Star Blazers DVD Season Three (1985) The Bolar Wars

The year is 2203. There is a great war going on in the Milky Way Galaxy between the Galman Empire and The Bolar Federation. During a battle, a stray planet destroyer missile crashes into the sun and has caused a dangerous increase fusion that threatens to destroy the entire Earth Solar System. As a result, the newly refitted Argo under the command of Captain Derek Wildstar and manned by a mix of veterans from “The Quest For Iscandar” and the battle against “The Comet Empire” and a group of bright, but reckless recruits are sent to find a new planet for humanity to immigrate to. If they do not find a new planet for humans to call home in one year, all life on Earth will succumb to radiation and the Earth along with much of her planetary system will be lost when the sun goes supernova from the after effects of the stray planet bomb that impacted upon the Earth’s sun.  

When we last saw our heroic Star Blazers, the Argo assisted in defending the valiant Captain Ram of the Bolar Ship Legandra and subsequently has involved themselves in the galactic war between the Galman Empire and the Bolar Federation. These four episodes focus on the Argo’s fight against General Dagon of the Galman 18^th Eastern Starfleet. The episodes feature some fantastic space battle sequences with one breathtaking scene where we see from the point of view of the bridge of the Argo the starship narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a Galman warship that is somewhat reminiscent of the scene in “Star Wars: Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi” where an A-Wing fighter crashes into the bridge of the Executor. There is a dramatic battle aboard the Argo when it is rammed and boarded by another Galman ship. There are casualties and we see a great scene where one of the rookie characters learns first hand the meaning of life or death hand-to-hand combat. Eventually the Argo makes it to the Barnard System where they discover a few human pioneers suffering from a mysterious illness and have a final face-off against the Galman 18^th Eastern Starfleet.

A few interesting items to note is that Emperor Desslok is not aware of the actions of General Dagon and the attacks on the Argo, which gives some continuity reasoning for those who remember Desslock’s last encounter with the Star Force at the end of “Star Blazers: Series 2: The Comet Empire.” Captain Wildstar is also surprised to learn that the Galmans are in fact the race from where the Gamilon Empire had originated from and the possibility that Desslok could be behind the attacks surprises him. So we are in a situation where both the antagonist and protagonist are unaware of what has caused the conflict, which makes the third series scenario more interesting and not a retread of what had occurred in the two previous series. There is also a moment that is somewhat sexist in the closing episode of this volume where all of the female crewmembers of the Argo, except Nova are sent back to Earth because the mission is just becoming too dangerous.  

Produced in 1985, “Star Blazers: The Bolar Wars: Series 3” has been referred to as “The Lost Season” because it was produced in 1985, years after the first two series and by that time, “Star Blazers” was not the syndicated animated success in America that it was in the late 1970s. So the series did not air in as wide a market in America, where by this time there had also been enough anime and manga crossover that created a savvier core audience that had long since moved onto other epic sci-fi imports from Japan.