The Dreamstone

Well the Nightmare Stone episodes were a role reversal par the morality switch. The Noops practically got the stone handed to them first time they tried.

Exactly!

That's what I'm trying to say - if THEY were the ones who had to steal the Dreamstone, they'd succeed first time, and the Urpneys would fail to get it back, and nightmares would rule the Sleeping World forever.

To tell ya the truth, I had an idea for a fanfic similar to this premise, but I had to abandon it when I realized that the only way to make it work was to basically make everyone Out of Character - in other words, I would have to give the Noops the same personalities as the Urpneys, and vice versa.

I am still waiting for a cartoon with a man and woman buddy team that does not at any point develop into a couple. Not that I hate the idea, but just for the sake of variety.

And speaking of VHS, I have a digitized transfer of the Tale Spin pilot that was taped off TV, and it is very watchable. Just because it's not Blu-Ray quality does not mean it looks absolutely horrible and cannot be enjoyed.

Rufus and Amberley were fairly dominantly just friends. They had a handful of subtle ship teases, but that's it.

Couldn't you get good quality just by squashing the Monster videos and putting better quality audio onto them?

And as said, it depends on the quality of the VHS. Some of the Youtube videos are obvious television recordings and they're barely viewable.

edited 27th Mar '16 6:13:41 PM by Psi001

You can watch any stretched YT video in VLC, and restore the original aspect ratio. It works.

And where exactly would you get "better quality audio"?

Might be off-topic, but at the risk of being controversial, which season do you (the general you) like the least?

Because as much as I LOVE the show, Season 4 is my least-favorite season. Oh, I like the Spidermobile episode, and Dreambubble Mixture is pretty good too, but as for the rest of the episodes...they're kind of so-so. Especially Urpjaws - I mean, really, would it have killed them to end the series with Zordrak being destroyed and the Urpneys being freed?

Truthfully Season Four was my favourite. There were some duds and losing some of the creative team like Mike Jupp and Leonard Whiting was a shame, but it was probably the most diverse and least formulaic of the four and the nearest to actually taking full advantage of the lovely concepts. Lots more world building and different characters and such. It was also the point the non-Urpney elements were better handled, they made at least some attempts to make the Land of Dreams look heroic against the Urpneys (larger stakes, challenged more often and less gratuitously vicious and self righteous), and the Noops had funnier personalities like in the pilot again.

Hmm, least favourite. Probably Season Two, it was probably the most formulaic and dull. It was the start of the Urpneys pretty much taking over the entire show, Zordrak stopped having ANY involvement and the heroes were just completely inactive and boring (the Noops also became completely incompetent and reliant on cheap Deus ex Machina endings all the time). It had some good points like Urpgor becoming a more focused character and Spildit and Zarag being introduced, but most of those were handled just as well in Seasons Three and Four.

Funnily enough, Season Two had ZERO episodes showing a dream. Even the other seasons usually only shown two or three, ironic considering the show's premise.

edited 1st Apr '16 6:50:40 PM by Psi001

Well, Season Two wasn't a TOTAL loss. It had some pretty good episodes.

Take "Bottle Harvest", for example. Not only did the Urpney trio get a happy ending, we got to see a nicer side to Blob's personality, as he was unconditionally nice to the Mech-Beav throughout the whole episode.

To be honest, the only thing I didn't like about the season was that it got rid of Frizz's glasses.

It had some good episodes, but it was kinda the height of the 'you've seen one, you've seen most of the rest' problem. And as said, they tended to only be good for the Urpney part. I feel like the first two seasons could have been compressed into just one containing their better episodes and you wouldn't have lost much, especially since they had a lot of duds.

I admit I wasn't big on most of the redesigns used post Season Two (par maybe Urpgor's, he looked more expressive without his Eyes Always Shut), a shame because that Season had some great animation (another plus for "Bottle Harvest" in particular).

edited 30th Mar '16 6:02:40 AM by Psi001

Skipping lots of episodes since many of them aren't available in English.

From what I know it's mostly just the last half of Season One that aren't on Youtube. This should only be a problem with The Nightmare Stone, which continues from Megattack. The rest don't have too much continuity.

Oh well, I will watch what there is (everything there is).

There are two "last hopes": the company that owns the show, and the mysterious person who claimed to have all episode taped on VHS.

Combining the two hopes, we have a good 75% chance the entire thing will become available within the next 5 years.

As said only a couple of episodes are that important. Season One for the large part was formulaic, and some of the episodes were rather mean spirited (I started to just feel sorry for the Urpneys all the time around the point of 'Blob's Incredible Plan').

Monster say they will be uploading more episodes soon, though it did take them two years just to get the current batch out.

edited 11th Apr '16 5:12:01 AM by Psi001

Oh goody! I hope they upload Blob's Incredible Plan!

Call it a Guilty Pleasure, but I just LOVE that episode. Yes, the Urpneys suffer WAY too much, even for this show, but I can't help liking it.

By the way, I don't know how well everyone here knows the Cthulhu Mythos, but I wanna share something which I found VERY amusing. Apparently *giggle* Cthulhu's parent *snigger snigger* i-is named...NUG!

Ain't it funny?! Ever since I learned that, I've had this mental image of Cthulhu meeting the Dreamstone Nug, then glomping him and calling him "Daddy". I know, that makes about as much sense as a version of Spirited Away with one of the Urpneys as Chihiro, but don't you think it would be funny?

Spirited Away had very whimsical takes on myths so it would be sensical. :P

I dunno if the Nug thing was deliberate. According to Jupp most of the unconventional names were just fun nonsense words (though Zordrak was originally Nasta Shelfim, an anagram of Satan Himself, they were obviously made to take that out).

I like sympathetic baddies, but The Dreamstone had a near Ron the Death Eater way of developing it. It was like what WB complained about with Elmer Fudd against Bugs Bunny, there was just no sport to fighting Frizz and Nug, they weren't villains, or even just Asshole Victims. They cowered and sobbed to get out of their horrible position, and yet the heroes always just gave them a priggish speech about how evil they were and beat them up (yunno, unless they were too much like real threats, they couldn't handle that, seriously). Not to mention they had way more sympathetic stakes than the heroes until near around the final season.

edited 12th Apr '16 10:13:51 AM by Psi001

Spirited Away had very whimsical takes on myths so it would be sensical. :P

Really? So which Urpney would be best for the role of Chihiro?

*Giggle* Just kidding - there's no way THAT would work...is there? I mean, for one thing, there's no love interest for the Urpneys in canon (although to be honest, when I first saw the movie, I wasn't sure whether or not Chihiro WAS in love with Haku, not being used to the very subtle way the Japanese portray romance), and for another, NONE of the Urpneys have a personality even halfway close to Chihiro's.

edited 12th Apr '16 10:56:26 AM by fruitstripegum

From my point of view, The Dreamstone's planet is literally a division between utopia and pragmatism. I don't think it is possible to have any utopia or its denizens be interesting or relatable. The urpneys are basically working class british men who are loyal to their country, despite their leader being almost pure evil. They are relatable because so many of us live in *cough cough* countries ruled by evil governments, and yet we still remain loyal to the nation.

The noops are not terrible as protagonists; they just live in a utopia, which, as I already stated, are boring by their very nature. But without a utopia, the entire premise of the show cannot happen. So, just as any good fairy tale cannot exist without a villain, Dreamstone cannot exist without the savage noops, who are the enemy of glorious Zordrak!

edited 12th Apr '16 7:39:15 PM by KlarkKentThe3rd

The heroes did come as kinda detached from reality. There was barely any conflicts or cruel behaviour in their world, and the Dream Maker and the Wuts could safeguard them from any real harm. In such an idealistic setup, it didn't seem like they could possibly understand the idea of someone just being bullied or threatened against their will to be evil. Surely the only excuse people do bad things because they're mean and spiteful.

There could have been a very intriguing grey premise in all this if they did any clever twists, but since the heroes were played so blandly and earnestly, it's hard to believe it's likely anymore than bad writing (cartoons recurrently have more trouble with heroes).

The last third or so did sorta catch on, even if it still sorta relied on the heroes being ignorant to the Urpneys being unwilling (though they were at least kinda jaded and bewildered by how they acted by that point, it seemed like they had at least figured out they weren't exactly nefarious opponents).

edited 12th Apr '16 7:26:06 PM by Psi001

DARN you're fast.

I assure you it was a coincidence.

edited 12th Apr '16 7:42:37 PM by Psi001

No it wasn't.

And the urpneys deserve everything they're getting. Why? Because they have all the chances to leave their master, but they never even try. The only time they do is when they're brainwashed into being extra nice.

Telling the truth, promise.

Truthfully every time they try to leave or back out, Blob or one of the other bosses bullies them into submission. Not to mention how eerily Zordrak has surveillance of the whole of Viltheed (he can even attack Urpneys through those monitor things).

By the end of the show there were at least implications they stayed on their own free will (as Horrible Argorrible pointed out, getting fired by Zordrak wouldn't be their best interest because then they'd have to fend for themselves). Even then though, Frizz and Nug weren't exactly provocative. They still didn't want to go into missions and spent more time blubbering and cowering than fighting the heroes in any way. After all, until A Day Out, their biggest crime was usually sending nightmares. Even if they had acted dastardly about it, that wasn't really enough to warrant their constant beatdowns and fate with Zordrak.

Maybe this is why the last episodes often favoured alternative villains (ie. nastier more challenging ones that the Noops could attack and it would look like self defence).

The final points of show really did seem like they were trying to make the heroes' POV more sympathetic, just it was a bit too late and after they'd spent nearly three seasons working on a broken dynamic. And even at that, the Urpneys were still far more developed and likeable.

edited 13th Apr '16 5:30:05 AM by Psi001

I find it too easy to approach it with an American perspective that concludes, "No, the invaders need to be punished to the fullest degree, until they learn the lesson: NEVER AGAIN."

So, nobody's gonna answer my last post?

And Klark Kent The3rd, I don't think you're being fair. It's not as black and white as other "Tom and Jerry" type cartoons, even those where Rooting for the Empire comes easy.

Take The Smurfs, for example. While Gargamel is clearly a Jerkass Woobie, his evil qualities far outweigh his sympathetic ones, and you don't want him to win against the Smurfs. Here, however, we have a species that serves an evil overlord, and if they don't obey him, they either get Taken for Granite, or Eaten Alive. Also, even though we never see any female Urpneys or Urpney children (except Urpgor's aunt and niece), something tells me that Zordrak wouldn't be any more lenient to them than he is to his troops. I mean, sure, theft is a bad thing, but if I had to work for someone like Zordrak, I'd steal as much as I could in order to stay alive.

And just accept getting eaten alive or turned to stone.

I'd answer it if I really understood a good deal of Spirited Away in the first place.

As said it was also that it was a case of Serious Business for the heroes. Aside from very rare cases, the most Zordrak wanted to do to the heroes originally was give them bad dreams. I mean, yeah, that's not nice, but compared to the living nightmare the Urpneys suffer it doesn't really come across as a Moral Event Horizon. We didn't even see these supposedly elusive dreams most of the time anyway.

The later episodes did even it out a bit. The Urpneys, while still Press-Ganged and abused, weren't killed for failure. It was implied they would actually be fired (as in released) if they pushed Zordrak's buttons. Also Zordrak got a far more menacing 'Lord of the Universe' plot for the Dreamstone. The stakes were actually higher for the heroes by then. It helped that the slapstick abuse didn't seem quite as one sided in the closing points, the Noops sometimes genuinely suffered because of the Urpneys. There was at least some validity to why they hated them by that point, even if it was still mostly for stuff they didn't want to do in the first place, and even at that, this was after what was implied to be centuries of the far harsher approach (Zordrak has a lot of Urpney statues by the time he gets bored of them).

As said I think there was a lot of potential for a really complex and even satirical dynamic here, but I think the writers genuinely just wanted it to be standard good vs evil for kids, hence the fine tuning when they likely realised it wasn't working.

edited 2nd May '16 8:52:04 AM by Psi001