Sonic the Hedgehog

***Sonic the Hedgehog*** (also known as Sonic SatAM) is an American-Italian animated television series based on the video game series of the same name. It was story edited by Len Janson and produced by DiC Productions L.P., Sega of America, Inc., and the Italian studio Reteitalia S.p.A. It is the second of DiC's *Sonic* cartoons, following *Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog*. It features a more dramatic and dark story, depicting Sonic as a member of a band of freedom fighters battling to overthrow Doctor Robotnik. The program aired for two seasons on ABC from September 18, 1993 to December 3, 1994.

Since its broadcast, it was praised by fans for a more challenging storyline in a Saturday morning cartoon at its time compared to *The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!* and *The Legend of Zelda*.

## Premise

The series takes place on Mobius, a planet mostly populated by anthropomorphic animals. The Kingdom of Acorn, based within the city of Mobotropolis, was at war with an unseen enemy. The King recruited a human scientist, Julian, to build war machines to end the war with a victory. However, during peacetime, Julian and his nephew Snively launched a coup d'etat against the kingdom. The King is banished to another dimension, the Void, and the citizens are captured and transformed into mindless robots, through a machine called the Roboticizer. Julian renames himself as Dr. Robotnik, now the steel-hearted dictator of Mobius. Mobotropolis is renamed Robotropolis, a polluted, factorial cityscape.

Robotnik finds himself opposed by a small collective group called the Freedom Fighters, who operate out of the secluded woodland village Knothole. They are led by Sonic the Hedgehog and Princess Sally Acorn, the King's sole heir. Other members include Sonic's best friend Miles "Tails" Prower, technical expert Rotor the Walrus, French-accented coyote Antoine D'Coolette, half-roboticized Bunnie Rabbot, and Dulcy the Dragon. They act as an insurgency against Robotnik's regime. Sonic uses the Power Rings to gain a temporary boost in power. Both the rings and the Roboticizer were designed by Sonic's uncle Chuck, one of the victims of the machine.

Early on in the series, Sonic uses a Power Ring to restore Uncle Chuck's mind in his mechanical body. Chuck decides to act as a spy for the Freedom Fighters, operating from within the city. He is eventually exposed by Robotnik in the second season, and flees to Knothole. Sally searches for her father throughout the series. He is found alive within the Void, shared with a sorcerer, Naugus, who was also imprisoned within the dimension by Robotnik. Naugus attempts to escape the Void, but both he and the King discover their bodies turn to crystal whilst back on Mobius, and are forced to return to their prison. The heroes gain other allies, including Ari the Ram, and Lupe, leader of the elusive wolf pack.

In the series' sole two-part episode, "Blast to the Past", Sonic and Sally use the Time Stones to travel back in time, in an attempt to thwart Robotnik's planned takeover. They fail, but manage to get their younger selves to the safety of Knothole, with help from Sally's nanny Rosemary Woodchuck. In the series finale, Robotnik builds the Doomsday Project to wipe out his enemies. The Freedom Fighters launch a full scale assault against Robotnik, Sonic and Sally destroying the Doomsday Project with the power of the Deep Power Stones. Robotnik vanishes, and the Freedom Fighters declare victory, with Sonic and Sally kissing.

In a final scene, Snively becomes the main antagonist, accompanied by an unseen ally with red eyes. Ben Hurst, one of the series' writers, confirmed the figure was Naugus.

## Production

According to Robby London, DiC originally made a deal to produce only the darker, more story-driven Sonic cartoon for ABC to air on Saturday mornings. However, DiC also wanted to go further and produce additional episodes for weekday syndication as well, similar to what DiC has previously done with The Real Ghostbusters, but Mark Pedowitz, the then-senior vice president of business affairs and contracts at ABC, who expected the Sonic cartoon to air exclusively on ABC, rejected the idea, saying that if DiC puts the show in syndication, then it won't be on their network. ABC wouldn't agree to the deal until London came with a proposition that DiC would produce a separate, vastly different Sonic show for syndication instead, the end result of which became *Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog*. The show bible for the Saturday morning Sonic cartoon was written in February 1992 with the final revision made on March 10, 1993.

### Cancellation

Season three was ordered by Ben Hurst for the 1995 season, but ABC halted further plans of anymore seasons as season 3 was eventually scrapped, resulting its airtime limitation during the Fall 1994 lineup and the highest ratings of *Power Rangers*, aired on FOX network.

## Broadcast and distribution

### Initial run

The Saturday morning series differs from the weekly *Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog* (which ABC originally planned to air before planning *SatAM*), which premiered the same month. While *Adventures* is lighthearted and comical (as being more aimed at children), *Sonic the Hedgehog* featured a comparatively complex plot and dramatic atmosphere. It explored unusual story concepts for animation, including losing loved ones to war and intimacy focusing on young adult couples. At ABC's request, the second season included episodes devoted to humor, while darker elements were reduced. Other changes include Princess Sally donning a jacket for season two, and Rotor receiving a new design. Further changes were made for the third *Sonic* cartoon.

ABC also ended up, in some weeks, airing back-to-back episodes of this show during the 1st season, while in Season 2, each time slot for the show was single-airings only.

### Syndication

After the program's initial run, it appeared on the USA Network's Action Extreme Team from June 1997 to January 1998. ABC did not replicate this, replacing Sonic with reruns of Free Willy, implying the network didn't want anything to do with the show anymore. The series aired in Canada on the CTV Network, with a bonus summer run between June 10 and September 2, 1995. *Sonic the Hedgehog* has not been rerun on broadcast or cable television in Canada since its cancellation on CTV, but was present on the Shomi video-on-demand platform until its November 30, 2016, closure. From 1994 to 1996, it had a complete run on the UK television on ITV and Channel 4, In December 1994, the first season was broadcast in the Republic of Ireland on RTÉ Two. On September 2, 2016, reruns of the series began airing on Starz. To date, this is the only *Sonic* cartoon that never airs on any Disney-related channels due to the dark themes.

## Home Media

In 2007, Shout! Factory released four disc boxset includes the entire 26 episodes from the series, and are presented in its original, uncut broadcast presentation. Bonus features include: storyboard version of the unreleased intro, concept art, storyboard-to-screen comparisons, deleted/extended scenes, a printable prototype script of the series pilot, "Heads or Tails" (which features the prototype version of Princess Sally), and interviews with Jaleel White and writer Ben Hurst. The individual cases and the DVDs themselves also feature fan art submitted to Shout! Factory during the box set's development phase. The set features cover art by Ken Penders, and was released by Shout! Factory and Vivendi Visual Entertainment. The Region 2 version was distributred by Delta Music Group PLC in the UK. After DHX bought rights to the DIC *Sonic* series in 2012, the Region 1 set went out-of-print, and due to legal issues as characters and elements (save for the Sega characters) were owned by Archie Comics prior to its discontinuation in 2017, *Sonic the Hedgehog* wasn’t going to be reissued by NCircle. This was since delayed until 2023 as the complete series is set to be released in September after resolving this issue, but will include a different art cover after a legal dispute against Ken Penders after getting sued for copyright infringement.

## Comic adaptation

Archie's *Sonic the Hedgehog* comic book was initially based on the Saturday morning cartoon. From its earliest issues, the book shared the characters and story premise established within it. However, the comic differed in that it featured humorous plots modeled after the weekday show, as well as Princess Sally looked slightly different from the show with a sporty ponytail and no curves, which she was more under development at the time. After writer Ken Penders had the opportunity to view the Saturday morning program, the comic gradually became adventure-driven. The comic series shifted focus again after ABC cancelled Sonic the Hedgehog, developing into a relationship-based superhero story, and following a reboot, Archie's Sonic was primarily inspired by the video game series. Nevertheless, the characters and locales from the Saturday morning cartoon remained prominent until the comic's cancellation in July 2017. When IDW Publishing took over the *Sonic* series in 2018, the new comic book series return the Sega Sonic characters, completely replacing the characters from the SatAM series due to legal disputes with Archie Comics.

## Trivia

* Sega of Japan was known to make frustrating and seemingly arbitrary demands. For example, like many American cartoons, the characters were all originally designed with four fingers instead of five. The designs were approved by Sega of America but were rejected by Sega of Japan, who were reportedly afraid that it would be associated with the Yakuza's tendency to "chop off" fingers. This resulted in DiC needing to reanimate a number of already completed scenes to include the additional fingers.
* This is Princess Sally Acorn's official appearance, Sonic's love interest. Sally wouldn't appear in *Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog* as it being different canon of the series, as well as being lighthearted, which explains Sonic having base-splitting love interest in *Adventures*, such as Breezie the robotic hedgehog for instance.
	+ This is Sally's only major role for the series.
* The only DiC *Sonic* TV series to feature the rings which were items from the game series that plays a significant role in this show.
* Robotnik's roboticised pet bird Cluck, only appeared in 9 episodes of Season 1. While he was absent and never mentioned in Season 2.
* This is the first *Sonic* cartoon that features Uncle Chuck. The second being *Sonic Underground*, except he is given a minor role for one episode and with a different roboticized design.
* All the love scenes were eliminated in the Middle East due to sensuality in children's medias are outlawed in MENA regions.

## Reception

Sonic the Hedgehog ranked #9 for all of Saturday Morning with a 5.2 rating, an estimated 4.8 million viewers during its second season.

Patrick Lee of The A.V. Club praised the cartoon’s challenging storylines that were lacked in other animated cartoons for children at the time. Mark Bozon of IGN, on the other hand, criticized the show as dated, considering it "so bad, it's good."Writing for DVD Talk, Todd Douglass Jr. remarked that Sonic didn't stand the test of time. Overall, he considered it to be of low quality, although he found the stories "Ultra Sonic" and "Blast to the Past" to be "the crème of the crop." Luke Owen of Flickering Myth felt Sonic aged better than is often supposed, praising its well-executed characterizations and treatment of war, although he considered Antoine to be "one of the worst characters committed to a cartoon series." GamesRadar listed the show as one of "the worst things to happen to Sonic." It criticized its plot and characters as "unwanted". Escapistjournalist Bob Chipman credited the series with providing a viably menacing take on Doctor Robotnik, and an engaging narrative. Bob Mackey of USgamer wrote that the cartoon's writing didn't live up to its intriguing premise. In particular, he argued that the Antoine character perpetrated negative French stereotypes. Sonic the Hedgehog was also reviewed by Doug Walker in his web comedy series Nostalgia Critic, who considered it "a great show," and better than he remembered; he praised it for "literally taking nothing and turning it into something," with a strong story and good character development, as well as a subtle environmental message. As of July 2019, this series has the score of 6.9/10 on IMDb.

## Potential revival

A group of fans is working to produce a revival based on the unused plans for the equally scrapped season 3 and hopefully try to partner with SEGA to make it official to distribute it on a streaming platform.