Many moons ago I did a Showcase for the first miniseries of The Transformers, “More Than Meets The Eye”. It introduced the series in three episodes, and it did well enough for a full syndicated series to be made, one season weekly and two weekdays. Yes, it is working again after the theatrical airing or whatever made them take it down for a short time.
Tonight we look at the next episode, the first episode of season one and the full series. “Transport To Oblivion” introduced the concept of the “space bridge”, as the Decepticons make contact with Cybertron and begin transporting their energon back to the Decepticon cause. The bridge would not only be a recurring element in the original series, but in the Aligned continuity it would be used even more often. A different take on the bridge would show up in the original comics, being a physical bridged that crossed hyperspace between planets. That’s not the only reason we’re here. This is posted to the Hasbro Pulse YouTube channel but there are plenty of streaming options, including their 24/7 livestreaming channel.
Transformers At The Moon managed to get their hands on a series of recording session tapes with famed voice director Wally Burr instructing the actors. They show off his attention to detail, a level of perfection not enough voice directors do even though it helps make the cartoon characters feel more real. It might have annoyed the actors at times, but the quality speaks for itself. Susan Blu, who worked with Burr in later seasons of The Transformers, would learn from him and later become a voice director herself. They’re interesting listens.
While trying to get caught up with my backlog, I was going through James Eatock’s Cereal:Geek TV YouTube channel and notice he put these recordings alongside footage of the episode where the lines were supposed to go, though there were some scenes that had voice recordings but weren’t used in the final episode. So for fun I’m posting them as well. They’ll come after the episode but you can watch them in any order. There’s one for the aired episode and three videos covering the entire set of recordings for the sessions of those episodes. Enjoy.
The Episode
The Recordings: three videos
The first video fills in more details about the session before going over the early scenes. This and the next one features the session with most of the cast of the episode, the other two saved for the third video. This contains all the takes, including the bloopers and deleted scenes.
Interesting. I heard later Beast Wars voice actor Scott McNeil, who voiced numerous characters, recorded each character separately but here Peter Cullen sounds like he’s switching between Optimus Prime and Ironhide. We also see other actors play numerous voices but their characters don’t speak near each other so I don’t know if that was Peter’s skills at play or if they regularly did that.
The final video includes the second recording session with Michael Bell and Frank Welker. You’ll get to hear Soundwave before all the electronic filtering is added to his voice. Sadly, Bell sits out most of the session. None of his regular characters are in this episode outside of a cameo by Prowl so I guess they just needed an extra background voice. This is the only episode he voices Laserbeak. Usually he and Buzzsaw were Chris Latta’s work. Guess they needed some sounds after the first session.
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