CBS Transformers> The First Draft part 3: Here Come The Autobots

Previously in the first attempt to bring Transformers to CBS Saturday mornings:

Tens of years ago on a planet not called Cybertron, mechanical lifeforms formed because the gravity was too high for biology or something. On this unnamed world, the heroic Autobots managed to completely wipe out their ancient enemies, the Decepticons. However, Megatron and a group of his minions–the treacherous Soundwave and his loyal avian companion Buzzsaw, the bitter fembot Starscream, the silent red warrior Thundercracker, and the hate-filled Skywarp–came to Earth as glowing energy orbs, taking over Earth machine to transform into their new bodies. Their mission: give a new robot a body each week for their old enemies to blow up again.

This time we’re looking at the Autobots. Instead of the army we got in the series we only get a similar handful of character. It worked for Beast Wars around a decade later. I’m curious how the other Autobot figures would get involved if this is a villain of the week series with only 13 episodes to play with. Already we had characters fall by the wayside in what we got, but could there be more toys not represented in the show? How do the Autobots get there. And fitting with CBS’s insistence of token obligatory girl characters, which of our heroes is joining Starscream as a gender swap? Find out now in part three of CBS Transformers: The First Draft.

Before the Decepticons could complete their planned takeover of all the mechanical forms of earth, the Autobots arrived, taking their own mechanical forms in order to stop the Decepticons from conquering Earth and then the universe.

So wait, if the Decepticons are dead and came to Earth to get new mechanical bodies by taking over Earth machines, and this is how the Autobots get bodies, as we’ll see, are these dead Autobots? Did they get killed during the war and their ghosts followed Megatron and company’s ghosts? Or did they achieve some higher plane of existence and turn into spark ghosts to follow the Decepticons? It’s not really clear how the Autobots get here.

OPTIMUS PRIME is the leader of the Autobots. The mechanical form he chose to take was that of a large, semi-tractor trailer rig. Optimus Prime is indistinguishable from an ordinary truck in his normal form, but when his cab detaches it transform:; into a thirty foot robot behemoth. The trailer part of the rig opens up to become the Autobots’ headquarters (more later).

That’s more use for the trailer than we got in the cartoon. In the two seasons we see Optimus with the trailer he only deploys it…what, twice? And it got destroyed in the miniseries, while in “Attack Of The Autobots” in season two, I think it was only there to ramp up the tension of having to cure all three of Optimus’ components to free him from the Decepticon brainwashing, which wasn’t a problem for Ironhide. He and Ratchet NEVER had their components show up in the show, or in the comic after they switched to the cartoon models. I left the typo after “cab detaches it transform” because that’s one weird mistake. I guess doing these on a typewriter was harder than a world processor but that should encourage paying more attention to your pitch to a major TV network. Between this and the Beast Machines pitches that hasn’t seemed to be the case.

Prime, as the others call him, is the smartest and strongest of the Autobots. Like a space marshal with a troop of loyal deputies, Prime’s number one concern is locating the Decepticons and thwarting their plans to transform every earthly mechanical form into a robot  warrior for his conquering army.

That makes Peter Cullen’s John Wayne sounding voice (inspired by his brother I believe) even more appropriate, though we don’t know that Cullen would have returned to voice Optimus. They didn’t keep anything else from the syndicated miniseries they already produced. Guess they weren’t concerned about confusing kids.

Under Prime’s outer metal shell is a warm and caring soul. 1–le (I’m assuming that’s “he”–I’m not keeping every typo, just the weird ones) will do anything to stop the Decepticons, but not if it costs human life or threatens the earth in any way. He thinks of humans as no different than Autobots, except that their personalities are clothed in flesh instead of metal. The Decepticons, on the other hand, think of humans as soft, inferior beings, good only for making into slaves (and not very good slaves at that).

At least Prime is close to his usual depiction. I can’t say the same for a lot of the Transformers in this draft. Well, until the next part.

Unlike the Decepticons, who took “confiscated” their mechanical bodies from the insignificant earthlings, Optimus Prime was too caring to just steal a truck. Besides, he calculated, a human being ally might be very useful to their cause. So when Prime took over the form of his truck he “drafted” a driver along with it (more later).

For those of you who missed the Devil’s Due GI Joe crossovers and my review, that’s Optimus smacking Megatron with his own fusion canon. I love these miniseries!

So instead of stealing a truck he stole the truck and its driver and calling it “drafting”. This is the advantage of just altering the alternate mode of your regular body. Optimus usually has to be talked into letting the humans help at first. In “More Than Meets The Eye” he was convinced pretty fast, while in the Marvel comics it was like pulling teeth to get him to work with humans. Jazz had to beg Prowl into doing it with G.B. Blackrock, while the Witwickys were run off after the twelfth issue until they were forced to bring them back, partly because  Fortress Maximus used Spike from the cartoon. Speaking of Jazz, we get to his character profile.

JAZZ is second in command amongst the Autobots. He has the form of a Porsche, and, as might be expected from someone who drives a Porsche, he has an impulsive personality. Jazz was the one who put Starscream’s original robot body out of commission. He’s not afraid of her rath. In fact, he fully intends to put her new form out of commission as well.

Wow, Jazz is a bit more vicious here. Jazz did serve a secondary command role in the miniseries, though not as much in the full series. I’m not even sure who was second in command. Maybe Ironhide?

Jazz is a little too reckless when it comes to speeding around in his car form. Like all Autobots, he can get damaged. In fact, when the Autobots are “wounded” by the Decepticons, or in a car crash, they must be repaired by their comrades much like a human is “repaired” by a doctor. They react to a dented fender like we would react to a broken arm.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t like when Transformers are treated like they’re biological. Robots would act differently to damage and there’s a big difference between a fender and an arm. Reacting to a broken arm like we would makes more sense, even if it is easier to repair. Optimus gets the longest description while the rest of the main cast get two paragraphs, and there’s a catch-all for supporting cast. For now we go to Bumb…wait, who is this guy?

TOAD has the form of a green VW Beetle. Toad’s main function is messenger running and spying for the Autobots. But, unlike the other Autobots, Toad has a few problems. He had the misfortune of taking over a car that wasn’t exactly in perfect working order. As such, Toad is constantly having problems with his new mechanical form. He can’t make is (his? it?) transform the way he wants to. He might need to turn into a robot for an emergency, but not be able to get one of his fenders to turn into a leg, thus having to comically hop around on one leg. If he’s not running into things he’s running out of gas … or even worse, getting “speeding tickets” (you can imagine the look on a CHP’s face when he moves to the window and finds no one driving)!

Sadly this is not the last time Sunbow will try to screw over my bot.

Yes, they replaced Bumblebee, the best Autobot…with this. Look, I’ll defend comic relief characters if they fit into the story and serve a good enough purpose on the team, and this feels so very forced. We’re trying to make these things look cool. You’re making Wheelie look dignified here, and I don’t even hate Wheelie. It’s kind of sad. If you wanted to make not-Bumblebee into comic relief for some reason, fine, but Transformers Animated had the better idea of making Bumblebee Namesake #2 into a decent character whose errors was a personality flaw to overcome. This is Orko done wrong. Also, green? At least go with red. There kind of was a red volkswagon who never got to have a name because he was shoved into Bumblebee packaging to make quota, and the same with a yellow Cliffjumper and bot who only got a name years later. Poor Bumper.

Toad is the only Autobot besides Prime to have a human occupant with his form. But he didn’t get his occupant on purpose, like Prime … he accidentally took a car that belonged to a young, teenage girl and seeing as how stealing is forbidden among Autobots, Prime informed Toad that he was the unlucky property of one female human (more later).

We’ll talk more about the humans in part four. This is just to add to the comic relief, meaning I’m not expecting Carly or even Jessie here. Kelly from (Car) Robots In Disguise, maybe, instead of having her cars blown up and flirted with by an Autobot she’s watching it run into battle while she had a date. Yes, that is one of the stories we’ll see in this draft. Okay, admittedly Bumblebee is my favorite Autobot. I have a shelf dedicated to Bumblebee. That said, I’m accepting a lot of these changes for what they are, but this one just feels wrong critically, not just out of personal bias. I accepting Starscream being a girl due to CBS, with another gender swap coming up two characters from now and even this is too far.

TRAILBREAKER has the normal form of a 4×4 camper truck when he’s not being the Autobots’ flying robot scout. Trailbreaker enjoys earth’s beautiful terrain when he’s in his 4×4 form, but when he transforms into a robot he remembers how much he misses his home planet, with its fantastic mercury waterfalls and the silver grasses of the highlands.

When could Trailbreaker fly? What we have here is part Tracks, part Huffer, and part Bluestreak. This is also all we get about Trailbreaker in the draft. It doesn’t sound like he was really thought out, and I have to wonder how the team behind this chose the characters they went with. Jeffery Scott is just making the pitch. He was one of a few people who actually created this take. Optimus got four paragraphs and everyone else gets two except for Trailbreaker and the secondary robots.

SIDESWIPE is the only female Autobot. Her body is a sleek red Lamborgini Countach. Her main duty as an Autobot is intelligence gathering. Using her complex computer da5hboard 5he can tap into any braodca::;t channel on earth, gathering information from earth comptuers as well as Decepticon memory banks.

If you think you’re upset, you should see your Aligned continuity namesake.

I left the typos in to show how bad it was. So now Sunstreaker has a sister instead of a brother. I have to assume none of the character models from “More Than Meets The Eye” are coming, because Floro Dery might not have followed the toy designs but he clearly made Sideswipe, one of the impulsive ones on the team with his jetpack because someone got Sideswipe and Sunstreaker’s tech spec bios backwards in the original release, a male body type. Also, she has Soundwave’s communication skills now, breaking into comm channels and gathering info. But here’s the funny part:

Sideswipe has a deep love and admiration for Optimus Prime. He may at times sense his love for Sideswipe, but Prime fears growing too attached to Sideswipe because he’s seen many Autobots destroyed in his three thousand years of fighting against the Decepticons.

No Elita-One at this time, so why not? There is some drama to be had here, but I’m too invested in what we got to really go for this. Meanwhile we have a love triangle thanks to the last member of the main cast.

MIRAGE has the flashiest personality of all the Autobots, so it seems quite appropriate that he should take the form of a Formula One car. As the fastest Autobot, Mirage’s main function is emergency situations. When it comes to a crisis, Mirage is ready for action. Cool and calm, Mirage is ever the wisecracker. He takes his responsibilities seriously, but not so seriously as never to crack a joke … especially when he’s in deep, deep trouble.

Mirage is constantly making passes at Sideswipe, and constantly reminded that Optimus is her “prime” man.

Speaking of Car Robots In Disguise, Mirage is Speedbreaker/Sideburn! This is like the total opposite of the Mirage in the tech specs and still off from what we got in the final show. I could have done without this part, frankly. It sounds too much like the Comedian in that Saturday Morning Watchmen parody I posted earlier today. Hmm, that also had someone turning into a car.

Anyway, on to the rest of the Autobots. Literally the rest of the Autobot cast, in one paragraph. There isn’t even enough to say about them individually because the Prowl is the only one with more than one sentence.

IRONHIDE, HOUND, PROWL & RATCHET are the secondary Autobot characters. They’ll be more or less in the background until a story dictates a need for them. IRONHIDE is a van with a metallic skin much like his name suggests. HOUND is a jeep, whose ability to get in and out of tight (terrain) places is phenomenal. PROWL is a 300-Z police car. Prowl comes in real handy when the Autobots need to get cars off the road. RATCHET is an ambulance (van) who is sometimes called upon for emergencies, especially when humans are involved. All of these Autobots have the ability to transform into powerful flying robots. So when the chips are down, they might all enter into the battle to assure an Autobot victory.

So Ratchet isn’t the doc you go to for that broken fender earlier?  This is a huge downgrade for all four characters, and it’s a real shame. These are some of the fan favorites, or at least Ironhide and Ratchet are. Prowl doesn’t have enough fans and I blame Simon Furman, while Hound was originally presumed to be the kid favorite character and the one to hang out with humans until the audience recognized Bumblebee’s superiority and it shifted to him for the full series, at least for the first two seasons.

Meanwhile, some of the other favorites, even ones who headlined episodes, are missing. Windcharger (my first Transformer), Gears, Brawn, Huffer, Cliffjumper–all the minibots are gone while the best one got replaced with an ugly green version with a lame name. It’s kind of sad. The guide does end with “More detailed information regarding Autobot identities, weapons, etc. is contained on individual Bio-Cards to be included in subsequent draft.”, which either means they were including the tech specs, which would have completely gone against everything here, or original bio-cards that Sunbow Marvel Archive doesn’t currently have available. Maybe in the future if they get lucky? I wouldn’t be against an amendment article.

Maybe I’m just too invested in the Autobots we got, but this doesn’t sound nearly as interesting to me as the versions we actually ended up with. Was Saturday morning the problem? We’ll find out more when we get to the humans in the next exciting installment of CBS Transformers: The First Draft.