Fantasy used to be just for nerds and gamers. Dragons, sorcery, quests: all that belonged in dark, poorly lit basements, around a plastic table where you and your friends-by-proxy donned personas, rolled dice, and pretended. That’s hardly the case anymore.
Perhaps we have 80s cartoons to thank for this mainstreaming of fantasy, at least in part. Escapism came in many forms back then, from shape-shifting robots to holographic pop singers and a never-ending supply of anthropomorphic animals. For the nerds (myself included) who didn’t feel enough connection to the formulaic good guy/bad guy shoot-ups of G.I. Joe and company, they had their needs catered to in a variety of shows set around magic and fantasy lore.
It’s not hard too imagine that those same kids raised on a steady diet of magical weapons, heroes, and battles fought in Eternia and Thundera are now at the creative helm of many modern fantastical narratives we enjoy today. Of course, for every He-Man there were dozens of failed attempts to capture the same fantasy fan base (to say nothing of merchandise sales).
Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light, Defenders of the Earth, The New Adventures of Flash Gordon, and Captain N: The Game Master—to name just a few—may have niche fan bases but they were hardly beloved pop cultural phenomena on the scale of He-Man or ThunderCats. Based on the familiar trope of a band of do-gooders fighting evil through various mystical scenarios, many of these shows were unceremoniously cancelled early, with few home video releases available for future generations.
One of these mostly-forgotten gems of Saturday mornings that I recall particularly fondly is Dungeons & Dragons.
Produced by Marvel Productions, the cartoon first premiered in 1983 and ran for 3 seasons, ending in 1985 with a total of 27 episodes. It follows six children who are magically transported through an amusement park roller coaster ride (why not?) into the world of, you guessed it, dungeons and dragons. This was all explained in the opening credits, a feature sorely missed these days. Come on people, a little plot expo wouldn’t kill you!
As with its source material, the hugely popular tabletop RPG invented by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (Gygax consulted on and co-produced the series), the children are each assigned a role to play, with a specific skill set and weapons that will help them in their quest to get home.
Hank, the eldest (with surfer Ken doll blond locks), is the ranger, armed with a powerful bow and arrows. Bobby, the youngest, is the barbarian, complete with Viking helmet and a Bamm-Bamm Rubbles-worthy club. Presto (real name Albert) is the magician and resident bespectacled, fumbling nerd. Sheila, Bobby’s older sister (despite differing hair colors) is the thief with a cloak of invisibility. Spoiled brat Eric is the cavalier with a resilient shield, but no sword for some reason. Finally, there is Diana, the token character of color, sporting a fur bikini and javelin/vaulting pole, which makes her the acrobat.
They are accompanied by the obligatory cute factor in the form of Uni the unicorn (yup), a Bambi-eyed My Little Pony knockoff who, despite coming from a world chock-full of talking animals, can only whinny, whimper, and occasionally bleat out a warning or incantation.
The children are guided through their journey by the Dungeon Master, a figure so blatantly based on Yoda it’s a wonder George Lucas didn’t sue. While he doesn’t speak in the same screwy syntax, he does converse in riddles, appearing and disappearing as he sees fit. Dungeon Master often promises the reward of getting the party back home but ends up teaching them a PSA-style “valuable lesson” more often than not, with the possibility of escape from the Realm of Dungeons and Dragons put off until their next adventure. His powers seem limitless so it’s often a wonder the kids don’t just pin Dungeon Master down and demand he return them home. Have they never seen The Wizard of Oz?
While every episode has its fair share of villainous antagonists, none are greater than the main man himself: Venger. Resplendent in floor-length gown, bat wings, and singularly phallic horned head, he gives off a distinct drag queen-does-Voldermort cosplay vibe. Venger must capture the children and steal their weapons in order to grow his own power and take over the realm. Makes sense.
Episodes are fairly routine and formulaic, with occasional variances. The children are teased by Dungeon Master with a new path to their prize (going home), but first they must complete a task that involves traveling the Realm, battling various dangers, and making moral decisions. They repeatedly come so close to returning to their own world, it’s patently ridiculous—but in the end they always decide to stay behind at the last minute, either to help a friend they made along the way or defeat the monster du jour.
For a children’s show airing between commercials for cereal and Care Bears, Dungeons & Dragons dealt with some pretty frightening stuff. Many of the secondary villains, often lifted from the original game, were downright terrifying!
Bloodthirsty spider queens, multi-eyed monsters, slime creatures, and demons hiding in the shadows were all ferociously rendered—none more than Tiamat, the hydra-headed queen of dragons. This bundle of nightmares had multiple heads, each capable of breathing out a different element (fire, ice, gas, etc.) and served as not only a common enemy for the children and Venger, but also as a chance to unleash jump scares on the kids, both on screen and at home. Tiamat’s distorted, screeching voice may sound a little corny today, but at the time it put Skeletor’s nasal whining to shame—thank god I had my Teddy Ruxpin blanket to protect me.
Death itself was not taboo. In a semi-infamous episode, “The Dragon’s Graveyard,” the children actually contemplate “destroying” Venger in order to finally get home. They stand up to Dungeon Master and demand that he explain how it can be done. By teaming up with Tiamat, they lure Venger to the titular desolate graveyard (shown initially with zero backing music, another rarity in this kinds of animation) for what is essentially a final showdown of good versus evil. Heavy stuff.
Let’s see them do that on G.I. Joe! (Yeah, yeah they “killed” Duke in the movie but that’s a different story—no one ever pulled a gun on Cobra Commander to essentially put an end to it all.) Apparently, CBS’s Standards and Practices had a field day with this plotline, nearly shelving the episode entirely. I can’t imagine a script like that would get a pass today.
Like many other cartoons of its era and genre, the series was cancelled without a definitive conclusion. Fortunately, the original screenwriter, Michael Reaves, published the final script, titled “Requiem,” on his website for all to see. It was even a bonus extra on the (now out of print) first edition DVD collection, performed as a radio play. Without spoiling anything, it offers answers to the lingering questions brought up in the series, reveals some surprising secrets, and presents the children with one last chance to go home…in exchange for completing just one more final quest.
Unlike other semi-fantastical shows like Transformers and Smurfs, Dungeons & Dragons seemed to lack the mass popularity I’ve always felt it deserved. There was barely any merchandise generated (who wouldn’t want a Uni plush toy?), no spinoffs, and you may be hard pressed to find anyone who remembers the show clearly enough to provide details beyond “those kids wandering around with a unicorn.” Online, its fandom is definitely present in the the ways you’d expect: there’s fan fiction, fan art, and the occasional cosplay costume on Instagram.
But when compared to its contemporaries, Dungeons & Dragons feels like the forgotten bastard child of 80s animation. It’s the Black Cauldron of its day (which is kind of fitting, since there’s even a moment in “The Dragon’s Graveyard” where Venger conjures up a skeletal army of the dead, bearing an eerie similarity to The Horned King.) So why doesn’t it have more of a following?
Buy the Book
The Starless Crown
Along with the nostalgic praise online, the show gets its fair share of scathing criticism, mainly from actual D&D players who dismiss it as a poor imitation or watered-down version of their beloved game. While I have no personal experience playing D&D, I wonder if these criticisms shed light on what hurt this show: it suffered from an identity crisis.
When it comes to adaptations, it helps to either stay true to the spirit of the source material or veer boldly off into a new own path—not try to have it both ways.
In a sense, this conundrum seems to reflect the choices faced by the protagonists each week. The children continually had to choose between the familiar and the unknown—to constantly decide whether or not to go home or stay and fight the battles in this new, fantastical world.
Today, with the mainstreaming of geek culture, the fantastic has become the familiar. Comic book adaptations mean box office gold, critics be damned. Nostalgia seems to fuel sub-par remakes and lazy re-imaginings of beloved characters. Every over-hyped new fantasy project is faced with a ready-made legion of expert naysayers, detractors, and minutiae-obsessed fact-checkers.
Adaptations can be great, but it’s easy to lose focus on the importance of facing new challenges and creating new narratives. Whether you loved Dungeons & Dragons, never watched it, or thought it was derivative nonsense, the key question at the heart of the show still stands: do you take the easy path or forge your own way? I’d like to think that there are six kids out there still searching.
Originally published in December 2016.
Reneysh Vittal is a writer, editor and cultural critic. His work has appeared on VICE, Narratively and The Rumpus. Read more work at his website and follow him on Twitter @ReneyshV
My understanding is that it had much more popularity when aired outside the US. Not going to try to embed a link here but there’s a relatively recent car commercial from Brazil that uses the cast and characters
I always thought this should be lauded for it’s positive representation of the female characters. Sure, both Diana and Sheila’s outfits are definitely cheese-cakey, but Diana was represented as level-headed and wise and a natural leader, the default go to person in lieu of the burly blond archer dude (Hank), and Sheila was resourceful and thoughtful and protective over her little brother. They weren’t just damsels in distress who always needed rescue. That in and of itself was remarkable. And while you call Diana the token person of color, the fact that she was there at all was marvelous, let alone that they made her such a strong character.
And I still get a frisson of a thrill from the episode when mighty Tiamat the Dragon made her film debut because that was pure awesome.
Mark Evanier was also involved in the show’s early development. He has posted on his blog about writing the series bible and the pilot episode, but had no further involvement. He has also posted about the “urban legend” that there was in fact a “final episode,” and that he’s met and corresponded with people who swear they remember seeing it on TV. As I recall, he attributed that to a couple of episodes where the kids get to see “home,” but are somehow stopped from returning.
Probably the strangest episode I can remember is one involving military people from different historical periods being drawn into the Dungeonworld, including, incredibly, a Luftwaffe pilot flying an accurately drawn Stuka dive-bomber complete with black crosses (but no swastika on the tailfin).
I was extremely fond of this series as a kid, though some elements definitely wouldn’t fly nowadays — for that matter, I’m surprised they were broadcast at the time. I’m thinking specifically of the “Beauty and the Beast”-type episode (don’t recall the name) where two adults nearly marry two of the children: a sorceress persuaded Eric to marry her, but it was secretly to solidify the spell she’d cast on the local ruler to look like an ugly creature with a speech impediment; said ruler asked Sheila to become his queen after she broke the spell, which occurred as Eric and the sorceress were at the altar and the finalisation of the marriage being spoken. Sheila turned down the wedding proposal in favour of staying with her friends to get back home.
@3: IIRC, there was an episode where they did in fact make it back home, but Venger pursued them through whatever means they used and began destroying the amusement park (thankfully closed and empty because they happened to arrive at night). The kids made the difficult choice to return to the D&D realm so Venger would follow them back there, since it was them he was after, and it worked.
In Brazil, till the early 2000s, it was still a very popular and beloved animation, thanks to multiple reruns, and widely aknoweldged outside geek circles. It’s today part of a nation wide nostalgia.
But because here the name of the show was CAVERNA DO DRAGÃO (Dragon’s Cave) , no one links it directly to the game DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.
We have our own fantasy inspired RPG though, named TORMENTA – That can be best described as Final Fantasy meets Lovecrafftian Cosmic Horror.
I remember this show, it ran right before Thundarr The Barbarian!!!!! in my area. It wasn’t bad, it was just terribly limited by the nature of kid’s programming.
I remember it well. It was okay but Presto was super annoying. Never able to do any decent magic at all, which was a big turn off.
The story I always remember hearing about this show was that Standards and Practices had a rule at the time that “the one who doesn’t go along with the group must always be wrong”–which would be Eric the Cavalier in this case. And lo and behold, the story would always prove Eric to be wrong, but a retrospective view has Eric being in the right more the once (maybe more often than not), as well as hating that rule for its own sake.
It should be mentioned that the final episode was scripted, but never produced…
Until fairly recently, by a fan group that used a radio play version of the script with a modified ending:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1_6SeRRflo&t=0s
I had very few friends when younger but was introduced to D&D at Boy Scout camp. I fell in love with all things TSR after that. I loved this show, watched it every Saturday, as it was the closet I ever came to “playing” in an RPG with “friends” til I got to college. I had totally forgotten about Uni, though. Don’t really think that is a bad thing, though. Annoying bugger.
I think there must be some sort of Mandela Effect in operation here. Not only do I clearly remember a last episode where they end up back at the funfair and are reunited with their families, but I remember a penultimate episode that wrapped up Venger’s storyline by having Dungeon Master cast a spell on him that turned him good.
Mind you, I also seem to remember an episode where they get sent to D&D land for the second time…
As @5 mentioned it is quite big here in Brazil, it is part of non-fandom conversation markers and almost everybody understands its references, last year a car company made a TV commercial using its characters (for those that want to see just search for “Renault Caverna do Dragao”)
@8 Regarding Standards & Practices, that was another reason why there were so many Sword & Sorcery/Fantasy shows on at this time: There were rules in effect about not depicting “realistic” weapons or “imitatable violence.” So, that’s why most weapons in those series were “fantasy” weapons, most often formed of “light” (like Hank’s bow & arrows), that could not be mistaken for the real thing.
For me, it’s the magic bow & arrows. I remember thinking that was the coolest weapon ever. I was 8-10 when this aired, right in the target demo, but I don’t remember much else about it. I know I watched it, but not a lot – I think it’s because my parents weren’t too keen on Saturday morning cartoons in general, and I wasn’t allowed to sit in front of the TV from 6 am until 11 lol
I wonder if Quag Keep played a role in the show’s genesis? It also featured people from our world being drawn into a fantasy world, specifically Andre Norton’s version of Gygax’s Greyhawk. Some important differences: the QK characters were adults, and their minds got overwritten by their characters.
Given Gygax’s, uh, let’s call them extremely dated views on various matters, I am going to assume he didn’t have a lot input on the characters of Sheila and Diana.
This was a staple of my … well, can’t say “childhood”, but my high school years. (After having previously been a fan of both Thundarr and Land of the Lost, and being succeded eventually by Blackstar.) I do have the fancy boxed set DVD set that they originally released (which included a booklet that statted up the heroes and Venger for … was it 3e?), and have been rewatching it; I’d love to see it get a Blu-ray release, or even streaming (if remastered in HD), but I assume it’d be a licensing nightmare these days.,
Loved Dungeons and Dragons. It was quite big here in the UK, certainly many of my friends remember it and nostalgia always prompted us to wonder if the kids got home and somehow collectively we missed the final episode until the Internet came along to tell us otherwise.
@8 My wife and i loved the show when we were kids and got the DVDs when they came out. More often than not Eric’s mistrust of situations turns out to be at least partially correct.
I love this show. It was shown in the teatime children’s stream on BBC1, so I used to watch it when I came home from school. Years later, I read the series bible, the pdf of which was included as an extra in the dvd box set, and the depth with which the characters and their relationships was fleshed out there was so much more than what it was possible to explore within the constraints of a half hour show censored for kids. It made me yearn for a novel, where those aspects could be explored in more detail.
Also, I fondly remember Dark Water, which I think was by Hanna-Barbera, and cancelled too early.