Free of the shackles of BSP, and boasting numerous technical improvements like enhanced shadows and character detail, ReBoot’s third season was arguably the show that the creators always dreamed of making. The story arc that began in the second season became more complex, with Enzo – drafted into the Guardians by Bob before the hero’s forced exile – feeling the pressure of defending Mainframe from viruses and games. Those games, which had always been fun but generic takes on existing formats, became more specific parodies, including an extended riff on the Evil Dead films that would likely have given ABC conniptions. Another episode lovingly homaged classic Warner Bros. cartoons, while James Bond riff “Firewall” even had its own parody Bond theme, written and performed in the style of Shirley Bassey’s iconic “Goldfinger.”
Season 3 also took plenty of storytelling risks. Enzo and his friend AndrAla, both of whom had always been cute, immature audience identification figures, were unexpectedly defeated by the User in a Mortal Kombat-esque game, ending up lost on the Net. Even more shockingly, due to time moving differently outside of Mainframe, the characters aged into adults – literally between episodes. One week, you were watching two kids with whom you’d spent multiple seasons. The next, they were suddenly grizzled adults fighting their way through increasingly bizarre worlds – including one particularly mind-bending riff on The Prisoner, of all things.
This was pretty unprecedented stuff for kids TV, and fairly mind-blowing for a young audience. The show had come a long way from the brightly colored, sanitized standalone adventures of the early seasons – though the team never forgot that ReBoot was supposed to be fun, balancing the darker, more mature storytelling with plenty of jokes. The general quality of the writing also improved, as the team drafted in experienced comic book scribes like Marv Wolfman, Lein Wein and Dan DiDio, and even legendary scriptwriter D.C. Fontana – who penned one of season 3’s highlights, “Where No Sprite Has Gone Before,” an affectionate mashup of Star Trek and superhero comics.
But sadly, despite the dramatic highs of the third season finale, the future of ReBoot would be bumpy at best.
Season 4, Reboots, and Beyond
Accounts of the production process for ReBoot’s troubled fourth – and final – season vary. But in broad terms, a mixture of budgetary concerns, changing deals, and cuts imposed from on high resulted in a fractured process, with much material being cut. Two TV movies were eventually produced, chopped roughly into shorter episodes to be broadcast on Cartoon Network, with the season ending on a cliffhanger.
A cliffhanger that was, sadly for fans, never to be resolved.
