Captain Power and The Soldiers of The Future - The Central Storyline

The Central Storyline

Each episode began with the following introduction, plus a recap of the storyline:

"Power on." Actor Timothy Dunigan, outfitted in his character's full regalia, would turn to the camera and deliver this line. Then Brad Crandall, a noted voice-over artist, would declaim:

By 2132, advanced robotic soldiers known as Bio-Mechs had replaced humans in the armed forces of the world's nations. The existence of Bio-Mechs meant that wars could be fought without significant loss of life. This had the effect of transforming the concept of war into a nearly harmless battle between machines, and wars became an everyday event. A group of scientists led by Dr. Stuart Gordon Power (Bruce Gray) began working on an advanced supercomputer capable of overriding the control systems employed by the world's armed forces to operate the Bio-Mechs, and thus stop them, bringing an end to war.

The supercomputer, OverMind, required an equivalent to human brain patterns to become operational. Dr. Power's closest associate, Dr. Lyman Taggart (David Hemblen), became impatient with the slow pace of the project and hooked himself up to OverMind, using his own brain patterns to bring the supercomputer to operational status.

Both Taggart and OverMind were changed by the experience. Taggart became obsessed with the precision and "perfection" of machines and convinced himself that the next step in human evolution involved the merging of human consciousness in perfect mechanical bodies. OverMind became sentient and shared Taggart's beliefs. Using OverMind to take control of Bio-Mech armies throughout the world, Taggart launched a crusade to bring his vision to life. In mere months, the world was devastated by the Metal Wars, an apocalyptic conflict between Taggart's machine legions and the rest of humanity.

Desperate, the world governments turned to Dr. Power to find a way to stop Taggart. He developed the "Power Suits," exoskeletal armored suits coupled with advanced weapons. But before testing this new weapon, Power died trying to rescue his son Jonathan from Taggart. Taggart himself was severely wounded and OverMind "repaired" him by transforming Taggart into a cyborg. Discarding his previous identity, Dr. Lyman Taggart became Lord Dread.

By 2147, fifteen years after the Metal Wars broke out, humanity had been largely annihilated by Lord Dread's forces, and those who survived lived miserable existences in hiding. To bring about his ideal world, Dread deployed forces of BioMechs around the world to "digitize" human beings, storing them within OverMind. These Bio-Mech armies were usually led by advanced sentient machines called Bio-Dreads or by human officers and troopers loyal to Dread, who controlled the world from his headquarters in Volcania, somewhere in North America.

There are still human resistance groups that battled the Bio-Dread Empire. Some were mere bands, but others such as the East Coast Resistance, and "The Soldiers of the Future," led by Dr. Power's son Jonathan, are organized movements.

Holding the rank of captain, Jonathan Power commanded a group of five soldiers against Dread's forces. His soldiers used the Power Suits developed by Dr. Power, making them much more effective in dealing with the Bio-Mechs. They operate out of a "Power Base," an abandoned NORAD installation concealed in the Rocky Mountains. They relied on a supercomputer programmed with the Mentor, an artificial intelligence whom Dr. Power had created in his own image and with his own voice so that his son would never be without him.