Trivia / Battle of the Planets

• Acting for Two:
  • Keye Luke is both Zoltar and the Luminous One, as well as voicing Colonel Cronus. Meanwhile, Alan Dinehart not only voiced Tiny, but also Chief Anderson and President Kane.
  • Aside from Princess, Janet Waldo voiced Zoltar's sister Mala, the Pluto warning robot Susan, and many other female roles.
  • Due to the limited batch of voice actors in general, all of them could be heard voicing bit parts at different times in the series, when the secondary batch of actors (Oppenheimer, Jolliffe, Fischer, etc.) were otherwise unavailable.
• All There in the Manual: Just like his Berg Katze counterpart in the original Japanese version, Zoltar is a gender-changing hermaphrodite, and his "sister" Mala is actually Zoltar in his female form. While this is never mentioned or revealed in the series itself, it is confirmed in an official action figure release for the character, where he has three switchable variant heads, of which being that of Mala◊.
• Directed by Cast Member: Alan Dinehart voiced Tiny in addition to serving as the show's voice director.
• Fandom Nod: The Top Cow series included a cameo of a well-known (somewhat infamous) OC named Miya Washio, a red-haired girl who was intended by her creator to be Ken's sister. Wilson Tortosa depicted her in a class of students in one of the issues.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: American fans only got 40 out of the 85 episodes of this adaptation on DVD, while overseas fans were comparatively luckier. After Sandy Frank's license expired in 2007, this has become the default option for anyone wanting to experience the entirety of this version. While Sentai Filmworks has acquired the original Gatchaman license, it is not yet known if they will gain sub-license to the rights of previous English adaptations.
  • They do have the streaming rights for Battle of the Planets, as it can be seen on Anime Network in North America.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Tiny was voiced by Ronnie Schell in the first episode, while Jason was voiced by a different actor that may have been David Jolliffe. When it came to the series proper, Schell was recast as Jason while Alan Dinehart^note Who is sometimes credited as "Alan Dinehart Jr." on fansites, owing to him being the second in line in the family. However, he opted to credit himself as "Alan Dinehart" while his own son, Mason Alan Dinehart (Alan Dinehart III), was generally credited under "Alan Dinehart Jr.". The younger Dinehart acted as assistant voice director and also filled in for voicing background characters. voiced Tiny.
  • The green Spectra commander went through a fast turnover himself, being voiced by Alan Oppenheimer in the first episode, but by Keye Luke in the second. This was apparently due to the fact that several episodes after the pilot were translated out of order, as Tatsunoko had sent them to Sandy Frank in a mixed-up order. Thus, the second episode was actually produced as the sixteenth, and it is likely that they had forgotten that Oppenheimer had previously voiced the character (or that it was even intended to be the same character, as scripts for the first dubbed episode called the commander "Okto" while the script for the latter episode refers to him as "Commander Gorok"). It proved to be for the best considering Luke played Zoltar with an infectious Large Ham gusto.
  • While Sandy Frank otherwise kept the original vocal tracks intact for the "movie" version of the series, the Zark segments were entirely redubbed, with David Bret Egen giving Zark a raspier voice with a robotic overlay. The ending credits were also altered to show Egen's name added in the main voice cast.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Mason Alan Dinehart, the assistant voice director, is the son of Alan Dinehart (Tiny's VA and voice director).
  • Alan Young's daughter, Wendy, also made guest appearances in the show.
• Voices in One Room: Many of the voice actors were present together when they recorded their lines at Studio B of the Valentine Recording Studios in North Hollywood.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sandy Frank Entertainment had drafted scripts for completely original episodes of the adaptation, including one called Zark Double Zark. But as they would have required new animation for the entire episodes and due to Sandy Frank already fulfilling their 85 episode quota for syndication, the ideas were scrapped. Janet Waldo insists that there was a voice-over session done for Zark Double Zark, although the tapes would appear to have been lost or destroyed.
  • Jameson Brewer (before his death) had stated that they would have wanted to adapt more of Gatchaman, as they did hold rights to all 105 episodes, but Tatsunoko had offered to send the last 20 reels they had only after production had wrapped. Considering that some of the missing episodes included the climax and finale, which featured Joe learning he only has a week left to live, being shot and tortured by Katse, and then dying from prolonged injuries, Katse's gender-bending situation being ultimately clarified, and Katse himself dying at the end by committing suicide, it is likely for the best that the production team didn't get to censor that material.
  • Sandy Frank briefly approached Tatsunoko about also adapting Gatchaman II for a sequel "Battle of the Planets" series, but the negotiations didn't go anywhere and the sequel series would never see an English adaptation until Eagle Riders. The lackluster ratings towards the end of the BOTP run, combined with the heavy reversioning that the original Gatchaman underwent to get there, may have played a part in Tatsunoko refusing to immediately let the sequel series be licensed for the USA.
  • Fred Ladd was offered the chance to work on the show, but turned down the position as he lived out in New York at the time and the production was being handled out in California. However, he did get the chance to work on another English adaptation of Gatchaman, nearly a decade later.
  • Sandy Frank had also considered doing a remastered and redubbed BOTP (titled Battle of the Planets: The New Adventures of G-Force) in 2004 with Ocean Studios providing the voices, as well as CGI versions of the Zark segments. There were to be 32 episodes culled from the original run of the series, with the 20 unadapted Gatchaman episodes added to the order, for a total run of 52 episodes. However, due to concerns of it being too expensive, this idea was shot down in favor of ADV's uncut dub of Gatchaman. Only one episode ("The Sea Dragon") was completed, but was never aired, and has only been shown at select Gatchaman fandom gatherings at the San-Diego Comic-Con. It is unknown who voiced the G-Force members in the redub. In the little that is known about this version, Keyop's status as being "genetically-engineered from a single cell" was dropped in favor of him being a regular human boy like the original Jinpei, and he lost his speech impediment.
    • An old press article by Sandy Frank suggested that there were also plans for "Battle of the Planets" films by Ocean, that also fell through.
  • Alex Toth's initial design for 7-Zark-7 had the name "Zark V" (Zark Five) attached to it.
  • Before they decided on Keyop being a genetically engineered clone, early scripts and materials suggested that he was to be an ALIEN, explaining his unusual Verbal Tic.
  • Alex Ross had stated that one plan for the Top Cow series was to reveal that there was a previous version of G-Force that had gone missing in action. Because of the series' cancellation, that plot point never happened, although another planned idea was a bit more controversial: Sandy Frank had wanted the creative team to kill off or at least retire the existing G-Force (in the scrapped two-issue mini series Endgame), so they wouldn't have to keep paying royalties to Tatsunoko for using the characters' likenesses.
    • The Top Cow series cut off with Jason having gone missing, with the final scene showing him appearing to betray the team to Zoltar, which caused much controversy. However, according to the artist Wilson Tortosa, the mysterious G-Force member with Zoltar was not Jason, though he was not at liberty to divulge the man's identity. Though it is unlikely Tortosa will ever fully reveal what was planned, theories have speculated that the man could have been Donald Wade (a one-shot episodic character stated as having been part of the team in the series ^note compared to the original Gatchaman, where his equivalent Mekkel was a mere scientist), or a member of the legendary first G-Force team.
    • A second "Battle of the Planets" series would have followed after Endgame, which would have seen Jason reunited with his team and a new G-Force squad ^note supposedly the original team that went missing in action, with both teams fighting off Zoltar and a bunch of his mass-produced clones. The all-new team would be the focus of the second series, and would wear uniforms that were redesigned by Ross to cut down on the Gatchaman resemblance.
    • Princess was intended to get a six-issue limited series, but Top Cow cut the number down to four issues due to low sales and left the interiors only in black-and-white.