Episode 101: Beginnings

Fraggle Rock episode 101: Beginnings

Air Date: January 10, 1983

Writer: Jerry Juhl

Director: Jim Henson

Doc, an inventor and tinkerer, moves into a new workshop in a seaside town with his faithful dog, Sprocket. Doc doesn't know it, but a magical underground world lies just beyond the wall of his workshop -- Fraggle Rock, populated by free-spirited, fuzzy, three-foot-high creatures called Fraggles, tiny, hard-working Doozers, and gigantic, weak-minded Gorgs.

Travelling Matt Fraggle, a Fraggle explorer, discovers a hole that leads through the wall into Doc's workshop, which he identifies as "Outer Space -- the final frontier for Fraggledom." He notifies his nephew Gobo that he plans to explore Outer Space, and he'll periodically send messages back to Doc's workshop for Gobo to collect. Gobo watches his Uncle Matt venture into the workshop, where he's chased out of the door by a barking Sprocket. Gobo is terrified at the thought that he'll have to go out into that workshop every day to get Matt's messages...

Songs: Hip Hip Hooray, Follow Me, I Seen Troubles

Note: This is a remarkable first episode, introducing twelve main characters: the five main Fraggles, Uncle Matt, Doc, Sprocket, Marjory the Trash Heap, Philo, Gunge, Junior Gorg and the Doozers. All of the major relationships are set up in this episode, and it also provides a sense of the interdependence between the Fraggles, the Doozers, the Gorgs, Doc and Sprocket, and the Trash Heap.

While this is the first episode of the series, it was recorded as the tenth. The producers apparently wanted the performers to have a grip on their characters by the time they recorded their introductory episode (a not uncommon tactic for television production). Most of the episodes in the series were shows in the order in which they were recorded, but the first block of episodes is entirely out of order. The first episode produced, Episode 105: The Thirty-Minute Work Week, was shot in March, 1982; Episode 101 was produced in July.