Total Drama Island

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This article is about the first season. For the entire series, see Total Drama.

Total Drama Island
The Total Drama Island logo.
Country of origin	Canada
No. of episodes	28 (including special and review)
Broadcast
Original channel	Teletoon
Original run	July 8, 2007 (2007-07-08) – November 29, 2008 (2008-11-29)^[1]^[2]
Season chronology
← Previous — Next → Total Drama Action TDA
First season of the Total Drama series. List of Total Drama episodes

Total Drama Island (sometimes shortened to TDI) is a Canadian animated television series which premiered in Canada on Teletoon on July 8, 2007 and on June 5, 2008 in the U.S. on Cartoon Network. This is the first season of the Total Drama series and has 27 episodes, each 22 minutes in duration^[3] with a special 44 minute episode at the end. The season is mostly a parody of the series Survivor, which consists of twenty-two campers in an elimination-based competition. On the Cartoon Network airing in the United States, some content has been removed from the episodes by censors in order to keep the rating open to a younger audience; for example, putting in words instead of long bleeps, for the episodes "That's Off the Chain" and "Trial by Tri-Armed Triathlon". The fourth season, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island is also shown in the same location except with a new cast. Christian Potenza hopes to have 10 seasons total.^{[citation needed]}

Plot

Total Drama Island sets in a fictional titular reality show that follows the competition of twenty-two teens at Camp Wawanakwa, a fictional island located in an unspecified area in Muskoka, Ontario. The campers participate in competitions to avoid being voted off the island by their fellow campers. At the end of the series, the winning contestant will win CAD100,000. The competition is hosted by Chris McLean, who is assisted by the camp's chef, Chef Hatchet.

At the beginning of the season, the twenty-two teen campers are placed into two groups of eleven, the "Screaming Gophers" and the "Killer Bass". In each episode, the teams participate in a challenge, in which one or more campers can win invincibility for their team. The losing team is called to the campfire at night, where they vote one of their members off the island. The camper with the most votes is eliminated from the competition. At this campfire, McLean passes out marshmallows to the campers who have not been voted off, while the one who does not get a marshmallow must walk down the Dock of Shame to the Boat of Losers, which will take them away from the island and they will "never, never, never, ever, ever, ever, come back, ever" according to Chris (this was proved a lie in "No Pain, No Game", when he brought Eva and Izzy back into the game).

About halfway through the season, the teams are disbanded, after which the challenges continue; the winner of each challenge then only receives invincibility for him or herself, whereupon a camper without invincibility is voted off the island. This process of elimination continued on until two players remains on the island. These two players, Gwen and Owen, were then subject to a final contest. At the end of the season, Owen wins the competition, while Gwen ends up being the runner-up. Total Drama Island is a parody of the reality show Survivor. Host Chris McLean is very similar to Survivor host Jeff Probst.^[4]

Episodes

Main article: List of Total Drama Island episodes

Total Drama Island is a Canadian animated television series which premiered on July 8, 2007, on the Teletoon channel. This season has 26 episodes, each 22 minutes in duration, and two special episodes.^[5] It was the third Cartoon Network show outside of Adult Swim and Toonami to have the U.S. rating of either "TV-PG" or "TV-PG-D", and a parental-guidance warning after every commercial break and at the beginning of the show (the first two being Sunday Pants and IGPX; its rating in Canada for most episodes is "G", or else "PG").

Season	Episodes	Country	Network	First air date	Last air date
1	28^[6]	Canada	Teletoon	July 8, 2007	November 29, 2008
		United States	Cartoon Network	June 5, 2008	December 18, 2008
		United Kingdom	Jetix	April 1, 2009	May 6, 2009

Characters

The primary cast of Total Drama Island.

Top: DJ, Duncan, Tyler, Harold, Geoff, and Heather

Middle: Lindsay, Leshawna, Eva, Justin, Owen, Noah, Trent, Gwen, and Cody

Sitting: Izzy, Bridgette, Courtney, Katie, Sadie, Ezekiel, and Beth

Main article: List of Total Drama characters

There are 22 original contestants who competed in Total Drama Island. They are Beth, Bridgette, Cody, Courtney, DJ, Duncan, Eva, Ezekiel, Geoff, Gwen, Harold, Heather, Izzy, Justin, Katie, Leshawna, Lindsay, Noah, Owen, Sadie, Trent, and Tyler. Owen won first place, Gwen second place, and Heather in third.

Teams

There are teams in every season of the show. The teams in this season are the Screaming Gophers and the Killer Bass. Here are the members of each team:

Screaming Gophers: Gwen, Trent, Heather, Cody, Lindsay, Beth, Izzy, Owen, Leshawna, Justin, and Noah.
Killer Bass: Geoff, Bridgette, DJ, Tyler, Katie, Sadie, Courtney, Ezekiel, Duncan, Eva, and Harold.

At the start of the series, Katie was on the Screaming Gophers, and Izzy was on the Killer Bass, but Katie and Sadie refused to be on opposite teams due to their hatred of being separated from each other, so Katie and Izzy switched places.

Production

Total Drama Island was developed and produced by Fresh TV. The series was animated at Elliott Animation. The series was directed by Todd Kauffman and Mark Thornton.^[7] It is primarily targeted at twelve- to eighteen-year-olds, and the creators, Tom McGillis and Jennifer Pertsch, studied what teenagers liked and disliked about reality television shows in the writing process.^[8] McGillis says they used a "countrywide online research project" to determine this demographic's likes.^[9] Fresh TV Inc. partners McGillis, Pertsch, Elliott and Irving produced the series.^[10] The budget for the series was $8 million.^[11] It was animated in Flash,^[7] at Elliott Animation's studio in Toronto.^[10] Every cast and crew member on Total Drama Island had to sign a confidentiality agreement not to disclose who the winner was.^[12] All the characters were designed by Kauffman.^[13] An early name for the series was Camp TV.^[14] Voice actors from the FreshTV series 6teen have lent their voices for Total Drama Island: Christian Potenza, who played the character Jude on 6teen, played the role of host Chris McLean. Potenza said that the best part of the job was that his character could not be voted off the show.^[15] Emilie-Claire Barlow plays a recurring role as Chrissy on 6teen and plays Courtney on Total Drama Island. Barlow stated that Courtney was her favorite character that she had ever played.^[16] Other voice actors from 6teen include Julia Chantrey as Eva; Drew Nelson (Kai) as Duncan; Megan Fahlenbock (Jen) as Gwen; Adam Reid (Wayne) as Justin; Stephanie Anne Mills (Kirsten) as Lindsay and Katie; and Rachel Wilson (Melinda Wilson) as Heather.

Reception

Total Drama Island has received critical acclaim. Carole Bonneau, the Vice President of programming of Teletoon Canada stated that Total Drama Island, along with FreshTV's 6TEEN were "consistently top performers" for audiences of ages 6–11, and also helped to bring in older viewers as well.^[17] When Total Drama Island aired on the American Cartoon Network, it performed very well; The Toronto Star reported that, "in some ages groups [Total Drama Island showed] a 500 per cent ratings increase in [its] time slot."^[9] On December 11, 2008, Total Drama Island garnered 3.5 million viewers.^[18] That year, the series was the top "regularly scheduled Thursday night program at 9 p.m. on all television throughout third quarter among boys 2-11, 6-11 and 9-14," according to the Animation World Network.^[19] On Memorial Day weekend of 2009, a marathon of Total Drama Island increased viewership in age groups 2-11, 6-11, and 9-14, each by 20% or more compared to the same week in 2008.^[20] Common Sense Media gave the show 4 out of 5 stars, calling it a "[c]lever cartoon reality show spoof".^[21] The series was nominated for a Gemini Award for "Best Animated Program or Series", shared by Tom McGillis, Jennifer Pertsch, George Elliott and Brian Irving.^[22] As of 2011, Total Drama Island has aired in over 188 countries.^[23]

Debi Enker of The Age gave a negative review of the season's last episode, calling the art and design and writing "lamentable."^[24]

Media

DVD releases

A DVD was released by Cartoon Network on August 18, 2009 in the United States. It contains all of the 27 episodes (including TDI Rundown) of season one of this series in a 4 disc set, for a total of 594 minutes long. In addition, its bonus features (entitled as X-tras) are the audition tapes of twenty two campers, as well as Izzy's second audition tape and her exclusive interview with Chris. In Australia, Total Drama Island is on Region 4 DVD as separate volumes. This series of discs contains the widescreen version with uncut scenes and original dialogue, as seen on Teletoon and ABC3. In reviewing the DVD for season, Matthew Price of The Oklahoman wrote that while the show started out "unbelievably slowly," the series became more interesting as campers began getting voted off. Price also praised the parody of reality shows.^[25] In another review of the DVD, Jeffrey Kauffman of DVD Talk wrote that the character development was compelling and that the parody of reality shows were very funny.^[26] Mac McEntire of DVD Verdict praised the character development as well, but noted that the show sometimes sinks to "lowbrow gross-outs".^[27] Both Kauffman and McEntire recommended the series DVD.