A Reading of Dungeons and Dragons (1983), Milestone of Television Animation

Dungeons and Dragons is the best and most important animated television series of the '80s. Yet, due to being made for television, indeed Saturday morning children's television, it has never been taken very seriously amongst critics. I believe it is worthy of being taken seriously and studied. I propose to examine it in a holistic way, looking at disparate elements such as its reflection of the cultural milieu in which it was created, ideas, themes, and the emotional effects achieved in viewers, and seeing how they complement, intersect and cohere with one another.

Part of the difficulty in analyzing a television series is that any series is usually the creation of several writers working together. There is a head writer or story editor to keep writers on track, but there is considerable leeway for writers to develop ideas in unique directions. Few series are developed with the level of planning and consistency of vision found in, say, Babylon 5. This lends any series, especially a series with multiple seasons, a sense of improvisation, each writer building off what the last contributed. Many writers do little more than create a self-contained episode with little to no impact on the larger scheme. However, some writers are more ambitious. In a series like Chris Carter's Millennium, though the first season has no definite story arc, the second season's new head writers, Glen Morgan and James Wong, find the seeds of a story arc within it and develop the material in ways Chris Carter hadn't anticipated. In fact, so little had he anticipated the development that he returned to a greater degree of control in the third season to reconcile the previous two seasons. This process of 'developing the seeds' is not unique to television in itself. Many of Shakespeare's plays are developed from the potential in other stories, for instance. Goethe's Faust and especially Faust II are developed from the potential in the Faust legend. The difference in television is that the original and the developed remain together as a single aesthetic object.

Dungeons and Dragons followed a similar path to Millennium. The first season was under the editorship of Steve Gerber and most of the episodes were written by Jeffrey Scott. These episodes are very self-contained. They allow the characters to become fully themselves and to reveal themselves in relationship to the world and each other. Each episode follows a formula. No greater pattern appears to be emerging. With the second season, Karl Geurs takes over as editor and Michael Reaves, one of the best of all writers for animated series, develops seeds of patterns from the first season into greater significance, into a full pattern leading to a final and meaningful point. It is particularly in light of Reaves's developments that Dungeons and Dragons has the value, power, and cohesion that it does. What I will be analyzing in this essay is not any particular episode, but the patterns that arise out of material in all the episodes, patterns that, while not attributable to any 'auteur,' were nevertheless recognized and developed by a few of the keener writers on the series.

Dungeons and Dragons concerns a group of six children of varying ages who have been transported through a wormhole to a planet in a distant solar system. This new world is full of magic and mythical creatures, evil and peril. An old sorceror named 'Dungeon Master' gives them each a unique magic weapon to defend themselves in 'the realm' and hopefully to find their way back home through one of the many magical portals. Each episode follows the same basic formula: The children are trying to merely get by in the realm by catching food or bathing and getting in mild danger for their troubles; dungeon Master appears out of thin air and provides gnomic advice on a new way to get home and the dangers involved; all of the characters are gung-ho, except one, Eric, who complains that Dungeon Master is needlessly unclear and sending them into danger; ultimately, they all follow Dungeon Master's directions; they do indeed encounter danger, usually in the form of archvillain Venger, an evil sorceror keen on getting their weapons; in the process of doing a good deed and fighting Venger, their way home ends up getting destroyed; Dungeon Master appears again, this time to console them or, in the third season, offer some insight in soliloquy for the benefit of the audience. Only a few episodes, written by Michael Reaves naturally, wander from this pattern and then only mildly.

Any narrative formula can be deceptively simple. Genres function upon the repetition of formulaic elements, the many possibilities within them, and the many possibilities for their subversion. The formula of a television series is no different. One of the cleverest moves from Geurs/Reaves is to provide overarching significance to the formula in a manner similar to that of The Prisoner. The formula of The Prisoner, the final episode reveals, represents the steps in a process of some elaborate psycho-social experiment. In Dungeons and Dragons, this significance hinges upon the character of Dungeon Master. As his near-omnscience gradually becomes clearer, his apparent pleasure with the disappointing results of each attempt to get home suggests the work of a cunning manipulator. However benevolent, Dungeon Master is a highly paternalistic manipulator of the first order, functioning without transparency and ostensibly permitting every negative event for some never explicitly stated greater good. While the children are under the impression that Dungeon Master genuinely intends to help them find their way home with each episode, the audience can see he is fully aware they cannot both succeed in reaching home and make morally right choices. Thus the formula each episode follows becomes a process of conditioning, so to speak, each episode representing a step in the fulfillment of Dungeon Master's plans. So what we now have to examine is what is the nature of Dungeon Master's intentions.

Roughly speaking, Dungeon Master's intentions are to transform. Firstly, the realm is beset by many injustices, is in many places bleak, fallen, and under totalitarian rule. Dungeon Master clearly has the power to right many wrongs should he so choose. Yet he chooses not to interfere. This totalitarian rule is a result of the evil tyrant, Venger. Venger is the second object Dungeon Master seeks to transform, describing Venger in "The Dragon's Graveyard" as his own mistake. His desire is to convert Venger back to good as is implicit throughout the second and third seasons and explicit in the unproduced final episode. Though Dungeon Master demonstrates in a few episodes that he is more powerful than Venger, he never takes any offensive position against him. Again, he chooses not to interfere. Thirdly, Dungeon Master seeks to transform the children. Since Dungeon Master refuses to directly interfere with either of these three objects, it's clear what he desires is not just transformation, but a sort of self-transformation. This self-transformation is centered upon and begins with the children.

The most important concept for the children is 'home'. In each episode they seek a way home. Home is the main motivation for any of the activities they perform in the realm. It's also the reward Dungeon Master holds out when he sends them on errands. He is not merely withholding from them his knowledge that they won't make it home, he's actively deceiving them for what he perceives as their greater good. At the end of both "The Dragon's Graveyard" and "Cave of the Fairie Dragons", Dungeon Master reveals, to the audience only, that his interpretation of the concept 'home' differs from the children's. The children, of course, have in mind the place they were raised and their family. Dungeon Master, however, has a more existential interpretation of 'home.' So where the children see themselves as failing to get home each episode, Dungeon Master begins, with "The Dragon's Graveyard," to reveal that he's leading them into a sort of spiritual home. In "The Dragon's Graveyard," Hank has the opportunity to kill Venger but spares his life. Dungeon Master claims, in soliloquy, that this is their "first step home." At the end of "Cave of the Fairie Dragons," the penultimate episode of the series, when Eric expresses satisfaction in sacrificing their way home to help the dragons, Dungeon Master, again in soliloquy, states that they are in fact closer to home than ever. Evidently Dungeon Master's equivocating. What does he mean by 'home'?

He seems to have in mind the realm itself. This is where the transformation of the realm, Venger, and the children converge. As the children show self-sacrifice and right injustices in their attempts to get home, they make the realm a better place. Moreover, by having Venger continually encounter the good young ones, Venger is being taken on a course towards becoming good. Dungeon Master's schemes are occasionally designed with the express intention of pairing Venger with the children. In "The Garden of Tardos," Dungeon Master's gnomic advice indicates they must work with Venger. In "The Dungeon at the Heart of Dawn," Dungeon Master clearly relishes having Venger stand beside his pupils, directly beside Eric incidentally, to fight a greater enemy. In the unproduced finale, "Requiem," the children succeed in converting Venger to good. Since Venger is the source of most evil in the realm, his transformation and the transformation of the realm coincide.

Thus, the action of the children represents a fundamental aspect of humanity. Animals, through evolution, adapt to their environments. Humans, however, adapt their environments to themselves. We don't find homes; we make homes. All of us, in every day life, exert influence on the physical reality around us, including other people, to make it more hospitable to our needs and desires. In Dungeons and Dragons, a group of humans from our world is set into a hostile world and through their actions they transform it into a hospitable world, a world they can potentially call home. So the action of transforming Venger and of transforming the realm coincides, in Dungeon Master's view, with the discovery of home.

Of course, in the children's conception of home, it is not merely a physical place. Their families are also left behind. Dungeon Master's plan seems to include, as well, making them find a family in each other. Eric, it's revealed, has always been neglected by his wealthy family. Amongst his friends he's never neglected, no matter how irritating they find him. As the series runs on, they become increasingly tolerant toward him. In "Citadel of Shadows," for instance, Diana only says 'Eric's just having one of his days,' when he's quite unpleasant to Sheila. He, likewise, becomes increasingly loyal to them. In the same episode, he later risks himself to protect Sheila. In the second season episode "Day of the Dungeon Master," Eric was willing to remain behind in the realm in order to send them home. This is quite a change from the first season episode "Eye of the Beholder," where they expressed surprise that Eric was even willing to use his magic shield to save them. It's not clear if they were even friends before arriving in the realm, but the disparity of ages suggests that they were not. They have simply learned, as the series progressed, to accept one another despite or even because of their differences. This, too, seems to be an aspect of finding home.

There is, moreover, an aspect of social commentary to Dungeon Master's concept of home. The '80s was a time of economic prosperity, of capitalistic success. People were free to indulge in materialistic whims like never before--except perhaps in the '20s. The sexual revolution and the women's rights movement had just unleashed unprecedented freedoms and now, in the '80s, those freedoms could finally be enjoyed. New technologies, like VHS and video game consoles, brought whole new forms of entertainment into the home. It became a bright, flashy, highly materialistic, morally bankrupt free-for-all. This milieu was home for the children of Dungeons and Dragons as well as the series original audience. Eric, coming from inordinately wealthy parents, represents that milieu most of all. An issue never quite explored in the series, but I believe to be implied, is that Dungeon Master is responsible for the children's sudden transfer to the realm. He takes them out of the materialistic world of the '80s and sets them in a harsh, dangerous, primitive world, where they have to struggle just to catch their own food and where around every corner something seems to want to destroy them. By learning how to fight for life and transform their world around them, they are reconnecting with an aspect of what it means to be human that has been lost in modern society. They are also reconnecting with an altruistic, purer aspect of humanity buried under materialism. In the first season episode "In Search of the Dungeon Master," Eric actually splits off from the group rather than help them find Dungeon Master. In the the third season episode "Cave of the Fairie Dragons," he's pleased to sacrifice his way home to help others. In this interpretation, the home Dungeon Master teaches them to find is wherever they are, with whatever they have. He's teaching them to appreciate what they have, the simple delights of one another's company and the joys of a world unsullied by modern technology.

Perhaps an even more abstract and misty notion of home is involved here. In "Citadel of Shadow," Venger's sister Karena is freed from her evil nature and, when asked what she can do for the group in return, is told her friendship is sufficient. At this moment, Dungeon Master tells her, "Welcome home." Katherine Lawrence wrote the final three episodes of the series, excluding the unproduced finale from Michael Reaves. Her writing is almost as good as Reaves's. There is reason to suspect this "Welcome home" indicates Dungeon Master's conception of home. It appears to have to do with friendship and goodness, being able to love and be loved. So perhaps the freedom from materialism and the selfishness it engenders is intended to itself be some form of 'home.'

It's worth noting, as well, that Eric is the most important character in the series, forming a triad with Dungeon Master and Venger. He is in some sense the protagonist of a subconsciously-running bildungsroman plot. The five other children are flat, one-dimensional characters. Bobby is the hot-tempered young one. Sheila is the needy but supportive teen girl. Diana is the independent tomboy. Hank is the fearless leader. Presto, though slightly more developed and exhibiting greater variety in his personality, is mostly the clumsy nerd. Presto's magic hat is perhaps responsible for elevating him, as the hat seems to work on purely subconscious principles, bringing into being not what Presto consciously desires, but rather some solution from a standpoint of pure lateral thinking. At any rate, these five are all eager to do good and never exhibit any disrespect toward Dungeon Master. The only interior conflicts that affect them are those directly pertaining to their roles and a single associated character trait. For instance, Hank's only concern is with leadership and his only internal conflicts arise when he believes he's not succeeding as a leader. Eric alone is fully human, his conflicts more real. He continues to go along with the group, but is always raising questions about the validity of their missions, of Dungeon Master's advice, or regarding the choices taken. That's not to say he's a great human being. But he's a fully-fledged character and with being fully-fledged comes flaws. It's important that he's weak; that he's not a great person to begin with. It is in him that Dungeon Master's process of transformation primarily takes effect.

Eric's interactions with Dungeon Master and Venger are both telling. He often questions Dungeon Master's advice and motives in front of him, initially rejects the role of cavalier in which Dungeon Master casts him, and expresses plainly in the first season that he'd rather go home than help anyone. Much of Dungeon Master's advice is aimed particularly at Eric and indeed several missions, particularly "Day of the Dungeon Master," in which Eric is temporarily made dungeon master, seem designed to benefit Eric more than anyone else. The progress of the whole group is centered in Eric. It is consequently Eric more than anyone else who annoys Venger. His silliness and comical behaviour infuriates Venger. Where Eric likes to be respected, he's strangely resigned to humiliations and rebukes. Venger demands reverance and fear, loathes anyone who makes light of his presence, and any apparent show of impudence. Eric's goofiness and lack of restraint in speech thus make him the usual target for Venger's rages. Not coincidentally, it is Eric who is placed beside Venger to fight a mutual threat in "The Dungeon at the Heart of Dawn"; and it is Eric who restores Venger to good in "Requiem." The series is in some sense about Eric's progress into a better person, with a new family who accepts him, and a new home in his role of helping others in the realm.

Eric and Venger may be bound as well in a psychosexual rivalry for paternal affection. Venger is both an Oedipus and a Prodigal Son. On the one hand he is scheming to take over the realm from his own father, Dungeon Master. However, all of his plans obsessively involve taking the magic weapons from the children. On a purely narrative level, he justifies his pursuit as an integral step to taking full control of the realm. However, there is another sense in which he is striving to displace the new objects of his father's affection. Dungeon Master has essentially adopted these children. Eric has the position of the younger sibling to Venger. By taking the weapons from the children, he takes away the affection his father has shown them. The older sibling is motivated, in psychoanalysis, buy envy and anger, sometimes fantasizing the murder of the younger sibling. Since Karena is Venger's sister, she must also be Dungeon Master's daughter. When he tells her "Welcome home," it therefore has the very straightforward meaning of welcoming her back to his family. The children finding home and Venger finding home thus become co-extensive events. This interpretation makes home more personal to Dungeon Master: home is his family, both the children he has begotten and the children he has adopted. This does not discount the previous interpretations of 'home,' of course, since that conception of home does appear to be involved in being a child of Dungeon Master's.

Dungeon Master's approach to home is closely related to the emotional force of the series. Watching the series within a short period of time rather than over months or years strongly impressed upon me the sense of delight in the realm's simplicity and the closeness of the friends. The modern world is terribly complicated and the human spirit sometimes feels diluted in an ocean of excessive choice. In Dungeons and Dragons, these children, albeit very different people, stick together and learn to love one another. Despite difficult situations, they support one another. They really only have each other in that world and there's something beautiful in that, a simplicity we don't find in our own lives. We're too free in our modern world to throw aside someone who doesn't quite fit our tastes or standards, too free to select our friends to be just like us. How terribly boring; how terrible for one's character. Yet in a world like this, it is no easy task to socialize with those who are Other. They're not interested. They might be in a nightmarish world full of evil wizards and dragons, however. I must admit I've fallen a little in love with Eric.

Surrounding the pleasures of the comradery is the simplicity of that world. Though they are in profound danger much of the time, they have no real duties. Dungeon Master sends them on missions for the way home, but in between this there is no pressure on them except to keep finding food and shelter. They don't have to seek jobs, or write a thesis, or visit their parents, or accept facebook friend requests; they don't have to worry about reputations or rivalry or romance. They've been taken out of the web of duties and brought to a world of self-reliance. There they always know what they must do and, when they have nothing to do, they may do what they like. And, of course, they always have each other to do it with. The pleasures of our world are manifold, but as one watches Dungeons and Dragons, the alternative looks very sweet indeed. They have whole new horizons and perhaps endless time to do see strange sights, meet new people, and perform heroic deeds all the while. I couldn't help but desire to be there amongst the children, to have the freedom and the comradery.

So within the formulaic episodes of Dungeons and Dragons a process of transformation for the children, Venger, and the realm takes place according to Dungeon Master's plans. There is a certain moral ambiguity involved. Although the world of Dungeons and Dragons is ostensibly dualistic, by which I mean there is a clear distinction between good and evil, those who are good and those who are evil are never entirely and unwaveringly such. Venger can be transformed to good. Dungeon Master, although wholly benevolent, still allows the children to fall into life-threatening danger time and again for the sake of his project. If his project is to organize their actions to transform the realm into a just world, resembling the moral rectitude of democratic earth without the complications of political systems and technology, if, that is, he cares about the realm, why has he allowed it, over the course of a thousand years, to fall into such a beleaguered state? All those who suffer under Venger's hand could, apparently, be saved by Dungeon Master. Has he truly allowed the world to come to such a state just for the sake of the children and Venger? This perhaps reflects the theistic notion that god works in 'mysterious ways.' Along with that theistic notion is the notion that god does not interfere so much as inspires. Perhaps the realm of Dungeons and Dragons is a Judeo-Christian world where the son of its god chose evil over good. Venger is indeed Dungeon Master's son. But this is speculation, matters of interest that arise as one watches, questions for which there are no answers. Were there answers, it wouldn't be ambiguity, of course.

To sum up, what makes Dungeons and Dragons such a fascinating and important animated series is the way its writers were able to use its formula to develop a consistant critique of '80s materialistic culture and dualistic propaganda through one of the essential tools of that culture, the television. It does so not just through the thematic development of the notion of 'home,' but also through the complementary emotional texture created in the experience of the characters, the world they inhabit and their progress through it to a redefinition of 'home'. I would be remiss not to mention that this emotional texture is in part created through the visual construction of that world, the stunning work of the animators. Much talent was involved in the creation of Dungeons and Dragons; it is with folly that it is neglected as an object of aesthetic appreciation.