''ReBoot: The Guardian Code'' is a Canadian teen drama science fiction live-action/CGI-animated television series produced by
Mainframe Studios.
Originally announced in 2013, the first ten episodes debuted on
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...
worldwide (excluding Canada) on March 30, 2018.
YTV aired all twenty episodes from June 4 to July 5, 2018.
Plot
Four teenaged
gamers
A gamer is a proactive hobbyist who plays interactive games, especially video games, tabletop role-playing games, and skill-based card games, and who plays for usually long periods of time. Some gamers are competitive, meaning they routinely ...
, who are members of an online game's highest-scoring team, meet in person on their first day at
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical co ...
High School. Their enrollment was arranged by Vera, an
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
who has recruited the team as "Guardians" to physically enter and protect cyberspace.
Early in the series, Vera is given a human body and locked out of cyberspace, so she enrolls as an
exchange student
A student exchange program is a program in which students from a secondary school (high school) or university study abroad at one of their institution's partner institutions.
A student exchange program may involve international travel, but d ...
. The Guardians battle the Sourcerer, a human
hacker
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...
. Dark code is the Sourcerer's primary weapon against the world's computer systems. After his initial run-in with the Guardians, the Sourcerer reactivates the
computer virus named
Megabyte, the main antagonist of the original ''
ReBoot
In computing, rebooting is the process by which a running computer system is restarted, either intentionally or unintentionally. Reboots can be either a cold reboot (alternatively known as a hard reboot) in which the power to the system is physi ...
'', to help him from inside cyberspace.
Cast
* Guardians, high school students who physically enter cyberspace under pseudonyms to fight viruses and hackers:
**
Ty Wood
Tyson Wood (born September 17, 1995) is a Canadian actor. He has had several roles including his role as Tim Cherry in the biographical television drama '' Keep Your Head Up Kid: The Don Cherry Story'' and in the role of Billy Campbell in the h ...
as Austin Carter,
a.k.a. Vector, the leader of the team whose color is red and is the son of Adam Carter/Sourcerer.
** Sydney Scotia as Tamra,
a.k.a. Enigma, the agility like ninja of the team whose color is yellow.
** Ajay Friese as Parker,
a.k.a. Googz, the brains of the team and a hacker in the internet, his color is green.
** Gabriel Darku as Trey Davies,
a.k.a. D-Frag, the muscle of the team who is an athlete in the real world and a hulking strong man in cyberspace, his color is blue.
* Hannah Vandenbygaart as V.E.R.A. (Virtual Evolutionary Recombinary Avatar), an artificial intelligence given a human body in the first episode, and the Guardians' leader.
*
Bob Frazer as Adam Carter, Austin's father, who became infected by dark code and turned into the Sourcerer, an evil hacker trying to send the world back into the Dark Ages or the early 1900s, before everything was working with computers. He is Megabyte's master.
* Kirsten Robek as Judy Carter, Austin's mother, who is unaware of her son's guardian double life.
*
Luvia Petersen
Luvia Petersen is a Canadian actress best known for her role on the TV series '' Continuum and Ghost Wars'', where she was part of the main cast.
Petersen is also co-owner of Vancouver tattoo studio Liquid Amber Tattoo & Art Collective, which open ...
as Special Agent Nance, an agent at the Department of Internet Security (DIS), she once threatened Adam Carter into giving up his information in the mainframe. She wishes to weaponize the Guardian tech so DIS can destroy computers of America's enemies.
*
Nicholas Lea
Nicholas Lea (born Nicholas Christopher Herbert; June 22, 1962) is a Canadian actor known for his portrayal of Alex Krycek on ''The X-Files'' and of Tom Foss on ''Kyle XY''.
Life and career
Lea was born in New Westminster, British Columbia. He ...
as Mark Rowan, an agent at the Department of Internet Security and a friend of Adam Carter.
* Timothy E. Brummund as Megabyte (voice), a virus from the
original series
Original programming (also called originals or original programs, and subcategorized as "original series", "original movies", "original documentaries" and "original specials") is a term used for in-house television, film or web series productions ...
, is the Sourcerer's servant. Due the fact he is over 20 years out of date, Megabyte was upgraded by the Sourcerer upon reactivation.
* Alex Zahara as the Alpha Sentinels (voice), Megabyte's lead minion at any given time. Megabyte destroys one an episode even if they carry out his orders flawlessly.
* Shirley Millner as Hexadecimal (voice), a virus from the original series and Megabyte's sister, who was later imprisoned by the guardians to Viruslym, she was later freed by Megabyte. Unlike her brother, Hex is chaos incarnate and wishes to turn cyberspace upside down.
Episodes
Season 1 (YTV) (2018)
Season 1 (Netflix) (2018)
Season 2 (Netflix) (2018)
Development
On October 3, 2013,
Rainmaker announced the development of a new ''
ReBoot
In computing, rebooting is the process by which a running computer system is restarted, either intentionally or unintentionally. Reboots can be either a cold reboot (alternatively known as a hard reboot) in which the power to the system is physi ...
'' television series alongside the reintroduction of the Mainframe company brand for its small screen productions. Speaking to
Canada.com later that month, Rainmaker's president and Chief Creative Officer Michael Hefferon stated that the show wouldn't be the same as the "world of technology has changed drastically in the 20 years from when ''ReBoot'' first started" and cautioned that the original show's characters would likely be limited to cameo appearances. He then said that the company planned to pitch the series in February, with the hope of getting
YTV on board as the broadcast partner.
In November 2014, Rainmaker revealed the show would be called ''ReBoot: The Guardian Code''.
The following May, ''
Deadline
Deadline(s) or The Deadline(s) may refer to:
* Time limit, a narrow field of time by which an objective must be accomplished
Arts, entertainment, and media Comics
* Deadline (DC Comics), a fictional villain
* ''Deadline'' (magazine), a British ...
'' reported the series would be a live-action/CG-animated hybrid distributed by
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company (usually credited or abbreviated as TWC) was an American independent film studio, founded in New York City by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in March 2005. TWC was one of the largest mini-major film studios in North America pri ...
. On June 8, 2015,
Corus Entertainment
Corus Entertainment Inc. is a Canadian mass media company. Formed in 1999 as a spin-off from Shaw Communications, it has prominent holdings in the radio, publishing, and television industries. It is headquartered at Corus Quay in Toronto, Onta ...
, owners of YTV, ordered a 26-episode first season, stating that the series was created by Hefferon and confirming the details of the ''Deadline'' story. Shortly after, various characters from the original series, including Bob, Dot, Enzo and Megabyte, were confirmed to appear in the series, though focus had shifted to a group of four teenagers recruited into protecting cyberspace by the Guardian program V.E.R.A. The four teens were named as Austin, Parker, Trey and Tamra. A poster showcasing Austin in his guardian form was released.
Commenting on the inclusion of live-action material in the series, Hefferon stated, "I talked with broadcasters around the world. The one
esoundingthing — and I hate to break it to the fans — was nobody wanted the reboot of what
he show originallywas. Nobody was willing to buy it." He later added that two thirds of an average episode would be animated content. At the time, the series was planned for a late 2016/early 2017 launch.
Production
Casting calls for the series went out in May 2016. They listed a shoot date between August and November of that year in
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
, British Columbia, with YTV attached as the broadcast partner and the episode count reduced to 20. Production was delayed with filming taking place in
British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
in February and March 2017.
On March 28, 2017, Corus confirmed the information revealed in the casting calls and announced the show's executive staff and main cast. Worldwide distribution, licensing, and merchandising rights had moved to Corus's
Nelvana Enterprises with YTV set to debut the series in 2018. A mobile
virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), e ...
experience and
digital trading card game were confirmed to be in development.
Rainmaker's parent company
Wow Unlimited Media
Wow Unlimited Media (stylized as WOW! Unlimited Media) is a Canadian animation and media holding company. It was formed as a result of a merger between Rainmaker Entertainment, Frederator Networks and Ezrin Hirsh Entertainment (EHE).
History
On O ...
reported that the first 8 episodes of the series had been delivered to broadcast partners in the third quarter of 2017, with the remaining 12 scheduled for the fourth quarter of that year.
''ReBoot: The Guardian Code'' is
modeled,
rigged, and animated in
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya ( ), is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interact ...
,
and rendered in
4K resolution using
Unreal Engine 4
Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game ''Unreal (1998 video game), Unreal''. Initially developed for Personal computer, PC first-person shooters, i ...
.
Hefferon stated that using Unreal gave them an advantage in speed: "Some of these shots could have taken 3 to 13 hours in a traditional pipeline, per frame," whereas Unreal rendered each frame in seconds or minutes. It also easily allowed the crew to reuse animation assets for the virtual reality tie-in.
Casting
Ty Wood
Tyson Wood (born September 17, 1995) is a Canadian actor. He has had several roles including his role as Tim Cherry in the biographical television drama '' Keep Your Head Up Kid: The Don Cherry Story'' and in the role of Billy Campbell in the h ...
, Sydney Scotia, Ajay Parikh-Friese and Gabriel Darku were cast as group of teenagers who enter Mainframe to protect the virtual and real world from viruses such as Megabyte.
Three voice actors from the original series reprise their voice roles in this series:
Michael Benyaer
Michael Benyaer is a Canadian-American actor. He is best known for his roles as Bob in the Canadian CGI series ''ReBoot'' and Hadji Singh in season one of ''The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest''.
On playing Hadji, Benyaer stated, " eis one of the ...
returns as Bob,
Kathleen Barr
Kathleen Barr is a Canadian voice actress. She is best known for voicing Marie Kanker and Kevin in ''Ed, Edd n Eddy'' and Trixie Lulamoon and Queen Chrysalis in '' My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic''. She also voiced Henri Richard Maurice D ...
as Dot and Shirley Millner as Hexadecimal. Timothy E. Brummund replaces
Tony Jay
Tony Jay (2 February 1933 – 13 August 2006) was a British actor.
A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was known for his voice work in radio, animation, film, and video games. Jay was particularly noted for his distinctive bari ...
as Megabyte due to the original actor's death in 2006.
Distribution
A trailer for the series and the virtual reality experience debuted on February 21, 2018.
The first ten episodes debuted on
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...
globally, excluding Canada, on March 30,
followed by ten more episodes on September 28 as a "second" season.
All twenty episodes aired on YTV in Canada between June 4 and July 5.
Other media
Following the debut of the show's first 10 episodes on Netflix, the official ''ReBoot: The Guardian Code''
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
channel uploaded a series of 10 one-minute
virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), e ...
shorts. Similarly, YTV released a series of live-action shorts featuring the characters from the show alongside the Canadian broadcast. A number of these shorts are directly tied to events in the series.
A
free-to-play
Free-to-play (F2P or FtP) video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content without paying or do not require paying to continue playing. Free-to-play is distinct from traditional commercial software, which ...
mobile game, titled ''ReBoot: The Guardian Code – Code Hacker'' was released for
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
and
Android devices on March 22, 2018. Developed by
A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Digital, the game is a
match-5 puzzle title that features audio detection technology allowing users watching the YTV broadcast to unlock in-game cards. A web-browser version was also hosted on the official website for the series, as well as on YTV's site. As of January 5, 2022 the mobile game is no longer on the Google Play Store.
Reception
Pre-release
On February 21, 2018, an official trailer was released.
It was not well received; by March 10, 2018, the trailer had reached 12,000 dislikes and 983 likes on YouTube.
On February 25, 2018, the French website Codelyoko.fr, a fansite for the TV show ''
Code Lyoko
''Code Lyoko'' () is a French animated television series created by Thomas Romain and Tania Palumbo and produced by Antefilms Production (season 1) and MoonScoop Group (seasons 2-4) for France 3 and Canal J, with the participation of Conseil ...
'', published a negative review of the trailer. The review accused ''ReBoot: The Guardian Code'' of plagiarizing ''Code Lyoko'', as the trailer showed many similarities to ''Code Lyoko''s premise and characters.
Shamus Kelley from ''
Den of Geek!
''Den of Geek'' is a US and UK-based website covering entertainment with a focus on pop culture. The website also issues a bi-annual magazine.
History
''Den of Geek'' was founded in 2007 by Simon Brew in London. In 2012, DoG Tech LLC licensed ...
'' also noticed the similarities, claiming that "''ReBoot: The Guardian Code'' is going for the whole ''Code Lyoko'' thing" and added that "There isn't a single reference to the old series outside of the term Guardians. It feels more like a teen drama with elements from ''Code Lyoko'' and ''
Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad
''Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad'' (or, in short, ''SSSS'') is an American television series. It was produced by Tsuburaya Productions, Ultracom Inc. and DIC Productions, L.P., with distribution by All American Television, and ran for a duratio ...
''."
Another concurring opinion came from ''
Digital Spy'' writer Jon Anderton, who claimed that the original show "took place inside a computer system and there was no schoolkid element, making ''The Guardian Code'' more similar to 2000's series ''Code Lyoko'' (or ''
Tron
''Tron'' (stylized as ''TRON'') is a 1982 American science fiction action- adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer ...
'', to use a more mainstream example)".
Shortly after the trailer's release, ''Code Lyoko'' co-creator
Thomas Romain responded to the official ''ReBoot: The Guardian Code''
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
account, stating, "Wow you really liked ''Code Lyoko'', didn’t you?" ''The Guardian Code'' has also been seen as a derivative of ''
Zixx
''Zixx'' (full title is ''Zixx: Level One'' for season one, ''Zixx: Level Two'' for season two, and ''Zixx: Level Three'' for season three) is a Canadian television series that aired on YTV. This series was developed by Savi Media and The Nig ...
'', an earlier CG/live-action TV show
Rainmaker helped produce.
Release
Reviewing the first ten episodes of the series for ''
Collider
A collider is a type of particle accelerator which brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. Colliders may either be ring accelerators or linear accelerators.
Colliders are used as a research tool in particl ...
'', Dave Trumbore had mixed feelings, giving the show a 2-star rating. While he praised the performance of Hannah Vandenbygaart, the character interactions and most of the visual aesthetic, he felt the show's animation was of poor quality for a 2018 series. He criticized the writing, acting and camerawork, saying that it is "stuck in the mid-'90s." His biggest issue was the show's pacing, commenting that the series took too long to introduce emotional moments and callbacks to the original show.
Emily Ashby awarded the show 3 stars in her review for
Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media (CSM) is an organization that reviews and provides ratings for media and technology with the goal of providing information on their suitability for children. . She felt the show had a number of positive role models for kids and while the series wasn't educational in nature, its use of technology could spur interest in
STEM fields.
Shamus Kelley of ''Den of Geek!'' was especially critical of the tenth episode. Describing it as "one of the worst episodes of television" he has ever seen. He derided the decision to include a character mocking fans and felt the cameos from the original characters were superficial. Conversely,
io9's Charles Pulliam-Moore found it to be the only episode of the first ten to be worth watching. Calling it "legitimately fantastic," he enjoyed the appearance of characters from the original series and said "you can get away with not watching the rest of the season, jumping to the finale, and actually having a good time."
References
External links
*
{{Netflix original ended series (2012–2018)
2018 Canadian television series debuts
2018 Canadian television series endings
2010s Canadian television series
2010s Canadian teen drama television series
2010s Canadian comic science fiction television series
2010s Canadian high school television series
Canadian action television series
Canadian adventure television series
Canadian drama television series
Canadian teen drama television series
Canadian science fiction television series
Canadian computer-animated television series
Canadian television series with live action and animation
Cyberpunk television series
Space adventure television series
Television series reboots
Television shows about virtual reality
Television shows filmed in Vancouver
Teen superhero television series
Television series about teenagers
Television series by Rainmaker Studios
Television shows about video games
YTV (Canadian TV channel) original programming
English-language Netflix original programming