Invader Zim

Invader Zim

Invader Zim is an American animated television series created by Jhonen Vasquez. It was produced by and subsequently aired on Nickelodeon. The series revolves around an extraterrestrial named Zim from the planet Irk, and his ongoing mission to conquer and destroy Earth...

is an American animated television series that was produced by, and subsequently aired on Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon (TV channel)

Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...

. The series revolves around an extraterrestrial named Zim from the planet Irk and his ongoing mission to conquer and/or destroy a dark and satirical version of the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

. His various attempts to subjugate and destroy the human race are invariably undermined by some combination of his own ineptitude, his malfunctioning robot servant GIR, and his arch-nemesis Dib, one of very few humans not oblivious enough to be unaware of Zim's identity.

Invader Zim was first broadcast on March 30, 2001. The show was targeted at children in their early teens, and met with critical acclaim. However, after the first season the show's ratings

Nielsen Ratings

Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...

 began to suffer. Before the second season was completed, Nickelodeon cancelled the series, leaving at least sixteen episodes and a planned television movie

Television movie

A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

 series finale unfinished. Because of its continued fan base and above average DVD sales since cancellation, Invader Zim has been called a cult hit.

The series consists of a pilot episode

Television pilot

A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...

, forty-six canon episodes, and at least seventeen episodes that were in production at the time of the series' cancellation. As of August 19, 2006, all forty-six canon episodes have aired on television and been released on DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

. December 10, 2011 the pilot episode finally aired on television. Thirty-eight episodes were originally broadcast in pairs, each twelve-minute episode debuting in the same half-hour. There are eight double length episodes. This list is ordered by the episode order in the DVD releases, with broadcast dates noted for proper viewing. Almost every episode was directed by Steve Ressel

Steve Ressel

Steve Ressel is an animator, comic book artist, illustrator, producer, publisher, novelist, script writer, and director. Steve directed animated series such as Invader Zim, The Wild Thornberrys, Duckman, Stressed Eric, God, The Devil and Bob, Rugrats, and others.Ressel directed and produced the...

; the only exception is the pilot, which was directed by Jordan Reichek.

Series overview

Season		Episodes	Originally aired
			Season premiere Season premiere In North America, a season premiere is the first episode of a new season of a given television show. It often airs in September or October, after several months of reruns.-Evaluating the changes:...	Season finale Season finale A season finale is the final episode of a season of a television program...
	____Pilot		December 10, 2011
	1	20	March 30, 2001	May 10, 2002
	2	7	December 10, 2002	August 19, 2006
	Unfinished	18	N/A

Pilot episode

#	Title	Written by	Original airdate

Season 1: 2001–2002

|}

Season 2: 2002–2006

The second season of Invader Zim began its run in 2002. After the season's first episode, the show was cancelled and the episodes that had been completed prior to the cancellation were not shown. The remaining finished episodes were released on DVD in 2004, and finally aired in 2006 on Nicktoons Network

NickToons Network

Nicktoons is an American digital cable and satellite television network owned by Viacom. It is a sister service of the Nickelodeon cable channel...

. Season 2 is not completed yet.

#	Title	Written by	Original airdate

#	Title	Written by	Original airdate

Unfinished Episodes

On January 2002, Invader Zim was cancelled, due to parent complaints on content.

#	Title	Written by

DVD release

47 of 68 episodes (not including the pilot) of the completed Invader ZIM series have been released on DVD, along with the pilot, an alternate cut of The Most Horrible X-mas Ever, and audio from seven of the unfinished episodes. Later, a DVD boxed set including both the seasons was added to the market. This came with a box shaped like Zim's house with a Gir figure, 46 episodes and all 6 DVDs. The last "new" episode aired in 2006.

An Invader ZIM DVD was released on February 22, 2011 titled "Operation Doom", which features the highest-rated episodes of the series.