Television
After the success of Squee!, the children's cable network Nickelodeon approached Vasquez about producing an animated television series, Invader Zim which airs on Nicktoons currently, focused on the daily life of Zim, a naïve alien from the planet Irk who tries to conquer Earth, before his attempts are constantly thwarted in a humorous manner by Dib, a young paranormal investigator and the only one (along with his sister Gaz) who knows with certainty Zim is an alien (although no one believes him), or by his own naïveté. The first episode aired on March 30, 2001. The series lasted for two seasons, until it was abruptly cancelled by Nickelodeon, saying that its main causes were low ratings, over-budget production and lack of interest in continuation of the series. The last episode before the show's cancellation, "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever" (a Christmas special), aired on December 10, 2002. Episodes of the third season and a show's finale, then remained unproduced or unfinished. Vasquez provided the voices for Zim's computer, Old Kid, and Minimoose, and various characters, being credited as "Mr. Scolex".
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Famous quotes containing the word television:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“Never before has a generation of parents faced such awesome competition with the mass media for their children’s attention. While parents tout the virtues of premarital virginity, drug-free living, nonviolent resolution of social conflict, or character over physical appearance, their values are daily challenged by television soaps, rock music lyrics, tabloid headlines, and movie scenes extolling the importance of physical appearance and conformity.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)