Friday’s Rag Tag Crew: Pirates of Dark Water

Hanna-Barbera produced a lot of cheap-looking cartoons over the years but in 1991 they literally pushed the boat out with an ambitious fantasy epic series. The show began with a five-episode pilot with a story that progressed over each episode. Later episodes were more self-contained but the show was an early attempt at more ambitious storytelling in the format of kid’s cartoons.

When thinking about rag-tag crews off on adventures, my examples kept turning to science fiction. Of course, fantasy has its fair share of motley bands of adventurers but whether it is Bilbo and Thorin’s dwarves or your average D&D party, they lack a key component to be a rag-tag crew: they don’t have a ship.

Pirates of Dark Water added the other genre element: PIRATES! Prince Ren and his crew of “misfits” are hunting treasure and in turn being hunted by the evil pirate Bloth. Ren has the (stolen) Wraith, an elegant ship with an outrageously flamboyant sail that can double as a kind of parachute/glider. The speed and agility of the Wraith is the only advantage the crew has to avoid Bloth’s far more monstrous ship, the Maelstrom.

For those of us plotting genre distinctions, there is a thin science-fictional aspect to the show. The opening credits tell us that it is all set on the alien planet of Mer. Beyond that, it is very much a fantasy setting with magic, monsters and an epic quest. However, the scope of the story and the need for a partly self-contained story each episode leads to a very rushed back story in the initial episodes.

We first meet Ren manning a lighthouse in a storm. From there he seas a man piloting a small boat that is being overwhelmed by waves. He rescues the man, but he dies in his arms but not before telling Ren that he holds the destiny of the ruined city of Octopon (which is just near by). Returning to the lighthouse, a second character explains that the man was Ren’s father, that Ren is a prince and that the jewel he now holds is a compass to help him find a city of treasures that will restore Octopon. It’s a lot of backstory in a short time and that’s just the beginning. As the story progresses over the series we discover the evil pirate Bloth not only is also after the treasures but that it was he who ruined Octopon. That plot line though just fuels the basic plot dynamic of individual episodes (Bloth chasing Ren). The bigger story is the eponymous Dark Water: patches of evil fluid in the ocean that consumes ships and which emperils the whole planet.

The crew of misfits are introduced one by one in the early episodes. First is Niddler, the standard comical cowardly creature sidekick. A “monkey bird”, Niddler is a brightly coloured flying pirate with a parrot beak, who first appears as a member of Bloth’s crew. Later we discover he was one of many enslaved monkey birds and there is a whole episode where Ren helps destroy the monkey bird slave trade. Loyal but cautious and food-motivated, Niddler was initially voiced by Roddy Macdowell.

The other two crew members come with the ship. Ioz is himself a pirate and his offer of a ship for Ren is on the promise of treasure. The ship itself (the Wraith) is stolen. Later, Ioz and Ren discover that a woman (Tula) has stowed away on the ship. Her initial explanation is that she wanted a change from waiting tables in a tavern. However, she is actually on a mission to recover a kind druid/magician (called in the show “ecomancers”) from Bloth. Later, Tulas will also discover she is an ecomancer.

The episodes themselves are hit-and-miss. The attempt to incorporate a layered story arc within a more standard kid’s adventure cartoon can make the stories feel very rushed and prone to info-dumps. Yet, overall it had a refreshingly original premise and really interesting designs of people, ships and creatures.

Famously, the show simply runs out of episodes long before the story heads to any satisfying conclusion. At 21 episodes, it is more than a fragment of a show but the backstory was one that really required Ren to find all the treasures and finally confront the menace of Dark Water.

And yet the show remains not only incomplete but difficult to find. A DVD collection was released but in limited regions. Apparently, Amazon has streamed episodes but only in the US. I found parts of the series available on the dodgy Daily Motion video site (dodgy in so far as they are of dubious quality and don’t appear to be official releases). In an age where large corporations are eager to mine IP for all its worth and sell nostalgia back to Gen-X et al, it’s weird that Pirates of Dark Water has not been revived.