About the Series:Staying Power
From Betamountain.org
- Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
- Staying Power
- Atypical Writers, Characters, Stories
- The Animated TV Series As Financial Disaster
Much to the bemusement of former production staff members, GR (as it's known among fans) has maintained a loyal, almost cult following in the years since 1986. The show boasts a fairly tightly knit fan community that maintains an Internet mailing list and a number of Web sites. Writers produce fan fiction, or fanfic, that continues the rangers' stories and explores new ideas. Some staff members are in touch with the fan community: three of the writers lurk on the mailing list, and others have been receptive to contacts by individual community members.
A series of 13 videotapes was released while the show was running, but at $69.95 a pop, they were outside the price range of many fans at the time, and a number of episodes were never released at all. Back then, tapes were extremely hard to come by, and many fans formed trading networks to dub free copies for each other while hoping for an official rerelease. In 2004 and 2005, Koch Vision released four DVDs featuring four episodes each. Koch released the full series in two box sets in 2008. Even more than 30 years later, it's not uncommon to find GR media and memorabilia being hawked on eBay—one more sign that the show has a small but faithful following.
Although the characters and the universe are probably the central draw, some fans also cite the show's refusal to take itself too seriously as a major attraction. Comedic stories abound, and the dialogue is liberally sprinkled with references to '80s culture, music videos, Westerns, and Japanese animation. Writers even gave Niko one line cribbed from the animated Beatles flick Yellow Submarine. Catching the in-jokes can be half the fun.
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