Gerry Anderson's
  Lavender Castle  (1998)
 
  producers: Carrington Productions Intl
                    & Cosgrove Hall Films
  animation: stop-motion animation
    episodes: 26 x 10mins

 

    The Paradox is an interstellar starship resembling a kind of thatched Tudor
    cottage. At the helm are a peculiar band of misfits, lead by three-eyed Captain
    Thrice and his living Walking Stick. There's a mechanic called Isambard, a warrior
    pilot called Roger, a kind of butterfly-being called Lyca who acts as the crew's
    doctor, ship's robot Sir Squeakalot and cute-but-oh-so-incompetent navigator
    Sproggle. Their goal remains an elusive one: They seek the mythical Lavender
    Castle a floating city of peace and harmony and purity somewhere in the furthest
    reaches of the galaxy. The problem is, wicked Dr Agon wants to find this city first
    and destroy it. Agon plots and schemes on board his massive warship, the Dark
    Station, which rumbles through the galaxy on a limitless tank of fuel, with one
    thousand enslaved souls toiling in its bowels. He also has a mighty steam-
    powered vehicle he calls the Mammoth which he can bring into play for closer
    encounters, and a rather menacing robot spider at his beck and call, which
    means the race to find Lavender Castle is well and truly on!

      

    This fantastic space quest was born from the marvellous mind of artist Rodney
    Matthews, brought into production by Gerry Anderson and in to splendid
    animated life by the multitalented folk at Mackinnon & Saunders and
    Cosgrove Hall Films.

    The first episode - "In the Beginning" - sets the scene with Captain Thrice
    rescuing his newly picked crew from the clutches of Short Fred Ledd, a
    scurvied space pirate in league with Dr Agon...

    The characters, ships and settings are extraordinary and instantly recognisable
    as the work of Rodney Matthews. In the 1970's and 1980's Matthews' distinct
    stylings graced innumerable Big O posters, Andre Norton and Michael
    Moorcock book covers, TSR Hobbies publications, record covers for Praying
    Mantis, Nazareth and others. He favours rich ink and gouache colours and trees,
    horns, tails and towers are embellished with extravagant extensions and
    that's all here, in abundance. There's a semi-religious theme buried in
    here too, in the shape of that celestial titular city. What strange power
    does it hold, exactly? - The details are left deliberately sketchy.
    
    As Rodney Matthews explains on his web site, the concepts for Lavender
    Castle actually took shape a decade earlier after an encounter with Gerry
    Anderson in 1986 and relate to a song he had written by the same name.
    At the time it would have been extraordinarily difficult to adapt Matthews'
    designs into animated form. But a decade on and new production techniques
    including the introduction of CGI meant that his imagination could be
    unleashed. And indeed, Lavender Castle is a designer's delight. The
    models are quite beautiful, with intricate design work on their costumes and
    armour. Elsewhere, fantastic starfields and galactic starships have been
    designed using CGI software - all staying true to the Matthews' style.
    Seriously, there's a cornershop's worth of eye candy here!

 

    Lavender Castle?

   "Lavender Castle, a place of legend at the center of the
    universe. An elusive city floating in the sky, where peace
    exists, hopes are met, and dreams come true!" 

    Captain Thrice has encountered the Lavender Castle once before.
    It made the walking stick he was carving come to life...

    Alas, no one catches up with the Lavender Castle in the series. But
    Dr Agon comes perilously close in the final episode ("Birds of a Feather")
    The evil doctor brings the three biggest bad guys from the series together
    on the Dark station to announce a union of evil, buit they're so tied up with
    their own maleficence they fail to see the ship passing within inches of
    that illusive, illuminated wonder...

 

    Lavender Spanner

    Oh, this is fun. In the episode "The Twilight Tower" the gang are
    coerced into watching The Most Fabulous Object in the Universe, which
    is a kind of future-television. And playing on its screen is a clip from
    Gerry Anderson's first ever stop-motion production, "Dick Spanner"!
     
 

   Lavender Castle episodes

 

     Lavender Castle on DVD


      Lavender Castle: The Complete Collection
                 Region 2 / two disc set / Universal / September 2005

 

   Carringtion Productions International

   from an original concept by Rodney Matthews
   produced at Cosgrove Hall Films Limited