Toggle search
Toggle menu
3
2
4
8.4K
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command Unofficial Wiki
Toggle preferences menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command

From Buzz Lightyear of Star Command Unofficial Wiki
More actions

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (often abbreviated to BLoSC by fans) is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. As a spin-off series of the Toy Story franchise created by Pixar Animation Studios, the series follows the adventures of Buzz Lightyear, who protects the galaxy with his fellow Space Rangers.[1] In Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear is a toy from an in-universe "Saturday morning TV show" that was never actually depicted.[2] Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was created to represent that show.[1]

The Adventure Begins, which serves as the introduction to the series, was released direct-to-video on August 8, 2000. The series itself soon followed, its first-run broadcast on both UPN and ABC from October 2000 to January 2001, spanning a total of 62 episodes.

Premise

edit edit source

Taking place in a far-off galaxy,[source?] Buzz Lightyear of Star Command can be thought of as a blend of space opera and soft science fiction.[3] It pays homage to several classic science fiction franchises, such as Star Trek and Star Wars, among others.

The show follows the exploits of Buzz Lightyear, a famous and experienced Space Ranger who takes three aspiring rookies by the names of Mira Nova, Booster and XR under his wing. Together, they are known as Team Lightyear, and they patrol the galaxy battling evildoers.[1] Their base is Star Command, a military-like police force[source?] that serves as the galaxy's primary line of defense, which orbits Capital Planet, the headquarters of the Galactic Alliance.

The Galactic Alliance's main arch-nemesis is the Evil Emperor Zurg, an intergalactic menace who rules an empire of heavily-armed robots and alien races and is the galaxy's most wanted criminal.[source?] Although Team Lightyear comes across several other one-time and recurring villains during the course of the series, Zurg is the most prominent, and Buzz wants nothing more than to take him in and put a stop to his plans once and for all to ensure peace throughout the galaxy.[source?]

Development

edit edit source

Production

edit edit source
"Our show has an old-fashioned, corny quality to it. We wanted something that felt like it almost could have come out of a time capsule."
―Mark McCorklehttps://x.com/bob_schooley/status/1666172396993384449

The show was first announced as early as March 2000,[4][5] although production on it took three years in total.[6] Janice Marinelli, the president of Buena Vista Television at the time, had stated, "The success of the Toy Story movies and the fan base surrounding the characters made Buzz Lightyear an obvious choice as the heroic lead for a comedy-adventure TV series."[4] It was clear to some that the show was going to be Disney's "big gun" for Fall 2000.[7]

Tad Stones, Mark McCorkle, and Bob Schooley had barely finished producing Hercules: The Animated Series together when Stones was approached by Disney to create Buzz Lightyear of Star Command on an $8 million budget. As Stones reflected, it was not common for producers to get involved in new projects so soon, so they initially found it difficult to juggle the responsibilities of producing two shows at the same time. McCorkle and Schooley found it especially difficult, as their attention was still focused on Hercules, so Stones took it upon himself to create a preliminary picture of BLoSC, steering it towards comedy-adventure elements. However, when MacCorkle and Schooley were finally able to devote time on BLoSC, it changed drastically from the original picture Stones had painted.[8]

Ultimately, while Stones enjoyed being able to guide the story and visuals of BLoSC as a producer/director, he found it frustrating that he hadn't had much control over the storytelling aspect.[8]

Despite the series not being a joint effort between Disney and Pixar as many seem to think, Pixar acted as Disney's consultants and contributed to the show's opening sequences that featured all of Andy's toys gathering together to watch the show. Pixar was also undergoing production for Toy Story 2 during the time Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was nearing completion, and it was ultimately deemed unwise to release the show before the Toy Story 2 sequel. Despite that leading to the series not being able to be released upon its completion, it gave Stones and the others the opportunity to begin work on The Adventure Begins, which detailed the events that led to the formation of Team Lightyear. They had everything already at their disposal, from character designs to layouts and backgrounds, which meant there was an "incredible increase in production value," despite the pilot chronologically being made after they had already completed their work on the series.[9]

Crew

edit edit source
Main article: List of writers and story editors

Unfortunately, we don't know much on what the crew's tasks were besides editing and mixing audio tracks, dialogue direction, supervising production, and making sure everything ran smoothly. However, most episodes featured different writers, possibly freelancers who were hired to write each episode. Sometimes a Story Editor would also be necessary. There were also several directors who worked on the show, fluctuating every so often depending on the episode.

Below follow photographs of crew members who worked on Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, as taken by Bob Foster, one of the storyboard artists, and shown on The Animation Guild blog.

File:BuzzCrew1.jpg
 Back row, left to right: Bob Zamboni, Craig Kemplin, Dave Schwartz, unknown, Denise Koyama, Dana Landsberg, Chuck Puntuvatana, Sean Read, Sean Bishop.
Front row, left to right: Cris Collins, Troy Adomitis, unknown, Carin Ann Anderson, Vic Cook, Jung Ja Wolf, unknown, Niki Kopp, Gordon Kent.
File:BuzzCrew2.jpg
 Back row, left to right: J.K. Kim, Cris Collins, Mitch Rochon, Sharon Forward, Bob Foster, Bill Turner, Garret Ho, Bob Zamboni, unknown, Kenny McGill, John Miller, Debra Pugh, Ron Erhear.
Front row, left to right: Niki Kopp, unknown, Zoe Seals, Donna Prince, Ginny Suess, Don MacKinnon, Katherine Victor, Plamen Christov
File:BuzzCrew3.jpg
 Back row, left to right: Justin Thompson, Plamen Christov, Jim Finch, Rich Chidlaw, Marsh Lamore, unknown, John Miller, Greg Guler, unknown, Nick Filippi
Middle row, left to right: Steve Loter, unknown, Jessica Portillo, John Ahern, John Kimball, J.K. Kim
Front row, left to right: Cris Collins, Rick Evans, Mike Karafilis, Linda DeLizza, unknown, Sharon Forward, Niki Kopp

A crew member recalls how John Kimball would traditionally make espresso for them a lot of afternoons on the set, a habit of his that he held true to on every set he worked on.[10]

Voice cast

edit edit source
Main article: List of voice actors

In order to select voice actors, they had to pass by an audition, which Jamie Thomason was presumably in charge of. According to Mark McCorkle, they chose their voice actors because they had some sort of science fiction heritage to them and to bring a little fun into the series. [11]

Interesting to note is the amount of A-list voice actors that worked on the series such as Rob Paulsen, Jim Cummings, Jess Harnell and Gary Owens, who provided the opening narration for the theme music.

Animation

edit edit source
Main article: List of animation studios

Working on a tight budget meant that several animation studios worked on the show, and that the animation quality varied from episode to episode. "The Adventure Begins" was understandably the episode with the highest quality, being made after the show's completion and with the majority of the character designs and layouts already taken care of. Other episodes of high quality are "NOS-4-A2" and "Lost in Time", the only episodes animated by Walt Disney Animation (Japan), Inc. and the first two episodes in production order.

Music

edit edit source
Main article: Music

The musical score was composed by Adam Berry, who had already worked with Tad Stones, Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley on Hercules: The Animated Series prior to Buzz Lightyear, and went on to work with the latter two on series like Kim Possible and The Penguins of Madagascar.

The work Adam Berry did on the show's musical cues was extensive. He wrote and recorded twenty-one minutes of music every two weeks for over a year.[12] A soundtrack was never released, but he has some of his favorite tracks up on his personal website.

Release and reception

edit edit source

Even as early as the show's first announcement in March 2000, there were some who doubted that it would live up to the emotional depth first explored in Toy Story.[13] However, The Adventure Begins debuted as the top-selling title in home video releases in its first weeks—something unusual for such releases, though likely due to the imminent release of Toy Story 2 on home video. 4 million units were shipped out for sale, hinting at The Adventure Begins becoming the third best-selling title of the year.[14] The Adventure Begins was received positively, with some praising its humorous script and above-average quality compared to other direct-to-video releases.[15]

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was considered one of the many Disney shows that had popular appeal due to its ties to a mainstream feature—in this case, Toy Story—during its initial release.[16]

The show was one of Disney's many attempts to profit off of the Toy Story franchise, which led to "frosty relations" between Disney and Pixar over the following years, likely contributing to the 11-year gap seen between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3. As Lee Unkrich stated, "Those 11 years gave us some distance and perspective."[17]

In a podcast interview with The Animation Guild, Stones doubted whether John Lasseter, the creator of Toy Story, would have liked his original idea for the show, remarking how he had recently heard that Lasseter hated the show, despite Stones having initially pitched the idea of the show to Lasseter, Joe Ranft and other key figures involved in production of the films at the time of its creation.[9]

"I have no clue whether John would have liked my version better. I suspect not when I finally see Buzz in those little dream sequences and things like that they do in Toy Story, it was... it's plain the Big Adventure, and this—this heroic guy who could do anything... and that's not the show that could sell to our guys down at Disney. So we were trying to get the feel of Buzz Lightyear being a fish out of water that was in Toy Story, except we were doing a story where he's a fish in the water, but we had to get that humor..."
―Tad StonesThe Animation Guild: A Talk with Tad Stones, Part III[9]

Lee Unkrich, one of the film editors for Toy Story and later on film editor and co-director of the sequels, originally had concerns about the show because he believed that "traditional, flatter animation wouldn't do justice to Buzz", even though Pixar had always intended for the first Toy Story film to open with a Buzz Lightyear TV show done in traditional 2D cel animation that Andy would be watching.[18] But Unkrich ultimately decided that it didn't matter and was quoted saying that Buzz Lightyear of Star Command "could actually be the cartoon that Buzz originally came from."[2]

Awards and nominations

edit edit source
Year Award Title Recipients Result
2001 Daytime Emmy Awards[19] Special Class Animated Program[a]
  • Mark McCorkle (executive producer)
  • Bob Schooley (executive producer)
  • Tad Stones (executive producer)
  • Don Mackinnon (director)
  • Steve Loter (director)
  • Vic Cook (director)
  • Jamie Thomason (director)
 Nominated[19]
Special Class Sound Editing[a]
  • Jennifer Mertens (supervising sound editor)
  • Paca Thomas (supervising sound editor)
  • Otis Van Osten (sound effects editor)
  • Rick Hammel (sound effects editor)
  • Eric Hertsgaard (dialogue editor)
  • Robbi Smith (dialogue editor)
  • Brian F. Mars (music editor)
  • Marc S. Perlman (music editor)
  • Dominick Certo (supervising music editor)
 Won[20]
Golden Reel Awards Best Sound Editing - Television Animation - Music (for "Return to Karn")
  • Brian F. Mars (music editor)
  • Dominick Certo (music editor/scoring editor)
 Nominated
Best Sound Editing - Television Animation - Sound (for "Enemy Without a Face")
  • Jennifer Mertens (supervising sound editor)
  • Michael Gollom (supervising sound editor)
  • Otis Van Osten (sound editor)
  • Rick Hammel (sound editor)
  • Eric Hertsguaard (dialogue editor)
 Nominated
Video Premiere Awards[21] Best Animated Character Performance[b] Nominated[21]
Best Animated Video Premiere[b] Nominated[21]
Best Original Song[b] To Infinity and Beyond Nominated[21]

Episodes

edit edit source
Main article: List of episodes

Broadcast and syndication

edit edit source

There are a total of 65 episodes—when including The Adventure Begins split into three televised episodes—which aired simultaneously on two different networks. 52 episodes were exclusive to UPN's Disney One Too children's programming block, which aired from Monday to Friday afternoons at 4:00pm EST, and on Sunday mornings at 10:00am EST. 13 episodes were exclusive to ABC's Disney One Saturday Morning children's programming block, which aired on Saturday mornings at 10:30am EST.[22][23] The first episode, "The Torque Armada," first aired on UPN on October 2, 2000. The last episode, "42," first aired on ABC on January 13, 2001. Due to the episodes airing on different networks, some online sources have incorrectly split them across two separate seasons.

Including their initial broadcasts, episodes continued to air on ABC and UPN during the following dates:

  • UPN: October 2, 2000 – August 29, 2003[23][24]
  • ABC: October 14, 2000 – September 8, 2001[25]

Reruns aired on three separate Disney-owned networks during the following dates:

  • Toon Disney: August 31, 2003 – August 11, 2007[26]
  • Jetix: February 16, 2004 – August 11, 2007[27]
  • Disney Channel: June 5, 2006 – May 16, 2008[28]

Missing production codes

edit edit source

When examining the production codes of each episode (excluding The Adventure Begins) there are 66 in total. However, some of them (specifically codes 005, 012, 055, 065) are unaccounted for. There is no information available to explain what happened to these episodes, as they were never included in the first-run broadcast or during any subsequent reruns.

Media

edit edit source

To be added.

Home media

edit edit source

To be added.

Continuity

edit edit source

With Toy Story

edit edit source

John Lasseter, the creator of Toy Story, always imagined Buzz as the "ultimate cop in space" and that depiction is faithfully represented in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command with his famous exploits at Star Command.[29] Although Toy Story came first chronologically, being released in 1995, it was always implied that Buzz Lightyear of Star Command existed within the film series as a Saturday Morning show and is the origin of Buzz Lightyear and his toy franchise.[2] With the release of "The Adventure Begins" on VHS and DVD and the toys eager to watch "the new Buzz Lightyear movie", that belief is further strengthened, despite the in-universe continuity issue of "The Adventure Begins" coming after the show in Toy Story.

Broadcast order versus production order

edit edit source
Main article: List of ambiguities and continuity errors

When shows are released for syndication, the episodes are usually not aired in the order they were produced. Thus, one of the biggest issues in the series is episodes airing out of chronological order, making events that relate to one another conflict. A notable example includes the episodes "Wirewolf" and "Revenge of the Monsters." "Revenge of the Monsters" is implied to take place not long after the events of "Wirewolf," but due to the episodes having initially aired on different networks, most reruns have "Wirewolf" taking place much later.

For more in-depth examples, read our list of ambiguities and continuity errors.

Credits

edit edit source

To be added.

edit edit source

Notes

edit edit source
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Specifically for the animated television series, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Specifically for the animated direct-to-video release, The Adventure Begins.

References

edit edit source
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 From official documentation retrieved from press kit releases about the series, which can be viewed here.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Harris, Elise. Out of the Toy Box: Toy Story 2 Interview with Lee Unkrich. Archived from the original on June 25, 2011. Retrieved on July 28, 2011.
  3. ↑ Wilson, Mark. What kinds of Sci-Fi are there?. About.com. Archived from the original on June 27, 2013. Retrieved on October 12, 2011.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Schneider, Michael (2000-03-02). Toy's Buzz Lightyear to TV. Variety. Archived from the original on February 12, 2025. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  5. ↑ Linan, Steven (2000-03-04). Arts and Entertainment Reports From the Times, News Services and the Nation's Press. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  6. ↑ Sellers, John. To Saturday Morning and Beyond!. Archived from the original on December 29, 2025. Retrieved on December 29, 2025.
  7. ↑ Lowry, Brian (2000-03-11). WB Casts Its Dollars With Animated X-Men. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Tad Stones Interview. Retrieved on August 11, 2011. [Dead link]
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 The Animation Guild: A Talk with Tad Stones, Part III
  10. ↑ Massie, Jeff (2008-06-04). Disney TVA's Buzz Crew in the Wayback Machine. The Animation Guild: TAG Blog. Archived from the original on June 27, 2013. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  11. ↑ Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Behind the Scenes
  12. ↑ Paraphrased quote from an e-mail conversation: "I do have lists of all the cues but not in one place. It's a lot of music. I wrote and recorded 21 minutes of music every 2 weeks for over a year."
  13. ↑ Beyond a joke. The Guardian (2000-03-08). Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  14. ↑ Hettrick, Scott (2000-08-17). Straight-to-vid toon Buzz-ing to No. 1. Variety. Archived from the original on February 12, 2025. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  15. ↑ King, Susan (2000-08-10). Buzz Is Back. Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on February 12, 2025. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  16. ↑ Hall, Wendy Jackson (2001-03-25). Riding the Shockwaves. Variety. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  17. ↑ Siegel, Tatiana (2010-11-12). Veteran toon franchises wrap it up. Variety. Archived from the original on February 12, 2025. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  18. ↑ From Toy Story: The Ultimate Toy Box Edition, which featured The Making of Toy Story: Abandoned Alternate Opening on Disc 3: Supplemental Features.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Bernstein, Paula (2001-03-13). Regis tracks two Emmys. Variety. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  20. ↑ Grego, Melissa (2001-05-14). ABC, PBS most creative at Emmys. Variety. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Hettrick, Scott (2001-02-25). Homevideo huzzahs. Variety. Retrieved on February 11, 2025.
  22. ↑ From official documentation retrieved from press kit releases about the series, which can be viewed here.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 2000–01 United States network television schedule (daytime) on Wikipedia
  24. ↑ 2002–03 United States network television schedule (daytime) on Wikipedia
  25. ↑ List of programs previously broadcast by ABC (American TV network) on Wikipedia
  26. ↑ List of programs broadcast by Toon Disney on Wikipedia
  27. ↑ List of programs broadcast by Jetix (block) on Wikipedia
  28. ↑ List of programs broadcast by Disney Channel on Wikipedia
  29. ↑ Harris, Elise. Tooning in. Archived from the original on June 27, 2011. Retrieved on July 28, 2011.
Retrieved from "https://bloscwiki.net/w/index.php?title=Buzz_Lightyear_of_Star_Command&oldid=11251"