One of the things I’ve enjoyed about these pitch documents and writer’s guides is when they include potential stories. In the case of shows we actually got we get to see the early version of episodes we ended up with and which episode ideas were dropped altogether. So I’m glad that this first failed pitch for a Saturday Morning Transformers cartoon has some in there.
Remember, this was AFTER “More Than Meets The Eye”, the first miniseries that aired in syndication, was produced. In fact, the “Story Springboards” section makes note of it:
Note: TRANSFORMERS will be full half-hour episodes, each a complete story in itself. The series, unlike the specials, will not be serialized.
As it turns out, the series we got also wasn’t serialized. G.I. Joe had more serials before they started their series than The Transformers had, though there were a few two-parters and it ended on a miniseries, “The Rebirth”, which is kind of appropriate. Most Transformers series had ongoing plots within done-in-one episodes, which to me is the best way to go about it. I do enjoy a good serial, but it’s not always the best way to go about it.
There are only five sample stories, so they didn’t think out a full season. Thirteen was the average number of Saturday morning episodes, possibly due to the extra work that goes into making a cartoon so even the few live-action options for Saturday morning in the 1980s would be that length, while prime time adult shows got more. This also came about in syndication, at least for weekend shows. Weekday shows would have more episodes but it was still thirteen weeks worth of TV. Still, we have an idea of what the season could have started with while the other eight episodes were thought up and produced. It will still be interesting to see if anything was reworked for the syndicated series or if they would have been as interesting to kids as “Heavy Metal War”, to pull a random episode from memory. Let’s get on with it.
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