Young Hercules
Young Hercules is a prequel series to the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys that originally aired on Fox Kids Network. After a pilot film aired on Feb. 17, 1998, the series premiered on September 12, 1998, and ended on May 14, 1999, with a total of 50 episodes over the course of one season. It stars Ryan Gosling in the title role, who took over from Ian Bohen who starred in the pilot movie and four episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The series was inspired by the Greek myths of Heracles.
Plot
The series follows Hercules as he attends the Academy, where the wise centaur headmaster, Cheiron, trains him in the ways of the warrior. There, he befriends Prince Jason, the future king of Corinth, and Iolaus, a former thief who was sentenced to train at the Academy instead of going to prison. Hercules also meets the Academy's first female cadet, Lilith.The show features Ares, the god of war, and his attempts to destroy his younger half-brother to win Zeus' favor. Among his allies are his nephew Strife and the goddess of retribution, Discord. The series also features two other villains: Hera, the queen of the gods and Hercules' stepmother, and Apollo, the god of the sun and Hercules' half-brother.
Other characters of interest include Kora, the innkeeper who, unbeknownst to Hercules and his friends, is a devotee of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. As the series progresses, it is revealed that Kora has special powers that allow her to do Artemis' bidding. There are hints of romance between Hercules and Kora, but their friendship keeps things innocent.
Cast
Main
- Ian Bohen as Hercules
- Ryan Gosling as Hercules
- Dean O'Gorman as Iolaus
- Chris Conrad as Jason
Supporting
- Jodie Rimmer as Lilith
- Mfundo Morrison as Theseus
- Nathaniel Lees as Cheiron
- Angela Marie Dotchin as Kora
- Kevin Smith as Ares
- Joel Tobeck as Strife
- Meighan Desmond as Discord
- Katrina Browne as Cyane, an Amazon
- Jason Hoyte as Hephaestus, god of metallurgy
- Sharon Tyrell as Alcmene
- Alison Bruce as Simula
- Elizabeth Hawthorne as Hera
- Jay Ryan as Cadet
- John Bach as Zeus
Production
The series has been used in case studies of how to shoot television series efficiently. Traditional television series are shot one episode at a time. Young Hercules was shot in blocks of four episodes at a time. The three main directors of the series were on a rotation, one director for each four episode block. The four would be written with this in mind, keeping sets, locations, and actors similar in all four episodes even if story and plot lines might not interrelate. This saved tremendous amounts of money and time allowing the series to be shot on a shoestring budget, but with maximum on-screen dollars. The 50 episodes had a budget of roughly $20 million which includes above and below the line costs. Shooting in New Zealand also allowed the series to circumvent considerable Guild regulations for further savings. Additional money was saved shooting the series on 16 mm film. Early research was done to see if digital cameras could be used, but it was determined that technology was not adequate at the time to make digital filming economically viable.
Principal photography took place in New Zealand while post-production elements including visual effects and music were all edited and integrated together in Los Angeles. Ian Bohen played Young Hercules in the pilot movie and was offered the part, but opted not to move to New Zealand where the series would shoot principal photography. Early on in the series, special visual effects were conceived by Richard Taylor's Weta Workshop, the then little known visual effects company that went on to win several Academy Awards for their work on The Lord of the Rings. Weta and Richard Taylor stepped off Young Hercules early on to work on Lord of the Rings. In fact, the early production days of Young Hercules saw many of its crew leave to work on the then little known Peter Jackson sensation, Lord of the Rings.
Ryan Gosling was only 17 when he was cast in the lead role. To train for the role, Ryan took intense martial arts classes by the same trainer who taught Lucy Lawless and Kevin Sorbo. He was so tall and thin that his costume had to be reworked to minimize the look of how thin he was. Original costume sketches showed a darker upper body costume. When Gosling was cast, the costume designers made the upper body of his costume lighter in color and broader in the chest to help create a more bulky look. Makeup was used on Gosling's arms to help add muscle contours. Similar tricks were used for both Sorbo and Lawless for their characters.
The show's large supporting cast drew from actors who had appeared on either Hercules or Xena previously, often taking advantage of the show's mythological setting to appear as the same characters.
Like its parent series, the show was only superficially faithful to Greek mythology and Ancient Greece; it retold and re-used characters in often anachronistic ways, and sometimes used original characters to tell stories found in mythology.