Blazing Dragons

**Blazing Dragons** is a French-Canadian animated series created by Nelvana and Ellipse and aired on Teletoon in Canada, Canal+ in France and Spacetoon in the Arabic world. The show is created by Terry Jones of the Monty Python Troupe and Gavin Scott.

## Summary

This show is set in a fictional universe focusing on the point-of-views of both the dragons and the humans, as well as parodying the Arthurian legend. The main protagonist is Squire Flicker, a creative dragon squire to Sir Loungealot, who is known for making many types of inventions and testing them out. He longs to be a Dragon Knight himself and has a secret crush on the princess Flame. And there is King Allfire, the monarch of Camelhot who earned his monarchy by pulling the sword of Escaliburn, Queen Griddle, the short-tempered, violent, bossy, and nagging wife of Allfire. Then there's the Knights of the Square Table: Sir Loungealot, the head of the Knights who is somewhat lazy in any sort of way, but rarely proves to be useful for quests, although it's shown he can be a good fighter, and often tries to get out of them except if it involves rescuing a damsel in distress or if threatened/forced by King Allfire. He is favoured by King Allfire and mostly Griddle. He somehow treates Flicker like a servent thoughout the show. Sir Blaze, who is the is the flamboyant and effeminate son of Queen Griddle and the stepbrother of Princess Flame. Sir Burnavere, the plucky Scottish-accented hero who has the tendency to use large words none of the other knights understand and is the the oldest and wisest of the knights and often screams "Hoot McGregor!" when something bad happens to him. Sir Galahot "The Proper", who is the is a large and imposing knight of the Square Table and the first knight to be introduced. And there is Sir Hotbreat "The Not-So Proper" who constantly belches out fire. The Wandering Minstrel with a Liverpool-accent who serves as a narrator to most of the season one episodes and breaks the fourth wall. And there is Cinder and Clinker, the two-headed Cockney-accented dragon jester.

There are human characters that appear in the show as well, such as Count Geoffery, the main antagonist of the series who has a strong desire to take over Camelhot and enslave (or even **destroy**) the dragons, his 3 Evil Knights, Merle the Wizard (who is actually a female, meaning she should have been called a witch), and the peasants, whom Geoffery taxes non-stop.

## Why They Will Save the Day!

1. The idea of making a show about dragon-knights is creative, as well as depicting the dragon's point-of-view.
2. The show can get amazingly humourous at times.
3. The designs of the characters are passable and colourful
4. Count Geoffery was a decent antagonist to the show, and whenever his castle was shown, male chorus music was heard in the background singing "Dum-da-dum", making it sound intimidating.
	* His 3 Evil Knights are also decent comic reliefs.
5. Flicker is a likeable protagonist. Inteligent, modest, and even creative. In fact, his relationship with Princess Flame is top-notch.
6. Like the 3 Evil Knights mentioned above, Cinder and Clinker are also decent comic reliefs as well.
7. The show's title name is heard in episodes when a character uses it as a catchphrase to express shock and emotion, meaning sometimes the characters shout out **"Blazing Dragons!!!"**
8. It is also avaliable to watch on TubiTV for free!!
9. As mentioned above, the show is created by no other that Terry Jones, who was also known for being a member and cast of another popular show and troupe.
10. Catchy theme song.

## Bad Qualities

1. Queen Griddle can be considered an unlikeable character because of her violent and nagging behaviour, her irritating tantrums, and she can also be the literal drama queen of the show.
2. Flicker recieved a bit of torture in the episode "Merle's Mirror". He was framed for being the assassin against King Allfire and for blaming Queen Griddle when it was actually Merle and Geoffery controlling Griddle with a magic mirror, making her do thing to try and kill Allfire, and Flicker saw that.
3. A few dark scenes, such as when the Evil Spy was executed by Geoffery by throwing him off the moat only for him to be eaten by crocodiles in the second episode, and in "Hermits and Heroes", where a group of ducklings who were seen making fun of a swan for his appearance get eaten by a crocodile while the Wandering Minstrel was explaining to the viewers that it's not nice to judge someone for being different, only for the Minstrel to say they learned their lesson, which can be ironically heartless because first off, how could they have learned their lesson if their eaten, they're probably dead in the croc's belly, and second, although the Minstrel had a point, it was still a bit dark and harsh. However, the two episodes had these scenes offscreen.
4. The second and final season went downhill because of a few things. First off, the characters such as Flame, Geoffery and the Wandering Minstrel had their roles diminished thoughout the season, meaning they appeared in only few episodes, while the Minstrel appeared in only one, explaining he got fired from Camelhot and currently resided in Ireland. Second, the redesigns of the character, although passable and more lighter, isn't as good as the previous season. And third, the episodes have **a shorter lenght of time**, while they are actually "sister episodes", meaning the season 2 premire had one episode and another one together, and it kept up as the season went on to the series finale.
	* Speaking of the second season, the bright and stiff redesigns of the characters with thick outlinings included makes everything look as if it was produced and/or animated by Butch Hartman.
5. The cartoon episodes that ran in the United States, namely Toon Disney, were bowdlerised. Parts of episodes considered too overt, such as the implied homosexuality of Sir Blaze, and minor swearing, were cut for the American release, as such matters were deemed taboo to American children's programming at the time.
	* About the minor swearing, in one episode when characters such as Allfire said "S.O.B." (despite spelling the word "sob"), other's gasped when the character who said the aforementioned word says it stood for "son of a Briton" while everyone is relieved. This could have meant the characters thought Allfire said "son of a b\*\*ch".

## Trivia

1. Scott Wentorth, the voice of Sir Loungealot from season 1, got replaced by Juan Chioran for season 2, although he kinda was good as Wentorth.