Eventually, Geneon Entertainment lost the distribution license to the first 67 episodes and Funimation began redubbing the series for an uncut broadcast.
The series serves as a sequel to the prior Dragon Ball anime and manga, which primarily focused on Goku's childhood experiences.
It has been speculated that creator Akira Toriyama did not originally intend for the series to stretch past the Saiyan Saga when he began working on the Dragon Ball Z portion of the manga.
The first English dub of the episodes was produced by Filipino company Creative Products Corporation, airing on RPN 9 in the Philippines during 1993.
Plans for a second syndicated Dragon Ball dub season were cancelled due to lower than expected ratings,[5] and Funimation partnered with Los Angeles-based Saban Entertainment (known at the time for shows such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and X-Men: The Animated Series) to syndicate their Dragon Ball Z adaptation to Fox, UPN and The WB affiliate stations.
[6][7][8][5] While Saban had a history of acquiring the rights to various anime series to be dubbed, Funimation still controlled the American license to the property during this period.
[5][10] Funimation producer Barry Watson would regularly fly out from Dallas to Vancouver to coordinate the voice actors at Ocean.
[1][8] Heightened exposure from Saban helped ensure a larger audience for the series, which led to Funimation creating a second syndicated dub season in 1997, intended to air in its own hour long block.
Regarding this episode and Saban's censoring of the dub, Funimation president Gen Fukunaga remarked in a 1999 interview, "we had a lot of arguments with them, saying they were going way too far with the censorship, but they would refuse to air it unless it was cut to their liking.
"[14] According to Fukunaga, Saban initially wanted Funimation to cut out a scene in episode 17 where Nappa blows up a helicopter with journalists in it.
They only allowed the scene to be kept after Funimation wrote a line where Tien says "I can see their parachutes, they're okay", immediately after the helicopter explodes and the journalists are killed.
[16][17] In an uncredited capacity, Wasserman had also previously composed the music and theme songs for shows such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and X-Men: The Animated Series, and had already left the company in 1995 due to being overworked.
[16] Saban let Wasserman compose for Dragon Ball Z from his home in Los Angeles, and he was allowed more creative freedom, giving it a darker sound than previous shows he had worked on.
[20][21] The theme song "Main Title" (known by fans as "Rock the Dragon") was created by Saban before they hired Wasserman to do background music for the show,[19][5] with the vocals performed by Jeremy Sweet, another composer who had previously worked on the Power Rangers franchise.
[23] Initial home video releases of the re-dub in 2005 were titled the "Ultimate Uncut Edition" and included a small number of episodes per DVD.
These DVDs only used the Nathan M. Johnson score, as well as a new heavy metal theme song by Dave Moran, which replaced "Rock the Dragon".
In 2000, the syndicated dub of these episodes began airing outside of North America, being shown on Network 10's Cheez TV block in Australia, New Zealand's TV3 and on the British version of Toonami.