Exosquad - Production

Production

The show was conceived in 1989 by Jeff Segal, who had been head writer and story editor of Challenge of the GoBots for Hanna-Barbera Productions prior to joining Universal as President of Universal Cartoon Studios. Segal intended to create another robotic boy-action property. The show was originally entitled Exoforce. It was modified in 1993 and the title was changed to Exosquad (as a result of a trademark conflict) when Playmates Toys made a deal for the Master Toy License. Segal receives "Created by" credit on the show, however Will Meugniot contributed immensely to the look and style of the show, and Michael Edens, as story editor, supervised development of episodic stories and helped to guide the story arc.

Exosquad was among the first animated series by Universal Animation Studios (then known as Universal Cartoon Studios) and was created under influence of anime imported from Japan. As a result, its complex story line covered a large number of topics from war through romance to genetic engineering and was able to appeal to a broad audience. Although the first season ran for only thirteen episodes in 1993, the rising popularity of the show allowed Universal to make the second one three times as long. In its second season, Exosquad was put into the "Universal Action Hour" together with Monster Force.

As the second season progressed, some characters, according to Michael Edens, "took on a life of own": for example, Nara Burns killing Phaeton and the Neosapien Thrax becoming a major recurring character after his initial appearance were not pre-planned. Another character, Alec DeLeon, was supposed to perish in the destruction of Mars but the Universal executives strongly opposed it, so he was killed several episodes later, on the Moon, only to be promptly resurrected in a Neo Mega body.

The show was purportedly cancelled after 52 episodes because at that time, many independent production companies were being taken over by larger networks, who wanted to produce their own content. Exosquad was eventually moved to poor time slots, such as 4 a.m., until the ratings were no longer sufficient to sustain it. The final episode detailed the post-war political and social climate prevalent in the Exosquad universe, and closed with J.T. Marsh engaging a group of alien space vessels, whose exact nature was to be explained in the third season or a feature movie. Michael Edens later remarked that the staff originally planned the aliens to be insectoid and that the Pirates' dark matter, Dr. Ketzer's experiments, and the unactivated clone of Phaeton would have played a great role in fighting them. The idea of a movie based on Exosquad was being promoted by executive producer Jeff Segal and it was also planned to expand the fictional universe with a spin-off series, then codenamed Exo-Pirates. Both initiatives were scrapped with the cancellation of the third season.