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Yesterday we looked at Media Zealot’s takedown of the Decepticons and other threats to the Autobots. This time the Autobots and presumably their allies get their turn in the spotlight. And this is the G1 US cartoon exclusively. That’s not counting more recent things that bother me about the Autobots, like the caste system based on alternate modes when we know they can alter those modes whenever they want, or making the Autobots the bad guys and Optimus just the guy who was less evil than the guy whose slogan was “peace through tyranny” on the tech specs.
Despite having the supposed combined wisdom of the Autobots in his chest for the accessing, Optimus has made his own share of boneheaded decisions. I just know we’re about to hear about that time the Decepticons made a remote controlled duplicate of Optimus and somehow they thought having the two race in tractor trailer mode would help decide who was the real Optimus. Every Transformers fan brings that up for a reason. I’d also expect to see that time the humans so easily believed the Autobots were evil and Optimus didn’t come up with a solution to clear their name and instead left Earth to its fate, did nothing about Ark security, and has lost more to Laserbeak than he has Megatron.
Let’s see if I’m right in part of the The Transformers: Too Stupid To Exist. Prep yourself for the occasional cursing.
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This is a companion to a previous post from the same series of PSA videos for schools. I posted the other one that’s been found discussing child abuse. There are two others I hope I get to see.
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To attempt to get a full week out with all the distractions, I’m going to drop a two part installment of Media Zealot‘s “Too Stupid To Exist” series, pointing out all the flaws in the plans of the villains, and occasionally the heroes. Sometimes you accept stuff for the sake of the story, but that doesn’t mean we can’t analyze those flaws later and see how to avoid them, or at least laugh at how silly it is.
The original Transformers cartoon will always be part of my nostalgia. It’s one of my favorite multiverses as the versatility doesn’t stop with shapeshifting robots. I can’t say I’m a fan of all of it, mind you, even just what I’ve seen. The Skybound comic everyone is drooling over is still too violent for me, and killed off Bumblebee right at the start. The Bayverse and its live-action counterparts rarely care about the robots while focusing on humans that aren’t very interesting. Funny enough, Bumblebee is the exception. EarthSpark I just found boring in the first story and just couldn’t bring myself to watch further episodes. From what I did catch previous shows did the only interesting parts better.
Still, even I made fun of Megatron’s dumb schemes in my Challenge Of The GoBots review because his ideas are kind of odd for a war that was about resource allocation to conquer the universe (it’s an 80s kids show), and we can make fun of him and Galvatron (you debate among yourselves if they’re the same guy or not) for his really dumb ideas. Let’s not forget that the Autobots make their own mistakes, and other factions show up with equally odd plans. Cue the Zealot, who isn’t as fond of the 80s kids show, but still points out that the Decepticons in particular and Cybertron in general lasting 4,000,000 years (give or take a few hours) is kind of silly. Note that there will be a few swears now and then, but it’s not habitual.
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I’m not sure which image to make fun of.
Knuckles The Echidna #26
Archie Comic Publications (July, 1999)
WRITER: Ken Penders
INKER: Andrew Pepoy
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie
Knuckles: “The First Date” part 1: “She Love You (And You Know That Can’t Be Bad)”
PENICLER: Chris Allan
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
Mighty The Armadillo: “Friend In Need”
PENCILER: Manny Galan
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
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Perch is quite the potty mouth these days…
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For you live readers: I was planning to make this a Friday series, but this is the second week in a row I had to drop it on Tuesday. We’ll see what happens. In case you missed last week’s post, we’re looking at the sales pitch for a new television series called Star Trek. I don’t know if this was the pitch to NBC or to Desilu or a general pitch before shopping it around to anyone. I’m admittedly lite on the history here. I found it on an archival site for writer’s guides and story bibles, linked to in the previous post if you want to follow along. Once we’re done with these 16 or so pages we’ll get into the actual writer’s guide.
This is the first draft, with Gene Roddenberry as the sole credit. The first four pages asks the question in the article title, and that’s what we’ll be looking at in this first official article. Remember as we go through this that at the time there was no “Star Trek”. It was still just a concept, with names changed between here and the story bible, and concepts that were refined between the two pilots and the series we all know and love. The point is to see all the changes and speculate if the changes were a good idea or if there was some merit, and what aspects of the original ideas made their way to the end product, or were even homaged in later productions either out of a desire to see those changes or as easter eggs for fans who may know all the behind-the-scenes stuff that went on. Almost immediately there will also be ideas that did get made into actual episodes.
Roddenberry’s goal was to sell a television studio and network on his science fiction series. The earliest production credit I found on a quick IMDB search was a writing credit for an episode of Mr. District Attorney, where he was a consultant. Other credits prior to this include writing shows like Highway Patrol, The Detectives, Dr. Kildare, Have Gun–Will Travel, and The Virginian. These are all crime dramas and westerns (except for the one with the doctor, of course, and there are others on the list), not science fiction. His first creator credit is 1963’s The Lieutenant, about a rifle platoon leader stationed at Marine base Camp Pendleton in California.
And here he is pushing a science fiction show when sci-fi was on a TV downturn. It was still around, but a lot of it was considered children’s entertainment, your Flash Gordons, Buck Rogers, and Captain Videos. How do you push a family-friendly but clearly more mature and thought-provoking hour long primetime series in that culture? Let’s find out.
BW Media Spotlight 