So, picking up from where I left off last week when discussing some of the things that jumped out at me while re-watching the 1st season of the original Transformers cartoon, there were a lot of things that I didn’t remember from watching the show as a kid. I really curious to see how the second season holds up to the first considering the franchise really caught on and became hugely popular between the two. At some point I also need to go back and see how these first 16 episodes stack up against the Marvel comics.
Did you know that the Autobots can SURF!
Whereas a motif in the series is to introduce new characters with specific alt-modes that work in a specific environment (ala Jetfire to help give the Autobots flight capabilities or the Constructicons to enable the Decepticons to burrow under the Autobots base), sometimes this is thrown out the window because there are no toys to back up these needs. In episode 13, “Revival”, part 3 of “The Ultimate Doom” mini series, the Autobots need to infiltrate the Decepticons new energy station from the sea. Instead of building a boat or introducing a new character (Sea Spray was a year or so away from release), the Autobots instead decide to catch a tidal wave and secretly surf into the complex. Hey, maybe skateboarding mutated giant turtles weren’t such a groundbreaking idea after all!?!
Did you know that Soundwave can read your mind?
In episode 5, “Roll For It”, we’re introduced to a new human, Chip Case, who is working in a laboratory with a scientist on an antimatter formula. Of course Megatron wants to steal it as a means of producing energon cubes, and though he tried to out-smart those big evil bozos by memorizing the formula and destroying the only electronic copy, Chip Chase soon learns the folly of underestimating the Decepticons! Again, another motif of the Transformers was for the writers to introduce new powers for each of the robots, but largely these were dictated by the plots and from a continuity standpoint didn’t make a whole lot of sense. For instance, sometimes Optimus Prime’s antennae on his head can work as a long range communications device, yet other times when he’s stranded and needs help these aren’t utilized. Hell, just consider his trailer which rounds out his vehicle form nicely, but then typically it disappears when he transforms (except the episode where he’s badly injured and Huffer helps out by hauling it back to their base.)
So when Megatron is confronted with Chip holding the antimatter formula hostage in his brain, he simply orders Soundwave to read the puny human’s un-evolved mind. At first I thought Soundwave was going to utilize some sort of device, but then I was surprised to see him bend down and place his index fingers to Chip’s head, downloading all the pertinent aspects to the formula. How utterly weird!
So Soundwave was a streetlight on Cybertron?!?
One of the cool aspects to the first episode, and something I’m really glad that the writers and story editors decided to include in the Transformers series was to highlight the Autobot and Decepticon’s alien natures by giving them different alt-modes before they come to Earth. It isn’t until crashing on the planet and being awoken millions of years later that the Transformers get their iconic alternate modes (Teletran-1 is awakened and send out a satellite that scans various vehicles and items and then sends that data back to be reprogrammed into the Transformers.) For instance, before becoming fighter jets, the Decepticon seekers Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp have an interesting pyramidal alt-mode, referred to by the fans as Tetrajets…
These al-modes back on Cybertron were typically similar in nature to their eventual vehicles counterparts, with a couple weird exceptions. Apparently on Cybertron Soundwave was a streetlight! Granted, as far as spying on the enemy faction goes, this would be an awesome alt-mode, but with the playability factor in mind for the toys this would have been a nightmare. Some of the characters were also somewhere in the middle of oddly alien and their new Earth counterpart. Take Laserbeak for instance. He seems like a weird flying disk, but also has the head of an avian…
Even though this concept was decently thought out by the writers, there was one major stumbling block that couldn’t be overcome (at least not without confusing the young target audience.) Having an alien alt-mode is one thing, but what about the iconic appearance of the robot characters? How would the kids know who is who if for instance Bumblebee is introduced in a robot mode that retains some of the parts of his Cybertronian alt-mode, and then changes after he’s programmed to convert into a VW Beetle on Earth? Sure, he might still be yellow, but then so is Sunstreaker. Nope, to circumvent any confusion and to keep the iconic designs of the robots intact Sunbow decided to keep aspects of the eventual Earth alt-modes on the characters. So Bumblebee’s feet are still the front end of the VW Beetle, Optimus Prime still has the big rig front end on his chest, and Soundwave still has the playback buttons of a tape recorder on his chest…
So there was already a 2nd set of seekers, before the introduction of Dirge, Thrust, Ramjet?
In episode 6, “Divide and Conquer”, a group of Autobots travel over the spacebridge back to Cybertron in an attempt to find a crucial component to save Optimus Prime’s life. While there Megatron orders three Decepticon seeker jets to attack them by causing an acid rain storm. These seekers have mostly different color schemes than Starscream (red, white and blue), Thundercracker (mainly blue with red accents), and Skywarp (purple, grey and black), and are neon green, bright yellow and completely blue…
Though not named in the episode, these characters are dubbed the Rainmakers by fans (since they create the acid rain storm), and eventually some of them would get monikers. The green one is named Acid Storm, and was released by Hasbro recently in their Transformers Classic line of toys. The yellow one is technically unnamed by Hasbro, though there is a seeker jet named Sunstorm with similar coloring that some fans assume is this character. I don’t believe the blue one was ever given a name or a back story.
So Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon swiped the overall plot MacGuffin from the original cartoon?
Yup, from the three part series “The Ultimate Doom”, episodes 11-13, Megatron conceives of a plan to conquer Earth by building the ultimate spacebride, large enough to reach through space and transport Cybertron into the planet’s orbit. The idea is to capture the energy released by this cataclysmic cosmic disturbance and funnel it into Cybertron. Part of this plan even involves setting up Pylons around the globe, all of which is part of the new big screen movie. Personally I’m not a fan of these films, but it was interesting to see this plot point ripped out of the cartoon…
As a last bit of interesting trivia for the Transformers 1st season, I thought it would important to point out the level of action and violence. Generally, when I think about the action cartoons of the 80s I tend to remember them having a whole lot of lasers with none of them actually finding any of their targets. I mean there are running jokes about Cobra Troopers being horrible marksmen and then there’s the idea that the Decepticons must of have a lot of accuracy training between the end of the second season and the beginning of the ’86 film. The fact of the matter is that there was a ton of violence in the 1st season of the Transformers and actually there are scenes that rival the movie for its gritty reality. In episode 6 Optimus is hurt so badly in a fight that he’s on the verge of death. This scene could have been ripped right out of the ’86 film, complete with him lying on an operating table with exposed inards and such…
The main difference between the movie and the 1st season is the finality of the violence. No one dies in the series, not like in the film, but there are plenty of scenes that surprised me because of how gritty and action packed they were. Just goes to show that the zeitgeist, though ever-present and affecting everyone, isn’t always accurate.