Les géants (The Giants)

Director: Albert Barillé
Airing date: December 25?, 1982
Rating: ★
Review:

‘Les géants’ is the first of three adjacent and vaguely education episodes that have nothing to do with the main story.

In ‘Les géants’ Pierrot, Psi and Metro visit a huge planet, which, like almost every other planet in the Barillé universe, is an exact copy of earth, this time only bigger. On this planet our heroes encounter huge animals, like a giant caterpillar, a monstrous spider and a very cartoony rat.

Most of the episode, however, they are trapped in a termite colony. Thus, Barillé is able to tell us more about these little insects, which he does mostly through a lecturing Metro. There’s practically no story, and most of the time Pierrot and Psi are trying to get out of the colony. This fact and the lectures render one of the most boring episodes of Il était une fois… L’espace.

It seems this and the following two episodes were made to sell the series as an educational one. However, ‘Il était une fois… l’espace’ remains far less educational than the previous ‘Il était une fois… l’homme’ or indeed, the subsequent ‘Il était une fois… la vie’, and its charm lies mainly in Barillés story. Unfortunately, ‘Les géants’, ‘Les Incas‘ and ‘Chez les dinosaurs‘ are no part of that and form the low point of the entire series.

Watch ‘Les géants’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This is the 12th episode of ‘Il était une fois… l’espace’ (Once Upon a Time… Space)
To the 11th episode: Les naufragés de l’espace (Shipwrecked in Space)
To the 13th episode: Les Incas (The Incas)