the Centurions (TV series)
The Centurions (1985-1987) was a syndicated 30 minute science-fiction cartoon produced by Ruby Spears and animated in Japan by Sunrise. The series began in 1985 as a five-part miniseries and was followed in 1986/87 with a 60 episode series. There was also a line of tie-in toys made by Kenner and a comic produced by DC Comics.
Premise
In the near future, an evil genius, the cyborg Doc Terror, seeks to conquer
the earth; he is assisted by Hacker, the cyborg sidekick and an army of Doom Drones. There were two types of drones: Traumatizers, the most commonly seen drones, were walking robots with several guns, while the Strafer was a flying robot with a phallic main gun, and multiple other guns. Dr Terror and Hacker were able to fly by swapping their purely robot half for a Strafer drone missing one set of wings. They were joined on many occasions, starting with the first episode, by Doc Terror's daughter Amber.
At each turn their evil plans are thwarted by the heroic Centurions. The
Centurions are a team of men dressed in specially created exo-frames that
allow them (upon shouting "Power Extreme") to fuse with 'incredible' assault weapon systems, becoming what the show calls man and machine, Power Xtreme! The end result is a weapons platform somewhere between a hard-suit and a mecha. Originally there were three Centurions:
Max Ray - 'Brilliant' Sea Operations Commander
Jake Rockwell - 'Rugged' Land Operations Specialist
Ace McCloud - 'Daring' Air Operations Expert
The Centurions are based on an orbiting space station called Sky Vault where the token (but very smart) female, Crystal Kane, uses a transporter (similar to the transporters in Star Trek) to send the Centurions, and the requested weapon systems, to where they were needed. To stop Crystal from getting lonely, she is kept company by Shadow the dog and Lucy the orangutan. Crystal plays a similar part in the Centurions' adventures to the operators of the Matrix, suggesting tactics and sending equipment as required.
Later in the series, two more Centurions were added to break the monotony and perhaps add some racial diversity. These were: Rex Charger, the energy expert, and John Thunder, the Apache infiltration expert.
Assault weapon systems
Each of the Centurions was specialised for a particular domain, originally land, sea or air/space. They all had multiple weapon systems that could be 'charged' to their exoframes. Typically each started out with the basic system and later in an episode would upgrade to a larger and more powerful system. The exoframes must act as a kind of exoskeleton, because no matter how large the system got, the Centurions never seemed to get weighed down by
the equipment. They also never seem to take the suits off.
Ace McCloud (Aerospace)
Sky Knight – the basic air system; small, lightly armed jet pack like air assault system with arm missiles, a chest mounted bomb and lasers Orbital Interceptor – non-atmospheric craft and featured several missiles and guns; usually used for space missions, but was used underwater on at least one episode.
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