Cartoon Viewing Club: Zob's Thoughts on "The God Gambit"

[Zobovor]

"The God Gambit" was episode #42 of Transformers, falling in the middle of the second season and first airing on October 28, 1985.  While Hasbro wanted the cartoon primarily grounded on Earth (robots who turn into Earth cars naturally need Earthlings to interact with), the show bible specified that occasional jaunt into outer space was acceptable, particularly following the introduction of the spacefaring Transformers like Omega Supreme and Astrotrain.  This is one of the comparatively rare second-season two stories that predominantly takes place offworld, which would become a much more common staple for season three.

The episode was penned by Buzz Dixon, who also co-wrote "Prime Target" with Flint Dille and, for better or for worse, also gave us "Carnage in C-Minor."  While Dixon received sole writing credit for the episode, the story premise for "The God Gambit" actually originated in Flint Dille's story treatment guide for the show, in which he offered several random ideas as jumping-off points for potential episodes (the story premise for "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court" was another one proposed by Dille).

Our episode begins on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn.  This is a fairly common setting for science-fiction writers, as Titan is the only known satellite with an atmosphere, and it has sometimes been theorized that it is capable of supporting life.  (The moon is not identified in dialogue until later in the episode, but Saturn is clearly visible in the establishing shot.)  A small contingent of aliens are bringing an offering to their Sky God, which is represented as a statue of a gigantic robot.  Making preparations for their arrival is an "astrologer priest" named Jero, who orders glowing rocks be placed within the empty statue's eye sockets to produce the desired effect.  The Titans, it seems, worship robots as if they were deities.  As the various purple- and blue- and pink-skinned humanoids arrive, they present their meager offerings to the robot god as he shakes his arms at them majestically (it's all done with ropes and pulleys, controlled by hidden operators).  Jero is voiced in this episode by Ed Gilbert, and is given a chance to wax dramatic, emoting wonderfully in a way we don't usually hear from Thrust or Blitzwing.  When a sad little alien offers only a meager bowl of fruit, Jero is enraged despite his protests that his family is already starving (he's called Scrawney in the script; he's also voiced by Paul Eiding, so you already know Perceptor is going to make an appearance eventually).  Jero is a stern taskmaster.  

Just then, a heretic named Talaria raids the ceremony, and her small band of like-minded followers sabotage the Sky God and cause the statue to crumble to the ground.  She decries his "I believe in reason and common sense!" she proclaims.  "There ARE no Sky Gods!"  This show has so few female characters that basically every female voice actor brought onto the show was a guest star, and most of them were never identified in the voice credits.  In this case, Talaria was voiced by the late, great Linda Gary, who also was recruited a few times to play other one-shot characters like Astoria from "The Girl Who Loved Powerglide" or Allana from "Sea Change."  

What does any of this have to do with those shapeshiftin' robots in disguise?  You're about to find out!  Elsewhere in the heavens, Cosmos is being pursued by Astrotrain through space, having apparently just acquired some information about a fantastic new energy source that the Decepticons are just dying to get their digital manipulators on.  In desperation, Cosmos radios the Autobot base.

There are a few interesting things about this scene.  For one, the Autobots present to hear the distress call are Optimus Prime, Jazz, Perceptor, and Red Alert, a latecomer who is colored grey-and-red as he arrives on the scene.  Needless to say, this is a bit different than the white-and-red color scheme of the Hasbro toy, and different than his previous appearances like "Auto Berserk" in which he's never darker than an eggshell white.  (This is the origin of the MP-14+ "Anime Edition" of Masterpiece Red Alert offered by TakaraTomy.)  Another interesting element is that when Prime commands Cosmos to transmit the energy data he collected, Red Alert actually countermands Prime's orders, noting that the possibility of Decepticons intercepting the transmission is too much of a risk.  My takeaway from this scene is that Red Alert, as security director, is actually able to override decisions from the Autobot commander if he believes them to be a security risk.  

On board Astrotrain, we see that Thrust and Starscream are his passengers.  Thrust warns Astrotrain his fuel reserves are nearly exhausted, but Astrotrain bids him to be silent.  "I am in complete control!  COMPLETE control!" he promises.  A couple of ionic blasts and Cosmos is disabled, shifting to robot mode and pinballing from asteroid to asteroid until he eventually falls towards Titan, ostensibly sucked in by its gravitational pull.  By the time we see Talaria again, she and her band have tied up Jero and his astrologer priests.  They're having a little fireside chat outdoors.  The Titans rally around Talaria as she tries to explain to the populace how the Sky Gods are just Jero's means of manipulating the people into servitude and poverty.  Talaria's stance is that there's no way their so-called gods would force them to live upon a plateau surrounded by deadly electric lava, where food is difficult to come by.  Jero's position is that the Sky Gods must want them there; otherwise, why else would they have formed the chasms that are impossible to cross?  Talaria's not buying it.  "They forbid it, or YOU forbid it?  Show me a Sky God, so I can ask him!"

Well, cartoon plots are nothing if not convenient and contrived, so it is, of course, at this specific moment that a flaming Cosmos enters the atmosphere.  "The Sky Gods have deigned to answer your challenge!" a vindicated Jero proclaims.  Astrotrain and the Decepticons are not too far behind.  "Here is the church; here is the steeple.  Open the doors, but where are the people?" Starscream spouts, in what is perhaps his most preposterous line of dialogue ever.  It's a reference to a children's rhyme and accompanying hand gestures.  It's extremely unlikely that Starscream would have ever been exposed to this piece of Earth culture, so it's unfathomably stupid for him to be quoting this.  Still, this is a story about religion so I suppose it's not completely out of place.  When Astrotrain realizes they are bowing before Cosmos, he proclaims, "These fools worship Transformers!" and thus gave birth to the obvious meta-joke about the fandom that's trotted out with alarming regularity.  (He also pronounces the word as "TRANS-for-mers" rather than "trans-FOR-mers," the same way Spike says it in "Five Faces of Darkness.")

Astrotrain calculates that the aliens will defer to him if he poses as one of their deities.  He's got a Megatron-like attention span, it seems.  It's as if he's completely forgotten about chasing down Cosmos, and he has no idea if this planet or its people holds any strategic significance whatsoever.  Naturally, Starscream questions this idea (not so much because it's a major deviation from their mission, but because he wants to be the god, not Astrotrain) but he backs down due to threat of force, like always.  Astrotrain makes his appearance on the scene, mowing over trees in train mode and laying on the horn before swapping to space shuttle mode long enough to do some fancy flying before he, and the others, land in robot mode.  He introduces himself as "Astrotrain, mightiest of all the gods!" and demands their fealty.  "Bow down and worship your new master, worms!"  He calls these guys worms a lot.  By accident or design, he's making the exact same gestures with his arms that the Sky God statue did in the beginning of the episode, waving them up and down majestically, and it's an impressive enough showing that the populace falls into place.

Astrotrain collects the unconscious form of Cosmos, propping him up on an altar and disabling him.  Like "Make Tracks," this episode establishes that you can literally disconnect a single cable and a Transformer is completely immobilized.  This is either incredibly poor design or shows amazing foresight on the part of their Quintesson creators——I haven't quite decided which.  Of course, Astrotrain goes out of his way to explain to the inert Cosmos what he's doing——"reconnect one little wire, and you could call for help!"——thus enabling Talaria to eavesdrop and set her plan in motion to circumvent Astrotrain's plans.  Some people just want to watch the world burn.  There's an interesting exchange where Thrust once again points out that Astrotrain is still low on power, suggesting they call Megatron at this stage.  Astrotrain steadfastly refuses, insisting that he's got things under control.  Starscream's concern is that as long as Astrotrain is playing God, they're all stuck on Saturn's moon.  This kind of implies that Starscream would be unable to leave the planet under his own power (though later episodes like "The Revenge of Bruticus" kind of fly in the face of that idea).  

From a storytelling perspective, it's actually really fascinating when the writers take Megatron and/or Optimus Prime out of the picture.  Those two are the driving force behind most plots, and they're the ones the Decepticons and Autobots turn to when making decisions.  Extracting them from the episode requires the troops to do all the decision-making, and maybe even make some really BAD decisions that create more conflict and thus more drama.  Really, though, Astrotrain is just playing a Megatron role in this episode.  Except for being the one who transports the other Decepticons to Titan and back, Astrotrain could be replaced by Megatron and the episode would flow exactly the same.  Also, inexplicably putting him in a leadership role is a little odd, since he's never outranked Starscream at any point before or after this episode (and he had to get Starscream out of the way before he could take charge in "Triple Takeover").

As for the Autobots, it's Jazz making most of the decisions in this episode, but it's all very basic straight-and-narrow heroic Autobot stuff——rescue the girl, stop the Decepticon plot, ensure the safety of the populace.  It proves the Autobots are largely capable of performing as well as ever, even in Prime's absence, but it's a little boring and cut-and-dried from a storytelling viewpoint.

After the Decepticons leave, Talaria sneaks down to the altar and plugs Cosmos back in.  Immediately, his communicator is activated and Optimus Prime demands a status update.  Talaria explains that he's hurt, but when Prime asks for the name of the planet they're on, Talaria doesn't understand the word "planet."  This in itself is kind of interesting, since it shows that while there's some language translating obviously going on, it doesn't work in every instance.  The Titans have evidently never been off-world (their limited technology is a testament to this) so it doesn't even occur to them that there are other inhabited worlds in the heavens.  One wonders if a Transformer visit at some point in the past was what spawned their legends about Sky Gods to begin with.

Prime tells Talaria to activate Cosmos' homing signal, but as soon as she presses the prescribed button, the Decepticons are alerted to its activation.  "She had led the Autobots here, but they will not find her alive!" Astrotrain promises, and Starscream opens fire.  Cut to commercial.  Oddly, Astrotrain's voice delivery has been deep and grandiose up to this point, in a way that's uncharacteristic for him, but when he delivers this particular line, it's at a much higher pitch.  It's as if it was part of an entirely different recording session, perhaps as a follow-up take to replace an earlier recorded line that didn't meet with censor approval?  (You can detect this sometimes in other episodes.  In "Fire in the Sky," any time a character delivers a line that includes Skyfire's name, it never matches dialogue from the rest of the episode, because he was originally called Jetfire and those lines had to be re-recorded.)

As we come back for the second act, Starscream opens fire... and misses Talaria pathetically.  He's a stormtrooper from Star Wars, apparently.  At this point, a whole bunch of things happen at once.  Talaria runs.  Thrust tries to block her path.  Cosmos awakens and shoots Starscream.  Starscream falls to the ground, eyes open and mouth agape, and just sort of lies there on his stomach while Talaria runs right past him.  Thrust runs to hide behind Astrotrain, because now there's a dangerous Mini Autobot on the loose.  "Coward!" Astrotrain scoffs.  "His damages——unnff!——render him harmless!"  I'm guessing Astrotrain was supposed to be shoving Thrust aside, hence the grunt, but in animation Astrotrain just stands there and peppers his speech with "unnff!" for no reason.  I think this must be one of the hardest things to figure out how to synch to animation because it's almost never handled correctly.

On Earth, the Autobots are preparing for a rescue mission to recover Cosmos and his secret energy discovery.  Omega Supreme (finally identifing Titan by name) explains, in that stilted way he's got, that he won't even be able to transform once they get there because he'll use up 97% of his energy.  This doesn't seem right.  Saturn is within Earth's solar system and Cybertron is much farther than that, and yet Omega Supreme has been shown traveling to Cybertron and transforming afterwards ("The Key to Vector Sigma" part 1, for example).  However, it's quite possible that Omega doesn't have a spare robot body waiting for him on Titan, so it really will just be his arms making the journey this time, and his rocket won't be able to combine with anything once he gets there.  

Optimus Prime says that only two Autobots can go, because of reasons.  He plans on going along for the ride himself——until Red Alert overrides him once again, pointing out that Prime is too important to risk losing.  Perceptor agrees to go so he can translate Cosmos' encoded energy data, and Jazz wants to be part of the mission just because "I like kickin' Decepticon cans."  The cast of characters for this episode is comparatively small (the focus is basically on two Autobots and three Decepticons), so Jazz seems like an odd choice.  The focus in season two tends to be largely on 1985 characters, but it's nice to see a couple of 1984 characters occasionally featured.  This is the closest thing Jazz gets to a spotlight episode, and he was one of the most popular characters from the show, so I'm not complaining.  "Let's home it's not just a one-way trip," Prime remarks ominously.  Of course, if they sent more Autobots, they'd have a better chance, but hey, what do I know?

Back on Titan, Jero eagerly leads the Decepticons to what he calls the "Fire Gods' lair," actually a cavern filled with crystals loaded full of electricity.  Apparently this was what Cosmos had discovered, though he must have done so in secret, without the Titans observing his presence.  "I've never seen crystals so rich in energy!" declares Starscream, completely forgetting about the ruby crystals of Burma from "More Than Meets the Eye" part 2... and the crystals deep within the Arctic Circle in "Fire in the Sky"... and the Crystal of Power from "Fire on the Mountain"... and the korlonium crystals from "A Prime Problem."  After Starscream starts playing with them, one of the astrologer priests cries foul, noting that their ancient tablets describe the crystals as taboo.  This is, of course, because they are highly volatile and would destroy the Titan population if they manhandled the crystals.  However, Jero sees no problem here.  "Taboo?  To a GOD?!" is his response.  

As an aside, I'm really surprised that Sunbow was willing to tackle an episode like this, and I'm equally-surprised that Hasbro gave them the go-ahead on it.  Despite the fact that historically around 90-95% of Americans have believed in God over the last few decades, religion is a subject that's almost never addressed in children's programming.  One supposes that somebody at Broadcast Standards and Practices decided it wasn't a cartoon's place to indoctrinate the remaining five-to-ten percent, but it's still interesting to me.  Unless it's a show like VeggieTales that's specifically designed to cater to good little Christian children, religion is an even more taboo subject than sex!  (There is a Challenge of the GoBots episode where Cy-Kill promises to "put the fear of Zod in them," but that's more of an implied inference than anything else.)

Granted, "The God Gambit" deals with gods with a lower-case "g," not God with a capital "G," but the message of the episode still seems to be that believe in a higher power is the result of being poorly-educated or misinformed.  So far, every Titan who believes in a Sky God is simply ignorant of the facts.  There isn't a single aspect of Jero's faith that cannot be explained by science.  We come away with the message that if you believe in a god, however you capitalize it, it's only because you're not seeing the truth.  It's a rather ballsy message for a kids' cartoon show!

Okay, back to the episode.  Ever wonder how Omega Supreme lands if he doesn't have an extra body waiting for him on the planet upon his arrival?  Badly, is apparently the answer.  He slides through alien foliage, while Jazz and Perceptor hang on for dear life, until the rocket comes to rest, on its side, at the edge of a precipice.  Omega is able to quickly calculate that Jazz and Perceptor lack the strength necessary to pull him back off the edge; they'll need to recover Cosmos first.  "We'll find an energy source and come back for you.  Just don't move," Jazz suggests.  "Sarcasm not appreciated," replies Omega.

Back in the caves, Astrotrain has got the Titans stockpiling the energy crystals.  Jero is warning the workers that the crystals are sacred and to treat them with respect unless they want to risk death.  Starscream agrees that they're dangerous, but for an entirely different reason——they're unstable and volatile.  I love the scene when the Decepticons are mining the crystals, because everybody is bathed in highlights and shadows and it just looks gorgeous.  It's similar to the way everybody is super-shiny at the beginning of "The Return of Optimus Prime" part 2, the main difference being that they aren't doing it in this episode to try to mask how bad they are at actually animating the robots moving.

Perceptor and Jazz are exploring Titan when Talaria spots them and opens fire.  "No sign of Cosmos... but there is a native in that tree shooting arrows at us," Perceptor reports after scanning the surrounding area as a microscope.  (This line was cut from the syndicated version on the Sci-Fi Channel, so in their edited version, Perceptor suddenly reverts from microscope mode but was transformed for seemingly no reason.)  Talaria is determined not to worship false gods, and would rather shoot them than kneel before them, but Jazz evidently manages to talk her down.

When next we see Talaria and the Autobots, they're already best buddies, with Talaria riding around on Jazz's shoulder.  She leads them to the altar and the disabled Cosmos, and Jazz waxes regretful for a moment, explaing to Talaria that they're not gods at all, but merely sophisticated machines.  Just then, Starscream and Thrust appear on the scene.  Thrust's defining character trait is that he's a loud-mouthed braggart, but in this episode he's spectacularly timid.  He panics at the idea that they might have to engage two whole Autobots.

What follows has always seemed like a gratuitous scene in which somebody suddenly remembers that this is a show called The Transformers.  Jazz switches to car mode, driving down the steps of the altar when his robot configuration would certainly be more fitting to traverse a staircase.  Starscream counters this move, likewise transforming to jet mode so he can fly around pointlessly for about nine seconds.  Jazz witches back to robot mode, picks up a good-sized boulder, and chucks it at Starscream, and he is instantly grounded.  Just think, the Autobots have been at war with the Decepticons for millions of years, fighting with all sorts of sophisticated lasers and space-age weaponry, and not once did anyone think to just pelt them with rocks.  

There's an awkward scene where Starscream is just laying there in jet mode, upside-down (with the underside of his jet nose colored orange as if it were his cockpit) and Jazz approaches him with the intent to strangle him.  Jazz is tiny compared to Starscream when he first grabs him, but as Starscream graciously reverts to robot mode, to allow Jazz to get a firm grip on his neck, he shrinks considerably.  What's even more bizarre than this, though, is the way Starscream is still able to shift to robot mode with Jazz already on top of him.  I don't understand how Starscream's jet nose is able to fold down and tuck away to form the middle of his chest without passing right through Jazz's torso, but somehow it happens.  Also, Jazz grabs Starscream when he's in jet mode, but by the time Starscream is in robot mode, Jazz's hands are already around his neck.  Maybe this is one of those things that seemed like a good idea in the script, but just couldn't be realized in animation.  

Starscream demands that Thrust give him a hand, but Thrust turns tail and flees instead.  He bumps into Astrotrain and warns him of the Autobot invasion.  Astrotrain responds by getting the Titans to shoot crystal-tipped arrows at the Autobots, which explode in electrical bursts.  Jazz and Perceptor (who has run outside to ask "what is transpiring out here?" because big words) are pummeled with bigger and bigger crystals, as the Titans break out this crazy medieval crystal-slinging catapult, until they're knocked clean off the altar and into a chasm.  "The cowards fled!" proclaims Astrotrain, apparently not understanding what has just transpired out here.

The music jumps right to the end of the "Emergency" theme so you know that a) somebody's in big trouble and b) the episode is about to cut to commercial in about 14 seconds.  The problem with the same musical cues getting used so frequently is that once you get to know the themes fairly well, you can predict the length of the scenes.  Of course, if you paid attention to your Garfield wall clock when these episodes were originally broadcast, you already knew that there was a break coming at the seven- and fourteen-minute marks.  In a lot of ways, the medium is the message.  In this case, it's no big surprise when the Decepticons converge upon Talaria and capture her.  The "damsel in distress" trope still ran rampant in the 1980's, though I have to admit it still works.  There's just less inherent pathos if it were some random male Titan who got captured, though I'm hard pressed to explain why.  Talaria isn't a weak character by any stretch of the imagination (she's the leader of her rebellion and no slouch with a bow-and-arrow), so it's certainly not that.  

So, a quick anecdote.  I lamented the fact that the show went off the air (1989 was about the last year I was able to watch the series in syndication, in early-morning reruns of the fifth season episodes) but when the Sci-Fi Channel picked up the cartoon in 1992 or thereabouts, I was overjoyed.  Moreover, by this point I actually had a VCR and could finally record episodes to watch over and over.  The problem, of course, was that I was still in high school so I had to go to classes in the morning, so I just set the VCR to record an hour's worth of episodes (they played two installments back-to-back, right after Defenders of the Earth but before a weird puppet show called Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons).  Anyway, after school I would excitedly rush home, check my tapes, and see which episodes had aired that day.  When I had partially rewound the tape and checked it, the middle of "The God Gambit" came on and I had absolutely no recollection of it.  Which was weird, because I'd watched the show religiously, if you'll pardon the reference.  

Elsewhere, Astrotrain the slave driver is overseeing the crystal harvest, chastizing the "worms" when they fail to perform.  "They are lazy insects, O Mighty Astrotrain.  Shall I punish them for you?" suggests Jero with far too much enthusiasm.  He sure has fallen into the sycophant acolyte role rather quickly.  With Talaria caged up, Astrotrain suggests that they watch her being sacrificed, predicting that it will "renew their vigor."  Big words for a kids' show!

Meanwhile, Perceptor and Jazz have stumbled upon the cavern containing the energy crystals.  Perceptor describes them as "highly unstable crystalized energy," and Jazz proceeds to try to break some off by bashing them with a nearby boulder.  You know, I love Jazz to death, but he really is a complete idiot sometimes.  Perceptor takes his time stopping him, finally warning Jazz that he might make everything go boom after he gets off about six good whacks.  Jazz is the Special Operations Agent for the Autobots, assigned to the most dangerous and important assignments, and yet his approach towards any problem is to hit things with a big rock.  

A few Titans show up and lay on the guilt trip, deriding Jazz for destroying their faith, their world, their delicious fruit baskets, etc.  Jazz is pretty insistent in sticking to his one-note refrain of "we ain't gods and never claimed to be!"  Perceptor points out that Astrotrain is a liar-liar-rocket-boots-on-fire, and the Titans realize they were duped.  One of them laments that they didn't listen to Talaria and that now she's about to get up close and personal with a large, stabby implement.  (He calls her "tuh-LAIR-ee-ah" while everybody else in this episode has called her "tuh-LARR-ee-ah.")  As luck would have it, the crystal cave is directly below the temple, so Jazz decides it's time to do some rock climbing.  He slips a couple of times, maybe because he's got those gigantic wheels on the bottom of his feet.  (That grappling hook that popped out of his forearm all the time in the pilot episode would have come in really handy right about now.)  

Meanwhile, Perceptor is going to stock up on crystals and use them to repower Omega Supreme.  He finds the rocket ship suspended on the edge of a precipice, and Omega warns him to be quiet because the vibrations will cause him to fall.  Perceptor responds by taking a mighty leap and landing on the precipice, causing it to shake.  When Omega insists that he be careful, Perceptor yells "I'M TRYING!" as loudly as possible.  (Wouldn't it have been better for Perceptor to transform in mid-jump so he could land as a tiny microscope?  I know that Transformers basically spit in the face of physics as we know it, so doing so should reduce his mass.)

At the climax of the episode, we're treated to some rapid jump-cuts.  Back in the temple, a bunch of Titans along with the three Decepticons have gathered to watch Talaria's sacrifice.  She's bound by the wrists and ankles and Jero is about to impale her with a sacred stabby thing.  Cut to Omega Supreme, who blasts off right before he's about to fall into the electric lava.  Cut back to Talaria, who is saved by Jazz an instant before she gets intimately acquainted with the stabby thing.  In a rare bit of continuity for this show, Astrotrain is blasted in the chest and he actually retains the damage several scenes down the road.  

It's Jazz versus Starscream and Thrust and Astrotrain, and it begins to look like a losing proposition until Omega Supreme arrives on the scene.  There's a comical moment where Perceptor lets go of the rocket and sort of drunkenly staggers out of frame.  The juxtaposition of applying very human attributes to these robots is pretty common in this show, but it's particularly funny in this instance.  The staccato horns playing in the background add to the humorous nature of the scene.  What bothers me, though, is that Omega Supreme is suddenly able to revert to robot mode.  Where did he get his robot-mode parts from?!  One supposes that he can simply summon an extra rocket base from subspace, and that it requires a great deal of energy, which is why he couldn't do it unless he was fully-powered.  That's the only rationale I can offer.  

Well, Omega Supreme starts ripping through the temple walls, and Thrust and Starscream immediately turn tail and flee.  Astrotrain takes a little more convincing, but as soon as Omega opens fire on him with his gun-arm, it's Astrotrain's turn to high-tail it out of there.  He falls into the pit that Jazz climbed through and narrowly avoids falling into the electric lava.  The Decepticons reconnoiter in the crystal caves.  Realizing that they can't fight off Omega Supreme, Astrotrain decides to pull a classic Megatron move.  "If we can't have the energy crystals, then nobody will!" he decrees.  He blasts the crystal reserve, starting the same chain reaction that Perceptor warned about.  "Lord Astrotrain, what about me?" protests Jero as Astrotrain reverts to shuttle mode and the other Decepticons climb aboard.  "Die, like the worm you are!" Astrotrain suggests casually, before he rockets off past Saturn.  Jero is last seen diving for cover as the temple explodes behind him.

So, the problem here is that not only has the temple been destroyed, thus robbing the Titans of their livelihood, but they're trapped upon the plateau, with no way of crossing the electric lava.  "Spare us and we will worship you!" promises one of Jero's former acolytes.  "We ain't gods!" Jazz professes for the seventeenth time.  "But we will save you!"

So, this is where it gets a little cheatsy.  Omega Supreme transforms to... well, not his normal rocket base configuration, but essentially a big, long ramp.  It's as if this was originally a script written for G.I. Joe, and this is the part where Tollbooth and the Toss N' Cross Bridge Layer vehicle were supposed to come out.  Anyway, Omega Supreme's tank module along with the entire rocket-and-gantry combo roll across the tracks.  There's an unspoken contract that this show is supposed to advertise the abilities of the toys to some degree.  I can totally understand inventing a random laser blaster that pops out of somebody's arm or a pair of telescoping optic sensors as the plot requires it, but this is something that there is no possible way to re-enact with the Omega Supreme toy (the track pieces are perpetually curved!) so this feels a little like dirty pool.  It's like showing Megatron transforming into a sword or having Roller pop out of Optimus Prime's trailer and transform to a robot mode.  

You would think that this would be the moment that Jazz remembers he's a Transformer and drives across the ramp, but instead he grabs Talaria and shuffles across on foot, stumbling in the wake of the explosion behind him.  The plateau collapses, and the ramp, still suspended in mid-air, pulls both of them to safety.  There is no rescue scene for Jero; he is not present among the gathering of Titans at episode's end, so is is implied that he did, indeed, die like the worm he was.  The message here is that blind faith to your beloved deity will result in your certain doom.  Evidently, Talaria survived because she used critical thinking and questioned religion.

Some time has passed, and the Titans are rebuilding.  Perceptor has gotten Cosmos operational again (and this is not the last time he will basically sleep through an entire episode; see "Quest for Survival"), and we can infer that the Autobots will eventually return home.  "We have much to be thankful for," remarks Jero's acolyte.  "Yeah, like no Decepticons to monkey around with your beliefs!" Jazz responds.  This actually doesn't seem quite right to me.  Yes, I suppose it's the proper message for an episode like this, but in fact the Decepticons didn't really tamper with the Titan beliefs at all.  They didn't introduce any new ideas or strongarm the Titans into a completely new way of thinking.  The Decepticons simply took the existing religious beliefs about Sky Gods and ran with it.  The real villains of this episode were the unknown robot or robots who visited Titan in the past, the ones who allowed the Titans to believe they were gods, and upon whom the Sky God legends were actually based.

No review of this episode is complete without mentioning that Titan will appear again in another Transformers episode called "Money is Everything," a third-season installment taking place in the year 2006.  It's not surprising, because as I said, Titan is a popular setting for sci-fi stories due to its unique properties.  In that story, the Quintessons have established a secret base within Earth's solar system on Saturn's moon.  There is no sign of Talaria or the other Titan people in the second episode, so we must conclude that the Quintessons simply wiped them all out!
 
While this episode touches on some strong themes, it sort of dances around the important issues without ever really addressing them.  It's highly telling that the story takes place on an alien planet, and not some backwater human village, which would surely have provoked a strong and unfavorable response.  Alien cultures are comfortable, because even though they're an allegory for human civilization, they're just different enough that it passes under the radar and does not read as offensive.  Can you imagine the outrage if somebody had submitted an episode about Spike Witwicky's belief in God being thrown into question after meeting the Autobots?  It never would have gotten past the spec stage!

Overall, this is a mostly forgettable episode.  Astrotrain's gotten better showcase stories (in "Triple Takeover" he was a little dumb, but lovable) and while there is probably no episode in which Jazz gets more screen time, this installment doesn't offer much in the way of character development.  

I almost think I would have preferred to see an ending in which something mystical happens at the end, something the Transformers cannot readily explain——it would have been a nice twist, and forced the Autobots to question their own convictions (and also validate the beliefs of the Titans, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of children with a religious upbringing who saw this episode).  At it stands, the episode basically closes with, "See?  No gods, just like we said.  Well, ciao."  

The Titans' entire theology just got completely uprooted.  I don't know what else they have going on in their lives, because the episode really only focuses on the religious aspect of their culture, but I can only assume it's pretty significant to their day-to-day lives.  Thanks to a brief visit by the Transformers, suddenly everything they thought they knew was wrong.  Folks like Talaria, who never really believed in Sky Gods anyway, will be affected to a smaller degree.  What about the rest of the population, though?  Nothing about life on Titan will ever be the same again.  One wonders what sort of report Jazz offered to Optimus Prime.  "Mission went well.  Kicked some Decepticon cans, disrupted an entire planet's belief system.  Usual stuff, man."


Zob (open to suggestions for December's episode)

[Zobovor]

On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 7:07:59 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:

<snip>

I had a couple more thoughts about this episode, because I apparently haven't analyzed it to death yet.

The early Cosmos line "I got energy data on my tapes and Astrotrain on my tail!" didn't seem at all peculiar in the 1980's but it seems positively antiquated now. It's preposterous that Cosmos would store any kind of data on a reel-to-reel magnetic tape. (I don't even think Blaster and Soundwave's cassettes were "real" tapes. Rewind's tech specs specifically mention that he stores info on some kind of light-matrix crystal, and Grand Slam and Raindance have such a huge storage capacity (something like 175,000 hours of audio/video) that they couldn't possibly be using magnetic tape.)

It's like of like the line in Star Wars: A New Hope when the Imperial officers are chastising Darth Vader for allowing Princess Leia to escape with the "stolen data tapes." Digital storage was unheard of in the 1970's but surely they must have known this wouldn't sound very sci-fi. I mean, it's not like Leia tries to stuff an 8-track into R2-D2.

It's actually interesting that Cosmos was even hunting for alternate energy sources in the first place. All indications are that the world governments have supplied the Autobots with constant energy on tap (hence the world energy reserve chip from "Enter the Nightbird"), and they have access to as much as they want. The fact that they were exploring alternative fuel sources suggests that they wanted to be more independent. They could have been concerned about the Decepticons depleting the Earth's reserves so that there wouldn't be anything left for them to use, but it's also possible the Autobots didn't want to be tied to Earth forever so they were looking for a power source that would make them self-sufficient. This could have even been the impetus that led to the construction of Autobot City, which was described in an early version of the 1986 movie script as a huge energy-gathering installation.


Zob (thinks about these things sometimes... especially when spending hours wrapping plastic around dozens and dozens of pallets of Black Friday merchandise)

[banzait...@gmail.com]

Great review as usual. As a kid, the religious aspect went right over my head. The first time I watched this episode as an adult, my jaw dropped. I think this very adult and controversial theme elevates this episode to almost historical significance. It's quite shocking that this was allowed to be produced and aired. It effectively calls out religions for taking advantage of the poor and vulnerable while the "church" enriches itself. It's a model that has unfortunately played itself out in many different religions over human history, and still happens today.
Outside of this very complicated and interesting subplot, I never found the episode that remarkable. There simply are not enough transformers in it, and the spotlighting that is done is not executed particularly well.

-Banzaitron

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

"The God Gambit" tells the story of a populist uprising on Titan, and has a brief Coda in "Five Faces of Darkness" where we see what happened to the civilization after the uprising -- spoiler alert, there is no sign of the civilization and everyone is presumably dead.

We don't know what caused the extinction level event on Titan, but since the uprising was in 1985, and everyone is dead within twenty years, it is very likely that we are watching the start of the extinction right here. We get fun and adventure, and then everything turns to crap.

It is technically possible that a comet collides with the moon in 1994 or something, but let's do a little thought experiment. Take the entire history of the Titans, from the dawn of their civilization to the natural end, whenever that might be, and then divide that into twenty equal periods. The odds that 1985 was in the last of those periods is a paltry 1 in 20, or 5%. We have 95% confidence that the natural lifetime of their race was cut short. You cannot watch the episode without wondering which actions will kill them all.

It reminds me of the musical "Urinetown", where there was a massive drought, and a corporation had a monopoly on the water -- you had to pay to use the toilet, etc. Laws were passed restricting private toilets, everyone had to use the public toilets, and peeing was not a right, it was a privilege you had to pay for. There's a populist uprising, everyone can pee when they want, where they want and with whom they want, and then they run out of water from all that flushing and everyone dies. Hail Malthus.

Here, however, we don't see the fatal consequences unfold. Also, it's not a musical.

We open with a purplish priest, who resembles a human version of Scourge, collecting taxes from the peasantry in the form of a portion of their harvest. There is a bit of theater, with a big stone Sky God, and it is also clear that the Priest has much better clothing than the commoners.

This is a problem in all human systems, and apparently in all Titan systems as well -- those in power will line their own pockets. Corruption is universal. There is a small friction on society imposed this way, and it can generate resentment.

Talaria, a Titan woman, destroys the monument to the Sky Gods, and rants about freedom and taxation being theft. Jero, the Priest, warns her that she will pay for her blasphemy, but Talaria responds that she believes in "reason and common sense".

I've always been very wary of anyone proposing "common sense solutions" since it invariably means that they have not thought through all of the consequences of their solutions. "Common sense solutions" are also not about creating a dialog or understanding the opposing views. Any opposition is obviously wrong, and there can be no discussion of it.

Here's an example from our world, the Laffer Curve: if you set the rate to 100% it will so discourage work that tax revenues will be zero. So, if you cut the tax rate, it will encourage people to work, and tax revenues will rise. Always. No use looking at how a 0% tax rate would also generate no revenue. No use looking at the many times we have tried cutting tax rates only to discover the tax revenues plunge. That's all nonsense, obviously cutting taxes increases revenue.

In fact, these "common sense solutions" frequently result in the tragedy of the commons -- we give tax breaks to a corporation that locates in our state because we want the jobs, and the neighboring state then gives bigger tax breaks to lure them over, and in the end we get decreased tax revenues in both states, which damages the educational system in both. This is the crap that Jero is attempting to defend his society against.

It is worth noting that basically only Talaria and Jero have good clothing -- Jero presumably wears many symbols of his office, while Talaria appears to be upper class.

Meanwhile, Astrotrain is chasing Cosmos across the ... cosmos. In particular, through the rings of Saturn, which are composed of rocks and crystals. Astrotrain is low on fuel, and Cosmos is shot down and plummets towards Titan.

And, Talaria has a bunch of hippies sitting in a circle around a bonfire, debating the existence of God. They have also taken Jero hostage, and are basically terrorists at this point. When Talaria demands proof of the existence of Sky Gods, Cosmos crashes nearby.

Afrotrain lands at the temple, and Starscream entertains them all with children's rhymes. Astrotrain then decides to pretend to be the Supreme God of all Sky Gods to make the Titans bow to the Decepticons. Starscream suggests that he might play the role of Supreme God, and it is decided that Starscream shall be Astrotrain's understudy -- Astrotrain makes a forceful argument while crushing Starscream's throat.

Jero implores Talaria to recognize the authority of the Sky Gods, but Talaria looks at what appears to be a shockingly clear divine message from the Sky Gods, and says "you will need more than this to convince me."

Talaria's refusal to see the Sky God in front of her is further tested by Astrotrain, as he races through the forest, and then transforms to shuttle mode, puts on an aerial display with Starscream and Thrust, transforms and proclaims himself to be the greatest of the Sky Gods.

There is no sign that Talaria believes any of this. Now, let's ignore for the moment that the Transformers are not actually Sky Gods. They appear suddenly when Sky Gods are called for, and they really resemble the Sky Gods -- the odds that this would just happen are preposterously low. Talaria's rejection of them might be correct, but it is correct for all the wrong reasons -- she isn't paying attention to what is going on around her, she isn't using "reason and common sense", she is clinging to her no-God hypothesis, despite the compelling evidence in front of her. She is letting her rigid dogmatism blind her.

Now, it turns out that the sudden appearance of Transformers on Titan just when the Sky Gods were being called for is an incredible coincidence, and Talaria's refusal to believe is, bizarrely, correct. But, this doesn't mean that Talaria is not a dangerously unbalanced dogmatist with only a tenuous connection to reality -- all evidence suggests that she is entirely temperamentally unqualified to be a leader. She takes hostages, for instance.

Talaria overhears the Decepticons talking, and learns how to call the Autobots for help. Thrust points out that, while they are on the subject of calling for help, Astrotrain might want to call Megatron since he used up most of his energy. Astrotrain says no, and repeats that he is in control here. Starscream asks if they are stuck on this particular mudball (since he wants to see other mudballs), and Astrotrain says only until he breaks Cosmos' code.

This scene is interesting, as it shows Astrotrain has ambitions, and that he knows the Decepticons here are completely dependent upon him. I also don't know what Megatron could do to help if Astrotrain called in -- it isn't like the Decepticons have other space ships.

Talaria climbs down a rope, and connects a wire that allows her to call the Autobots for help. The viewscreen in Cosmos' chest is weird, by the way. She follows Optimus' instructions to activate Cosmos' signal beacon, and then the Decepticons attack her. Luckily, Cosmos is back online, and fires one blast that allows Talaria to escape before Astrotrain defeats him with the power of his collar.

On Earth, a rescue mission is put together. Optimus claims he wants to go, but quickly defers to Red Alert's objections ("We can't afford to lose you, Optimus, or the Autobot basketball team will be destroyed"). So the two Autobots standing closest to Omega Supreme go instead. Omega Supreme will spend almost all of his energy getting there, and will then be helpless and unable to transform.

Preceptor explains that he has to go since he is the only one who can decode Cosmos' data -- which makes it sound like everyone expects Cosmos to be dead when they get there.


Omega Supreme tells everyone to shut up and get moving, and Jazz and Perceptor are blasted into space. Optimus takes a moment to hope that it isn't a one way trip, then shrugs.

On Titan, Jero leads the Decepticons to a cave full of crystals, the Fire Gods lair. Astrotrain emerges from the wall in a deeply odd bit of animation and sound effects.

The Fire Gods are apparently a different set of gods than the Sky Gods. And, the cave of the Fire Gods is filled with crystals that are glowing and incredibly rich in energy.

Astrotrain hypothesizes that these crystals must be what Cosmos discovered, but Starscream is content to just play with them and toss one from hand to hand.

Jero's little lackey points out that the crystals are taboo, and that the ancient tablets say something incredibly relevant that we never hear because Jero cuts him off. "Taboo? To a god? Lord Astrotrain may do with them as he wishes!"

I don't understand the religion of the Titans, but I do question why a Sky God can play with a Fire God's crystals. Such things seem doomed to create a conflict among the gods, and it is generally the people who would suffer.

Anyway, Omega Supreme is rocketing towards Titan, and Perceptor inquires about his fuel reserves. "Dwindling," Omega replies, with the impatience of someone who has answered the same question every 90 seconds since blasting off from Earth. Omega's rockets flicker out and Jazz offers some useless words of encouragement as Omega Supreme crashes on Titan.

Omega Supreme teeters on the edge of a ravine. Jazz wants to push him back from the brink, but Omega calculates that he and Perceptor don't have the strength, and that Cosmos is required. Jazz says they will find him and return, and tells Omega Supreme not to move. Omega Supreme utters his greatest line: "Sarcasm not appreciated."

The cliff crumbles a bit, and Omega Supreme is now on a tiny pillar of stone above the water.

Meanwhile, the Decepticons have the peasantry removing the crystals from the cave. They are very unstable, explosive crystals.

Perceptor and Jazz have been wandering for hours when Talaria begins shooting arrows at them. "As long as a breathe," she declares, "Titans will not worship false gods." Perceptor believes this shows the Decepticons have arrived before them, and Jazz says that if she stops shooting, and starts talking, they might be able to work something out. She fires another arrow.
Eventually, they must work something out, since Talaria leads them to the temple where Cosmos is propped up. Talaria rides on Jazz's shoulder like one of those ROTF Human Alliance toys.

"This is terrible," Jazz proclaims, concerned.

"Cosmos has been in worse predicaments," Perceptor replies, unconcerned.

"No, I mean worshipping him like he's some kind of god," Jazz answers. "We're not gods, we're just fancy machines, Talaria."

I guess Jazz wasn't concerned about Cosmos either, and no one bothered to explain that they aren't gods to Talaria before now.

The Decepticons order the workers to bring the crystals to the temple, which is apparently next door, and they stumble upon the Autobots. Fight, fight, shoot, shoot, a tie fighter flies by offscreen, and then Jazz grounds Starscream with a rock.

Ramjet goes to get help. By stepping right outside. Astrotrain demands the workers shoot the false gods with their crystals, and they fire crystal tipped arrows that apparently annoy Jazz. Jero demands larger crystals, so the workers load up a catapult while the Decepticons fly away. Once the Autobots flee, the Decepticons land and call the Autobots cowards.

Astrotrain strolls into the temple, picks up Talaria and decides she should be sacrificed because she is a heretic.

Thrust and Starscream are flying on patrol, with Thrust saying they need to look for the Autobots, and Starscream quite sure that the crystals frightened them off for good.

And, in the cave lazy workers are being lazy and Astrotrain is making menacing comments about Talaria being a sacrifice.

And, in another cave, or another part of that cave, Perceptor and Jazz find crystals. Perceptor says they are highly concentrated unstable energy, so Jazz starts hitting them with a rock. Perceptor stops him, explaining that it would be trivial to set off a chain reaction.

A bunch of Titans stroll by, begging to die. Jazz refuses. They mention the sacrifice, Jazz wants to be a hero, and wants Perceptor to be a gas station attendant refueling Omega Supreme. Also, there is electric lava surrounding the plateau, made from the same stuff as the crystals.

Daring rescues abound. Omega Supreme says that his destruction is unavoidable, but is not destroyed. Astrotrain sets off the energy crystals out of spite and leaves. Omega Supreme transforms into a bridge and rescues everyone from the exploding plateau. It's all very exciting.

So, the Titans have to rebuild their society on the next plateau, and have learned that there is no god. This might make them more willing to use the Fire God's crystals as an energy source, and wipe themselves out, setting off a chain reaction that detonates the electric lava.

This is actually one of my favorite episodes -- I like the Season 2 space episodes, and I like Astrotrain having ideas and a plan, even if that isn't his character at any other time. The pending doom of the Titans is kind of fun too.

This is really Astrotrain's spotlight episode. We will see in a few episodes that when he does get power, he doesn't know what to do with it, and is a ridiculous fool. I prefer to think that "Triple Takeover" is where he is out of character.

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 6:07:59 PM UTC-8, Zobovor wrote:
> While Hasbro wanted the cartoon primarily grounded on Earth (robots who turn into Earth cars naturally need Earthlings to interact with), the show bible specified that occasional jaunt into outer space was acceptable, particularly following the introduction of the spacefaring Transformers like Omega Supreme and Astrotrain.  This is one of the comparatively rare second-season two stories that predominantly takes place offworld, which would become a much more common staple for season three.

I love the Season 2 space episodes. They expand the universe without completely redefining it the way Season 3 did.

> The episode was penned by Buzz Dixon, who also co-wrote "Prime Target" with Flint Dille and, for better or for worse, also gave us "Carnage in C-Minor."  While Dixon received sole writing credit for the episode, the story premise for "The God Gambit" actually originated in Flint Dille's story treatment guide for the show, in which he offered several random ideas as jumping-off points for potential episodes (the story premise for "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court" was another one proposed by Dille).

How? What? Huh? How could such a good episode come from people who wrote such terrible episodes?

> Our episode begins on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn.  This is a fairly common setting for science-fiction writers, as Titan is the only known satellite with an atmosphere, and it has sometimes been theorized that it is capable of supporting life.  (The moon is not identified in dialogue until later in the episode, but Saturn is clearly visible in the establishing shot.)  A small contingent of aliens are bringing an offering to their Sky God, which is represented as a statue of a gigantic robot.  Making preparations for their arrival is an "astrologer priest" named Jero, who orders glowing rocks be placed within the empty statue's eye sockets to produce the desired effect.

They are a mostly agrarian society with a religious government. It's not something barbaric or terrible -- it's a reasonable way to organize a small society.

> Just then, a heretic named Talaria raids the ceremony, and her small band of like-minded followers sabotage the Sky God and cause the statue to crumble to the ground.  She decries his "I believe in reason and common sense!" she proclaims.  "There ARE no Sky Gods!"

She is also opposed to high taxes and strict laws. She is a one woman Tea Party.

Given that only she and the priests have decent clothing, she is also obviously pretty wealthy. We have the usual governmental strife -- wealthy people fighting over which wealthy person gets to control the peasants.

> My takeaway from this scene is that Red Alert, as security director, is actually able to override decisions from the Autobot commander if he believes them to be a security risk.  

My takeaway is that Optimus will defer to Red Alert when Red Alert makes sense, but that Optimus is still in charge.

> "Here is the church; here is the steeple.  Open the doors, but where are the people?" Starscream spouts, in what is perhaps his most preposterous line of dialogue ever.  It's a reference to a children's rhyme and accompanying hand gestures.  It's extremely unlikely that Starscream would have ever been exposed to this piece of Earth culture, so it's unfathomably stupid for him to be quoting this.

Eh, you want stupid, just watch TF:Energon...

> Still, this is a story about religion so I suppose it's not completely out of place.  When Astrotrain realizes they are bowing before Cosmos, he proclaims, "These fools worship Transformers!" and thus gave birth to the obvious meta-joke about the fandom that's trotted out with alarming regularity.  

I don't think I ever heard the meta-joke.

> There's an interesting exchange where Thrust once again points out that Astrotrain is still low on power, suggesting they call Megatron at this stage.  Astrotrain steadfastly refuses, insisting that he's got things under control.  Starscream's concern is that as long as Astrotrain is playing God, they're all stuck on Saturn's moon.  This kind of implies that Starscream would be unable to leave the planet under his own power (though later episodes like "The Revenge of Bruticus" kind of fly in the face of that idea).  

I don't think Starscream would have been able to go far. I also don't know what Megatron could do if they were so far away.

> From a storytelling perspective, it's actually really fascinating when the writers take Megatron and/or Optimus Prime out of the picture.  Those two are the driving force behind most plots, and they're the ones the Decepticons and Autobots turn to when making decisions.  Extracting them from the episode requires the troops to do all the decision-making, and maybe even make some really BAD decisions that create more conflict and thus more drama.  Really, though, Astrotrain is just playing a Megatron role in this episode.  Except for being the one who transports the other Decepticons to Titan and back, Astrotrain could be replaced by Megatron and the episode would flow exactly the same.  Also, inexplicably putting him in a leadership role is a little odd, since he's never outranked Starscream at any point before or after this episode (and he had to get Starscream out of the way before he could take charge in "Triple Takeover").

When they are in space, far from Megatron, Astrotrain has everyone at his mercy. I think he knows that and takes advantage of it here -- follow Astrotrain or be left on Titan. Had everything not gone to crap, he would have made a power-play back on Earth.

> As for the Autobots, it's Jazz making most of the decisions in this episode, but it's all very basic straight-and-narrow heroic Autobot stuff——rescue the girl, stop the Decepticon plot, ensure the safety of the populace.  It proves the Autobots are largely capable of performing as well as ever, even in Prime's absence, but it's a little boring and cut-and-dried from a storytelling viewpoint.

I really like Perceptors bits of heroism.

> On Earth, the Autobots are preparing for a rescue mission to recover Cosmos and his secret energy discovery.  Omega Supreme (finally identifing Titan by name) explains, in that stilted way he's got, that he won't even be able to transform once they get there because he'll use up 97% of his energy.  This doesn't seem right.

Has Omega Supreme ever been able to fly somewhere and back without refueling? He seems to be somewhat inefficient.

> Optimus Prime says that only two Autobots can go, because of reasons.

Weight? Other plans on Earth?

> He plans on going along for the ride himself——until Red Alert overrides him once again, pointing out that Prime is too important to risk losing.  Perceptor agrees to go so he can translate Cosmos' encoded energy data, and Jazz wants to be part of the mission just because "I like kickin' Decepticon cans."

No one bothers to decode Cosmos' encoded energy data during this episode. I assume it was something else entirely.

> Back on Titan, Jero eagerly leads the Decepticons to what he calls the "Fire Gods' lair," actually a cavern filled with crystals loaded full of electricity.  Apparently this was what Cosmos had discovered, though he must have done so in secret, without the Titans observing his presence.

No evidence is presented for that. He might have detected energy lava from orbit, or found something else and just crashed on Titan. He was probably already leaving the energy source when the Decepticons found him, so unless he doubled back, the one place the energy he found couldn't be is Titan.

>  "I've never seen crystals so rich in energy!" declares Starscream, completely forgetting about the ruby crystals of Burma from "More Than Meets the Eye" part 2... and the crystals deep within the Arctic Circle in "Fire in the Sky"... and the Crystal of Power from "Fire on the Mountain"... and the korlonium crystals from "A Prime Problem."

These are richer.

> As an aside, I'm really surprised that Sunbow was willing to tackle an episode like this, and I'm equally-surprised that Hasbro gave them the go-ahead on it.  Despite the fact that historically around 90-95% of Americans have believed in God over the last few decades, religion is a subject that's almost never addressed in children's programming.  One supposes that somebody at Broadcast Standards and Practices decided it wasn't a cartoon's place to indoctrinate the remaining five-to-ten percent, but it's still interesting to me.  Unless it's a show like VeggieTales that's specifically designed to cater to good little Christian children, religion is an even more taboo subject than sex!  

I don't think it is that daring, there just aren't that many cartoons where it would come up. The TMNTs take place on Earth, so unless they were to go to Mecca and disprove Islam or something, it wasn't an option.

And, I think even by the 1980s, people were squeemish about making fun of the religions of natives. I'm sure someone posed as a god to the cannibals on the other side of Gilligan's Island, but that was in the 1970s.

>(There is a Challenge of the GoBots episode where Cy-Kill promises to "put the fear of Zod in them," but that's more of an implied inference than anything else.)

Or an explicit reference to Kneel Before Zod.

> Granted, "The God Gambit" deals with gods with a lower-case "g," not God with a capital "G," but the message of the episode still seems to be that believe in a higher power is the result of being poorly-educated or misinformed.  

Well, the Sky Gods are obviously wrong. If they believed in Space Jesus, that would have been different.

Also, note that they had a polytheistic religion with multiple gods -- something that few western societies explicitly do (although the Saints and special Angels blur the lines). This is clearly primitive people worshipping the wrong gods.

> Back in the caves, Astrotrain has got the Titans stockpiling the energy crystals.  Jero is warning the workers that the crystals are sacred and to treat them with respect unless they want to risk death.  Starscream agrees that they're dangerous, but for an entirely different reason——they're unstable and volatile.  I love the scene when the Decepticons are mining the crystals, because everybody is bathed in highlights and shadows and it just looks gorgeous.  It's similar to the way everybody is super-shiny at the beginning of "The Return of Optimus Prime" part 2, the main difference being that they aren't doing it in this episode to try to mask how bad they are at actually animating the robots moving.

The animation in the caves is excellent.

> Perceptor and Jazz are exploring Titan when Talaria spots them and opens fire.  "No sign of Cosmos... but there is a native in that tree shooting arrows at us," Perceptor reports after scanning the surrounding area as a microscope.  (This line was cut from the syndicated version on the Sci-Fi Channel, so in their edited version, Perceptor suddenly reverts from microscope mode but was transformed for seemingly no reason.)  Talaria is determined not to worship false gods, and would rather shoot them than kneel before them, but Jazz evidently manages to talk her down.

Talaria may have also spent the next few hours shooting them with arrows, and finally gave up. I think she is headstrong enough that she wouldn't listen while she still has arrows.

> When next we see Talaria and the Autobots, they're already best buddies, with Talaria riding around on Jazz's shoulder.  She leads them to the altar and the disabled Cosmos, and Jazz waxes regretful for a moment, explaing to Talaria that they're not gods at all, but merely sophisticated machines.  Just then, Starscream and Thrust appear on the scene.  Thrust's defining character trait is that he's a loud-mouthed braggart, but in this episode he's spectacularly timid.  He panics at the idea that they might have to engage two whole Autobots.

Braggarts are often cowards. They exaggerate their accomplishments, and Thrust may be more bold when he has a clear advantage.

> There's an awkward scene where Starscream is just laying there in jet mode, upside-down (with the underside of his jet nose colored orange as if it were his cockpit) and Jazz approaches him with the intent to strangle him.  Jazz is tiny compared to Starscream when he first grabs him, but as Starscream graciously reverts to robot mode, to allow Jazz to get a firm grip on his neck, he shrinks considerably.  What's even more bizarre than this, though, is the way Starscream is still able to shift to robot mode with Jazz already on top of him.  I don't understand how Starscream's jet nose is able to fold down and tuck away to form the middle of his chest without passing right through Jazz's torso, but somehow it happens.  Also, Jazz grabs Starscream when he's in jet mode, but by the time Starscream is in robot mode, Jazz's hands are already around his neck.  Maybe this is one of those things that seemed like a good idea in the script, but just couldn't be realized in animation.  

It was deeply weird and wrong. Like the baby in Trainspotting, that rotates its head entirely around while crawling across the ceiling.

> Elsewhere, Astrotrain the slave driver is overseeing the crystal harvest, chastizing the "worms" when they fail to perform.  "They are lazy insects, O Mighty Astrotrain.  Shall I punish them for you?" suggests Jero with far too much enthusiasm.  He sure has fallen into the sycophant acolyte role rather quickly.  With Talaria caged up, Astrotrain suggests that they watch her being sacrificed, predicting that it will "renew their vigor."  Big words for a kids' show!

Jero has been a priest to the Sky Gods, and then they showed up. He has had his entire faith validated. He's going to be a dick for a while.

> Meanwhile, Perceptor and Jazz have stumbled upon the cavern containing the energy crystals.  Perceptor describes them as "highly unstable crystalized energy," and Jazz proceeds to try to break some off by bashing them with a nearby boulder.  You know, I love Jazz to death, but he really is a complete idiot sometimes.  Perceptor takes his time stopping him, finally warning Jazz that he might make everything go boom after he gets off about six good whacks.  Jazz is the Special Operations Agent for the Autobots, assigned to the most dangerous and important assignments, and yet his approach towards any problem is to hit things with a big rock.  

I love the rocks in this show.

> Meanwhile, Perceptor is going to stock up on crystals and use them to repower Omega Supreme.  He finds the rocket ship suspended on the edge of a precipice, and Omega warns him to be quiet because the vibrations will cause him to fall.  Perceptor responds by taking a mighty leap and landing on the precipice, causing it to shake.  When Omega insists that he be careful, Perceptor yells "I'M TRYING!" as loudly as possible.  (Wouldn't it have been better for Perceptor to transform in mid-jump so he could land as a tiny microscope?  I know that Transformers basically spit in the face of physics as we know it, so doing so should reduce his mass.)

He definitely should have done that. In fact, he should have been in microscope mode during the trip to Titan to conserve fuel.

>
> It's Jazz versus Starscream and Thrust and Astrotrain, and it begins to look like a losing proposition until Omega Supreme arrives on the scene.  There's a comical moment where Perceptor lets go of the rocket and sort of drunkenly staggers out of frame.  The juxtaposition of applying very human attributes to these robots is pretty common in this show, but it's particularly funny in this instance.  The staccato horns playing in the background add to the humorous nature of the scene.  What bothers me, though, is that Omega Supreme is suddenly able to revert to robot mode.  Where did he get his robot-mode parts from?!  One supposes that he can simply summon an extra rocket base from subspace, and that it requires a great deal of energy, which is why he couldn't do it unless he was fully-powered.  That's the only rationale I can offer.  

I do not pretend to understand Omega Supreme.

> So, the problem here is that not only has the temple been destroyed, thus robbing the Titans of their livelihood, but they're trapped upon the plateau, with no way of crossing the electric lava.  "Spare us and we will worship you!" promises one of Jero's former acolytes.  "We ain't gods!" Jazz professes for the seventeenth time.  "But we will save you!"
>
> So, this is where it gets a little cheatsy.  Omega Supreme transforms to... well, not his normal rocket base configuration, but essentially a big, long ramp.  It's as if this was originally a script written for G.I. Joe, and this is the part where Tollbooth and the Toss N' Cross Bridge Layer vehicle were supposed to come out.  Anyway, Omega Supreme's tank module along with the entire rocket-and-gantry combo roll across the tracks.  There's an unspoken contract that this show is supposed to advertise the abilities of the toys to some degree.  I can totally understand inventing a random laser blaster that pops out of somebody's arm or a pair of telescoping optic sensors as the plot requires it, but this is something that there is no possible way to re-enact with the Omega Supreme toy (the track pieces are perpetually curved!) so this feels a little like dirty pool.  It's like showing Megatron transforming into a sword or having Roller pop out of Optimus Prime's trailer and transform to a robot mode.  

Given the way everything bends when Transformers transform, changing the shape of the track seems fine. They made good use of his base mode, and no one had ever done so before.

> You would think that this would be the moment that Jazz remembers he's a Transformer and drives across the ramp, but instead he grabs Talaria and shuffles across on foot, stumbling in the wake of the explosion behind him.  The plateau collapses, and the ramp, still suspended in mid-air, pulls both of them to safety.  There is no rescue scene for Jero; he is not present among the gathering of Titans at episode's end, so is is implied that he did, indeed, die like the worm he was.  The message here is that blind faith to your beloved deity will result in your certain doom.  Evidently, Talaria survived because she used critical thinking and questioned religion.

Yeah, she will die sometime before 2006 though.

> No review of this episode is complete without mentioning that Titan will appear again in another Transformers episode called "Money is Everything," a third-season installment taking place in the year 2006.  It's not surprising, because as I said, Titan is a popular setting for sci-fi stories due to its unique properties.  In that story, the Quintessons have established a secret base within Earth's solar system on Saturn's moon.  There is no sign of Talaria or the other Titan people in the second episode, so we must conclude that the Quintessons simply wiped them all out!

Given how different Titan is in that episode, I question whether the Quintessons wiped them out. I think they suffered an ecological disaster, probably because of "common sense".

> While this episode touches on some strong themes, it sort of dances around the important issues without ever really addressing them.  It's highly telling that the story takes place on an alien planet, and not some backwater human village, which would surely have provoked a strong and unfavorable response.  Alien cultures are comfortable, because even though they're an allegory for human civilization, they're just different enough that it passes under the radar and does not read as offensive.

This is what science fiction does well. I mean, maybe this is not a great example of it, but look at the works of Ursula K. Le Guin -- she explores sexual roles by placing them in different societies on different planets.

>  Can you imagine the outrage if somebody had submitted an episode about Spike Witwicky's belief in God being thrown into question after meeting the Autobots?  It never would have gotten past the spec stage!

The singer/songwriter Robbie Fulks was just a songwriter for years, writing for a variety of country stars. No one wanted to record his song "God Isn't Real".

I'm pretty sure a Witwicky crisis of faith episode would have been just fine if it ended with Optimus discovering Jesus.

> Overall, this is a mostly forgettable episode.  Astrotrain's gotten better showcase stories (in "Triple Takeover" he was a little dumb, but lovable) and while there is probably no episode in which Jazz gets more screen time, this installment doesn't offer much in the way of character development.  

I have always hated "Triple Takeover". To me, this is what Astrotrain should be, and he is out of character everywhere else.

> I almost think I would have preferred to see an ending in which something mystical happens at the end, something the Transformers cannot readily explain——it would have been a nice twist, and forced the Autobots to question their own convictions (and also validate the beliefs of the Titans, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of children with a religious upbringing who saw this episode).  At it stands, the episode basically closes with, "See?  No gods, just like we said.  Well, ciao."  

Meh. That would just be a cliche.

Now, if the Autobots left, and they started carving statues of Jazz and Perceptor and worshipping those, that might have been better.

> The Titans' entire theology just got completely uprooted.  I don't know what else they have going on in their lives, because the episode really only focuses on the religious aspect of their culture, but I can only assume it's pretty significant to their day-to-day lives.  Thanks to a brief visit by the Transformers, suddenly everything they thought they knew was wrong.  Folks like Talaria, who never really believed in Sky Gods anyway, will be affected to a smaller degree.  What about the rest of the population, though?  Nothing about life on Titan will ever be the same again.  

Cosmos crashed into a revolution -- the society was changing suddenly anyway, and I don't get the impression that Talaria was going to be preaching religious tolerance.

> Zob (open to suggestions for December's episode)

Something with snow? Maybe going in the wrong direction?

[Zobovor]

On Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 11:06:47 PM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> I've always been very wary of anyone proposing "common sense solutions" since
> it invariably means that they have not thought through all of the
> consequences of their solutions. "Common sense solutions" are also not about
> creating a dialog or understanding the opposing views. Any opposition is
> obviously wrong, and there can be no discussion of it.

Talaria and Jero are each terribly pigheaded and dogmatic. We're naturally supposed to side with Talaria and her viewpoint (after all, she's the one who befriended the Autobots, so she's incontrovertibly the "good guy" in the episode, while Jero befriends Decepticons so he can't possibly be in the right). Really, Talaria's being just as stubborn about her point of view as Jero. Each is fully convinced he/she is right and that the other is clearly wrong. It's like one of the old arguments on alt.toys.transformers.

> There is no sign that Talaria believes any of this. Now, let's ignore for the
> moment that the Transformers are not actually Sky Gods. They appear suddenly
> when Sky Gods are called for, and they really resemble the Sky Gods -- the
> odds that this would just happen are preposterously low. Talaria's rejection

> of them might be correct, but it is correct for all the wrong reasons.

Maybe she thinks the Transformers in this episode are being operated by a bunch of Jero's lackeys using ropes and pulleys.

> This scene is interesting, as it shows Astrotrain has ambitions, and that he
> knows the Decepticons here are completely dependent upon him. I also don't
> know what Megatron could do to help if Astrotrain called in -- it isn't like
> the Decepticons have other space ships.

Maybe they could have diverted the space bridge or something?

> On Earth, a rescue mission is put together. Optimus claims he wants to go,
> but quickly defers to Red Alert's objections ("We can't afford to lose you,
> Optimus, or the Autobot basketball team will be destroyed").

Snerk!

> Preceptor explains that he has to go since he is the only one who can decode
> Cosmos' data -- which makes it sound like everyone expects Cosmos to be dead
> when they get there.

Wow. What a dark and, probably, entirely correct reading of this. (I guess it's possible that Cosmos can scramble data to the point where he is unable to unscramble it himself. Occam's Razor really favors your explanation instead, though.)

> On Titan, Jero leads the Decepticons to a cave full of crystals, the Fire
> Gods lair. Astrotrain emerges from the wall in a deeply odd bit of animation
> and sound effects.

It's like he's unzipping the cave.

> Talaria rides on Jazz's shoulder like one of those ROTF Human Alliance toys.

Heh. I can't tell, is Talaria the size of a human, or is she slightly larger? Scale is wildly inconsistent on this show so it's hard to make a clear determination.

> "This is terrible," Jazz proclaims, concerned.
>
> "Cosmos has been in worse predicaments," Perceptor replies, unconcerned.

One of the great Autobot comedy duos of our time.

> This is actually one of my favorite episodes -- I like the Season 2 space
> episodes, and I like Astrotrain having ideas and a plan, even if that isn't
> his character at any other time. The pending doom of the Titans is kind of
> fun too.

There's a little too much focus on the Titans for my taste. I get that incidental characters are necessary to drive the plot, but I totally bought into the toy commercial aspect of the show as a kid. I like my Transformers to be the focus, first and foremost. Any non-toy characters are just window dressing. This episode has a lot of window dressing.

> This is really Astrotrain's spotlight episode. We will see in a few episodes
> that when he does get power, he doesn't know what to do with it, and is a
> ridiculous fool. I prefer to think that "Triple Takeover" is where he is out
> of character.

Well, putting computer brains inside a bunch of trains isn't really that different from, say, Megatron creating killer taxi cabs ("City of Steel") or rebuilding the cars of New York into an army of mindless drones ("Make Tracks"). Trains are just a lot more limited in what they can do since they have to stay on their rails. It's not a completely horrible idea, it just ended up being executed badly (and the flood made it all a moot point ultimately).

Blitzwing, on the other hand, really was an idiot in that episode. There's just no getting around that.


Zob (I NEED MORE STRAGEDY!)

[Gustavo Wombat]

Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 11:06:47 PM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of
> the Seattle Wombats

>> There is no sign that Talaria believes any of this. Now, let's ignore for the
>> moment that the Transformers are not actually Sky Gods. They appear suddenly
>> when Sky Gods are called for, and they really resemble the Sky Gods -- the
>> odds that this would just happen are preposterously low. Talaria's rejection
>> of them might be correct, but it is correct for all the wrong reasons.
>
> Maybe she thinks the Transformers in this episode are being operated by a
> bunch of Jero's lackeys using ropes and pulleys.

These ones speak, walk about, fall from the sky, etc.

If you are raised in a culture that worships sky gods, and then a giant
robot falls from the sky and others are flying about, transforming and
demanding things, the reasonable conclusion to make is that these are sky
gods.

Talaria is like those militant atheists who claim there can be no god when
they see the horrors of the world, like children dying slow painful deaths
from cancer, and they completely refuse to see it from the cancer's
perspective! Ok, I really have nothing with this analogy, since I am an
atheist and have seen nothing approaching the level of evidence of
something that looks and acts like god falling from the sky directly in
front of me.

It would be like discovering someone visiting houses with flying reindeer
and a sled, and insisting that there is still nothing to the whole Santa
Claus story.

>> Preceptor explains that he has to go since he is the only one who can decode
>> Cosmos' data -- which makes it sound like everyone expects Cosmos to be dead
>> when they get there.
>
> Wow. What a dark and, probably, entirely correct reading of this. (I
> guess it's possible that Cosmos can scramble data to the point where he
> is unable to unscramble it himself. Occam's Razor really favors your
> explanation instead, though.)

We do have asymmetric encryption algorithms, where you need different keys
to encrypt and decrypt. But this data is also Cosmos' memories, and we have
never seen a Transformer in G1 delete their own memories.

Whatever the data is, Cosmos should just remember the bulk of it.



--
I wish I was a mole in the ground.

[Zobovor]

On Thursday, November 17, 2016 at 12:20:31 AM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> I love the Season 2 space episodes. They expand the universe without
> completely redefining it the way Season 3 did.

I'm kind of torn about it. On the one hand, since most Transformers turn into Earth vehicles, it's absolutely essential for at least some of the stories to take place on Earth. Humans are a regrettable but vital element to the story. (Carry it to its logical extreme, of course, and you get the Michael Bay movies, which is like 90% humans and 10% giant robot aliens from outer space.)

On the other hand, season three played fast and loose with the storytelling rules and I think the show was made all the better for it. There's only, like, one episode when humans actually ride around inside Ultra Magnus, and I don't think anybody ever rode inside Blurr or Kup. Then you have a lot of prominent season-three characters who can't even accommodate human passengers, like Galvatron, Scourge, Grimlock, Perceptor, Blaster, etc. Because of this, the storytelling aspect naturally shifts to the robots. There are a handful of episodes where Daniel plays a vital role, but it's not like he's there in every episode directing traffic the way Spike always did.

To bring this back around to season two, I almost feel like the space adventures feel out of place. The good thing about going to another planet is that you can tell stories you can't really tell on Earth. With that said, it would be an interesting exercise to rework episodes like "The Gambler" or "Child's Play" to feature human characters. ("Child's Play" would require minor reworking so that it's the Autobots who shrink, rather than encountering giant aliens, at which point it becomes an episode of Challenge of the GoBots.)

> How? What? Huh? How could such a good episode come from people who wrote such
> terrible episodes?

I need to find that story treatment guide written by Dille. I know I've seen it online somewhere but I cannot find it right now. The final page was just a list of suggestions for episode ideas. They were very succinct springboard ideas, stuff like "the Transformers go to a planet where the aliens think they are gods" or "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court story where the Transformers think armored knights on horses are just poorly-constructed robots."

Of course, you could give two writers the same story idea like that and they could each come up with radically different episodes. (If there were more fan fiction writers on the newsgroup I think that would be a fun challenge. Each of us could start with something like "a love story where a Transformer falls for a vending machine" and see what everybody comes up with. Maybe that would have worked better 20 years ago when alt.toys.transformers.fanfic was still a thing.)

> When they are in space, far from Megatron, Astrotrain has everyone at his
> mercy. I think he knows that and takes advantage of it here -- follow
> Astrotrain or be left on Titan. Had everything not gone to crap, he would
> have made a power-play back on Earth.

Things would have definitely gone in a different, and interesting, direction for him. Returning to Earth with the knowledge that he now had an entire planet under his control, and one with his very own power source to boot?

It's possible Megatron never even learned about the Titan adventure at all. I could certainly envision a scenario in which Astrotrain kept quiet about it deliberately, Starscream also kept quiet about it just to be a jerk, and Thrust was coerced into keeping quiet about it because he's Courage the Cowardly Dog.

> Has Omega Supreme ever been able to fly somewhere and back without refueling?
> He seems to be somewhat inefficient.

In his defense, he's antiquated technology. I think the writers included this aspect of the character as a crutch, because otherwise there's no reason why the Autobots wouldn't just take him along on every single adventure and have him save the day every time.

> No evidence is presented for that. He might have detected energy lava from
> orbit, or found something else and just crashed on Titan. He was probably
> already leaving the energy source when the Decepticons found him, so unless
> he doubled back, the one place the energy he found couldn't be is Titan.

So Astrotrain's conclusion that Cosmos must have discovered the energy crystals was an incorrect one? And the fact that Titan did contain a potent energy source is just a happy coincidence?

> I don't think it is that daring, there just aren't that many cartoons where
> it would come up.

I strongly disagree. Cartoons tended to fall into two categories——ones that had the prerequisite Christmas episode (The Smurfs, Inspector Gadget, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop) and the ones that did not have a Christmas episode (Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe). Not every show went down that road, but it wasn't wholly unexpected when they did. The point of this is that the ones that did Christmas stories unilaterally avoided the religious aspect of the holiday altogether. Topics that were safe to explore included decorating and gift-giving and Santa Claus. Topics that never came up were Jesus Christ or the resurrection. Apparently it was okay for cartoons to depict the commercialized version of Christmas but never the religious version.

Obviously, for the purposes of this discussion this does not include programs that were specifically created to explore the religious angle, like the Little Drummer Boy holiday special.

I imagine the idea is to offend as few viewers as possible, which makes sense since you're relying on advertisers to help fund the programs, and the advertisers need consumers to buy the sugary cereals and action figures. Producers were locked into a cycle where they were forced to come up with bland, inoffensive stories and characters. Thundercracker eventually got a personality that was created for Starscream (or Ulchtar as he was being called), and instead of being a wishy-washy semi-supporter of the cause, he was a full-blown religious zealot. That would never fly on children's cartoon programming, so he was toned down.

Some religious messages are good (I don't think anybody would be offended or insulted by messages like "be kind to your fellow man" and "be the good you want to see in the world") but due to the way people cling so steadfastly to their religious views, to the opposition of all other views, it's very risky to present a religious message that's contrary to any other existing religious message. I don't blame some shows for avoiding it altogether——even to the point where they don't even touch the Christmas issue.

> Also, note that they had a polytheistic religion with multiple gods --
> something that few western societies explicitly do (although the Saints and
> special Angels blur the lines). This is clearly primitive people worshipping
> the wrong gods.

At least, until Magnokor from the Inhumanoids cartoon shows up and demands to know what the hell they've done to his Fire God Lair.

> Braggarts are often cowards. They exaggerate their accomplishments, and
> Thrust may be more bold when he has a clear advantage.

Well, he is kind of out of his element in this episode. Compare his behavior to "Child's Play," though, when he's still boasting and swaggering even as he's getting tied up with kite string.

(As an aside, I wonder how many kids actually tied up their Thrust toys with kite string after watching that episode?)

> He definitely should have done that. In fact, he should have been in
> microscope mode during the trip to Titan to conserve fuel.

That makes zero sense, and yet it's exactly the sort of thing that would happen on this show. I'm really surprised they didn't go this route.

> Given the way everything bends when Transformers transform, changing the
> shape of the track seems fine. They made good use of his base mode, and no
> one had ever done so before.

If the Omega Supreme toy had come with even a couple of sections of straight track, I could swallow this idea a lot better. It just raises so many questions. Does he have infinite track sections that he can just continue laying down, like the Choo-Choo Express from The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse? Can he lay tracks in mid-air and glide across them like Iceman in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends? Why isn't he present whenever Optimus Prime commands the Autobots to transform and roll out?

> Now, if the Autobots left, and they started carving statues of Jazz and
> Perceptor and worshipping those, that might have been better.

That would be an amusing twist. Damn, I wish we'd gotten that ending, now. It would have been amazing.

>> Zob (open to suggestions for December's episode)
>
> Something with snow? Maybe going in the wrong direction?

Have we really not done "Fire in the Sky" yet? Apparently we need to!


Zob (I'll be watching the Shout Factory version where the snow falls in the correct direction, mind)

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

On Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 10:06:47 PM UTC-8, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> "The God Gambit" tells the story of a populist uprising on Titan, and has a brief Coda in "Five Faces of Darkness" where we see what happened to the civilization after the uprising -- spoiler alert, there is no sign of the civilization and everyone is presumably dead.

I've been thinking about Titan and the Titans.

They have a catapult.

A catapult doesn't really have a lot of uses other than as a siege engine -- so at some point, the Titans wanted to catapult things at either other Titans or each other, or something else. We have seen no evidence of who or what they wanted to catapult things at.

But, we do know that their society has such divisions that there was a populist uprising, which led to the capture of Jero. The most likely targets of the catapulting were one of the two factions of Titans on the plateau -- presumably Talaria's group.

And, then the Decepticons told the Titans to throw the explosive crystals at the Autobots and Talaria. Crystals that they had held in reverence because they belonged to the Fire Gods.

The problems in their society aren't going to just go away just because they moved to the next plateau -- there is likely to be a counter revolution. And now, the Titans will be throwing the explosives at each other. While completely surrounded by the liquid version of the explosive crystals.

Frankly, it's surprising that half the planet didn't explode when Astrotrain shot the energy crystals in the cave. The collapsing mountain must have stopped the reaction from spreading.

I'm pretty sure we just wanted the Titans learning how to kill themselves. And Talaria deposing the theocracy means that the crystals are no longer taboo.

[Travoltron]

I don't know what to say that you guys haven't.
But I'm convinced that the Astrotrain role in this episode was
originally written for Megatron and hastily changed by Hasbro to feature
the new Astrotrain toy. All of his megalomaniacal dialogue doesn't fit
the character, yet it sounds great when I imagine Megatron saying it.

[Zobovor]

On Monday, November 21, 2016 at 8:02:52 PM UTC-7, Travoltron wrote:

> I'm convinced that the Astrotrain role in this episode was
> originally written for Megatron and hastily changed by Hasbro to feature
> the new Astrotrain toy. All of his megalomaniacal dialogue doesn't fit
> the character, yet it sounds great when I imagine Megatron saying it.

I think you're probably right. It wouldn't be the first time Hasbro tampered with an episode because they wanted their new toys showcased.


Zob (like "Starscream's Ghost" being a Springer and Blitzwing story)

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

Whether that was the history of the story or not, I prefer it with Astrotrain.

Why does he bluster like Megatron and call Titans worms? Because Megatron is the leader he knows, and he thinks that's what being a Decepticon leader means. It all goes to crap, and he shrinks back a little bit when he gets back to Earth.

It's one thing to take over on an alien world and emulate Megatron, but he doesn't want to be like Starscream, so he's a loyal soldier in front of Megatron, "Triple Takeover" excepted.