Blackstar

( any filmation employee or related archivist able to correct me , feel free. I like giving proper information. I saw toygalaxy verified it and I got  the info from several
filmation related sites and IMDB)

This series aired in 1981 on CBS and also in the local Puertorrican tv network channel 4 I think. I was 5 years old back then and loved the show.

I recently watched the episodes in order and what can I say. This, like Bravestar and Tarzan are some of Filmation's best work.

John Blackstar is Basically your John Carter, Adam strange, buck rogers, flash Gordon kinda guy from a very advanced earth that uses ships that travel through dimensions and time

in order to avoid issues, ends up stranded on an alien planet death trap, somehow gets the other half of the Power-Star and opposes the Overlord who wishes to

ruin everyone's day with his evil Aku style. ( I compare to other shows to make explaining easier and reiterate in case you don't get the references )

*Power-Star* Same idea and concept as the He-Man Sword of power, it was divided in two. Filmation divided it in a way that She-ra obtained the other half. ( people say She-Ra was better than He-man and in a way they were right, He-man's quality dropped near the last season and mid first season)
So the Power-Sword is a nigh unbeatable force until divided.

The *Power* half is offense and can do magic, is controlled by Overlord.

The *Star* half is defense and can absorb and deflect energies which keeps the power sword. Both sides share certain properties but knowing how little writers cared about consistency, the full capacity of each side and the whole is unknown. Blackstar could shoot it to push objects, cause objects and people to float, pierce trough stone walls, stun enemies, absorb energy and or deflect it back ( like when the ghost ship shot him and he flung it to him) Blackstar has used his half in episode 6 to slow down his fall with his girlfriend towards a whirlpool from which a giant flying wyrm went to eat them as just up above them a flying nightmarish creature was swooping to attack him. He then destroyed a wall and pushed himself and his girl through the hole. EVERYTHING about Blackstar's sword is for pure defensive purposes.

*John Blackstar* he controls he ( star sword falf) Hero extraordinaire, he is basically John Carter ( I think they were going for that)

He's native american. Kinda obvious. Allegedly they wanted to make him black but again you cant believe everything you read online. I'm transcribing here as much info as I could compile.

He has a girlfriend named Katana, becomes the love interest of Mara, rides Warlock (a dragon) and saves the day often. He is upbeat and is constantly overwhelmed and put to the test by the planet and Overlord who wish for his destruction as a rebel so that the overlord can take the sword from him, form the complete Power-Star .

*Overlord* He controls the ( Power Sword half ) The offensive aspect of the weapon. ( He's the BBEG/ Big Bad Evil guy )

In one episode where he captures JB's girlfriend from Earth Katana, he reads her mind and sees JB holding her

lovingly in his blue white jogging track suit whatever and asks" WHAT ..uh..IS THIS..,RITUAL?!" Katana: " Something called LOVE. LOVE SOME SAY IT IS THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN ANY UNIVERSE"  Overlord: "THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN THE POWERSTAR AT WORK!" ( episode 6 I went back to transcribe it ) Overlord can't feel compassion, he has no loyalties, he as no fear. he will work together to save his own skin and betray you ( episode 12 fightinga  demon he created bu absorbing all teh magic in the planet and it truned against everyone, hes forced to aid Blackstar in killing it as Mara vanishes, trobits struggle against tentacles and Blackstar gets shot in the back) SOooooo He's but not in a funny cheeky way like Skeletor who reveled in his schemes and plans and he was just super sassy though NEVER scary, Skeletor was a comical villain because he was insane and did do cruel things but it was childlike and yeah he was crazy. In the 90s he-man series Skeletor was obsessed with killing he-man before succeeding in anything because he learned from his mistakes and knew that he-man would always stop him so he tricked a whole race of mutants into his manipulation. in the 2002 series Skeletor was more insane, evil, awesome, badass and ONLY showed fear before Hordak's spirit who died after fighting Lord Grayskull and had also tornd Eternia in half during the releasse of magical energies and battle which wiped out the evil horde entirely. He wanted to swap places with Keldor on Eternia to return and take revenge but he was halted in a collab between foes. Overlord is instead cold, unfeeling, intelligent, relies only on his pawns to create enough chaos to do what he needs. he confides in no one , people follow him blindly, he rules Sagar, and the planet itself is a death trap. So the next character is the planet Blackstar ends up in.

*Sagar, where the Sagar tree ( which has fruits of several powers ) grows. EVERYTHING KILLS YOU HERE!
I am serious, in the episode John's girlfriend shows up, EVERY FREAKIN KAIJU WANTS HIM DEAD! monsters from above, beneath between adn beyond show up!
The show is like that! He ges to fight in a region, it turns out it is infested with alrge monsters who fly , swim or breathe fire or lasers because they stumbled on to their nests. There are magma men, relentless rock aligator headed golems who serve the overlord, various mercenaries he has either created or enslaved, wizards and more.

Memorable as heman? no Heman was bright and happy and fun and campy, this show was dark and seemingly soulcrushing yet the good guys ALWAYS were upbeat

and cracked jokes and felt like they brough light to that darkness. in eternia EVERYTHING was light and in the side where snake mountain was, it ws pure darkness with some folks who had hope. In Sagar there is precious little hope in teh form of Blackstar. The allies were cool

*Warlock hsi trusty winged dragon sidekick who looked suspicioysly a lot like the one Sandor rode in the herculoids with a really cool face and was slightly horselike

mixed with teh Gidzilla from the Mathew Broderic movie. in green. He was pretty cool.

*Klone/ a sad looking changeling shapeshifter elf who turned into monsters
*Mara/  used Telepathy, Telekinetics ( creates shields and levitates objects ) energy blasts and illussions. in episode 7, Poulo built a snow sculpture of Blackstar on his mount Wizard, and Mara brought it to life... and I mean LIFE! see teh world was gonna be stuck in an eternal winter and when one of the Trobits, Balkar spoke of blackstar , he corre ted himself meaning it was the REAL one, reffering to it as Sir AND it recognized who spoke. The snow golem actually attacked some soldiers and snow Wizard shot them with freezing breath. MARA IS godlike!
a hot blue skinned lil number who reminded me of Dejah Thoris  because Blackstar is a John Carter of Mars type of show as was flash gordon and buck rogers who borrowed ( cough rip off  ) from Edgar Rice Burroughs ( who also wrote Tarzan one of FIlmation's properties ), still yeah she is not the love of Johns life , its Katana.
*the trobits: Oopah Loompas crossed with the 7 dwarfs... living in a large tree who gave various fruits which gave certain powers to those who eat from them.   

-Balkar ( Doc)The King of the Trobbits and the mentor of John Blackstar. He controls elemental magic and is also a great alchemist.
-Rif ( grumpy)– The Trobbits' grumpy, flame-capped cook. His cap actualy DOES light on fire using it more than once for live saving purposes in a pinch. Hes a big softy and cracks jokes with the rest of them. hes impish at times and stole the knowledge nuts for himself
and his friends shook them from him in episode 4 before delivering he haul to teh merpeople and he made a cute excuse XD
-Terra ( sleepy)– The gardener who talks to plants.
- Burble ( sleepy)– The babbler who swims very well and freezes during the winter.
- Carpo  (bashful)– The carpenter who gnaws wood with his teeth to construct things. kinda grumpy built a freakin SHIP with his teeth! and wood planks... WOW. "There she's Sea worthy and leak proof!" then they dumped Rif's soup into it and they laughed
-Poulo ( happy)– The mute whistler. kida timid and curious, blew up Balkar's lab doing spells without  permission activating an ice crystal from the Overlords palace to see into his plans and BOY that was cool! they do goofy things but they are VERY competent. BTW He destroyed a freakin stone giant with his highpitch whistling which made me wonder why he barely used it... then I forgot it hurt him and the others a bit.
    Gossamear  ( dopy) – The huge-eared flying one who is the scout and lookout.
hey look 7 smurfy OOmpa Loompas living on Endor! JK they had their own personalities, but you can see the Disney 7 Dwarfs inspiration all to clearly a-la Oompa Loompa.
three of them were kinda grumpy and the rest was combination of happy curious impulsive and powerful. they had to simply use their skill in teh appropriate time. WHich if you look at this in a strategic way and a gaming sort of way, you could say, they are similar to support characters in a game granting you cover and buffs depending on teh situation and their specific powers are great in a pinch so it makes sense tehy go with Blackstar who they love dearly everywhere there is danger. They are loving cute and sweet. Like a bunch of kind uncles who dote on the one child in their family that they take care of who was orphaned and they never could have kids themselves so yeah.

This came before He-man, you can see how filmation drew from this show to make Heman a hit. sadly Lou had a tiff with Mattel and ruined the heman universe doing whatever he wanted instead of collaborating and using the new characters from the line or follow a bit with the comics.

I prefer this to the filmation he-man BUT I am a fan of the original heman comic where heman was a caveman who simply used a magic sword, like blackstar. the mini comic preternia Heman  was powerful by himself and did not post being the most powerful man in the universe who would be easily taken out by lava or some stupid incident that involved piss poor wriing since knowing He-man he was strong enough to escape on his own. man filmation pissed me off sometimes. I freakin hated prince Adam and cringer until the 2002 he-man which made me like Adam. I tolerated cringer because he didn't talk. I wanted the comic with teh action figure not what filmation gave me so I bought the toys to read the adventures. the 90s show was not that horrible, it was decent.
these shows were mediocre. but yeah, they had MAGIC and I know Lou Sheimer was always dropping hints that magic does not exist, like the show
Sentinels, which is pretty cool Astria super hot, the shapeshifter, Mercury faster than the speed of light who seemed to fly a bit too slow and Hercules who is hercules and also in Tarzan. BUT Magic was i these shows. Children need this kind of stuff to help them dream up ideas and many other things. Dreams are iportant, so is fantasy. Phasing it out kills it and it explains why some shows feel hollow to me. everyone is acting hostile and people are copying nostalgia and ruining it to take away from old fans and give them something that they could've enjoyed simply. Nostalgia works only on teh generation that passed not the new one. The new one needs fresh new characters and ideas, reboots destroy this. I was lucky I enjoyed the heman reboot though I always wished filmation followed the comics because I was 5 years old and I still knew I was lied to. I felt lied to by the product. the idea of the multiverse was not well known.

Still my go to filmation show is Bravestarr, then this one. funny that the best one for me, Bravestarr was the one that was cancelled and they blamed it on the low toy sales, glad the people in charge had their priorities straight!

( sorry I for writing this ... im a lonely old man that nobody has anything on common with in general so I am unable to talk about all of this stuff with anyone. My social skills suck and I manage to ostracize myself each time...
so yeah. I also apologize for the thoughts that seem all over the place. It's difficult to focus for me.