recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Spider (cartoon)

Spider is a cartoon character that appears in Amazing Animals. It is a recurring character that makes a minor appearance in the first season, before returning with a new design in the second season, which recurs in the third season. Spider appears on the back cover of all season three and four VHS boxes.

## Appearance

Spider’s first appearance, in Mini-Beasts, is a single red ball-shaped body, with a triangular yellow nose, a single pair of eyes and a pink cross on its back. Its legs are bright yellow.

When Spider appears again in season two, its appearance has completely changed. Now it has the typical two-part body of a spider, with a separate head and abdomen. The abdomen ends with a pointed tip, while the head is hairy. Its entire body is dark grey or black, save for the eight yellow eyes. Each of Spider’s legs end with two fingers, that are dextrous enough to tie knots. Spider has normal square-shaped teeth, but the upper lips have two fang-like protrusions as well.

## Personality

In Spider’s first appearance, it seems to largely tolerate Gorilla using it as a paddle ball. Only when Gorilla stops does Spider cut itself free and leave. Even then, it does not seem to be angry at Gorilla.

In later appearances, Spider is much less tolerant. He gets understandably angry at the Lizards trying to use his web for high-wire practice, ties up Frog and Toad in silk and leaves them dangling when Frog spits on him during a spitting contest and angrily waves his fist at Gorilla for drenching him, when Spider was listening to loud music down Gorilla’s bath plughole.

## Episodes

Mini-Beasts (1 appearance)

Slimy Animals (1 appearance)

Animal Acrobats (1 appearance)

Animal Neighbors (1 appearance)

Creepy Crawly Animals (1 appearance)

Scary Animals (1 appearance, plus as character on television)
Partridge Films

Partridge Films was a British production company based in Bristol, England. It specialised in creating wildlife programmes, which were then distributed worldwide on channels including the BBC, Anglia Television, Channel 5 and PBS.

The company was founded by Michael Rosenberg in 1974 and quickly gained a reputation for producing high-quality wildlife documentaries including ‘Etosha – Place of Dry Water’, ‘Fragile Earth’ and ‘Korup – An African Rainforest’. Rosenberg won two Emmy Awards and the company won a Queen’s Award for Export Achievement. In 1996, Rosenberg sold his shares to the United News and Media Company; later on, the rights passed to ITV (formerly Anglia Television) after the UNMC dissolved.

In the Dorling Kindersley Vision canon, Partridge Films is best-known as a part-creator of Amazing Animals. All four seasons were partly produced by Partridge Films. All of the stock footage in the series was sourced from the Partridge Films library, and in 1999 Rosenberg described the series as the flagship children’s series for the company.

Another of Partridge Films' prominent contributions to children's media was that of 'Animal Alphabet' - a series that aired both on television as 26 individual episodes; and was released to DVD and VHS as a full video. The video featured 26 songs - each relating to a different animal for each letter. The songs were both composed and mainly sung by Anton Mullan. In North America, the DVD video was released by Time Life Kids - which released a version that was largely abridged from the original, with large parts of each song being cut out. The video would see dubbing into at least 6 other languages - and a sequel; Animal Numbers; with a focus mainly on numbers from 1-10, as well as a song dedicated to 0.

As well as supplying all the footage for Amazing Animals, some Partridge Films documentaries also supplied footage to other Dorling Kindersley Vision programmes. For example, the two ‘*Amazon – The Flooded Forest*’ programmes, from which stock footage was used in the Eyewitness episodes Jungle and Pond and River, was created by Partridge Films.
Chicks (cartoon)

The Chicks are cartoon characters that appears in Amazing Animals. The three Chicks are the eighth most frequently recurring characters, which appear in seasons two, three and four. The Chicks also appear on the back of all the second, third and fourth season VHS boxes.

## Appearance

The three Chicks are all depicted as identical. They all have pale green bodies, with two small tail feathers. Their legs and feet are black and twig-like. Their wings are small and rounded, without any sign of fingers like their parents. They all have yellow beaks, large eyes and floating eyebrows.

## Personality

The Chicks are often depicted as playful and mischievous. In most of their appearances they seem to be either playing or otherwise excitable and have a wide variety of play equipment in their possession. They are often friendly with other younger characters, playing with the Tiger cub at the daycare centre in Animal Changes and inviting the young Tyrannosaurus to play with them in Animal Neighbors.

While a lot of their playfulness is based on playing with physical toys, the Chicks are also shown to sometimes use their imagination while playing – in Animal Flight, they all start pretending to be the superhero version of Mole and bounce on Rooster’s body to pretend to fly.

Their parents, Rooster and Hen, both dote on the Chicks and often do things to try and please them but equally they can sometimes be frustrated with the Chick’s antics and try different ways to prevent them from getting into trouble.

These traits are for the Chicks collectively – none of the three seem to have their own individual personalities, and they often appear together as a trio.

## Episodes

Animal Mothers (1 appearance)

Animal Pets (4 appearances)

Seashore Animals (3 appearances)

Animal Families (1 appearance)

Endangered Animals (1 appearance)

An Animal Year (1 appearance)

Animal Neighbors (1 appearance)

Farm Animals (1 appearance)

Animal Changes (1 appearance)

Clever Animals (1 appearance)

Scaly Animals (as backing singers in ‘Ask Henry’)

Animal Flight (4 appearances)
Hullaballoo

Hullaballoo was a 26-part television series created by Dorling Kindersley Vision, in coordination with Crystalrowe Ltd and aired on Channel 4 from 1994-1995.

## Structure

Each episode is around 15 minutes in length. The episodes have little to no consistency in their layout, but all include the same general segments scattered through the episode. The episodes can contain:

* Segments with the main presenter, Floella Benjamin, who also produced the show, alongside a group of young children and Ted Bear, a costumed character played by Raymond Griffiths, in a set containing small houses
* Narrated segments involving Mr Mime, played by Jason Webb, and Kitty, played by Alvina Benjamin-Taylor
* A magician, Paul Reeve
* Dances, performed by three-man dance troupe The New Berry Brothers
* Several creature and human puppets created and puppeteered by Hands Up Puppets
* Hand-drawn animations including Buddy the Elephant and Pip the Mouse
* Stories sections, with the narrative performed by actors
* Small narrated animated stories

## Availability

The full series of Hullaballoo remains lost, although some episodes were released in VHS sets and some have been put onto the internet. The VHS sets are around an hour in length, with titles including:

1. Clothes, Families and Helping
2. Colours and Numbers
3. Making and Sharing
4. Nature and Music
5. Shapes and Opposites
6. Time and Growing
Gibbon (cartoon)

Gibbon is a cartoon character who appears in Amazing Animals. They (multiple Gibbons appear) are a fairly frequent recurring character that appears in seasons two, three and four. A pair of Gibbons also appear on the back cover of all season two VHS releases.

## Appearance

Gibbons have tall thin bodies, with short legs and long arms. Both the arms and legs end with long hands and feet, each with four digits. Gibbons have wide, lemon-shaped heads, with large eyes, small divided nostrils, a fairly small mouth, a tuft of hair on the top of their heads, a small beard beneath their chins and tufts of fur on each cheek.

In colouration, Gibbons are almost completely light brown, with the exception of the skin around the eyes, nose and mouth plus the beard of fur under the chin, which is a darker shade of brown.

## Personality

Gibbons can at times be seen as another prankster-type character – they deliberately act in an uninteresting manner to annoy the Lizards trying to film a documentary about them, and later steal their camera. It is shown that, after the Lizards leave at the end of each shoot, the Gibbons are actually very sophisticated.

The Gibbons are also often shown as acrobats, and will often show off when doing their tree swinging acrobatics to other animals.

In some appearances, Gibbons serve as officious characters – they can be the guards from trains or traffic controllers. In this position they can be authoritative, but they remain easily distracted. In Rainforest Animals, a Gibbon controlling the movements of the other animals is trampled after blowing his whistle at a female Gibbon.

## Episodes

Desert Animals (1 appearance)

Animal Pets (1 appearance)

Monkeys and Apes (5 appearances)

Rainforest Animals (1 appearance)

Animal Acrobats (2 appearances)

Animal Neighbors (1 appearance)

Farm Animals (1 appearance)

Clever Animals (2 appearances)

Underground Animals (1 appearance)

Backyard Animals (1 appearance)
Dig and Dug with Daisy

Dig and Dug with Daisy is a sixteen-part series that was produced by Dorling Kindersley Vision during 1993. It then first aired on Channel 4 in 1994, followed by reruns on Channel 5 and Tiny Pop. It is filmed with stop-motion and is one of the few mainly fictional series produced by Dorling Kindersley Vision. The programmes were narrated by George Layton.

## Style

Each episode is around ten minutes in length. The episode focuses on the two title characters, both construction workers, trying to complete a task – the programme combines physical comedy with the inclusion of facts to teach children about construction. Invariably, Dig and Dug make a mistake during their work and Daisy, Dug’s niece, uses her intelligence to solve the issue.

The programme has three main characters:

1. Dig – The younger of the two construction workers, tall and skinny in appearance. Although eager and hardworking, he is quite naïve and lacks experience. He is depicted as having a cockney accent.
2. Dug – The older of the two construction workers, shorter and rounder in appearance. He is more experienced than Dig but can be just as clumsy. He is depicted as having a Yorkshire accent.
3. Daisy – Daisy is Dug’s long-suffering young niece, who is smarter than both Dig and Dug combined. She is often the one who solves the problems the two construction workers are facing. Neither of her parents appear in the programme.

A number of secondary characters also appear in different episodes, including Farmer Stubble and Mrs. Stubble, Mr. Rubble, Mr. McAdam and Mr. Packet.

## Programmes

The sixteen programmes are, in order of airing:

* The New Tractor
* Turnips in the Field
* Fencing the Lane
* Trouble at the Haybarn
* Mrs. Sparkle’s Shed
* Cement Pudding
* Mr. Rubble’s Wall
* Daisy’s Kite
* Night Patrol
* Nowhere to Park
* The Giant Molehill
* Race to the Finish
* All Hooked Up
* Oswald Misbehaves
* The New Office
* The 100th Tractor

## Availability

Four multi-episode VHS have been released for the series in Australia. All four were released on 13th March 1995. The four VHS, and the four episodes contained on each, are:

* On The Farm (The New Tractor, Turnips in the Field, Fencing the Lane, Trouble at the Haybarn)
* At The Building Site (Mrs. Sparkle’s Shed, Cement Pudding, Mr. Rubble’s Wall and Daisy’s Kite)
* On The Road (Night Patrol, Nowhere to Park, The Giant Molehill and Race to the Finish)
* At The Factory (All Hooked Up, Oswald Misbehaves, The New Office, The 100th Tractor)

The full series of Dig and Dug with Daisy has also been uploaded online.

Dig and Dug with Daisy - Night PatrolDig and Dug with Daisy - Oswald Misbehaves
List of Eyewitness episodes (Season 1)

This is the list of all thirteen episodes in the 1994 first season of Eyewitness.

**Writing staff**: Anne MacLeod • Ben Southwell • Ben Steiner • Brian Meehl • David Hanson • David Stafford • David Helton • George Bloom • Lynette Singer • Mike Tomlinson • Paul Thomas • Stan Cullimore
**Directors**: Gavin Maxwell • Justine Kershaw • David Hutt • Andrew Jackson • Justin Hardy • Ludo Graham • Jerry Foulkes • Derek Hall • Sanjida O'Connell • Caius Julyan • Bonni Cohen • Leanne Pooley • Edwina Vardey • Alexandra Beazley • Sam Hodgkin • Karen Walsh • Jack Weber • Richard Simkin • Alex Hearle • Brian Cummins • Ben Southwell
**Composers**: Guy Michelmore (season one) • Guy Dagul (seasons two and three)

**Season One**: Cat • Fish • Horse • Dog • Jungle • Bird • Amphibian • Insect • Shark • Elephant • Reptile • Dinosaur • Skeleton
**Season Two**: Desert • Tree • Ape • Mammal • Butterfly and Moth • Volcano • Rock and Mineral • Seashore • Pond and River • Weather • Arctic and Antarctic • Prehistoric Life • Shell
**Season Three**: Flight • Bear • Sight • Island • Survival • Mountain • Monster • Human Machine - Plant • Ocean • Planets • Life • Natural Disasters
Jenna Hall

Jenna Hall is a British television director. In Dorling Kindersley Vision, she is known to be the director for two episodes of Creatures Fantastic:

* The Apocalypse (fifth episode)
* Man Beasts (eighth episode)

As well as Creatures Fantastic, Jenna Hall has directed no fewer than 6 other shows; these are primarily lifestyle programmes.
Rattlesnake (cartoon)

Rattlesnake is a cartoon character who appears in Amazing Animals. They (multiple Rattlesnakes appear) show up occasionally in all four seasons, and is the ninth most commonly recurring character in cartoon segments. He also appears in every single opening segment of the series and appears on the back covers of all seasons one, three and four VHS boxes.

## Appearance

Rattlesnake’s appearance has remained remarkably consistent over the four seasons. Rattlesnake has a large nose and eyes, with his whole body seemingly a dark yellow colour. He wears a long one-piece, which is beige coloured. It has three bells along its length, with one at the end of the tail and the other two mid-way along it. The suit is held together with a zip that goes down Rattlesnake’s belly, and there is a blue patch sewn onto the back of it, near the tail end. The only teeth he has seem to be a pair of sharp white fangs that only become visible when he opens his mouth.

## Personality

Early on in the show, Rattlesnake is a character that combines misfortune and malice. In his solo appearances he often ends up embarrassing himself, such as when he ends up covered with spaghetti in Animal Appetites and ends up exposed without his suit on in Armoured Animals. In other appearances, including in Animal Appetites, Animal Mothers, Animal Eggs and Poisonous Animals, Rattlesnake is shown trying to eat Squirrel, successfully swallowing the baby Rabbits and Crocodile’s egg and bite both Tiger and Elephant, in the latter cases seemingly for no reason.

In other episodes, Rattlesnake is shown as simply wanting to be left alone, such as in Underground Animals when he gets angry at Mole for dragging him through the wall of his burrow. In several appearances, Rattlesnake is friendlier or actively helpful – in Scaly Animals he even donates his suit and inflates it for one of the Chicks.

The other character Rattlesnake appears alongside the most is Gorilla, with a fairly fraught relationship between them. In Animal Builders, Rattlesnake distracts Gorilla while he is building and is used to replace a prop that gets accidentally broken. In Rainforest Animals, he is mistaken for a vine by Gorilla, and laughs when Gorilla falls from the tree and is chased by Crocodile.

## Episodes

Animal Appetites (2 appearances)

Animal Builders (1 appearance)

Armoured Animals (1 appearance)

Poisonous Animals (2 appearances)

Animal Colors (1 appearance)

Animal Mothers (1 appearance)

Animal Pets (1 appearance)

Monkeys and Apes (1 appearance)

Slimy Animals (1 appearance)

Rainforest Animals (2 appearances)

Animal Eggs (2 appearances)

Clever Animals (1 appearance)

Underground Animals (1 appearance)

Backyard Animals (1 appearance)

Scaly Animals (1 appearance, plus as a backing singer in ‘Ask Henry’)
Dog (cartoon)

Dog is a cartoon character that appears in Amazing Animals. It is one of the most rarely-appearing characters, that only shows up briefly in one cartoon in a single episode of season two.

## Appearance

Dog is shown to have a rather stout body, with short legs ending with pawed feet and a short stumpy tail. Dog’s head is long and tapering, ending with a red nose. It has large eyes and ears that stick upright but flop over about half-way along their length. Dog has an orangey-brown coat.

## Personality

While Dog only appears briefly, it shows itself to be a friendly animal that licks one of the Chicks in greeting while in the process of fetching a bone thrown for it. Ultimately, it is meeting Dog that drives the plot of the cartoons of the rest of the episode – the Chicks decide they want a pet like Dog but Rooster instead brings home increasingly unsuitable cartoon characters to serve as a pet, much to the annoyance of Hen.
Owl (cartoon)

Owl is a cartoon character that appears in Amazing Animals. She is among the most rarely-seen characters in the series, appearing in a single cartoon from one episode of season four.

## Appearance

Owl is shown to be very large – she is considerably bigger than Tiger, and is able to drag him away with one wing. She is shown to be rich chestnut brown all over, with stubby yellow toes and a stubby yellow beak, large eyes with three eyelashes above each and ear tufts on top of her head. Her wings are as long as her body, and end with feathers that also serve as a three-fingered hand.

## Personality

Little is seen of Owl, but she is shown to fall for Tiger’s hooting call, which Tiger is using to try and keep in touch with Bear and Tyrannosaurus. She shows amorous intentions towards Tiger, hooting in response before fluttering her eyelashes at him. Her pupils also turn to love hearts. She then drags Tiger away off-screen.
List of Eyewitness episodes (Season 3)

This is the list of all thirteen episodes in the 1997 third and final season of *Eyewitness*.

**Writing staff**: Anne MacLeod • Ben Southwell • Ben Steiner • Brian Meehl • David Hanson • David Stafford • David Helton • George Bloom • Lynette Singer • Mike Tomlinson • Paul Thomas • Stan Cullimore
**Directors**: Gavin Maxwell • Justine Kershaw • David Hutt • Andrew Jackson • Justin Hardy • Ludo Graham • Jerry Foulkes • Derek Hall • Sanjida O'Connell • Caius Julyan • Bonni Cohen • Leanne Pooley • Edwina Vardey • Alexandra Beazley • Sam Hodgkin • Karen Walsh • Jack Weber • Richard Simkin • Alex Hearle • Brian Cummins • Ben Southwell
**Composers**: Guy Michelmore (season one) • Guy Dagul (seasons two and three)

**Season One**: Cat • Fish • Horse • Dog • Jungle • Bird • Amphibian • Insect • Shark • Elephant • Reptile • Dinosaur • Skeleton
**Season Two**: Desert • Tree • Ape • Mammal • Butterfly and Moth • Volcano • Rock and Mineral • Seashore • Pond and River • Weather • Arctic and Antarctic • Prehistoric Life • Shell
**Season Three**: Flight • Bear • Sight • Island • Survival • Mountain • Monster • Human Machine - Plant • Ocean • Planets • Life • Natural Disasters
BBC Wildvision

BBC Wildvision is the commercial arm of the BBC’s Natural History Unit, established in 1991 as a joint venture between the NHU and BBC enterprises. The venture allowed all stock footage and recordings to be archived, compiling a library with 15 million feet of film and 5,000 sound recordings.

BBC Wildvision were one of the main producers, alongside Dorling Kindersley, of both Eyewitness and Creatures Fantastic. Eyewitness was produced for the BBC and CBS, while Creatures Fantastic was made for the Discovery Channel. Both programmes borrow heavily from the BBC archives for their stock footage.

Among other productions made by Wildvision, there is Killing for a Living (a thirteen-part wildlife documentary, with ten episodes narrated by John Shrapnel), plus a large number of individual TV movies (including titles such as All About Pandas, Predators’ Prey, Sabretooth, Rattler: Behind the Fangs, Mars: Pioneering the Planet, Animal Mummies: Secrets of the Gods and Invaders from the Sea).
Baby Animals

Baby Animals is a two-part set of 25-minute programmes, released direct to VHS, which was produced by Dorling Kindersley Vision. Both VHS were released on 4th May 1998.

The two programmes are ‘fronted’ by a golden retriever puppy named ‘Doodle’ and a kitten named ‘Bungie’. Two children provide off-screen narration, and describe themselves as the animals’ owners. Doodle’s segments are narrated by Jacob, while Bungie’s segments are narrated by Katherine.

## Style

Both programmes follow a similar format. First the child narrator introduces their animal, which moves through a set filled with soft play equipment. On some of the equipment, screens are overlaid that show footage filmed especially for the programmes out in the field. Each programme is divided up into five segments, each around 5 minutes in length. In each segment, the puppy or kitten is looking for a particular baby animal. It first finds three different animals, which progressively share more similarities with the target animal. Finally, the correct baby animal is found, and the narrator tells their animal what a good job they have done.

At the end of each segment a clip from an old cartoon is shown, each relating in some way to the target animal.

With five segments, Doodle and Bungie get different levels of representation in each programme. In Baby Animals On The Farm, Doodle gets three segments and Bungie two, while in Baby Animals From The Wild it is Bungie that gets three segments and Doodle just two.

## Programmes

There are only two programmes in this series, both of which released on the same date:

Baby Animals On The Farm (4th May 1998)

Baby Animals From The Wild (4th May 1998)

## Availability

Both programmes have been uploaded in full online, and the VHS are available periodically on online shopping sites.
List of Eyewitness episodes (Season 2)

This is the list of all thirteen episodes in the 1996 second season of Eyewitness.

**Writing staff**: Anne MacLeod • Ben Southwell • Ben Steiner • Brian Meehl • David Hanson • David Stafford • David Helton • George Bloom • Lynette Singer • Mike Tomlinson • Paul Thomas • Stan Cullimore
**Directors**: Gavin Maxwell • Justine Kershaw • David Hutt • Andrew Jackson • Justin Hardy • Ludo Graham • Jerry Foulkes • Derek Hall • Sanjida O'Connell • Caius Julyan • Bonni Cohen • Leanne Pooley • Edwina Vardey • Alexandra Beazley • Sam Hodgkin • Karen Walsh • Jack Weber • Richard Simkin • Alex Hearle • Brian Cummins • Ben Southwell
**Composers**: Guy Michelmore (season one) • Guy Dagul (seasons two and three)

**Season One**: Cat • Fish • Horse • Dog • Jungle • Bird • Amphibian • Insect • Shark • Elephant • Reptile • Dinosaur • Skeleton
**Season Two**: Desert • Tree • Ape • Mammal • Butterfly and Moth • Volcano • Rock and Mineral • Seashore • Pond and River • Weather • Arctic and Antarctic • Prehistoric Life • Shell
**Season Three**: Flight • Bear • Sight • Island • Survival • Mountain • Monster • Human Machine - Plant • Ocean • Planets • Life • Natural Disasters
Eyewitness Season Two

The second season of *Eyewitness* aired between 15th April and 8th July 1996. This season had episodes written by seven writers and, as with all three Eyewitness seasons, it was produced by Bill Butt.

This season had less of a primary focus for the episode topics, but this season included more habitat episodes than either the first or third, and also included more earth sciences episodes than any other. Compared to the first season, with ten or eleven animal groups as episode topics, the second season only had three (*Ape*, *Mammal* and *Butterfly and Moth*)

## Introduction sequence

The season two introductory sequence starts facing a blank white wall of the Eyewitness Museum. The camera pans out from the wall and twists to show an animated dolphin (*Mammal*) jumps from a pool of water into a picture frame. The camera rotates into the main corridor - a scarlet macaw flies past the camera and down the corridor. A chimpanzee (*Ape*) can be seen at the end of the corridor. Mid-way down the corridor is a weathervane (*Weather*) and a right-hand junction. Turning right at this junction, this new corridor has a Bennett’s wallaby (*Mammal*) hop past, a volcano (Volcano) in the middle of the corridor erupts and at the end a dromedary camel (*Desert*) walks past. The camera turns left at the end of this corridor with another scarlet macaw flying past. The camera spins quickly through a small room and emerges from a small door near to a European common fro*g (Pond and River*) and an African bush elephant (Mammal) before sweeping left down the corridor. The camera goes past a shell on a plinth (*Shell*) and passes into a large room. In this room there are a Bengal tiger (*Mammal*), American alligator (*Prehistoric Life*), oak tree (*Tree*) and a third scarlet macaw. The camera cuts briefly through another corridor with a shore crab (*Seashore*) and the camera is joined by a cloud of butterflies (*Butterfly and Moth*). The butterflies go into the main atrium with a free-standing Tyrannosaurus skeleton (*Prehistoric Life*) – the camera flies around the skeleton and pans up through the roof to look down on the museum. The title then appears and the episode begins.

While *Rock and Mineral* and *Arctic and Antarctic* have no animals or items roaming the museum during the introduction, they are both depicted in at least one photograph on the museum walls during the opening.

## Writers and episode list

* Ben Southwell (*Desert*)
* David Helton (*Desert*)
* Anne Macleod (*Tree*, *Volcano*, and *Prehistoric Life*)
* David Stafford (*Ape* and *Shell*)
* Ben Steiner (*Mammal*)
* Brian Meehl (*Butterfly and Moth*, *Rock and Mineral*, *Seashore*, and *Pond and River*)
* Lynette Singer (*Weather* and *Arctic and Antarctic*)
Monitor lizards

Monitor lizards (family Varanidae) are a group of mostly large predatory lizards, found in Africa, South and Southeast Asia and particularly Oceania. The Komodo dragon is the biggest of the monitor lizards and also the largest living species of lizard. They are often thought to be the most intelligent of the lizards, and are the only lizards known to have airsacs similar to birds in their bodies.

## Appearances in Dorling Kindersley Vision media

The Komodo dragon is the equal second most commonly-recurring reptile species in Dorling Kindersley Vision programmes, appearing in ten different episodes. Collectively, monitor lizards have appeared in sixteen episodes.

### Eyewitness

Both seasons one and three of Eyewitness have two episodes containing a monitor lizard.

* **SEASON ONE**: Reptile, Dinosaur
* **SEASON THREE**: Island, Monster

The Komodo dragon appears in all four Eyewitness episodes that include a monitor lizard. Additionally, the Asian water monitor also appears in Monster and the perentie in Reptile. The perentie is the only monitor lizard to appear exclusively in Eyewitness.

### Amazing Animals

All four seasons of Amazing Animals have episodes containing monitor lizards, with ten altogether. Season three has four episodes, season four has three, season two has two and season one a single episode containing at least one species of monitor lizard.

* **SEASON ONE**: Animal Weapons
* **SEASON TWO**: Animal Families, Prehistoric Animals
* **SEASON THREE**: Animal Neighbors, Giant Animals, Extinct Animals, Animal Eggs
* **SEASON FOUR**: Underground Animals, Backyard Animals, Scaly Animals

A total of four monitor lizard species appears in Amazing Animals, with the Komodo dragon appearing most often. The three African monitor lizard species – the rock, savannah and Nile monitors, are all exclusive to Amazing Animals. The savannah monitor is also the only species of monitor lizard in Dorling Kindersley Vision shows to have been filmed in a studio setting.

The Komodo dragon was the winner of the silver medal in the Golden Gecko Awards for Giant Animals.

### Creatures Fantastic

Monitor lizards appear in two of the discovered episodes of Creatures Fantastic. Their first and biggest appearance is in Dragons. Asian water monitors are shown, with the different features they share with dragons described. The Komodo dragon also appears, but the episode makes clear that this lizard did not influence dragon mythology but was instead named for its perceived similarity to the mythical dragons.

The Apocalypse also briefly includes Komodo dragon footage in the opening sequence. Close-up clips of these lizards are used in conjunction with clips of cassowary feet to make the impression of dinosaurs.

## Total species

Six species of monitor lizard appear in Dorling Kindersley Vision programmes:

* Rock monitor, *Varanus albigularis*
* Savannah monitor, *Varanus exanthematicus*
* Nile monitor, *Varanus niloticus*
* Asian water monitor, *Varanus salvator*
* Perentie, *Varanus giganteus*
* Komodo dragon, *Varanus komodoensis*

## Gallery

Komodo dragonRock monitorSavannah monitorAsian water monitorPerentie
Eyewitness Virtual Reality: Shark

Eyewitness Virtual Reality: Shark was a planned educational video game made for the Eyewitness Virtual Reality Series, by DK Multimedia. The game would presumably have been based on the Eyewitness first season episode Shark.

Although the game was never produced, for unknown reasons, it has a button in the elevators of the Cat, Bird and Dinosaur Hunter virtual reality games. When clicked on, an advertisement page for the game is shown. The advertisement reads:

'*Enter the underwater world of one of the planet’s most extraordinary living creatures, and discover more than you could ever imagine about the 375 species of shark.*'

The game was also advertised as having more than:

* 800 screens
* 500 illustrations and photographs
* 40 videos
* 20 animations
* 40,000 words
Paul Thomas

Paul Thomas is a creative.

### Other

**Writing staff**: Anne MacLeod • Ben Southwell • Ben Steiner • Brian Meehl • David Hanson • David Stafford • David Helton • George Bloom • Lynette Singer • Mike Tomlinson • **Paul Thomas** • Stan Cullimore
**Directors**: Gavin Maxwell • Justine Kershaw • David Hutt • Andrew Jackson • Justin Hardy • Ludo Graham • Jerry Foulkes • Derek Hall • Sanjida O'Connell • Caius Julyan • Bonni Cohen • Leanne Pooley • Edwina Vardey • Alexandra Beazley • Sam Hodgkin • Karen Walsh • Jack Weber • Richard Simkin • Alex Hearle • Brian Cummins • Ben Southwell
**Composers**: Guy Michelmore (season one) • Guy Dagul (seasons two and three)

**Season One**: Cat • Fish • Horse • Dog • Jungle • Bird • Amphibian • Insect • Shark • Elephant • Reptile • Dinosaur • Skeleton
**Season Two**: Desert • Tree • Ape • Mammal • Butterfly and Moth • Volcano • Rock and Mineral • Seashore • Pond and River • Weather • Arctic and Antarctic • Prehistoric Life • Shell
**Season Three**: Flight • Bear • Sight • Island • Survival • Mountain • Monster • Human Machine - Plant • Ocean • Planets • Life • Natural Disasters
Crocodile (cartoon)

Crocodile is a cartoon character who appears in Amazing Animals. He first appears in Season Two and crops up infrequently in both subsequent series. Crocodile appears on the back cover of the Season Two VHS boxes.

## Appearance

Crocodile has a fairly standard appearance, being completely green with a ridged back and tail, a long snout with two protruding nostrils and sharp teeth, two of which protrude at the back of his mouth.

## Personality

More so than any other cartoon animal, Crocodile is a danger to the other characters. In almost all of his appearances, he tries to eat the other animals he encounters. He is sufficiently dangerous that other large and typically tough animals, such as Tiger and Gorilla, run away when he starts chasing them. In Scaly Animals, he even attacks Tyrannosaurus after hiding in their soup. Although he can eat other food, he would prefer to eat the other animals - in Backyard Animals, he is shown sitting on a bench and eating peanuts but when he notices the Pigeons eating spilled nuts, he uses the nuts to tempt the Pigeons into his mouth. The only animal that is shown stand up to him is Elephant, who is able to throw him away when Crocodile bites his trunk in Animal Colors.

## Episodes

Animal Colors (1 appearance)

Animal Pets (1 appearance)

Animal Hunters (1 appearance)

Rainforest Animals (1 appearance)

Animal Eggs (2 appearances)

Backyard Animals (1 appearance)

Scaly Animals (1 appearance, plus being a backing singer in 'Ask Henry')
Camel (cartoon)

Camel is a cartoon character that appears in Amazing Animals. It is among the most rarely-seen characters in the series, appearing in four cartoons from one episode of season two.

## Appearance

Uniquely among the cartoon characters, Camel is a machine albeit one that closely resembles a real animal. It has a long face with protruding bottom front teeth, small ears and eyes with long eyelashes, two humps, long jointed legs that end with large flat feet and a short, hanging tail. Camel is a pale yellowish colour.

As a machine, Camel has some unique features. It sometimes has an aerial on its head, has three ejector seats (two on the humps and one between them) and a button that causes the area around Camel to explode. The rear hump also opens up and stores equipment. Camel is fuelled by gasoline like other vehicles.

## Personality

As a machine, Camel spends much of the time either inanimate or serving as a vehicle for Rooster, its presumed creator. However, Camel does show signs of having a mind of its own – it activates its ejector seats when the Lizards try to steal it, even though Rooster is asleep and none of the buttons on its remote have been pushed. When the Lizards have been blasted away, Camel waggles its eyebrows and chuckles audibly.
My First Green Video

My First Green Video is an educational activity video released in 1992 by Dorling Kindersley Vision. It is intended to show children how to both monitor and protect the environment. It is based upon a book title called ‘My First Green Book’, which covers many of the same recipes as shown in the video.

## Sections

The full episode has not been uploaded online, but the description on the back of the VHS box includes the following twelve activities:

1. Air test
2. Rain check
3. Dirty water test
4. Cleaning water
5. Your rubbish
6. Green shopping
7. Soil test
8. Wildlife garden
9. Planting a tree
10. Tree test
11. Rainforest treasures
12. Campaigner’s kit

## Home media releases

The cover for the VHS of My First Green Video has a white background and a border of green men cut from a daisy chain, with the picture collage below the title showing a green bottle, two arts-and-crafts trees, an inkwell, several seeds, a caterpillar, a Queen Alexandra birdwing butterfly, a sliced lime, a row of green thumbtacks and a multicoloured pencil.
Hen (cartoon)

Hen is a cartoon character that appears in Amazing Animals. The main Hen (plus several others that appear only briefly) has appearances in seasons two, three and four. Hen also appears on the back of all the second season VHS boxes.

## Appearance

Hen is depicted as having a deep red body, with two small tail feathers, orange legs and feet with two forward-pointing and one backward-pointing toe on each foot and a short yellow beak with two hanging purple wattles. Instead of having a comb on top of her head like Rooster, she has a small feathery tuft.

Some younger Hens appear in a cartoon segment in Animal Talk. They are smaller and thinner than the main Hen character and have combs like Rooster, some in purple and others in pink, but are otherwise similar in colouration.

## Personality

Hen is often depicted as a doting mother to the Chicks, but can sometimes reach her limits and turns to Rooster to help control their mischievous tendencies. As well as being loving to the Chicks, she can be affectionate towards the young of other animals, even knitting a fleece for a shorn lamb out of her husband’s feathers.

Hen’s relationship with her husband, Rooster, tends to be a bit more fraught. They are shown as a loving couple on occasion, but more often she is depicted as being stern towards him. This perhaps comes with good reason, as a lot of Rooster’s contraptions and ideas go awry in different ways – she gets covered with paint as a result of her husband’s malfunctioning machine, some of the pets he brings home for the Chicks damage or destroy their house and a robot of his puts the Chicks into the washing machine.

While Rooster is often depicted as the intelligent member of the family, Hen does have her moments of inspiration. It is her who gives Rooster the idea to enlist Octopus for dealing with Crab in Seashore Animals.

## Episodes

Animal Colors (1 appearance)

Animal Mothers (1 appearance)

Animal Pets (2 appearances)

Seashore Animals (2 appearances)

Animal Families (1 appearance)

An Animal Year (1 appearance)

Animal Talk (1 appearance)

Farm Animals (1 appearance)

Animal Changes (1 appearance)

Animal Partners (1 appearance)
Rooster (cartoon)

Rooster is a cartoon character that appears in Amazing Animals. Rooster is the third most commonly recurring character in the series, despite first appearing in the second season. He also appears in both subsequent seasons. Rooster also appears on the back of all the second, third and fourth season VHS boxes.

## Appearance

Rooster is always depicted as having a pale blue body, with two short tail feathers. He has a ruff of feathers around the base of his neck. Rooster has orange legs and feet with two forward-pointing and one backward-pointing toe on each foot, a yellow beak with two hanging purple wattles and a three-pronged comb on the top of his head. His wings end with three fingers. Often, Rooster hides much of his appearance beneath a lab coat, that he wears when inventing and often when he goes out on adventures.

## Personality

Rooster’s main trait is his inventiveness – he has a workshop where he goes to create things that might help him. Sometimes, he creates extravagant robotics to help with otherwise menial tasks, such as making a robotic version of himself to do the housework and look after the Chicks and making a machine that uses snails to lick stamps for him. A lot of his inventions work well, with their failures often due to outside interference.

While Rooster and his wife Hen have a loving relationship, she can be easily angered when Rooster’s inventions or ideas go wrong, especially if they damage their house or cause danger to the Chicks.

To the Chicks, Rooster is a doting father. A number of his inventions or ideas are done to please them, such as retrieving Tyrannosaurus from the past and bringing home a variety of pets. He also tries to help them on occasion, such as trying to assist with reeling in a fishing rod for one of them in Seashore Animals. Sometimes, the Chick’s attention can get too much for him – on one occasion he invented a robotic version of himself to look after the Chicks while he relaxed.

Of the characters not in his immediate family, Rooster appears most with Tyrannosaurus. He helps Tyrannosaurus escape extinction in Endangered Animals and tries to get him as a pet for the Chicks in Animal Pets. Despite often appearing together, Tyrannosaurus sometimes seems a bit puzzled or uncaring about Rooster’s attention – he tries to eat Rooster in Prehistoric Animals and tramples him into the ground at the end of Endangered Animals.

In many ways, Rooster replaced the Squirrel scientist from the first season, although he is more adept at mechanics than chemistry and the madness of Squirrel has been toned down in Rooster.

## Episodes

Desert Animals (4 appearances)

Animal Records (1 appearance)

Animal Colors (1 appearance)

Animal Mothers (1 appearance)

Animal Pets (4 appearances)

Seashore Animals (4 appearances)

Animal Families (1 appearance)

Endangered Animals (4 appearances)

An Animal Year (1 appearance)

Prehistoric Animals (4 appearances)

Animal Talk (2 appearances)

Slimy Animals (1 appearance)

Underwater Animals (4 appearances)

Farm Animals (2 appearances)

Clever Animals (1 appearance)

Animal Partners (1 appearance)

Animal Flight (3 appearances)
John-117

**Master Chief Petty Officer John-117**, also known as simply by his rank as the **Master Chief**, is the protagonist of the Halo franchise. He is a Spartan-II supersoldier of the UNSC Navy's Special Weapons division. He served as one of the most important figures of the Human-Covenant War. After over thirty years of active duty, he is one of the most decorated war veterans of the United Nations Space Command.

## Trivia

* John's surname is consistently unknown. However, because his redacted name in the Eridanus II census record takes up less space than the surnames of Rolla Hedegaard and Hirayama Tatsuyuki, it can be determined that his surname is less than nine letters long.
Guy Michelmore

Guy Michelmore is an English film and television composer and former news reporter. He is best-known for composing the opening and closing themes and the music for the first season of Eyewitness.

As well as scoring for Eyewitness, he also has provided the music for a number of direct-to-video films, television series and nature documentaries, including the 1994 series 'The Human Animal', from which clips were used from several episodes in the creation of the third season Eyewitness episode Human Machine and the 1992 Survival Anglia documentary 'The Tides of Kirawira', which was used as stock footage in the Amazing Animals episode River Animals.

Michelmore currently is the CEO of the online education provider ThinkSpace Education, which trains composers for jobs in producing music for visual media including film, television and video games.

## DK Vision media scored

Also includes general description of the score in instrumentation and feel.

* Cat - Jazz-influenced.
* Fish - Sombre, atmospheric - mainly strings
* Horse - Atmospheric, with elegance - harp and string
* Dog - Woody, light-hearted, spritely - clarinet and harpsichord [strings in places]
* Jungle - Lively, multi-faced - yet instrumentally simple - guitars
* Bird - Multi-faceted, dramatic, elegant - full orchestra
* Amphibian - ?
* Insect - ?
* Shark - ?
* Elephant - Heavy, brassy, magnanimous, with indian instruments used
* Reptile - ?
* Dinosaur - Heavy, dramatic, brassy, switching between a bombastic style composer John Williams used for Jurassic Park and a Victorian style.
* Skeleton - Xylophones used extensively.
Domestic Chicken

The Domestic Chicken (*Gallus domesticus*) is a domesticated form of the red junglefowl of South and Southeast Asia, first domesticated around 8,000 years ago. They are mainly kept either for food (meat and eggs) or as pets, but in the past were also bred for cockfighting.

These omnivorous birds have been bred into many different shapes and characters, either for ornamental or practical purposes - for example, the silkie's fluffy feathers and docile behaviour make them ideal pet and show birds, the Indonesian Ayam Cemani has been bred to be completely black down to the meat and internal organs for religious purposes and completely featherless chickens have been bred for keeping in hot climates and to increase efficiency in plucking.

## Appearances in Dorling Kindersley Vision media

With appearances within eighteen different episodes, the domestic chicken is the second most commonly-recurring species of bird in the Dorling Kindersley Vision programmes.

### See How They Grow

The life cycle of a group of chicks is the first of the four segments in the See How They Grow episode Farm Animals. The rooster in the episode, supposedly the father of the chicks, reappears later on in the cow segment.

### Eyewitness

A total of eight episodes of Eyewitness contain a domestic chicken. Season three has the most episodes with a chicken, with four in total, while seasons one and two both have two episodes containing chicken footage.

* **SEASON ONE**: Bird, Reptile
* **SEASON TWO**: Weather, Shell
* **SEASON THREE**: Flight, Island, Survival, Life

In Weather, a weathervane in the shape of a rooster serves at the episode's hero. At the end of the episode, a lightning bolt strikes it, turning it into a real chicken.

### Amazing Animals

A total of eight episodes of Amazing Animals contain a domestic chicken. The season with the most episodes is season four, with four episodes altogether. Season one has three episodes with a chicken, and season three has just one. Season two has no episodes that contain a domestic chicken.

* **SEASON ONE**: Animal Weapons, Armoured Animals, Animal Babies
* **SEASON THREE**: Farm Animals
* **SEASON FOUR**: Clever Animals, Animal Helpers, Backyard Animals, Animal Flight

Despite real chickens not being overly common in the series, from the second season there were appearances by multiple chicken cartoon characters - Rooster, the third most commonly recurring cartoon character, his wife Hen and their three Chicks, the eighth most commonly recurring characters.

Of note, Tropical Birds includes the only footage in Dorling Kindersley Vision of the red junglefowl (*Gallus gallus*), the wild ancestor of the domestic chicken.

### Baby Animals

In the On The Farm episode of Baby Animals, chickens are one of the species shown.

### Hullaballoo

   A rooster appears as the logo for the show Hullaballoo, but it does not seem to appear regularly in the programme itself.