Arrival

"Arrival" is the first episode of Butterfly Valley (1969 series). It is also considered to officially start the franchise as whole, despite the pilot film being produced and pitched to the NBC network executives a year earlier.
==Synopsis==
Twin sisters Rose and Petunia are playing on the playground of their school when they are picked on by a group of bullies. After that, they find a butterfly fairy named Princess Butterfly, who gives them a magical flower to visit Butterfly Valley. They meet butterfly fairies and face against the ruler of the trolls, King Boogieman, who wants to marry Princess Butterfly.
==Plot==
The episode opens with several children playing on a school playground, with Rose and Petunia playing hopscotch, then a group of bullies appear and attack everyone. The twins fought the bullies before they stop to hear a small voice.
They look around, wondering where the voice came from, and see a small monarch butterfly.
The butterfly reveals herself to be Princess Butterfly and gives the twins a white glowing flower they can use to visit the kingdom of her species whenever they wish.
The twins decided to use the flower and enter Butterfly Valley. They are stunned to see such a beautiful world around them and begin to play around the area. They then meet a little blue caterpillar named Bluebell, who then turns into a little girl. She reveals that she is a young butterfly fairy who has not yet earned her wings.
Princess Butterfly soon transforms into a fairy, shocking the two children.
She takes the twins to the kingdom and introduces them to the village of butterflies, who promptly turn into fairies. She explains that she is in charge of ruling the kingdom because her parents are trying to make peace with the Beehive kingdom.
Suddenly, some dark stormy clouds appear and the fairies all turn back into butterflies and hide in shelters, with Princess Butterfly shrinking the twins so they can hide as well.
When the two ask why is everyone hiding, Bluebell explains that the stormy clouds were the result of troll magic, as the trolls were invading Butterfly Valley.
However, one butterfly fairy mother begins to panic because her son went missing. Princess Butterfly goes out to search for the lost child and Rose, Petunia and Bluebell follow, with the latter turning the twins back to normal size.
Princess Butterfly finds the missing child wandering away from Butterfly Valley, but is captured by the trolls, along with the others.
They are brought before King Boogieman, who instantly falls in love with Princess Butterfly and asks her to marry him. Disgusted, she refuses, to which King Boogieman replies, "Well, too bad. I only asked to be polite. You don't actually have a choice in this. You'll be my lovely queen."
The twins, not knowing what to do, hold each other's hands and suddenly, a beam of light shoots out, hitting King Boogieman, whom Petunia calls him a "scary-man". With their newfound power, they help Princess Butterfly, Bluebell and the missing child escape and return to Butterfly Valley.
The missing child reunited with his mother and Princess Butterfly thanks the two for their help. They then return home using the magic flower and gain the courage to stand up to the bullies who were picking on them earlier, defending a young boy from them.
==Behind the scenes==
After the success of the pilot film, Ronald Smickon and Bobby Westmoreland began producing a full animated series for NBC on June 15, 1968. Tim Weiss and Glenn Donovan came up with the storyboards of the episodes that were planned to be produced, the first one being "Arrival".
This episode took six months to be produced, instead of usually five months, due to the producers struggling to think of a good story to start the show, so they decide to revamp the plot for the pilot film for this episode's plot.
==Home media release==
This episode is included in most Butterfly Valley VHS and DVD sets as well as the Blu-ray box set Butterfly Valley: The 50th Anniversary Collection.
It was also featured as the fourth cartoon in the 1997 VHS compilation video Saturday Morning Classics Vol. 1, played between the Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends episode "Video-Man" and the Inspector Gadget episode "All That Glitters". This caught the attention to Carl Keatley, who will later produce the 1998 reboot.
==Trivia==
*This episode received 1.7 million viewers during its first broadcast.
*The story was actually adapted from the pilot film produced in 1968.
*This episode would later be remade 29 years later as "Welcome to Butterfly Valley," the first episode of the 1998 series.
*While Princess Butterfly guides the twins around Butterfly Valley, Rose can be heard whistling to Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Te Deum, which is best known as the theme music of the Eurovision network and its related events, including the Eurovision Song Contest and the currently-defunct Jeux Sans Frontières.
Category:Episodes