In the mid-eighties "State of the Art" meant that you owned a brand spanking new compact disc player and your exposure to the realm of CGI consisted entirely of a matinee showing of Disney's "Tron". In 1984, ReBoot creator Ian Pearson, Head of CAL Videos 3D Computer graphics department, was looking to expand on what he had learnt during his time there creating computer graphics for commercials, industrial films and most notably the digital sequences on the motion picture "Electric Dreams". He left his position to join the Rushes Post-Production facility in London, England where he was instrumental in expanding the company's graphic facility to encompass special effects compositing using the first Quantel "Harry" in Europe, this is where he met ReBoot co-creator Gavin Blair for the first time.

LIGHTCYCLES FROM TRON

RUSHES POST-PRODUCTION

Gavin had joined Rushes in 1985 as a runner after graduating with honours in Graphic Design from the DeMontford University in Leciestershire and within two months he had been promoted to their Computer Graphics Department, training on the Quantel Paintbox and BTS Elite Computer Animation Systems, establishing himself as an authority in computer based model making. During his time there, Ian realised the future potential of computer animation and approached Award Winning Producer Steve Barron (who had previously worked with Ian on "Electric Dreams" and would later become an Executive Producer on ReBoot) to use the system to create a CGI Pop Promo, after pitching the idea several times Barron was finally convinced. Pearsons persistance had paid off and the result was the world's first computer animated music video on the world's first specialist computer-based graphics engine, the Bosch FGS-4000 CGI system. It was the birth of the iconic "Money for Nothing" by popular UK band Dire Straits.

On putting the video together Gavin Blair recalls, "It was three and a half weeks of hell! Working twenty hours a day, seven days a week, sleeping on the couch... the machines crashing all the time... losing the tapes, losing the drives... At one point we lost a whole drive because the building was hit by lightening." But in spite of all the problems they experienced, the video was delivered and instantly became a worldwide hit, turning CGI characters Harv and Sal into celebrities overnight. "Money for Nothing" was awarded "Video of the Year" at the 3rd annual MTV Video Music Awards in 1986 beating Tina Turner, Prince and A-Ha. Securing Steve, Ian and Gavin valuable recognition within the industry and catapulting CGI into a viable medium for mainstream entertainment. Directly after work completed on the Promo, a very tired and very weary Mr Blair and Mr Pearson decided to unwind in the local pub, as the evening progressed - the pints flowed and the two became quite... inebriated.

MONEY FOR NOTHING...

Pearson voiced what he had been thinking from the start, 'We could do a show like this' after the mountain of work that had just gone into 'Money for Nothing' Pearson thought he was nuts to even consider it. He remained unconvinced... for about two minutes. After which the pair started fleshing out the basics of the ReBoot concept on nothing more than napkins and beer coasters, but due to the limitations of computer graphics back in 1986 things became a little sidetracked. The success of "Money for Nothing" kept Blair and Pearson busy at Rushes Post-Production for some time to come. They recall, "We got loads of work off the back of it..." and Ian was later appointed as Creative Director to the Rushes Board. Gavin was also to benefit and after eighteen months as an assistant, he was upgraded to a full operator and animator working on over 200 commercials and winning a Creative Circle Award for Computer Animation for the successful Honeywell Bull commerical. It wasn't until late 1989 before things began to move again when Ian decided to leave Rushes and with Chris Roff (who also produced season four) they founded the world's first fully digital post-production facility, The Mill.

They hired the best of the best from the industry, those who could see what CGI was really capable of. It was inevitable that Gavin Blair would join them as animator a few months later in January 1990. Pearson and Blair continued to develop and improve the ReBoot concept In their free time. "We pushed and prodded the idea around in the background for probably two or three years. We brought another guy on board, my teacher at university, John Grace - he did a TV show in England called Portland Bill, which was all stop frame puppets. John became the third member of the team. The fourth member of ReBoot team was Phil Mitchell. Phil was a close friend of Gavin Blair, he had studied and graduated with him during their time at DeMontford University and Phil brought with him a wealth of raw talent and an impressive resume in commercial computer animation, winning several major animation awards during his time with Electronic Arts, Array Productions and Snapper films. Mitchell introduced the Mill to 2D morphing, making them the first post-production facility in London to have the technology at the time.

GAVIN BLAIR & PHIL MITCHELL

The Mill was to become the UK's foremost computer animation studio winning accolade upon accolade, including a coveted BAFTA for best animation effects in their 1993 commerical 'Doorbells' for the Nationwide Building Society. ReBoot was never to far away and the concept started expanding, "Basically the four of us kept rolling the ball, and the idea grew and developed," says Blair "Meanwhile the technology was developing, the hardware, the software. Computers were getting faster, they were getting more capable. The reason that the series took place inside a computer was, in the early days, because of the limitations of the technology," Blair continues, "Back then, the blocky, shaded, Dire Straits look was state of the art. We had to put ourselves in the shoes of the viewer and ask, 'Why does it look like this?' Well, it's inside a computer. 'But why are there no shadows?' Um, it's inside a computer. Then of course, as the technology advanced, the show started looking all shiny with rich textures and natural-looking body movements. The reason for the show taking place in some kind of digital fairyland became less pressing. But the whole thing had already been set in motion, and we figured, What the hell, it's a great idea, let's just go with it." says Blair. "In fact, by the time the show was actually made, we could do just about anything. It's funny that the reason for the show being in a computer really was no longer valid. It could have been set on another planet ".

EARLY BOB DESIGN

A few unofficial ‘down time’ tests were done at both Rushes and during their first year at The Mill. Limelight Productions in London paid for the creation of a CGI demo reel to showcase the ReBoot concept, featuring 'Chip' an early version of 'Bob', 'Megabyte' and his partner in crime 'Hacker' (who was later developed into "Hack and Slash"). Numerous copies were dispatched to producers they hoped would be interested in the concept. Although only a few minutes long, Vid Windows, Mainframe, the Supercomputer and even a game environment (which eventually formed the template for the episode "Wizards, Warriors and a word from our Sponsor") were actively demonstrated. Limelight made sure the demo found it's way into the hands Ian and Gavins' mutual friend Steve Barron who was in the process of developing "The Storyteller" for Muppet legend Jim Henson. Limelight also introduced them to former Hanna Barbara prime time development guru Christopher Brough.

With over 25 years of experience in the animation development field, Chris Brough was looking for something new to unleash on a hungry and demanding audience, and this was it. "The tape didn't look that great. Honest to God, it looked like animated billiard balls" says Brough. "It had no warmth, the geometric shapes were very inorganic. But there was a strength to the concept that I liked a lot and the idea of creating a TV series for kids set inside the world of computers, creating therefore a window of technology, was a compelling idea" During a visit England on business Brough arranged a dinner meeting with the team to discuss moving the project forward and the prolonged task of securing the necessary finances to make it a reality which wasn't an easy task. "The tape was well received, but it didn’t prove the concept, it didn’t convince anyone that we could pull it off. Chris Brough needed more, (he also needed help selling this entirely new breed of show), and we didn’t have the time or the means to do any more." says Blair.

CHRIS BROUGH

MANDATORY STOOPID KID

During the development of the show Gavin Blair recalls, "We were all still in London, Phil, Ian and I were having a creative meeting with Chris Brough. He was telling us that it would be important for the sale of the show to a US Network to have a 'kid' in it for our young audience to relate to. Now, it has to be said we weren't too happy about that idea. After all, we didn't want no stoopid kid character 'ruining' our kick-butt, high-tech action show just to appease the networks! But Chris was adamant; "You have to have a kid... a little 'Enzo' running around in there..." he said. Well, we griped and moaned, but eventually we gave in, and Dot gained a little brother. The name Enzo stuck because it was funny, and unusual - and besides, we'd think of something better later. From the moment he was added to the show Enzo grew and grew on us. Now he's one of our favourite characters, and one of the most fun to write for, both comedy and drama."

Chris Brough did what he could to sell ReBoot in the US, but things were hard going. The test wasn't as as extensive as it needed to be to impress those in charge and there was no money in the budget to continue the project. The Mill were watching them carefully, ReBoot was now a real property that they could no longer develop through The Mills' expensive computer systems without bringing them on board. "It was one of those 'teetering on the brink, risk everything' moments… but we were all safe and comfy with our good jobs and mortgages." says Blair. Reboot had hit a critical point in it's history, they had a potentially killer idea but to get it made meant gambling everything. Pearson was despondant, retiring to the White Horse Pub in the trendy SoHo district of London after winning yet another creative argument with one of their clients. He was approached by one of their favorite Barmaids who gave him the push he needed when she said, "Why don’t you stop talking about it and do it?"

THE WHITE HORSE

Gavin Blair remembers, "A week or so later, after taking Phil and I warmly by the throat and telling us that this was it and we’d better not let him down when the time came." Pearson took the plunge and quit The Mill to promote the ReBoot concept full-time." A lot of people took this moment as a signal that this thing was for real and longer just a flight of fancy. Softimage and SGI started pushing hard to involved with the project, at one point even lending Pearson some systems so he could work at home. During this time, Pearson created Softimage versions of Mike and a pair of binomes for use in the early animation tests as they were 'light' and could demo very quickly. It was also at this point he also built Ian Gibsons' version of Bob.

Reknown British comic artist Ian Gibson was brought in to add faces to some of their many characters. Although credited as 'Production Design Consultant ' on the series, his contribution remains a bone of contention especially when it comes to one particular character. Gibson claims, "Before I became an illustrator I worked in computers, So I was keen to apply my warped mind to the weird world of the bits and bytes, the bobs and sprites! Bob and Dot were lovely characters and I would have liked to see them on the screen, but as things turned out I 'fell off' the project, having helped set it in motion. About all that was left of my original designs were the Ones and Zeroes, Hack and Slash and Hexadecimal the Witch. Odd that when I first suggested her as a character the team were very dismissive. Glad that she survived and thrived!" Although Gibsons recollection about his involvement seems genuine, the version of events remembered by some of the team is somewhat... different.

GIBSONS COMICAL DESIGNS

WHICH WITCH IS WHICH?

"When we were working with Gibson, we already had a bible and a character list. We asked him to work on major characters like Bob, Dot, Enzo, Hack, Slash, etc. We already had a handle on Megabyte, but I think we wanted to see what Gibson did with him, to see what he brought to the table. Also in the bible and on the list was 'Hex-a-Decimal, a digital witch' Gibson was intrigued, but we told him we didn't want him to work on her. He worked on her anyway, because he'd gotten all excited about the concept of a digital witch. We still have a copy of the sketch he did, which is VERY different to the Hex we know and love." Gibson was to be replaced later down the line by fellow British artist Brendan McCarthy for a more mature and less 'cartoony' look to the series, leaving only a screen credit to associate Gibson with the project which was a concession to the artist who had resurfaced and raised his version of events while the series was in production.

Ian Pearson flew out to Los Angeles, spending the next year sleeping on Chris Brough’s couch during which time Pearson, assisted by a couple of demo animators from Softimage, put together the Def Leppard promo 'Let’s Get Rocked'. Not only did the video serve as a test of the new Softimage animation software and SGI hardware but the kid in the promo served as a prototype for Enzo. In all his free time Pearson was worked out of the Limelights US offices, revamping all the designs with McCarthy and pounding the pavements with Brough trying to get a deal with a network. The two 'struck gold', they had pre-sold the series to US network ABC and also managed to bring funding from Brough's business partner Josanne Lovick at the newly formed BLT Productions. Limelight was eventually forced to pull out, unable to meet the continuing commitment when Alliance who was Canada's largest production company became ReBoot's newest financier using ReBoot as an experiment into the developing field of multimedia.

LET'S GET ROCKED!

BLAME CANADA!

The next obstacle was where would they create the series? England was far too expensive in terms of both technology and talent so the team started to venture out into other areas, Los Angeles (Where Brough & ABC were based) even Rome were considered until Chris Brough suggested Vancouver, Canada which would allow them easier access to both BLT & Alliance. Ian Pearson bravely volunteered to check it out. Blair remembers "Phil and I got this phone call from a very drunk Ian. It was two in the morning in England and the phone rang. Ian was all: 'Awe man! Vancouver is beautiful! The mountains... the sea...' He basically had just fallen in love with the place...'This is where we are going to do the show!' So we all packed our bags and came here, despite the fact that back in England everyone thought we were insane. After all, Canada was just for mounties and polar bears." John Grace chose to remain in England to work on other projects, while Ian, Gavin & Phil found their new home much more than they expected.

With a weak Canadian dollar, substantial tax credits for research and development and an incredible array of freshly trained computer animators, it was exactly what they were looking with an added bonus of the funding that they had aquired from YTV in Canada, ITV in the United Kingdom, Polygram International Video, and Telefilm Canada. It was now time to venture into the undiscovered country, the production of the series. Using traditional animation methods it was the industry standard to produce the pilot and sell the series off the back of it, but for ReBoot things were quite different. Gavin Blair explains, "You can't just knock out a pilot for a computer-generated series, and then if people like the pilot, you do the show," Blair says. "Because to buy all the gear, build all the models, all the characters, and all the sets to do a pilot - that's an enormous investment. You've got to do 13 episodes or none. Also, the people we asked to sink millions of dollars into the project were a bit jittery because they weren't sure we could do it. We couldn't prove we were up to the job because nobody had ever done something like this before. So for them, it was a big leap. A huge gamble."

Originally 'ReBoot inc.' started out with only a handful of talented individuals and a great idea. Along with Technical Guru Kelly Daniels, "Ian and I were running this operation out of a hotel room," laughs Chris Brough and it was time for them to deliver on the promises they had made to the companies that had invested in that great idea. Scriptwriting was underway, "We decided early on not to go with the straight formula typical in shows like Scooby-Doo," explains Ian Pearson, "We wanted to break the mold... to create a world where anything is possible." The original script, which was actually 'Racing the Clock' ran for 44 minutes, far too long for the 21 minutes of airtime they were expected to fill. Severe edits were made to the script which didn't help when they found it distorted the desired plotline. But that wasn't the only problem, they also had to deal with ABC who only weeks after agreeing to finance and air ReBoot had their own issues with the scripts which dogged them throughout the first two seasons. ABC's internal Broadcast Standards and Practices unit (BSP) were exercising their moral judgment at each and every given opportunity, whether warranted or not.

"We can generally see the logic to what BSP is trying to do," says Gavin Blair. "If you have a kid run through a plate-glass window on TV and he's OK, you might find that actual little kids start running through plate-glass windows thinking they'll be all right. It can't hurt to have someone point that out to you so you'll be extra careful and responsible. We'd just sold ABC an action adventure show, and now we couldn't even have a punch-up because that was violence," says Blair. "Also, we couldn't have jeopardy. Meaning we couldn't end an act with Bob falling off a cliff and him yelling 'Aaaaahh' as we cut to a commercial - because that's jeopardy, and we'd upset the kiddies." BSP also interfered with the character design insisting that Dot have her cleavage sanitised. "So she acquired this longish horizontal lump on the front of her torso," recalls Blair. "Her breasts sort of come out at the side and then go straight across the front without a hint that there are two of them." humorously referred to by the animators as 'Dot's Mono-breast' But as they settled into the new Howe Street offices in downtown Vancouver, the problems experienced with ABC were just the tip of the iceberg.

LIFE IMITATING ART?

In bringing the series to life technical issues dogged them every step of the way. Although the systems were sound, a combination of Silicon Graphics, Onyx and Indigo hardware, the software was not. Despite being open-ended, allowing them to add to existing programs and write their own programs in-house, the main package Softimage was tempermental and not designed to handle the information being thrown at it, unpredicably crashing at random intervals. During the first year of production ReBoot animators were hit with over 15,000 software bugs, sometimes losing entire profiles or erasing over three weeks' worth of rendering. "We made every mistake possible," says Dan Didio, who at the time was a programming executive for ABC and later, ReBoot’s story editor. "That’s the only way you’re going to learn, and we wound up thriving for it. We were charting new territory, which made it kind of fun. We didn’t understand the production problems at the time. 'ReBoot Inc.' were pushing programs further than ever before. We became pretty much a beta test site for computer software that was applied later on down the line."

"When we started out, nobody had done what we were doing so there was nobody else's lessons to learn from.", says former Director of Communications Mairi Welman, "We were inventing the wheel. We made our mistakes, people worked obscene 18 hours days and slept under desks." Some even slept in front of their workstations in sleeping bags to maximize time, "While things were rendering, they you would wake up, animate a little more, sleep some more." Blair recalls. At the same time they had to keep their ABC liason sweet, "I started at ABC Childrens Television and the first show that I was assigned was ReBoot," says Didio, "Nobody knows what's going on, nobody knows how it's been done. I remember stepping in on the first day, seeing the tests and how incredible it was and getting swept up in a lot of what happened." Gavin Blair now freely admits that for the most part, "We were making it up as we went along."

ENOUGH TO RENDER INSANITY

STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN
DAN DIDIO

He continues, "Me and Ian and Phil and the other guys we were 'ReBoot Inc.' and Dan was essentially the client so we were doing a show for him, he was the network guy. The network would send him in and he would see how we were doing. So we had to make it look good for the network." Dan Didio remembers one such attempt to make themselves look good, where the Mainframe crew who were still recruiting animators for this unknown art had the audacity to boost the size of their staff using anyone they could find... including the night security guard. "What they would do is you would walk in and they would have a bunch of people working, 'this is our first workstation, now let me show you the second workstation.' So you would go to the next workstation and then they would show you a third, not knowing that the same people who were at the first one, are now at the third one. I was just learning animation so they were able to pull everything over me and I completely fell for it all."

To assist in the animation process, some of the models were simplified, Hack and Slash lost their originally planned legs which were replaced for their now signature roller balls, complex sprites were kept to a minimum in favor of the more simplified Binomes and the Zip-Board was introduced allowing animators to dispense with the painful technique of getting the cast to walk. Although one of the support characters was actually designed as an in-joke taking advantage of his more simplified format, Dots' Maître d' Cecil is named after The Cecil Hotel, Vancouver's premier exotic show lounge. "Why do you think he's on a brass pole?" laughs Blair. With some of the more difficult processes cut back, they slowly but surely made progress. Mainframe told Didio and ABC that it took ten weeks to animate 'Racing the Clock', Blair says "We just lied about how long it took." in truth, the production stretched to 18 agonisingly long months.

WTF?!? MY LEGS!!!

REVENGE OF THE MEDUSA

Finally it was finished, Dan Didio visited 'ReBoot Inc.' to view the results, "The first episode was done and it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant! They were 'half way done' on the next one and we asked about the fourth and they were 'well, we haven't started yet'," he thought, "Uh-oh, What are we goin to do?!?" ABC decided to cut the team some slack, "Everybody saw what we were getting and we believed it." says Didio and they proceeded as planned airing ReBoot for the very first time on the 10th September 1994. "We got the first four shows done and then we hit a wall," says Didio, "The show went on hiatus and we ran 'Superhuman Samurai Squad'" On it's original airing, the fourth show 'The Medusa Bug' had an alternate ending and 'ReBoot Inc.' produced a series of 'bumpers' which became known as 'The Trias effect' to fill the void and keep interest with the viewing public until the new episodes were available to air. When Didio returned, they had made up for lost time, "Every single script was already written."

The only problem was that some of the scripts were written by people from a traditional animation background. When it came to 'Wizards, Warriors and a word from our Sponsor' they knew they had to get a handle on things as all the dialogue was over 'no action' sequences. "I tell no lie, the script was 52 pages long, I have a copy at home... a 52 page script for a 21 minute episode. Hollywood writers always write long anyway, but you learn to live with it." says Blair, "So, we recorded the whole 52 page script we cut the dialogue into the AVID, which was the editing system we used. With no gaps, no pauses for action, just solid dialogue... it was 37 minutes long for a 21 minute show, with action." he goes on, "We basically threw out the entire second act of the show. We had the beginning of the script, the end of the script and all the stuff in between we just made it up to make the story work.

Dan Didio continues, "That was one of the turning points where we realised the way the show was built, at least in regards to the network was completely wrong. We did not understand how to make a computer animated show and we started to learn", says Didio. "The thought was we're approaching this as a traditional cel animation, it's not cel animation it's live action. So we did the scripts like they were live action scripts and now it was coming alive." There was just one snag; because of the immense amount of time and investment in the pilot, 'ReBoot Inc.' were quickly running out of money. Mairi Welman explains, "There's one point where we didn't have enough money for payroll and Barb Russell went around and handed everybody hundred dollar bills and said, 'Make this last 'till Monday when I can sort things out.'" Chris Brough remembers that at the the time, the company was running "on a wing and a prayer," but they didn't have to wait long for additional funds, the Worldwide success of the series meant only one thing... Merchandising.

BINOME SERIES

Even before the series aired, licensing deals to keep ReBoot alive had been in place and they were now coming into play. Colouring books, socks, toothbrushes, biscuits and the first wave of Irwin Toy Action Figures started to make their way into the consumer chain. Steve Denure, former President of Alliance Multimedia explains, "If you have a hit television series then it will drive your merchendising and licensing product, the toy line, the games, etc and you can make sales at retail that are far in excess of what you would have made for making the television show." At the height of ReBoots popularity over 100 licenses were issued, directly resulting in a designated animator in a newly outfitted suite who's specific role was to turn out publicity and merchandising artwork for companys hungry to cash in on the ReBoot brand. Merchandise flooded onto the market, enough for one dedicated fan to start a ReBoot museum. But the one item we really wanted never made it... the plush Frisket is still in the possession of Mr. Ian Pearson.

Upon resuming production, 'ReBoot Inc.' had to confront the combined system crashes of SoftImage and their own lipsync package 'GRIN' which was written and developed in house to provide the facial movements for the characters. If the series was to continue, the glitches had to be addressed. "They would have major problems which would cause crashes and all these little problems that slow things down, they had to be prioritised." says Dan Didio, "Ian (Pearson) said, 'We've been approaching this wrong... we have these giant crashing problems over here, so if that makes the system crash... let's just not do it. Let's just worry about the things that slow us down.'" The programmers and software engineers targetted the minor issues first, being easier to fix and allowing the production process to move much faster, avoiding the minefield which would have brought the system crashing to a halt. This combination of dedicated staff, unique thinking and the ability to adapt to a learning curve which was way off the scale finally culminated in the realisation of a dream, the completion of season one of ReBoot, the worlds first fully computer animated television series.

ReBoot became an animation phenomenon introducing the world to CGI a year before Pixar broke the mould with 'Toy Story.' It was a huge success, at one point gaining a massive 63% share of the viewing public on British television channel cITV. Recognised as a trailblazer within the industry and winning with the 1995 Award of Excellence for Best Animated Program from the Alliance for Children and Television. ReBoot also became one of the first new television shows to gain an online following when in April 1995, Joe Smith started The Unofficial ReBoot Homepage which still remains online to this day and was often used by 'ReBoot Inc.' to get information out their their growing fanbase. "It makes more sense all of a sudden," concedes Mitchell. "Everybody is into computers, and everybody has a PC." The path was now clear for a second season, but on reflection the team now concede that ReBoots' first season was too fast-paced for their liking. "We wanted to put everything into the first shows," Blair says. "We had this huge cast of characters. We had three heroes, two villains, their sidekicks, plus all the ancillary characters. We had a city to explore."

BECAUSE I CAN'T STAND IT!

One of the most fondly remembered episodes from the first season is 'Talent Night.' This was originally supposed to be a 'bottle' or 'clip' show where two characters are placed in an isolated area, and they talk about things that happend in the past. "There was going to be a static storm that stranded half a dozen characters in the diner and it was Enzo's birthday, so they were going to put on a little show and all you could see out the windows of the diner were static, to save production time." says Blair. The episode took on a life of it's own as parodies and tributes were added at every given opportunity. Almost all of the acts were to be turned down by their very own Broadcast Standards Binome, based in part on the highly influential UK moral guardian Mary Whitehouse, 'Emma Cee' also known as 'M.C.' are the initials of Mary Connelly who worked at the Broadcast Standards and Practices unit at the time. The same BSP who insisted that the ReBoot team make a rather bizarre change when it came to censoring the episode.

At the part where Dot was dressed in a long, red glamorous gown and sang 'Alphanumeric' to Enzo, the script called for her to sashay over to him, wink, and then give him a short sisterly peck on the chin. ABC wouldn't hear of it. "It was obviously incest," Blair says BSP told him. "We were implying an incestuous relationship between brother and sister." - "I can't honestly get my mind to think in those terms. I think that's one of the sickest things I've heard." says Pearson, "Those people, how do they sleep at night?" On a more personal level, one particular scene pleased Ian Pearson more than any other. The Dire Straits’ 'Money for Nothing' blockheaded workmen 'Harv and Sal' made a cameo appearance to be unceremoniously whumped by falling sandbags. "Ian can’t stand being reminded about those characters all the time," Dan Didio recalls, 'He wanted to kill them in ReBoot because he hated being held to that standard.' One thing that they all agreed on was the finale of the episode, "The culmanation of the show HAD to be Bob and Megabyte, what are they going to do? ROCK AND ROLL!" says Blair.

I'M NOT BAD...
I'M JUST RENDERED THIS WAY.

ALMOST WENT ASS BACKWARDS

With season one under wraps it was time for 'ReBoot Inc.' to begin pre-production on it's second season, but prior to this they created on special behind the scenes look at the series which nearly didn't make the light of day. During the closing credits of "Wizards, Warriors and a Word from Our Sponsor" U.K. station cITV announced they would be showing "Fast Forward: The Making of ReBoot" as the tenth episode in their first season run. It never came and the missing 'episode' almost slipped into obscurity... almost. One British ReBoot fan directly contacted Limelight productions in London after it didn't air and they agreed to provide a VHS copy for review purposes. Although aquired in 1995, it didn't make it's way onto the internet until 2003, over eight years later. Fortunately, Gavin Blair remembers his interview segment of the feature all too well, "During a break in filming, Phil drew a charicature of me on the whiteboard behind us. It's visible if your resolution is high enough. Curse you, Mitchell! Curse you!"

With the majority of the software problems solved, a meaner, sleaker, more efficient team immediately began work on the faster paced season two. "The terrible thing about 3-D computer animation is the enormous investment you need to get started," says Blair. "The wonderful thing is that once that's behind you, new projects are so much easier to get off the ground because everything you need is already in place." The cast and the heaving digital Metropolis known as Mainframe were fully introduced and it was time to progress the development of the series into a more character-based feel rather than the episodic format of the previous season. The live action emulation which began in writing the series had tranferred over to the characters who learnt from their previous experiences, adapted and most of all they had started to grow, keeping pace with the audience. It made writing for the show much easier, "We've got a better handle on what we're doing," says Blair, "So we have 21-page scripts instead of 44-page ones, and we don't try to do too much in any one show."

SECOND SEASON CAST

But when it came to Broadcast Standards and Practises, things certainly hadn't improved at all. According to Blair, BS&P outlawed the word hockey on the grounds that it's apparently slang for a mixture of semen, urine, and feces. Next they outlawed the term wuss because it is not just "a weak, cowardly, or ineffectual person," as the dictionary might have you believe, but a vulgar word meaning "wet pussy" or so they claimed. Dan Didio recalls one such incident which almost saw an entire episode go back to the drawing board, "We're running behind and we find that motion is the fastest way to make up for lost time in animation, so we did the whole Mad Max show (Bad Bob)." Blair adds, "To a driving Rock soundtrack! You'll notice that once the Rock and Roll starts and the beat starts, the whole show just rolls with it." Didio continues, "We took all the previous Broadcast Standards notes and exaggerated all the violence. Big explosions, etc. So we send the show in and we get the note back from Broadcast Standards 'SHOW COMPLETELY REJECTED!'" A note that Ian Pearson personally had framed, Didio adds, "I don't know what to do, I'm supposed to support that. So Ian calls up Broadcast Standards directly and says 'We made this show, just for you. Here's all the notes you gave me, and they're all in the show.' and the next letter comes in 'APPROVED!' the same show, not a single change." Didio also remembers a very special message they left, "Somebody wrote in a cityscape sequence, in all the windows, in binary code, "Fuck you, Broadcast Standards!"

THIS SECTION FOR GILLIAN ANDERSON, PARODIES, BREADCRUMBS (WTF MOMENTS)
"You stick things in there because it gets the audience to go, 'What did he just say?!?' But you haven't necessarily thought it all the way through the end, you've just thrown it in there and then later down the line you reveal the truth, the full story. You don't necessarily know where you're going with it." says Blair.

ABC were acquired by Disney in 1995 and cancelled ReBoot planning to replace ABC’s Saturday morning programming with Recess, The New Doug and other Mouse-produced programming. The person who had to break the news was Dan Didio, "I get a note from a rather high executive at Disney that says basically, 'Don't worry about any shows you are getting from other places, you'll get all Disney now.' So we knew we were coming to a close." He continues, "We were also having delivery problems and the ratings were not as strong as we hoped. But yes, with Disney coming on board they did want to go with a slate of Disney-owned products. So basically, with the exception of Looney Tunes, everything we previously had on our Saturday morning schedule went off the air."

CANCEL US? I DON'T THINK SO!

CAPTION GOES HERE

THIS SECTION WEB WORLD WARS, CLIFFHANGER, ETC...