Titan Maximum, Season 1

TITAN MAXIMUM, SEASON 1 (DVD)
Revolver Entertainment

Release date: August 30th, 2010
Certificate (UK): 15
Running time: 109 minutes

Created by: Tom Root, Matthew Senreich

Voice cast: Breckin Meyer, Rachael Leigh Cook, Eden Espinosa, Dan Milano, Seth Green, Adrianne Palicki, Tahmoh Penikett

Official Site

Like Transformers, Titan Maximum pits robots and humans, well, against more robots and humans but with all the biting humour we’ve come to know and love from Robot Chicken and their wacky brand of stop-motion animation.

The show is set way in the future when our solar system is protected by Titan Force Five, a team of pilots whose spaceships combine to form the giant robot Titan Maximum. After years of peace Commander Palmer, Lt. Jodi Yanarella and Lt. Junior Grade Sasha Caylo have no other choice but to reform the team as the solar system now faces its greatest threat.

With two members short, they enlist the commander’s younger brother Space Seaman Willie Palmer and Leon the silent monkey.

These aren’t your average heroes though. Instead of shining examples of integrity and wholesomeness what we have is a crew that’s completely incompetent, foul mouthed and to describe Sasha as promiscuous is to say the Pope is a little bit Catholic. Suffice to say, each episode plays out like a cautionary tale of how not to save the solar system.

Their foe comes in the form of Lt. Gibson “Gibbs” Giberstein who used to be part of Titan Force Five and once dated Jodi. He’s now resurfaced with an eye patch and seems to have gone insane from years resenting the team and being jealous of the attention Palmer always got.

His plan now is to conquer the solar system, crush anyone who opposes him, and name himself “Super King Big Nuts”.

This shouldn’t be too difficult as there are no opposing forces intelligent enough to pull off a counter-attack or offer any kind of defence, but still, the Titan Force Five give it a good go. The episodes are quite short but they pack a lot of action and gags and it’s not hard to spot the obvious influence of Japan’s Super Sentai, from which we got the Power Rangers.

As Titan Force Five race to stop Gibb’s from roasting everything on Mercury, the retirement home planet, a sex tape of him and Jodi is leaked to the press, much to the delight of Sasha who’s fed up of being labelled the super slut in the team. Whether or not they manage to save the planet full of grandparents by intent or accident is not really the point, what really matters is that they try. Oh well.

There are quite a few extras on the disc as well, including some deleted sequences and photos of the crew, but the behind the scenes featurette is interesting. We hear the cast and crew talk about the work that goes into producing each episode and some of the challenges in working with scale models and toy figures. No official word yet on Season 2, so let’s keep our fingers crossed – or in Sasha’s case, legs – and hope for the best.