Comments on The Dark Crystal

The following material consists of my thoughts and speculations on the movie The Dark Crystal. The original movie is, of course, copyright Henson Associates. This work is not meant to be anything but a tribute to that movie and their effort in its production. Most of the photos in this book I took, although some were from another source and are credited.

Please understand that I do not have all the Dark Crystal memorabilia by any means. This book contains all that I could find, but it does not include pictures of some items, and there are going to be items, particularly from other countries, that I might not even know about. I also do not have any of the original costumes or creatures from the story. This is the best I can come up with, combining what I can find as far as merchandise goes with my own analysis of the movie plus some other references and items like fanzines.

II. OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK AND MOVIE

Let's start off with some of the main points of the movie:

1. A planet named Thra circles a triple-sun system. The planet is within a habitable zone for life.

2. There is a great variety of life on the planet. The Podlings and the Gelfling are both humanoid in general structure.

3. There is a person called Aughra who is half-mystic, half-scientist, and who can be a little eccentric. Her origin is unknown.

4. There is a Great Crystal that is somehow tied in to the welfare of the planet (via ley lines, possibly.)

5. At some time in the past alien visitors arrived and, basically, screwed everything up. They split into beings who were nearly pure good and nearly pure evil. The evil Skeksis waged war both the Podlings and the Gelfling who they captured and drained of something called 'life essence,' which is a life-prolonging potion. This is similar in a way to what happened in the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within, where Kirk was split into a powerful side and a weakling side.

6. Someone in the past carved a prophecy telling about two Gelfling who would heal the Great Crystal. If they failed, no one would be able to heal it.

7. Jen survived a Garthim attack and was taken in and raised by the urRu, the good beings. Kira was taken in by the Podlings after a similar Garthim attack and was raised by them. Neither knew the other existed until the events of the movie.

8. Jen is sent out by the urRu to find Aughra and the missing shard that could be used to heal the crystal. After he gets the shard he meets Kira, and they go to a podling village where they are driven out by a Garthim attack. The chamberlain, one of the Skeksis, has been kicked out and sees the Gelfling as a ticket back to the inner circle.

9. Jen and Kira eventually reach the castle with the Chamberlain seeming to know their every move. He reveals his true nature, tries to kill Jen and captures Kira.

10. Jen lives and gets to the crystal while Kira dies trying to get him the shard. The urRu arrive and meld with the Skeksis, returning to the alien urSkek form. They leave after bringing Kira back to life.

11.So you have a story involving a Great Quest, involving the hero having to face almost insurmountable odds to accomplish the quest. It appears he will fail but, at the very end, he succeeds.

12.This is definitely in the grand myth tradition noted by Joseph Campbell.

13. Bringing the Great Quest up-to-date, though, Kira is added to represent female strength and she, too, risks all to save the world from evil. In the end the world is saved and evil is overcome.

The book was also printed in other languages, including French, Spanish and German. These are not easy to find. The French book lacks the photographs that are in the English version of the book.

My Thoughts on the Movie Itself

The movie had various themes to it. One was the theme that each individual person (the Urskeks representing human beings in a way) has both good and evil in them, and that, like in the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within, it takes both to make us whole and functional. We work to do good and to control our own dark impulses and the vast majority of people succeed.

Then, in the Skekeis and the Mystics, we see the result of pure good and pure evil in beings. The mystics were pure good but were also ineffectual. They apparently did not make any effort to stop the Skeksis from their reign of terror. They rescued Jen, yes, but that was only after an attack had taken place. They had a thousand years to come up with some way to at least control the Skeksis or to neutralize them, but they did nothing.

They seemed to base everything on the prophecy of the crystal being healed by a Gelfling, although they didn't seem to pay much attention to the 'or else by one' phrase that implied that the world would remain under Skeksis control perhaps forever if a Gelfling, who had been eradicated down to a population of two, did not solve the problems the mystics had not even worked on.

The Skeksis were pure evil but they were too reliant on their technology, including the Crystal Bats, the Garthim, and the device to drain the essence from the Gelfing and the Podlings. This made them vulnerable and Jen and Kira were able to enter the castle through an unguarded entrance. If the Chamberlain hadn't been playing his game then no one would have detected them and they would have healed the crystal without Kira being killed in the process.

So pure evil and pure good just don't work. Not in the 'real' world.

In a way this is the Joseph Campbell-type mythological story of someone setting out alone against impossible odds to accomplish a task set for him by others. He meets Kira and others along the way but, in the end, it is just Jen and Kira against the might of the Skeksis. Jen succeeds in his task, but at the price of Kira being killed. Her being killed not only meant he lost his companion, but the entire future of the Gelfling was destroyed since there were no longer any females to mate with and produce offspring. (A problem which I worked a way around in my own fiction stories by assuming that other Gelfling had survived but on another continent which was beyond the reach of the Skeksis and their minions.)

So, in the end, Kira is brought back to life which helps ensure the continuation of the Gelfling race, but at the same time pretty much neutralizes the 'great price' that the hero had to pay to complete his task.

One of the problems that Aughra and the Mystics faced was a way to do away with the Skeksis but at the same time healing the crystal. (This refers to the time before the finding of Jen) They could not leave the crystal as it was because that was damaging the planet. If some way had been found that the Mystics could have waged some kind of kamakaze attack on the Skeksis and all of both groups died, that still would have left the matter of getting the right crystal shard into the crystal and Aughra admitted in the movie she did not know which shard was the fight one.

She would have had to try every single shard piece she had, and that's assuming she could find a way to get to the point in the crystal where the shard would be inserted. In our world that would simply have taken the construction of some structure that would have bridged the shaft the crystal stood above that a person could have safely climbed and taken their time inserting the crystal. Such construction did not seem to be within the technological level of the beings that were left. Aughra's observatory had been built by the Urskeks, and the Podlings had only a very primitive level of technology.

So it boils down to the point that someone else, Jen and Kira, would be called upon to do what no one else had the inclination (Mystics) or the technological ability (Aughra) to get accomplished, and that is what they did.

This is what makes the story good. The two Gelfling manage to accomplish what no one else was able or willing to accomplish. Their own histories were filled with terrible emotional tragedy and their future was nebulous at best. They only had each other and both realized that they must not fail in the mission set before them, that being the healing of the crystal. They were willing to put their lives on the line so everyone else in the world and the world itself could be saved.

There is also the understood love theme between Jen and Kira which develops as the story moves along.

DVD extras

Extra 1:The World of the Dark Crystal

57 minutes long. Scenes include painting a garthim, getting a guy into a landstrider outfit and then it shows the filming of the battle between the garthim and the landstriders. Then it moves on to Jim Henson talking about what he wanted to do with the film. Then it goes into how Brian Froud came up with character designs for the movie.

The film goes on to show many scenes of early designs, how individual creatures and scenes were actually built, various problems encountered and so on covering a wealth of informative detail. To me the most stunning part of the film is showing how they did the scene involving the filth from the Crystal Castle coming off.

Extra 2: Reflections of The Dark Crystal: Light on the Path of Creation

This extra is twenty minutes long. First off it shows some fascinating test footage with both Jen and a mystic, but neither of them in their final physical form. Then there's even more test footage. Then it examines the story from the viewpoint of it's being a story about good and evil in all of us.

Brian Froud talks about his use of geometry to show how everything in the Dark Crystal world is linked together. He talks about how the Mystics had purged themselves of all dark impulses, but that left them without any urge to really act and change things. He then talks about the Skeksis and how the easiest way to deal with them for the movie was to give each one of them a job. For example, you had a scientist, a gourmand, and a warrior.

One of the test footage sections shows an earlier version of both Jen and Kira. This was when they were less human-looking than the final version used.

Extra 3: Shard of Illusion

This section is a little over sixteen minutes long. There is more test footage in this section. There is even one bit of test footage that uses one of the oldest designs for Jen which makes him look more animal-like. There's a lot of praise of Jim Henson in this section, and a lot of emphasis on spirituality.

Extra 4: Extra (deleted) Scenes

This section includes deleted funeral scenes and the Skeksis original language work print scenes. The funeral scene section is about three-and-a-half minutes long. This includes both the funeral scene for the Skeksis emperor, and the funeral scene among the urRu for Jen's master. Then the work print scenes include seven sections.

Collector's Edition

Sometimes it pays to get one of the other versions of this or that movie. The collector's edition of The Dark Crystal has the movie, of course, but it also has a copy of a notepad that Jim Henson wrote some ideas for the movie on, a parchment-like piece about the movie, and a special item that has a cel from the movie on it. Definitely worth getting.

Ad for the Collector's Edition.

Film Trailer

You can also buy an actual 35mm trailer of the film. Of course, unless you happen to have a 35 mm projector lying around about the only thing you can do with the trailer is unwind it carefully and look at the film using a moderately bright light as a background. Basically, it's just a cool thing to have if you are into The Dark Crystal. These, by the way, do show up once in a great while on ebay.

The Dark Crystal on Fraggle Rock

On episode 30, Boober's Dream, the card from Traveling Uncle Matt describes how he was at a drive-in that was showing the scene from the Dark Crystal where Jen and Kira are heading towards the caste on landstriders.

III. BOOKS ABOUT THE MOVIE

Only the new comic book about the new movie is currently available. For all the other books dealing with the original movie, once again ebay is an excellent choice. Amazon has various used sellers that also sell the books. Abe Books and Alibris Books are both good sources. Finding the books in other languages requires going to one of those two bookstores or a similar one.

The prices will vary quite a bit so you may need to do a little research to find acceptable copies at acceptable prices.

The Garthim Wars Volume 1

My main question about this book is why? Why even write it? If you know anything about The Dark Crystal, you know that Jen and Kira were the last two Gelfling left. Period. At least according to the film.

So, then, you automatically know that every single Gelfing in this Garthim Wars series is going to die. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. No matter how courageous or innovative their fight, ultimately they will fail and all fall to the enemy.

So why do such a downer series anyhow? That's one thing I can't figure out.

So, as to the story. Lahr, a male Gelfing, comes from a village wiped out by the Garthim. Sound familiar?

Neffti is a female Gelfling that comes from a village wiped out by the Garthim. Again, sound familiar?

They warn another group of Gelfling that the Garthim will soon attack their settlement, and they manage to devise a defense of sorts and are able to destroy some of the attackers. Then, Lahr and Neffti decide they will go to the castle to free the Gelfling that have been caught.

So, a male and a female Gelfling go to the castle by themselves. Sound familiar?

So, in addition to being a book that is rather depressing, when one considers what will ultimately happen to all the Gelfling characters in the book, you also have a book that is way too close to the movie itself in basic plot.

A very disappointing work.

The Garthim Wars Volume 2

Lahr and Neffi are two Gelfling who have survived attacks of the Garthim (just as Jen and Kira would do in the future.) The two plans to stage a raid on the Crystal Castle and rescue captured Gelfling. After that there is a very interesting section dealing with intrigues among the Skeksis who are vying for power any way they can get it. The use of captured Gelfling for 'Gelfling essense' is also covered.

Lahr and Neffi get closer to the castle. Meanwhile Aughra is in her lab and says it will all end in tragedy.

Just like in The Dark Crystal, a male and a female Gelfling get to the castle and end up going down into a chasm. The only difference is Neffi makes Lahr a set of wings rather than carrying him down. Again, just like in the film the Chamberlain finds them in the tunnel.

Then, just like in the movie, there is another challenge. The only difference is that it's a trial by fire rather than a trial by stone. The Gelfling get away, but barely. Yet we already know what happened to them all, and that is they were all destroyed, ultimately, by the Skeksis because the movie established that Jen and Kira were the only two left.

There's also an artist's gallery and a lot of ads for other books.

The Dark Crystal free comic

This covers the mythology of Aughra, and tells about how the Urskeks constructed the Crystal Castle and manipulated its energy to help the beings of Thra. It reveals that Aughra had a son named Raunip and he wasn't the nicest person in the world, and that's putting things mildly.

There will be more comics in this series and I really hope that they don't keep using Raunip. He was not in the original movie and there was never any indication at all that Aughra had ever had a child. I can understand introducing some new people, like the Gelflings other than Jen and Kira, but Raunip would be too much to add, again this being due to there being no hint at all of any such being in the first movie.

The Making of the Dark Crystal

This is an oversized book filled with photos and information about the making of the movie The Dark Crystal. There are photos of the main characters along with photos and information on how the creatures were actually constructed. There are photos showing how Jen and Kira were originally going to look like and how they ended up. If you are interested in the behind-the-scenes information about the fantasy, then this is a good book to get.

TWO-ISSUE MARVEL COMICS SET

April, 1983. This issue goes from the beginning of the story through the mystics making their way towards the castle while Jen and Kira are riding landstriders, also approaching the castle. The story makes reference to the funeral of the former Skeksis Emperor, but doesn't actually show the funeral.

The artwork is well done, especially with having to work with what I would assume to be rather difficult-to-draw Skeksis and Mystics.

May, 1983. Continuing the story from issue 1, this cover from there up through the end of the story. Again the artwork is rather good except for Kira, where it varies from being mostly pretty good to some panels where it doesn't like like Kira much at all.

MARVEL COMICS SPECIAL

This is entitled Marvel Super Special #24. It's printed in a larger, magazine format rather than the normal comic book-size format. There's the same story as in the comics (although I think the artwork is colored slightly differently or something, but it looks better than that of the comics). There's ap icture from the movie on Jan and a landstrider. There is a thirteen page section of other photos from the movie, and full-page size photos on both the back cover and the inside back cover.

RECORD/TAPE AND BOOK

There are two versions of this publication, a book-and-tape set, and a book-and-record set. It is dated 1982 and is one of those things for younger readers where they listen to the tape/record then follow the story with the pictures, turning pages as necessary. It's almost thirty pages long, and the pictures in the booklet are extremely well done.

It's not an extremely difficult item to find, and it's another one where prices will vary.

THE TALE OF THE DARK CRYSTAL

The inside front cover and facing page have a map of sorts of The World of the Dark Crystal, although it's impossible to determine the distances between locations.

The artwork is pretty good for a children's book. The story is told in six chapters, although none of the pages are numbered which, in my opinion, they should have been.

This is a hardbound book and is pretty well done as a book for younger readers. You can often find it on ebay or Abe or Alibris books.

The World of the Dark Crystal

This is a 1981 book that contains illustrations by Brian Froud. It also contains photos and text. It contains a map showing the area around the Crystal Castle. In a chapter entitled The World of the Crystal and Aughra, there is a page that shows various symbols used in the movie and what they mean, including the triangular symbol that is so prominent.

The next chapter is The Darkened World and it has loads of illustrations of various creatures from Thra, partcularly those from the swamp area. The chapter after that is Of The Nature of the urRu. It lists the name of each urRu and what they did and contains numerous illustrations of the types of things they carried with them that relate to symbology.

The next chapter is Of The Nature of the Skeksis, and is simlar to the above chapter except, of course, it is geared towards the Skeksis. The last chapter is entitled Of The Prophecy and the Quest.

This is an over-sized book which is great in that it gives room for larger than normal and more detailed illustrations. There is no doubt at all that this is a book you would want to add to your Dark Crystal collection.

The Dark Crystal, including: Skeksis, The World Of The Dark Crystal, The Dark Crystal (computer Game), The Power Of The Dark Crystal, Characters And ... The Dark Crystal, Legends Of The Dark Crystal [Paperback]

This is a print-on-demand book which is pretty much just articles from Wikipedia put together in bookform. It's about 34 pages long and the price is around $12 or more. You can get the same information by just going to Wikipedia yourself and printing out the same pages. The font is also not very large.

There are probably hundreds of very small articles from various newspapers across the country, primarily reviews, but I just want to deal with the better-known, not hard to get magazines.

AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER

This is the December, 1982 issue of this rather technical-oriented magazine. The first article is Creating a World For The Dark Crystal. First , there are various color photographs, various drawings, and various black-and-white photos in the article. Henson started working on the movie in 1977 according to the article. The Skeksis were fairly easy for Froud to design, but for most of the rest of the creatures it took various group discussion sessions to figure out what kind of creature would live where, what would it do, and what would it look like.

There are pictures about the construction of various things and one that shows how a human would work a landstrider. The article then goes into how a single creature is created, from design onwards, and it's a very, very complicated process.

The actors working inside the mystics had to go through a four week training program to get them into shape so they could bend over for a long time and not get cramps. Then the article goes into talking about the storyboard process.

The next article dealing with the film is Photographing The Dark Crystal. This one has fewer pictures than the first article. One of the difficulties was that there were actually two films being done at the same time, one of them The Great Muppet Caper. The Dark Crystal was requiring a lot of before-filming planning. The movie being a fantasy film made it all that much harder to photograph. One of the things they did was to take puppets that were fairly far alone in the construction process, build a small partial set and then light and film that much as a test. Discussions afterward would then lead to whatever changes it felt were necessary.

The article then goes into the actual equipment that proved useful and how color filters were used for different environments such as the swamp (green) and the valley of the mystics (gold.) Then the article discusses various technical things done and, quite frankly, it's all beyond me.

In the middle of this article there is another, smaller article called Lighting the Dark Crystal. One very interesting thing is that the men working on the lighting sometimes had to work in temperatures of 130 degrees.

CINEFANTISTIQUE

Cinefantastique is one of the absolute best magazines out that on film, and this issue devotes a good amount of space to The Dark Crystal. Even before that, though, there's a long article on Jim Henson and the Muppets.

The actual Dark Crystal article is The Dark Crystal: The behind-the-scenes story of one of the most complex and imaginative fantasy films of all time. There are a whole lot of really great pictures in the article also.

The article starts off with a fascinating section about the release of the movie and how much effort Henson had to make in order to get it released when he wanted. The roots of the movie go back to 1975, actually, as Henson was working to make his puppets more realistic than ever before. The original title of the movie was The Crystal.

A good bit of the preliminary conceptualization of the film was actually done when Henson was snowbound during travel, giving him time to work out ideas. His daughter, Lisa, helped him with this. Then the article goes on to tell how Brian Froud became involved. Also, the film work started with designing the environment and the characters; the story came after that had gotten started.

There was a major tie-in with a character from another film; Yoda. Some people in Henson's group helped design, build and work with Yoda which, in turn, served as a learning experience that could be applied to characters in The Dark Crystal. The design for the original Gelfling had them appear blue and furry-looking, by the way.

The article then goes into the construction of the various characters and how they managed to figure out how to get the characters to move and look real. The Skeksis, for example, varied in how much they could do. The Chamberlain had 21 facial movements he could use, but one of the other Skeksis only had two. It depended, of course, on their importance to the story.

Aughra started out as something entirely different. Aughra was going to be a male character called Habidabat who had crab-like pincers, a high forehead and whiskers. The article goes on to talk in detail about the construction and working of the various creatures. The Garthim, for example, consisted of some 590 separate pieces of material.

The Dark Crystal started filming on May 4, 1981. The article goes into the filming and various problems, including how to have the characters and the people operating them all working together, yet keeping the humans completely out of sight at all times. The article gives the reader a good idea of just how difficult a job it was to do the actual filming for the movie.

Another article in the issue is Confessions of a Creature Craftsman: Puppetmaker Lyle Conway provides an inside view of the fun, hard work and magic of filming The Dark Crystal. During one of the rehearsals a number of the puppet heads were damaged. The article has some tidbits about the performances of the creatures and funny things that would happen.

Finally, the issue has its own review of the movie. Henson gave life to a world, but gave its inhabitants no life. The article is basically saying that the Jim Henson company did a stand-out job with the puppets, the various creatures, the environment and the like, but the movie fell down seriously where the script was concerned. The article also points out that having the prophecy was a mistake, that it made it inevitable that Jen and Kira would succeed. It points out that only the Chamberlain and Aughra had actual personalities. What Jen was supposed to do and why and a whole bunch of other things were not made clear, the review continues. The review also says that what happens is a victory without a sacrifice, thus going against more traditional mythic stories.

DYNAMITE MAGAZINE

This is from Scholastic, Inc, which makes publications for younger readers. This is also one of the most wide-priced items I have seen, running from around $6 on ebay through people who are trying to get $100 or more for it. It has a four-page article with pictures of Aughra's observatory, an urRu, Frank Oz and Kira, Aughra and one of the Skeksis.

The author of the article was on the set for several days and writes about what he say. The main points I found are as follows:

The movie uses no live actors, making it different from almost all other movies.

Some of the puppet outfits are worn by the workers, such as the urRu outfits. These outfits have various mechanisms allowing things like facial movement. The Chamberlain, the article says, can make 21 different facial expressions.

Jim Henson handled Jan, and Frank Oz handled Aughra and some others. The Aughra head alone weighed some thirty pounds. At the same time four other workers would be behind Frank Oz, working the devices to make Aughra's facial expressions.

Objects that were to be picked up had to be designed so they could be picked up by a puppet hand, which made it different than if it were to be picked up by a human hand.

The article describes how complicated it was to film the section where the mystics merge with the Skeksis.

FAMOUS MONSTERS, March 1983

All the pictures in the article are in black-and-white. The cover, though, in color, is well done. The article starts with a recap of the main events of the movie. It then talks about Jim Henson, the Muppets, and other men involved in the history of the movie. Then it talks briefly about how the film was actually made. The article is like a summation of various other articles that I have read.

Fantastic Films #32, February 1983

Muppeteer Jim Henson and Star Wars Producer Gary Kurthz Talk About their Newest Project: Dark Crystal.

This is an interview with both men. Some of the main points of the interview include the following:

Henson is asked if the beings in the movie are considered muppets or puppets. He says they are just considered 'creatures.'

Workers practiced for up to eight months on creature movement before filming even began. The creatures are a combination of human plus radio control plus mechanical linkages, making them quite complex to work.

Kurtz considered Jen the traditional hero of the movie and, in a way, that makes him the most boring character.

Making the creatures move in a believable way, especially in actions like bending down, is very difficult. They can't just bounce around the screen like Muppets generally do.

FANTASTIC FILMS: MAY 1983

The article is entitled Inside the Dark Crystal. There are both color and black-and-white pictures from the movie and from behind the scenes. The article notes that the characters that were the most trouble to develop into believable puppets were Jen and Kira since their appearance was more human-like than any of the other characters in the movie.

There's an interesting picture that shows how a human wore the urRu outfit, and you get a good idea how difficult and uncomfortable it must have been for them to move around once dressed. The multiplicity of the characters, and their different appearances, also proved to be a problem since this type of work had not been done on this scale before, and they had to figure out just how to construct some of the creatures and make them believable.

The article is filled with information on how the creatures were made, and has interesting tidbits like the Skeksis were first more animal-like, but they were changed and given personalities during development. Another interesting bit is that each Garthim was composed of 590 parts. All of the major creatures are described in the article in more detail than I have seen anywhere else.

NEWSWEEK 12/17/82

(Actual article)

It takes some optical adjustment to sort out the strange beasties that populate The Dark Crystal. They include the Skeksis (villainous and vulture-like creatures with bad table manners); the Mystics (gentle, wise and droopily decrepit, with armadillo tails); the Garthim (the Skeksis' militia, a metallic mix of beetle and crab; the Podlings (button-faced ethnic types, clearly derived from happy but oppressed southern European peasant stock); Aughra (a one-eyed hag who's into astronomy, fierce but benevolent); Fizzgig (a scene-stealing canine, Toto with extra teeth); the fleet Landstriders (towering catfish on stilts); and most important, Jen and Kira, the Gelflings (immediately identifiable by their humanoid features as our hero and heroine, he looks like Dondi and Bruce lee reconstituted as a 12-year-old elf, she like Mia Farrow after too much plastic surgery.)

Welcome to Jim Henson's world of wonders, a fantasy pastiche without a single human in it. Henson and his gifted designer, Brian Froud (of "Faeries" fame), run some wild visions across the screen, but even young kids will quickly recognize the story line as a meltdown of every Mythic Quest from the Greeks to Tolkien to George Lucas. There's an ancient prophecy to be fulfilled and a young hero armed with a magical crystal shard who must journey to a dark castle where, at the time of the Great Conjunction, he must save a divided, dying world. Totas of a tender age may be nightmare prone from this encounter; the reptilian Skeksis, who drain and drink the vital fluids of their victims, don't behave like Muppets, though Henson and codirector Frank Oz make sure that no permanent harm befalls the good guys. What grownups will make of this depends on your susceptibility to the genre.

Starburst #55

The cover of the magazine is devoted to a photo of one of the mystics from the movie. The article has some very good color photos and some all right black-and-white photos. One of the hopes was that the people watching the film would accept the creatures as real and not think of them as puppets and how were they being made to work. There were major problems with the filming since it would take several people or more to operate one puppet, several puppets being used at the same time, and any mechanical failures that could happen.

Frank Oz was directing the film but also managed having to work in the film itself. The movie cost around $30 million to make.

Starburst #56

The critic feels that The Dark Crystal was 'a monumental waste of money.' He says there was too much emphasis on special effects and not enough on making it a complete movie. He thinks that one of the reasons for the movie was to take advantage of the teen-age interest in beings like Yoda, saying 'it seems to be an accountant's thinking, rather than an artist's, which is at the cold heart of The Dark Crystal.'

'On a purely dramatic level, David Odell's screenplay, from Jim Henson's story, is just too thin and simplistic even for the children's market at which the film is pitched. ' He notes that the characters in the movie are just not interesting as characters. Also, without any humans at all in the film, there is nothing with which the audience can identify. Much of the movie was shot in medium-to-close up views, helping emphasize that the characters were puppets and not actually real. He goes on to say the film is actually boring.

Starlog, February 1982, #55

This contains a one-page article entitled Muppets Evolve in Dark Crystal. The article says the film cost around $25 million to make and has some 70 characters. Then it gives a very brief description of the film and notes that two items of merchandise are planned.

Starlog #66, January 1983

There's an ad on the inside front cover for masks of Aughra and a Pod Peasant. The first article about the movie is Merchandising the Dark Crystal. The article talks about The World of the Dark Crystal, the Milton Bradley Dark Crystal game, clothing patterns, posters, dolls and various toys that are all tied in to the movie.

I've seen a Fizzgig that was knitted and it looks quite good. There was a Dark Crystal Collection of clothing.

The next article is Producing the World of the Dark Crystal. One of the things the article talks about is the screening of the movie in Washington. A special language for the Skeksis had been developed but, when the film was shown, the audience did not like the scenes and so the Skeksis language was dropped and English was used instead. The Podling speech is a mix of several languages, but the audience didn't seem to have trouble with that. The article discusses some prejudice against puppet-centric movies and related problems.

The next Dark Crystal-oriented article is Brian Froud: Creating The World of the Dark Crystal This one has numerous drawings that Froud had done showing various creatures from the world othe Dark Crystal. He discusses the various races in the movie such as the Skeksis, the urRu, the Podlings and the Gelflings, then he notes that 'There was a whole other race of beings, for instance, which lived below ground.' These weren't used in the movie but I imagine this group is what we will see in the movie The Power of the Dark Crystal.

The Podling People almost were the Potato People with various eyes in different locations on their faces. Fortunately, that concept was dropped. The article also discusses how the creature drawings were affected by the environment of the planet. It's a very interesting article.

(A second article:)

Merchandising the Dark Crystal

People have been curious about Dark Crystal since Starlog ran pictures from it last December. Then, there were the tantalizing trailers attached to the summer's prints of Conan and E.T.. Now, just in time for Christmas and the film's December 17 release, more and more stores are stocking Dark Crystal products.

Brian Froud's production art for the film has been collected in a handsome trade paperback entitled The World of the Dark Crystal, out in October. A handful of Dark Crystal books will be released for children, retelling the story and featuring art and photos involving the Gelflings, and the evil Skeksis.

Milton Bradley also rushed out their Dark Crystal spin-off in October. It's a board game designed for two to four players and requires competitors to race against one another to find the Dark Crystal's missing shard and return it before the Skeksis can rule the world.

Boutiques nationwide have stocked clothing patterned after the garb worn by the Gelflings and Pod People. Made out of natural materials, they command high prices and have been manufactured in limited quantities.

For the more mainstream consumer, a variety of posters, dolls, and toys will appear in the near future, including what some observers consider to be the hit of the film, toy Fizzgigs, Kira's little canine-like pet.

Marvel Comics has released their graphic adaptation in a plethora of formats including a 64-page, high-quality paper comic and three monthly regular comics. David Anthony Kraft adapted the story; the art was primarily by newcomer Brett Blevins assisted by Vince Collins and Rick Bryant.

As the movie continues to play through the winter, more and more manufacturers will be unleashing related products. And, if it's a hit, expect Skeksis masks and Gelfling costumes next Halloween.

Starlog #69 April, 1983

The article is entitled Behind-the-scenes with The Dark Crystal. The article is three black-and-white pages of photos from the construction of various creatures in the movie. Text material is minimal. The photos are interesting.

V. OTHER ITEMS RELATED TO THE FILM

Note: This is not all the items that were made. I'm sure I've missed some of them here and there. This also includes almost exclusively American-made items. I have some material from Japan, France and Germany, but I'm sure there was more available in all three of those countries. Still, I've done the best with what I have been able to find.

Ads and like things

German ad booklet

Another ad

Bookmark

This is an item that is still available.

This item is still also available. It has an actual cel from the move, and the cels differ from bookmark to bookmark.

This one can be found on ebay.

Busts

There is a 'mini bust' of an Urskek available on Amazon.com. It was released in 2004 and the Amazon price is $99. There is no indication what the size. This is pretty much the type of thing that only a completist would want.

There was also a Skektek bust. This one is not available on Amazon nor anywhere else as far as I can determine. Picture collected by Bland Garrett, the creator of The Book of Habidabad - A Dark Crystal Website

Clothing

If you go to the Jim Henson Company site itself you will find that they have a lot of t-shirts available with various Dark Crystal images on them. The shirts are in the $20 range. These are also available from Amazon.com.

Coffee Mug

There is also a coffee mug with The Dark Crystal on it. The mug is white, the lettering black. It's also available from the Jim Henson shop and it runs around $30. As of when I am writing this, both the mugs and the t-shirts are still available.

Computer Games

The Dark Crystal was a computer game first released for the Apple II series of computers, and hen later for the Atari computers. It's a first-person computer game with the old style method of giving a description and then asking the user to type in some choice like Look or Take. The graphics are, of course, exceedingly primitive by today's standards. Still, for the time, it was pretty good.

The game was on floppy disks. The Gelfling Adventure was a game issued a little later and was a simplified version of the above game. You can sometime find the game online, but you will also need a program that will allow you to emulate an Apple II computer.

The second one that I found I found totally accidentally. I was going through various gamesites online and found one that had an actual Dark Crystal game. There are a bunch of online sites that have the game; it's called The Dark Crystal Find the Alphabets game.

There are three screens in the game and on each one your task is to find all the letters of the alphabet. Sounds easier to do than it is because the letters are in a shade of brown and much of the background is also in brown. Here are the three pages:

There is yet another online game called The Dark Crystal Trivia game. It consists of twenty questions based on the movie.

Dark Crystal Font

There is a special font now that is the same kind of font used in The Dark Crystal. The only problem, of course, is that the person you send something to with the font in it has to have the font in his or her group in order to read the Dark Crystal font.

Dolls

There was a Jen and a Kira doll made, each about 12 inches high, each in a box of its own. They are extremely hard to find now and are expensive when you can find them. You also have to read the ad to make sure that you are getting all the parts that go with the dolls. I'm a little disappointed with how the dolls look. I think they could have been made to look just like Jen and Kira in the movie, but that wasn't done. They will generally run at least $100 each if not more. About the only place to find them is on an online auction place like ebay.

Version of the Movie

There are a variety of release forms of the movie.

Videodisc

This one had me stumped for a bit but I checked up and found out that the Videodisc was a device that pre-dated the laserdisc. The Videodisc actually used a stylus to play its contents. By the time it was made commercially available the laserdisc and the VHS were coming out, making the Videodisc obsolete from the start so it quickly failed.

They also happened to weigh a lot more than a normal laserdisc.

VHS

Collector's Edition DVD

25th Anniversary Edition with lots of extra features

There are also other releases with different covers, and there are releases of the film in Japan and there is one in Spanish. Virtually all of these DVD and VHS releases can be found on ebay or one of the other auction sites.

Laser Disc

There are also laser editions of the movie. This is an older one; there is also one that is a collector's edition and I have seen a Japanese version on ebay.

Figurines

The figure of the Chamberlain, one of the Skeksis, has come out.

The detailing on the figurine is incredibly well done. The figurine is so well done that I don't plan to take it out of the plastic; it looks fine just as it is. The price is also reasonable. To me, figurines that run a hundred dollars or so are just too expensive no matter how neat they look.

There is also a figure the Mystic uRak and it's still available. It will cost over $80 with shipping, though. It's about the same size as the Chamberlain figure. The figure comes in an attractive box and actually looks even better than this prototype figure.

There were two sets of very small metallic figurines that were produced. The box noted that they could be painted. These, as far as I can tell, are virtually impossible to find anywhere.

Ones that weren't made.

VI. You Tube Creations

There have been a good number of Dark Crystal-related videos done and put up onto You Tube. Unfortunately, some of these seem to vanish over time for some reason. Some of them consist scenes from the movie with other music added; some of them are deleted scenes from the movie, and there are other kinds as well. The videos vary over time, some seeming to vanish and others to appear.

One of the most useful ones included the funeral scene for the Skeksis emperor. Some feature music such as Bring Me to Life and My Immortal. There are some based on the yet unreleased movie, The Power of the Dark Crystal. All you need to do is to go to You Tube and type in The Dark Crystal and there will be plenty of videos to look at.

VII. WORK PRINT OF THE FILM

The work print of a film is basically a rough draft of what the finished film will look like. Sometimes it will include most of the film but with certain special effects left out. It does give the people involved in the film a chance to see what the nearly-finished product looks like and see if they need to make some changes. You can find the work print on one of the standard auction sites.

The work print of The Dark Crystal lacks the title and the closing credits. It is also all in black-and-white, and the image quality is not very good. In addition, the Skeksis speak Skeksis for most of the time (although the Chamberlain seems conversant in English). The idea of having the Skeksis speak their own language was dropped from the final version of the film. An audience that saw the early version of the film didn't like the Skeksis using a language when there were no subtitles.

The work print also contains a section with the Emperor's funeral in it, another section which was dropped from the finished work. Also, some of the special effects are missing, mainly the lights that shine into the eyes of the Skeksis from the crystal, and from the Podlings and Kira from the Skeksis essence-drawing device.

This is the Great Castle as it appears near the opening of the film. The still gives the viewer a good idea of the rather low level of quality of the actual print.

This is from the Emperor's funeral. They bring the remains into the room in a small casket, then get something that is on fire and end up throwing it into the casket. I guess they wanted to make sure that the Emperor was really most completely dead.

Kira appears to rescue Jen from a swamp.

The mystics get to the castle and neutralize the Garthim.

The mystics and the Skeksis start to merge. Note that the background is totally black. The background was added later.

An Urskek. Again, the background is totally black.

XIII. FANZINES AND STORIES BASED ON THE MOVIE

For some reason, The Dark Crystal did not seem to generate much in the line of fan-written fanzines.The only ones I have been able to find have, frankly, been ones that I did myself for a relatively short time. There are, though, some stories up on fanfiction.net and I'll do a brief review of the ones I though were pretty good.

I'll start off with stories from Fanfiction.net. One of the problem with many of the Dark Crystal-related stories (and other stories, too) is that the author starts a story and suddenly stops it, sometimes even though it's obvious the author planned to make the story much longer. The only stories I will consider below will be ones that were finished. They may be only one page long or perhaps many pages, but they need to be complete stories to be included here. They also need to make sense and not do things like referring to other Gelfling being around when there is no explanation of why they are still there. The worst part about most of the stories, though, is that they have not been completed.

Do I? By Rose Rebellion. This is a very good story that takes place a year after the events in The Dark Crystal. Kira is trying to determine if she really is in love with Jen or not. This is a very introspective piece from Kira's viewpoint and brings up some very valid questions for her to consider.

Fractures by Merlin Missy. This goes back to when Aughra was young and lived with others who were basically ruling everything. She was sort of an outcast, mistreated by the others and had to work very, very hard cleaning and doing other chores. One day she somehow linked with the Crystal and gained prophetic powers and became a true witch. She sees a Gelfling and becomes attracted to him but things don't go well for her or the Shining Ones, her masters. This is a really good story.

Ghosts by KiraJenLove. This is a story about Jen and Kira, two days after healing the Crystal, sleeping with each other and having sex for the first time. After that the next time they sleep they both see their real parents who are full of praise for both the Gelfling. This provides some backstory to what happen to both Jen and Kira, and is a good short story.

Jen & Kira: A New Beginning by KiraJenLove. This story covers over a year's time after the events in The Dark Crystal. Jen and Kira are deep in love and have started on a family (although Jen's lack of sexual knowledge is interesting). Their desire is to live with the podlings, but Aughra has a different idea about something that she feels the two of them need to do in relation to finding a new home, and in relation to their futures. It's a really good story.

Nothing Much by Lauraeffingiero. A one-page story about when Jen and Kira were walking to the podling village and how Jen was quickly developing feelings for Kira. Very well done, romantic.

SkekTek's Bad Day at Work by Bill Hiers. This story focuses totally on the Skeksis scientist who drains podlings. It covers the time from the capture of Kira, the Chamberlain bringing her before the emperor, to when the scientist fell down the shaft and died. It's told from the scientist's viewpoint and that makes for a very interesting story.

Then We Shall See, Face to Face by asphalt-pirate. This is a story like none of the others that I have seen. It brings a Skeksis and an urRu together in a conversation, two beings that were once one and then were separated. It shows the Chamberlain as emotionally hurting, but still filled with total evil. His mystic counterpart and he are able to talk together, realizing that, one way or the other, an entire way of life will be ending soon. Their conversation is very interesting and the story very well done.

Traces by Ayehli. This is a very sad, but very good, story. It takes place after events in The Dark Crystal. Jen and Kira had been told to go and make a new world. The assumption was that they would have children and the Gelfling race would get going again. But what would happen if, for some reason, they can't have children?

Voyana I Love You by Akkadia: This is a short by very romantic story about Jen and Kira. Very well done, very touching.

My own fanzines

This is the first issue. Contents included a Welcome, Gelfling Chronology, Pre-Dark Millenium Monarchies, The Monarchy During the Dark Millenium, The Age of Renewal, Gelfling and urRu history; Gelfling Traits; poetry; Dark Crystal Memorabilia, a Dark Crystal word search, a notice and thanks. It was thirty pages long. (If an article is not credited to anyone, I am the one who wrote it.)

This was published in May of 1985 and contains a Welcome, Some Thoughts on Gelfling Origins by David Krouse; Messenger (short story); The Epistle of Krangorn (short story) by David Krouse; a listing of Dark Crystal articles; The Crystal and the Grail by David Krouse; Controversy and the Dark Crystal; Kira's Dream by Gennie Summers (who has done almost all the artwork in all six issues of the fanzine); Speculations on the Evolutionary and Psychological Characteristics of Intelligent Life as Found in the movie The Dark Crystal; copy of a letter from Henson Associates about the movie; Journey, a short fiction story based on The Prisoner and a Dark Crystal crossword puzzle.

Introduction; Letters of Comment; Aughra; Dr. Who and the Crystals, short story by David Krouse; The Dark Crystal Game Review; More Legends of the Great Crystal by David Krouse; Gelfling Technology and the Crystal Connection by David Krouse; On the Origin of the Wall of Destiny by David Krouse; On Beginnings (short story); From the Diary of Mark Johnson (short story); a series of humorous cartoons; Kira (short story, dark); I'm Coming Home (short story); Alternative Chronology and Jen and Kira Triumphant (short story).

June, 1986. Welcome; Letters; From the Diary of Mark Johnson (short story); Dave's Corner (by David Krouse); Judeo-Christian Symbolism in The Dark Crystal by David Krouse; All Hope Abandon (a short Prisoner story from Rover's viewpoint); From the Diary of Mark Johnson (short story); Fantasy Games on Computer; Fantasy Adventuring in Paperback; Works of Fantasy Reviewed; Analysis of The Prisoner, Episode One Arrival; Dorothy and the Grumpalot and Dark Crystal Word Guess, a computer program done in Basic for the Apple computer.

November 1987.Dave's Corner (David Krouse); The Crystal Connection (book review by David Krouse); Fraggle Rock; poetry; The Gift of Alu Ytar (fiction by David Krouse); Rite of Passage (fiction by David Krouse); Room 106 (fiction); Room 212 (fiction); Uncover the Mystery Phrase; Which Does Not Belong.

The final issue. Dark Crystal's Network Television Premier; The Ending of The Dark Crystal; The Crystal Wombs by David Krouse; Parallels Between the Cayce Atlantis Readings and a Suggested Origin for the Urskeks in The Dark Crystal Mythos by David Krouse; War and Crystals, a Review of the War of the Worlds episode Dust to Dust by David Krouse; The Harmonic Convergence and Crystals by David Krouse; The Crystal Connection and the Holy Grail by David Krouse; Some Interesting Differences between Book and Film Versions of The Dark Crystal; A Classic Krystal Trek Episode by David Krouse; Crystal Connections by David Krouse; a Preliminary Model of the Thra Solar System Basedo n the Aughrian Orery, and the Implications for Understanding Its Origin by David Krouse; The Jordansbank Tape by David Krouse; What is Fraggle Rock?; and a series of analyses of the first nine episodes of Fraggle Rock.

Ercheinungsformen Der Wirklichkeit (The Shapes of Kindness)

This is a hardbound German translation of my story The Shapes of Kindness.

This is a fanzine I did which was a complete story entitled The Shapes of Kindness. The story is about a lonely human who loved the movie. He ends up being transported to Thra, the world of the crystal. He is able to adjust fairly well due to his knowledge of the movie, but what he had not counted on was a form of evil arriving on the planet at the same time he did, the evil thing leaking out from our own Earth.

The story also explains that there are other Gelfling in the world and explains how they got to Aughra's. Mark also develops an attraction for a Gelfling. He works with Aughra and others and finally has to confront the evil being.

I think a lot of people are like me. If you see a movie that moves you for some reason, you want to get things related to that movie. They somehow tie you in closer to that movie. I'm not saying you need to collect all sorts of things, of course. You might only want a few items at most but they still manage to bring you and the world of that movie closer, almost as if you can very nearly touch the movie, be in the movie, live in that movie's world.

It is good fortune to live in a time where getting such items is not that terribly difficult. In this modern-day world of computers we can just go online and, with patience and hard work, find what we want. Sometimes, of course, a little luck goes a long way, too. Collectibles are not new, of course.

Maude Adams was a famous American stage actress back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, well before the computer and recording devices, yet people were able to guy photographs of her and those photographs sold very well. Gradually we got to the point where you could use a tape recorder to tape the sound from a television show. This moved on to where you could use a VHS or Beta device to record the show or movie itself. Then came the Videodisc and the Laser disc and in today's world we have the DVD.

At the same time we moved from collectibles like just photographs that you found in a local store to a world where you can get online and buy things from almost any country on the planet and have them shipped to you. It's become a very interesting world, indeed.

Web Sites and Other Things

Listing web sites is always a tricky business as they tend to go in and out of existence very quickly. There are a few which have been around a while and which I think will continue to be around, and which are of great value to those interested in The Dark Crystal, so I will list those. Don't forget that there are various videos about and from The Dark Crystal on You Tube. Sources for Dark Crystal material include Amazon.com (generally listing used stuff from other people); Half.com, Ioffer and Bonanzle auction places. A couple of used bookstores that are online and that I have done business with successfully include Abe Books and Albris Books.

There are also some Yahoo clubs dealing with The Dark Crystal, although not all of them are active.

The following are some original thoughts of mine on the world of The Dark Crystal. Note; these are my thoughts and have nothing to do with any 'official' movie background from the Jim Henson Company.

Fortunately, urAc, the Mystic scribe, had done considerable research on the history of Thra and had recorded that information within the spiral designs of a special cloth he kept in his cave. with the restoration of the Dark Crystal to its original status, that information was released to become part of the store of cosmic wisdom. After much effort and difficulty I managed to read that information from its cosmic storage area and have recorded it here for the benefit of non-Thra sentients.

The history urAc recorded was dated based on the beginning of the Dark Millennium, the time during which the Skeksis held power and the Crystal was dark. Therefore BDM means "Before Dark Millennium."

Earliest Gelfling History

Birth or Creation of Aughra.... Date unknown

Domestication of Nebrie by Podlings....Date unknown

First evidence of Gelfling habitations...ca. 3400 BDM

First Gelfling villages established...ca. 3350 BDM

Pictographic writing developed (1)...ca 3325 BDM

Invention of double flute...ca. 3300 BDM

First castle constructed at Ballenchor...ca. 3300 BDM

Monarchy begins with coronation of Ariel the First (2)...3285 BDM

Written language developed (3)...3285 BDM

1. It is believed that pictographic writing was introduced to the Gelfling by Aughra.

2. Until this time each tribe had its own female leader. In 3285 a gathering of the Tribes was held in which all Gelfling tribes met and chose a Queen to reign over all the tribes.

3. The Gelfling had a very strong oral tradition. The written language was also introduced by Aughra, apparently in honor of the crowning of the first Queen. The oral tradition maintained the highest popularity through Gelfling history. only a few scholars practiced the more complicated formal written language and they seemed to use it only to record special occasions. The pictographic language was more widely practiced by builders and historians. The general Gelfling population, however, was quite content with its oral tradition.

Pre-Dark Millennium Monarchies

Note: A Gathering of the Tribes was often used to elect a new Queen, but the procedures of succession did not require such a gathering, so many of the new Queens ascended to the throne upon the death of their Queen mother.

3285-3106 BDM: Reign of Ariel the First. Length of reign: 179 years. Daughters: 18. Major events: Capital city of Tarakendal founded 3280 BDM.

3106-2814 BDM: Reign of Ariel the Second. Length of reign: 192 years. Daughters: 14. Major events: Great Conjunction of 2000 BDM; Floods of 2850-2847BDM.

2814-2811 BDM: Reign of Ariel the Third. Length of reign: 3 years. Daughters: 2. Major events: Gathering of the Tribes in 2811 BDM to share discoveries of the various tribes. Ariel the third was killed in an accident. None of her daughters wished to rule as Queen.

2811-2732 BDM: Reign of "Shalana the Wise". Length of reign: 79 years. Daughters: 21. Major events: Library at Barendel constructed in 2809 BDM. Music Center established in 2806 BDM in Tarakendal. Her reign was noted for artistic and musical advances.

2732-2589 BDM: Shalana the Second: Length of reign: 143 years. Daughters: 16. Major events: Northernmost colony established 2679 BDM.

2589-2367 BDM: Shalana the Third: Length of reign: 222 years. Daughters: 27. Major events: Easternmost colony established 2497 BDM. Aughra disappears 2392 BDM.

2367-2114 BDM: Shalana the Fourth, also known as "Shalana the Sad." Length of reign: 253 years. Daughters: 23. Major events: Her consort died in 2120 BDM. She never bonded again and spent the rest of her reign as a virtual recluse. it is said she died of a broken heart.

2114-1939 BDM: Shalana the Firth, also known as "Shalana the Beautiful." Length of reign: 275 years. Daughters: 42. Major events: Great Conjunction of 2000 BDM observed with great festivals. Reappearance of Aughra in the same year.

1754-1601 BDM: Shalana the Seventh. Length of reign: 153 years. Daughters: 3. Major events: Westernmost colony established in 1697 BDM.

1601 BDM: Gathering of the Tribes called upon the death of Shalana the Seventh. All three daughters were produced late in Shalana the Seventh's reign and were considered too young to become Queen.

1601-1434 BDM: Sharla the First: Length of reign: 167 years. Daughters: 15. Major events: Drought of 1483-1469 BDM. Southern colonies were abandoned in 1473 due to the drought.

1434-1293 BDM: Sharla the Second. length of reign: 131 years. Daughters: 9. Major events: Great Festival of Crafts in 1337 BDM. Jen's ancestor becomes Consort in 1432 BDM.

1293-1153 BDM: Sharla the Third. Length of reign: 140 years. Daughters: 29. Major events: Southern colonies re-established. "Altan the Remarkable" composes over a hundred songs in a two-year period, 1196-1194 BDM.

1153 BDM: Gathering of the Tribes called by Sharla the Third for unknown reasons, during which she stepped down from the throne. She studied with Aughra for the next twenty years and disappeared somewhere in the West shortly thereafter.1153-1009 BDM: Tarena the First. Length of reign: 144 years. Daughters: 21. Major events: The "ruins" seen in the movie were part of a structure built in 1129-1123 BDM.

1009-871 BDM. Tarena the Second. Length of reign: 138 years. Number of daughters: 9. Major events: Great Conjunction of 1000 BDM. Eltan the prophet predicts an on-coming age of darkness.

871 BDM: Gathering of the Tribes.

871-742 BDM: "Marla the Unfortunate." Length of reign: 129 years. Daughters: none. Major events: First ocean-going vessel constructed in 860 BDM. Attempt to explore Beta continent fails in 853 BDM. Castle at Karuftan destroyed by fire in 827 BDM. Two consorts died during her reign, one in 846 BDM and the other in 753 BDM.

742 BDM: Gathering of the Tribes.

742-531 BDM: Keltara the First: Length of reign: 211 years. Daughters: 29. Major events: Westernmost colony disappears with no signs of violence 547 BDM.

531-403 BDM: Keltara the Second. Length of reign: 128 years. Daughters; 31. Major events: Castle of Barendel established in 487 BDM. Castle of Albrenard established in 495 BDM.

403-287 BDM. Keltara the Third. Length of reign: 116 years. Daughters: 17. Major events: great period of construction of cities, with three major cities and a dozen smaller cities established.

287-113 BDM. Kamara the First: Length of reign: 174 years. Daughters: 19. Major events: Second attempt to explore Beta continent fails in 165 BDM.

113-14 BDM: Karara the Second: Length of reign: 127 years. Daughters: 34. Aughra's observatory built in 86 BDM. Warnings from Aughra of "major catastrophe" during the next Great Conjunction. 87 BDM: Arrival of UrSkeks on Thra.

The Monarchy During the Dark Millennium

14 BDM- 136 DM: Reena. Length of reign: 122 years. Daughters: 20. Major events: Major events: Great Conjunction noted by arrival of Urskeks and Skeksis. Contact between urRu and Aughra takes place within days of the Great Conjunction. Skeksis establish the Crystal Castle after the Shattering of the Crystal. First negative effects of Dark Crystal seen in mutations of swamp animals starting in 27 DM. First major plague disease in 64 DM. Northernmost colony abandoned in 112 DM due to extremely violent weather.

136 BDM: Gathering of the Tribes

136-227 DM: Tolmalar. Length of reign: 91 years. Daughters: 14. Major events: Trangorn the Prophet urges exodus to Beta continent in 143 DM. Major storms nearly destroy the easternmost colony in 214DM. Skeksis began tentative attacks in areas nearby the Crystal Castle.

227: Gathering of the Tribes.

227-307DM: Almera the First. Length of reign: 80 years. Daughters: 9. Major events: Colony established on Gamma continent in 281 DM. Second colony established in 283 DM. Third exploratory group finds first two colonies abandoned with no signs of violence, 291 DM. All attempts to colonize Gamma continent end. Trangorm the Rebellious leads one of the smaller tries to Beta continent in 301 DM. The ship was attacked at sea by some form of monstrous reptilian creature with the resultant loss of all life on board.

307-370 DM. Almera the Second. Length of reign: 63 years. Daughters: 7. Major events: Drought of 351-359 DM. Garthim attacks begin spreading out from the crystal Castle, with all nearby villages destroyed by 365 DM.

370 DM: Gathering of the Tribes.

370-430 DM. Karla the First. Reign: 60 years. Daughters: 4. Major events: Capital city of Tarakendal destroyed by fire believed set by Skeksis. Attacks by garthim continue. First appearance of Crystal Bats.

430-463 DM. Karla the Second: Reign: 33 years. Daughters: 7. Major events: Another attempt to colonize Beta continent fails in 443 DM. Several major cities destroyed by Skeksis/Garthim attacks.

463 DM: Gathering of the Tribes.

463-514 DM. Merendel. Length of reign: 51 years. Daughters: 2. Major events: Series of major storms and droughts, 481-497 DM.

514: Final DM Gathering of the Tribes.

514-529 DM: "Shalla the Doomed." Length of reign: 15 years. Shalla and all her daughters killed by the Skeksis in 5229 DM. Great Library of Barendel destroyed by fire. Lat of Gelfling cities and towns fall to Skeksis/garthim attacks. Monarchy effectively ends.

546 DM: Skeksis achieve major control of entire Alpha continent. Few remaining Gelfling flee into the wilderness.

970 DM: Jen born.

981 DM: Kira born.

982 DM: Final Skeksis purge ends. All Gelfling on Alpha continent are killed with the exception of Jen and Kira.

The Age of Renewal

0 ADM (After Dark Millennium): The Great Crystal is healed.

2 ADM: Jen and Kira have their first child, Katara.

13 ADM: Aughra returns with Gelfling that had survived in the wilderness of Beta continent. Survivors revealed that attacks by flying reptilian creatures along with periods of sustained drought had forced them to move deep into the Beta continent interior.

14 ADM: First new Gelfling city founded at Canmore. Aughra along with Jen and Kira locates the ancient Valley of the Queens and finds the crown traditionally worn by Gelfling Queens.

15 ADM: First new-Millennium Gelfling Queen elected, Ahallandra the First. Invention by Aughra allows remote viewing of Beta and Gamma continents. Gamma continent Gelfling are located but are few in number. Contingent of Beta continent Gelfling sail for Gamma continent.

16 ADM: Beta continent group returns with fewer than fifty Gamma continent Gelfling.

The growth of the Gelfing tribes was slow, but gradually their numbers increased and the old cities were restored to their former glory. In the year 54 ADM another attempt, this time successful, was made to colonize Beta continent. A colony was established on Gamma continent soon after. It was discovered that many colony attempts during the Dark Millennium had failed due to effects from the Dark Crystal. Beta and Gamma continents had their own power centers which were also corrupted by the Dark Crystal. this resulted in mutation of local life forms which became the reptilian creatures referred to earlier. With the healing of the Great Crystal these creatures vanished.

18 ADM: Kira is offered the throne after the death of Shallandra the First due to an accident, but she declines to accept the honor. Shallandra the Second is elected the new Queen. Birth of Jen and Kira's second daughter, Kara.

History of the Skeksis and the urRu