So word came out this week that Skybound’s “Energon Universe” is getting an animated series, and will be adult like their other big hit, Invincible. So like their Transformers comics it won’t be for me. I don’t need to see an animated version of Bumblebee being destroyed just to prove they aren’t the kids stories–you know, the age group the franchise was made for. I also don’t need the human body count to feel “mature”. If you enjoy it, go right ahead. I’m not stopping you, I’m just not joining you. I’ve said my peace on that. I’m just letting interested parties know it’s coming and segueing into…would a Saturday morning version of Transformers have been too far the other way? They did seriously dumb down Super Dinosaur, another Skybound comic made into a cartoon, and that one WAS for kids, comic AND show.
The problem, and I’ll go more into it in the transition between pitch drafts, is that Saturday morning cartoons in the 1980s had to deal with parent groups and psychologists who think they understand kids but don’t, and consultant firm with their heads in the clouds. Look up what happened at ABC and The Real Ghostbusters. CBS already forced Marvel Productions to add two females, one Autobot and one Decepticon, which they did by gender swapping Sideswipe and Starscream (like Starscream didn’t get enough gay jokes…though now we know Slipstream’s deal in Transformers Animated). Then again, we also know that the Decepticons would be wiped out by the Autobots, come to Earth to possess machines to create their new robot bodies, and the Autobots would have to follow suit, but we still don’t know if they’re dead as well. The Autobots would also be forcing humans to join their cause while the Decepticons followed Cy-Kill’s plan and just recruited one. Like I said many years ago, Cy-Kill is better at his job than G1 Megatron.
Now we’re going to look at further information about the format of the show. This should tell us the tone, style, and goals of the series should Hasbro sign off on the new concept and CBS greenlights a series. Would this get around the stuff they couldn’t get away with? Let’s see.
The Autobots want to keep themselves secret so they don’t disturb the normal course of events on the earth. This is not easy in light of their extreme visibility when confronting and battling the Decepticons.
The comics have tried to do this over the years but only the Unicron Trilogy anime and Cyberverse would actually try this animated besides Prime, Rescue Bots, and the second Robots In Disguise of the “Aligned Continuity. Interestingly, Energon in the comics said “just make friends with the humans” and that’s the series cut short. The “Aligned Continuity” would keep to the secret war and somehow managed to hide a whole transforming robot civil war in better ways than the live-action movies, making keeping their “secret” from humanity outright laughable with all the destruction Bay couldn’t get enough of.
Neither Autobots nor Decepticons can transform from machine to robot when they are damaged. This will serve to complicate stories and heighten jeopardy. Perhaps, after a dramatic battle sequence, an Autobot is wounded and only part of him can transform back to a car, thus enabling the Decepticons to hunt him down.
“I have come to Hasbro with a request: choose a body for me and scrapping stick to it!”
This never really happened in the shows we got. There was an episode where the Autobots were locked into vehicle mode, and times where they were so damaged they had to painfully force themselves to transform, but only to get home for repairs. Admittedly it would have made for an interesting story. It did wonders for Dinobot in Beast Wars.
Both Autobots and Decepticons grow “tired” when their batteries run down. Like all machines, they cannot run forever without a recharge. Also, if they run out of fuel that’s it. They must wait until another brings gas before they can start their engines. Their batteries will still keep their minds going, but they are otherwise powerless. “We’re running on empty,” will be a common phrase heard by the Autobots when they’re cranking themselves to their limits.
Being a “common phrase” just sounds like a story crutch. “We should go after them and finish them off…again.” “Can’t. Jazz’s battery is drained, Mirage is out of fuel, and Toad is useless.” Plus, the Autobots are also turning Earth machines into robot bodies. What if the original machine didn’t have batteries or there was nothing in them at the time? Would they die the moment they tried to take it over?
The Autobots and Decepticons are not indestructible. They are made of metal and as such can be dented, bashed, burned, broken, etc. They need repair like cars or any other machinery. They are only as strong as their size and weight (and hydraulics) will allow.
This, on the other hand, is at least better phrased. The ability to be damaged puts stakes into a story, as does the energy issue. Then again, the previous miniseries that did become a series was all about battling over energy resources needed to continue the war on Cybertron.
When the Autobots or Decepticons are in their car/jet forms, they are virtually indistinguishable from ordinary cars and jets. Thus, the Autobots can hide from their adversaries by mingling with cars on a freeway. Similarly, the Decepticons can land at a military airstrip and vanish into anonymity.
This rarely happened on the show we got. The Decepticons seemed to know all the vehicles used by the Autobots. The only time they were fooled was the first time they saw humans in their totally not a robot truck. The show we got seemed to lack in the “robots in disguise” angle, so I’ll give this show points for actually trying to use the idea.
The Autobots and Decepticons will have synthesized electronic voices. These voices, however, will be less synthesized while they are in their car/jet forms and more electronic sounding when in their larger, robot forms.
“What did you say? Your voice is over-modulated! I can’t understand you.”
Why? The way the method they use to talk wouldn’t have changed, so why would their voices changed? The show we got did alter the voices for the Transformers slightly–or greatly in Soundwave’s case–to make them sound a bit more robotic despite the emotions. However, I didn’t notice any attempt to alter that between forms and it’s better that they didn’t.
Because they possess an unlimited supply of “glowing energy orbs,” the Decepticons can grow in number by merely obtaining more mechanical bodies. When the Decepticons take over a mothball fleet they will suddenly have giant “battleship robots” at their disposal. Through the progression of our stories the Autobots will vanquish these new robots, leaving the Decepticons with their corps group at the end of each episode.
So they’re going to die again. Do they become orbs again to be reused if Megatron has a plan that requires the “guest” to return? Remember, Hasbro wants to sell these characters, which means having them show up more than once. Both the Power Rangers and Panosh Place Voltron lines tried to include their franchise’s monsters, but outside of the main thugs I don’t think anyone cared. You don’t bring back the same “villain of the week” unless you have another use for them. I don’t see this pushing as many Decepticons. As it is the large cast made it harder to make them stand out. Many just got lucky, and had the tech specs that Marvel Productions was just going to ignore anyway. (And too often did with the show we got.) This is the part of the concept I think was best done with the miniseries and the series that came from it.
The Decepticons headquarters is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean where a powerful magnetic bubble holds the crushing pressure of the sea in an arched dome. Within this dome the Decepticons formulate their plans, take off for intended conquest, and return after bitter defeat. When the Decepticon jets fly over the ocean they wi II dramatically dive straight for the surface, which will open like a swirling whirlpool, creating a vortex through which they can fly to the bottom of the ocean.
Sounds cool, granted. They clearly weren’t reusing anything from the miniseries, but by that point we only saw a crashed spaceship at the end with no plans at the time to make it the Decepticons’ underwater headquarters. I wonder if they took that idea from this pitch, adding in the elevator to the ship rather than the magnetic bubble. Something goes wrong with that and the ‘Cons are going swimming.
Each week the Decepticons will embark on a mission to take over more mechanical forms. They will seek out locations like the train yards of Tokyo, where hundreds of bullet train cars make a potential army of Decepticons … or the Naval Air Station at San Diego, where dozens of jets and ships await them … or a computer factory in upstate New York, where the world’s most sophisticated computers can be turned into veritable Decepticon geniuses … or the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico … the subways in New York,,,airports .. ,bus stations .. ,steel factories … amusement parks … experimental laboratories … university campuses … all are potential targets for Decepticon invasion. All must be watched and defended by the Autobots.
Ellipses overload, Jeffery Scott., and I’m not sure why some of them turned into commas when copy/pasting from the PDF file I’m using. I think it’s also responsible for turning small “l”s into capital “I”s that get separated from the word. Sometimes I think Adobe Acrobat’s AI conversion of the text is being screwed up by the scanned pages warping a bit in the scanner. Nobody’s at fault. It’s just an odd glitch. Anyway, some of these stories and locations we would get, factoring in how broad these ideas are. For example, the Decepticons did deal with New York a few times, Astrotrain tried to make a train army, though not in Tokyo. I don’t remember an amusement park, but we did get a discotech.
But none of these places will be a piece of cake for the Decepticons to take over. Like an military maneuver, their plans must be precise. Not only are the Autobots a potential threat, but most of their targets can be defended by the military. Though the Decepticon weapons are far superior to anything the army has, the Decepticons are still capable of being damaged. Thus, the Decepticons will often need Arthur Kroll’s help to get past check points, sabotage defense installations, etc.
Autobots and humans are friends. Stop screwed that up!
Like an evil version of Denny Clay from the second Robots In Disguise. Actually, they did the “Decepticon of the week” angle as well, but with a better chance to bring them back since some escaped being put back in stasis capsules, and if the Autobots’ base was found or a pod malfunctioned they could have been released. However, that was Cartoon Network in the 2000s. They could get away with a bit more and were by a different studio, so you can’t really compare the two.
Although the Decepticons and Autobots will be the center of interest in each episode, subplots which include our human characters and other isolated human characters will we interwoven throughout the stories to bring the stories “down to earth,” giving us people we can care about, and people the Autobots must help in some way.
That sounds more like Transformers Animated or even Rescue Bots, as well as some of the more interesting comic stories from the US and UK. Occasionally the show we got might do this but usually they stick to the regular human quartet in the first two seasons, with Raul being the only recurring human outside of that group.
Through contact with the Autobots, Duke and Wendy will learn much about these “aliens” and how different and yet similar they are. The human characters we run into during a story will be changed in some positive way by their contract with the Autobots, perhaps learning to give up a prejudice or opening their minds to worlds beyond their own.
This actually could have been interesting. Plenty of Saturday morning shows did it and made everybody happy. It’s when the story is too sterile, too clean, too obvious in pushing one belief or message on the audience (sound familiar?) that it ends up being bad. There’s some ideas there, but would it make for a show as good or better than the one we got?
Perhaps we’ll have an answer next time, concluding our dive into this first of two pitch attempts. We’re actually getting story ideas. I love it when guides and pitches add these, story addict that I am. What kinds of tales were brainstormed? Find out in the next exciting installment of CBS Transformers!
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