Katie and Orbie

Characters

Katie is a five-year-old human girl with blonde hair, typically dressed in a green and white striped shirt with blue overalls and brown shoes. She is imaginative, playful, curious, and generally happy, and she lives with her parents and her best friend Orbie, whom she considers an adoptive brother. Katie does not attend school but takes dancing classes in some episodes. Her sound effects, including a characteristic laugh, sighing, yelling, and crying, as well as her voice during the Did You Know? segments, were performed by Amanda Tripp.

Orbie is a small pink alien from an unknown planet outside Earth's Solar System. According to one of the books on which the series is based, he was sent away because his home planet was too polluted to sustain life, though this backstory is never mentioned in the series itself. He arrived on Earth in a small spaceship, landing in Katie's backyard, and was adopted by her parents, becoming her brother. Orbie is the same age as Katie and shares many of her personality traits.

He communicates through squeaks, chirps, and honking sounds made with his nose, which people appear to understand despite not being a known language. He has red polka dots on his body; in early episodes, the dots could change color depending on his mood. People generally treat him as a normal person, and any initial surprise at his appearance fades as they get to know him. Orbie is usually naked but wears clothing and boots in rain, cold, or snow.

He is a natural acrobat, often leaping and flipping out of joy, and has pads on his fingers and toes that allow him to climb walls and hang from ceilings. He sleeps hanging upside down from the bar in Katie's closet. His sound effects were made by Chris Wightman.

Episodes

Lacewood Productions began work on the series in 1993, producing 13 half-hour episodes that premiered in 1994 on Family Channel. Success led to two further seasons in 1995 and 1996. The third season switched to digital ink and paint for coloring, and the sixth season used Flash animation. After Lacewood closed in 1997, Paragon Entertainment took over, and in 1999 Amberwood Entertainment acquired the series from Paragon.

Amberwood, along with Entertainment Rights, produced 26 more episodes that premiered on Family Channel in 2001. Production ended after the sixth season in 2003. A total of 234 individual stories were produced, with three stories per half-hour episode. Each episode also includes two Did You Know? interstitial segments, narrated off-screen by Katie (voiced by Amanda Tripp), which present small facts about subjects such as plants, food, animals, the body, and arts.

The episode structure consists of the opening theme, the first story, a Did You Know? segment, the second story, another Did You Know? segment, the third story, and the closing credits.

Production

The animated series Katie and Orbie started with four children's books called Katie and Orbie Save the Planet, which came out in 1991. Ben Wicks did the illustrations, and his daughter Susan Wicks wrote them. These books focused on the environment. In 1993, Lacewood Productions turned the characters into a TV show.

That first run lasted until 1996, and then Amberwood Entertainment brought it back in 1999, with the series finally ending in 2003. Unlike the books, the TV show is not mainly about the environment. Its stories cover things like getting a new pet or helping friends, and it also tackles topics such as kids with divorced parents, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy—something rare for a preschool show. Edmund Eagan wrote the theme song, and his niece Mireille Eagan sang it.

The show uses a special animation style called "picture-mation," which producer Sheldon Wiseman compared to a Play-a-sound book. Most of the time, the characters don't move much, but there are small moments of real animation, like a butterfly flying at the end of the opening credits, or characters blinking or eating. No character speaks; instead, cartoon sound effects are used, and a narrator tells the story. That narrator is Leslie Nielsen.