Saturday Night Showcase: Space Sentinels

Space Sentinels (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some of Hanna-Barbera’s superheroes have become popular figures among cartoons fans, particularly Space Ghost and Birdman, but we’ve seen others in the “Toonami” editions of Cartoon Network Presents and there may be others you aren’t aware of.

However, Filmation created their share of superheroes as well. As our Filmation tribute continues, Saturday Night Showcase looks at one of those teams, the Space Sentinels. All three of the Filmation Founders had a hand in this show about three humans snatched from Earth, given superpowers, then sent back to fight evil. With no evidence of them asking first. And you thought the Guardians of Oa were jerks.

In the first episode, the Sentinels meet their own Black Adam in the form of an evil Sentinel who (naturally) wants to rule the universe.

I give them credit for noting the improbability of one person ruling a whole universe.

Hercules would appear again as part of another Filmation super-team, the Freedom Force, where he would be joined by an animated version of another Filmation creation, Isis, and some original heroes based on famous (public domain) characters and a new character, Super Samurai. Mercury would NOT go on to be the one that taught Billy Batson in the live-action Shazam! and Astrid, an original name, would also never appear again.

Space Sentinels was a decent show. I’d point you to the DVDs but they’re out of print since BCI/Eclipse went down and nobody picked up the mantle. Hopefully the rights holder will license them out again someday.