I never got into Keyop or his burbles. However, he was my sister-in-law's favorite character. One of her brother's stuttered as a child and it was neat for her to see a character that didn't speak perfectly.

As a writer, I take advantage of her opinion and write him with a stutter rather than trying to create a background for it.

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Perspective Alters Reality

Jinpei looks, sounds, and acts like a 10-year-old. For the moral guardians of the 1970s, a kid who teased his sister, made smart-ass remarks, and tended to disobey his elders was unacceptable, so they gave us Keyop. And since Jinpei could be counted on to open his mouth at every opportunity, they had to figure out a way to fill the time. Hence the burbles, broops, and other noises.

Then they had to explain the goofy noises, and that's how we got Keyop the artificial boy. (Given the time pressure the producers worked under, I doubt the writers were thinking deep thoughts about children in combat.)

IMO, the rumor that Jinpei had a potty-mouth came about when word got out that Jinpei spoke 'inappropriately.' That's the sort of weasel-wording people use when they don't want to come right out and say what they really mean, and so others assumed the worst. (This is what happens when you rely on euphemisms and 'polite' words instead of plainly, but tactfully, stating your case.)

TJ's Tough to Swallow is a very funny version of why Keyop talks the way he does. Hint: Zark was a bad robot.

In my version, his brain works so fast his mouth can't keep up. It's gotten better over the years.

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Benefits, not features; benefits, not features

Marie, I totally agree with you. I think it's a shame that they couldn't have given Keyop proper words to say, instead of all of the burbling. And you make a good point about how thy gave Zark so many lines, yet Keyop had so few.

You've got some good ideas, LB. I think you might be right about the producers wanting to make Keyop seem *different* from the 'kids at home'. But unfortunately, his poor command of the language made him appear less intelligent, and thus I always felt far superior to Keyop when watching the program as a child. While many of the episodes were produced in a hurry, there was clearly a lot of time spent on series planning, as you can see from the information provided by Jason Hofius' book.

I love the idea that maybe he's making alien noises... that his DNA/tongue/vocal chords is configured to alien speech. But still, they could have made him speak differently (altered grammatical patterns, such as Star Wars did with Yoda) without making him seem sub-intelligent.

Amethyst and UW, you make good points about the stuttering, but Keyop's speech impediment is FAR beyond stuttering. Even stuttering is making 'language' sounds, albeit not necessarily being able to control them. My brother had a severe stuttering problem for many years, and I recall how long it would take him to say things sometimes. But Keyop's noises were incredibly bizarre and disturbing, and nothing like what comes to mind when I think of stuttering.

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" No gratitude needs to be voiced, your mind speaks to us!"


Racer by day, Feather Thrower all the time!

Yours are great ideas, Garnet! The experimental phase, and the lack of Keyop's interaction with other of the same age during his infancy, are good reasons for his slow development of speech. Moreover, like you and others have pointed out, I also agree that his speech would have improved as he grew older ... not to a perfect extent, but enough to compare to normal.

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To be or not to be a gatchamaniac - that's the dilemma!

Garnet, I think you have some very valid ideas as to why Keyop's speech might be the way it is. There are all kinds of possibilities a writer can work with, and since we know he was created in a lab, it can be fully explored. As you say, the idea of the implant messing with his (perhaps not entirely human) brain can be another factor. Having been 'force grown' or having limited social interaction can be another factor.

Garnet, I would be interested in learning why you were attratced to Keyop as a character, if yo uare willing to share.

I agree with everyone who said that he could easily grow out of it. In fact, for Keyop's sake, I hope he does!

And I also noticed that Keyop doesn't use first person 'I'... but at least he doesn't speak of himself in third person, like Elmo!

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There was that G-Force in the future episode where I think the adult Keyop had no speech impediment. But, of course, it wasn't the real Keyop.

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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny."

The burbling in his thoughts is a little disturbing, I do have to agree.

Okay, as for why I was drawn to Keyop when I first saw BotP, here's the story.

I was 15 when the show starting airing in our area that made me a little older than the average fan.

I was always a bit of a geek. I had liked Star Trek and other science fiction for several years, so when BotP started, I was interested. I think I actually found it by chance one day.

When I first heard that Keyop was a genetic construct, I was curious. Then I heard him talk for the first time and I about lost my mind. Here was a person in a series who was less than the ideal but was still a valued member of the team. He was treated just like any other member and expected to do his fair share. He had an obvious nonconformity, but it didn't define him as a character and he didn't have some super-skill that off-set it.

Now this was important to me because I had a disability that most people wouldn't notice right at first, but once they were around me for a while anyone could figure it out. I could almost, but not quite fit in.

Up till that moment, most, if not all, characters on any type of TV series were either the ideal human being or were very stereotypical. The common myth was, and still is sometimes, that anyone who has any type of disability has to have something amazing that makes up for it. An example is that all blind people have musical talent. The other stereotype was that the person who was disabled had to helped and was not expected to pull his/her own weight.

I was so excited that I wanted to hug the character and the person who had come up with this idea.

I also found a bit of a commonality in the not having a family thing. Yes, I had a loving family, but for a lot of my school life I was not with them. I went to a state-run school for the blind that was several miles from my home and the choice was either spend a lot of time getting to and from school or stay and actually be involved in after-school activities. I had very few friends away from school.

I know that there were at least three or four of us that watched BotP when we could and, I think, all of us thought Keyop was pretty cool.

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks for letting me share this.

Garnet, that is a very moving story, and I can appreciate why he is your favorite character. It just goes to show how BOTP touched your life in a way that the producers may never have imagined. Clearly the show has touched many of us, but to me, your story is unique.

Thank you for sharing it with us.

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Thanks, guys.