The Pirates of Dark Water

This show was such a good fantasy action/adventure with great effort put into both its animation and its world-building and had an all-star cast as well.

But I guess that was what ended up prematurely ending our adventure with prince Ren and his loyal crew of misfits in the search of the thirteen treasures of Rule and the fight against the villainous pirate Bloth and the overall baddie of dark water. Only twenty-one episodes were aired, and what we got was excellent but now unfinished.

The Pirates of Dark Water remains one of the saddest cancellations of a TV-show, because every minute of the show was dedicated to building this imaginative world with its own creatures, clothing, language, culture and we could've got so much more of that and fulfill the quest.

Just to clarify a few things...What became "The Pirates of Dark Water" originally aired as the mini-series "Dark Water". It lasted one week and ran in the after-school slot on Fox starting on a Monday and finishing on the following Friday. This was during what I like to call "the golden era" of Fox. (The Simpsons, In Living Color, etc.) Anyway, here on IMDb it credits Roddy McDowall as the voice of Niddler for all 21 episodes of the series. This isn't correct. He was actually the voice of Niddler for the original mini-series and NOT for the ensuing series. His voice, in my opinion, was way cooler than that contributed by Frank Welker. (Sorry Frank) Welker's whinier version of the Niddler voice was dubbed onto the five original episodes when it was released for Saturday morning television. A lot of people didn't come to know the series until its Saturday morning incarnation and, therefore, never had the pleasure of hearing McDowall's Niddler. I remember being extremely disappointed watching the series and hearing a different, less cultivated voice. It really changed the character completely. Unfortunately, none of the uploads that I've encountered on the internet are of the original mini-series. Also, as of January 2009, it seems that the great fan site piratesofdarkwater.net is now regrettably defunct.

I rented this on VHS, then bought the toys, then collected the comics, it was so good. I never knew there was a TV show until after it was gone and unavailable. I'd buy it on DVD in a second.

The concept was fairly unique, dark water taking over the world and the hero going on a quest for magical items to stop its progress. It was like a fantasy take on pirates of the Spanish Main. The ships had really neat concepts, like the hero's ship which could glide for short distances, gigantic waterfalls in the ocean, and some sort of gas gun that worked by stimulating a living creature to produce knockout gas. The main bad guy, Bloth, had a ship which was actually a gargantuan carcass of a long dead sea creature, so it looked cool as well.

It had the same set of characters as a lot of fantasy films, close to Star Wars, but the characters were amazingly three dimensional for a cartoon. Niddler was likable, but you were never sure he would be on your side when the going got rough, and not in a typical cowardly save-his-own-skin type of way, but a maybe-he-really-is-evil type of way.

"The Pirates of Dark Water" has to be one of the most overlooked animated shows ever. It is so much fun, unique and very original. Sadly, the show got axed before the story had resolved fully, so it was a real shame that something so good ended feeling incomplete. That said, I liked the idea of the plot, and the episode ideas revolving around it. Dark water threatening to take over the world, and a hero seeking to retrieve the magical items used to prevent it, that is quite an intriguing concept. The music is wonderful and the episodes are full of adventure, humour and even swashbuckling. The scripts were surprisingly mature and has some good morals. The animation is amazingly detailed, very vibrant in colour and detailed in character features and backgrounds. And the characters are great, Ren is a very likable hero very like Luke SkyWalker, and Bloth is a great adversary, quite a complex character if you really think about it. And Tula is beautiful. These characters were brought to life by a terrific voice cast, especially Brock Peters as Bloth who shows a good deal of menace, but also from Jodi Benson, George Newbern, Frank Welker, Hector Elizondo, Jim Cummings and Tim Curry. In conclusion, this is a truly great show, that I feel was unfairly treated. It is better than a vast majority of the animated shows airing now. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This was a great show!!

On first glance, it may seem a bit dorky and juvenile.

However, if one actually watches all the episodes in order, they have a good story to tell.

If you can ignore the blatant morality imposed on all American cartoons [can never kill the bad guy, even if he just tried to kill you for the 10th time], then this is a REALLY good cartoon. Serialized and everything.

The story continues from one episode to the next, yet abruptly stops without any conclusion. That is a real letdown and disappointment. Even Cartoon Network has commented on this in a humour commercial.