In the present day, when Disney is releasing Star Wars films, TV series, and spinoff media as fast as, or even faster than, audiences can cope with, it is hard to believe that in the wake of 1983's release of Return of the Jedi, demand for Star Wars was far, far greater than the supply. With Lucasfilm leaving these dollars on the table, plenty of other companies jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon to try to grab themselves a piece of the action.
Of course this had been going on ever since the first Star Wars film exploded onto cinema screens, leading to sci-fi imitators such as Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, helping to get the Star Trek film series going, and even causing films in other genres to get sci-fied up with added pewpewpew lasers, such as in Krull, or when James Bond went into space in Moonraker.
While all of these were like Star Wars, in their own way, none of them were Star Wars. And by the mid-1980s there was an audience of kittens for whom Star Wars had always been there. They wanted Star Wars, the real thing, or as close to the real thing as they could get. In that context Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan wouldn't have counted (despite being the best film evar), but Caravan of Courage would.
This, then, is the world that gave us Starchaser The Legend of Orin. Now I'm not going to claim that Starchaser is a ripoff of Star Wars (you can find plenty of other reviewers on the internets who will, mew), but we mustn't forget the environment of 1985 that Starchaser came out into, and the influence of Star Wars upon it is impossible to ignore. It could never have taken the form it did without Star Wars, if indeed it would have existed at all...
The film starts with some captive mannys being made to do mining like they're in a Terry Nation script, with some of them getting their shirts off like Blake in Horizon. This is a promising start, purr.
Orin is one of the mannys. We can tell at once that he is a main character because he has the most fabulous '80s hair out of all of them. The robots guarding the mannys look a bit like Hordak's robots, and are introduced as obvious baddys when they whip a miner. Orin gets into a fight with a couple of robots, and is literally 'saved by the bell' that rings to summon them all to a meeting.
The mannys at the meeting start shouting for "Zygon" which I at first thought meant that they were about to watch a Doctor Who DVD and were voting for the one they wanted to get put on.
Zygon is actually the main baddy (and why he is named after the aliens from Terror of the Zygons is never even referred to, never mind explained, mew). We can tell at once he is a baddy from the scary mask he wears, and also the way he emerges out of a giant skull with fire behind him. He is actually there to give the mannys a motivational speech about mining more crystals, ending with
"So dig harder, or die!"
We are less than five minutes into the film and already it is giving out a pretty strong anti-capitalist message, not something I was necessarily expecting to see here.
Orin is back mining when he finds a sword in the stone. An old manny seems to recognise it, but he is soon killed by a robot after telling Orin only to hide it and that the baddys must not get it.
The sword then begins to play a hologram recording of an old manny, looking not dissimilar to Slartibartfast, who tells the watching mannys
"There is a world above, a magnificent universe."
encouraging them to escape, then adds, cryptically
"Find the blade."
and when the recording ends and the manny disappears, the sword's blade also disappears, leaving only the hilt.
Orin and his friend Elan are inspired by this to try to escape to the "outside world." They are followed by Cally, who is Orin's brother, a small, blind manny, and nothing to do with Cally from Blakes 7. The three of them get spotted and chased by some robots, in a short but decently exciting action sequence.
Cally gets left behind, while Orin and Elan escape out of the mine into a sci-fi base of grey metal walls, hexagonal like the Liberator's. You know, there are definitely more parallels to Blakes 7 than I was expecting to find, even if they are in minor (or should that be miner? lol) ways.
Orin and Elan get captured by robots, and Zygon decides that, before he kills them, he will show them his face, which is supposedly some big secret that he wouldn't tell anyone unless he was about to kill them anyway. He takes off his scary mask to reveal that he is a grey-skinned alien, then he strangles Elan and she goes
Before he can strangle Orin as well, Zygon notices "the sword with no blade" and is distracted by it long enough to allow Orin to run away. The robots shoot at Orin but they accidentally hit a big pile of crystals instead, which explode. The roof collapses on Orin, and Zygon assumes he is also ded, but he isn't.
Orin realises that if Zygon is a baddy, then his commandment to the miners to
"Never dig up. Up is hell"
is a lie, so he does the opposite in order to escape. When he reaches the outside world, Orin sees the stars for the first time. With tears in his eyes he says to himself
"It's not a lie!"
because now he knows it to be the truth, rather than having to take it only as an article of faith. This is quite an emotional moment, and is followed by a short montage of Orin exploring this new world he finds himself in, as he crosses a number of alien landscapes.
But we can't go for too long without an action scene, so Orin meets (and gets captured by) some horrible half-alien-half-robots who want his "body parts" for themselves. They fall out and argue amongst themselves when they find the sword hilt and each wants it, until one of them cuts another in half with the sword even though it seemingly still has no blade. Then their leader impales itself on the sword's blade, which is revealed (well... sort of) to be invisible as the leader's blood runs down it.
Orin gets the sword and runs away, and is pursued by the remaining creatures.
He is rescued by Space-Sinatra Dagg Dibrimi, who mistaiks Orin for a rival smuggler. Dagg then gets attacked by a big green monster and Orin rescues him using the sword to slice at it.
"Listen Water-Snake - I saved you; you saved me. We're even. Now beat it."
Dagg is a scoundrel, so doesn't want to team up with Orin straight away. Besides, he already has a sidekick - the computer on his spaceship, called Arthur. Wait, there's a character called Arthur but he isn't the same character as has a sword that he pulled out of a stone? Confused cat is confused.
Orin has nothing better to do, so he follows Dagg around anyway. A small glowing insect that Dagg calls a "starfly" starts following them too. A patrolling robot spaceship flies overhead and pewpewpews at Dagg and Orin, so they run back to Dagg's spaceship where Arthur shoots it down with their own pewpewpew lasers.
Arthur is sort of a cross between Zen and Orac - while he is the ship's computer, he has a similar argumentative attitude to Orac's whenever Dagg asks him to do anything.
Their ship takes off and flies towards a city. Orin has, of course, never seen a city before.
"What is that?""That, my little Water-Snake, is where I'm about to do my business."
That sentence has a different meaning when you're a cat, lol!
The ship is spotted by the baddys and gets shot at, leading to an action sequence that could have been inspired by any one of a number of scenes, all from the Star Wars trilogy.
It turns out Dagg has some robots of his own, which he uses to hide behind when he leaves his ship to steal some crystals, all the while still being shot at by baddy robots. Dagg is clearly supposed to fill the Han Solo role in this film's line up of characters, but when he's doing this heist he actually reminds me more of Avon. Purr. Gamma Longcat says that a lot of things remind me of Avon, and he's right. He's a clever cat, and his cleverness reminds me of Avon. Purr.
Zygon comes out and pewpewpews all Dagg's robots. Orin distracts Zygon so that Dagg can get away and, because all of his own robots have been destroyed, Dagg grabs a non-combatant robot who happened to be nearby to use as his new robot shield, even taking her onto the spaceship along with Orin when they escape.
Zygon is left behind with the knowledge that Orin is still alive. He says to himself
"It is him. A Kakan has returned."
although we don't get to know who or what a "Kakan" is yet.
The ship flies off into space where Dagg reprograms the captured "fembot" to be friendly in a manner that is coded to be distressingly like a sexual assault played for laughs. This is a scene that definitely wasn't OK even taking into account that this was made in the less enlightened times of the 1980s. The level of sexism on display here I wouldn't even expect to see in some of the worst sci-fi of the era, and it is utterly unnecessary to see it here in a film aimed at kittens. Well... Ben Steed might put it in a script, but even he would think twice about making it a komedy scene.
They fly to a planet with a silly name, which Dagg says is a "den of thieves." He decides to continue his villainous behaviour by selling the "fembot" to a slave dealer, and then goes on to a brothel to meet with a highly dubious ethnic stereotype who Dagg tries to sell his stolen crystals to. I think this might be the same planet where Avon got captured and sold as a slave in Assassin, it certainly has a similar (and thus similarly dodgy) aesthetic.
Orin has somehow learned the "fembot's" name is Silica between scenes. Hers isn't even the worst example in this film of characters not being properly introduced to the viewers - it is over 12 minutes after Dagg first appears before his full name is mentioned. I think of all the main characters, only Zygon gets a proper introduction at his first appearance.
Orin tries to rescue Silica by bidding on her, even though he doesn't have any moneys. This ensures he wins in the short-term, since his bids aren't limited to the amount of moneys he actually has, but it means that when he is unable to pay up he gets captured by the slaver.
Dagg walks away from Orin saying
"Sorry, kid, it's the law."
but then he has a crisis of conscience and buys both Orin and Silica from the slaver. As they walk away they are followed by a squad of baddys who start pewpewpewing at them. Dagg sends Silica out to act like a prostitute robot from the future to distract the baddys so that he and Orin can ambush them.
Is this definitely a film for kittens? I'm not watching the Starchaser equivalent of Flesh Gordon by mistaik, am I? It certainly seems that way at times, and I don't like it, mew. Our "heroes" escape back to their ship and take off.
The action cuts to Zygon in his lair, and we see that he is mobilising all of his resources to hunt for Orin.
"Why all this fuss over one boy?"
asks one of his henchmannys. The real answer would involve Zygon explaining about how he has to do it because Darth Vader was obsessed with hunting for Luke Skywalker, so instead he gives some enigmatic exposition about how "twelve hundred years ago" someone or something escaped from him, and he does not intend to let the same thing happen again.
Dagg still wants to sell his crystal haul, so keeps the rendezvous he made with the stereotype out in the desert. Er, I mean they meet out in the desert. The stereotype's equally stereotypical henchmanny recognises Orin and knows that Zygon has put a bounty on him. So he's both Luke and Han in this scenario.
Dagg shows loyalty to Orin, and says
"If we don't both walk out of here in the next few seconds, my ship is programmed to blow the crap out of this tent."
Ah, I think I know what's going on - the film is intended for kittens, but nobody told Dagg that. Anyhow, this allows them to get away.
Once the ship is in flight, the "starfly" from earlier reappears and flies around annoying Dagg, but Orin realises that it is trying to warn them that there is a bomb hidden in with the moneys Dagg got for the crystals. The ship flies back over the treacherous stereotypes' camp and drops the chest with the bomb in it onto them, where it explodes. So much for them.
Some more baddys fly up to them and fire a warning shot. Arthur suggests they surrender like he's C3PO. The framing of this bit is very reminiscent of the Millenium Falcon's approach to Cloud City in Empire Strikes Back. This leads into another chase scene as our heroes are pursued by multiple smaller baddy ships, who Dagg tricks into flying into the scenery to whittle their numbers down one by one. You know, like Han Solo does in another scene from Empire Strikes Back.
A pew to their windscreen shatters it and causes the ship to crash. Arthur's voice goes deep like he's HAL9000, to signify that he's dying. Are there any sci-fi computers from before 1985 that he's not going to borrow (putting it politely, mew) traits from by the end of this film? The baddys board the crashed ship where they find Dagg, unconscious, and capture him.
A mysterious horse-riding manny in a face-concealing helmet finds Orin, also unconscious but outside the ship. She takes her helmet off to reveal she is one of the mannys who was bidding on Silica at the slave auction earlier, so we know she must be a baddy. She orders her robot servant (or presumably, given what has been established about her so far, her robot slave) to bring Orin back to her "palace."
When Orin wakes up he mistaiks her for Elan, which is somewhat understandable given that they have identical facial structures and voice actresses. She is actually Aviana.
Aviana asks Orin about himself and he begins to tell her, but she doesn't believe there are any mannys in the crystal mines. The only thing that begins to convince her that Orin is telling the truth is when the invisible sword cuts through a curtain and is then an empty hilt again when she waves her paw over it.
Aviana goes on the space internets to space wikipedia to research the hilt, and finds the complete backstory about it and the Kakan, who used the sword to overthrow a tyrant 1,200 years ago. Orin recognises the picture of the old manny from the recording the sword played when he first found it. The history ends with the blade being lost after a battle on Orin's home world of Trinia.
Aviana agrees to take Orin back to Trinia on her own spaceship - it looks like she has joined the party and isn't a baddy after all (her earlier willing involvement with the slave trade will not be referred to again). They get to the planet really easily, but then neither Aviana nor Orin knows how to find the hidden mines. It is while they are blundering around looking for a way in that they are surrounded by robots and captured by Zygon. At first Aviana doesn't even know that "Commissioner Zygon" (as she calls him) is a baddy, and she tries to talk their way past him.
Orin and Zygon wrestle over the hilt, which Orin can only use to cut things sometimes and unreliably at that, but he is still better with it than Zygon who cannot use it at all.
Zygon's face is slashed to reveal he is actually a robot
"I am not just a robot, I am the robot."
Orin correctly guesses that this means Zygon is the same robot who was defeated 1,200 years earlier, who has successfully taken over the galaxy again, only from within this time. Zygon keeps him alive because he wants Orin to tell him how to use the sword, not believing that Orin has no idea himself, and has him put in a prison cell opposite Dagg.
Aviana, as the daughter of a planetary governor, is being kept alive to use as a hostage, since Zygon plans to preemptively attack her family's planet. Zygon monologues
"Thousands of years ago, on some obscure planet, a primitive chess computer was the first inorganic mind to beat man. In a few hours, I will be calling checkmate in the last such game the humans and their kind will ever play."
The starfly flies into Orin's cell. He asks it to help him by getting him the hilt, and it replies
"Don't need hilt."
Orin, who can be a bit single-minded, doesn't pause to be surprised that the starfly can talk, and he insists he needs the hilt. The starfly flies off, and quickly proves it is the most competent member of the party when it defeats a robot armed with a pewpewpew gun by flying into the robot's head, so that it shoots itself. It returns to Orin's cell with the hilt. Orin is polite enough to say "thank you" before using the sword to escape - cutting through both doors and robot guards with the invisible blade.
Orin and Dagg go to look for Aviana to rescue her, over Dagg's complaints - presumably he objects on the grounds that, lacking a Wookie, they can't even try a "prisoner transfer from cell block 1138" plan. Luckily, they do manage to locate the ship she is being held on, the flagship of Zygon's invasion fleet, and are able to stealth aboard just before it takes off.
We cut to a short scene back at Dagg's ship, to show us that Silica has repaired Arthur and the ship enough for it to take off.
Dagg and Orin enter a room with a lot of baddy robots (you know that scene where Han Solo runs into a lot of Stormtroopers...) whereupon Dagg closes the door again. The robots try to do a classic slow-cutting through the door to get at them, but not before Dagg finds a way to open the airlock in their room and jettison them all into space.
This saves Orin and Dagg in the short term, but in the longer term it alerts the other baddy ships that something is wrong when they see a lot of robots floating about. Zygon, who has by now noticed that the hilt is no longer where he put it, orders his other ships to destroy his flagship - he isn't taking any chances with Orin any more.
Our heroes, meanwhile, get to the flagship's bridge and rescue Aviana. Dagg takes over the controls of the ship and flies it down towards the planet, with baddys ships in pursuit. Verrrry conveniently, they fly near to where the ship with Arthur and Silica on it just happens to be flying. Or maybe it's a small world after all?
Guided by the starfly to the right controls, Dagg is able to send a signal that detonates the missiles on board all of the baddy spaceships. When Zygon learns what has happened, his henchmanny tells him "we've got to evacuate." (You know that bit with Governor Tarkin...)
Zygon says
"No! He'll be coming for me next, but I'll be ready for him."
Our heroes take their ships to Trinia, where they find only one way into the base open to them, as though they are being led down a single path. (You know when Luke arrives at Cloud City and...)
Zygon sets a tractor beam onto the stolen ship with Orin, Dagg and Aviana on it, but Silica pilots the other ship into its path and so she and Arthur get caught in their place. As baddy ships and robots start shooting at them, Dagg says to Orin
"Just like old times, eh Water-Snake?"
By "old times" he means about an hour ago. Either because they have control of Zygon's powerful flagship, or maybe because Dagg is just that damn good, they are winning even against the whole of Zygon's forces.
There is an amusing moment when Zygon's henchmanny tries to flee to save himself, only to run right into the path of a crashing ship as he does so, lol. This detail is superfluous to the plot, but a nice little touch.
Another crashing ship disables the tractor beam, freeing Silica and Arthur. Zygon orders his remaining ships to ram the flagship, and this manages to bring it down. Silica takes Dagg and Aviana onto their remaining ship, while Orin heads for a final confrontation with Zygon, alone...
...Except when Aviana sees Zygon she goes after Orin to try to help him.
Orin finds his way into the mine, and emerges from Zygon's fire door that he used back at the beginning of the film. This means that at first his mannys mistaik him for Zygon, until they see it is Orin really. He makes an impassioned speech.
"Ever since I can rememberI always wanted to be a gangsterthere have been rumours, rumours that there was another world, that long ago there was more than just Mineworld. Some said it was a heaven, a paradise beyond imagination. Others said it was a hell, far worse than the world we know now. But an old man saw the truth beyond the sword, and gave his life so that I might reach out beyond these caverns, reach out to a greater world above. Well I have reached, and I have touched the stars!"
This might have gone better had it been said by Captain Kirk, since as he finishes Zygon (wearing his scary mask again) comes in behind Orin and wins the crowd back at once.
Orin fights Zygon with the sword, disarming him of his pewpewpew gun and then his mask. Seeing Zygon's true face revealed begins to turn the mannys against him. Unfortunately, Aviana then comes in and gets captured by Zygon, just like in that other great sci-fi film of 1985, Transformers: the Movie, when Hot Rod gets captured by Megatron. Given the closeness of their releases, I doubt either can be accused of copying the other, it's just a case of synchronicity.
Zygon reminds Orin of the way he killed Elan, and threatens to do the same to Aviana unless Orin surrenders the hilt. Orin does so, but Zygon is again completely unable to use it, so he throws it away and pounces on Orin with only his paws. A group of starflies appear and tell Orin
"You do not need the hilt, there never was a blade."
Orin is then able to make an invisible sword without the hilt, which he uses to cut off one of Zygon's paws (You know that bit...)
He then cuts Zygon in half, and the two halves fall down a pit (You know... wait, that one wasn't made until after Starchaser! The circle is now complete) into some lava. The miners all instantly rebel against the robots and, because their mining tools turn into pretty effective pewpewpew guns really easily, soon defeat them.
Meanwhile (should that be 'minewhile'? Oh, please yourselves, mew) the ship is still being chased. With Dagg injured, Silica is piloting, and she shoots down a baddy ship so that it crashes into the crystals, setting off a chain reaction which starts to blow up the whole base, and even threatens to collapse the mines.
Orin and Aviana lead the mannys out of the mines to the outside world, and Orin is reunited with Cally.
Orin uses his newfound magic space Jesus powers to cure Cally's blindness. The starflies appear and transform into glowy space ghosts. They are the Kakans, and they offer Orin membership in their group if he leaves behind his "human form." Orin says "not yet" and gives Aviana a meaningful look.
They accept his decision and fly away, disappearing into a constellation of stars that looks like the hilt, over which the end credits roll and theme music plays.
Starchaser The Legend of Orin is actually a mostly enjoyable film. Its frequent action scenes keep it exciting, and it tells a complete epic, space opera story in an hour and 40 minutes, which is more than can be said of many more celebrated films.
The film's worst weakness is the gratuitous sexism and ethnic stereotyping found in some scenes in the middle, which can't even be passed off as the film being 'of its time' since these would have been just as dodgy back then. Meanwhile the biggest complaint frequently leveled at it, that it rips off Star Wars, is exaggerated.
Oh, don't get me wrong, the resemblances to Star Wars are blatantly there, but they are almost entirely on the superficial level - one could surgically remove all the Star Wars iconography and it wouldn't change the shape of the plot. On a character level there's the resemblance of the central trio of Orin, Dagg and Aviana to Luke, Han and Leia respectively, but these characters were based on archetypes that existed long before Star Wars - which is why they resonated so readily with audiences when Star Wars itself came out.
I think it would be much more accurate to say this borrows (ahem) from anything and everything sci-fi of its era, of which Star Wars was simply the biggest and best known (something true both then and now). Hence my being able to draw so many parallels with Blakes 7, even though it is much less likely that the makers of Starchaser would be familiar with it than with Star Wars.
In this way Starchaser The Legend of Orin was a forerunner of sci-fi franchises that came along later - such as Warhammer 40,000 - built on the premise that if you steal from enough different sources then you end up creating something original.
