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Cartoon Viewing Club: Zob's Thoughts on "The Search for Alpha Trion"
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Zobovor
May 15, 2018, 10:10:44 PM5/15/18
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"The Search for Alpha Trion" is episode #53 of the original Transformers series, one of the last episodes to feature the regular first- and season-season cast before the Aerialbots came and dominated the show. It was written by Beth Bornstein, who had previously written "Child's Play" from season two and would go on to write "Nightmare Planet" from season three. This episode is the first to feature Alpha Trion, a character created for the cartoon who had no existing Hasbro toy, as well as introducing us to the female Autobot group.
I've always felt that adding female Autobots to the second season sort of spoiled the introduction of Arcee a little. The Transformers: the Movie was in development as season two was being produced; writers working on the second season in 1985 would have been aware of the existence of the upcoming 1986 film. (At one stage in development, "Cosmic Rust" was to make a passing reference to the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, seeding the idea prior to the introduction of the Matrix in the movie.) The movie pushed the envelope in terms of what had been done with Transformers up to that point—we'd gotten plenty of cars and trucks, but the movie pioneered the concept of monster Transformers, city Transformers, gigantic planet Transformers, and girl Transformers. Or, at least, until "The Search for Alpha Trion" came along and stole its thunder.
Our episode begins in media res, with a team of female resistance troops sneaking into the Decepticon base on Cybertron. The group consists of Chromia (blue), Firestar (red), and Moonracer (sea green). Firestar is interesting in that she shares a name with a character from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. They were designed by Floro Dery, but without having to conform to existing Hasbro or Takara designs, they have foregone the traditionally boxy look typically associated with Transformers, and are lithe and slender. Their designs also include some signature elements like Chromia and Moonracer's popped "collar" that show up in a lot of his original robot designs (Hot Rod, Scourge, Unicron, etc.) Their transformations, which we'll see later, also include a lot of crazy size-changing parts (the tiny component on the front of Chromia's head ends up on the top of her car mode where it's about three times larger). This size-changing, too, is classic Dery (the contention of Blurr's vehicle transformation is that his head forms the entire back end of his car mode, and the head of Kranix somehow forms the entire front end of his unused spaceship transformation).
Anyway, the female Autobots are on a desperate hunt for the Decepticon energon stores; when they find it, Firestar transforms into a Cybertron version of a pickup truck and they load up the goodies. (The model for her transformation really bothers me, because her legs detach from her body. She does this consistently every time we see her transform.)
Chromia says they will only be stealing a small portion of the energon, as per standing orders from Elita One. Moonracer balks at the idea, quickly grabbing another armful before rejoining them. She's set off a booby trap, though, and a square-shaped invisible forcefield is generated, like a gigantic energon cube, trapping her. She immediately goes into panic mode and screams to be let out. Chromia attempts to free her while Firestar is told to depart. Well, the girls are making such a ruckus that Shockwave finally notices. "Female Autobots? I thought they were extinct," he muses. This is our in-universe explanation as to why we've never seen them before, even though we've seen the Autobots revisit Cybertron several times prior to this episode. (There is another explanation as to why the male Autobots have never gone looking for them, which we'll get to later.)
Shockwave takes a few potshots at Firestar as she drives away, but poor Shockers hasn't had much occasion for target practice in the last four million years, and his aim is atrocious. He resolves to do better against the other two. He tries to blast Chromia, who ducks out of the way so that the field holding Moonracer is destroyed instead. Moonracer throws her small pile of energon at Shockwave and the other two girls flee. (I've said this before, but while Floro Dery is a great designer, he would make a lousy toy engineer. Both Chromia and Moonracer's "transformations" can be generously described as folding their robot forms in half. Pretty much like the G1 Blurr toy, actually, who was also based on a Dery design.) Unbeknownst to the girls, Shockwave sends a sentinel to track them down so he can finally find out where they've been hiding all this time. The girls spot it and destroy it, but at least Shockwave has a vague idea of what neighborhood they're living in.
Shockwave tells Megatron about the break-in, and Megatron is already putting a scheme together that involves the capture of Elita One. He says he's going to send some Decepticons over the space bridge to lend Shockwave a hand. Does this seem strange to anyone else? Does Shockwave have absolutely no Decepticon troops under his command? In retrospect, this would have been a great episode in which to introduce the Battlechargers or somebody—characters living on Cybertron that we'd never seen before. In any event, Megatron sends Starscream, Ramjet, Astrotrain, and Rumble. If you look at the episodes that come before and after this one, Megatron probably wanted to get rid of Starscream for a while following his Dancitron failure in "Auto-Bop." And, while they're running around chasing the girls, Dirge is probably breaking into Wheeljack's workshop and stealing the secret weapon to set up the events of "Hoist Goes Hollywood."
What's odd about Astrotrain's role in this episode is that he never speaks. Not once. We know Jack Angel was available, because Ramjet gets some dialogue, so it's weird that Astrotrain is completely silent.
Elita One is the mysterious benefactor of the female Autobot group, a character whose name we hear in dialogue, and whose voice we hear over Chromia's communicator, before we actually meet her face-to-face. When we finally see her, she's seated but facing away from the viewer, so she can swivel around for a big, dramatic reveal. Also, she is very, very pink. (There are also two additional female Autobots present in the episode who don't get any dialogue. One is green and the other is orange/purple. Officially, they're known as Greenlight and Lancer these days, but for many years they had no canonical designations at all.)
When Chromia expresses concerns that her group was followed by the sentinel, Elita One opts to consult with Alpha Trion. On Elita's communications array, he appears as a glowing head and gets some extra reverberation to his voice, so you know he must be pretty darned special. He's also got a beard and a moustache, the first such time we've seen these features on a Transformer in the cartoon (again, another concept that may have been borrowed from The Transformers: the Movie). Alpha Trion (voiced by John Stephenson, the actor for Windcharger and Thundercracker and, later, Kup) strongly urges her to relocate but to proceed with caution. When Elita defiantly states she can handle the Decepticons, Alpha Trion recognizes this as a reference to her innate special powers, and warns her that she must never use them. Neither of them elaborates on just what this power actually is, but it must be devastating.
It's been difficult to verify the voice actors for the female Autobots, partly because they were introduced so late in the game that the end title cards were never updated to reflect their participation, and partly because there are so few female performers on the show that it's incredibly difficult to cross-reference roles. Moonracer was performed by Morgan Lofting, better know to G.I. Joe fans as the voice of the Baroness, and a rumored favorite of the late director Wally Burr. Elita One was played by Marlene Aragon, also the voice of Synergy on Jem. The others, I'm not really sure about. For a while, I was convinced that Firestar was Marsha Wallace. Maybe if I watched more My Little Pony episodes, I'd have a better working knowledge of the female voice actor pool working in the 1980's.
The Decepticons arrive on Cybertron, but there's no sign of Elita One. There's an unintentionally silly moment when Ramjet picks up a broken column and looks under it in desperation (as if she was tiny enough to be hidden underneath it). Starscream orders Rumble to use his earthquake-creating powers to scare the female Autobots out of hiding. There's a brief power play when Rumble reminds Starscream of their mission objectives. "When Megatron is not with us, I am in charge," says Starscream, "and I order you to obey me!" This is just another way of saying "I order you to follow my orders!" so it's kind of a funny moment. Well, Rumble starts shakin' and quakin' and support columns start falling on top of the female Autobots. At least now Ramjet will have a reason to look underneath them. Cue the first commercial break!
As we begin act two, Elita One has finally come out of hiding and starts taking sniper shots at the Decepticons. The fight is on. Ramjet opens fire, but Elita executes an athletic double-flip, landing on the top of a spire. Ramjet switches to jet mode and fires a missile, which Elita One CATCHES IN MID-AIR and throws back at him. Elita One is a badass mamma-jamma robot fighter. Starscream does finally manage to bring her down with a null ray (it emits circles of energy, reminding me a lot of the Stormtroopers taking down Princess Leia in Star Wars). She's not invulnerable after all. Down below, the rest of Elita's team is recovering from the attack. They're trapped underground, but they resolve to escape and try to help Elita.
Almost ten minutes into the episode and Optimus Prime finally shows up. Megatron calls him up and taunts him, revealing that the female Autobots are still prancing around on Cybertron. Prime is not convinced. "I realized you would demand proof," Megatron smirks, and transmits footage of the captive Elita One. There are a couple of things wrong with this scene (it's actually Thrust cosplaying as Ramjet, and Megatron must be dressed up like Elita One because that's his voice coming out of her mouth) but Prime falls for it anyway. He gets Teletraan to call up the Decepticon space bridge. Every once in a while, the Autobots just completely forget that they have Omega Supreme at their disposal. I get that a lot of these episodes were being developed concurrently, but isn't that what story editors are for? This same problem pops up in "The Revenge of Bruticus" and it drives me nuts.
Prime heads towards the space bridge in truck mode, and during the journey we're treated to a flashback in the form of a major retcon. The contention of this episode is that there was "really" a missing scene from "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1 in which the Ark is just about ready to launch, when suddenly Elita One and the other female Autobots run towards the ship and want to board. Prime insists it's too dangerous and that he'll return shortly, but suddenly the Decepticons open fire and all the female Autobots are presumed destroyed. This doesn't exactly jive with what we see in the pilot episode (in fact, when Starscream wants to open fire on the Ark, Megatron specifically avoids attacking them because he's curious about what energy source they may have found), but it's certainly not the first time (or the last!) that this show has rewritten its own history. So, this is our explanation for why the Autobots never looked up their old girlfriends during any of the previous return visits to Cybertron.
So, here's where it gets a little weird. Back at the Autobot base, the other Autobot troops realize that Prime has left on a secret mission, apparently without telling anybody. Based on the research that's been done on Teletraan, they conclude that he's left for Cybertron. The Autobots present are Cliffjumper, Powerglide, Inferno, and Ironhide. Notice anything they have in common? Yep, they're all red. We'll come back to this in a bit. There's also another Autobot, also red in color, standing at the viewscreen, but his back is turned so we can't really tell who he is. Based on the design of his feet and the component on his back, it looks like a Reflector body type, but it's colored almost entirely red, from head to toe. And no, it's not Perceptor. So strange.
So, Prime arrives at the space bridge, and he observes that there are no Decepticon guards present. It stands to reason that if Megatron was using Elita One as bait to lure Prime into a trap, he would make it easy for Prime to get to Cybertron. No guards putting up a low level of resistance, no facade to make it seem as if Megatron is trying to prevent access... he's not even bothering to pretend.
So, Prime arrives at the teleport chamber on Cybertron and he's instantly enveloped by another one of Shockwave's giant energon cubes. There's a momentary scuffle when Elita elbows Astrotrain and tries to escape, but she's subdued again. Starscream is ready to just end her right here and now, but Shockwave stops him, suggesting that he's got a "better idea." Shockwave's plan is, apparently, to melt Optimus Prime in a vat of acid while his girlfriend watches. Shockwave's spent the last four million years coming up with the most gruesome ways he can imagine to torture the Autobots.
Back at the female Autobot base, Moonracer suddenly remembers that she stashed the stolen energon cubes in a closet (no other use for a closet, since they don't have any female Dinobots) and that they can utilize them to blast through the rubble. The plan is successful and the girls all go to find Elita One.
Ironhide, Powerglide, and Inferno arrive at the deserted space bridge. "If Prime got past those guards, so can we," says Ironhide, as we see a space bridge with no guards anywhere near it. Optimus just went out of his way to point out to us that there was nobody guarding the thing. I'm beginning to wonder if this episode was heavily edited or hastily rewritten, and hiccups like this were the result. (The scale is also wildly inaccurate when the red Autobots enter it. This must be a mini-space bridge that the Decepticons sometimes use to conserve power.)
The Decepticons have Prime strung up over a vat of acid (except in the scenes where the vat is missing, and steam is just coming out of the floor panels). This is a Toei installment and is fairly perfunctory, though there's a great piece of animation when Starscream reaches down and produces a metal rod to demonstrate the dissolving effects of the acid. It's such a simple moment but it's executed absolutely beautifully. A desperate Elita begs that she be sacrificed instead, and Starscream promises that he'll make good on her request... right after Optimus. Rumble cuts the chain with a lightsaber, and Prime falls to his death. Commercial break!
As we begin the third and final act, Elita screams. It's not just a scream, though. She's activated her special power, which appears to be some kind of time distortion ability. She's literally frozen everyone and everything around her, and every frozen character is represented in sickly puke-green tones. Elita is able to pluck Optimus from his position in mid-drop, just above the acid pool, and a physical touch is enough to undo the freezing effect. Unfortunately, the effect in animation is completely backwards; Prime fades from his regular colors to the green tones, instead of the other way around. It would have looked really cool if they'd done it right. Well, the animators get a You Tried star.
Prime is revived, but Elita falls to the ground, weak. Using her special ability has nearly drained her life force completely. She suggests that Prime take her to Alpha Trion, the only robot who might possibly be able to save her. Prime takes her outside, gently places her on the ground, and transforms. There's a rare appearance of his artillery robot, which gingerly picks her up with its claw and deposits her into the trailer.
There's an odd bit of dialogue when the Decepticons recover from their chronometric stasis. Starscream begins the conversation with, "But Prime has disintegrated!" Presumably, there's a missing line of dialogue where one of the other Decepticons observes that Elita One is no longer present. There's a ruined hunk of metal inside the acid vat, which the Decepticons believe to be Prime's body. We never saw Elita deposit the chunk of metal into the vat. Maybe some day there will be an episode with another retcon that shows her doing it.
The Autobots show up just in time for Starscream to start gloating obnoxiously. He points out the grisly remains of Optimus Prime; the Autobots are in denial, dismissing it as a Decepticon trick, but you can tell by Ironhide's reaction that he's positively incensed. The Autobot reaction is so visceral that the Decepticons are forced to flee.
There really are some great visuals in this episode. Even the close-up of Prime's hubcaps as he carries Elita One is particularly well-done. The close-up of Elita inside Prime's trailer as she clings to life is amazing, too. Most of the animation on the show is done with a single color value, or maybe two colors if the animators are feeling especially adventrous, but each of Elita's parts in this scene have three color values—the basic color, shading, and highlights. It's gorgeous.
The firefight between the Autobots and Decepticons has continued outside, and it's around this time that the female Autobots show up. "How quaint! The girls have come to rescue their boyfriends!" Starscream quips. This was the 1980's and attitudes about women were very different. This was a very male-dominated show, in the same vein as the early Star Wars films. Even G.I. Joe had a sizeable number of prominent female characters (Baroness, Lady Jaye, Scarlett, etc.) There are moments when the female Autobots are portrayed as weak (Moonracer panicking when she gets captured) but I like that every one of them is a fighter. They all carry guns and all get into combat just like the male Autobots. They're not nurses or secretaries or telephone operators. It's surprisingly progressive for the time period.
The only thing I take issue with is the pairings to the male Autobots. Every one of these girls is in an exclusive relationship. What's worse, the girls appear to be NAMED after the male Autobots that they're paired with. Chromia, whose name shares a root word with the element chromium, is paired with Ironhide. Firestar is paired with Inferno. Moonracer is paired with Powerglide, both names that connote speed. And then, of course, there's Elita One, whose two-word name has Latin roots just as Optimus Prime's name does.
So, it bothers me that none of the female Autobots can exist as a standalone character. We don't see whether Greenlight and Lancer have boyfriends or not, but they're hardly characters since they never speak and aren't named in the episode. They're window dressing. It would have been nice if the girls had been able to stand on their own as characters without "belonging" to anyone. Also, it strains credibility that the three Autobots who just happened to go to Cybertron were the girls' boyfriends. Also, why do only the red Autobots get girlfriends? I guess it could just be a coincidence, but it seems like a strange one.
Speaking of red, Chromia's eye switch from blue to red a number of times. I wonder if there was an early, miscolored version of her color model, or perhaps the way the close-up of her head design was colored didn't match the colors for her full body design. It happens too often for it to be a simple coloring mistake, and it happens only to Chromia.
So, Optimus Prime finds Alpha Trion's hidden base, cleverly disguised as a junkyard. Not sure why he's living alone in seclusion. "I never expected to see you again," Optimus Prime remarks. He explains the situation with Elita, and Alpha Trion takes her into his laboratory to see if there's anything that can be done. Eventually, Alpha Trion suggests to Prime that he disengage his power filter, and Prime proceeds to open his abdomen and pull out a retractable cable. "Only your design will properly interface," Alpha Trion explains. Prime is puzzled. "But how would you know that? Only my creator could know that," Prime proclaims. Alpha Trion responds that he's making an educated guess, and Prime stares at him wide-eyed in response (or, at least, inasmuch as Prime is capable of any kind of facial expressions at all). Prime lets out a prolonged groan as there is some kind of power exchange between him and Elita. Are we watching robot sex? Is that what's going on here?
But, let's skip back for a moment. We just found out that Alpha Trion created Optimus Prime. We'll find out later in "War Dawn" that he actually REcreated a smaller, weaker robot into Optimus, but close enough. Oddly, though, Prime doesn't remember any of this. There are lots of examples of Transformers having incredibly bad long-term memories, and this is one of the most egregious ones. Prime remembered Alpha Trion well enough that he recognized him on sight, but evidently he can't remember far back enough to his own creation. We'll see later that Elita One can't remember it, either. The fact that Alpha Trion created both Optimus Prime and Elita One, though... doesn't that make them brother and sister?
The Autobot-Decepticon skirmish continues. The Autobots are greater in number and believe they've won the fight, until Shockwave switches to gun mode and blasts them all over the edge of a precipice. Shockwave is just hovering there as Starscream eggs him on, wanting him to finish them off. It's around this time that Optimus and Elita finally show up. (For fan artists wishing to learn to draw Elita One by studying this scene, we only catch a tantalising glimpse of part of her vehicle mode—never the whole thing.)
This is where Starscream completely freaks out. "It can't be! I saw his melted carcass!" he shrieks. I never thought it was possible for Starscream's already high-pitched voice to go up an entire octave, but he manages it. He orders the retreat, Astrotrain finally makes himself useful, and they escape (back to Earth, presumably). Shockwave had been abandoned by the others, and a single potshot by Elita One is enough to send him tumbling into a chasm.
Alpha Trion gets the female Autobots moved to a new headquarters, and now it's time for the boys to say their good-byes. Elita One mutters something about continuing the fight on Cybertron, even though it seems like Shockwave is literally the only Decepticon on the planet for them to fight. So, the girls and their boyfriends get one last moment together. Of course, the real reason they have to stay behind is so that the status quo of the show isn't horribly disrupted. It's likely the female Autobots might have appeared in another episode, had the third season of the show taken place in 1986, but the deaths of characters like Optimus Prime and Ironhide, and the disappearance of Inferno during season three, effectively precluded another reunion from ever happening.
Considering what a big deal it was that the female Autobots were discovered to still be alive and functional, though, leaving them behind seems like a huge mistake. Pretty much any time the Autobots or Decepticons are reunited with wayward members of their teams, they're always annexed to the group (Skyfire, Omega Supreme, the Constructicons, etc.) Also, having to continue the fight on Cybertron is a pretty flimsy excuse. Shockwave hasn't spotted any of the girls once since the Ark departed! Maybe they're just really good at operating in secrecy, but they clearly haven't disrupted any major Decepticon operations, or Shockwave would have noticed.
The female Autobot characters were never realized as G1 toys. Most of the characters introduced in the cartoon who were created by the spec writers didn't enjoy that luxury. It's doubtful the characters' creators would get percentages from toy sales anyway. The appear of creating original characters, actually, is that the Writer's Guild of America dictated royalties would be awarded if the characters were used in future stories, even if somebody else wrote those episodes. I think this means that Alpha Trion definitely qualifies for this. Conceptually, Alpha Trion feels like a David Wise creation (who developed a lot of the mythos revolving around Cybertron and its early days), but if the episode airdate order is any indication, then it was Beth Bornstein who created the character, since he was introduced in her episode first.
Alpha Trion never got a G1 toy, but he was recognized a number of times in recent years by Takara. Takara's Super Collection Figure series of PVC figurines included Alpha Trion in 2002, a BotCon redeco of Vector Prime in 2007, and an EX Gohkin figure with swappable hands and heads. Hasbro's Titans Return toy from 2016 was loosely based on the character, but transformed into a lion. The female Autobots have enjoyed far fewer toys. There have been multiple toys using Elita One's name (or a variant of it), including a neat model kit back in 1996, but the Power of the Primes toy is the first such transforming toy designed to represent the character. Moonracer also got a Power of the Primes toy, with a redeco for Firestar (renamed Novastar) coming in the near future. Chromia got a Generations toy in 2014 that turned into a motorcycle.
Is this a good episode? In some ways it feels like fan fiction. "Here's my story about how all the Autobots actually have secret lovers, and this why we never saw them before!" With that said, it's a really significant episode in the mythos, mostly because it manages to close the gender gap, if only for 22 minutes or so. In particular, the female fans tend to gravitate to it, as it gives them some x-chromosome robots they can identify with more readily. Some folks probably figure it paved the way for Arcee's introduction in The Transformers: the Movie, when in truth it was probably the other way around.
Here's a special reward for anyone who made it all the way through my review:
https://youtu.be/WnCARLQJtx8
Zob (has too much time on his hands, apparently)
I've always felt that adding female Autobots to the second season sort of spoiled the introduction of Arcee a little. The Transformers: the Movie was in development as season two was being produced; writers working on the second season in 1985 would have been aware of the existence of the upcoming 1986 film. (At one stage in development, "Cosmic Rust" was to make a passing reference to the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, seeding the idea prior to the introduction of the Matrix in the movie.) The movie pushed the envelope in terms of what had been done with Transformers up to that point—we'd gotten plenty of cars and trucks, but the movie pioneered the concept of monster Transformers, city Transformers, gigantic planet Transformers, and girl Transformers. Or, at least, until "The Search for Alpha Trion" came along and stole its thunder.
Our episode begins in media res, with a team of female resistance troops sneaking into the Decepticon base on Cybertron. The group consists of Chromia (blue), Firestar (red), and Moonracer (sea green). Firestar is interesting in that she shares a name with a character from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. They were designed by Floro Dery, but without having to conform to existing Hasbro or Takara designs, they have foregone the traditionally boxy look typically associated with Transformers, and are lithe and slender. Their designs also include some signature elements like Chromia and Moonracer's popped "collar" that show up in a lot of his original robot designs (Hot Rod, Scourge, Unicron, etc.) Their transformations, which we'll see later, also include a lot of crazy size-changing parts (the tiny component on the front of Chromia's head ends up on the top of her car mode where it's about three times larger). This size-changing, too, is classic Dery (the contention of Blurr's vehicle transformation is that his head forms the entire back end of his car mode, and the head of Kranix somehow forms the entire front end of his unused spaceship transformation).
Anyway, the female Autobots are on a desperate hunt for the Decepticon energon stores; when they find it, Firestar transforms into a Cybertron version of a pickup truck and they load up the goodies. (The model for her transformation really bothers me, because her legs detach from her body. She does this consistently every time we see her transform.)
Chromia says they will only be stealing a small portion of the energon, as per standing orders from Elita One. Moonracer balks at the idea, quickly grabbing another armful before rejoining them. She's set off a booby trap, though, and a square-shaped invisible forcefield is generated, like a gigantic energon cube, trapping her. She immediately goes into panic mode and screams to be let out. Chromia attempts to free her while Firestar is told to depart. Well, the girls are making such a ruckus that Shockwave finally notices. "Female Autobots? I thought they were extinct," he muses. This is our in-universe explanation as to why we've never seen them before, even though we've seen the Autobots revisit Cybertron several times prior to this episode. (There is another explanation as to why the male Autobots have never gone looking for them, which we'll get to later.)
Shockwave takes a few potshots at Firestar as she drives away, but poor Shockers hasn't had much occasion for target practice in the last four million years, and his aim is atrocious. He resolves to do better against the other two. He tries to blast Chromia, who ducks out of the way so that the field holding Moonracer is destroyed instead. Moonracer throws her small pile of energon at Shockwave and the other two girls flee. (I've said this before, but while Floro Dery is a great designer, he would make a lousy toy engineer. Both Chromia and Moonracer's "transformations" can be generously described as folding their robot forms in half. Pretty much like the G1 Blurr toy, actually, who was also based on a Dery design.) Unbeknownst to the girls, Shockwave sends a sentinel to track them down so he can finally find out where they've been hiding all this time. The girls spot it and destroy it, but at least Shockwave has a vague idea of what neighborhood they're living in.
Shockwave tells Megatron about the break-in, and Megatron is already putting a scheme together that involves the capture of Elita One. He says he's going to send some Decepticons over the space bridge to lend Shockwave a hand. Does this seem strange to anyone else? Does Shockwave have absolutely no Decepticon troops under his command? In retrospect, this would have been a great episode in which to introduce the Battlechargers or somebody—characters living on Cybertron that we'd never seen before. In any event, Megatron sends Starscream, Ramjet, Astrotrain, and Rumble. If you look at the episodes that come before and after this one, Megatron probably wanted to get rid of Starscream for a while following his Dancitron failure in "Auto-Bop." And, while they're running around chasing the girls, Dirge is probably breaking into Wheeljack's workshop and stealing the secret weapon to set up the events of "Hoist Goes Hollywood."
What's odd about Astrotrain's role in this episode is that he never speaks. Not once. We know Jack Angel was available, because Ramjet gets some dialogue, so it's weird that Astrotrain is completely silent.
Elita One is the mysterious benefactor of the female Autobot group, a character whose name we hear in dialogue, and whose voice we hear over Chromia's communicator, before we actually meet her face-to-face. When we finally see her, she's seated but facing away from the viewer, so she can swivel around for a big, dramatic reveal. Also, she is very, very pink. (There are also two additional female Autobots present in the episode who don't get any dialogue. One is green and the other is orange/purple. Officially, they're known as Greenlight and Lancer these days, but for many years they had no canonical designations at all.)
When Chromia expresses concerns that her group was followed by the sentinel, Elita One opts to consult with Alpha Trion. On Elita's communications array, he appears as a glowing head and gets some extra reverberation to his voice, so you know he must be pretty darned special. He's also got a beard and a moustache, the first such time we've seen these features on a Transformer in the cartoon (again, another concept that may have been borrowed from The Transformers: the Movie). Alpha Trion (voiced by John Stephenson, the actor for Windcharger and Thundercracker and, later, Kup) strongly urges her to relocate but to proceed with caution. When Elita defiantly states she can handle the Decepticons, Alpha Trion recognizes this as a reference to her innate special powers, and warns her that she must never use them. Neither of them elaborates on just what this power actually is, but it must be devastating.
It's been difficult to verify the voice actors for the female Autobots, partly because they were introduced so late in the game that the end title cards were never updated to reflect their participation, and partly because there are so few female performers on the show that it's incredibly difficult to cross-reference roles. Moonracer was performed by Morgan Lofting, better know to G.I. Joe fans as the voice of the Baroness, and a rumored favorite of the late director Wally Burr. Elita One was played by Marlene Aragon, also the voice of Synergy on Jem. The others, I'm not really sure about. For a while, I was convinced that Firestar was Marsha Wallace. Maybe if I watched more My Little Pony episodes, I'd have a better working knowledge of the female voice actor pool working in the 1980's.
The Decepticons arrive on Cybertron, but there's no sign of Elita One. There's an unintentionally silly moment when Ramjet picks up a broken column and looks under it in desperation (as if she was tiny enough to be hidden underneath it). Starscream orders Rumble to use his earthquake-creating powers to scare the female Autobots out of hiding. There's a brief power play when Rumble reminds Starscream of their mission objectives. "When Megatron is not with us, I am in charge," says Starscream, "and I order you to obey me!" This is just another way of saying "I order you to follow my orders!" so it's kind of a funny moment. Well, Rumble starts shakin' and quakin' and support columns start falling on top of the female Autobots. At least now Ramjet will have a reason to look underneath them. Cue the first commercial break!
As we begin act two, Elita One has finally come out of hiding and starts taking sniper shots at the Decepticons. The fight is on. Ramjet opens fire, but Elita executes an athletic double-flip, landing on the top of a spire. Ramjet switches to jet mode and fires a missile, which Elita One CATCHES IN MID-AIR and throws back at him. Elita One is a badass mamma-jamma robot fighter. Starscream does finally manage to bring her down with a null ray (it emits circles of energy, reminding me a lot of the Stormtroopers taking down Princess Leia in Star Wars). She's not invulnerable after all. Down below, the rest of Elita's team is recovering from the attack. They're trapped underground, but they resolve to escape and try to help Elita.
Almost ten minutes into the episode and Optimus Prime finally shows up. Megatron calls him up and taunts him, revealing that the female Autobots are still prancing around on Cybertron. Prime is not convinced. "I realized you would demand proof," Megatron smirks, and transmits footage of the captive Elita One. There are a couple of things wrong with this scene (it's actually Thrust cosplaying as Ramjet, and Megatron must be dressed up like Elita One because that's his voice coming out of her mouth) but Prime falls for it anyway. He gets Teletraan to call up the Decepticon space bridge. Every once in a while, the Autobots just completely forget that they have Omega Supreme at their disposal. I get that a lot of these episodes were being developed concurrently, but isn't that what story editors are for? This same problem pops up in "The Revenge of Bruticus" and it drives me nuts.
Prime heads towards the space bridge in truck mode, and during the journey we're treated to a flashback in the form of a major retcon. The contention of this episode is that there was "really" a missing scene from "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1 in which the Ark is just about ready to launch, when suddenly Elita One and the other female Autobots run towards the ship and want to board. Prime insists it's too dangerous and that he'll return shortly, but suddenly the Decepticons open fire and all the female Autobots are presumed destroyed. This doesn't exactly jive with what we see in the pilot episode (in fact, when Starscream wants to open fire on the Ark, Megatron specifically avoids attacking them because he's curious about what energy source they may have found), but it's certainly not the first time (or the last!) that this show has rewritten its own history. So, this is our explanation for why the Autobots never looked up their old girlfriends during any of the previous return visits to Cybertron.
So, here's where it gets a little weird. Back at the Autobot base, the other Autobot troops realize that Prime has left on a secret mission, apparently without telling anybody. Based on the research that's been done on Teletraan, they conclude that he's left for Cybertron. The Autobots present are Cliffjumper, Powerglide, Inferno, and Ironhide. Notice anything they have in common? Yep, they're all red. We'll come back to this in a bit. There's also another Autobot, also red in color, standing at the viewscreen, but his back is turned so we can't really tell who he is. Based on the design of his feet and the component on his back, it looks like a Reflector body type, but it's colored almost entirely red, from head to toe. And no, it's not Perceptor. So strange.
So, Prime arrives at the space bridge, and he observes that there are no Decepticon guards present. It stands to reason that if Megatron was using Elita One as bait to lure Prime into a trap, he would make it easy for Prime to get to Cybertron. No guards putting up a low level of resistance, no facade to make it seem as if Megatron is trying to prevent access... he's not even bothering to pretend.
So, Prime arrives at the teleport chamber on Cybertron and he's instantly enveloped by another one of Shockwave's giant energon cubes. There's a momentary scuffle when Elita elbows Astrotrain and tries to escape, but she's subdued again. Starscream is ready to just end her right here and now, but Shockwave stops him, suggesting that he's got a "better idea." Shockwave's plan is, apparently, to melt Optimus Prime in a vat of acid while his girlfriend watches. Shockwave's spent the last four million years coming up with the most gruesome ways he can imagine to torture the Autobots.
Back at the female Autobot base, Moonracer suddenly remembers that she stashed the stolen energon cubes in a closet (no other use for a closet, since they don't have any female Dinobots) and that they can utilize them to blast through the rubble. The plan is successful and the girls all go to find Elita One.
Ironhide, Powerglide, and Inferno arrive at the deserted space bridge. "If Prime got past those guards, so can we," says Ironhide, as we see a space bridge with no guards anywhere near it. Optimus just went out of his way to point out to us that there was nobody guarding the thing. I'm beginning to wonder if this episode was heavily edited or hastily rewritten, and hiccups like this were the result. (The scale is also wildly inaccurate when the red Autobots enter it. This must be a mini-space bridge that the Decepticons sometimes use to conserve power.)
The Decepticons have Prime strung up over a vat of acid (except in the scenes where the vat is missing, and steam is just coming out of the floor panels). This is a Toei installment and is fairly perfunctory, though there's a great piece of animation when Starscream reaches down and produces a metal rod to demonstrate the dissolving effects of the acid. It's such a simple moment but it's executed absolutely beautifully. A desperate Elita begs that she be sacrificed instead, and Starscream promises that he'll make good on her request... right after Optimus. Rumble cuts the chain with a lightsaber, and Prime falls to his death. Commercial break!
As we begin the third and final act, Elita screams. It's not just a scream, though. She's activated her special power, which appears to be some kind of time distortion ability. She's literally frozen everyone and everything around her, and every frozen character is represented in sickly puke-green tones. Elita is able to pluck Optimus from his position in mid-drop, just above the acid pool, and a physical touch is enough to undo the freezing effect. Unfortunately, the effect in animation is completely backwards; Prime fades from his regular colors to the green tones, instead of the other way around. It would have looked really cool if they'd done it right. Well, the animators get a You Tried star.
Prime is revived, but Elita falls to the ground, weak. Using her special ability has nearly drained her life force completely. She suggests that Prime take her to Alpha Trion, the only robot who might possibly be able to save her. Prime takes her outside, gently places her on the ground, and transforms. There's a rare appearance of his artillery robot, which gingerly picks her up with its claw and deposits her into the trailer.
There's an odd bit of dialogue when the Decepticons recover from their chronometric stasis. Starscream begins the conversation with, "But Prime has disintegrated!" Presumably, there's a missing line of dialogue where one of the other Decepticons observes that Elita One is no longer present. There's a ruined hunk of metal inside the acid vat, which the Decepticons believe to be Prime's body. We never saw Elita deposit the chunk of metal into the vat. Maybe some day there will be an episode with another retcon that shows her doing it.
The Autobots show up just in time for Starscream to start gloating obnoxiously. He points out the grisly remains of Optimus Prime; the Autobots are in denial, dismissing it as a Decepticon trick, but you can tell by Ironhide's reaction that he's positively incensed. The Autobot reaction is so visceral that the Decepticons are forced to flee.
There really are some great visuals in this episode. Even the close-up of Prime's hubcaps as he carries Elita One is particularly well-done. The close-up of Elita inside Prime's trailer as she clings to life is amazing, too. Most of the animation on the show is done with a single color value, or maybe two colors if the animators are feeling especially adventrous, but each of Elita's parts in this scene have three color values—the basic color, shading, and highlights. It's gorgeous.
The firefight between the Autobots and Decepticons has continued outside, and it's around this time that the female Autobots show up. "How quaint! The girls have come to rescue their boyfriends!" Starscream quips. This was the 1980's and attitudes about women were very different. This was a very male-dominated show, in the same vein as the early Star Wars films. Even G.I. Joe had a sizeable number of prominent female characters (Baroness, Lady Jaye, Scarlett, etc.) There are moments when the female Autobots are portrayed as weak (Moonracer panicking when she gets captured) but I like that every one of them is a fighter. They all carry guns and all get into combat just like the male Autobots. They're not nurses or secretaries or telephone operators. It's surprisingly progressive for the time period.
The only thing I take issue with is the pairings to the male Autobots. Every one of these girls is in an exclusive relationship. What's worse, the girls appear to be NAMED after the male Autobots that they're paired with. Chromia, whose name shares a root word with the element chromium, is paired with Ironhide. Firestar is paired with Inferno. Moonracer is paired with Powerglide, both names that connote speed. And then, of course, there's Elita One, whose two-word name has Latin roots just as Optimus Prime's name does.
So, it bothers me that none of the female Autobots can exist as a standalone character. We don't see whether Greenlight and Lancer have boyfriends or not, but they're hardly characters since they never speak and aren't named in the episode. They're window dressing. It would have been nice if the girls had been able to stand on their own as characters without "belonging" to anyone. Also, it strains credibility that the three Autobots who just happened to go to Cybertron were the girls' boyfriends. Also, why do only the red Autobots get girlfriends? I guess it could just be a coincidence, but it seems like a strange one.
Speaking of red, Chromia's eye switch from blue to red a number of times. I wonder if there was an early, miscolored version of her color model, or perhaps the way the close-up of her head design was colored didn't match the colors for her full body design. It happens too often for it to be a simple coloring mistake, and it happens only to Chromia.
So, Optimus Prime finds Alpha Trion's hidden base, cleverly disguised as a junkyard. Not sure why he's living alone in seclusion. "I never expected to see you again," Optimus Prime remarks. He explains the situation with Elita, and Alpha Trion takes her into his laboratory to see if there's anything that can be done. Eventually, Alpha Trion suggests to Prime that he disengage his power filter, and Prime proceeds to open his abdomen and pull out a retractable cable. "Only your design will properly interface," Alpha Trion explains. Prime is puzzled. "But how would you know that? Only my creator could know that," Prime proclaims. Alpha Trion responds that he's making an educated guess, and Prime stares at him wide-eyed in response (or, at least, inasmuch as Prime is capable of any kind of facial expressions at all). Prime lets out a prolonged groan as there is some kind of power exchange between him and Elita. Are we watching robot sex? Is that what's going on here?
But, let's skip back for a moment. We just found out that Alpha Trion created Optimus Prime. We'll find out later in "War Dawn" that he actually REcreated a smaller, weaker robot into Optimus, but close enough. Oddly, though, Prime doesn't remember any of this. There are lots of examples of Transformers having incredibly bad long-term memories, and this is one of the most egregious ones. Prime remembered Alpha Trion well enough that he recognized him on sight, but evidently he can't remember far back enough to his own creation. We'll see later that Elita One can't remember it, either. The fact that Alpha Trion created both Optimus Prime and Elita One, though... doesn't that make them brother and sister?
The Autobot-Decepticon skirmish continues. The Autobots are greater in number and believe they've won the fight, until Shockwave switches to gun mode and blasts them all over the edge of a precipice. Shockwave is just hovering there as Starscream eggs him on, wanting him to finish them off. It's around this time that Optimus and Elita finally show up. (For fan artists wishing to learn to draw Elita One by studying this scene, we only catch a tantalising glimpse of part of her vehicle mode—never the whole thing.)
This is where Starscream completely freaks out. "It can't be! I saw his melted carcass!" he shrieks. I never thought it was possible for Starscream's already high-pitched voice to go up an entire octave, but he manages it. He orders the retreat, Astrotrain finally makes himself useful, and they escape (back to Earth, presumably). Shockwave had been abandoned by the others, and a single potshot by Elita One is enough to send him tumbling into a chasm.
Alpha Trion gets the female Autobots moved to a new headquarters, and now it's time for the boys to say their good-byes. Elita One mutters something about continuing the fight on Cybertron, even though it seems like Shockwave is literally the only Decepticon on the planet for them to fight. So, the girls and their boyfriends get one last moment together. Of course, the real reason they have to stay behind is so that the status quo of the show isn't horribly disrupted. It's likely the female Autobots might have appeared in another episode, had the third season of the show taken place in 1986, but the deaths of characters like Optimus Prime and Ironhide, and the disappearance of Inferno during season three, effectively precluded another reunion from ever happening.
Considering what a big deal it was that the female Autobots were discovered to still be alive and functional, though, leaving them behind seems like a huge mistake. Pretty much any time the Autobots or Decepticons are reunited with wayward members of their teams, they're always annexed to the group (Skyfire, Omega Supreme, the Constructicons, etc.) Also, having to continue the fight on Cybertron is a pretty flimsy excuse. Shockwave hasn't spotted any of the girls once since the Ark departed! Maybe they're just really good at operating in secrecy, but they clearly haven't disrupted any major Decepticon operations, or Shockwave would have noticed.
The female Autobot characters were never realized as G1 toys. Most of the characters introduced in the cartoon who were created by the spec writers didn't enjoy that luxury. It's doubtful the characters' creators would get percentages from toy sales anyway. The appear of creating original characters, actually, is that the Writer's Guild of America dictated royalties would be awarded if the characters were used in future stories, even if somebody else wrote those episodes. I think this means that Alpha Trion definitely qualifies for this. Conceptually, Alpha Trion feels like a David Wise creation (who developed a lot of the mythos revolving around Cybertron and its early days), but if the episode airdate order is any indication, then it was Beth Bornstein who created the character, since he was introduced in her episode first.
Alpha Trion never got a G1 toy, but he was recognized a number of times in recent years by Takara. Takara's Super Collection Figure series of PVC figurines included Alpha Trion in 2002, a BotCon redeco of Vector Prime in 2007, and an EX Gohkin figure with swappable hands and heads. Hasbro's Titans Return toy from 2016 was loosely based on the character, but transformed into a lion. The female Autobots have enjoyed far fewer toys. There have been multiple toys using Elita One's name (or a variant of it), including a neat model kit back in 1996, but the Power of the Primes toy is the first such transforming toy designed to represent the character. Moonracer also got a Power of the Primes toy, with a redeco for Firestar (renamed Novastar) coming in the near future. Chromia got a Generations toy in 2014 that turned into a motorcycle.
Is this a good episode? In some ways it feels like fan fiction. "Here's my story about how all the Autobots actually have secret lovers, and this why we never saw them before!" With that said, it's a really significant episode in the mythos, mostly because it manages to close the gender gap, if only for 22 minutes or so. In particular, the female fans tend to gravitate to it, as it gives them some x-chromosome robots they can identify with more readily. Some folks probably figure it paved the way for Arcee's introduction in The Transformers: the Movie, when in truth it was probably the other way around.
Here's a special reward for anyone who made it all the way through my review:
https://youtu.be/WnCARLQJtx8
Zob (has too much time on his hands, apparently)
Gustavo Wombat
May 16, 2018, 5:34:23 AM5/16/18
to
Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
> I've always felt that adding female Autobots to the second season sort of
> spoiled the introduction of Arcee a little. [...] The movie pushed the
> I've always felt that adding female Autobots to the second season sort of
> envelope in terms of what had been done with Transformers up to that
> point—we'd gotten plenty of cars and trucks, but the movie pioneered the
> concept of monster Transformers, city Transformers, gigantic planet
> Transformers, and girl Transformers. Or, at least, until "The Search for
> Alpha Trion" came along and stole its thunder.
Arcee has the problem of being the only female Autobot, and her personality
> point—we'd gotten plenty of cars and trucks, but the movie pioneered the
> concept of monster Transformers, city Transformers, gigantic planet
> Transformers, and girl Transformers. Or, at least, until "The Search for
> Alpha Trion" came along and stole its thunder.
is basically “girl” as a result. It takes her forever to develop any
personality on the show, and that is really only in Rebirth. She is
decently developed in the movie, but everyone seems to forget about it.
On the other hand, Chromia, Moonracer and Elita One all have enough
character moments that I have some sense of how they differ. Sorry,
Firestar, I might have blinked and missed yours.
> Our episode begins in media res, with a team of female resistance troops
> sneaking into the Decepticon base on Cybertron. The group consists of
> Chromia (blue), Firestar (red), and Moonracer (sea green). Firestar is
> interesting in that she shares a name with a character from Spider-Man
> and His Amazing Friends. They were designed by Floro Dery, but without
> having to conform to existing Hasbro or Takara designs, they have
> foregone the traditionally boxy look typically associated with
> Transformers, and are lithe and slender.
and been more/less ... well, I don’t think these are really that lithe or
slender. For Autobots, they are thin, but for humans they would probably be
a bit chunky and with really flat butts.
I don’t need my female transformers to be designed as sex toys, but I think
it’s worth noting that they aren’t.
The phrase “Lithe and slender female robots” would generally be used to
describe something else.
> Shockwave tells Megatron about the break-in, and Megatron is already
> putting a scheme together that involves the capture of Elita One. He
> says he's going to send some Decepticons over the space bridge to lend
> Shockwave a hand. Does this seem strange to anyone else? Does Shockwave
> have absolutely no Decepticon troops under his command?
Shockwave hadn’t captured the females.
> Elita One is the mysterious benefactor of the female Autobot group, a
> character whose name we hear in dialogue, and whose voice we hear over
> Chromia's communicator, before we actually meet her face-to-face. When
> we finally see her, she's seated but facing away from the viewer, so she
> can swivel around for a big, dramatic reveal.
> When Chromia expresses concerns that her group was followed by the
> sentinel, Elita One opts to consult with Alpha Trion. On Elita's
> communications array, he appears as a glowing head and gets some extra
> reverberation to his voice, so you know he must be pretty darned special.
> He's also got a beard and a moustache, the first such time we've seen
> these features on a Transformer in the cartoon (again, another concept
> that may have been borrowed from The Transformers: the Movie). Alpha
> Trion (voiced by John Stephenson, the actor for Windcharger and
> Thundercracker and, later, Kup) strongly urges her to relocate but to proceed with caution.
could have called to inform him that the base might have been compromised,
and that she was planning to find a new one (or verify that the previously
selected alternates were still good candidates). And then he could have
issued his warning. It would have kept her more independent.
> Prime heads towards the space bridge in truck mode, and during the
> journey we're treated to a flashback in the form of a major retcon. The
> contention of this episode is that there was "really" a missing scene
> from "More Than Meets the Eye" part 1 in which the Ark is just about
> ready to launch, when suddenly Elita One and the other female Autobots
> run towards the ship and want to board. Prime insists it's too dangerous
> and that he'll return shortly, but suddenly the Decepticons open fire and
> all the female Autobots are presumed destroyed.
anything. “We’re counting on you to do X” would have been good.
>
> So, here's where it gets a little weird. Back at the Autobot base, the
> other Autobot troops realize that Prime has left on a secret mission,
> apparently without telling anybody. Based on the research that's been
> done on Teletraan, they conclude that he's left for Cybertron. The
> Autobots present are Cliffjumper, Powerglide, Inferno, and Ironhide.
> Notice anything they have in common? Yep, they're all red.
> The firefight between the Autobots and Decepticons has continued outside,
> and it's around this time that the female Autobots show up. "How quaint!
> The girls have come to rescue their boyfriends!" Starscream quips. This
> was the 1980's and attitudes about women were very different. This was a
> very male-dominated show, in the same vein as the early Star Wars films.
> Even G.I. Joe had a sizeable number of prominent female characters
> (Baroness, Lady Jaye, Scarlett, etc.) There are moments when the female
> Autobots are portrayed as weak (Moonracer panicking when she gets
> captured) but I like that every one of them is a fighter. They all carry
> guns and all get into combat just like the male Autobots. They're not
> nurses or secretaries or telephone operators. It's surprisingly
> progressive for the time period.
somewhat disobedient, risk-taking sharpshooter who goes from slightly cocky
to scared when things go wrong. She gets more character in a few brief
scenes than a lot of the main cast.
> The only thing I take issue with is the pairings to the male Autobots.
> Every one of these girls is in an exclusive relationship. What's worse,
> the girls appear to be NAMED after the male Autobots that they're paired
> with. Chromia, whose name shares a root word with the element chromium,
> is paired with Ironhide. Firestar is paired with Inferno. Moonracer is
> paired with Powerglide, both names that connote speed. And then, of
> course, there's Elita One, whose two-word name has Latin roots just as
> Optimus Prime's name does.
> So, it bothers me that none of the female Autobots can exist as a
> standalone character. We don't see whether Greenlight and Lancer have
> boyfriends or not, but they're hardly characters since they never speak
> and aren't named in the episode.
>They're window dressing. It would have been nice if the girls had been
> able to stand on their own as characters without "belonging" to anyone.
> Also, it strains credibility that the three Autobots who just happened
> to go to Cybertron were the girls' boyfriends.
Greenlight, he didn’t make it.”
(Both Screwloose and Greenlight have names that might imply promiscuity, so
I kept with your pattern)
>Also, why do only the red Autobots get girlfriends? I guess it could just
> be a coincidence, but it seems like a strange one.
it’s probably just as well that they didn’t bring Prowl, Bluestreak and
Smokescreen along.
> Is this a good episode? In some ways it feels like fan fiction. "Here's
> my story about how all the Autobots actually have secret lovers, and this
> why we never saw them before!" With that said, it's a really significant
> episode in the mythos, mostly because it manages to close the gender gap,
> if only for 22 minutes or so. In particular, the female fans tend to
> gravitate to it, as it gives them some x-chromosome robots they can
> identify with more readily. Some folks probably figure it paved the way
> for Arcee's introduction in The Transformers: the Movie, when in truth it
> was probably the other way around.
the episode never happened, nothing would have been effected in any other
episode.
> Here's a special reward for anyone who made it all the way through my review:
>
> https://youtu.be/WnCARLQJtx8
> Zob (has too much time on his hands, apparently)
>
I wish I was a mole in the ground.
Zobovor
May 16, 2018, 6:49:32 PM5/16/18
to
On Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 3:34:23 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> Arcee has the problem of being the only female Autobot, and her personality
> is basically “girl” as a result. It takes her forever to develop any
> personality on the show, and that is really only in Rebirth. She is
> decently developed in the movie, but everyone seems to forget about it.
Arcee suffered a little from Smurfette Syndrome. In the Smurfs cartoon, Smurfette's personality was also "girl" for the most part, and it led to her behavior being all over the map. Sometimes she was cautious, sometimes she was impetuous. Sometimes she was generous, and sometimes she was selfish. Obviously, we all act in different ways in real life, but fictional characters need to have more rigid and clearly-delineated personalties. I'm okay with characters growing and developing and learning, but they have to start somewhere that's well defined.
> Arcee has the problem of being the only female Autobot, and her personality
> is basically “girl” as a result. It takes her forever to develop any
> personality on the show, and that is really only in Rebirth. She is
> decently developed in the movie, but everyone seems to forget about it.
I got from the movie that Arcee was flirty toward Hot Rod and protective of Daniel (behavior which came full circle in "The Rebirth"). During the rest of the series, though, she was all over the map. She was whatever the script called for her to be.
I loved Babs Bunny on Tiny Toon Adventures. She was a comedian and a jokester, and she remained so for the entire run of the show. She had a very clearly-defined personality during a time when female characters generally did not.
> On the other hand, Chromia, Moonracer and Elita One all have enough
> character moments that I have some sense of how they differ. Sorry,
> Firestar, I might have blinked and missed yours.
> I think asking Alpha Trion what to do really undermines Elita One. She
> could have called to inform him that the base might have been compromised,
> and that she was planning to find a new one (or verify that the previously
> selected alternates were still good candidates). And then he could have
> issued his warning. It would have kept her more independent.
> Anything would have been better than “it’s too dangerous.” Well, almost
> anything. “We’re counting on you to do X” would have been good.
> Moonracer is not just portrayed as weak, she is portrayed as a impulsive,
> somewhat disobedient, risk-taking sharpshooter who goes from slightly cocky
> to scared when things go wrong. She gets more character in a few brief
> scenes than a lot of the main cast.
> The episodes pacing didn’t have time for “where’s Screwloose?” “Sorry,
> Greenlight, he didn’t make it.”
> It wasn’t a great episode. And, for all the expanding of the mythology, if
> the episode never happened, nothing would have been effected in any other
> episode.
Zob (and she sounds too much like Jem)
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