Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years

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Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years
Format	Space Opera
Created by	Harmony Gold, Toei Animation
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	65
Production
Producer(s)	Carl Macek
Running time	25 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	syndicated
Picture format	NTSC
Original run	1985 – 1985
External links
IMDb profile

Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years is an animated science fiction television series produced by Harmony Gold USA. The series was created by Carl Macek by combining footage from Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock and Queen Millennia anime series.

This is the second time the 1978 Captain Harlock series was treated for English language distribution. The first attempt was in 1981 with the lesser known Ziv International who only released a handful of episodes in what was intended to be a faithful adaptaion of Captain Harlock. This attempt is often confused with the Harmony Gold production but the two productions are not related.

The plot of Macek's creation has no relation to Matsumoto's works.

1 Plot
2 Production
3 Episode List
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years takes place in the year 2976, after humankind has colonized the distant stars. But prosperity has corrupted the people of Earth, becoming corrupt and decadent.

The Mazone, a race of sentient plants, hatch a plot to seize Earth after their own planet becomes uninhabitable. A lone scientist tries to warn the people of Earth, but at the cost of his reputation and life. The titular Harlock is framed for the murder and finds himself on the run from Earth authorities. Now an outcast, Harlock plans to stop the Mazone and save humanity from the alien threat with aid from Captain Millennia.

[edit] Production

After the success of Robotech, Harmony Gold sought to expand their syndicated television production in other animation series originating in Japan. Carl Macek, producer of Robotech, was asked what other anime series he was interested in dubbing. Macek expressed an interest in Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock.

After the rights were obtained, Macek was informed Harmony Gold had allocated airtime for 65 episodes. Captain Harlock, however, was 42 episodes long, prompting Harmony Gold to buy another Matsumoto series, Queen Millennia. It then fell to Macek and his team to combine the two shows into one series.

Unlike Robotech, it was decided to combine the two series simultaneously instead of simply running them one after the other with some "connecting" episodes. At the same time, it was also decided to change the timing of episodes, thus creating a situation where clips from episodes at various points in the original series would appear in a single episode in the American series. This resulted in a wildly different plot from both of the original sources. Also, despite title of the series, the two titular characters never appeared together onscreen.