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An All-CGI Cartoon from Mainframe Entertainment, makers of ReBoot. Shadow Raiders (1998-1999; also known as War Planets after the original toyline) tells the story of a quartet of planets divided by war for generations as they band together to defend from The Beast. Princess Tekla, not just the last survivor of her kind but of her solar system, flees her doomed world to warn the people of planets Fire, Bone, Rock and Ice about the coming threat. Graveheart of planet Rock, King Cryos of Ice and Princess Tekla fight off her pursuers and band together. From there, the story chronicles the struggles to form an Alliance against the Beast; battling prejudice, hatred, and suicidal pigheadedness, and that is just among each other!

Do not confuse with Shadow Raiders The Dragon Brigade.

The main cast includes:

Their enemy is the enigmatic The Beast Planet, a single mechanical organism who has technically (if not actually) created three individuals to act as its agents.

  • General Blokk — Short tempered and violent. Prefers to deal with problems via brute force.
  • General Lampray— Manipulative and scheming. Takes a more subtle approach favouring deception and subterfuge.
  • General VoydThe Voiceless. Casts the tiebreaking vote when Blokk and Lampray can't agree on a course of action.
  • The Beast Planet— The looming antagonist of the series, an ancient doomsday machine that devours planets whole, and has a penchant for teleporting out of the center of a solar system's sun.

Remarkable for having a solid continuity between episodes and a lot of Character Development. Though it follows most animated show conventions regarding onscreen violence (no one is seen to die, those killed go up in a burst of light without any blood), it started becoming increasingly dark in its second season, with the destruction of several planets. There was going to be a third season, which was going to give some of the Beast background, but the show ended up cancelled.

There is now a character sheet under construction.

There was also a PC game based on the toy line, War Planets: Age of Chaos.


This show provides examples of:

  • Alternate Company Equivalent: The original Trendmasters toyline started as a sort of middle school age counterpart to Warhammer 40,000.
  • Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: One of the reasons Jade, as an offworlder, is immediately suspected in the murder-mystery seventh episode. "We of Fire never kill our own!"
  • Apocalypse How: The Beast Planet is a Planet Eater, and its combination of ability to travel between galaxies and actively seeking out "prey" could bump it to a Class X-2 threat.
  • Artistic License – Space: Moving a planet any distance from its sun would cause catastrophic climate and gravitational changes; moving too far away would reduce them to icy, barren husks. None of the planets seem worse for wear when the planets flee the solar system, though. We do see some sort of atmosphere shield activate before the world engines engage, so there's probably that as a Hand Wave. There's also the fact that day and night is a byproduct of planetary rotation relative to the closest sun, but somehow even after fleeing the solar system the three planets still have perceivable night and days.
  • The Assimilator: The Beast absorbs and learns from everything it devours, and can even make copies of the originals. However, made of null matter, the fake worlds are extremely unstable and any evil intention on its part to use them as a weapon is liable to literally explode in its face.
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: In the final episode of the second season, Jade passes the leadership trial and becomes the new monarch of Planet Rock.
  • Bar Brawl: When the girls have a night out, they have fun...
  • The Battlestar: The Aurora, Cryos', and later, the Alliance's flagship.
  • Benevolent Precursors: Heavily Implied. Worlds not yet attacked by The Beast Planet have legends of it, their planetary cores are massively huge computers that command engines big enough to move the planet, if need be, and should the computer core actively sense null energy, it will recommend using the world engines at maximum thrust to escape. Sadly, knowledge of these systems have greatly been lost with time, and all the worlds devoured by the Beast didn't even know they had a way to run, let alone fight.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Graveheart. Usually the compassionate and mild-mannered leader of the Alliance, but keep in mind that this is also the same man who snapped like a twig and took out most of Fire's aerial fleet by himself after his brother was killed right in front of him.
  • BFG: The Sonic Cannons, which are industrial mining equipment.
  • Binding Ancient Treaty: Graveheart manages to get Rock's battlemoons to stand down because Cryos invoked the "Treaty of Four" which is described as an ancient treaty. Its exact provisions are unknown but it seems to at least guarantee safe passage to foreign leaders to and from the other planets and grants them diplomatic immunity.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The Prison Planet is used to teleport the Beast Planet and strand it in some far off section of the galaxy, Graveheart kills Blokk, and the planets are finally at peace. But the Beast itself is still active and is still preying upon other worlds. The last seconds of the final episode show the Beast preparing to devour Planet Reptizar....
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: Block, Lamprey, and Void, as well as the Beast Drones, are constructed entirely of "null matter." Now while the drones don't need air, Void, Blokk, and Lamprey do, as we see in Episode 10, "Against All Odds." Where Zera and Pyrus stumble upon the beast drone base in Remorrah.
  • Blind Obedience: Lord Mantle seems to believe everyone should act this way towards him.
  • Bloodless Carnage: The amount of killing happening on screen is surprising for a kid's show, but there are no gibs or blood. Usually when someone is killed it's in a big flash of light after getting blasted by one of the many Energy Weapons being used by both the heroes and the villains. This is due to largely being handwaved by the Beast Drone's null-matter composition; anything they come into contact with is instantly disintergrated, while they themselves disappear into a puff of light when their containment fields are destroyed, collapsing the null-matter onto itself. If you look closely at internal Alliance combat (especially in flashbacks and in the first episode) all fatalities are due to environment deaths, with guns rarely causing actual wounds.
  • Book Ends: "Planet X: On Doomsday".
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Of all the characters the audience could be addressed by, it would be Femur.
  • Break the Haughty: The clip show episode reveals that part of the reason why Graveheart is so humble is because his kid brother died in a raid on Planet Fire that Graveheart was leading.
  • Breather Episode: "Period of Adjustment". The remaining planets are able to keep ahead of the Beast Planet due to the world engines so they are out of danger for the moment. The focus of the episode is on the Alliance's food shortage problem, and Femur's inept efforts to get himself back into the Alliance's good graces.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Every attempt to destroy the Beast Planet is one of these.
  • The Brute: General Blokk. Thick as one too, most of the time.
  • The Cavalry: During the battle against Remora:
    Jade: This is Commander Jade of Planet Rock. By Lord Mantle's decree, I commit the battle moons to the service of the Alliance!
  • Celestial Body: The various minions of the Beast Planet all have translucent red bodies that are seemingly filled with stars and nebulae, due to being constructs of null matter.
  • A Child Shall Lead Them: Prince Pyrus, the youngest of all the world leaders, is the most willing to abandon the ancient feuds and pointless hatreds that have divided the cluster for generations.
  • Clip Show: The episode Graveheart has a crisis in his leadership role.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: Take a look at the impending doom and monstrous Planet Eater, then try to dispute this. The series was originally planned to end as a Lovecraft Lite story with the defeat of the Beast, but the series was, alas, cancelled on a cliffhanger...
  • Daddy's Girl: Zera. So much so that her dad abdicates the throne because he realizes that she will always come first, even over his duty.
  • Darker and Edgier: The Prison Planet arc. Though the series was already fairly dark and edgy by 90's Saturday morning standards, the arc was considerably much grittier than the episodes that preceded it.
  • Debut Queue: One character per episode for the first five or so.
  • Depraved Bisexual: Jewelia spends most of her screentime hitting on Graveheart (and arguably Cryos) in the creepiest manner she can, and then does it to Jade when they finally duke it out in "The Long Road Home":
    Jewelia: Oh, you play rough. And here I thought you weren't my type...
  • Discard and Draw: On the scale of an army. In Ragnarok part 2, Jade brings in the Battle Moons after Femur orders a full retreat of his fleet.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The unstoppable Beast Planet and its demonic extensions. It does not spread madness, but no matter what happens, nothing can harm it.
  • Enemy Mine: The whole premise of the series is about a young war veteran and miner trying to convince four planetary civilizations that have been fighting and stealing from each other for centuries without end to put aside their differences and stand together to defeat a threat that threatens to destroy them all.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: Jade gets mixed up in a particularly cruel case of betrayal, when the group's survival depends on a reluctant king. She ends up giving a valuable tool to the power hungry King of Rock to ensure his co-operation. Her position as his Captain of the Guard does not help, and when she chooses loyalty to her king, she ends up betraying her friends.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Vizier of Planet Fire. Also, No Name Given, he's never called anything but the Vizier.
  • Evil Chancellor: Subverted with the Vizier. Despite displaying outright contempt for the other members of the alliance, he admits that he does respect them. Played straight later on when an evil duplicate of him turns up.
  • The Evil Prince: Femur had a brother whose throne he usurped and sent to the Prison Planet. Although he was Femur's exact opposite when we meet him (refined, noble, tall, and muscular), flashbacks indicate that he was having Femur disposed of but Femur managed to turn the tables.
  • Faceless Masses:
    • Just about every soldier in the four planets, and they were the good guys!. Taken to its literal extreme by the Beast Planet, whose soldiers are actually called drones and are literally nothing but mindless extensions of the Beast Planet itself, and their models literally lack faces.
    • Each of the planets have some funny exceptions; we regularly see the faces of Planet Fire and Rock's inhabitants, soldiers and civilians. Most of which are fairly unique. We also see some of the faces of the inhabitants of Planet Ice, but funny enough they all resemble their king down to a tee (even his successor). Planet Bone's inhabitants never show their face, likely due to the suits they wear being required to keep their (flimsy) loyalty to their king.
  • Fantastic Racism: All of the races hate all of the other races, mainly due to the history of mutual raiding. The people of Fire and Ice go so far as to (falsely) believe that physical contact between their species is fatal. This really causes trouble in the series, particularly when the people of Fire lose their planet and must emigrate to the moons of Rock.
  • Fantastic Slurs: "Rockhound" is the traditional slur for the people of Rock, Fire people are often called "hotheads" and "lavaheads", and Ice people have been referred to as "ice fleas" and "insects". Femur has been referred to several times as "Toad", but no one else from his planet is ever called this (and he does indeed look like a toad, especially compared to his brother).
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
    • Ice: Britain, obviously. The people speak with British Accents and typically display the somewhat "cold" demeanor stereotypical of Britons.
    • Fire: Has a distinct "Arabian Nights" Days vibe, complete with a Grand Vizier.
    • Bone: Italy, specifically Renaissance Italy in the time of the Borgias, what with its political system encouraging back-stabbing. Also has food items called cannolis and the main Bone character talks with an Italian-American accent.
    • Rock: Harder to pin down, but its thriving mining industry, arid climate and petulant, xenophobic warlord ruler give it the feel of a post-colonial African dictatorship. It helps that most of the Rock people aside from Graveheart are voiced by black actors.
    • Tek: Japan, natch.
    • Sand: Egypt, not only for the architecture, but the natives being worshipers of the sun.
    • Beast: Eastern Europe, if only due to Blokk and Lamprey's Funetik Aksents.
  • Femme Fatale: Lamprey is one made of Anti Matter. It don't get much more fatal than that. Appropriate, since her voice actress appears to be channeling Natasha Fatale from Rocky and Bullwinkle.
  • For the Evulz: The apparent reasoning behind the Beast Planet's planet-eating behavior. It is a mindless drone planet after all.
  • Fling a Light into the Future: Princess Tekla left her doomed world in order to warn others to prepare for the coming of the Beast.
  • Gentleman Snarker: Cryos.
  • Girl's Night Out Episode: In Girl's Night Out, the girls (And Pelvis, for whatever that means) head out to a bar and have fun...
  • Head-in-the-Sand Management: Lord Mantle of Planet Rock seems determined to blithely ignore anything that contradicts his view of Planet Rock as the ultimate power in the system. Show him a video of the Beast Planet effortlessly shrugging off a much bigger Wave-Motion Gun than his Battle Moons have? He insists that Battle Moons can handle it and so Planet Rock doesn't need the Alliance and can stand on its own.
  • I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: "I'm not a hero. I'm just a miner."
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The accuracy of the Beast Drones drops measurably when firing at heroes when compared to firing at the RedShirts. Unlike your typical kids cartoon though, a lot of those get atomized onscreen.
  • Implacable Man:
    • Er, Implacable Planet. The Beast Planet shrugs off everything in the series, including being hit with another planet!
    • Unlike Lamprey, Blokk is this as well. While both generals lack Containment Units (and so can't be poofed with a good shot), Lamprey goes down fairly quickly when fighting Jade. Blokk, by comparison, tears his way through to Rock's world engine without even breaking stride and then (quite literally) floors a shielded Graveheart.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: The heroes have an amazing knack for hitting the tiny containment unit of the Beast Drones when not using the heavy sonic cannons.
  • Interspecies Romance: Femur has a real thing for women who are not from his planet. He hits on Lamprey in his introductory episode (until she reveals her true nature as his enemy), and then flirts with the "reactivated" Tekla up until it is revealed she is being possessed by Lamprey. His steadiest "crush" is Jade, blunt-spoken warrior-woman of Rock, whom he flirts with through the entire series. His brother also seems attracted to her when they meet in the final episodes, and there seems to be something between Graveheart and Tekla throughout the series. And then there is Pyrus and Zera, despite the complications of a fire/ice romance...
  • It Can Think: The Beast Planet proves throughout the series it is not mindless, but a heavily sadistic Manipulative Bastard. It learns from every planet it destroys and absorbs the knowledge hidden within every feast, even displaying sadistic tendencies against its victims and does not like to let targets escape.
  • Jerkass: Lord Mantle of Planet Rock. Absurdly stubborn and arrogant, he is the only ruler who refuses to see that the Alliance serves the best interests of all planets, and only joins the Alliance at the last moment because he sees himself as having a chance to take control of it. In the last episodes of the second season, he demands to be placed in charge of the Alliance when Graveheart is presumed lost on the Prison Planet, and eventually uses a stolen Command Data Crystal to paralyze Alliance ships in the face of attacking Beast Drones, resulting in multiple deaths before he finally gets his way. It's telling that basically nobody in the Alliance likes him; Graveheart is too polite to show it, and Jade is motivated by her loyalty, but none of the non-Rock characters make much effort to hide how little they think of Mantle. Even Femur is considered by the main characters to be more tolerable than Mantle is.
  • The Juggernaut:
    • While the heroes destroy the Beast Drones by truckloads, the Beast itself shrugs off all attempt to stop it, including ramming a planet into it, detonating a planet turned into a bomb inside it, and teleporting it to unknown parts of the universe. The last one only forces it to shift targets. For a while it was hiding inside of a star.
    • By extension, Blokk is terrifying when it comes to close-quarter fighting. Despite never needing to fight hand-to-hand before, due to his null-matter body, when he faced off against Mantle he absolutely floored the Rock King. Because the generals lack containment units, he also shrugs off all of the concussion blasts the Quarriors under Feldspar threw at him without breaking stride. He only dies after Graveheart slams the force field generator into his stomach, destabilizing the null-matter.
  • Jumped at the Call: King Cryos. "You can count on Ice to be the first to stand at your side."
  • Karma Houdini: The Beast. The very last shot of the series is the Beast eating another planet, unimpeded and unopposed. This is justified because The Beast is indestructible. Even worse in that the Beast Planet now has a grudge against the War Planets and will return to finish them off when able.
  • Kill Sat: Planet Rock's Battle Moons. Emphasis on Satellite.
  • Killed Off for Real: Blokk is killed in the finale when Graveheart shoves an anti-nullmatter shield generator inside him, tearing him apart.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Jade. Buried underneath the cynicism and hair-trigger temper is a honorable woman who genuinely wants to protect people.
  • Lame Pun Reaction: Two examples in Girls' Night Out; Graveheart was refused entrance into the Moon Over Mayhem bar because they do not serve miners, while later Zera informs the room that Pelvis has Left the Building. Both times Graveheart lampshades the puns (with a side glance towards the audience too no less).
  • Lampshade Hanging: Apparently, Graveheart's "I'm just a miner'' annoys Jade even more than the audience. Femur has been known to do this as well.
  • Lantern Jaw of Justice: Sternum has the most epic chin in the show. And due to the anatomy of his species (which has four tentacles drooping down from their chins) he instead has 3 clefts due to his "tentacles" being incredibly stubby and rigid.
  • Last of His Kind: Princess Tekla, the sole survivor of Planet Tek (well, not counting Vox).
  • Left Stuck After Attack: In the series finale, Graveheart finishes Blokk by shoving his powerglove into his abdomen, nearly resulting in unintentional Taking You with Me when Blokk falls off the ledge. Graveheart manages to hold them both with his other hand long enough to slip out the powerglove, letting Blokk fly.
  • Licensed Game: Though it's obscure, when the toy-line came out, Trendmasters also published a CD-rom (with downloadable demo available through the official website) video-game ''WarPlanets: Age of Chaos,'' with the player able to play missions from planets Ice, Rock, and The Beast. With the Trendmasters official site down, due to the company's bankruptcy and closure, it's no longer available legitimately.
  • Market-Based Title: It was called "Shadow Raiders" in Canada because Canadian kids TV shows cannot have the word "war" in the title (fellow Mainframe series Beast Wars was renamed Beasties for the same reason).
  • Mauve Shirt: Captain Feldspar, a Quarrior of Planet Rock, shows up numerous times throughout the series. He survives all the way to the final episode of the second season, where he is killed by Blokk.
  • Merchandise-Driven: Based on "War Planets", a toy line of planetoids with various gadgets that popped out.
  • Mighty Glacier: The Beast Planet is this on a planetary scale. It has extremely powerful weaponry; its lack of speed is the only reason it hasn't been able to wipe out the protagonists, and is also the reason for its drone army. If it weren't for the drones' acts of sabotage or luring the heroes into battle, the Beast would have no chance of ever catching up to the other worlds once they figured out how to use their world engines.
  • Military Coup: Femur comes perilously close to this after he orders his fleet to flee the battle of Remora. Pelvis makes it clear that the military's patience with him is nearing its breaking point.
    Pelvis: "They feel dishonoured, your voluminousness... and you do know what that means."
    Guard: *Cracks his knuckles threateningly*
  • Moment Killer: Femur's bad timing almost gets him throttled by Jade.
  • Mooks: The Beast Planet can field a seemingly endless supply of drone soldiers. In stark contrast to the Beast Planet itself, the drones drop like flies when the heroes shoot the small containment units that keep their null matter bodies together. Also, Planet Rock's Battle Moons can rip through the Beast's largest ships like they were made of paper, though they can't harm the Beast Planet.
  • Moral Guardians: Well, kind of. Girls' Night Out was not shown in the U.K. by Sky, supposedly due to strobe lighting, but attention has been drawn to the fact that GNO saw a lot of sexual innuendo and featured the female characters trashing a bar in a brawl. The problem is that a lot of later events do not make sense if you have not watched a key scene in this episode.
  • Morality Pet: Pyrus seems to be something of this to Femur, as the otherwise amoral and treacherous ruler of Bone has a definite soft spot for the young prince of Fire. In a more literal fashion, the seedling of Planet Jungle that Femur is charged with tending could be seen this way.
  • Moral Myopia: Alluded to in the pilot. The Cluster's warring factions are more than willing to steal each other's natural resources in the name of survival while getting morally outraged when their own planets are invaded for their natural resources. Graveheart and Cryos both acknowledge this hypocrisy, leading to the formation of the Alliance.
  • Mugging the Monster: When Jade is walking the streets of Fire, one of the inhabitants bumps into her and tries to shove her down while screaming that she should get off "his" planet. Jade, in turn, knocks him down and explains that the only thing that is keeping her from killing him is Graveheart's hope for a planetary alliance.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Ice people can apparently sprout a second pair of arms from their backs.
  • Nano Machines: The Ice Planet has them, they are used both to freeze enemies and heal allies.
  • Neglectful Precursors: The ancients who built the World Engines fitted them with radical technology, teleporters, machinery to move the worlds themselves, and have sensory equipment to detect threats far away. But, the AI computer systems aren't automated. They'll sound alarms, but won't move a planet out of harm's way unless they are ordered to.
  • Never Say "Die": Notably averted. While there's "destroy" thrown around sometimes, "die", "kill" and even "murder" are used freely in dialogue. Indeed, it may be the only children's cartoon to feature the phrase "justifiable homicide".
  • No Blood for Phlebotinum: The Four Planets were stuck in a Forever War because each respective planetary civilization depended on resources found only on another one of the four planets. Planet Rock had mineral deposits, Planet War had ice needed for water, Planet Bone housed all the food supplies, and Planet Fire had fuel deposits. As such the four civilizations ruthlessly stole from each other out of desperation and prejudice until the Beast Planet showed up.
  • Nobody Poops: For a kid's show, surprisingly averted. Femur tries to use a toilet in "Period of Adjustment." Unfortunately for him, Pelvis got to it first.
  • No Flow in CGI: Hilariously justified in the case of the inhabitants of Rock; their "hair" is just crystaline growths from their bodies, making them rigid (except for Mantle's facial "hair"). Something similar happens with King Cryos and Zera, where they have a white protrusion growing from their heads, although it is unknown if this is actually hair or just a crest of some sort. Averted with Fire and Bone; inhabitants of Fire have literal fiery heads, while the people of Bone have head fins that do indeed flap around.
  • Not Your Problem: The Beast Planet is 'defeated' by using a teleport engine to send it out of the star system, thus dooming another.
  • One-Steve Limit: The planetary monarchs all have different titles: King Cryos, Prince Pyrus, Lord Mantel, and Emperor Femur.
  • Organic Technology: Planet Bone's ships and other things. Technically more "Cyborg Technology"- organic tech as a base, but supplemented with actual machines, like Femur's (ill-fitting) Powered Armour.
  • Papa Wolf: King Cryos to his daughter, Zira. "Blood Is Thicker" deconstructs this attitude: Blokk deliberately exploits Cryos' love for his daughter by kidnapping her and simultaneously sending a large force of Beast drones to attack the Ice Palace. Cryos chooses family over duty and goes to rescue Zira, but at the end decides to abdicate the throne because he felt that abandoning his people for what he saw as a selfish reason was dishonorable (though this ends up being temporary).
  • Pet the Dog: Femur with the last remaining growth of Planet Jungle.
  • Planar Shockwave: Shows up in "Embers of the Past". When the fake Planet Fire's core of null matter is destroyed, it causes a huge shockwave that wipes out the Beast armada, but the heroes are able to get out of its path as they are further away.
  • Planet Eater: The Beast Planet.
  • Planet Spaceship: The Beast Planet is one of these, and at the start of season two, it's revealed that all the planets in the system have giant engines that allow them to become this.
  • Planetville: Amazingly averted with planet Sand. When the Sun People representative encountered the Alliance representatives, the guy assumed the new people were from some other province instead of being aliens.
  • Power of Trust: What ultimately helps the Alliance to stand up to the Beast, rather than being devoured one by one, as was the case in Tekla's system.
  • Precursors: The builders of the world engines. They seem to have been on every planet encountered by the main characters, and they might even have been more advanced than we believe with the teleportation engines of the prison planet, but who and what they are is still a mystery. Presumably the third season would have dealt with them, as it was intended to deal with the origin of the Beast, but now we will never know.
  • Production Throwback:
    • The show reuses catch phrases from the other Mainframe produced shows: "By the Matrix..." and "Stay Frosty".
    • Pyrus is first introduced in "Born in Fire" practicing with a staff. His routine and the final pose he strikes are the same movements of the Codemaster in the ReBoot episode "High Code."
    • The lava dogs of planet Fire are remodeled versions of Dinobot's raptor mode from Beast Wars. In turn, the sequel series Beast Machines reused the planet Jungle set in a flashback sequence.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: While the Bones respect treacherous ambition and Femur himself is something of a coward, the people of Bone love a good fight and consider it quite dishonorable to flee one. What prompts Femur to try and patch things up with the Alliance is the fact that his own people started trying to kill him for fleeing the fight against the Beast Planet.
  • Pursued Protagonist: Princess Tekla. The Alliance themselves become this during season 2
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Miners, soldiers, royalty and refugees that do not like, trust or cooperate with each other.
  • Ramming Always Works: Vizier rams the entire Planet Fire into the Beast. Subverted, as it doesn't work.
  • Redemption Equals Death: The Vizier, to a degree. While never being evil or doing anything overtly bad, he had maintained a hostile and suspicious attitude towards the alliance as a whole and its leaders in particular. After secretly watching them try and fail to save Planet Fire from the coming Beast and witnessing their distress upon realizing the hopelessness, he opts to remain on Planet Fire for its final moments while informing Pyrus that he had been wrong.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The reptilian representatives of the Alliance are treacherous, cowardly, disgusting, and contribute half the Token Evil Teammate quota. Their entire ruling class promotes backstabbing as a way of life. They even get a pretty vicious Take That!, as the final victim of the the Beast is Planet Reptizar.
    • Though that being said, Bone's warriors at least are established as having a sense of honor; Femur's retreat from the battle of Remora causes a great deal of discontent within the ranks, enough so that they attempt to depose of Femur in the hopes of a more 'honorable' ruler taking his place.
  • Rogue Planet: The Beast Planet is a rogue planet of a predatory type, constantly seeking out other planets to devour. It starts the series making a meal out of Planet Tek
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Of the main cast, the vast majority are royals, and to their credit they actually pull more than their weight. Unfortunately, this means that any away missions puts a significant portion of the Alliance leadership at risk. Justified in that most of the away missions are Alliance business, or specifically about keeping the Alliance together, or involve the Alliance war council, or...
  • Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Averted for the most part. The inhabitants of Planet Rock are the only ones who look even remotely like humans and even they look very different from humans, being made of rock and all. However Sternum has some very distinctly human traits, despite everyone else of his species being a cartoonish Lizardman. Princess Tekla also looks like a chrome human woman, but from what little we've seen of her father's troops (which all look very robotic), her family might be the exception.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: A lot. Distances, sizes, planetary population numbers and everything else are more akin to neighbouring countries than planets...and pretty small countries at that.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the battle for Remora Planet goes awry, Femur orders his forces to retreat. Both his allies and his own forces are furious with him for.
  • Senseless Sacrifice: Planet Fire, Planet Jungle, and the Prison Planet.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Single-Biome Planet: Each of the planets are defined by a single geographical type (Usually whatever their name is): Ice - ice, Rock - rocks, Fire - volcanoes, Bone - swamps, Jungle- jungles, Sand - sand. This is one of the few justified examples, as virtually all of the planets seen are artificial.
  • The Spook: The Beast. Neither the characters nor the audience ever learn its origin or motivations. It simply exists and nothing can stop it.
  • The Starscream: Pelvis, Femur's slightly smarter but equally cowardly Evil Chancellor.
  • Start of Darkness: We were ''supposed'' to get one for the Beast in the planned third season but the show got Cut Short. There's an implication that the mysterious Precursors were somehow involved with it (or at least knew more about it).
  • Sudden Downer Ending:
    • "Ragnarok" ends happily with the Alliance celebrating the destruction of Remora and the Beast forces decimated, with Blokk and Lamprey being taken off by Voyd to receive some punishment for their failure from the Beast... Except than the Beast itself arrives and destroys an entire moon with a single small laser blast. The episode ends with the entire Alliance having a Mass "Oh, Crap!" as they realize how screwed they are.
    • Due to being Left Hanging, the last episode of the series has Graveheart cheer over how the threat of the Beast Planet is forever gone and that the planets have finally united as a whole, seeing Peace as never before seen in their shared histories. It then immediately cuts to Planet Reptizar with the Beast Planet approaching it, with the subtitle "Planet Reptizar: On Doomsday".
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Jade. Her "dere" side comes out most frequently around Graveheart, but as the series progresses we see her gradually warming up to other Alliance members as well.
  • Taking You with Me:
    • When Planet Fire's World Engines fail, and it falls so far behind the rest of the Cluster that it will be inevitably devoured by the Beast, the Grand Vizier orders it evacuated. Then he deliberately turns it around and rams the Beast with Planet Fire.
    • The self-destruct of Planet Jungle, since its World Engines were inoperative and it was going to be eaten anyway. [[spoiler:Like the above example with Fire, It doesn't work.
    • A literal version happened with the Prison Planet, which had a Teleport Engine rather than a conventional one allowing it to beam across the universe at will. Sternum allowed it to teleport away just as the Beast Planet made contact, making sure that the Beast Planet will never find the cluster ever again.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The four founding planets of the Alliance have been enemies for as long as any of them can remember. It's only the threat of the Beast that gives them the motivation to end hostilities.
  • Token Evil Teammate: It's a tossup between Emperor Femur and Lord Mantle. Femur is cowardly, conniving and obnoxious, but is generally helpful towards the Alliance. Mantle, on the other hand, is disdainful, needlessly antagonistic, belligerent, and ultimately tries to seize control of the Alliance, murdering multiple soldiers in the process.
  • Touch of Death: The minions of the Beast Planet are made of null matter, which will instantly disintegrate any organic being that touches it.
    Blokk (to Lord Mantle): One touch is all it's going to take!
    • The episode Girls' Night Out has a whole plot and all kinds of character development, but much more importantly, introduces the anti-anti-matter device, allowing Jade to deliver a fist-to-face beatdown of several minions.
  • Tsundere: Zera, who's pretty fiery for an ice maiden.
  • Twist Ending: A really dark one, by the standards of a children's show. See Book Ends above.
  • Unseen Evil: The Beast itself is never seen. Even the Beast Planet itself, is merely one of its forms. Had the series not egregiously ended on a cliff-hanger, Princess Tekla's memories on how to cripple the planet may have been recalled... only to reveal the monster within itself. Cue another cliff-hanger.
  • Undying Loyalty: Both Cryos and Pyrus inspire this level of loyalty in their people.
  • Unstoppable Rage: Graveheart had an experience of this when his little brother was killed on planet Fire.
  • The Voiceless: General Voyd, who often acts as a tiebreaker between Generals Blokk and Lampray. Possibly the direct representation of the Beast's judgement.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: In the episode where Tekla and Graveheart try to persuade Lord Mantle to join their alliance, Vox plays a recording of the last stand of planet Water from Tekla's home solar system. The inhabitants of Planet Water turned their entire world into a wave motion gun to try and destroy the Beast. The result was less than impressive.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
    • The show never clarified what happened to the Battle Moons and, more importantly, the remains of Planet Fire civilization after the assault on the Beast Planet in Death of a King.
    • Lamprey is last seen being crushed under a falling roof, but dialogue implies she got away rather than being killed. Nonetheless, she doesn't appear at all afterwards since it focuses on Blokk's assault on Rock. Similarly, except for a few token appearances, Voyd all but disappears from the show from Season 2 onwards.
  • Working-Class Hero: As Graveheart often reminds us, he is just a miner, but he is a very capable leader. This instance of this trope is not used to cast any disparagement on upper-class or educated people, though, as royalty like Prince Pyrus and King Cryos are shown to be just as heroic.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: This is the official credo of Planet Bone, enshrined in a children's rhyme. "You snag the throne, you rule on Bone, the guy that dies is food for flies." Although it's also heavily implied that the Bone military sometimes exercises... let's call it veto power over someone being on the throne. Generally you need to do something so colossally bad that it unites everyone on the planet against you.

Alternative Title(s): War Planets, War Planets Age Of Chaos

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