From The TV IV

Total Drama Island (sometimes abbreviated TDI and has the French title of L'île des Défis Extrêmes) is a Canadian animated sitcom that airs on Teletoon. The show is produced by Fresh TV Inc. and (beginning with the second season) Camp TV Productions in association with Teletoon. Cake Distribution handles international syndication of the series.

Total Drama Island made its debut on July 8, 2007, starting with a 26 episode season. TDI concluded its first season on January 4, 2008. Episodes from Season Two air on Thursday nights at 7:30 p.m. with a rebroadcast on Sunday nights at 7:30 p.m. Season One episodes are currently being rerun on Monday to Wednesday nights at 8:00 p.m. A one-hour special episode reuniting the Season One contestants, titled "Total Drama, Drama, Drama, Drama Island", aired on Teletoon on November 29, 2008. [1]

The first season of TDI debuted in the United States on June 5, 2008 on Cartoon Network, where it currently airs on Monday nights at 9:00 p.m. The second season of the show, which is airing under the title Total Drama Action, premiered on Teletoon on January 11, 2009 at 6:30 p.m., [2] and then on Cartoon Network on June 11, 2009, [3] with the season concluding on both networks on December 10, 2009. The third season of the TDI franchise, titled Total Drama World Tour (formerly Total Drama, the Musical), debuted on June 10, 2010 on Teletoon, and aired on June 21 on Cartoon Network. TDWT will begin its regular run on Teletoon on September 9, 2010 on Thursday nights (and repeating on Sunday nights) at 8:00 p.m., while TDI and TDA reruns will begin alternating on Monday to Wednesday nights at 8:00 p.m. [4]

Contents 1 Season One (Total Drama Island) 2 Season Two (Total Drama Action) 3 Season Three (Total Drama World Tour) 4 Season Four (Total Drama Reloaded) 5 Cartoon Network censorship controversy 6 Cast 7 Seasons 8 In-Depth 9 DVD Releases 10 External Sites

[edit] Season One (Total Drama Island)

Total Drama Island is a parody of reality-based television game shows such as Survivor, Big Brother and Fear Factor. The setting for TDI in the first season is a summer camp near Muskoka, Ontario called Camp Wawanakwa, where 22 teenagers from across Canada (divided into two teams of 11, the Killer Bass and the Screaming Gophers) spend eight weeks during the summer competing for a $100,000 grand prize in a reality TV game show (also called Total Drama Island, a show within a show), engaging in various challenges laid out by TDI host Chris Maclean.

As with Survivor in real life, the team that loses the episode's challenge would vote for a team member they believe has cost them the challenge or is, in any way, a weak link to them (although, in later episodes after the teams are dissolved, they sometimes will also vote out a contestant they believe to be the biggest threat to them). At the end of each episode in most cases during the first season, while the winning team celebrate with rewards, the losing team attends a campfire ceremony where Chris hands out marshmallows to each contestant; the player who does not get a marshmallow has been voted out of the game and must leave the island, departing from the Dock of Shame on the Boat of Losers. The last remaining contestant on the island in Season One wins the $100,000 prize.

In addition to the challenges, intra-team alliances are also formed and dissolved, romances develop between players on one team (or sometimes from opposing teams), and some players scheme and manipulate (and sometimes even cheat) their way to victory. Between challenges, each contestant also discusses their thoughts and feelings about the game in the Confessional Can, a mock outhouse with a TV camera installed inside.

[edit] Season Two (Total Drama Action)

The show's second season, which is known as Total Drama Action (TDA) (Défis Extrêmes: Action in the French version), features 14 returning contestants in a new competition set at an abandoned film studio backlot in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Ontario with a $1,000,000 prize at stake, with Chris and Chef Hatchet also returning. The new competition features movie-themed challenges, all expected to be as tough and just as revolting as the challenges from the first season.

Returning contestants for TDA are Gwen, Trent, Owen, Leshawna, DJ, Duncan, Beth, Harold, Geoff, Izzy (who has begun referring to herself in the third person as "Kaleidoscope" or "E-Scope"), Justin, Bridgette, Lindsay and Heather. Courtney, who did not finish as part of the 14-way tie that ended "Total Drama, Drama, Drama, Drama Island" and led up to TDA, was not originally to have been part of the lineup of players for Season Two, but she is allowed to join the game later into the competition anyway after she successfully sues the show's producers for her wrongful elimination in TDI. Katie, Sadie, Cody, Tyler, Ezekiel, Eva and Noah do not return to compete in TDA, but they do appear as panelists in the TDA Aftermath talk show segments.

Some slight changes from the first season are also made in how eliminated contestants are dealt with. Instead of marshmallows, Chris hands out gold-plated award trophies he calls the Gilded Chris (fashioned after himself) to contestants who survive a challenge, while the contestant who is voted out of the game walks down the Red Carpet Walk of Shame and departs the studio lot in the Lame-o-sine (a limousine replacing the Boat of Losers). In two other variations on traditions from the first season, the Confessional Can has been replaced by the Confessional Makeup Trailer as the venue for the contestants to discuss their show experiences in between challenges, and variants on the original team names, now utilizing behind-the-scenes film industry job titles, were used for the teams this season, the Killer Grips (originally captained by Trent, then captained by Justin following Trent's elimination, then by Lindsay and then by Courtney) and the Screaming Gaffers (originally captained by Gwen, then captained by Duncan following Gwen's elimination), up until the team merge later in the season.

In another notable change from the previous season, due to a combination of Teletoon's airing of several weeks of repeats in Canada following each edition of TDA Aftermath and Cartoon Network airing TDA without interruption from the beginning (even though CN began its run of TDA much later than Teletoon), there was a period of several weeks during the fall of 2009 when CN aired each episode of TDA before it aired on Teletoon, its originating channel. This discrepancy was eventually fixed when Teletoon aired two episodes back-to-back two weeks in a row, on November 19 ("Rock n' Rule" and "Crouching Courtney, Hidden Owen") and 26 ("2008: A Space Owen" and "Top Dog"), 2009, along with CN pre-empting TDA on November 26.

[edit] Season Three (Total Drama World Tour)

The third season of the show, which is known as Total Drama World Tour (TDWT, formerly Total Drama, the Musical or TDM [5]) (Défis Extrêmes: La Tournée Mondiale! in the French-dubbed version), features 15 returning contestants and 2 newcomers, along with Chris and Chef, traveling around the world by airplane to take part in challenges that also sees them performing some songs.

Returning contestants for TDWT are: Owen, Gwen, Heather, Duncan, Leshawna, Izzy, DJ, Lindsay, Bridgette, Harold, Courtney, Cody, Tyler, Noah and Ezekiel. They are joined by two new contestants: Alejandro and Sierra. Beth, Justin, Trent, Geoff, Katie, Sadie and Eva do not return as contestants for Season Three, although they are expected to appear on the newly-renamed talk show segment TDWT Aftermath.

In more changes from the previous seasons, the biggest change is that instead of two competing teams, there are now three teams competing for a $1,000,000 prize, Team Amazon (comprised of Gwen, Sierra [replacing Izzy], Heather, Courtney and Cody), Team Victory (with Leshawna, Bridgette, Lindsay, DJ, Harold and Ezekiel as members) and the oddly-named Team Chris is Really, Really, Really, Really Hot (named in the season premiere by original member and new contestant Sierra, who has since switched teams with Izzy; also includes Alejandro, Owen, Noah and Tyler). Also, contestants have to break into song when Chris rings a chime (a premise included when the third season was first in development as TDM). There are also two new Confessional zones located on the airplane, one in a bathroom and the other in the plane's cockpit. Contestants who are saved from being voted off during the elimination ceremony now receive barf bags, and players who are voted off have to parachute off the plane in the Drop of Shame and land on the Helipad of Losers.

Most notably, although TDWT debuted in Canada on Teletoon on June 10, 2010, 11 days before the third season's American debut on Cartoon Network, the show is once again, as with Season Two, breaking from the pattern of the first season's broadcast schedule on those respective networks; even though Teletoon is the show's originating channel and co-production company, episodes will again air on CN before airing on Teletoon, as new episodes are already currently running on CN while TDWT's Teletoon schedule does not begin until September 9, 2010, which will put Teletoon at least three months behind CN's schedule for the show.

[edit] Season Four (Total Drama Reloaded)

A fourth season of the series, tentatively to be called Total Drama Reloaded (TDR), was announced by the show's production staff on the TDI blog and is currently in development. [6]

[edit] Cartoon Network censorship controversy

When TDI began airing on Cartoon Network in 2008, the network made a number of dialogue edits to nearly every first season episode for perceived issues with language and/or cultural references which network censors believed would not be easily understood by American viewers due to cultural differences from the show's country of origin, Canada. When CN viewers compared the version of TDI aired on that network with the original Canadian version, however, there were complaints by those viewers that the edits ruined many jokes and puns used in the original dialogue, and words that were edited for language (such as "crap", "frickin'", "stupid" and "suck") are actually much milder in comparison to more offensive language used in more mature movies and cable TV programs, where language standards are less stringent. [7][8]. The Cartoon Network TDI viewers' criticism of CN's censorship of the show is bolstered by the fact that 6teen, another Canadian import from Fresh TV which also airs on CN (and which has themes and dialogue similar to TDI), is left mostly untouched by the network censors, even though 6teen airs in the afternoon and TDI airs in prime time, prior to the start of CN's late-night Adult Swim block. Another argument against what the viewers regard as unnecessary censorship of TDI by Cartoon Network is the fact that many CN-produced shows, all of which have targeted similar or younger viewer age demographics to those of TDI, have used the type of words censored from the American airings of TDI. [9]

Among the common edits made to the dialogue by Cartoon Network in the first season episodes:

• All use of the word "suck" is replaced with the common word "stink" or "stank", except in "Not Quite Famous" where Chris says it
• The word "crap" is replaced with a variety of words, but Bridgette uses the word in "Not Quite Famous" and Trent also uses the word during his audition tape in the Season Recap
• The word "stupid" is usually changed to "foolish", "silly", "lame-o", or some other variation, except in "I Triple Dog Dare You!" where "stupid" is used to replace "frickin'" in Gwen's dialogue when she demands her freebie after winning it in a dare
• "Shut up!" was often censored to become "Shut it!" in earlier episodes, and "Zip it!" to substitute for Chef saying it in "Are We There, Yeti?"
• The word "freak" is often changed to "weirdo" whenever it comes up in most cases
• The word "frickin'" (or "freakin'") is replaced with a different word as well, with the substituted word depending on the dialogue and its context
• During the rare occurence of a censor beep in the original version, it is either replaced with PG-rated dialogue or is removed entirely
• The word "gitch" (as a reference to men's underwear, always as either briefs or boxer shorts) is infrequently mentioned, but is always replaced by "drawers", as "gitch" is not a common term used in the US

Notably, censorship of episodes of TDA on Cartoon Network has been much less frequent than it was with episodes of TDI because, thanks to apparent influence from CN, Fresh TV made much less use in the second season of the words and phrases which CN assumed to be objectionable, while Canadian cultural references made by the characters have also been infrequent on TDA for the same reason.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Character	Duration
Main Cast
Christian Potenza	Chris Maclean	1	2	3
Cle Bennett	Chef Hatchet	1	2	3
	DJ	1	2	3
Megan Fahlenblock	Gwen	1	2	3
Rachel Wilson	Heather	1	2	3
Novie Edwards	Leshawna	1	2	3
Drew Nelson	Duncan	1	2	3
Scott McCord	Owen	1	2	3
	Trent	1	2	3
Sarah Gadon	Beth	1	2	3
Brian Froud	Harold	1	2	3
Dan Petronijevic	Geoff	1	2	3
Katie Crown	Izzy	1	2	3
Adam Reid	Justin	1	2	3
Kristin Fairlie	Bridgette	1	2	3
Emily Claire Barlow	Courtney	1	2	3
Stephanie Mills	Lindsay	1	2	3
	Katie	1	2	3
Lauren Lipson	Sadie	1	2	3
Peter Oldring	Cody	1	2	3
	Ezekiel	1	2	3
	Tyler	1	2	3
Julia Chantrey	Eva	1	2	3
Carter Hayden	Noah	1	2	3
Marco Grazzini	Alejandro			3
Annick Obonsawin	Sierra			3
Carla Collins	Blaineley			3
Season numbers in red indicate a recurring or guest role in that season.

[edit] Seasons

Season	Premiere	Finale	#
Teletoon
Season One	July 8, 2007	January 4, 2008	26 + 2
Season Two Total Drama Action	January 11, 2009	June 10, 2010	26 + 1
Season Three Total Drama World Tour	June 10, 2010	—	26
Cartoon Network
Season One	June 5, 2008	December 18, 2008	26 + 2
Season Two Total Drama Action	June 11, 2009	April 6, 2010	26 + 1
Season Three Total Drama World Tour	June 21, 2010	—	26

[edit] In-Depth

• At a Glance: Additional information about the series

[edit] DVD Releases

Title	Release Date	#
Season Sets
Total Drama Island: The Complete Season Season One	August 18, 2009	4	purchase

[edit] External Sites

• Official website for Total Drama Island
• Official Teletoon website for Total Drama Island
• Official Teletoon website for Total Drama Action
• Official Cartoon Network website for Total Drama Island
• Official Cartoon Network website for Total Drama Action
• Official Cartoon Network website for Total Drama World Tour