Saturday Night Showcase: The Cybertron pilot

Superhuman Machine Metalder was a Japanese superhero series of the “Metal Hero” franchise. (I mentioned the “metal heroes” in my Tokusatsu primer.) After their success with the Power Rangers, Saban Entertainment went to the well again to create a new series. They had planned to call it Cybertron, but since that is the home planet of the Transformers and thus Hasbro took issue, they had to change the name. I’m not sure where the alternate name Psycon fits into the timeline but it doesn’t matter. Saban would later grab another show and create VR Troopers.

Tonight I want to show you the original pilot, thanks to YouTuber and Sabanophile SirStack. Here was the show originally planned. As a bonus, we have the “rough cut” of the pilot, which I will post first.

As you can see, the “rough cut” has limited VO work and no sound effects. VR Troopers fans will also notice that the actors who played Tao and Ziktor (called Cyrus instead of Carl), Richard Rabago and Gardner Baldwin respectively, are the only two actors to return in their role, although Tao would be very much altered from his VR Troopers concept. You may also notice one of the bumbling reporters (Cybertron‘s answer to Bulk and Skull) is played by Jamie Kennedy, neither of whom made it to the final version as well as Tao’s granddaughter or Ziktor’s son.

Of course, Jason Frank played Adam Steele (renamed Ryan for VR) but would return to Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers as Tommy. This would have been his vehicle but I don’t know why the change was made other than Tommy was a favorite character of Ranger fans and Fox didn’t want to give him up.

So what would all that look like with music and sound? Luckily, SirStack also gave us the pilot presentation.

That theme song sounds familiar. At any rate we wouldn’t get this show, whatever they ended up renaming it. Next week we’ll see the show they went with, Saban’s VR Troopers.

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