Challenge of the GoBots/Credits

From GoBots Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

Challenge of the GoBots, like many cartoons of the period, did not fully credit its' cast and crew, leading to many creators either not being precisely credited or in some cases not credited at all.

Voice Actors[edit | edit source]

The end titles for the show simply listed the actors in alphabetical order with no indication of who played which role. After the initial mini-series the credits were recompiled for the regular episodes to reflect changes in the cast, but the same credits were used for all 60 episodes and did not change when more additions were made to the cast.

The feature film GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords did credit its' cast mostly correctly, though as it did not feature many of the characters from the series it does not solve all of the problems - and includes at least one known recasting and two naming errors.

Further complicating things was that - partly due to a hectic production schedule - many minor recurring characters, such as BuggyMan and Dozer, have more than one voice actor. Whether this was due to no-one keeping track of things or just due to it not being expeditious to ship in a certain actor for the occasional line is unclear. Many bit parts were thus filled in by the more versatile regulars, such as Frank Welker, Kelly Ward and even voice director Gordon Hunt.

As such there are a large number of characters whose voice actors are unknown, as well as a large number of credited voice actors with no identified roles. One of the GoBots Wiki's aims is to try and identify more of these gaps in the cast.

Credited Actors[edit | edit source]

Mini-series[edit | edit source]

Regular series[edit | edit source]

Directors[edit | edit source]

Challenge of the GoBots also pulled the same trick with the episode directors. For the initial mini-series, Oscar Dufau and Carl Urbano were credited as directors; it is unlikely they co-directed, with it being more likely that the 5 episodes were divided between them, though it is unknown at what ratio.

It got more confusing for the regular series. Urbano was retained and joined by Art Davis, Volus Jones, Don Lusk, Rudy Zamora and Alan Zaslove in the credits, with all six being credited on all 60 episodes. Not to mention Ray Patterson being credited as Supervising Director and possibly getting involved, or the possibility that - like the cast - more names were added later in the series and simply not credited.

As the show hardly allowed directors to express much of a personal style the precise credits are unlikely to ever be confirmed unless someone turns up Hanna-Barbera documentation, and who knows how much of that has survived the various takeovers, mergers and licensing impasses the series has been through.

Writers[edit | edit source]

Thankfully as each episode featured a unique title card which credited the writers this is one area that we can be largely certain about.