Today marks the 45th anniversary of the first airing of the
first episode of the first show starring
Space Ghost. That
series ran from 1966 to 1968, and was followed up by
Space Stars from 1981 to 1982. Skip ahead another couple decades, and Space Ghost returned to TV, but he finally found his calling.
Space Ghost: Coast to Coast was a talk show, broadcast from
Ghost Planet, and featuring a wide array of guests who were interviewed on a wider range of topics.
SG:C2C ran from 1994 to 2004, starting on Cartoon Network, then moving to Adult Swim in 2001, and finally to jumping from TV to
the internet, where it was on
GameTap from
2006 to 2008.
The original Space Ghost TV series was the creation of
Alex Toth, who was noticed by Hanna-Barbera for his work on
the 1962-64 animated series called
Space Angel.
Toth worked for Hanna-Barbara from 1965 to 1968, and again in 1973, which was only part of his
larger career in animated TV shows.
The format for the original Space Ghost series was a series of short segments (first airing
two days after the first Star Trek episode --
warning: the embedded clip is loud). Typically, one Space Ghost segment would play, then a clip of Dino Boy in the Lost Valley, then a second Space Ghost segment.
Wikipedia lists the Space Ghost/Dino Boy/Space Ghost segments in order, but for some wacky reason, they were re-shuffled for DVD release, though retaining the SG/DB/SG order. This same format carried over into the streaming format on The WB:
DVD Episode 1 - The Heat Thing/ The Worm People/ Zorak
DVD Ep 2 - The Creature King/ The Treeman/ The Lizard Slavers
DVD Ep 5 - The Robot Master/ Marooned/ The Energy Monster
DVD Ep 7 - The Schemer/ The Rock Pygmies/ The Evil Collector
DVD Ep 11 - Space Birds/ The Wolf People/ Attack of the Saucer Crab
DVD Ep 17 - The Sorcerer/ The Ant Warrior/ The Looters
DVD Ep 18 - The Ovens of Moltar/ The Mighty Snow Creature/ The Gargoyloids
The Final 2 episodes are a six-part Space Ghost story called "The Council of Doom" and are kept in their on-air order on the DVD and online:
TV/DVD Ep 19 - The Meeting/ Clutches of the Creature King/ The Deadly Trap
TV/DVD Ep 20 - The Molten Monsters of Moltar/ Two Faces of Doom/ The Final Encounter
The 1981-2 series Space Stars was similar to the original series, each episode made of disconnected segments, except this time it was
four segments from four shows: Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Teen Force, and Astro and the Space Mutts. Space Ghost ran with 22 new episodes, with new villains, even a evil version of Space Ghost from an alternate universe, called
Space Spectre.
1. Attack of the Space Sharks
2. The Haunted Space Station
3. The Sorceress
4. Planet of the Space Monkeys
5. The Anti Matter Man
6. The Space Dragons
7. Starfly
8. The Big Freeze
9. The Toymaker
10. Microworld
11. Space Spectre
12. Web of the Wizard
13. Time Chase
14. The Deadly Comet
15. The Shadow People
16. Time of the Giants
17. City in Space
18. Nomads
19. Eclipse Woman
20. Devilship
21. The Time Master
22. Spacecube of Doom
If you've watched the original Space Ghost and Space Stars, but have your episodes and enemies mixed up, you're in luck!
The Original Space Ghost FAQ has you covered! All the content is still intact, circa 1997. Sadly, the links to other sites are hit-or-miss now.
About a decade after Space Stars aired,
Turner Network Television acquired two collections of animation: the MGM film library (which included old Warner Bros. cartoons), and the Hanna-Barbera Productions Animation Studio,
mirroring the original creation of TNT itself. TNT formed a new channel,
Cartoon Network, to play cartoons all the time. And like TNT, Cartoon Network grew beyond simply re-playing classics. With a limited initial budget,
Mike Lazzo worked with others to re-purpose some of the Cartoon Network library. It was there they hit upon
splicing re-dubbed segments of Space Ghost with cuts of an interview with Denzel Washington. In TV host style,
Space Ghost shows a clip of "Malcom X", and gets Denzel's plans for the Oscars. Then there was
the $100,000 "really slick two-minute piece", but that didn't set much of a precedent for the future episodes, which started on April 15, 1994, with
Spanish Translation, featuring Susan Powter, Brak look-alikes who sound like Beavis and Butthead, and a collision with Ghost Planet. And then it kept on going, for another 90+ episodes, which are conveniently collected and uploaded in
YuTuber I1ABSU's playlist, though it's missing
Live at the Fillmore, called "Unfinished POS" in the [adult swim] title cards. Speaking of AS,
they host many clips are online, with some "
gold episodes" available to some folks with cable or satellite provider buy-in.
And then there are
the GameTap episodes. Wikipedia lists 16, but only names 11 of them. There were no official names for the segments, so they are referred to by their guest's names. A few of these have migrated from GameTap's now-defunct subscription service to the broader tubes:
5. Steve Wozniak
6. Rob Fulop
7. Howard Warshaw
15. Dee Snider
16. Barenaked Ladies and Space Ghost's nipple (finale)
More Bonus Tangents
In the beginning, Space Ghost Coast To Coast episodes were sometimes paired with original Space Ghost episodes, which now featured
an added "studio audience" who would ooh, aah, and laugh along at the interstellar hi-jinks.
As a wacky spin-off following the success of SG:C2C, in 1995 TBS made
Cartoon Planet, in which
a live-action Space Ghost appears, and Brak is the host, so we'll ignore that here, and point you
to past coverage (though many YT links are now dead).
Space Ghost appeared in 1998 on the Donny & Marie Show
Season 5 promos:
Courage,
Fame,
Private Life
Happy April Woolves Day from Tommy Wiseau!
posted by selfnoise at 5:59 PM on September 10, 2011 [2 favorites]