User Reviews

Plot; Three astronauts are flung thousands of years into the future and crash land on a planet where apes are the dominant species.

There was an unusual phenomenon in the early 1970s when the Planet of the Apes franchise exploded in popularity after the films began to run on television. Companies took notice, and a merchandising boom soon followed. Action figures, bubblegum cards and comic books filled the shelves, and a live action TV series was commissioned. The latter proved to be short-lived, but that didn't stop them from greenlighting this equally short-lived animated series. More or less following the mold of the original film and the TV series, it still differs in a number of minor and not so minor ways.

The animation is limited, but the backgrounds are nicely detailed and stylized. The voice acting is stilted; particularly the three human leads. What impressed me most is the dark tone and sophisticated (for the era and format) storytelling. It begins with a debate between the apes (not all of them are apes, but why pick nits?) about whether or not human should be allowed to live. That's pretty heady stuff in an era that saw cartoons lobotomized by strict regulations.

This first episode definitely suffers when the apes aren't on screen. There's literally a four minute stretch in the middle of the episode where we get a montage of the astronauts wandering through the desert with no dialog. Given the stiff voice acting I'm not sure if that's a blessing or a curse. But when the apes show up, things liven up and I found myself enjoying the subsequent, er, monkey business.

• General Urko is voiced by Henry Corden, who would go on to take over the role of Fred Flintstone a few years later. Corden's voice is distinctly Flintstone-like here, and it's humorous when he barks out orders. I kept waiting for him to shout "Barney! My Pebbles!" or "Yabba, dabba, doo!".

• One big difference here is the portrayal of Dr. Zaius. In the films he was always the zealot who saw the humans as a threat to apekind. Here he's portrayed as wise and sympathetic to the humans, acting as a bit of a foil to Urko.

• The opening credits are jarring, disorienting and unnerving. They really do create a perfect mood for the series.

Six months after the live action 'Planet Of The Apes' television series - starring Roddy McDowall as 'Galen' - was cancelled, the series was back. Well, sort of. It went the 'Star Trek' route by becoming animated. Made by David DePatie and Friz Freleng, 'Return To The Planet Of The Apes' opens with the crew of U.S. space mission 'Venturer' passing through a time warp into the year 3979 and landing on what appears to be an uninhabited planet. Evolution has taken a different turning here and Apes, not Man, are the rulers. What few humans there are the apes use for hunting purposes. As Bill Hudson, Jeff Allen, and Judy Franklin search for food, they see a wall of flame appearing from nowhere and lightning flashing across a clear blue sky. Judy falls into a fissure in the ground. Bill and Jeff see a Mount Rushmore-like edifice with simian faces in place of those of U.S. presidents. Finding a young human woman, Nova, they notice that she is wearing dog-tags belonging to a man named Brent. He was not even born when Venturer left Earth...

Rather than slavishly copy the then-recent series, 'Return' drew its main inspiration from the movies, particularly the 1968 original and 1970 sequel 'Beneath...'. It is indeed a pity that neither Roddy McDowall and Mark Lenard were hired to provide the voices of 'Cornelius' and 'Urko' respectively. Their replacements are totally inadequate. The quality of the animation is basic, but passable. The decision to upgrade Ape City to a more Ancient Rome-like setting was a wise move, as was the decision to have the Apes driving cars and motorbikes and flying planes ( an unused idea in Rod Serling's original script ). 'Return' was shot as a serial, not a series, which must have confused viewers when 'Tunnel Of Fear' promised 'Lagoon Of Peril' would be shown the following week - it had been screened a week before! 'Return' brought satire back to Ape World. Later episodes featured them with their own music and motion pictures, such as 'The Ape Father'! Only 13 episodes were made. Presumably the Saturday morning cartoon crowd the show was aimed at found it too disturbing ( that opening pan across a desert dotted with dead upside-down humans on stakes must have worried a few parents watching ).

A good start to an enjoyable series which knocked the Tim Burton farrago into a cocked Ape helmet!

"Flames of Doom" is the first episode in the animated Return to the Planet of the Apes. If you are at all familiar with the basic Planet of the Apes storyline, not much in the first episode will surprise you. It features the basic set-up – three astronauts (one female named Judy and two males named Jeff and Bill) crash on a mysterious planet that at first seems uninhabited. While searching for food and water, they run into a group of primitive humans. But the humans are not the dominate species on the planet. Instead, apes are in charge. By the end of the episode, Judy has disappeared in an earthquake fissure, Bill has been captured by the apes, and Jeff escaped with a primitive female named Nova.

Other than setting up the rest of the series and the uncertain future of all three human characters, there's really not a lot I got out of "Flames of Doom". It's just not terribly exciting. So instead of discussing "Flames of Doom", I'll take this opportunity to write about a couple of my initial impressions of the series. First, it's really difficult to get used to Henry Corden doing the voice of General Urko. Whether he's giving orders to an underling or makes speeches to the ape council, Corden's Fred Flinstone voice is hard to take serious. Second, while I hope to get comfortable with Corden in a few episodes, I doubt I'll ever feel the same way about the animation. I wasn't expecting computer generated type images, but I do expect something more than what you'll find in this series. I'm not sure what you call this style of animation, but to me most of it looks like little more than a static background over which a camera moves attempting (in vain) to create the allusion of motion. There's nothing fluid or "animated" about any of it.

I really hope things get better as I go along. After one episode, I'm not very impressed. So far, it's not difficult to understand why Return to the Planet of the Apes lasted only 13 episodes.