Sunbow Sundays

[Pinwig]

Getting caught up today/tomorrow but doing some background reading has brought me to a question I can't find an answer to. TFWiki seems sure that Spike is said to be 14 years old, but I can't remember anything in the series to this point that actually states that. How do we know he is this age?

[legios]

Not sure, and a glance at TFwiki shows that they haven't cited their source. Anyone else.
(Also, excuse me whilst I am downcast for a moment - the same page suggest that CMs Corp may have fallen to Bankruptcy. A crying shame because I thought they'd been putting out some quite good stuff and was hoping they'd stick around and mature in the Action toy market. :-( )

Karl

[Benn]

Isn't 14 a bit young to be working a rig?
Ah, the 80's, when health 'n' safety weren't so big.

[Benn]

Maybe it's maths?
Counting back from his movie age?
Still 14 on a rig is pretty big gaffes,
And his age might be on a script page.

[Shockprowl]

14, huh? On an Oil Rig..... Maybe it was a 'Go to work with you Dad' day or something...


AND HISTORY WAS MADE!

[Pinwig]

The other odd thing the wiki points out is that at the end of The Immobilizer he persuades Carly to go on a date, and she is University age because she's a student at MIT, so why would she date a 14 year old?

There must be some tortuous logic somewhere that means a reverse calculation ends up with 14 in 1984. Is he 35 in the movie or something? I've no recollection of any age being given.

[Pinwig]

Oh, got it. It's explicitly stated in cartoon bible that Spike is 14 and Carly is supposed to be 15. However that age doesn't match her character in The Immobilizer because she's driving.

Edit: Actually, it just about works. If Spike is 14 in 1984, he's probably 15 by season two in 1985, and Carly is supposed to be 'a year older' than him, which suggests she could be 16 heading toward 17. So she's old enough to drive under US law, and if she's the scientific genius she appears to be, it's possible she could have the scholarship to MIT she says she has. It's pushing the bounds of believability, but it's possible.

[blueshift]

Jan 16, 2016 23:17:18 GMT Pinwig said:

Oh, got it. It's explicitly stated in cartoon bible that Spike is 14 and Carly is supposed to be 15. However that age doesn't match her character in The Immobilizer because she's driving.

Edit: Actually, it just about works. If Spike is 14 in 1984, he's probably 15 by season two in 1985, and Carly is supposed to be 'a year older' than him, which suggests she could be 16 heading toward 17. So she's old enough to drive under US law, and if she's the scientific genius she appears to be, it's possible she could have the scholarship to MIT she says she has. It's pushing the bounds of believability, but it's possible.

I feel it somehow touching that out of everything Sunbow has thrown at us, it is this that causes the most confusion

[Pinwig]

I find more and more when writing about these episodes that where there are glaring plot holes or inconsistencies (all the time) that rather than pointing them out and laughing I want to puzzle out logical reasons why things are the way they are to paper over the cracks. The comic really spoils you for depth compared to the cartoon.

In most cases I doubt the writers even cared things made no sense, but it makes the world more believable if things have reasons. The cartoon is really weak on internal logic, but a few maybes can make it work well enough.

[blueshift]

I genuinely am excited about the upcoming discussion as to why Powerglide has a giant flashing LED heart in his chest

[Pinwig]

22 - The Immobilizer

The Immobilizer is notable really only for two things, neither of which is the titular device invented by Wheeljack at the start of the episode. The first is that it introduces the character of Carly, finally bringing a semi-regular female into the show, and the second is that in keeping with many of the episodes so far this season it has a featured character; this time Ironhide gets his turn under the spotlight.

One thing that can be said about the Transformers is that the presence of significant female characters throughout the entire run is negligible to say the least. It could be argued that perhaps America was still struggling with the idea of sexual equality in the early 1980s, and that female characters in a primarily boys’ cartoon would be a deliberate oversight, but with others such as Firestar (Spiderman and his Amazing Friends), Teela (Masters of the Universe) and Lady Jaye (GI Joe) all predating the arrival of The Transformers, it’s hard to argue the show was simply victim to the social trend of the time.

The problem is that the human characters in the series are secondary to the main cast of robots, which keeps their numbers to a bare minimum, and Hasbro simply hadn’t written up any of the toys to be female. This of course opens up the much wider discussion of why it took three years to introduce a female Transformer in a main role, in contrast to someone like Crasher in Challenge of the Gobots who isn’t differentiated from the rest of the cast and was there from the start. That in itself is a much bigger discussion, but sets the stage for Carly’s arrival. Chip brought disability to the show, and now Carly becomes the token female.

To all intents and purposes Carly’s character is an amalgam of Spike and Chip; she has a strong academic background like Chip, coupled with Spike’s sense of adventure. Her biography notes that her intelligence is of a “chemical/electrical/mechanical” nature, rather than Chip’s focus on computers. This does almost feels like a last minute ‘get out of jail’ addition to the script for this story though, because until she reverses the immobilizer it isn’t alluded to at all. Perhaps the idea that she has scuba gear and boat suggests a marine biology link, but her claims that she knew how to reverse the immobilizer because of similarities to her own science work more suggests physics.

She is more hot-headed and willing to throw herself into danger even than Spike, and she displays character traits that make her initial outline feel closer to a Lois Lane type investigative journalist than a scientist. Her rash behaviour also makes it questionable that she attempts to retrieve the immobilizer from the Decepticons through a sense of remorse (implied by Spike’s horribly sexist “she was very upset about Ironhide, there’s no telling what she’ll do”), but more through a sense of carefree adventure and a thirst for knowledge. That might also explain the boat and scuba gear, although the fact she also has a sports car points more at rich parents!

One curiosity the end of the story throws up is the beginning of the relationship between Carly and Spike that eventually sees them married and with a son by the time of the 2005 set movie. Spike’s character biography states he is fourteen years old, and that Carly is “a year older” than him. Neither age really seems believable for the characters as shown on screen; Spike is built far more like a seventeen-year-old school leaver starting work with his father, and Carly is clearly portrayed as a university student, but this being a second season story Spike could at a push be an ‘old’ fifteen by this point, and Carly sixteen, turning seventeen, making her old enough to drive (as shown in the episode) as well as being able to bag an MIT scholarship if she is particularly bright.

(What doesn’t make sense, and requires further research, is that at least as far back as 2000 it was compulsory in Oregon to attend school until the age of 18, so presumably Spike isn’t actually employed by the oil company his father works for in the original pilot episode, he was just there helping out during a school holiday).

Underlying the tussle over the immobilizer is the episode’s more interesting sub-plot, that of Ironhide's sudden loss of confidence in himself. As is usual when toys are being promoted, the character’s unique personality traits are extrapolated to form the plot, and in this case the story usefully clears up an ambiguity in Ironhide’s original toy biography. His tech spec states he is the “oldest, toughest and most battle tested Autobot”, and that his “trithyllium-steel skin makes him nearly invulnerable to attack”, which is completely at odds with the last line saying he is the “most fragile of the group”. The cartoon bio clarifies this by changing the wording to say that he “breaks down more often than others”, omitting the reference to fragility.

This then is the driving force behind Ironhide's character in the cartoon, and presumably the reason why Peter Cullen voices him as a hoary old Texan cowboy in contrast to the similarly tired sounding but more measured tone he gives Optimus. What writer Earl Kress does here is expand on the idea of Ironhide being a tough old boot prone to physical breakdowns to suggest this ‘fragility’ affects him mentally as well. After causing havoc in the Ark while trying to shoot down one of Hound’s holograms he starts to question his ability to act as the team’s security chief, which he explains when confiding in Ratchet as the medic repairs him later in the episode.

His decision to retire from active duty raises the question of what that actually means because he clearly can’t leave the Autobots and go and do something else. It seems from his lone presence in the Ark later in the episode that he intends to generally hang about doing nothing while the others take on the Decepticons, but fortunately the story doesn’t let him do this for very long - especially because due to an animation error he is seen second behind Prime in the convoy leaving the Ark to face the Decepticons moments before he is back in the Autobot base left by himself.

It’s interesting that Optimus offers no resistance to Ironhide’s decision to stand down, despite his personal reaction clearly showing he doesn't want his old friend to retire. Realistically Ironhide should be someone Prime can confide in because of their clear long term friendship, but despite having the opportunity to here he doesn’t. In fact he rarely expresses his own feelings to any of his troops. His quiet mutterings here about ‘missing Ironhide already’ are in keeping with the way he is presented outwardly as very distant. He makes decisions based on logic, law and to protect the freedom of others, but rarely, if ever, could these decisions be regarded as compassionate or heart-felt. Notable examples include bricking up the Dinobots after he perceives them as dangerous (SOS Dinobots) and how he falls foul of Megatron's plan in Heavy Metal War purely because his adherence to ancient laws overrides his common sense.

Of course the story needs a feel good ending, and Ironhide proving that he has worth isn’t so much a moral prompt to remind kids that their grandparents may not be as past it as they seem, but more that people are allowed to make mistakes and come back from them without beating themselves up too much about it. In fact far worse than his attempt to gun down a hologram of Laserbeak is the fact he doesn’t notice Carly stealing the grenade when giving her a tour of the base. However, it’s Ironhide who notices her being abducted via Teletraan 1’s screen, it’s he who then rescues her, and ultimately it’s Ironhide who stops the Decepticons by grabbing the immobilizer from Laserbeak - neatly being the Decepticon whose hologram image started all this.

All of which makes perfect sense in terms of the plotting you’d expect from a story like this. The rest of the resolution though is disorganised and has the feel of a five year old’s imagination making up escape after escape without any regard for logic: Carly just happens to have access to scuba gear and a boat, Ironhide just happens to hit exactly the right spot to find her, Prime just happens to know where he needs his team to be, Brawn just happens to have a drill attachment not in his tech spec when someone has to dig a tunnel, and worst of all, Carly just happens to know how to reverse the immobilizer because, as we conveniently find out seconds later, she isn’t an arcade game playing, scuba diving adventurer after all, she has a science scholarship at the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

All of this could be explained as a string of coincidences, but as each incident piles on top of the one before it, the story crashes to its conclusion in such a ham-fisted fashion it’s impossible to watch it without repeated eye-rolling. It’s a shame because the Ironhide plot is a real strength in the writing here, and there are other moments such as Megatron taking pleasure from watching Carly drown that really make the viewer sit up, but the underlying immobilizer plot is just another rehash of the same disable/control the robots idea that has driven the previous four stories. It’s a pity that by this point the writing team were happy to recycle ideas instead of looking at building elements of a mythology like the comic did. It’s no surprise the success of the comic equivalent to the cartoon worked by taking the character development to a much higher level instead of churning out MacGuffin of the week stories over and over again.

[Pinwig]

How this got so long I've no idea. I forgive everyone for looking at it and not bothering.

23 - The Autobot Run

The Autobot Run is the third story to feature the Constructicons and has a basic premise close enough to their previous two outings to discern a pattern developing in the way that they are used. Both Heavy Metal War and City of Steel have Megatron using Scrapper to design something (the power transfer device and then ‘New Cybertron’) which is built by the Constructicons, countered by the Autobots, and leads to a finale in which Devastator almost but doesn’t quite manage to turn the tide in Megatron’s favour.

Like the other sub-teams, the Constructicons feature in isolated stories that bring them into focus as a group, and when they aren’t part of a plot they don’t appear at all. Along with the Dinobots and the Insecticons they’re dealt with as a separate ‘guest star’ entity, which is a shame as it lends to the idea of them being ‘shelved’ when not needed - literally in the case of the Dinobots. The only time this hasn’t happened to this point is when the Dinobots featured in the ensemble cast of The Ultimate Doom, which had the feel of a more cinematic production anyway. The Insecticons at least carry the conceit that they’re a separate entity to the Decepticons and stories occur occasionally when their paths cross, but it feels awkward that the Constructicons never feature casually in background shots, or perhaps one or two of them form part of an away team in a different mission not centred on them. Where are they all in the other episodes? The need for Constructicons = Devastator therefore limits their presence as six individual characters because it’s difficult to push all of them in a single feature episode. City of Steel does that better than The Autobot Run, which doesn’t even manage to maintain all the unique voices of the earlier episode.

The reuse of this format is compounded by the fact this is another straightforward ‘device to disable the Autobots’ story, the sixth in succession. This sadly means that The Autobot Run is on to a hiding to nothing from the start - it doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done better before. Writer Donald F Glut cites the episode as his least favourite of the twelve he wrote, and to put that in perspective he also wrote Heavy Metal War, the superb introduction story for the Constructicons, so it isn’t hard to see why. The Autobot Run is basically that story re-skinned, but without the enthusiasm of the original. All it really has going for it is the anticipation of knowing that Devastator is certain to appear in the final act. Damningly, Glut said of the episode in an interview in 2001:

“No one, not even the story editors, looked at these scripts very carefully… I wrote some of them in a single day, first draft, and they went almost immediately to the storyboard artists after Bryce or an assistant gave them a rather cursory read. We were not trying to create art… None of the writing was good or passionate or, sometimes (my own included, like “The Autobot Run”) even adequate. But we got paid well for writing them fast.”

In comparison to the unbridled enthusiasm of Bob Budiansky’s lovingly crafted character biographies, or Simon Furman’s intricate plotting, this comment neatly sums up why the cartoon is such a poor relation to the comics in terms of imagination and creativity. No one really wanted to invest time in making anything of the Transformers universe.

The Autobot Run is a simple story, too simple compared to the better plots of the season so far (Traitor and Attack of the Autobots), but the flip side is that there is very little that can go wrong with it. Unlike something like The Immobilizer, which overreached itself in trying to tie up the main story and two sub-plots in too short a space of time, The Autobot Run has quite a sedate pace and doesn’t throw up too many improbable plot-solving twists, so the trade off for its prosaic nature is that it does at least make sense and tick all the boxes for a Transformers cartoon.

One of those boxes is of course toy promotion, and Sunstreaker here gets an unusual amount of screen time because his position as the primadonna of the team lends itself to him lapping up the adulation of the crowd at the race. It’s interesting that he doesn’t actually win it - the victor is left deliberately (and literally) cloudy. This is because the promotional aspect of the stories is about showing how the characters have unique but equal traits and abilities, not about showing which is better than the other. In that regard the most sensible winner of the race from Hasbro’s point of view would be Optimus Prime as the ‘best’ Autobot, but it would make no sense for an articulated lorry to beat a sports car.

On the subject of toy promotion, in the interview mentioned above Glut is also quoted as saying,“We were told to ‘put as much product’ into each episode as possible. In my earlier scripts, like ‘Divide and Conquer’ I attempted to at least show (somewhere) all the characters as they existed at that time”. This is interesting because it suggests the writers determined the characters used in the episodes, rather than the animators giving a quota of what they could draw. Unlike Ironhide in The Immobilizer however, the story doesn’t revolve around Sunstreaker, and Glut’s self professed desire to cram in as many characters as possible means that at the conclusion it isn’t Sunstreaker who is thrown to Megatron’s mashing machine. It would make sense given his fear of scratched paintwork, but in a lack of joined up thinking between the writers, it’s Ironhide who gets put forward again.

In fact, no Autobots are named in the original synopsis for this story at all. Naturally Jazz and Mirage get to show off during the race, but in looking through the ranks for speaking roles Glut picks on second stringers Brawn and Huffer for a bit of attention and the better dialogue, even if it’s just to let Huffer moan and worry as usual.

On the subject of inclusivity with the characters, it’s something of an anomaly that Shockwave appears out of nowhere on two occasions in this story. This could be down to the kind of ‘cram them all in’ script direction Glut mentions above, but in both cases he is there in one shot and gone the next, which more suggests random crowd filling on the part of the animators than any actual intent to suddenly position Cybertron’s neglected caretaker on Earth. After all, this is noted as being the second of the three possible season two episodes animated by AKOM, a company at this point largely unfamiliar with the source material (see the entry for City of Steel).

That said, the usual criticisms of AKOM’s less than impressive animation style don’t seem to apply to The Autobot Run, which features some dynamic perspectives and at times the higher number of animation frames per second noted under City of Steel (Wheeljack running from the strike planes to protect the grenade being an example). Incidentally, the ‘AKOM three’ also happen to be the first three Constructicon focused episodes of the season, and the opportunity is taken to clear up the ongoing inconsistency with Devastator’s eyes one minute being a visor and the next not. Here when he uses optical beams his eyes are clearly shown illuminated through the visor, suggesting he is able to retract it at will - something mimicked by the new Unite Warriors toy. Megatron is also shown to have eye beams for the first time in the series when he blows a hole in the roof of the grandstand at the race track, suggesting both are an addition by AKOM rather than a scripted intention.

It quickly becomes obvious that rather than being the crux of the plot, the charity race is a protracted device to find a way to ensure the Autobots are all together in car form for a period long enough for the Transfixatron to be used on them. It also looks horribly for a while that the sudden reappearance of Chip is simply to liken his paralysis to the Autobots being crippled, as disability has been a theme in his episodes before (notably Roll For It), but thankfully this isn’t the case and his role in the Autobot research team seems more the reason why he is in the story; he is the one who identifies the Transfixatron problem using Teletraan 1 before Wheeljack sets about reversing it. Oddly this means it’s a human character doing the clever intuition again, just as Sparkplug did at the start of Autobot Spike and Carly at the end of The Immobilizer. Wheeljack and Ratchet now seem to follow up with a solution once a human has worked out the problem, which puts an odd spin on where the true intelligence in the series lies. In fact, the original outline for this story actually makes it look much more like a spotlight episode for Chip than any of the Transformers. The synopsis talks only about him being the one who returns to the Ark, and that:

“There, Chip uses his computer expertise to come up with a ray to counter the Stasitron. Subsequently, in a desperate downhill wheelchair ride, Chip physically delivers the explosive knockout that enables the Autobots to transform and overcome the Decepticons.”

Aside from the fact the ‘Stasitron’ becomes the ‘Transfixatron’ in the final episode (a better name for suggesting the idea of ‘fixing’ transformation, rather than the lack of actual movement ‘stasis’ implies), this is a great opportunity for Chip to become something more than just a brain on wheels, and the fuss made about him appearing to stand in his chair to catch Spike’s throw when his biography states he is, “physically handicapped --paralyzed from the waist down-- and must be confined to a wheelchair” is nonsense because the shot clearly shows he propels himself upward using his arms. His legs don’t actually move before gravity returns him to his seat.

The plot is eventually resolved by reversing the power the Transfixatron has, as was the case with the immobilizer in the previous episode. The Autobots then use the device to turn Devastator back into his component vehicle modes, showing the Transfixatron doesn’t actually lock a Transformer in the state they’re in as originally implied, but forces them to switch to, and remain in, their alt mode. Given the way this follows on from such similar previous stories the resolution is all but a formality, and the way the Decepticons appear to leave without the Constructions is more evidence of the way the sub-teams are treated as separate entities. Many times we have seen the ‘Cons desert their comrades, but the comical pile of construction vehicles that concludes the episode is as disappointing as the story itself. Just as in the previous two Constructicon stories, the most powerful Transformer of them all is once again sadly proven to be anything but.

[blueshift]

Jan 23, 2016 15:37:06 GMT Pinwig said:

How this got so long I've no idea. I forgive everyone for looking at it and not bothering.

I read your Sunbow stuff!

[Andy Turnbull]

I haven't yet, as i am still behind.

Way, way behind!

I shall though!

Andy

[Benn]

I, too, read these. Essential reading on a weekend!

[Shockprowl]

Jan 23, 2016 15:39:38 GMT blueshift said:

Jan 23, 2016 15:37:06 GMT Pinwig said:

How this got so long I've no idea. I forgive everyone for looking at it and not bothering.

I read your Sunbow stuff!

So do I. Pinwing's amazing. I think he should gather all his reviews together in some sort of.... VOLUME.

[Pinwig]

I'd need to be sure I can go the distance first! But it's nice to know the time spent writing them is worth it. I'd love to dig deeper into this further, but whenever you read or listen to interviews with the people who wrote the series they never seem to remember anything about it. I'm also really not very familiar with a lot of this, so I'm making assumptions in some cases I'll come back to later. I remember very little of the cartoon. I've seen all the episodes, but the only ones I really remember well are the ones that got VHS releases in the 80s. I'm not an authority on it at all.

I may go back eventually and reformat them. I'm having fun at the moment looking at how each writer developed the original synopsis from the story bible to flesh it out into a full plot, but I haven't done that for many episodes. Doing that helps you understand the thought process of the writer, and sometimes explains some of the wackier ideas - in a lot of cases they're quick fixes to solve problems the very vague original outlines have.

[Shockprowl]

I think that's what I like about your reviews... There's a blend of fan instinct and professional reviewer.








KEEP UP THE FRAKKING GOOD WORK!!!!!

[Pinwig]

Still a week behind, but Day of the Machines is almost done so I'm aiming to be back on track next Sunday with Nightbird. 


24 - Atlantis, Arise!

Atlantis, Arise! seems an odd direction for the Transformers cartoon to go in, introducing as it does an entirely new humanoid race who never appear again, but by doing so it brings some variety to the increasingly formulaic plots that make up the first part of season two. Alongside the mobile nautical city of the title, it raises a fair number of questions, and rather frustratingly because of the short-lived lifespan of the Sub-Atlanticans it doesn’t answer many of them in detail.

The episode moves along at quite a pace, so much so that a short voice over dispenses with the need for a more elaborate reminder than the Decepticons primarily spend their time looking for energy sources instead of planning attacks on the Autobots. It’s largely unnecessary, but the effect is designed to make the viewer feel the episode’s action is already in progress - a way of skipping over the need for a setup.

It makes sense that the Decepticons should be scanning the entire surface of the Earth for energy spikes because they’ve done well so far in finding sources in a hugely diverse range of places, and it’s fitting to think that even the most lowly Decepticons in the form of Laserbeak and Buzzsaw can survey the ocean floor in the kind of clarity beyond human ability at the time (satellite technology caught up in the last few years[1]). It isn’t even Starscream, the supposed scientist in Megatron’s ranks, who carries this job out. In fact this episode gives a lot of time to Soundwave and the cassettes, with Frenzy being the only one left out. Megatron refers to Laserbeak and Buzzsaw as “your cassette vultures” when talking to Soundwave, again reinforcing the notion that they aren’t considered to have the same level of sentience as other Decepticons - here by being referred to as possessions.

The function of the cassettes as recorders was explored under the entry for The Ultimate Doom Part 3, but again here Transformer technology is shown to rely on dated Earth standards. After the Decepticons meet the Sub-Atlanticans, Soundwave records Nergil’s scrambled speech on a cassette to help uncover the underwater king’s treachery. Starscream prompts Soundwave to do this, and it’s almost cute that the key to decrypting Nergil’s speech is to play the audio at a slower speed, implying Soundwave is the only one who can do it because he is a tape deck. This again shows how the writers of the series found it hard to imagine beyond Earth technology of the day when depicting how the Cybertronian equivalent should work, unless (as with Laserbeak and Buzzsaw’s earlier scanning) things just happen with no explanation because they need to for the sake of the plot. It is this playback rather than Soundwave’s unique ability to read thoughts that is used to understand Nergil, because all of the Transformers seem to hear the Sub-Atlantican’s telepathic speech.

With a moving city as an opponent for the Autobots there’s no space for Devastator in this episode, which means when the Decepticons go about improving the Sub-Atlantican technology to lift it from the seabed, it’s the strike planes who are seen doing the building and not the Constructicons. This would have been a great opportunity to show Scrapper’s team integrated into the regular Decepticon forces (as just about happens in the next episode), but they are again noticeable by their absence. Having written City of Steel, Douglas Booth is more than aware of their skills, but it seems likely that given this episode features the Dinobots, bringing the Constructicons in too would suggest a rerun of their climactic meeting in Heavy Metal War, for which there is no time.

Booth is clearly a fan of setting his stories in real world locations, which helps to make the narratives feel more rooted in reality. City of Steel used New York landmarks to show the Decepticons wreaking havoc on humanity, and this time Washington DC gets the same treatment - even to the point that Megatron removes Abraham Lincoln from his memorial seat to symbolically take his place. Seeing crowds of screaming humans fleeing from the towering Decepticons automatically makes the Transformers feel more of a threat, which is something that the Michael Bay films use to great effect.

The true impact of the Decepticons’ arrival on Earth from the wider human point of view is sadly under-developed in the cartoon, with rare examples (such as the opening of Countdown to Extinction showing the Autobots helping to repair the fallout from The Ultimate Doom, and the beginning of Divide and Conquer showing factories being set up to manufacture weapons to counter the invaders) being few and far between. True, the Decepticons often attack generic human plants and installations to steal power sources, but the long term effects of this are never shown and locations aren’t returned to. When that is contrasted with the way the Transformers’ story was largely embedded in human society in the first few issues of the comic it gives the impression that the cartoon stories exist in a bubble away from real life, with Spike and Sparkplug representing the whole of humanity.

The presence of the screaming masses also has a necessary part in helping differentiate Nergil’s people from humans. When the Decepticons first encounter the Sub-Atlanticans there is a definite stand-off between the sides as they size each other up. Megatron has never felt threatened by humans, but here when facing a race physically no bigger he is much more guarded. The audience needs to know quickly that this race are of a power significant enough for Megatron to work with rather than simply subjugate (as with Dr Arkeville’s mind control device), which is demonstrated by Starscream flying into the defence barrier and then being shot down by a single hand gun blast. It makes sense the Sub-Atlanticans don’t look human to support the notion they are different and more powerful, so Nergil is presented in the typical, post ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ (Universal Films, 1954) style for convenience. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Nergil also bears more than a passing resemblance to Mer-Man of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe fame (a series Booth had also written for), whose visual origins lie in the same cinematic reference. To differentiate the green-skinned alien-looking people from the traditional representation of Plato’s Atlantis they become Atlanticans instead, although perhaps deliberately this change didn’t make it as far as the episode title.

MOTU’s Mer-Man is also noted to be an undersea king, as well as having telepathic abilities, which Booth adapts here into the Atlantican way of speech. This point is one which is confusing in itself, because Nergil is seen to mouth the words he is telepathically speaking throughout the story. There are possibilities to explain this, the simplest being that in a cartoon it’s much easier to recognise who is speaking if their mouth is moving (which explains why Optimus Prime in recent years has developed the ability to retract his faceplate during conversation). Another is that in a rare moment of sense for the series it may be that Booth realised talking underwater doesn’t really work, which would also imply that Nergil can hear the Decepticons’ words through thought too.

Aside from the interest created by the Sub-Atlanticans, this is the first story produced in the second season to feature the Dinobots. As noted under the entry for The Autobot Run, it’s common that the sub-teams are dealt with as units rather than individual characters, and are wheeled out to fill the dedicated role outlined for them. This is hinted at by the way the cartoon bible has a list of toys intended for promotion in specific episodes. Whereas ‘ungrouped’ characters (Warpath, Smokescreen, Perceptor etc) are given their own spotlight episodes, all sub-groups (Insecticons, Dinobots, Constructicons, Triple Changers) are listed by their group name and lumped together instead.

Because the sub-groups are therefore defined by purpose instead of individual character, from a writer’s point of view it becomes difficult to make them unique. The Dinobots were fortunate enough to be introduced across two stories, which helped to divide them a little, but since then have simply become the heavy artillery unit. The viewer is deliberately reminded of this when Grimlock says, “Autobots bite off more than they can chew then send for Dinobots”. For those unfamiliar with the characters that one line sums up their purpose, and also reaffirms that even Grimlock doesn’t consider himself to be an Autobot. This is of course also placed here to foreshadow the upcoming desertion storyline, and is reinforced again in the next episode.

In the original synopsis for this episode there is no treachery between the Decepticons and the Sub-Atlanticans, with the Dinobots tipping the balance in favour of the Autobots against their combined force. The synopsis simply says, “Together, the Autobots and the Dinobots defeat their enemies and Atlantis is sunk to the bottom of the ocean”, which presents a problem for the writer because in the world of the Transformers the two sides can shoot each other to bits without appearing to actually damage themselves, but the same can’t be said for humanoid creatures. Indeed, in this episode alone Buzzsaw and Laserbeak are seen to be shot down in a cloud of smoke at least twice but are then straight back in the action. Although Nergil’s people can’t sustain the same level of knock-about wrestling ring theatrics, there has to be a permanent enough conclusion for them not to come back the following week and try again. In addition, by introducing the deception between Nergil and Megatron, Booth has also created a situation where Megatron is as likely to want to off Nergil as the Autobots apparently seem to. His solution is quite sensibly to chicken out of the dilemma and have Nergil go insane in an, ‘if I can’t have it no one will’ moment where he effectively destroys his own kingdom by blowing up his energy reserves. This sinks Sub-Atlantica, drains it of its energy stock pile (thus removing its threat), leaves it open to question whether Nergil dies or not - making it entirely optional as to whether the race are ever used in the series again. An option which is never taken up.

Introducing an entirely new race for the sake of an episode seems a tad excessive, but it’s novel to see Megatron trying to forge an alliance with another power and it means there is enough to talk about without having to resort to picking holes in the plot - such as how Spike can survive the pressure at the bottom of the Atlantic unaided, and why he gets swimming shorts for the expedition when Carly was allowed a more sensible wetsuit two episodes previously. Even the fact that Nergil’s attempt to get one over on the Transformers means yet another robot disabling ray gets dragged into the plot is forgivable because its function is only to show Starscream that the Sub-Atlanticans aren’t quite as cordial as they seem, instead of being the core of the plot like usual. Arise, Atlantis! wins points for trying to do something original with the series by showing a new side to Megatron’s scheming, and the battle scenes at the end are epic enough to rank alongside the likes of The Ultimate Doom because of their real world setting. It’s a fun episode, if a little left-field.

[1] Exploring ocean tectonics from space - topex.ucsd.edu/grav_outreach/

[Pinwig]

25 - Day of the Machines

It’s easy to see that one of the problems with creating new and inventive ideas for the early cartoon is that because it doesn’t build an ongoing continuity like the comic it has to ensure everything is reset at the end of each episode. Only character introductions survive from one story to the next. These are frequent enough in the first season to give a feeling of progression, but exciting and potentially world-expanding changes like the introduction of the space bridge are subsequently ignored in the second. Even tiny connections that would raise a smile are left out, such as the possibility that the energy dome Megatron uses to protect the sea platform in this episode could have been the Sub-Atlantican shield technology from the last story. This limitation means the Autobots are always reactive rather than proactive in their role in stories. The cartoon is about them stopping Megatron’s latest scheme and not starting their own because the unwritten rule that the bad guys can’t win would mean if the Autobots did decide to hatch their own plan there wouldn’t be anything to stop them achieving it. Megatron is therefore usually the key character in any plot.

Because of this there are only so many basic stories that can be retold each week, with the Autobots foiling Megatron’s latest scheme to gather energy in the first season giving way to the Autobots overcoming Megatron’s latest disabling device at the start of the second. The one thing Day of the Machines has going for it is that it doesn’t feature a device for controlling Transformers; this time the exciting twist is that the almost obligatory device of the week is designed to control everything else instead. Even if this is so that Megatron can gather energy again.

Continuing the theme of repetition and the need for Megatron to drive plots, David Wise in his second Transformers script uses the same idea as his first to open the story. In both cases Megatron gains entry to a restricted area using stealth - in the case of Attack of the Autobots using a highly improbable invisibility spray, and in Day of the Machines by hiding ‘gangster style’ in a violin case. While the spray sounds far less plausible than the case, in practise both are as comical as each other and visually lend themselves more to Loony Tunes type antics than something fitting the all-powerful leader of the Decepticons.

Soundwave, his partner in crime here, has used this infiltration technique successfully before - notably in the original pilot where sat outside the Ark in his cassette player mode he is taken inside by Spike. That idea is fitting, but is largely pointless here because he and Megatron are already inside Quantum Laboratories when the episode starts. Their situation is then only worsened by being collected up and put in the lost and found. Setting aside the unintentional humour in Laserbeak quietly unlocking the violin case to let Megatron out before the Decepticon Leader promptly unleashes hell on the metal gate confining him, the group then fly onto the roof of the laboratory (which they might as well have done from the outside anyway), and Laserbeak causes another major explosion by blowing a hole in the roof. If this is Megatron’s revised idea of stealth, the invisibility spray was a much better option.

At least in this case there is a reason given why Megatron is doing all this and not leaving it to his minions, which is what felt odd about his need to fiddle with the sleep machines himself in Attack of the Autobots. Here his goal is to imprint his personality on the TORQ III computer, which for some reason makes it subservient to him. Of course because he’s transferring his brain pattern to TORQ the connection comes from his head, requiring an unfeasibly large and phallic connection because it has to be long enough to reach the socket on TORQ’s fascia. One might think that if he wanted TORQ to follow his commands it would have been safer to use the personality of one of his lackeys for the job, say the ever fawning Rumble, rather than risking his own duplicitous nature being turned against him. This is another illustration of how Wise drives the Decepticon side of these stories directly through Megatron, with the rest of the ‘baddies’ firmly reduced to dependant henchmen roles. The opening would be much more interesting if Soundwave and the cassettes were doing this alone, which could also be said of Attack of the Autobots, but it seems when Wise is writing Megatron he does everything himself.

TORQ III is an interesting proposition, being an artificially intelligent computer with more than a hint of the MCP from Tron about his pinkish face. There is an untold tale here of how the first intelligent computer life was born on Earth, and you’d think that the Transformers would be quite interested to know how this came about, particularly as Megatron is still in need of expanding his ranks to effectively combat the Autobots.

In contrast to Megatron’s solo nature, the Autobots are much more of a team, and their narratives don’t revolve solely around the actions of Optimus, shown in this episode by the fact that two separate units take on the threat of TORQ and Megatron simultaneously. That said, having been in the background a lot of late, the Autobot leader does take a major role in this episode as he navigates TORQ’s maze alone after ordering his team to wait outside. It’s a nice ‘you’ve got the touch’ type moment for his character, heroic and noble in sacrificing himself for the others, but it’s overshadowed by the simple question of where the Dinobots have suddenly disappeared to as they would surely have made much shorter work of the whole thing.

The answer seems to be that they’ve done their job. They feature in this episode for one reason alone - to show they’re more powerful than the others and so Grimlock can again reiterate his displeasure at being brought out just to hit things, which he does with the line “Always get Autobots out of messes they get into”. This is identical to their use in the previous episode, and is about as good as the series gets at laying continuity points to be picked up later. That done, they vanish literally between shots.

It’s unusual that a sub-team takes part in a story without driving the plot, but Day of the Machines takes that even further by featuring a lone Constructicon on Megatron’s oil siphoning platform. He may be the wrong colour and strangely immobile, but his vehicle mode looks right, he does speak and Hound refers to him by name making it conclusive that this is Hook. This is the first time this kind of integration of a solo character from a sub-team is seen in the series, and it is pleasing to see the removal of that deliberate separation, even in this small way. It would have been fantastic to see some of the others in the background working on transferring the oil too, but as it stands the Decepticon forces in this episode are restricted to Soundwave and the cassettes, barring the unannounced arrival of Starscream and Thundercracker for a couple of shots in the final fight on the platform.

As an aside, his utilisation of TORQ does raise the question of why Megatron doesn’t have an equivalent to Teletraan 1 in his own base. At times the Autobot computer provides answers for the Autobots, and in terms of defending the Ark warns Optimus of problems too. Not quite on the level of something like Auntie from the early UK comics, but enough that Teletraan gives the impression of being a reliable mother figure or solution finder, more efficient even than the other Autobots. That would be why it is deliberately excluded from this story - presumably Teletraan would be able to overpower TORQ far more quickly than Prime having to physically reach it on foot.

Perhaps the reason why the Decepticons don’t have their own computer is shown at the point Soundwave reveals TORQ has been disabled - in terms of monitoring and information gathering he effectively is the Decepticon equivalent of Teletraan 1. Sadly this moment also points out a flaw in the story as Megatron simply pulls out a device to control the linker chips himself - showing that TORQ’s role in the plot is entirely superfluous. It’s a shame with the possibility of Megatron controlling thousands of machines that more isn’t made of the idea, which might also make TORQ a more important figure in controlling a huge network, but as it is a few odd defence machines and nicking a flotilla of oil tankers doesn’t seem to be a particularly ambitious use of the technology.

These problems don’t detract from the fact that like Attack of the Autobots, David Wise writes an enjoyable romp and doesn’t let logic or common sense get in the way of telling it. It’s easy to pick apart any of the cartoon stories, to the point the list of things that don’t make sense in any given episode is insurmountable. This only becomes an issue when the basic premise is bland or flawed to start with (Autobot Spike or Changing Gears being examples), but in the case of Day of the Machines, the idea of Megatron taking control of every machine in the world is an exciting (if unfulfilled) premise strong enough to permit the viewer to overlook the problem of how the linker chips to do this with machines that have no circuits to integrate with. It’s a fun story, and deserved a sequel to further explore the possibilities that TORQ III could bring to the Transformers universe. Fortunately though, more on the idea of artificial intelligence is only an episode away.

[Pinwig]

26 - Enter the Nightbird

In many ways Enter the Nightbird is a perfect companion piece to Day of the Machines because it again looks at the idea of humans creating artificial life and how that relates to the Transformers. What’s different here is the way the Autobots and Decepticons differently react to the idea of humans creating an automaton, and the way Transformers are shown to be ‘not just robots’ through the emotional reaction the Nightbird provokes in both Megatron and Starscream.

The story presents another good example of how the initial synopsis is fleshed out by writers at the script stage. Here, the original premise is: “A demonstration ninja robot, Nightbird, is unveiled by her Japanese inventor. The presentation is interrupted by the appearance of the Decepticons, who make off with the ninja”. This is then followed with, “Infiltrating Autobot headquarters, the ninja steals a valuable microchip which shuts down Teletraan I”.

This explains why the Nightbird is styled as a ninja, and also why the Autobots at the beginning of the episode are reinforcing their base with new pressure sensitive alarms. A ninja is a logical choice for a robot that will need to enter the Ark by stealth, and the question of why alarms don’t go off, as would be the case with a Decepticon attack, is answered by the way the new system is one Nightbird can bypass by demonstrating her ninja skills. This also explains why Dr Fujiyama has created a robot the size of a Transformer when it would be far more logical to keep his research human sized. The fact the Nightbird is the size of a Transformer and clearly a fighting machine suggests that there is military intent behind all this anyway. Why else would humans need a 30 foot tall warrior robot other than to act in defence against the Decepticons?

It’s therefore comical the way Fujiyama tries to explain Nightbird is not “meant for battle”, despite the fact she is shown to be holding a pair of nun-chucks taller than he is and has a sword strapped to her back. That awkward incongruity can be put down to the way the only figures in the series to advocate and initiate violence are the Decepticons, who we know are ‘very bad people’ and that it may seem a little off in this usually very sanitised cartoon to have humans displaying intent to harm with enormous fighting machines. This would be why the writers push the idea that Nightbird isn’t a warrior until the Decepticons reprogram her, instead of saying this is a fighter but under human control because of her lack of independent thought. All of this could have been got round by saying the Nightbird is the first of a new wave of robots designed to defend the Earth from Decepticon attack, which would explain the size and armament in one sentence while maintaining a peaceful stance.

It may appear stereotypical that it’s a Japanese scientist who is developing new robot technology, but this would be more to do with it being a ‘ninja’ robot than the popular misconception of the time that all technological advancement came from the Far East. Given Brawn decides he can walk back to the Ark after the battle at the University and there is no evidence of Skyfire’s airbus service, this story must be taking place in America anyway.

Being a silent ninja helps sidestep the problem of whether Nightbird should speak, which is also part of the wider question of her level of sentience. Both factions perceive the Nightbird as something less than them, but whereas the Autobots see her as a joke, Megatron sees more potential. Wheeljack and Ratchet, the two Autobots most closely associated with creating and repairing robots, laugh at the University unveiling with lines such as “If it walks, it probably needs a long extension cord” and “I wonder if batteries are included?” However, it’s worth noting that Optimus is more guarded with his thoughts. Fujiyama initially asks the Autobots to come to the unveiling as security, and does mention the Decepticons, but Prime shows interest in attending to find out more about Nightbird herself as well. One wonders what Optimus is really thinking at that point, whether he is pondering the question of his own origin and how humans perceive him, or considering the possible ramifications of humans creating robot life.

Megatron meanwhile sees the Nightbird more as a toy (or pet), evidenced with lines such as “she’s all I ever wanted” later in the episode, echoing the cries of children everywhere that year unwrapping Transformers under the Christmas tree. He openly perceives her as being as potentially lethal as Starscream, but with a controllable attitude, which gives rise to the tongue-in-cheek emotional triangle that fans have enjoyed exploiting in jest ever since. Megatron’s desire to have a figure with Starscream’s strength and guile under his control again shows how Megatron is something of a control freak by nature, even if it comes across in the writing more that he fancies her. Returning to the episode synopsis, Starscream’s reaction is given as: “…the ninja is immobilized without harm by a jealous Starscream, and delivered safely back to her creator by the Autobots” giving the writers a poser in trying to come up with a plausible reason why Starscream would be jealous of an automaton. He is of course insanely confident in his own ability, it being he sees himself as the rightful leader of the Decepticons, and his natural vanity is an obvious target for making him the one to come under threat of replacement. Note also how the episode never answers the question of why Nightbird is lined up as a replacement rather than an addition, because obviously adding a new robot permanently to the series without a toy to support it would never happen.

It’s an opportunity for nice character driven conceit to resolve the story in this manner though, and is a way to avoid having a gang of Autobots basically beat up a woman on screen to subdue her - something that would raise far deeper concerns than the comical exchange we get to explain the resolution instead. “She’s not so hot!” chides Starscream before Megatron quickly snubs him with, “She’s hot enough to replace you”. Aside from the double-entendre and the implications reading too much into that creates, Starscream’s hurt at being replaced is very in keeping with his biography: “Driven by envy... Ruthless, cold-blooded, cruel...considers himself most sophisticated and handsome”, especially because Nightbird manages Starscream’s forte, attacking through speed and stealth, far better than he does. It also creates a strangely tender moment when Starscream is imprisoned and left behind, rejected and laughed at. His inner insecurity and jealousy of Megatron hasn’t been this well portrayed before, giving the boastful playground bully of the early episodes a more subtle depth to his nature.

What makes less sense is the fact that Starscream is jealous at all, given he has already established that “she’ll burn out fast after the way Bombshell over-torqued her circuits” - something that Megatron acknowledges by saying she’ll complete the mission before that happens. This all seems to be forgotten when Megatron starts making claims about replacing Starscream with her.

All this though presents Nightbird as a possession rather than an independent character. There is nothing in the episode until the very final shot that implies Nightbird is fully sentient, before or after the Deceptions have ‘upgraded’ her. The fact the frown at the end demonstrates an emotional reaction begs the question of whether she is ‘alive’ right from the start of the episode, from the point Bombshell reconfigures her, or if it is a result of the learning process she goes through in the story. We have seen how she reacts to situations and employs battle protocols, and is capable of making decisions bordering on intuition such as the best way to avoid the sensor traps in the Ark, but the deliberate lack of speech and movement when receiving instruction is used as a way of implying this is just a machine - unless of course she is pretending. It could also be argued the way she is put into cold storage at the end of the episode shows Fujiyama doesn’t consider her sentient, but then Prime did exactly the same with the Dinobots when they were first created and he decided he didn’t trust them. Even the Transformers see themselves as something that can be switched off.

It’s worth comparing the way Nightbird is presented to TORQ III from the previous episode, which gives us the other way of looking at artificial intelligence. In that case, the computer’s ability to talk and react to conversation implied complete sentience, but at the same time it was confined to a screen and was unable to move. In that way TORQ was restricted to being less than human in the same way that Nightbird’s lack of speech limits her. One therefore wonders what might have happened if Dr Fujiyama had spoken to Quantum Laboratories earlier in his research.

Enter the Nightbird is one of the sub-set of episodes written by once only writers. Sylvia Wilson and Richard Milton never again appear on a title card for the series, and the internet reveals almost nothing about them. Perhaps it’s worth pointing out that Wilson is the only female writer credited on any of the 65 season one and two episodes, which makes it an incredible coincidence that it’s the first to feature a female robot.

With writers possibly less familiar with the source material than others, this means the episode adheres closely to the writer’s guide and fulfils the typical needs of a Transformers cartoon outlined by it. A lot of the dialogue reflects this in the way characters talk about their individual weapons and abilities while using them, reminding the viewer of why (particularly the Autobots) are different to each other. This harks back to the very early episodes where this was commonplace, but in quick succession here we have Cliffjumper’s glass gun, Jazz’s deafening speakers, Mirage’s invisibility and Hound’s tracking skills, as well as an attempt at interpreting Megatron’s anti-matter technology - part of his armoury usually ignored by writers familiar with the setup because of how ludicrously powerful a black hole powered gun sounds. Here however the idea is misinterpreted to imply the anti-matter blaster draws energy from any source to power itself, in this case the net holding Nightbird, and not necessarily a black hole. The line “Watch how my anti-matter blaster eats up the energy” shows this.

The flip-side of using writers new to the series means that some unwritten rules get broken, a good example of which is how Bombshell is used here individually away from the Insecticon banner, and with a much more compliant personality than one might expect from the way matters were left at the end of Traitor (significant because in the original broadcast order Nightbird came straight after Traitor). This would be because during Nightbird’s conversion the synopsis tells us “The Decepticons reset her circuits, intensifying her power tremendously, and program her to treat the Autobots as her enemy”. This is fine in itself, but any writer unfamiliar with the characters would look through the rosta in the writer’s guide to pick out who is most likely to be able to do this. While Scrapper has become Megatron’s go to minion for engineering, his cartoon biography specifically states he is a building designer. Instead, Bombshell is the only likely candidate because he “can turn foes into helpless accomplices by injecting cerebro-shells into their heads (robot or human) with his stinger”. That’s about as close as any of the Decepticons get to being right for the job of improving Nightbird, and in keeping with the wide use of dialogue to reinforce unique character traits in this episode, the line “Cruel sense of humor... amuses himself by having his victims debase themselves once he gains control of their minds” in Bombshell’s bio becomes “I love warping minds for you, Megatron” on screen. In that way it’s Bombshell’s function that is needed here rather than the actual character, so the Insecticons don’t feature as a group.

Unintentionally funny in places, but with an interesting premise behind it, Enter the Nightbird brings the Bruce Lee Kung-Fu movie experience to The Transformers in a light-hearted and child friendly manner. It’s a story really about the Decepticons finding a new way to infiltrate the Ark with a bit of fighting thrown in for good measure. In the original outline Nightbird’s mission is to disable Teletraan 1, something that the writers realised would be ultimately pointless if the computer was back in action again the following week. Instead the premise shifts to the stolen chip being a storage device detailing the location of the world’s most prominent energy sources, bringing the plot back in the line with the overarching theme of the quest for energy. We see a new kind of robot for the first time, but ultimately the most interesting thing about it is the way we get to see the old ones from a different point of view, with Starscream’s whining jealousy and Megatron’s emotionally charged threat to replace him bringing a new and uniquely human dimension to their characters.

[Bogatan]

Just started the rewatch and the thread reading.

MTMTE 1 - nothing much to add except for the random strike planes.

Aug 19, 2015 11:40:16 GMT Pinwig said:

Okay, so is the fact Sunstorm, Bitstream and Hotlink exist down to artistic licence on the part of the fans based on a colouring error, or was it intentional? when Wheeljack and Bumblebee approach the Decepticons on the bridge you can clearly see five figures. Then this split second image:



Gave rise to those three characters, when to me it looks more like a wrongly coloured Starscream, Skywarp with his colours reversed and Thundercracker with minor colouring errors. Was it only the Botcon 2013 set that first named Bitstream and Hotlink? and why was the set called the Rainmaker set when that confuses it with the other three tetrajets that seem to have that name in 'Divide and Conquer'? 

Does anything definitively explain that or is it all conjecture?

I dont think they are errors, well sometimes sure, but I dont think its coincidence that the mould that that was being reused 3 times in the initial release was the one that ended up with loads of cartoon repaints. With a small Decepticon range the writers/animators would have looked at Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp and thought well if theres three of them whay cant there be more.

Sunstorm especially is so far removed from any other Transformer in the first few years that I can not see how it cant have been deliberate. Purple jets reappear so often theres no way they werent being used as cannon fodder. But it could be that that is meant to be Thundercracker leading the team.

Kinda feel bad for the guy in the back that history has forgotten.

[Pinwig]

I think you're right with this. Having the benefit of hindsight now being further into the run, I think it's very likely that the presence of three planes would have led the animators to randomly colour more to add variety, especially on Cybertron. At that point it's possible the series was only ever envisaged as a pilot story, so as long as the main cast got a look in somewhere the crowd scenes could be, and were, filled with anything that looked like it would fit in. Then in later years the fan club's need for obscure characters would have led them to create lives for them.

The random repainting does stop pretty quickly. For a while Reflector is the easy crowd filler, then in the second season the characters used in each episode become more precisely defined and it gets much rarer that odd background characters just happen to be there. Cheaper to animate.

[blueshift]

Don't forget, MTMTE also included orange and green cassettes in Megatron's army. They were clearly making filler characters.

[Pinwig]

Woah! Missed that. Pictorial evidence!

[Benn]

These guys?

(I'm sorry, I don't know how to make the pictures happen)

[Andy Turnbull]

I eagerly await Burns getting angry when they are given names and a backstory.

Andy

[Pinwig]

Was really hoping to do a double this weekend and try and get back up to date, but unexpected events overtook me and I lost a day. Here's a load of waffle about body doubles.

27 - A Prime Problem

The use of doubles or doppelgangers as a device to illustrate the opposites of good and evil is as old as writing itself, with various mythologies from Egyptian to Viking using the idea many hundreds of years before popular fictions such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde got in on the act. As such the ‘evil twin’ can seem a tired and over-exploited idea to modern eyes, and you would be hard pressed to name a genre TV show that hasn’t used it for its own ends, so it’s only fitting that The Transformers should adapt it in its own way to explore the differing moral perspectives of the Autobots and Decepticons.

As usual Megatron introduces the problem that drives the narrative, and not for the first time the energy source of the week is produced by crystals - in this case Korlonium, which is said by the Decepticon Leader to be the rarest and most dangerous source of energy in “this” solar system. Soundwave’s cry of “Success!” and the fact the Decepticons are at the chasm seconds after it is revealed suggest that Megatron caused the earthquake to reveal it, linking back to the idea of the planet-wide energy survey going on at the start of Atlantis, Arise! and that Megatron may have stockpiled a list of potential energy sources as a result. Either way he doesn’t know the crystals are specifically Korlonium until Soundwave’s autoscout analyses them. In keeping with previous episodes (eg Fire on the Mountain), Megatron’s use of crystal energy is for destructive purposes rather than to fuel the Decepticons’ escape from Earth - a curious but consistent differentiation.

The autoscout is an interesting device in itself. Created specifically for this scene and never again used in the series, it is referred to as “an” autoscout by Megatron, suggesting it is an off-the-peg drone that is commonly used for dangerous or exploratory survey work. Although it can transform and assumes a cassette form for storage (suggesting it is something specific to Soundwave’s arsenal), it is shown not to be sentient and doesn’t have a computerised voice of any kind for relaying information. This is deliberate because its only real use here is to be destroyed to show the power of the crystals, meaning it has to be seen as a device rather than a life form. As such its robot mode can’t be based on something living, although its odd gangly appearance shows little creative thought on the part of the animators. It does however have a visual reference in the Sunbow collection of character models, cementing its importance in the show’s history.

Megatron again makes a point of explaining his new base is a “temporary” one, which is a recurring theme and a line always put in at the start of episodes where the Decepticons aren’t operating out of their usual undersea base. It’s odd that in a series so relaxed with continuity that this seems important enough to explain every time it happens. In this case the Decepticons being away from home is about Megatron’s base of operations being close enough to the crystals for Windcharger and Spike to infiltrate it.

This new flight-capable HQ contains the equipment necessary to ‘clone’ Transformers. It’s an important distinction that although Megatron refers to the process as cloning, it doesn’t create a living copy, just a mechanical puppet that has to be directly controlled. This makes it feasible to believe that Megatron could duplicate Prime as quickly as he does, and explains why he isn’t using the process to create hundreds of new warriors. Clearly another of Scrapper’s inventions (although not said to be) the device uses a holographic scan to fashion a solid copy with moving parts - in effect it’s an advanced 3D printer. The use of a helmet as a controller suggests that Megatron controls his duplicate Prime by thought, which also might explain why the copy can walk and gesture when Megatron isn’t performing the same actions.

In this way the premise holds together, but the writing sadly breaks continuity when the imposter Prime makes the mistakes which alert the Autobots to a potential problem. Megatron thinking Ironhide is Bumblebee is wrong because he refers to him by name in The Autobot Run when deciding on the first Autobot to be fed into the crushing device (“I suggest that the talkative Ironhide be your first client”). This is a good example of why the series foregoes building an ongoing continuity and stays as simple as possible, as the plethora of jobbing writers bought in to write odd episodes wouldn’t have the knowledge base to avoid such errors, and the bible contains nothing beyond basic plot synopses. It’s the job of the script editors to clear up continuity problems, which makes this instance even worse because the episode is credited on screen to those actual editors, Dick Robbins and Bryce Malek (one of only two stories in the entire run, the other being Transport to Oblivion). It also doesn’t make much sense that Megatron would have no idea how Teletraan-1 works given his expertise in Cybertronian technology. Perhaps this again shows the disparity between the dedication to accuracy the cartoon had compared to the comic, or simply a lack of imagination in coming up with a way for the Autobots to smell a rat. On that note, the abundance of ridiculous name calling in this episode also shows a certain disdain for the subject on the part of the writers, with Floptimus Prime and Megarat apparently leading the two factions among many other ill-fitting accolades.

Beyond continuity errors, it’s also awkward that just as the Autobots decide something is “very wrong” with Optimus, another appears and is put under equal suspicion. No one suggests the one acting oddly is the fake. Given the imposter Prime is basically a brainless automaton, Teletraan-1 surprisingly can’t separate them when scanning them, and the Autobots then decide the easiest way to tell two ‘identical’ robots apart is to test them physically. No one at this point thinks to ask the other Prime if he can work Teletraan-1 or recognise Bumblebee. The whole sequence is an awkward nonsense that avoids the logical way of telling the two Primes apart and makes the Autobots look far more stupid than they are.

Megatron’s plan also requires a second automaton to be destroyed by the first to prove the fake Prime’s authenticity to the other Autobots. This allows for one of the high points of the episode - an exchange between Megatron and Starscream which again explores the balance of power between the two. Starscream initially enjoys being taken into Megatron’s confidence as the pair discuss who should be sacrificed in the ruse. The audience gets the joke quickly that it’s Starscream Megatron is thinking of, but the way he pauses long enough to revel in his lieutenant’s distress when he names him reinforces Megatron’s position of power and shows his delight in tormenting Starscream. Conversely, Starscream’s natural fear of his leader causes him to attempt to run away rather than take him on. This illustration of the relationship between the two is very similar to the way it’s shown in Enter the Nightbird - both times Starscream seeking praise from his leader before hating him for being discarded. Starscream, in his own words being “the pride of the Cybertron war academy”, can’t believe he is thought so disposable by the figure he secretly has significant admiration for.

This in itself hints at possible reasons why Megatron keeps such a duplicitous figure so close to him, in that he simply enjoys tormenting him as a reminder to others (and perhaps to himself) of who has the true power in the Decepticon ranks. Starscream’s weakness is then deliberately reinforced by the fact that a character as lowly as Laserbeak can round him up and return him alone, although it was somewhat impressively Laserbeak’s job to singlehandedly take down Prime earlier in the episode as well.

There is something that doesn’t sit right about the way the Autobots believe the fake Prime to be real because he has mercilessly destroyed a Decepticon. The duel Starscream suggests is reminiscent of the same ‘loser must leave’ clause in the Cybertronian code Megatron invokes in Heavy Metal War, but it comes as a surprise that the Autobots are so unphased by Starscream’s apparent termination when Optimus usually goes to any length to avoid destructive courses of action. The threat of death is implied but never shown in the series, so when a Transformer is put permanently out of commission it seems odd the Autobots would believe someone so violent is their real leader. It certainly doesn’t feel right to the viewer, even though they’re in on the ruse that this is just Megatron playing games. This of course is why the movie comes across as so shocking with its wholesale massacre of many of the original cast.

What works better is the way in which the Autobots finally resolve who the right Prime is, which relies on strength of character instead of strength of body. Megatron wrecks his own plan by not recognising that Prime would prioritise rescuing Spike over stopping the Decepticons, highlighting the difference in moral stance between the sides. Here, rather like Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Optimus and Megatron are shown to be two sides of the same coin, and the viewer is presented with the resolution that truth and honour will always triumph over lies and deceit; the ‘freedom’ of Prime’s motto winning over the ‘tyranny’ of Megatron’s.

Outside the confines of the plot, this episode shows the first signs of the series transitioning into the second phase of season two with the almost unnoticeable introduction of Warpath and then more overtly Powerglide - the first new characters to appear since the end of season one. With such a huge rosta of 1985 toys to bring into the show most aren’t even given the simple “worth the time we spent building them” explanation Megatron gives the Constructicons - new arrivals are assumed to have either always been around or arrived in some unspoken adventure. In this case Warpath’s first action is to be taken down by the fake Starscream, and Powerglide too is seen fleetingly before he saves Spike at the end of the episode. It is jarring to see an entirely new character appear out of nowhere, but Beachcomber and Inferno will follow suit before the dam bursts with Dinobot Island clearly showing that there was no plan for the introduction of the new toys.

It’s worth noting though that in the original outline Powerglide isn’t specifically mentioned as saving the day. The synopsis only details the way in which the Autobots resolve the doppelganger issue: “The Autobots decide upon the authentic Prime when one of the two opts for rescuing Spike, who has been captured, in preference to the false leader, who encourages the Autobots to retrieve the Korlonium crystals before the chasm closes again.” Therefore it is Robbins and Malek themselves who wrote Powerglide in as Spike’s saviour, meaning that it is no accident.

It’s possible that originally the scene featured Skyfire, but Powerglide gave the writers an alternative. From the beginning Jetfire was a problem character for Sunbow, explained by the note “JETFIRE has been changed to SKYFIRE with a new model due to legal reasons. Do not use the character unless necessary in small scenes” in the bible. Consequently it’s surprising he appears as often as he does, but past his introduction is almost always used as transport. In fact by this point he had been written out of the show - Day of the Machines is his last appearance. Not having any kind of air power limits the Autobots’ mobility though, so the early presence of Powerglide here suggests the writers were thankful to bring in an alternative as soon as possible.

In summary, A Prime Problem works along similar lines to Autobot Spike, in that it takes a well worn literary device and simplifies it for a young audience. The fact that here the anti-Prime isn’t a proper inverse of the real one prevents the opportunity to explore the darker side of the Autobot leader, something along the lines of Star Trek’s Mirror, Mirror (eventually touched on in Transformers fiction with the character of Nemesis Prime), but given the muddy way in which Autobot Spike explored ideas of psychology it is perhaps better that it is kept simple. When it comes to it there is only one Optimus Prime, and looking past the plot holes and continuity problems we find the usual moral message that good will triumph and evil will ever be its own undoing. It’s only surprising that Robbins and Malek didn’t take the opportunity to use the story as a more obvious metaphor to show that only true Transformers are the real thing, and that fakes and knock offs only ever lead to disappointment.

[Pinwig]

28 - The Core

The Core is the first of two scripts contributed to the series by prolific children’s cartoon writer Dennis Marks. Having been involved in cartoon writing since the early 1960s, prior to working on The Transformers Marks had engaged in a busy relationship with Marvel that saw him produce as well as write for Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and also come up with the concept for the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon in conjunction with D&D creator Gary Gygax. It’s therefore no surprise that someone so familiar with children’s cartoons should turn in such a well structured story for The Transformers. Given Marks would be familiar with the fashion for learning points and moral messages in cartoons of this era it’s also possibly why this episode contains more pauses to educate the audience than usual, such as Starscream the scientist explaining the potential for the Earth to shatter when drilled through, and the demonstration that drills need coolant to prevent them overheating.

Marks had clearly done his homework on the series itself too because the sudden reappearance of a spacebridge (not seen since the previous season) as Megatron’s escape route isn’t in the original synopsis for the episode, suggesting that the writer had watched a few early episodes to get the tone and lore right when fleshing out the plot. There is also a return to the Autobots concealing tools and weapons in their arms, most prominently shown in the original pilot trilogy, and the use of well established stock skills such as Mirage’s disappearing act, Jazz’s lightshow, Sunstreaker’s fancy driving and Ironhide’s ability to freeze water (also a skill demonstrated in More Than Meets The Eye). It’s nice to think that at least some of the writers did a bit of research and tried to tie their stories into what little continuity there was. The fact the sight of a spacebridge stuck in a disused cave causes a smile shows just how little there is to work with in that regard.

The story is the third of the second season to heavily feature the Constructicons, again animated by AKOM. Now already established, they are handled better in this story than the previous ones. Their conversations early in the episode are left free to reinforce character and ensure they’re properly differentiated, shown in biography references such as Long Haul expressing dissatisfaction with being a dump truck and Mixmaster using his drum to concoct sealants. This is also the first time that Scrapper isn’t used in a leadership role, with Mixmaster being the one who generally seems to be the most vocal.

The surprisingly fast-paced plot breaks from the usual structure of building up to Devastator appearing as the dénouement in the final act. Here he is thrown into the mix almost from the start, which suggests that the writing team were already looking beyond “Constructicons, transform and merge into Devastator!” being a suitable payoff for an episode. Marks also chose to bring Devastator in earlier than the story synopsis demands, pitting him against the Autobots early in the first act rather than at the point the dominator discs are used. This shows a writer confident in playing his trump card early, but then raises the question of where the episode can go for the climax. Here that means Devastator loses his near mute/King Kong type personality as he begins to show emotion and ambition beyond just growling and hitting things, particularly at the end of the episode when Megatron issues an ‘everyone for themselves’ escape order and leaves him behind.

That moment is the most interesting in the episode because Megatron’s need for self-preservation brings about his own downfall and deepens Devastator’s character at the same time. By discarding his underlings, Megatron overlooks the fact that Devastator’s childlike intelligence would mean without a direct order he would simply try to follow his ‘father’ and in doing so destroys the spacebridge escape route. Eager to please, Devastator then saves the day by digging after the drill to stop it. His blind faith in his leader is then demonstrated when he returns to the surface and refers to Megatron as ‘noble’. Then, when he hears he has deserted him, he refuses to believe Chip and interprets Megatron’s action as a strategic retreat. By this point few Decepticons display such unswerving loyalty, bringing a touch of sadness to the exchange as the viewer realises that Devastator is like the puppy who returns to his master after being kicked because he knows no different. The moment is especially poignant coming as it does straight after the attempt by the Autobots to forcibly change his allegiance.

Prime’s perspective in this episode is another talking point. When Chip and Wheeljack explain the theory behind the dominator discs, he sees having Devastator “under Autobot control” as a way to keep the Decepticons in check. This arguably goes against his motto of freedom being the right of all sentient beings, but given that most episodes to this point in the second season have featured some kind of robot control device, a fair number of which are Autobot creations, it’s not really any different to what’s gone before. It fits his character that he would try and demonstrate to Devastator that Megatron’s actions could bring about the death of them all, perhaps in the hope that he would switch sides under his own volition, but really it would make more sense to talk to the individual Constructicons than their combined form. This again touches on the idea that the sub-teams are seen as slightly separate to the two main factions, in the same way Prime views the Dinobots. It’s interesting to play with the idea that Prime actually believes he can pull the Constructicons away from Megatron, but fails because of their inability to see Megatron for what he really is.

It also makes sense to view Prime’s attempts to control Devastator more as being a desire to confiscate Megatron’s power than find a way to ultimately defeat him. Although it looks like the Autobots for once are being proactive by coming up with the control device, it’s only deployed as a reaction to the immediate danger of the Decepticon plan. It does seem odd that Chip and Wheeljack can produce the dominator discs just when they’re needed, as if the pair had the device already built and were keeping it in reserve for a time when they knew Prime would go for using it, but as usual when Prime has victory in his grasp he walks away. The plan works, Devastator defeats the Decepticons, but when Ironhide suggests finishing them off Prime says, “There’s no need; they’re trapped. They have no water so they can’t drill. Let’s head back for repairs and mop up later.” In his eyes the job is done because the drill can’t be operated, not that the Decepticons are finished. This then leads to Megatron revealing to Starscream that he has full control of Devastator after all, leading to the climactic battle for control of the giant. As with the last few episodes Starscream is used as the question asking sidekick again, a role he didn’t start out with but now seems to have consistently adopted.

Treating Devastator like a character rather than a weapon is a much needed new direction for the Constructicons, and one which will be echoed by the way the Dinobots also gain significant development in this season. The fact that Marks had clearly bothered to do some research shows in the way the episode feels embedded in the continuity through background reference to established devices such as the space bridge and the Autobots making use of their unique abilities. The revelation two-thirds of the way through that Megatron is fully aware of what the Autobots are up to for once gives us a plot with a genuinely surprising twist, and there is more than the usual amount of Devastator fun on offer for a Constructicon spotlight episode, making The Core a worthwhile watch that offers a little more than the usual stories at this point in season two.

[Andy Turnbull]

The Ultimate Doom Part 1

The Autobots are just the most inept defenders of Earth. Soundwave and co. are outside Headquarters and not an alarm goes off. I mean, really how useless are they? This makes no sense, especially later on in the episode when the Decepticons manage to sneak in, only because Sparkplug has damaged Teletraan-1. To further compound things after the Decepticons flee, they wait until Teletraan-1's spy in the sky is back on line, before taking any kind of action.

Staggering to see the lack of agency they have.

Love how Dr Arkeville just appears out of nowhere, I assume he's been drafted by Megatron to do repairs and such, given how they appear to have no qualified medics.

In addition to the hypnochip, it would appear that Dr Arkeville raided the store that Sparkplug gets his clothes from just so his slaves all look alike, I do like a villain that gives thought to this sort of thing.

Some very ropey animation in the episode as well, with Megatron having a very stubby Fusion Cannon and one or two times when Starscream and the Jets all have diddy arms.

Compared to our last multi-parter - episode 1 is not off to the best of starts.

Andy