Steven Melching recently appeared on an episode of the
Geek Cast Radio podcast and revealed several details about the next season of Transformers Prime. For those unfamiliar with Melching, he wrote several episode of Beast Machines ("Forbidden Fruit", "Revelations Part III: Apocalypse", "End of the Line", "Sparkwar Pt. III: The Siege", "Endgame Pt. II: When Legends Fall") and Transformers Prime ("Darkness Rising, Part 4", "Con Job", "Sick Mind", "Operation: Breakdown", "One Shall Rise, Part 3", "Toxicity"). Click
here to listen to the full podcast. Seibertron member
Sabrblade has provided a detailed outline of the interview below:
- Each episode of the show includes some element that’s important to the overall show, whether it’s part of the plot development, a character’s development, the emotional growth of the show, etc.
- It wasn't a mandate for the show to homage all the past series like has done so far, but they did try to abide by Hasbro’s plan for the show be in an Aligned Continuity with the video games and book (but not the movies, he says). They weren’t beholden to any past continuity, but did want to be respectful to them. Though, they did use Wikis and reference books to look for something that they could homage when they felt like doing so.
- At first, they toyed around with Bumblebee doing radio clips like the movies instead of beeps, but it proved to be too complicated decided to let him speak through contextual beeps.
- Regarding Shockwave, since it’s very expensive to create these CGI designs, they tend not to let things go to waste. So it might be safe to say that we’ll see Shockwave again.
- Unicron being inside the Earth’s core was a very early idea from the first week of the writer’s room meeting in 2009. They knew from the beginning that they wanted to do that.
- Budget restraints and the story concept prevented them from creating a wide variety of diverse core characters. Melching ran into this problem with the 90’s X-Men cartoon, having so many unique characters with little for them to do in the span of 22 minutes, making it difficult to manage them all. However, there WILL be more new characters, both Autobot and Decepticon, coming in season 3.
- It is not yet known when season 3 is going to air.
- Hasbro sent over a chart of about eight or ten different color types of energon for the show to use (including something that sounded like “Chronogon”, a time-displacement energon), but they’re pretty much done with the different energon flavors in the cartoon for now. What we’ve gotten thus far is it, but we have not seen the last of Dark, Synthetic, or Red Energon.
- Season 3 will be shorter because a total of 65 episodes is the magic number for TV shows to strive for, and was the goal this show was going for. They came into the show knowing how they wanted to end the series and weren’t rushed into anything, so Melching feels comfortable if season 3 were to be the end of the series itself. But he als ocan’t confirm any of what’s to come after season 3.
- Back when they were thinking of Unicron being the core of the Earth, they imaged how he’d emerge from the planet like if a giant hand the size of half a continent rising form out of the ground, but they figured that was too ridiculous (and too quick a way to end the series) and so scrapped it.
- The season 2 finale is titled “Darkest Hour” (which was made known thanks to Zap2it.com) and is sort of an “Empire Strikes Back” ending for Team Prime. Season 2 does not end well for Team Prime, and will hopefully build enough hype for season 3, which will have the Autobots trying to get out of the tight situation they’re caught in.
- Melching has heard the fan complaints about the show continuously resetting to status quo, and he has no doubts about it that they are in a whole new place season 3. Status quo will no longer be an issue in season 3.
- Repeating classic lines of dialogue is something that they have tried to be careful about since they know it can be groan-inducing if not handled properly. They admittedly overdid the classic quoting in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series and have tried to make things work better in TF: Prime.
- Melching wrote next week’s episode, “Inside Job”, and the season 2 finale “Darkest Hour”. He also wrote five episodes of season 3, while Marsha Griffin wrote five other season 3 episodes.
