Since this thread has been brought back from the dead, I suppose I can contribute something of substance to it.
Earlier this year, I was inspired by
this Facebook post by Ask Vector Prime, as well as all the work that was put into the
Renegade Rhetoric Facebook, to purchase the Warner Archive DVDs of the
Challenge of the GoBots cartoon, and used the episode order in the AVP Facebook post to watch the episodes in an order that felt like everything flowed well enough to make that order work (though, the loose continuity of the overall show, notwithstanding). After which, I watch the
GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords movie online.
It was back in May that I completed my watching of all of the cartoon and its movie. While the show overall was a roller coaster of ups and downs, I gotta say, it sure goes out on a high note when one ends it on the epic that is "Mission: Gobotron". That episode is awesome! One of the best episodes of the entire series, right up there with "The Third Column", which was another great episode with arguably the show's best villain in Zero. That guy could give Starscream a run for his money any day!
As for the show overall, yeah, it sure is a 1980's Hanna-Barbera cartoon, alright. Lots of lazy plots, cheap animation, above-average voice acting... but with absolutely
stellar music. For all of H-B's faults, one thing I've never had any issue with in their cartoons is the accompanying musical scores, and
GoBots is no exception. The orchestral music provided for this show sounds just as regal, magnificent, and (sometimes) epic as a lot of their scores from their other shows. A few specific tunes would even send chills down my spine when they played, getting me hyped up for whatever was about to happen regardless of whether whatever happened actually deserved to be hyped up (this most often occurred whenever the music let us know Courageous was coming, even if not all of Courageous's fights were as good as their musical cues were).
The characters were also quite endearing for the most part. I didn't find Scooter to be as annoying as most of the Internet makes him out to be, as he was quite resourceful and smart when he needed to be. Cy-Kill was just a hoot of a character, oozing with charisma and chewing up as much scenery as he could whenever he was onscreen. Turbo took a while to grow on me and now I find myself using his "Time to go!" catchphrase every now and then. And I've already sang my praises for Zero, that guy was just awesome and criminally underutilized in the series. The rest of the characters, both major and recurring, were charming enough on the whole (with the lone exception being Crasher, whose obnoxious laugh will never stop being irritable).
But, my favorite character in the series is not a GoBot, for it is none other than the human Matt Hunter. I love his cynical, sarcastic, straight man personality. He speaks his mind bluntly and knows when something is too ridiculous even for this show's standards. He has a good head on his shoulders and is among the most rational of thinkers in the show. And he's quick to leap into action when necessary, never hesitating to pick up a laser rifle and open fire on Cy-Kill himself, even if he's the only one around to engage the Renegades by his lonesome. The only times he didn't seem well written were in the far too many "something is wrong with Leader-1/the Guardians and UNECOM can't realize that the Renegades are behind it" episodes, in which he tended to be among those who believed that Leader-1/the Guardians had genuinely turned evil. But other than those isolated dumb instances, he was cool.
In regards to the movie, while not really that much better than the TV show, it did feel like the kind of movie I would have loved had I got to see it as a kid.
Transforming Converting space robots on a fantasy world planet inhabited by morphing rock people fighting over magical spears of power?
Slag yeah! This had so much potential to be so much more than it was, but instead just felt like a really good but really long episode of the show rather than something on a more legit cinematic scale. I get that it was probably meant to be a lead-in to either a new season or a spinoff show, and it shows. But it wasn't terrible. I just wish it was a little less slow, a little more punchy, and had more of a definite ending, as it ends without really resolving the main struggle against Magmar (BTW, Pokemon would totally sue over than name in this day and age :p ) and leaves things open to never again be followed upon (that is, until Renegade Rhetoric came along). It also could have used more of a kickbutt 80's rock soundtrack like TFTM had; and really, a rock soundtrack for this movie would have been all too obviously perfect that I'm surprised that they
didn't try to sneak in any rock music even into the end credits after the Rock Lord commercial theme song played.
As far as the continuity of the show goes, I spotted several of the glaring continuity issues that this show is infamous for, and many of which cannot easily be fixed by reordering the episodes. For instance, "Quest for New Earth" feels like a fitting epilogue to the Gobotron Saga that takes place not long after it, but because that saga must come early in the series while "Quest for New Earth" features the Secret Riders, it feels as though that the Master Renegade has been a prisoner of Cy-Kill aboard
Roguestar for nearly the entire series, which feels really awkward since everyone in that episode acts like the Master Renegade's actions in the Gobotron Saga didn't happen that long ago, as though the writers were taking that saga's late-run broadcast order to heart despite the saga needing to happen earlier. The only way I could see any mending to this situation would be for this episode and "Guardian Academy" to be placed far earlier in the series, but that would throw out of whack the whole flow of the final batch of episodes feeling like a sort of story arc on their own, and would mean that the Secret Riders show up early and disappear for a good long while before making sporadic reappearances near the end (although, placing "Guardian Academy" sooner would help fix Staks's being a cadet in that episode when he showed up as a full-fledged Guardian in many episodes beforehand, but I don't think fixing his continuity hiccup is worth adding more inconsistency to the other Secret Riders' appearances).
One more thing of note about "Quest for New Earth" is that something happened in this episode that greatly surprised me given how PC the whole series is. At one point when the Last Engineer and the Master Renegade have their fistfight, the Last Engineer punches the Master Renegade in the mouth and a faint trail of red
blood is very briefly seen flying out of the Master Renegade's mouth. Hardcore.
Now, having said all that, do I feel that this show stacks up with the likes of the Generation 1 Transformers cartoon? Oh, slag no! Like I said, this is a pretty typical 1980s Hanna-Barbera cartoon with all around shoddy production quality. That isn't to say the G1 cartoon didn't have production flaws itself, 'course it did. Several of the G1 cartoon's animation errors and storytelling oddities are practically legendary, even! But the
GoBots cartoon falls even lower on the production quality level of the G1 cartoon. But like the G1 cartoon, in many ways, the
GoBots cartoon has a lot to like about it, in a quaint 1980's cartoon standards way. There's a lot of charm to several of the characters and sometimes the stories did churn out some rather creative plots (in addition to the many stinker plots as well). And frankly, given the past rivalry history this show shared with the G1 cartoon, there's a strong feeling of this show being underrated as an unsung product of its time.
I honestly kind of feel that the 5-part pilot of the
GoBots cartoon had a better villain plot than the 3-part pilot of the G1 cartoon. Whereas Megatron's plan seemed a little more random and unfocused with the Decepticons stealing whatever energy they could from whatever nearby sites they could find on a whim, all just to build a ship and nebulously go "take over Cybertron", Cy-Kill actually had a single, focused plan that was both coherent and ambitious, and had been all planned out ahead of time to make good use of the specific resources that he knew he needed. And what's more, he actually achieved more of his goal than Megatron did. Cy-Kill successfully took over the Earth with his mind control technology and created his armada of Zods. The situation felt a lot more dire in the
GoBots pilot what with the entire world turned against the Guardians. Only by some plot-induced conveniences and good timing were the Guardians able to thwart Cy-Kill's plans, meaning Cy-Kill's plan was so good that the Guardians needed help from the
plot itself to stop him.
But overall, I'd still put the
GoBots cartoon below the production standards of the G1 cartoon, even if I did still get a kick out of its good parts (the bad parts are still pretty bad, however).
