Kim Possible | |
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Cover for "Crush", pilot episode of Kim Possible. Featuring Kim, Ron, Rufus, Dr. Drakken and Shego. |
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Format | Television series |
Created by | Mark McCorkle Bob Schooley |
Voices of | Christy Carlson Romano Will Friedle Nestor Carbonell Nancy Cartwright Gary Cole John DiMaggio Shaun Fleming (1-3) Ricardo Montalban Tahj Mowry Earl Boen Jean Smart Rider Strong (1-3) Nicole Sullivan Kirsten Storms Raven-Symoné A.J. Trauth (1-3) Patrick Warburton Ashley Tisdale (4) Spencer Fox (4) |
Opening theme | "Call Me, Beep Me" by Christina Milian |
Country of origin | ![]() |
No. of seasons | 4 |
No. of episodes | 87 (List of episodes) |
Production | |
Running time | approx. 22 minutes (per episode) |
Broadcast | |
Original channel | Disney Channel |
Original run | June 7, 2002 - June 10, 2006 February 10, 2007 – September 7, 2007 |
External links | |
Official website | |
IMDb profile | |
TV.com summary |
Kim Possible is an Emmy Award-winning American animated television series about a teenage crime fighter who has the task of dealing with worldwide, family, and school issues every day. The show is action-oriented, but also has a light-hearted atmosphere and often lampoons the conventions and clichés of the secret-agent and action genres.
Contents |
The series revolves around the life of Kimberly Anne Possible, a junior adventurer who deals with both super-villains trying to take over the world and her own school life without actually living a double life. Her lifetime friend Ron Stoppable and Ron's pet naked mole rat, Rufus, act as sidekicks. They are backed up by Wade, a ten-year-old genius who gives Kim her equipment and missions and never seems to leave his room, though he does on a few occasions in the last season.
The characters live in the average town of Middleton, and while the series revolves mostly around Kim’s fight against her enemies, she usually also has to deal with problems in her own daily life as a cheerleading teenager, normally as a subplot in many episodes.[1]
Creators Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley claim they created the show in an elevator. As they tell it, McCorkle looked at Schooley and said, "Kim Possible: she can do anything". Schooley at once replied, "Her partner is Ron Stoppable: he can't do anything". The creators also maintain that it was always their intention for Kim and Ron to eventually become involved romantically, rather than just remaining best friends. This becomes a reality in the supposed series-ending movie, Kim Possible: So the Drama. The romantic theme also continues in season four.[2]
The series premiered on Disney Channel in June 2002, and the first episode to air, Crush, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award the following year. After the premiere of this episode, Kim Possible was the most watched and highest rated television show on Disney Channel at that time. The series as a whole was nominated for the Daytime Emmy in 2004, and again in 2005 (that year it received 5 nominations and 1 win).[3]. The show has been widely praised for its smart dialogue, fluid animation, and engaging, well-written characters (both heroic and villainous).[4]
On February 22, 2005, after 3 seasons and 65 episodes, the show ended production. Due to the popularity of the series and grassroots operations by dedicated KP fans, Disney announced on November 29, 2005, that the show would be renewed for a fourth season, which debuted on Disney Channel on February 10, 2007. The series finale aired on September 7, 2007 with the airing of the one-hour-long concluding episode, "Graduation."[5]
Steve Loter documented the production of the final episode of season 4, and thus the completion of the Kim Possible franchise, in a blog titled "So the Finales" hosted on Blogger. It included behind the scenes and production information from the perspective of the crew as well as production sketches from one of several alternative endings that had been scripted. So the Finale maintained an open comment system allowing fans to express their views on the franchise and its closure.[6]
The show's title music, "Call Me, Beep Me", is sung by Christina Milian. Artist Stephen Silver was the lead character designer. Kim Possible also airs on Toon Disney in the United States, and Family in Canada. Some early episodes have been aired on ABC as part of its Saturday morning block ABC Kids.[7]
In the UK, the show can be seen often on Toonattik (GMTV's children's weekend slot on ITV1). It's currently on Saturday mornings.
In Australia, Kim Possible can be seen on Disney Channel Australia 3 times a day along with the Seven Network which are currently repeating the final season every Saturday at 7:05am. In India, Kim Possible can be seen on "Toon Disney", "Disney Channel" and "Disney CineMagic".
Season | Ep # | First Airdate | Last Airdate |
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Season 1 | 21 | June 7, 2002 | May 16, 2003 |
Season 2 | 32 | July 18, 2003 | August 5, 2004 |
Season 3 | 12 | September 25, 2004 | June 10, 2006 |
Season 4 | 22 | February 10, 2007 | September 7, 2007 |
The show hovers around the conflict of good and bad. The good is represented by the protagonists: vigilante and teen crime-fighter Kim Possible, assisted by her faithful sidekick Ron Stoppable, the main source of comic relief for the show. During the show, Kim and Ron progress through the high school, starting in the ninth grade in the pilot episode Crush and ending on the prom in the final episode Graduation.
Together the duo fights various antagonists. The most common of these is Doctor Drakken assisted by his henchwoman Shego, whose unsuccessful world domination schemes appear in almost every episode of the show. The other common villains are Monkey Fist, Duff Killigan, Señor Senior, Sr. and Jr. and Professor Dementor. Monkey Fist starts out as an Indiana Jones-like persona, but soon turns into a megalomaniacal practicer of monkey kung fu, a real-world fighting discipline supernaturalized and portrayed as mystical in the series.[8] Duff Killigan is an overweight Scottish golf player who wears a kilt and attacks his opponents by exploding golf balls.[9] The Señor Senior father and son duo are at first just extremely rich people owning a large resort island. However, they are inadvertently dragged into the evil business by Ron Stoppable. Senior, the father is more business-oriented, as his son tends to exploit the evil ways for not-so-evil deeds, such as opening a personal disco.[10][11] Little is revealed about Professor Dementor, an antagonist obsessed with world domination schemes like Doctor Drakken, his sworn enemy, although Dementor usually turns out to be more successful.[12][13]
Various DVDs were released for the series:
Probably all 4 seasons will be released in Germany. These are region 2 DVDs with the original English language track included.
A Mandarin version aired on CCTV-12 in China, and an Arabic dub was also made which started airing on Dubai TV in early 2006 and is currently airing on MBC 3 on the network's "Disney morning timeslot", the only thing that was changed were the character's names, for example Kim was called "Damo Staheel" (Mostaheel is Arabic for Impossible), Ron was called "Mostah Aed", Wade was called "Awad", Shego was called "Shahira", and Dr. Drakken was called "Daraken". The show aired on the French Disney Channel and then on TF1's Disney show in France. Several changes were made in the names to fit with translated jokes: for example Ron Stoppable is called Robin Trépide ("Intrépide", meaning intrepid: some kind of a courageous adventurer). From August 11, 2008, the show airs on Jetix, in Romania. In Bulgaria the show was aired on Kanal 1 in 2005. The same translation was made available on the Bulgarian version of Jetix on October 20, 2008. In Sweden, the show has been aired on SVT1, Disney Channel Sweden and Toon Disney Sweden. The show was dubbed to Swedish, but the names were the same as in the original version.
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