TV Times Review of Fraggle Rock in Text Format

January 22 to January 29, 1983
Fraggles, Gorgs, and Doozers

Wessely Hicks
National Editor, TV Times

This tinkering inventor, Doc, has established his workshop atop a buzzing world whose inhabitants are Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs and is known as Fraggle Rock because it is built on a rock and because the Fraggles named it. Doc's inventions and techniques are unique, and he is the first man to discover that the proper method of sewing a button on a fried egg is to freeze the egg, bore a hole in it and attach the button.
Doc and the Fraggles and Doozers and Gorgs will invade the CBC network on January 23 and overcome viewers with irresistable whimsy. Gerard Parkes, who is Dr. Edmund Lowe in the CBC series Home Fires, is Doc, and he is the only human being to be cast in a regular role in Fraggle Rock, which is scheduled to continue in half-hour episodes for five years on CBC-TV Home Box Office in the U.S., and various networks around the world.

"As Doc, I'm an irascible old man with a dog named Sprocket," Parkes says. "Sprocket sees these little Fraggles coming out of a hole in the baseboard in my workshop, but I don't. One of them, Gobo, comes out every day to retrieve a postcard from Uncle Travelling Matt who is the only Fraggle in the outside world."
"Uncle Matt has discovered the hole and believes he is on the threshold of a whole new universe. He ventures forth, after enlisting Gobo as a courier who will pick up his despatches in my workshop. Uncle Matt is confused by the human world and he thinks that an ice cube is a wonderful jewel he lost when he put it in his pocket, that kites are captive people on strings, and that parking meters are people who are fed. His reports are read to the Fraggles by Gobo."

That is an outline of the series plot furnished by a mere human, namely Gerrard Parkes. But Uncle Matt comes from an underground world where tiny Doozers build wondrously intricate structures, giant Gorgs harass the happy-go-lucky Fraggles, and the resident seeress is Trash Heap who is a talking, undulating conglomeration of orange peels, grass clippings, tin cans, coffee grounds, rotting leaves and other tasty gleanings from strewn garbage. So when Uncle Matt peers through the hole that leads into Doc's workshop, he is indeed, surveying a new and fear-inspiring world.
"It is the final frontier of Fraggledom," he assures Gobo, a character whose mauve hair looks as though it were coiffed by a friendly neighborhood manufacturer of string mops.

The Fraggle Rock series is a joint venture between CBC and Henson Associates, the creators of The Muppets and the discoverers of that superstar performer, Miss Piggy, as well as the most frazzled host on the air, Kermit the Frog. The characters in Fraggle Rock are new, but some of the voices are recognizable, and the antics are borrowed from The Muppets, which just proves that despite the delightful concept of Henson Associates, the acting range of the performers is limited.

There are 12 episodes of Fraggle Rock completed now, and in February, the cast will be assembled to do 24 more. When production began in August, Gerard Parkes was still portraying Dr. Edmund Lowe in Home Fires, a series that will probably continue in 1983. Parkes was Doc for two days and Dr. Lowe for the rest of the week.
"I tuned myself into Doc, and when I was finished, I'd go home and tune in Dr. Lowe," he says. "I read scripts in the bath, in bed, and at meals, and it worked. We ended even, the scripts and I."

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