The Energon Pub

Thanks to FP's Protector set and TakaraTomy's Masterpiece Rodimus Prime, I had to see what Rodimus was like as leader, since I hadn't seen any of season 3 outside of 5 Faces Of Darkness.

The stories were just as bad as I expected, but kitschy, so I was able to overlook it. I was able to embrace the silly and carry on.

What really stunned me, however, was once they got to Carnage In C Minor, everything went to Hell in a handbasket.

The animation, even in seasons 1 and 2, were never what I'd call fantastic, but they were pretty good for a show that was rushed to air. Once season 3 started, it slowly began to decline, but wasn't a big deal. Once you get to CICM, it's like night and day. It's just AWFUL.

The writing has gotten worse, the visual quality is just flat out terrible, and it's just jawdroppingly bad.

Hound? Ratchet? Ironhide? Seriously, they ran out of robot design ideas? I was flabbergasted to see them on screen, and in their correct color schemes. At the very least, they could've recolored them.

This is just awful. Fight Or Flee, Rodimus saves the day...by blowing up Paradron? Seriously? Hot Rod was impatient and childish and even he wasn't that stupid. Rodimus has the wisdom of the Matrix, plus common sense, and he still blows up an entire planet and every home the Paradrons had ever known? WTF?!

Are you kidding me? I'm not even sure I want to finish the season. Egad.

I can almost overlook the writing quality, but the visuals are amazing to me. It literally looks like the animation used on Beavis & Butthead. Their quirky animation style was intentional, it fit the feeling of the show. Robots, on the other hand, shouldn't look like this. I mean, this is really really awful.

I know I've said time and again that I'm not a fan of G1, and it's true, but this isn't a thread lashing out with bias, I'm being completely honest with my disgust and shock over the decline of the quality of the show in season 3.

Even I have to admit they put far more work into the first two seasons of the show and at least tried to make it entertaining. There's no reasonable explanation for the decline in quality. The showrunners should be ashamed of themselves for letting it turn to crap.

If you took all of the errors of the episodes and turned it into a drinking game, you'd literally die of alcohol poisoning, because it's that friggin' awful.

The first two seasons deserve an Emmy for quality compared to this. They should be absolutely ashamed for season 3.

Ashamed.

I 100% agree with you!!!

That is why G1 ended for me after Transformers The Movie 1986.


After the movie...it was just pure crap!!


The Robot designs are all stiff humanoids unlike Seasons 1 and 2 which were more have a feel of classic Giant Robots.


The robots also acts like humans instead of Giant Robots.

I wasn't digging the future vehicle transformation either.

Call of the Primitives will make you think otherwise.


There are a few other gems in season three, but yes for the most part it's pretty awful.

What happened? AKOM Happened, that's what. Remember in FFoD pt. 3, the army of miscolored freaks behind Dead End and Blast Off? That was AKOM. Galvatron on Charr BEFORE they rescued him? AKOM. Broadside tricking Cyclonus in "The Killing Jar"? AKOM. They're responsible for all of those catastrophes, and more.

JetOptimus23 wrote:What happened? AKOM Happened, that's what. Remember in FFoD pt. 3, the army of miscolored freaks behind Dead End and Blast Off? That was AKOM. Galvatron on Charr BEFORE they rescued him? AKOM. Broadside tricking Cyclonus in "The Killing Jar"? AKOM. They're responsible for all of those catastrophes, and more.

Oh yes AKOM how I hate thee, just check them out:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/AKOM

I'd say grin and bear it, cause at the end of the season the big man returns!

Dead Metal wrote:

JetOptimus23 wrote:What happened? AKOM Happened, that's what. Remember in FFoD pt. 3, the army of miscolored freaks behind Dead End and Blast Off? That was AKOM. Galvatron on Charr BEFORE they rescued him? AKOM. Broadside tricking Cyclonus in "The Killing Jar"? AKOM. They're responsible for all of those catastrophes, and more.

Oh yes AKOM how I hate thee, just check them out:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/AKOM

AKOM, eh? *clicks and reads* Egad.

Nelson Shin, himself, owns that company? How in the hell can he sleep at night knowing what he did to his bosses? But I still blame the head honchos above him, because they didn't have to go with his crappy company. Ridiculous.

I love how BTAS fired AKOM. Glad they did. BTAS is quite possibly the best animated series of all time and didn't need to be weighed down by subpar work. (TFA is the best TF show of all time, but Batman? ...I sincerely believe it was the best cartoon I've ever seen.)

Fight Or Flee was amazing. Stoners would have a trip unlike any other. You hear Cyclonus talking and then find out it's Bruticus. I can see them strung out now...

Shin should be ashamed of himself. This is terrible.

Im glad Im not the only person that thought after the movie G1 went down. There are so many plotholes and errors, and the movie was just to kill off a bunch of toys that whernt selling well, and replace them with new ones. The movie had no point at all but to replace toys.

City Commander wrote:Call of the Primitives will make you think otherwise.


There are a few other gems in season three, but yes for the most part it's pretty awful.

I agree, there that there are a few gems but for the most part season 3 is bad..

Season 4 is not really any better.

Cyber Bishop wrote:

City Commander wrote:Call of the Primitives will make you think otherwise.


There are a few other gems in season three, but yes for the most part it's pretty awful.

I agree, there that there are a few gems but for the most part season 3 is bad..

Season 4 is not really any better.

Season 4 wasn't much of a season...

Ah, season three. One or two good episodes but for the most part it sucked.

I think that the series lost most of its appeal because most of the characters we liked were killed in the movie. Instead we got new toys characters we didn't like as much as the old ones.

And then there's characters like Daniel and Wheelie, I already hated both of them back in 1986.

Ah, season 4, The Rebirth mini-series. Yeah, it was craptastic, but watchable. CICM was just incredibad.

Season 3 has no right to exist. And Nelson Shin deserves a slap in the back of the head followed by "WTF, man?"

I think even he would say "Yeah, it was bad. I'm sorry."

Stormwolf wrote:

Cyber Bishop wrote:

City Commander wrote:Call of the Primitives will make you think otherwise.


There are a few other gems in season three, but yes for the most part it's pretty awful.

I agree, there that there are a few gems but for the most part season 3 is bad..

Season 4 is not really any better.

Season 4 wasn't much of a season...

3 episodes.. Short but what they considered a "season"...

Who knows..

Cyber Bishop wrote:

Stormwolf wrote:

Cyber Bishop wrote:

City Commander wrote:Call of the Primitives will make you think otherwise.


There are a few other gems in season three, but yes for the most part it's pretty awful.

I agree, there that there are a few gems but for the most part season 3 is bad..

Season 4 is not really any better.

Season 4 wasn't much of a season...

3 episodes.. Short but what they considered a "season"...

Who knows..

It wasn't just The Rebirth. It also had those re-edited episodes with Tommy (or was it Timmy?) and Powermaster Optimus Prime.

Autobot032 wrote:

Cyber Bishop wrote:

Stormwolf wrote:

Cyber Bishop wrote:

City Commander wrote:Call of the Primitives will make you think otherwise.


There are a few other gems in season three, but yes for the most part it's pretty awful.

I agree, there that there are a few gems but for the most part season 3 is bad..

Season 4 is not really any better.

Season 4 wasn't much of a season...

3 episodes.. Short but what they considered a "season"...

Who knows..

It wasn't just The Rebirth. It also had those re-edited episodes with Tommy (or was it Timmy?) and Powermaster Optimus Prime.

Nope those are actually known as season 5 I think, the sad thing is the Rebirth was meant as a 5 episode pilot story to a longer season 4 but was ultimately cut down to 3 and cancelled.

Anything after the movie was just crap to me. I rememeber watching them as a kid thinking "this isn't right". At the time I didnt understand why, but I knew it wasn't good. I have the entire G1 DVD set, but I only watch seaspns 1, 2, and the movie.

SJ21 wrote:Anything after the movie was just crap to me. I rememeber watching them as a kid thinking "this isn't right".

I agree, for the most part. Season 3 was, overall, garbage on an epic scale. The stories were poorly written and the animation was worse-than-bad most of the time. Granted there are some exceptions to the rule, since one of my favorite episodes of all time happens to be in season 3 (Webworld RULES!).....there was just no consistency to anything Transformers-related at this time...the death knell for the G1 line had sounded in the western market.

Anyone remember the opening credits and Kup miscolored as Springer?

Besides Call of the Primitives, I also liked the epilogue of Kup's story from the movie. You know, about that ikyak and so forth.....where Skylynx fought an uber looking Predaking?

Here's my take on season 3.

Likes:

• The overall darker and edgier atmosphere and tone of the series compared to the blandness of the light-hearted previous two seasons.
• The fact that there was a third-party involved in the conflict (the Quintessons), making it more complex than the simple "good guys vs. bad guys" set up
• The involvement of humans in the Autobot/Decepticon conflict and other space matters (i.e. - Spike being Earth's ambassador, the EDC, etc.).
• The fact that the new cast members had more substance and depth to their personalities than most of the previous series cast members had.
• The further development of the lore and history of Cybertron and Matrix.

Dislikes:

• The old cast members who weren't shown to be killed off in the movie just up and disappeared (save for a few cameos)
• The fact that alien/futuristic altmodes and space battles were the norm rendered the whole "robots in disguise" aspect moot (though, this had already been rendered moot long ago in season one)
• Rodimus Prime wasn't as cool as he had been in the movie's conclusion
• "Carnage in C-Minor"
• The incomprehensible retcon made for "Dark Awakening"'s ending by the opening scene of "The Return of Optimus Prime - Part 1".

Sabrblade wrote:Dislikes:

• The old cast members who weren't shown to be killed off in the movie just up and disappeared (save for a few cameos)
• The fact that alien/futuristic altmodes and space battles were the norm rendered the whole "robots in disguise" aspect moot (though, this had already been rendered moot long ago in season one)
• Rodimus Prime wasn't as cool as he had been in the movie's conclusion
• "Carnage in C-Minor"
• The incomprehensible retcon made for "Dark Awakening"'s ending by the opening scene of "The Return of Optimus Prime - Part 1".

I know alot of people don't like this episode, but I have always quite enjoyed it!

SlyTF1 wrote:Im glad Im not the only person that thought after the movie G1 went down. There are so many plotholes and errors, and the movie was just to kill off a bunch of toys that whernt selling well, and replace them with new ones. The movie had no point at all but to replace toys.

What I hate is well...the movie, fun to watch sure but killing many old characters and then replacing them with new characters we never saw and passing them off like they were there all along?

Annoying...anyhow, have not seen too much of Season Three though I do know the Ultimate weapon was very, very stupid.
Galvatron finds out they know he was bluffing, Rodimus walks towards him, Galvatron runs,

Galvatron blew up a planet in the five faces of darkness, why doesn't he just kill Rodimus?
Call of the Primitives was great though, one of my favorite G1 episodes(Revenge of bruticus shall always be my favorite).

I'm gonna pull a Butters from South Park on this one and say "I don't know guys. I thought it was pretty good."

Still can't believe that AKOM got to work on the Simpson and Batman.

Yeah, season 3 is mostly horrible. I think what compound the problem for the show, was the fact that the show's writers were also doing GI Joe at the time, as well as AKOM being brought on board.

Does anyone know if the show switched writers, or fire half the staff at the time?

There were a few good ideas in season 3, but they were executed terribly.

I loved Paradon at first, because it was great seeing another lost tribe of Cybertronians, but then Rodimus had Ultra Magnus blew it up. "Damn you all! You blew it up! Damn you to hell, you damn dirty bots!" is what Sandstorm should've said to Rodimus.

Call of the Primitives looked cool, but then finding out that a monkey made Unicron kind of ruined it for me, but it was one of Grimlock's last hurrahs. Also, the dumbing of Grimlock (If at all possible), was lame.

I heard about Carnage in C Minor years before I ever saw it, so when I finally got the boxed set for season 3, I skipped it.

You know what? If you want good stories with the season 3 cast, just read the Marvel UK comic. Furman had complete creative license do whatever he wanted with Transformers UK. Also, Rodimus' adventures were way more epic.