The Telebugs is a British cartoon from the mid-1980s produced by TVS about the adventures of three robots with televisions for heads.
The Telebugs were a hi-tech trio of merry monitored robots created by absent-minded Professor Brainstrain. These robots were, in the professor's own words, 'Pwogwammed to help people in twouble', but more specifically to combat the new threat of computerized villains and advanced adversaries springing up around the country.
The Telebugs' leader was a white-shelled droid called Chip. He was a calculation robot, able to process data and statistics at a phenomenal rate. Yellow-shelled Samantha was a hi-tech monitor and tracking device. Then there was Bug, the red robot programmed to acquire video footage and pictures. Bug came with a sidekick called Mic, a mobile independent camera.
The Telebugs worked for the local tv station run by the ill-tempered Mr McStarch. Their main adversaries were mad Baron Bullybyte and his Dragon Sister Magna. Bullybyte was in possession of an evil computer creation called Angel Brain. This wicked trio cropped up numerous times during the three Telebugs seasons. There was also Arcadia, an arcade game-loving female punk turned computer criminal who controlled an army of little evil robots.
In the course of the first season, Professor Brainstrain creates a fourth black shelled Telebug called Zudo. Unfortunately, Zudo's wires get crossed and he sets off on a wild rampage through the English countryside. Season 2 introduces Professor Brainstrain's evil brother, Professor Albert, and his Binods, as well as temporarily partnering Arcadia with the dangerously naive reality-warping alien Lifo.
The Telebugs contains examples of:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Arcadia kickstarts the Lifo arc in season 2 when she decides to randomly fire her machinery-paralyzing raygun into space through her flat's skylight out of sheer boredom, then miraculously manages to hit Lifo's spaceship as she's traveling past Earth, causing her to almost literally fall into Arcadia's lap.
- Aliens Speaking English: Lifo is able to perfectly communicate with Arcadia in English. Arcadia even asks how she can speak her language, and Lifo merely giggles and declares "Easy, I transmit", implying she may be using Psychic Powers of some sort.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Invoked in the season 2 episode "Space Age Snooker", after Lifo paralyzes Bug despite Samantha's scanners assuring her that the alien is friendly in nature. Chip and Samantha promptly deduce that Arcadia has deceived Lifo and taught her that "wrong is right and right is wrong".
- Big Bad Ensemble: Baron Bullybyte and Arcadia both compete for the role of the series' main big bads. Bullybyte works only with his sister Magna and their evil AI Angel Brain, whilst Arcadia has her own schemes, temporarily partnering with the alien Reality Warper Lifo in season 2.
- Big Brother Bully: Inverted; while Professor Brainstrain was bullied by his brother when they were both young, the bullying Albert is actually Brainstrain's younger brother, not the elder one.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Thanks to the manipulations of Arcadia, Lifo is deceived into thinking that "boring = bad" and "chaotic = exciting = good" during her stint as Arcadia's partner.
- Catchphrase:
- Chip has "I calculate" and "All systems - Go Telesonic!"
- Samantha has "My scanners detect".
- Zudo has "Evil OK!".
- Mr McStarch is prone to shouting "Great steaming haggis!" when distressed or surprised.
- Cats Are Mean: Averted with Professor Brainstrain's cat Grumble, who is on the whole helpful and good-natured... though he can get impatient if Professor Brainstrain doesn't feed him fast enough.
- Cute Machines: The Telebugs themselves are quite child-friendly and adorable. Even the Binods, despite being designed as literal Evil Counterparts of the Telebugs, are quite cute, especially when they compact themselves into their UFO-like fast travel forms.
- Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Professor Brainstrain suffers from this.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: Baron Bullybyte works with his sister Magna and their female-coded AI, Angel Brain. The other major candidate for the series' position of primary antagonist is Arcadia; a female punk and video-gamer who partners with the female alien Lifo in season 2. The last major recurring antagonist is the male-coded rogue Telebug, Zudo.
- Evil Counterpart:
- The Telebugs have three of these in the form of Zudo, a fourth Telebug whose programming was accidentally scrambled by Grumble and which turned him evil, and the Binods Pyro and Rosie; literal evil robots created by Professor Brainstrain's malevolent younger brother Albert to one-up the Telebugs.
- Professor Albert is Professor Brainstrain's younger and, in Brainstrain's own words, cleverer brother. But he's also a greedy, arrogant Jerkass who is bitterly resentful that his elder brother's philanthropic inventions, primarily the Telebugs, has made him famous. So he invents evil equivalents to the Telebugs in his Binods, Pyro and Rosie, in an effort to ruin their reputations out of sheer spite.
- Face–Heel Turn: The Binods' first arc revolves around the Binods attempting to discredit the Telebugs by using Rosie's scrambling powers on them. In their debut episode, they hit Samantha whilst she's about to rescue a father and daughter who've been trapped aboard an unsafe ship, which causes Samantha to stop her rescue efforts because her scrambled circuits assess the risk to herself as being too great.
- Fiery Redhead: Mr McStarch has bright orange hair and a bit of a temperament.
- Forced Transformation: Lifo's primary means of dealing with living people that Arcadia doesn't like is to turn them into something else. In "Culture Clash" she deals with Mr McStarch and Rita by "reducing them to 2 dimensions" (which seems to mean "turning them into living cardboard cutouts"), whilst in "Arcadia Goes West" she transforms Bootlick into a dog and a horse into a gunslinging bipedal maniac version of itself.
- Freudian Trio: Chip is the purely logical leader (Super-Ego), Bug is the most impulsive one and the most likely to get into trouble (Id). Samantha is more emotional than C.H.I.P (and by her own admission, has less processing power) but is more restrained and mature than Bug (Ego).
- Fun with Acronyms: The names of the Telebugs - C.H.I.P. (Coordinated Hexadecimal Information Processor), S.A.M.A.N.T.H.A. (Solar Activated Micro Automated Non-inTerference Hearing Apparatus), B.U.G. (Binary Unmanned Gamma-camera), M.I.C. (Mobile Independent Camera) and Z.U.D.O (Zero-failure Universal Data Optimizer).
- The Binods also have the same naming scheme; P.Y.R.O. and R.O.S.I.E.
- Limited Animation: The show didn't have a very big budget, and it shows.
- Literal-Minded: The Telebugs, being robots, tended to not be very good with metaphors or exaggerations, and would take whatever Mr McStarch said literally.Mr McStarch: Get out of here in one second, or I —
Chip: Thanks. Mr McStarch! One second is all we need! - Meaningful Name: "Lifo's" name is a nickname that Arcadia gives her as a portmanteau of "Life Form", since she's an alien.
- Mechanical Monster: In Zudo's initial arc through season 1, he steals an experimental digging machine created by Professor Brainstrain and uses it to wreak havoc. The imagery portrays the machine almost like a living monster under Zudo's control, including a very "chomping maw"-coded digging scoop that is Zudo's primary means of damaging things, such as when he slowly crushes a sub with it in "Sub Snack", or cracks open an oil rig's main pipe-line in "Oil Strike".
- Mind Control:
- Frequent with Baron Bullybyte and Magna, who would hypnotize children into playing their video games. Magna also used her vaguely defined hypnotic powers to make other people see her as a pretty blonde lady.
- The Binod Rosie's special power is that she can "scramble microwaves" and "even put logic circuits into reverse". This allows her to temporarily scramble the minds of the Telebugs, causing them to begin acting in ways completely contrary to their usual helpful mannerisms.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: It seems there's nothing the Telebugs' sonic beams can't do.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Zudo only turned out evil because Brainstrain's cat, Grumble, interfered during his creation — he got impatient because Brainstrain wouldn't give him his dinner before the robot was assembled and so decided to "help."
- Obliviously Evil: Lifo the alien doesn't intend to hurt anybody, but because she was accidentally shot down by Arcadia, she takes her cues as to what is socially appropriate and normal on Earth from Arcadia. As a result, she repeatedly uses her Reality Warper powers to twist reality in ways that Arcadia finds hilarious, and which in turn terrorizes the civilian population. When the Telebugs are able to explain to her that she's been tricked, she turns on Arcadia. This is set up in her second episode, "Culture Clash", when she asks why all the humans at the art gallery are running and shouting due to her bringing the various art pieces to life, and Arcadia assures her it's because they're having a good time. A similar conversation ensues in "Lifo Makes Friends".
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Arcadia is so called because she always gets the high scores in video games.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: In the episode "Danger", the Telebugs attempt to infiltrate the Angel Palace disguised as children. Said disguises consist of wigs and hats. Naturally, Bullybyte is immediately suspicious.
- Reality Warper: Lifo the alien is able to basically do whatever she wants by projecting a ray at things from the three antennae atop her head. All she needs is to be able to see whatever she wants to warp, and she can even target things through television screens, such as causing a bunch of snooker balls to sprout faces and start bouncing all over the place whilst blowing raspberries in her debut episode, "Space Age Snooker". She mostly uses this ability to bring inanimate objects to life and transform things, especially people she doesn't like.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Zudo's color scheme, with some yellow thrown in.
- Robotic Reveal: Lifo initially appears to be a totally organic alien. But, the episode "Lifo Makes Friends" reveals in the last minute that she's actually a robot constructed by an unknown alien race.
- Sixth Ranger: Lifo joins the Telebugs after they finally reveal that Arcadia has been tricking her into doing evil things at the end of her first arc in the second season..
- The Smurfette Principle: Samantha is the only female Telebug.
- Soft Glass: Magna jumps through a window to escape the Telebugs in "Apple Hi" and doesn't receive even a scratch.
- Team Pet: Mic the video-pup.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Samantha's bow, although it's actually a spinning radar.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: In the ending of "Lifo Makes Friends", it turns out that Lifo also has the ability to alter her own shape, as well as to warp the shapes of others.
- You No Take Candle: Zudo has this manner of speaking, although there are a few occasions when he speaks normal English.
