| Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin | |
|---|---|
| Format | Children's Adventure |
| Starring | Gerry Duggan José María Caffarel Bill Conn Ric Hutton Justine Clarke |
| Opening theme | The Poop Poop Song, composed by Bob Young, lyrics by Roger Mirams |
| Country of origin | Australia |
| No. of episodes | 39 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Roger Mirams |
| Running time | 30 mins |
| Broadcast | |
| Original airing | 1986 |
Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin (aka Professor Poopsnaggle and His Flying Zeppelin) was a popular Australian children's television series and a spin-off from the 1984 series Secret Valley. It was first aired 1986 in Australia and also later in Switzerland (TSI) and Finland (1987), Spain (1989), Greece (1989, ERT), Netherlands (1989, KRO), France (1993, FR3) and Vietnam (1996, VTV3). In contrast to Secret Valley, which was a commercial failure in the United Kingdom when screened there in 1985, Professor Poopsnagle's Steam Zeppelin was hugely successful in the UK, where it was first broadcast in 1987 on the ITV network, and proved so popular that it was also later repeated on Channel 4 in both 1990 and 1998. The series still has a strong cult following in the United Kingdom today.
Doctor Garcia had made an invention that would stop the air pollution. After he mysteriously disappears, the children of the Secret Valley have to find six golden salamanders which each contain the name of a mineral for that secret recipe, and then locate the minerals. Professor Poopsnagle, the grandfather of Peter, a resident of Secret Valley, planned a steam zeppelin, a reconstruction of a red bus with technology of a hot air balloon so it can fly. The children now build it and search the salamanders with the aid of an encoded document.
The powerful, wealthy, and influential local retired business magnate Count Sator is also interested in this formula, as he is himself working on a new invention that he hopes will revive the flagging fortunes of his new motoring business. He kidnaps the Professor after the zeppelin breaks down in the desert after intercepting the Professor's radio call for help and pretending that he has come to rescue the Professor and to offer him aid; he also turns one of the children (Matt - the Professor's adoptive grandson who was asleep in the zeppelin) into a spy and observes the children with his computer "Brute". His main henchman Murk (a former army sergeant with a severe stutter, now working as Sator's chief of security) would often sent Matt out to bug Secret Valley and the zeppelin, while his other henchman, the intelligent but accident-prone Willie Dingle (the caretaker at Sator's mansion), would track the movements of the Secret Valley children and report back to Sator to let him know where they were headed. While Sator and Murk were persistent in trying to steal the formula, Dingle was a more reluctant accomplice, who had only got involved when Sator threatened to lock him away in the cells with the Professor if he did not assist in their mission. Sator also owns a wild creature of unknown species named Baby Julius, who he kept in a cage and deliberately tormented to make him more vicious.
Soon after, Doctor Garcia arrives at Secret Valley having located and repaired the zeppelin and tracked Peter down to Secret Valley after learning that the Professor had disappeared; after confirming that his own disappearance was due to a bite from a poisonous snake, he continued where the Professor had left off in helping them in their search for the salamanders and minerals. At one point, Murk and Dingle kidnapped Doctor Garcia and held him hostage in a dungeon at Sator's mansion, with Sator himself trying to extract information from him. Peter and his friend Mike went ot the police for help in finding the Doctor, but their search of the mansion was futile as Dingle made a false call for the police sergeant to Murk, in which Dingle - who had been out of sight when Murk and Sator had greeted the police at the mansion entrance - managed to trick the sergeant into thinking that the Doctor was apparently sighted near the station; however, while Sator had Brute shut off the security system for the police to leave, the Professor managed to escape undetected through the back door of the mansion.
Doctor Garcia was also rescued soon after following a "commado raid" in which six of the Secret Valley children broke into Count Sator's dungeons and escaped with the help of Matt, who turned against Sator after he realised that Sator was using him for his own gain.
The series concluded when, having completed the recipe for Doctor Garcia's formula and put it to use with the zeppelin, the two scientists and the children decided to try and make peace with Sator by offering to help him with his own invention, called "Megavapor". Initially, a defeated Sator accepted their offer of help; however, Sator then decided that he did not want to share the technology with the Professor after all and would instead keep the recipe for himself and murder all of his opponents so that he could patent the invention as his own. He lured Peter into a trap that saw the Professor recaptured when he offered himself in exchange for his grandson, and Sator stole the minerals from the Professor.
In the end, Sator's greed and disregard towards the efforts of his accomplices ultimately led to his downfall, when he eventually fell victim to one of his own traps that he had laid for the Secret Valley team that came in to rescue Peter and the Professor. Dingle, fed up with his poor treatment at Sator's hands, turned against Sator and, after aiding the Doctor and the children's escape with the Professor and the minerals, he tricked Sator and Murk into thinking that Sator's plan had worked, and let both of them walk into their deaths at the hands of Sator's own wild creature Baby Julius.
Following Sator and Murk's deaths, the children and two scientists were shown flying away victoriously in the zeppelin to complete their anti-pollution work. Dingle was not shown with them at this time, and it was left unrevealed as to whether he managed to escape the mansion before Baby Julius caught up with him.