Buzz Lightyear of Star Command - Wirewolf

Why look, it's October. You know what this calls for? An entire month filled with nothing but Halloween specials! Those who are allergic to vampires and werewolves should probably avoid this blog for the next month on account the episodes I do are going to be all about the things that go bump in the night (and I don't mean that claymation show) and the strange, hostile creatures that celebrate the witching hour.

Now, while you enjoy your candy corn and chocolate bars shaped like pumpkins, consider the following. Suppose they made an animated series of a character in a Pixar movie without any of the original voice actors, with a completely new cast of characters, and in a completely different style to said Pixar movie. Sounds like it'd be pretty stupid and unwatchable right?

Allow me to prove you wrong by introducing you to Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.

This show sounds like one of those things that could've been terrible, could've been a horrible blemish on the face of Disney, and could've been considered another cash-in franchise like the many direct-to-video sequels that were coming out at this time. I mean, even the premise sounds dumb. It's supposedly the TV show that Buzz Lightyear the toy was based off of, which means we're dealing with sort of a different Buzz Lightyear but not really. And he's in a crimefighting team that includes a token chick, a talking robot comic relief, and a fat janitor alien. Bound to be crap, right?

Pictured: Not crap.

Instead, it was actually a decent show, probably because they actually had Tad Stones, the man behind Darkwing Duck, working on it. The people that do remember it remember it fondly, but unfortunately, since it wasn't a Disney afternoon show, therefore that means that it doesn't have the fanbase that say, Darkwing Duck or Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. And that's a real big shame, because in the years that have passed, they managed to tighten up the writing and animation in Disney shows. This was probably one of Disney's last great shows with the spirit of the 90's coursing through its veins before Disney decided that kids really want to see live-action pop stars in sitcoms.

Yeah, Disney. I'm a tiny bit pissed that you feel that having only two animated shows running at a time does the trick. It really doesn't. One of the reasons why the 90's was so great for you is because you had variety. Come back to school, get bombarded with like six different shows. Now, if you don't like Phineas and Ferb, you're pretty much out of luck.

Also unfortunately, since Disney afternoon show DVDs apparently didn't sell as well as Disney would've hoped (well, gee, Disney, maybe if you included the uncut episodes instead of porting the cut-for-TV cuts from Toon Disney and maybe if you had just a couple of extras...), this show never got a DVD release. If I sound a little bitter, that's probably because I am, on account Disney is usually really good at releasing DVDs and Blu-Rays with all of the bells and whistles...provided that they're well-known animated films. Come on, Disney. Warner Bros. was embarrassed by Loonatics Unleashed and they gave that show a full DVD release! The entire show of Loonatics Unleashed is on DVD and yet we can't get Season 3 of Darkwing Duck.

But I'm getting off-topic and ranting about cartoon politics instead of the actual episode. Buzz Lightyear! The first episode I'm going to do of this show was going to be, as expected, one of the first episodes in the series, but then October happened and I tossed that out in favor of a Halloween episode. I went with this one first because, like a lot of my posts, I chose it because the villain and the premise sounded neat.

Allow me to introduce you to an episode named after the villain, because this is...

Wirewolf