Sgathaich: Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye

By sgathaich0 on January 19, 2022 • ( Leave a comment )

Perhaps my writings about Transformers have interested you in checking out the franchise but you don’t know where to start. Well, there are many answers, Transformers Animated, Transformers Armada and Transformers Prime are all good shows to check out and work well for new viewers, maybe you miss a reference but other than that they are good shows to enjoy. Of course, you could go back all the way to the beginning. Well sure you could hunt down the Generation 1 Marvel comics but for the show, let’s look to the original 3 parter.

The story is set up very quickly with a narrator explaining enough about Cybertron and the Transformers (not referred to yet as Cybertronians), the war between the two factions and how it’s used up the resources of the planet. Then we get a few minutes that would create the demand for what are now known as Cybertronian form even though we only see 5 different designs of them, Bumblebee and Wheeljack’s vehicle forms, the triangle Jet Seeker design, Sound Wave’s hilarious alt mode of a Lamppost and Laser Beak. Then it’s into the space ships, a short space battle before crash landing on Earth and a volcanic eruption waking them up 4 million years later.

Then the rest of the 3 parter (that was about half way through the first episode) involves the Decepticons stealing energy to make energon cubes while building their space cruiser to go back to Cybertron with the energy to build something that’s never really elaborated on outside of ultimate weapon (and given when Megatron controlled Cybertron during the movie he didn’t have one I think that detail was forgotten).

The three parter also spends its time introducing us to character traits while the action is going on, so for example using the special abilities of each Transformer which ultimately barely gets shown after this episode. It is also a bit annoying there are a few roll calls just to make sure you know who’s who in the Autobots.

There is a fair bit that only really got shown here in the first 3 parter then forgotten about till recently. Megatron and Optimus’s energy weapons get used in one fight in the 2nd episode and never again until the modern era suddenly decide it’s their iconic weapons.

Also, of interest is watching the show you can see how the character of Hound was intended to have been the friend to the human’s character and not Bumblebee. He loves the Earth and interacts with human character Spike while Bumblebee does not (he has a role with Spike’s dad instead)

The story is rather self-contained. bar the appearance of Shockwave and the final scene showing the Decepticons survived. The story could easily just end there with all its plot tied up. I recall hearing that was the original version and they added the last scene after it became a full series.

You can see from this where many of the elements fans loved came from (and no not just those one-off bits people obsessed over). The characters people came to love mostly started all here. Soundwave and Starscream come out of the box very much fully formed. Sure, later shows may add more to them but the core elements are here.

The 3 parter isn’t hard to find be it on the Hasbro Pulse YouTube page or on one of many DVD sets of Generation 1 so it’s not hard to find… just note there are many animation errors that are rather infamous with the show, nothing too much yet but I noticed a few background errors and Hounds’ rematch with Rumble still had the water effects showing it was reusing that animation. Eh not enough to ruin it though.

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