Gilligan's Planet

Infobox Television
show_name = Gilligan's Planet


caption = "Gilligan's Planet" title card
format = Animated cartoon
runtime = approx. 0:30 (per episode)
presenter = Filmation
director = Hal Sutherland
executive_producer = Lou Scheimer
voices = Bob Denver
Alan Hale, Jr.
Russell Johnson
Jim Backus
Natalie Schafer
Dawn Wells
country = USA
network = CBS
first_aired = September 18, 1982
last_aired = September 3, 1983
num_episodes = 12

Gilligan's Planet was a Saturday morning cartoon produced by the Filmation animation studio and MGM/UA Television which aired during the 1982-1983 season on CBS. It was the second animated spin-off of the classic television program "Gilligan's Island" (the first being 1974's "The New Adventures of Gilligan"), as well as the last cartoon that Filmation produced for Saturday mornings; afterwards, they produced cartoons exclusively for syndication. It was also the first Filmation series to feature the Lou Scheimer "signature" credit (as opposed to the rotating Lou Scheimer/Norm Prescott "wheel" credit which had been used since 1969).

Premise

"Gilligan's Planet" hinged on the unlikely premise that the Professor had managed to build an operational interplanetary spaceship to get the castaways of the original series off the island (despite his inability to simply repair the hole in the hull of the ship that got them to the island in the first place). True to form of the castaways' perpetual bad luck, they rocketed off into space and crash-landed on an unknown planet, which coincidentally had an atmosphere that was breathable to humans and had edible foodstuffs—in fact, the background of the planet often resembled little more than the tropical island they were stuck on all those years, but was simply recolored to make it seem more "alien". The rocket, of course, was severely damaged in the crash, and the Professor resumed his perpetual attempts to repair their only way home.

Overall, "Gilligan's Planet" represented the premise of the source material with "space" and "alien" themes. Being stranded on a planet this time, the castaways had more area to roam than on the small island of the live-action series (and by extension, the aforementioned "New Adventures" series), but due to the limited animation used on American animated series at the time, most of the backgrounds were similar if not exactly the same. Encounters with "headhunters" and other shipwrecked people became encounters with aliens of various shapes and degrees of intelligence. The only completely new element added to the series was Bumper, a cute, reptilian alien pet/sidekick for Gilligan and company (though the "cute sidekick" was itself a television animation cliché at that point).

Cast

The entire cast of "Gilligan's Island" returned to voice their characters for "Gilligan's Planet", with the exception of Tina Louise (who played Ginger Grant, "the movie star"). Dawn Wells took over Louise's role for "Gilligan's Planet", as well as continuing to perform her own character, Mary Ann Summers.

Episode list

* Amazing Colossal Gilligan
* Bumper to Bumper
* Gilligan's Army
* I Dream of Genie
* Invaders of the Lost Barque
* Journey to the Center of...Planet
* Let Sleeping Minnows Lie
* Road to Boom
* Space Pirates
* Too Many Gilligans
* Turnabout is Fair Play
* Wings
* Super Gilligan (also the same title as a "New Adventures of Gilligan" installment)

ee also

*List of Animated Spinoffs from Prime Time Shows

External links

* [http://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/Filmation_Associates/A-G/Gilligan_s_Planet/ Gilligan's Planet Cartoon Info @ Big Cartoon DataBase]
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