Cyberchase (seasons 1-8)
| ♥ | This article is dedicated to Len Carlson (1937-2006), Gilbert Gottfried (1955-2022) and Philip Williams (1954-2024) |
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Cyberchase is an ongoing Canadian-American animated television series that aired on PBS Kids and is produced by Nelvana in seasons 1-5 then was produced by Canada-based Title Entertainment Inc. in seasons 6-present. The show represents that math is everywhere.
Plot
After being warped into Cyberspace from a library computer, Jackie, Matt and Inez, along with a wacky cyberbird named Digit, become the Cybersquad. With live hosts Bianca and Harry, the team must protect Motherboard from the evil Hacker who wants to rule Cyberspace. Using gadgets and following clues, the team solves math mysteries and any other problem that comes their way.
Why These Seasons Will Beat Hacker at His Game
- The premise itself is very interesting. As the show is about 3 kids who got transported into another dimension on the Internet to save the world from an evil doer.
- The show has some pretty clever lessons about math and geometry and how they work such as going through patterns, measuring, and balancing the right numbers.
- The art style is very unique.
- There are great locations which are called Cybersites that based around different cultures such as Forgsnorts (which is a homage to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts), Happily Ever After (a land of fairytale stories), and many more.
- Many memorable and amazing episodes such as:
- Lost My Marbles (which was an amazing way to start off season 1 and the series)
- Castleblanca
- R-Fair City (arguably the best episode in the entire series)
- And They Counted Happily Ever After
- Clock Like an Egyptian
- The Poddleville Case
- A Day at the Spa
- Cool It
- Hugs & Witches (a heartwarming way to start season 2)
- True Colors
- Ecohaven CSE
- A Perfect Fit
- Starlight Night (a good way to end season 3)
- The "Hackers Transformation" four part special (The Icky Factor, Penguin Tears, Past Perfect Prediction, and Measure for Measure)
- The Case of the Missing Memory
- A Crinkle in Time
- A Broom of One's Own
- A Tikiville Turkey Day (which nicely ended season 4)
- The Halloween Howl (a great Halloween episode and start to season 5)
- The Fairy Borg Father
- Inside Hacker
- Team Spirit
- A Perfect Score
- Chaos As Usual
- Blowin' in the Wind
- Father's Day
- Spellbound (which ended season 7 decently)
- The Hackers Challenge (which started season 8 with high impressions)
- Face-Off
- Hackerized!
- The Bluebird of Zappiness (which was an amazing way to end season 8 and these seasons)
- The Hacker is a very entertaining villain as he is the egotistical scientist with personality trying to take over cyberspace.
- Amazing voice acting, especially from Christopher Lloyd as Hacker and the late Gilbert Gottfried as Digit.
- The main characters are very likable as they have a good relatable relationship to another and work together to save Cyberspace and sites.
- The animation is decent, especially in seasons 1-5 where it’s in its traditional form.
- Awesome CGI, especially from the portal.
- Not only does it teach math, but it also gives some positive messages such as teamwork, friendship, and forgiveness.
- Good pacing.
- Catchy theme song.
- Nice adventure scenes.
- The Cyberchase for Real segments were also decent, especially with Harry and Bianca.
Hacked Qualities
- The show began to go a bit downhill during season 6. However, the show was still decent during this, it wasn't until season 9 is when the seasonal rot started to fully kick in when they started to focus more on protecting the environment rather than math and also completely forgot about the Motherboard story arc.
- The show never translated to widescreen until season 10.
- There is some repetitive dialogue that might get old sooner on such as Inez saying, "This is not good, this is not good at all!"
- The show switched to PiP Animation's flash animation in season 6. At least it's passable until season 10 as it drastically changed the intro to flash.
- Speaking of flash in seasons 6-9, while not bad, it is pretty stiff, lackluster, and slow-paced compared to the animation used in seasons 1-5, but it's still smoother and fluid than it would become in season 10 and beyond.
- Even before season 9, the earlier seasons still had their fair share of bad episodes such as:
- Snow Day to Be Exact (the first bad episode of the series)
- Of All the Luck
- Eureeka
- Find Those Gleamers
- Codename: Icky
- Return to Sensible Flats
- Problem Solving in Shanghai-La
- Send in the Clones
- Trading Places
- Less Than Zero
- Model Behavior
- Size Me Up
- A Battle of Equals
- Out of Sync (a mediocre way to end season 1)
- Totally Rad
- Harriet Hippo and the Mean Green
- All the Right Angles
- Mother's Day
- The Eye of Rom
- Whale of a Tale
- Double Trouble
- Raising the Bar
- The Wedding Scanner
- The Guilty Party
- A Time to Cook
- Trick or Treat (a mediocre Halloween episode)
- A Piece of the Action
- The Creech Who Would Be Crowned
- In Brazil, they only dubbed the first three seasons, and for unknown reasons, they didn't dub seasons 4-onwards.
Reception
Cyberchase has been pretty well-received with critics, audiences, kids and parents alike with Common Sense Media ranked the show four out of five stars. Joly Herman commented that "the adventures aren't scary, violent, or sexually inappropriate" but "require fortitude and brain power". Proposed discussion points sprouting from the series include "Can your child take the skills learned in each episode and figure out how to apply it to everyday life?" Herman noted that the only downside was that the adventures did not take place in the "real world" but added that the "For Real" segments solved this problem. The show was given a rating of five smiley faces under "The Good Stuff" section.
Carey Bryson of About.com gave the show a rating of four out of five stars. Bryson noted that the series' explanations of "simple mathematical idea[s]" are "usually explained well and woven throughout the story in a fun and interesting way". The review commented the series for its accessibility: "Children can easily learn from the example in the cartoon story" and praised the "Cyberchase for Real segment that follows each episode". Citing an example from the series using codes, Bryson explained how the show could be used to expand upon the curriculum: "Not only did [her five-year-old] learn about codes, but she also got in a ton of spelling practice". Bryson commented the series: "Educationally, Cyberchase delivers".
The show has also been nominated for five Daytime Emmys and won in 2007 in the Outstanding Broadband Program category. It has also won a CINE Golden Eagle in 2006.
The show in general has a 6.9/10 on IMDb.
Trivia
- One episode, "The Poddlevile Case" was originally the show’s pitch pilot made in 1999 but then got re-animated and added in as the 7th episode of season 1.
- This is the 3rd longest running show on PBS Kids, behind Sesame Street and Arthur.
- As of February 2022, the show is now the second longest running PBS Kids show ever since Arthur ended.
- Christopher Lloyd and the late Gilbert Gottfried later worked together on the 2009 adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk.
- Until 2015, the show had all of its episodes aired in 4:3 aspect ratio and 16:9 versions of seasons 6-9 were never seen. Despite this, widescreen versions of seasons 6-9 are shown in the updated introduction segment explaining the premise of the show, aside from the footage in that segment, the widescreen versions of the earlier flash seasons are completely lost, as the episodes are always aired in full screen in PBS reruns and the PBS Kids video app has the episodes in 4:3 as well.
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