dragonfire88's Full Review: Fraggle Rock - The Complete First Season
When I was a child, I loved the Muppets. I watched the tv show all the time and the saw the movies when they came out. I spent a lot of time at my grandmothers and when I was there, I was able to see Fraggle Rock, another show created by Jim Henson. I really enjoyed the show. Once television shows started coming out on DVD, I kept hoping for The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock to be released that way. I was thrilled when that happened in the fall of 2005 and I quickly grabbed up The Muppet Show - Season One and Fraggle Rock - Season 1.
Like The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock featured characters that were puppets. The main characters were small creatures called Fraggles who lived in an under ground place called Fraggle Rock. The Fraggles were generally happy, fun loving, and liked to sing a lot. Doozers, even smaller creatures, also lived in Fraggle Rock. The Doozers constructed small structures around Fraggle Rock that the Fraggles ate. The Fraggles sought advice from a talking pile of trash that the called the Great Trash Heap. The Fraggles took radishes from the garden of the Gorgs, a family of very large creatures that hated the Fraggles and was always trying to catch them.
Fraggles tended to stay in Fraggle Rock except for visits to the trash heap or to get radishes. Two Fraggles were a bit more adventurous. Uncle Traveling Matt explored all the caves in Fraggle Rock and eventually found an opening that led to what the Fraggles called outer space. The opening went into a room that a human, or silly creature, named Doc was turning into a workshop with the help of his dog Sprocket. After finding the opening, Uncle Traveling Matt decided that he was going to leave Fraggle Rock and explore outer space. He sent post cards back to his nephew Gobo to share what he was learning about outer space and the silly creatures. Gobo had to venture into Doc’s workshop to get the postcards, which meant he had to get past Sprocket on a regular basis. His friends thought that Gobo was very brave to do that.
Uncle Traveling Matt’s postcards were mentioned in every episode. Gobo was shown going into the workshop to get the postcard that Doc would throw in the trash once he saw it since he didn’t know who Gobo Fraggle was. I did wonder how Uncle Traveling Matt had figured out the postal system and knew Doc’s address. After Gobo got the postcard back to Fraggle Rock, he would read them to at least one of his friends. When he read the postcards, a scene that showed what Uncle Traveling Matt was describing was shown. Uncle Traveling Matt tended to talk about common things, like fountains or kites, that he encountered and didn’t understand what they were. Those segments could work to introduce children to new things or ideas.
Fraggle Rock - Season 1 had twenty-four episodes. Each episode had a different plot though they all shared a few things. In addition to Gobo retrieving a postcard from his uncle in each episode, other adventures the Fraggles got involved in were also shown. I thought the show was very entertaining. Every episode did share a small lesson, like how the Fraggles should respect each other or work together. The lessons were a bit obvious, but they worked well in the episodes and didn’t detract from the entertainment. Fraggle Rock was a bit like Sesame Street in that the show was trying to teach children things. Sesame Street taught things like counting and the alphabet while Fraggle Rock was trying to teach children how to get along better with others and how to deal with differences between people.
The Muppet Show was just meant to be a fun, entertaining show and it didn’t try to teach any lessons like Sesame Street. Even though Fraggle Rock was trying to teach, it did share something in common with The Muppet Show. Every episode of Fraggle Rock included at least one of the main Fraggle characters singing. Several of the episodes included more than one song and several of the main characters frequently sang songs together. The songs all tied into the main plot of each episode. Some of the songs were just fun while others were more serious and were used to help convey the lesson the episode was trying to teach. The songs were written for the show.
Sesame Street featured a group of characters that included humans and puppets. The Muppet Show had all puppet characters with different human guest stars appearing in each episode. Doc was the only human character on Fraggle Rock, though Uncle Traveling Matt dealt with different humans while he was exploring outer space. Doc’s dog Sprocket was a puppet and Doc acted like it was perfectly normal for Sprocket to do some things that a dog wouldn’t normally do. Doc and Sprocket were featured at least briefly in every episode.
There was a group of five main Fraggle characters in Fraggle Rock. Gobo was Uncle Traveling Matt’s nephew. Gobo shared his uncle’s adventurous nature and seemed to be the leader of his group of friends. Wembley had trouble making decisions and was a bit of a coward when it came to some of the adventures the friends went on. Red loved sports and was very competitive and even a bit adventurous. Mokey was kind to everyone and enjoyed artistic things. Boober tended to believe that someone horrible was always going to happen. Uncle Traveling Matt was only shown briefly in the scenes that illustrated what his postcards were about. The Doozers were small puppets while the Gorgs were large, full body puppets that required more than one person to perform. A lot of other Fraggles would be shown in the backgrounds of scenes without them ever receiving much attention, sort of like the audience on The Muppet Show.
Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, and Steve Whitmire, performers for some of the Muppet characters, were also performers for characters on Fraggle Rock. Jim Henson developed and created the show, though he wasn’t a regular performer like he was with other projects. He was involved in an episode every once in a while as a sort of guest Fraggle character.
DVD Information
This DVD set includes five discs. The case is a box that opens like a book, with a separate “page” for each disc. Six episodes were included on each of four of the discs . The fifth disc has extras. New interviews with some of the cast and crew were recorded in 2005 for this DVD set. The people that participated talked about making the show. Some clips, drawings and photos from the production of the show were also included. The interviews were very interesting and enjoyable to watch. A documentary hosted by Jim Henson was the other bonus feature. The documentary was made during the production of the show and showed how the show was made. I loved seeing this, though it did make me a bit sad as well since Henson is dead.
This DVD set contained one other extra, something that I think is the best extra I have ever seen with any DVD. The extra is a replication of the notebook that Henson wrote out his original ideas for Fraggle Rock in. It was very interesting to me to read Henson’s original ideas in his own handwriting, complete with scribbles. Originally he was calling the Fraggles Woozles, but the basis for Fraggle Rock is in this notebook.
Episode List
Beginnings Wembley and the Gorgs Let the Water Run You Can’t Do That Without a Hat The 30 Minute Work Week The Preachification of Convincing John I Want to Be You The Terrible Tunnel The Lost Treasure of the Fraggles Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk Cath the Tail by the Tiger The Finger of Light We Love you Wembley The Challenge I Don’t Care Capture the Moon Marooned The Minstrels The Great Raddish Famine The Garden Plot Gobo’s Discovery Mokey’s Funeral The Beast of Bluerock New Trash Heap in Town
Fraggle Rock was a wonderfully entertaining show created by Jim Henson. People who liked The Muppet Show may also enjoy this show. Fans of the show need to pick up the first season on DVD. It is a wonderful DVD set with some amazing extras.
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