Animorphs 

Five kids and an alien with the ability to turn into any beast they touch vs. an army of parasitic aliens who are slowly infiltrating Earth.

Stars:

Shawn Ashmore, Brooke Nevin, Boris Cabrera

Cast

Series cast summary:
Shawn Ashmore	...	Jake Berenson 26 episodes, 1998-1999
Brooke Nevin	...	Rachel Berenson 26 episodes, 1998-1999
Boris Cabrera	...	Marco 26 episodes, 1998-1999
Nadia-Leigh Nascimento	...	Cassie 25 episodes, 1998-1999
Christopher Ralph	...	Tobias 25 episodes, 1998-1999
Paulo Costanzo	...	Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill 21 episodes, 1998-1999
Eugene Lipinski	...	Visser Three / ... 18 episodes, 1998-1999
Joshua Peace	...	Tom Berenson 15 episodes, 1998-1999
Richard Sali	...	Principal Chapman 13 episodes, 1998-1999

Storyline

My name is Elfangor. I am a prince from the Andalite world. I am dying. My ship has crash-landed on a planet called Earth. This is not the first time my hooves have touched the surface of this vast and beautiful world, but it will be the last. The Yeerks have launched their silent attack on Earth. Yeerks are evil parasites who live in the brains of other species. Now their goal is to enslave every human being on this planet. As I looked into five pairs of innocent human eyes, I knew what I had to do. These young people had no knowledge of the invasion, no idea that some of their closest friends and family members were already under Yeerk control. But they would soon bear the responsibility of saving their entire world. I gave them the power to morph, Andalite technology no other species has ever possessed. Now these humans will be able to use the energy and instincts of any living creature to resist the Yeerks. They can become any animal they touch. Many Andalites have called me a ...

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Plot Keywords:

20th century | 21st century | 1990s | 2000s | alien | 

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Genres:

Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Details

Official Sites:

Scholastic Productions

Country:

Canada USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

4 September 1998 (USA)

Also Known As:

AniTV

Filming Locations:

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Company Credits

Production Co:

Angel/Brown Productions,Scholastic Productions,Protocol Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

24 min (1998-2000) 30 min (26 episodes)

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

When frequent writer/director Ron Oliver announced that the show was ending to the cast, Boris Cabrera (Marco) went to his office and wept, confiding in him that he was from a rough neighborhood in East LA and didn't want to have to go home. Boris no longer acts and is now a successful personal trainer.

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Quotes

Cassie: [approaching zoo] This is where mom works with all the exotic animals.
Marco: Exotic... Like weird chickens and stuff?

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Connections

Referenced in Atop the Fourth Wall: Titans #1 (2008)

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Soundtracks

Ask No Questions
Performed by Think Tank
Written by P. MacCormack, T. McKay, S. Clement, T. Vrhovnik and Norman Orenstein (SOCAN)

User Reviews

Oh, what this could have been...

There was so much that could have been done to make this a quality show. For one thing, get rid of that Boris kid! Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the obvious choice, as his personality and appearance were both perfect! And Gregory Smith would have been amazing as Jake- he's always the actor I imagined in that part. That said, the other actors were all pretty good choices (and I loved the Tobias pick), so no more problems there.

Next issue: If memory serves me correctly (and it probably doesn't- I only watched the first episode before giving up on it), they did a weekly or nightly half-hour show on Nickelodeon. Wrong length, wrong station. If they had done what Farscape did and made it an hour-long special on Fox or some other channel, they'd have had a lot more flexibility to do it right. Nickelodeon is for brainless cartoons- they no longer know how to handle real quality programming.

They shouldn't have done it without better funding than they had- no sci-fi/fantasy story, even one for kids/teenagers, will work on a shoestring budget. Why not gear some of that book/merchandise revenue to the show, in turn getting good ratings and making more money as you increase interest in both sets of the series? Was their marketer on sedatives?

But even with everything as it was, I believe (and if anyone reads this who has seen the show will probably agree) what lost the fanbase was its nearly complete disregard for the books. It retained the characters, the aliens and the idea of morphing- and that was about it. And it failed utterly, being cancelled not long after it began.

Animorphs was an amazingly well-written series that hooked most of us by the mix of crazy humor and emotion-wrenching drama. Whether it was plausible or even entirely original didn't matter because the author (props to Mrs. Applegate) did such a good job. If anything, the TV show hurt that. From reading the posts, a lot of kids who got a glimpse of the show decided that the books must have been just as awful (or *gasp* unaware that there even were books). The show could have been so much more- it could have contended among the best preteen/teenager programming, and been a guilty pleasure for the adults out there. But it wasn't, so I bid it a wistful but otherwise indifferent farewell. I'll stick to my original sorrow over the book series ending.