.
With at least Greedly, it is implied his family suffers from several generations of deformities which causes them to develop unusual skin color, deformed faces and teeth, and pig-like ears. So people may just feel "sorry" for these rich disfigured folks who, like Looten Plunder (no excuses for that one though...) seem to be honest but utterly ruthless businessmen who just want to build businesses and jobs for others, and make some big cash, but aren't exactly warlords.
Now the real insanity emerges when you realize that Dr. Blight's evil BS may be because she drove herself insane: she hated her sister and her movie career, and it's stated she attempted some kind of cosmetic surgery on herself (possibly to outdo her sister) which disfigured half her face and probably drove her nuts in the process. So in other words, pure vanity+self-disfigurement=what was your plan bitch?!
If Zarm had managed to replace Gaia as the Spirit of the Earth in "The Conqueror", would he have experienced the same synchronization with the planet's condition as she does?
If what he was trying to do had had that effect, it would have been one doozy of a Hoist by His Own Petard, given that he'd presumably die along with the rest of the world when it got destroyed by a nuclear war.
We see the eco-villains' future descendants in a future episode. The question is, who had a kid with Verminous Skumm?! Plunder and Blight are attractive and rich, but why would someone procreate with a filthy humanoid rat who lives in a sewer?
Given that Skumm's schemes (from drugs to Forced Transformations) often involve stripping people of their right minds, the poor girl (whoever she was) may not have had a choice.
At the beginning of "Smog Hog", Junior mentions his father giving him a bike for his last birthday. Given that Greedly is horrified by Junior deciding to use it after Captain Planet saves his life ("How can I pollute on a bicycle?!"), why did he give it to his son in the first place?
Maybe Junior actually wanted a bike back then, and his father obliged.
It's not a question of whether Junior wanted a bike; it's a question of why Greedly would give his son something that he hated the idea of him actually using.
Gaia acts all motherly towards the Planeteers. Does this technically make her a single mother of five?
If one assumes that she and Captain Planet aren't married, then yes, but why is that a headscratcher?
"Given the fact that we dealt not only with real-life issues, but also with children, our challenge lay in the concern that children might come to the conclusion that if their parents worked in a polluting industry, they were somehow villainous. Our answer to that issue was to create villains who were intentionally exaggerated, plainly operating outside the law in an otherwise realistic setting. The eco-villains emerged as characters symbolic of the planet's environmental problems rather than representative of the actions of individuals."