BOT!

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

"B.O.T." was the final episode of Season 2, and the last episode to feature the Transformers in present day Earth, before they would jump to the far future year of 2005. It was written by Earl Kress, author of such notable episodes as "Hoist Goes Hollywood", "Desertion of the Dinobots Parts 1 AND 2", "The Immobilizer" and "Megatron's Master Plan, Part 2", as well as work on "Fat Albert", and "The Oddball Couple" (a cartoon adaptation of "The Odd Couple" featuring a fastidious cat and a slovenly dog sharing an apartment). With such a breadth of work, Earl Kress was an obvious choice to prepare viewers for the radical shift that was to come, as well as say goodbye to the world that they had known.

The episode opens with a title card, as most episodes did. And a city scene. Noticeably absent from this city scene are the ubiquitous hardhats that had been the height of fashion on Earth until this point. A cool looking man wearing a suit and reading a paper is disturbed when a shadow crosses the paper, and looks up to see ... something. A woman with enormous breasts and a suspiciously manly face raises her arms in surprise, thrusting her breasts at the viewer. A man near her is startled.

There are a variety of people wearing sweater vests, which may have been an attempt to try out more futuristic fashions -- it is a good thing that they did not take off in the show. Also, polo shirts and sports jackets.

We then see the cause of the disruption -- the Combaticons have been walking down the street. Recognizing that their robot modes are drawing unwanted attention and alarm, Onslaught orders the Combaticons to transform into their much more discreet alternate modes. Aside from a minor mishap between Swindle and Brawl, the plan works like a charm, and no one notices a jeep, a tank, a helicopter, a shuttle and a whatever-the-hell-Onslaught-is driving down the street.

Brawl has his extra guns, which I always liked.

Now that they are well disguised, Onslaught recognizes that they will have the element of surprise and orders them to form Bruticus. This causes people to flee in terror. And then Bruticus explodes.

It turns out the Combaticons had been driving down the street towards Defensor, who shot them with his pacifist arm. Swindle pops up from under what appears to be his own corpse, and lets children know that this is Defensor, and that he is available in stores near you. No one notices. "Call sanitation," Defensor orders the puny humans, "there is junk all over the street."

Swindle complains about finding parts, and then drives to the docks. A gruff but lovable man notices the jeep with no driver, and calls his superiors, seeking advice on whether to dust it. General Dictator El Presidente says that the jeep is a very important client, and so Swindle drives onto a ship containing a massive arsenal of weapons.

Swindle is trying to get spare parts for his damaged comrades, and El Presidente says that this can be arranged for a price.

Meanwhile, at the Decepticon lair, Megatron is showing off his animation skills -- a movie of Swindle riding Blast-Off, shooting the moon out of orbit. Starscream believes that Megatron spends too much time on things like this, and not enough on actual conquering and villainy. Starscream points out that they don't even know if Megatron's device would even work.

Megatron silences the fool by shouting "Silence, you fool!" and then reveals that his untested device is but a prelude to Soundwave's untested device which will control the tides, once the moon has been blasted out of orbit -- and once he controls all the tides on Earth, he will flood a small canyon and create almost limitless power using another, unmentioned, untested device. Megatron has carefully created a cartoon of that, which he now plays on a large monitor.

Meanwhile, in a canyon, Swindle has apparently given up on his plan to get parts for the rest of the Combaticons, and has shifted tactics to selling the Combaticons for parts. El Presidente wants the computer systems and the weapons, but wants the rest taken to a dump because it is worthless. He kicks Brawl's head.

So, Swindle drove down to the docks, met with El Presidente, and then went back to collect the parts and meet with him. Did no one bother to clean up Combaticon rubble? The puny human never called sanitation, did he?

Skywarp flies over the canyon, which is apparently the Combaticon base, and reports back that they are not answering his landing requests. Skywarp sounds like a slightly malevolent Powerglide in this scene. Megatron has to walk him through everything -- land without receiving an invitation, follow the trail of Combaticon parts, etc.

Swindle, meanwhile, really is dropping off Combaticon parts into the junkyard. Does this mean the entire thing with El Presidente could have been cut? Just have Defensor tell someone to call sanitation, and boom, Combaticons in the junkyard. Economy is story is not why Earl Kress was hired.

Starscream and Skywarp are overhead. Starscream notes that this is where all the parts are, and posits that Swindle might be up to something. Swindle attempts to flee, but Starscream grabs him magnetically or something, and flies off with him. Starscream is a very small jet.

Back at the Decepticon lair, Swindle is on his knees begging. "It's not my fault, Megatron, this greed is built into my personality component." Also, it's not like he doesn't warn everyone not to trust him -- his name is Swindle after all.

Megatron decides that he would like Bruticus reassembled, and has Soundwave install a bomb in Swindle's head, which Starscream explains will explode in 15 hours unless Swindle delivers a functioning Bruticus. Just pause for a moment to consider this -- Starscream knows about this, and Soundwave has one on hand. Starscream is pretty gleeful, so I don't think Starscream knows about it from having one installed in his head.

So now, we have a bomb in Swindle's head to persuade him to rebuild Bruticus, so Swindle can ride Blastoff into space the shoot the moon out of orbit using a device Megatron has developed, so Soundwave can control the tides using another device, so Megatron can gather energy using hydroelectric power (and presumably another device).

Megatron's final device, the unnamed device to harvest the power of the tides Soundwave is controlling, could easily be adapted to be a peaceful tidal energy plant -- imagine what would happen if the Decepticons began installing tidal energy plants along the coasts, and giving 20% of the energy to the local inhabitants, while stockpiling the rest on Cybertron for the coming war... it would have worked. It might have been terrible tv, but it would have worked.

We've also had bombs planted in robot's heads in IDW, and the idea might have come from here.

And so, Swindle heads off on a world-wide tour collecting parts. In some Arab country, he takes parts from an airplane while Sheiks shout Arabic-sounding gibberish at him. In Soviet Russia, there a is door almost large enough for him, so he wanders in and takes some more parts -- "Sorry, I need the parts back!" he says, and we learn that he is actually intent on rebuilding Bruticus, not just cobbling together something close enough.

And then, back at the Decepticon lair, Swindle shows off his creations -- the Combaticons, rebuilt. Megatron is suitably impressed, says that he will not blow up Swindle's head, and orders them to transform into Bruticus. Swindle has to gently lead Brawn over, and when they transform, the fail to combine.

"Swindle!" Megatron screams, as if he were screaming "Jetson!" -- the vocal intonations are the same, to the point where I suspect it was intentional.

Swindle explains that he couldn't find Brawl's personality component, but that he didn't think it would matter. Megatron suggests he think again.

None of the other Combaticons have said anything, so maybe he didn't find their personality components either, and it really didn't matter.

Meanwhile, at an all-American school, the teacher is demonstrating a laser beam. When a student questions whether this will be dangerous, the teacher says "Oh, no, not this one, it's much too low power" and then cuts a hole through a plate of steel, some books, and then shatters a window.

"What the---?" the teacher asks, "I don't understand," and then it dawns on him -- the class clowns have increased the effectiveness of his oversized laser pointer to make an advanced, deadly weapon. People across the street were probably killed. "Martin, Roland! Somehow you two have boosted the power of that laser". He then ignores their objections and demands they win the science fair, along with Elise Presser.

There are lots of things that are weird about these kids. They dress preposterously -- turtle-neck, sweater-vest with a big stripe, and matching jacket and pants combo for one (with a popped collar), and the other wears a striped t-shirt tucked into his pressed blue slacks, with suspenders. Also, the one with the turtleneck speaks for both of them, using different voices.

The teacher is more conservatively dressed, in a three piece suit. He is morbidly obese, balding, and has slanty eyes, but very pale skin.

The use of Elise Presser as some kind of addition to their punishment is strange. There is probably some backstory there that we aren't getting -- is the Mr. Robbins attempting to set up Elise Presser with one or both of the boys, or does he have some grudge against Elise?

Outside the school, Elise approaches the boys, excited that they would be working together, but Martin (the talkative one), rebuffs her and suggests she work alone, and that he and Roland will work together.

Elise is dressed pretty well, actually. She could totally live in Portland.

Meanwhile, there is a building on fire, probably because it was hit by an overpowered laser. Window washers are stranded on the side of the building, protected from the inferno inside only by glass, which is beginning to give way. Also, the ropes are giving way.

Luckily, Protectobots arrive to rescue everyone. "What the flying fuck are those things?" Martin asks, having failed to notice the many, many times Transformers have saved the world in the past few years.

Scooter and Hot Spot spray the building with pink fluids, while Blades flies over to try to rescue the window washers.

I have no idea how Blades' plan is supposed to work, since helicopter blades are long enough that he would not be able to get close enough to the side of the building to rescue the window washers. But, he gets points for trying, I suppose. Unfortunately, the wind of his rotors knocks the window washers off the dangling platform and they plummet to their deaths? Nope, First Aid grabs them right before they hit the ground.

The workers do not splatter on the pavement, they land on heavy, rigid robot arms, shattering their spines. We are not shown the "rescued" workers, but instead an angry mob shouting at the Protectobots. Fashion disasters abound in the crowd -- a woman in a ballroom dress, a man wearing a mask, a misshapen body builder, etc.

"Waaa", Roland says. I'm not sure Roland is fully verbal. Martin says that he knows what they should do for the science fair, and when Elise asks what, he shouts "Build our own robot!" Roland mouths along as if he was able to speak. I'm really not sure whether Roland ever speaks in this episode, or whether he just mouths along as Martin speaks in a silly voice.

So, they head off to the junkyard.

Martin berates Elise, just because. She tries to defend herself with "logic", but is cut off by Roland finding something. And then Elise finds something -- she cannot identify what it is, or what it might be good for, but it's something.

We next see the kids in a corner lab of the school, late at night, Elise believes they will be expelled, while Roland gibbers, and Martin works out an elaborate name for their robot -- B.O.T., Biotronic Operational Telecommunicator. It's not a robot at all, it has biological components, and is some kind of horrific cyborg.

Roland cannot figure out what B.O.T. means, or what their hideous thing does.

BOT is a rotund robot/cyborg, strongly resembling the unmade G1 Unicron toy. When plugged in, electricity sparks all over his surface, and he is unable to say "Martin". Elise suggests they wire in the random thing she found. She opens a door on the back of the things head, and just tosses the component in.

The only way this episode makes any sense is to remember that the Combaticons were just personality components shoved into old Earth vehicles, which then completely reconfigured the vehicles. Brawl's component doesn't reconfigure BOT, because rotund robots are the Cybertronian ideal, or something. Also, I have no idea why Swindle is bothering to look for the other parts.

BOT then throws Elise to the ground, and stomps through the lab, throwing things. "Maybe I wired the box in wrong," Elise said, "what do you men think?" "I think we better turn him off" "But how?"

And we have our first commercial break.

BOT has apparently been destroying things for the entire commercial break. Elise attempts to reason with BOT, but he grabs a pipe and is about to beat her to death. Martin goes and gets the laser and just chases him off, and BOT smashes through the wall of the lab into a hallway.

Please, take a moment and consider the wall. It is made of square, dark gray panels, with screws or rivets in the corner -- dark gray is often used as a color for metal in the visual vocabulary of the show. As BOT smashes through the wall, it breaks through the panels rather than tearing them at the corners -- so they appear to brittle rather than bendy, as if they are some kind of stone. There is no framework within the wall that the panels are bolted onto, so the panels are clearly bolted onto each other. In other views, we will not see the lines of the panels at all, and there is no sign of the joints between the panels in the cross sections.

I believe the wall is actually made of a single slab of stone -- let's say granite -- with grooves and fake rivets etched into it as if there were panels. It's an interesting engineering choice -- shockingly heavy, and wildly impractical as you can run no wiring through that wall -- so it must have been made for aesthetic reasons by the architects. We have a electronics and/or robotics lab (the most advanced thing you would find in a school), with a wall of stone (the most primitive building material possible), carefully etched to suggest that it is high tech. I like it.

Elise chastises Martin, claiming that she almost had him convinced, but now they will never stop him. Elise apparently does not recognize when a giant robot is about to bash her head in.

So, they go to the school's computer lab -- a massive computer system the size of a truck, with all the processing power of my watch, and a modem that requires a phone handset to be placed on it. The computer will find the Protectobots. They probably should have just set another building on fire.

Also, the kids refer to "yellow pages". None of my coworkers know what that is.

Surprisingly this idiotic "plan" actually gets the attention of the Autobots, as the computer sends a high resolution image of an LCD display out to Teletraan-1, so Optimus sends Ironhide, Bumblebee and Gears to check it out. Ironhide has no idea what a high school is, but with that southern drawl, is that any surprise?

Meanwhile, Swindle is threatening Biological Bob, who runs the junk yard, demanding the personality component, or, one of these days... to the moon, Bob, to the moon! Biological Bob decides that the kids must have it, since he has had no other customers. Swindle thanks Biological Blob with a threat, and then checks the scrap heap anyway. No information on which kids this might have been is ever given.

The kids are staring at their school, when the Autobots arrive. The kids are disappointed, but grudgingly accept help from the Autobots. So, they go inside the school, which is scaled for giant robots. Elise warns them not to anger BOT.

The schools I went to had hallways scaled for giant robots, but doorways scaled for humans. Here the doors are almost big enough for Autobots to walk through without ducking, and there are windows at twice human height. The architects were insane.

They corner BOT in the cafeteria, which is scaled for giant robots (seriously, the cafeteria staff must be 12-18 feet tall to cut things on those counter tops), but he dumps creamed corn on the Autobots. Elise says "I told you so", which is something that has never once helped anyone ever.

Gears does not kill her, but shoots at BOT instead, although he deflects the last blast with a pan. Ironhide squirts molten lead at him, but he jumps out of the way. The molten lead then makes the floor under Ironhide collapse. "This is so humiliating" Gears says, before Bumblebee is defeated by a doorknob. By the time Gears tries to help, BOT has stacked filing cabinets against the door, so it is completely impassable, and then jumped out the window.

Elise shows them another way out. Bot runs across the street into the destroyed building that the boys had caused to be burnt down with the laser, and goes into an elevator. Swindle is watching, and you can hear the ticking of the bomb in his head.

Everyone wants to follow BOT, but Ironhide tells the kids to wait, and then he, Gears and Bumblebee take the stairs up. Ironhide sticks a piece of wood in the elevator doors, apparently blocking it. So we have a burnt out building with a functioning elevator and power. Huh. This building is also designed at giant robot scale.

I think the architects of this Earth were struggling to make sense of a world with giant alien robots, and were trying to make a statement about humanity's place in the world. I think these buildings would be incredibly intimidating.

The boys get tired of waiting in a matter of moments, and then drag Elise into the burnt out building against her will, take the stick out of the elevator, and then go up. The elevator shaft is round, but the elevator itself is a more conventional rectangular box. The architects managed to stick a square peg into a round hole.

The stairwell that the Autobots are going up is another example of terrifying architecture. The floor and stairs are all medium to dark gray, with the stairwell spiralling around the elevator shaft. The stairs are each probably three feet high. They are obviously not stairs for people to use, but some kind of art project.

Someone shoots at them as they go up the stairs, so Ironhide orders everyone to shoot randomly somewhere up-ish. After they shoot a wall, Ironhide tells them to stop, since they must have hit whoever it was.

It's Swindle, and the stairwell shifts from a spiral to a more squared off form.

Meanwhile, the kids are still in the elevator. The elevator stops, so they send Roland up the elevator shaft. Roland sees BOT just kind of pulling on the cables until one breaks.

COMMERCIALS!

Someone shoots BOT from behind, with a pink blast.

Roland drops back down into the elevator, and explains that there is something fishy going on. He does not mention the snapped cable for the elevator.

Ironhide and the Autobots are pushing rubble off themselves. "My paint job is ruined," Gears complains.

The kids are somehow out of the elevator, and catch a glimpse of Swindle's backside. "What was that?" Martin asks. "I don't know," Roland answers, "but it went that way."

And apparently they were on the ground floor. Everyone follows Swindle out, and the Autobots shoot at the fleeing Decepticon. Bumblebee explains that it was Swindle, a Combaticon, and that they are Decepticons, available at a store near you.

Back at the Decepticon lair, Swindle has vindicated himself. BOT's personality component is stuck into Brawl, they form Bruticus, and Megatron chortles over soon controlling the oceans.

And, in the school's lab, Elise Presser notices that BOT no longer has the funny component. No one seems to have noticed the massive holes in the wall, so it must be a weekend, and the custodial staff is on strike, but not picketing.

Martin has a plan to find the personality component, and while Elise Presser says they shouldn't do this, but moments later they are driving off in Elise Presser's amazing transforming car -- it starts as a red convertible VW Beetle, and then becomes Swindle, and then shifts back to the red Beetle. I can only assume that this is another instance of Transformers technology finding its way into the lives of ordinary humans and becoming so commonplace that it isn't really remarked upon. Here, Elise Parker has a car with hologram abilities, which can be any car she wants.

I have no idea why Elise Parker is not more popular. She is thin, has nifty glasses, and a car? Come on, she is way cooler than Leisure Suit Martin and Suspender-Over-A-Polo Roland.

The kids drive to the edge of a cliff, tracking Brawl's brain waves, and stare out into the water. Elise has an idea of using BOT's speech synthesizer to find them, but all they get is Megatron explaining that there is one Earth rotation left before they blast the moon out of orbit. Also, Roland says "Huh" a lot.

But first, Megatron wants to test fire the orbit disrupter, by shooting Autobot headquarters out of orbit? Martin now wants to warn the Autobots.

Elise and the boys go to Autobot Headquarters (how? I mean, I guess they drive, but how do they know where it is?) and Elise explains the situation. Optimus says that they might be able to stop the Decepticons, but that only Defensor can stand against Bruticus due to their labor contract or something. He orders Ironhide to contact the Protectobots.

Roland wants to know if someone else could intercept the signal, but Ironhide explains that it is on a subfrequency that no Earth equipment could receive, and that the only equipment capable of receiving it belongs to the Protectobots. The Protectobots must respond on some other frequency.

The Protectobots have their own lair, in a building with a very weird doorway. Streetwise has some pretty disturbing lips, and says "the Autobots need us". The Protectobots leave their lair, where a wall raises up and they drive (and fly) out.

We have seen both the Protectobots and the Combaticons with their own independent bases, and being treated as something other than Autobots and Decepticons by their respective factions. Had Season 3 followed from this status quo, we might have seen a splintering of the forces, and a more complicated political structure.

Meanwhile the Decepticons are outside the Autobot base. Megatron orders the Combaticons to transform into Bruticus, while unbeknownst to him the Autobots are waiting to start firing until the Decepticons are at their strongest. Bruticus just stands there getting shot.

Starscream complains, so Megatron orders Bruticus to transform back to the Combaticons. The Autobots then fail to press their advantage until the Protectobots show up. A wall appears out of nowhere for a moment. More fighting.

Inside the Autobot base, the kids want to help. I really dislike Roland.

And Elise has BOT running up to the orbital destabilizer. Roland the bonehead asks if she can get BOT to do what she wants, and Elise responds "I can do anything, or haven't you noticed?" He had not.

The Protectobots transform into Defensor, he shields them, Decepticons stand on the edge of a cliff, dramatically, and shoot at them. Forcefield falls, Megatron shoots Defensor, Bruticus fires the disrupter, and Starscream is knocked from orbit. Bruticus had failed to notice BOT by the base, messing with it. BOT then presses the overload button, and is killed in the blast.

And then we are back in the base, at the end of the episode.

Martin attempts to make a joke about BOT buying the big one. He says it as if it is a pun or something, but I don't get it... Oh, he BOT the big one. That's not even groanworthy.

Elise continues speaking, so they boys duct tape her mouth shut and drag her off. It's funny because it is pointlessly misogynistic.

---
Wow, that was an episode. It was 22 minutes long or so, and had animated robots fighting and it was pretty terrible. I hate the boys' fashions. Also the boys. I hope they failed science.

I wouldn't have minded Elise showing up a few more times, but she would have been close to 40 or so by the time 2005 rolled around. She wasn't terribly annoying.

[No One In Particular]

On 9/15/2016 2:02 AM, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> Wow, that was an episode. It was 22 minutes long or so, and had animated robots fighting
>and it was pretty terrible. I hate the boys' fashions. Also the boys. I hope they failed science.
>
> I wouldn't have minded Elise showing up a few more times, but she would have been close to
>40 or so by the time 2005 rolled around. She wasn't terribly annoying.
>
>

With their variety of "practical jokes", I very much imagine they ended
up dead in an alley somewhere by the time they were 25. Also, I hope at
some point that they let poor Elise out or told someone she was there;
that might be a slightly gruesome surprise when the construction crews
show up to fix the damage. You know, after funding has been secured.
And they have all of their permits. And the necessary equipment has
been released from the other job sites. I'm thinking a minimum of six
months to a year from the events of the episode.


Brian

[Zobovor]

On Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 1:02:17 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> With such a breadth of work, Earl Kress was an obvious choice to prepare
> viewers for the radical shift that was to come, as well as say goodbye to the
> world that they had known.

I'm sure he was aware of the existence of The Transformers: the Movie (and the radical change in setting that would follow), but do you think he knew he was writing the final episode of the season? For all we know, the order of the episodes could have gotten shuffled around, and the epic two-parter of "Starscream's Brigade" and "The Revenge of Bruticus" could have been the final send-off.

> A woman with enormous breasts and a suspiciously manly face raises her arms
> in surprise, thrusting her breasts at the viewer.

When I was a teenager, watching this show on the Sci-Fi Channel for the first time since I was a kid, I made special note of all the boobalicious women on the show. There was the lady who was dancing topless at the Dance-A-Tron night club, of course. Carly in her wetsuit in "The Immobilizer" was quite tasty. I even liked Alanna from "Sea Change," especially the scene when Decepti-Traan grabs her with his tentacles.

The lady from "B.O.T." did not show up on my boob radar. She's just drawn so weirdly.

> his untested device is but a prelude to Soundwave's untested device which
> will control the tides, once the moon has been blasted out of orbit -- and
> once he controls all the tides on Earth, he will flood a small canyon and
> create almost limitless power using another, unmentioned, untested device.

This is perhaps the most convoluted Decepticon plan ever. Prowl calculated that it would take something like ten trillion astro-liters of energy to knock Cybertron out of orbit in "The Ultimate Doom," so I imagine something comparable would be required to power the orbit disruptor. Could the Decepticons really harvest more energy than that by creating a fast-moving river?

> Megatron has to walk him through everything -- land without receiving an
> invitation, follow the trail of Combaticon parts, etc.

Well, you know. He didn't have Ma Beagle there to tell him what to do.

> "Swindle!" Megatron screams, as if he were screaming "Jetson!" -- the vocal
> intonations are the same, to the point where I suspect it was intentional.

SWINNNNNDLE! YOU'RE FIRRRRRED!

> There are lots of things that are weird about these kids. They dress
> preposterously -- turtle-neck, sweater-vest with a big stripe, and matching
> jacket and pants combo for one (with a popped collar), and the other wears a
> striped t-shirt tucked into his pressed blue slacks, with suspenders.

The popped collar, obviously, is the universal symbol for "cool" and suspenders are the universal symbol for "nerd." Neither of the kids really act this way, of course (and Elise doesn't behave the way her stereotypical design would suggest either). Martin does refer to Roland once as "bright boy" implying he's a gifted student, but nothing about the episode really supports this.

> The use of Elise Presser as some kind of addition to their punishment is
> strange. There is probably some backstory there that we aren't getting -- is
> the Mr. Robbins attempting to set up Elise Presser with one or both of the
> boys, or does he have some grudge against Elise?

Either Elise is a gifted student and Robbins knows the boys will need her to come up with a successful science project, or Robbins is annoyed with Elise and he's using it as an excuse to fob her off on the boys so he doesn't have to deal with her for a while. It all depends on whether he's being sarcastic or not when he says, "And, just to show I'm not a rotten guy..." It really could go either way.

> Meanwhile, there is a building on fire, probably because it was hit by an
> overpowered laser.

Ha! Hadn't made the connection. This needs to be made official.

> "What the flying fuck are those things?" Martin asks, having failed to notice
> the many, many times Transformers have saved the world in the past few years.

I know, right?

> Fashion disasters abound in the crowd -- a woman in a ballroom dress, a man
> wearing a mask, a misshapen body builder, etc.

A disco dolly dancing with a garbage man? A guy off the cover of GQ dancing with a housewife? Holy crap, it's the revenge of the Dance-A-Tron zombies from "Auto-Bop"!

> Biotronic Operational Telecommunicator. It's not a robot at all, it has
> biological components, and is some kind of horrific cyborg.

They found a human cadaver buried at the junkyard and decided to incorporate it into their creation as well. "Hey, look at these internal organs? I bet they might be useful for something! I don't know what, just yet, but...!"

> The only way this episode makes any sense is to remember that the Combaticons
> were just personality components shoved into old Earth vehicles, which then
> completely reconfigured the vehicles.

Yup, that's the conclusion I reached as well. This probably means that there was no reason for Megatron to spend all that time cutting up the Stunticon cars, or for Alpha Trion and Hoist to spend all that time refurbishing the ancient shuttles into Earth jets. All they needed to do was give them life, and the life forces of the Stunticons and Aerialbots would have taken care of the rest.

> Please, take a moment and consider the wall. It is made of square, dark gray
> panels, with screws or rivets in the corner -- dark gray is often used as a
> color for metal in the visual vocabulary of the show. As BOT smashes through
> the wall, it breaks through the panels rather than tearing them at the
> corners -- so they appear to brittle rather than bendy, as if they are some
> kind of stone.

Yeah, I watched the scene again and it reads as a concrete wall to my eyes. (A lot of stuff on this show essentially crumbles in exactly the same way. Like the Power Tower from "Master Builders.")

> Elise chastises Martin, claiming that she almost had him convinced, but now
> they will never stop him. Elise apparently does not recognize when a giant
> robot is about to bash her head in.

Well, in her defense, a giant robot has probably never threatened to bash her head in before. After all, kids at BFP High School don't even know what Transformers are.

> Also, the kids refer to "yellow pages". None of my coworkers know what that
> is.

It's a really dated reference. I made a comment the other day about sticking a phone book underneath our wobbly kitchen table, and then I had to explain to my kids what a phone book was. They have literally never seen one.

> Meanwhile, Swindle is threatening Biological Bob, who runs the junk yard

I love this. I LOL'ed. This, too, needs to be official.

> The kids are staring at their school, when the Autobots arrive. The kids are
> disappointed, but grudgingly accept help from the Autobots.

Later in the episode, they have no idea whether or not they've seen Swindle before, but somehow they can tell the Protectobots apart from the Autobots?

> The stairs are each probably three feet high. They are obviously not stairs
> for people to use, but some kind of art project.

Maybe the whole building was a BFP High School creation.

> I have no idea why Elise Parker is not more popular. She is thin, has nifty
> glasses, and a car? Come on, she is way cooler than Leisure Suit Martin and
> Suspender-Over-A-Polo Roland.

Also, she could impersonate Jem over the phone if she wanted to.

> Ironhide explains that it is on a subfrequency that no Earth equipment could
> receive, and that the only equipment capable of receiving it belongs to the
> Protectobots.

I just don't understand why this is necessary. It's not like the Protectobots operate in secrecy, what with the entire side of the building flipping up every time they have to go somewhere.

> Elise continues speaking, so the boys duct tape her mouth shut and drag her

> off. It's funny because it is pointlessly misogynistic.

I'm really trying to see it from both sides here. A show like Transformers is predominantly filled with male characters, because it's a boy's cartoon based on a boy's toy line. So, female characters of any kind are rare and wonderful. The problem is, a lot of female characters just end up suffering from Smurfette Syndrome; i.e., this guy's the smart one, this other guy's the strong one, and she's the... uh, girl. As if that were somehow a character trait. So, kudos for creating a female character who actually breaks the mold. Elise has some relatively well-defined character traits. She's timid and whiny, but she's also clever. That's a really strange and unique character archetype. Ironically, she has more personality depth than a lot of the one-note Transformer robots.

So, the problem we run into is that when she's written like any other normal, regular character, it's easy to cry foul when she's mistreated. Nobody balked when Brainy Smurf regularly got thrown out of the Smurf village and landed on his head. If they'd done that to Smurfette, though, it would have been misogyny. There's kind of a double-standard in play here. Roland and Martin aren't annoyed by Elise just because she's a girl; they're annoyed by her because she never stops babbling and questions every single thing they do with "I don't think we should be doing this, do you?" and "we really shouldn't be in here, don't you think?" Man, I annoyed myself just typing that.

Maybe it would have been better if this had been a trio of three female students, where Elise was one of several, but she was the annoying one who ended up getting her mouth taped shut by the other two girls. Of course, then it would just turn into an episode of Jem.


Zob (or, given the Hanna-Barbera vibe, maybe an episode of Josie and the Pussycats)

[Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats]

On Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 4:26:11 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> On Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 1:02:17 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
>
> > With such a breadth of work, Earl Kress was an obvious choice to prepare
> > viewers for the radical shift that was to come, as well as say goodbye to the
> > world that they had known.
>
> I'm sure he was aware of the existence of The Transformers: the Movie (and the radical change in setting that would follow), but do you think he knew he was writing the final episode of the season? For all we know, the order of the episodes could have gotten shuffled around, and the epic two-parter of "Starscream's Brigade" and "The Revenge of Bruticus" could have been the final send-off.

So, a Swindle heavy episode about the Combaticons before the Combaticons are created?

There might have been a few more scripts in the works, and they decided "eh, good enough, let's end it here" pretty arbitrarily, but this was definitely intended to be after those two.

> > A woman with enormous breasts and a suspiciously manly face raises her arms
> > in surprise, thrusting her breasts at the viewer.
>
> When I was a teenager, watching this show on the Sci-Fi Channel for the first time since I was a kid, I made special note of all the boobalicious women on the show. There was the lady who was dancing topless at the Dance-A-Tron night club, of course. Carly in her wetsuit in "The Immobilizer" was quite tasty. I even liked Alanna from "Sea Change," especially the scene when Decepti-Traan grabs her with his tentacles.
>
> The lady from "B.O.T." did not show up on my boob radar. She's just drawn so weirdly.

I'm not sure that was a lady. Maybe very early in the transition process from dude to lady.

> > his untested device is but a prelude to Soundwave's untested device which
> > will control the tides, once the moon has been blasted out of orbit -- and
> > once he controls all the tides on Earth, he will flood a small canyon and
> > create almost limitless power using another, unmentioned, untested device.
>
> This is perhaps the most convoluted Decepticon plan ever. Prowl calculated that it would take something like ten trillion astro-liters of energy to knock Cybertron out of orbit in "The Ultimate Doom," so I imagine something comparable would be required to power the orbit disruptor. Could the Decepticons really harvest more energy than that by creating a fast-moving river?

given that we don't know what an astro-liter of energy is, and that rubies are a powerful energy source, sure, why not?

> > There are lots of things that are weird about these kids. They dress
> > preposterously -- turtle-neck, sweater-vest with a big stripe, and matching
> > jacket and pants combo for one (with a popped collar), and the other wears a
> > striped t-shirt tucked into his pressed blue slacks, with suspenders.
>
> The popped collar, obviously, is the universal symbol for "cool" and suspenders are the universal symbol for "nerd." Neither of the kids really act this way, of course (and Elise doesn't behave the way her stereotypical design would suggest either). Martin does refer to Roland once as "bright boy" implying he's a gifted student, but nothing about the episode really supports this.

I think he was being sarcastic. Roland seems to be the dim one.

I really wonder what the animators were thinking of with the fashions though. No one is ever dressed normally.

> > Meanwhile, there is a building on fire, probably because it was hit by an
> > overpowered laser.
>
> Ha! Hadn't made the connection. This needs to be made official.

I assume it was intended to be taken that way in the script, and was meant as a small, quiet joke.

> > Fashion disasters abound in the crowd -- a woman in a ballroom dress, a man
> > wearing a mask, a misshapen body builder, etc.
>
> A disco dolly dancing with a garbage man? A guy off the cover of GQ dancing with a housewife? Holy crap, it's the revenge of the Dance-A-Tron zombies from "Auto-Bop"!

Terrifying.

> > The only way this episode makes any sense is to remember that the Combaticons
> > were just personality components shoved into old Earth vehicles, which then
> > completely reconfigured the vehicles.
>
> Yup, that's the conclusion I reached as well. This probably means that there was no reason for Megatron to spend all that time cutting up the Stunticon cars, or for Alpha Trion and Hoist to spend all that time refurbishing the ancient shuttles into Earth jets. All they needed to do was give them life, and the life forces of the Stunticons and Aerialbots would have taken care of the rest.

I don't know if Vector Sigma would give life to things that don't look living. I also don't understand why Alpha Trion's corpse wasn't reanimated though.

> > Elise chastises Martin, claiming that she almost had him convinced, but now
> > they will never stop him. Elise apparently does not recognize when a giant
> > robot is about to bash her head in.
>
> Well, in her defense, a giant robot has probably never threatened to bash her head in before. After all, kids at BFP High School don't even know what Transformers are.

And yet the entire school and the building next door were built to Transformers scale. No, wait, not Transformers... we have seen several humanoid species the size of Transformers by this point.

Was this neighborhood originally constructed to house refugees from Titan? But then they never escaped whatever happened to their planet?

> > I have no idea why Elise Parker is not more popular. She is thin, has nifty
> > glasses, and a car? Come on, she is way cooler than Leisure Suit Martin and
> > Suspender-Over-A-Polo Roland.
>
> Also, she could impersonate Jem over the phone if she wanted to.

Probably has a great singing voice.

> > Ironhide explains that it is on a subfrequency that no Earth equipment could
> > receive, and that the only equipment capable of receiving it belongs to the
> > Protectobots.
>
> I just don't understand why this is necessary. It's not like the Protectobots operate in secrecy, what with the entire side of the building flipping up every time they have to go somewhere.

They want to catch the Decepticons by surprise, don't they? I mean, first, let the Decepticons haul in their weapon, and reassemble it, and gather their forces for attack, and then surprise them.

> > Elise continues speaking, so the boys duct tape her mouth shut and drag her
> > off. It's funny because it is pointlessly misogynistic.
>
> I'm really trying to see it from both sides here. A show like Transformers is predominantly filled with male characters, because it's a boy's cartoon based on a boy's toy line. So, female characters of any kind are rare and wonderful. The problem is, a lot of female characters just end up suffering from Smurfette Syndrome; i.e., this guy's the smart one, this other guy's the strong one, and she's the... uh, girl. As if that were somehow a character trait. So, kudos for creating a female character who actually breaks the mold. Elise has some relatively well-defined character traits. She's timid and whiny, but she's also clever. That's a really strange and unique character archetype. Ironically, she has more personality depth than a lot of the one-note Transformer robots.

She reminds me a lot of Jack from TF:Prime, just female and more babbling than brooding. She could have slowly grown into a hero, like he did.

> So, the problem we run into is that when she's written like any other normal, regular character, it's easy to cry foul when she's mistreated. Nobody balked when Brainy Smurf regularly got thrown out of the Smurf village and landed on his head.

All true. But Brainy also always did something to deserve it.

> Maybe it would have been better if this had been a trio of three female students, where Elise was one of several, but she was the annoying one who ended up getting her mouth taped shut by the other two girls. Of course, then it would just turn into an episode of Jem.

Martin and Roland are just unpleasant and interchangeable. I don't see why there needed to be two of them. I didn't understand why she was with them (why she was assigned, or why she stayed).

Some other dynamic was needed.

Hmm. Unrelated, but why has their been no BOT/Nightbird shipping?

[Zobovor]

On Saturday, September 17, 2016 at 7:33:30 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> So, a Swindle heavy episode about the Combaticons before the Combaticons are
> created?

Dude, this is Transformers we're talking about. We first saw the Combaticons in "Aerial Assault" before they were created. We first saw Sandstorm in "Thief in the Night" before his introductory episode. We first saw the Technobots in "Money is Everything" before Grimlock built them. At this point, what's one more continuity error?

Some online episode lists put "Kremzeek!" at the end of the second season, which actually makes sense in some ways (it was clearly a rushed episode; it was quite obviously one of Chris Latta's final performances as Starscream; it uses sound effects mixed for The Transformers: the Movie) but it would also be a really anticlimactic end to the season. And would have kind of suggested that Optimus Prime and Bumblebee spent 20 years chasing Kremzeeks through Tokyo.

> I'm not sure that was a lady. Maybe very early in the transition process from
> dude to lady.

It's good that the show is diverse in its inclusion of all the many gender identities out there. Very proactive for a 1980's cartoon.

> I really wonder what the animators were thinking of with the fashions though.
> No one is ever dressed normally.

Well, everything we know suggests that Floro Dery was still in charge of visual designs for the show (he didn't work on season three, though). So, blame him. Maybe it was a snarky commentary on 1980's fashions.

(I really wasn't aware of what 1990's fashions represented at the time because I was living through it and just accepted it. Looking back now, I realize that there was a lot of really bright pink and orange and purple going on. I actually kind of miss it.)

> Was this neighborhood originally constructed to house refugees from Titan?
> But then they never escaped whatever happened to their planet?

I tend to think a simpler explanation is warranted. Maybe humans started constructing Transformer-sized buildings because they were tired of the Decepticons (and sometimes the Autobots!) busting through walls every time they needed to get somewhere. There was some damage to the school, but it's not like Ironhide had to break anything to get from point A to point B.

>> Also, she could impersonate Jem over the phone if she wanted to.
>
> Probably has a great singing voice.

Somebody needs to write a fanfic which requires Jerrica Benton and Jem to be somewhere at the exact same time, so they recruit Elise Presser to masquerade as Jem. (Actually, I think I just recycled an episode of the old 1960's Batman TV series. Didn't Alfred pretend to be Batman one time?)

> Martin and Roland are just unpleasant and interchangeable. I don't see why
> there needed to be two of them. I didn't understand why she was with them
>(why she was assigned, or why she stayed).

It's possible Elise was responsible for some unrelated transgression, and Mr. Robbins was an unconventional administrator who didn't think that detention was sufficient punishment. He lumped all three of them together as a potential way to flunk them all.

She doesn't really seem like a ne'er-do-well like Roland and Martin, though. Maybe she was assigned precisely because she was so brilliant and because she was the only hope the boys had of passing the course. And she stayed because she's just that much of a dedicated student.

Hmm, I'm beginning to like her a lot more than I did before we reviewed this episode. I used to take her at face value (whiny and annoying) but there are deeper layers at play here.

> Hmm. Unrelated, but why has their been no BOT/Nightbird shipping?

Lucky for you that I don't do Rule 34 artwork.


Zob (oh, good lord... there already is B.O.T. porn online... avert thine eyes!)

[Gustavo Wombat]

Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, September 17, 2016 at 7:33:30 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of
> the Seattle Wombats wrote:

>> I'm not sure that was a lady. Maybe very early in the transition process from
>> dude to lady.
>
> It's good that the show is diverse in its inclusion of all the many
> gender identities out there. Very proactive for a 1980's cartoon.

And they were entirely nonchalant about it -- she isn't presented as a joke
and there's no sudden revelation. She just exists in their world.

>> Was this neighborhood originally constructed to house refugees from Titan?
>> But then they never escaped whatever happened to their planet?
>
> I tend to think a simpler explanation is warranted. Maybe humans started
> constructing Transformer-sized buildings because they were tired of the
> Decepticons (and sometimes the Autobots!) busting through walls every
> time they needed to get somewhere. There was some damage to the school,
> but it's not like Ironhide had to break anything to get from point A to point B.

Nonsense. No one anticipates giant robots will be in their buildings.

>>> Also, she could impersonate Jem over the phone if she wanted to.
>>
>> Probably has a great singing voice.
>
> Somebody needs to write a fanfic which requires Jerrica Benton and Jem to
> be somewhere at the exact same time, so they recruit Elise Presser to
> masquerade as Jem. (Actually, I think I just recycled an episode of the
> old 1960's Batman TV series. Didn't Alfred pretend to be Batman one time?)

Everyone has pretended to be Batman at one point or another. Alfred,
Superman, Nightwing, Azrael, Jim Gordon, ... one of the most common
storylines it seems. Batman '66 had Alfred do it on at least one occasion.

>> Martin and Roland are just unpleasant and interchangeable. I don't see why
>> there needed to be two of them. I didn't understand why she was with them
>> (why she was assigned, or why she stayed).
>
> It's possible Elise was responsible for some unrelated transgression, and
> Mr. Robbins was an unconventional administrator who didn't think that
> detention was sufficient punishment. He lumped all three of them
> together as a potential way to flunk them all.

I just don't buy it. Too far from anything that would happen in the real
world.

It would have worked better had she volunteered to help, then we would only
wonder what is wrong with her, rather than what is wrong with the teacher
too. We then get to know her better, and it's not entirely out of
character.

> She doesn't really seem like a ne'er-do-well like Roland and Martin,
> though. Maybe she was assigned precisely because she was so brilliant
> and because she was the only hope the boys had of passing the course.
> And she stayed because she's just that much of a dedicated student.

Why didn't they just enter their completely amazing high powered portable
laser? You can carry it, and set fire to buildings next door. It's awesome.

> Hmm, I'm beginning to like her a lot more than I did before we reviewed
> this episode. I used to take her at face value (whiny and annoying) but
> there are deeper layers at play here.

I didn't get an impression of whiny and annoying, since she was always
right. I thought she was a bit of a pushover, who didn't know how to stick
to her guns when she said no, and was physically dragged by the boys.

>> Hmm. Unrelated, but why has their been no BOT/Nightbird shipping?
>
> Lucky for you that I don't do Rule 34 artwork.
>
> Zob (oh, good lord... there already is B.O.T. porn online... avert thine eyes!)

Not searching for it.

It's bad enough that I figured out the perfect title for a sequel to B.O.T.
-- B.L.T. I don't know what it means, but it is perfect.

(Bruticus Loves Tomatoes?)



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

[Gustavo Wombat]

Gustavo Wombat <gustav...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> It's bad enough that I figured out the perfect title for a sequel to B.O.T.
> -- B.L.T. I don't know what it means, but it is perfect.
>
> (Bruticus Loves Tomatoes?)

Bioelectric Lifeforce Template?
Beetle Living Transmission?
Bendable Legal Theory?
Brightly Lit Transistor?
Bioluminescent Lincoln Towncar?


"I can't believe the Autobots let us tape over her mouth and drag her off
like that," Roland said, as he and Martin tossed Elise into the trunk of
the bioluminescent Lincoln Towncar...