[BW] Tigerhawk vs The Man. *spoilers*
Robert Powers
SPOILERS for "Nemesis" Part 2 and "Other Victories" follow...
blah
blah
There's nothing here,
Just spoiler space...
Yadda yadda...
etc, etc...
So on and so forth
ad naseum
That oughta do it.
Quoting from Ben Yee's web page (www.bwtf.com), specifically from his
notes on "Other Victories":
"Early on in the development of "Other Victories", the tale had been
intended to resolve the alien storyline and its relation to Tarantulas.
However, as time and money became more and more tight, Hasbro asked Larry
DiTillio to introduce Tigerhawk in this episode as well. It is not easy to
work with one's story being rewritten over and over. In this case, "Other
Victories" was a fairly tough task. In that view, this episode came out
well."
And quoting again, from the notes on "Nemesis" part 2:
"Although heroic, the death of Tigerhawk truly feels empty... The reason
for [his death] was mostly due to last minute decision making.
Originally, Hasbro was not going to produce the Tigerhawk toy (they are as
of this writing), so they instructed the writers to kill the character
off..."
In short -- Hasbro forced TH to be written in at the last minute, to
sell toys -- then forced him to be written OUT, also at the last minute,
because they decided NOT to sell the toy. Then they decided to sell the
toy anyway!! They basically killed not one, not two, but THREE characters
due to their waffling back and forth. If they hadn't forced Tigerhawk
into the picture, maybe we'd have gotten Tigatron and Airazor back alive
and well. If Hasbro had not reversed themselves, at least we'd have their
fusion/offspring around in the future. Sheesh. Would it have been so
horrible to have Tigerhawk survive, even if he didn't have a toy? Jeez,
they saved themselves the expense of animating him for a whole 2/3 of an
episode -- I'm sure that was THE budget cut needed to keep the company out
of the red for the year. :/
My question, then, is: who the heck came up with the idea for Tigerhawk,
anyway? From the look of the toy, it looks like he was intended right
from the start to be a Tigerhawk/Airazor fusion. Given that he was
written in somewhat last-minute, he obviously wasn't the writers'
creation. So the apparent conclusion is that the toymakers took it upon
themselves to decide Airazor and Tigatron's fate on the show themselves!
And the other obvious question... what would have happened to Stripes
and the Bird Lady if OV had gone through as originally planned?
--
Robert Powers of the Ever-Changing .sig
repo...@netaxs.com
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/6754
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DiTillio
>anyway? From the look of the toy, it looks like he was intended right
>from the start to be a Tigerhawk/Airazor fusion. Given that he was
>written in somewhat last-minute, he obviously wasn't the writers'
>creation. So the apparent conclusion is that the toymakers took it upon
>themselves to decide Airazor and Tigatron's fate on the show themselves!
>
> And the other obvious question... what would have happened to Stripes
>and the Bird Lady if OV had gone through as originally planned?
To answer the question - it was Ace Fipke, our stalwart Producer who came up
with the idea for TigerHawk. Hasbro wanted to introduce a new toy in OV
(sigh!) and Ace came up with this quasi-fuzor. It then made sense to make him
an amalgam of Tigatron and Air Razor. His elemental powers was also Ace's
notion and I put them together.
It is hard to say what would have become of Tigatron and Air Razor had it not
gone this way. I am sure I still would have shown them in the Vok Nebula, but I
doubt they would have come back (Hasbro simply wouldn't have allowed it).
Killing off TH was a last minute move on Hasbro's part.
My original idea was to have TigerHawk stay with the Maximals BUT with the
notion that he might still be working for the Vok, so that no one could
completely trust him. Of course this was fashioned on the idea that there
wouild be another season during which our heroes and villains would be
travelling in space.
This my friends is the problem when working on toy-driven shows. You can
create all the memorable characters you want, but the minute the toy company
decides not to keep making the toy you have to get rid of them some way. I
hope to not find myself in this situatuion again any time soon...
Larry DiTillio
NeoTrent
>This my friends is the problem when working on toy-driven shows. You can
>create all the memorable characters you want, but the minute the toy company
>decides not to keep making the toy you have to get rid of them some way. I
>hope to not find myself in this situatuion again any time soon...
>
>Larry DiTillio
You did a fine job, considering. What did you have in mind for that fourth
season, anyway? These things happen, and I'm glad we got you and Bob for as
long as we did. Good luck on your next project.
-Trent
---
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Transmetal BA: You found me beautiful once
Silverbolt: Babe, you got REAL ugly
--
Robert Powers
Still some Nemesis/Other Victories SPOILERS below...
On 3 Jun 1999 23:49:08 GMT, DiTillio <diti...@aol.com> wrote:
>To answer the question - it was Ace Fipke, our stalwart Producer who came up
>with the idea for TigerHawk.
The producer of the show... that at least makes some sense. The
question of who creates the character/toys has gotten several conflicting
answers over the years. We've heard that at least some of them originate
in corporate brainstorming sessions. But I recall from the script of "The
Spark" that it seemed like Airazor was the creation of Mr. DiTillio
himself. I guess it's a back-and-forth process with no set guidelines...
>It is hard to say what would have become of Tigatron and Air Razor had
>it not gone this way. I am sure I still would have shown them in the Vok
>Nebula, but I doubt they would have come back (Hasbro simply wouldn't
>have allowed it).
*Sigh*... at least no-one can complain that their deaths were
"cheapened" by a return to life. But I still kinda wish they'd come back
as Transmetals or Transmetal 2s or some such... just the fanboy in me, I
guess. And a Transmetal Tigatron could've been nifty.
>My original idea was to have TigerHawk stay with the Maximals BUT with the
>notion that he might still be working for the Vok, so that no one could
>completely trust him.
THAT would have been neat to see... it also touches on another
question: were the Vok possessing TH in "Other Victories" destroyed when
Tarantulas bought it? Or is that supposed to be one of those
up-in-the-air ambiguous things designed to make us wonder?
Of course this was fashioned on the idea that there
>wouild be another season during which our heroes and villains would be
>travelling in space.
Related, I assume, to the scrapped cliffhanger with the Ark and the
Nemesis facing off.
>This my friends is the problem when working on toy-driven shows. You can
>create all the memorable characters you want, but the minute the toy company
>decides not to keep making the toy you have to get rid of them some way. I
>hope to not find myself in this situatuion again any time soon...
Believe me, we Transfans know! We've been having our favorite
characters killed off because they didn't have a toy in production
since... oh, since around 1986, when The Movie came out. The most
dreaded and powerful force in the Transformers universe is the Corporate
Marketing Decision...
--
Robert Powers of the Ever-Changing .sig
repo...@netaxs.com ___________________________________________________
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|________--- Megatron ____|_________________________ --- C3PO ________|
DiTillio
>question of who creates the character/toys has gotten several conflicting
>answers over the years. We've heard that at least some of them originate
>in corporate brainstorming sessions. But I recall from the script of "The
>Spark" that it seemed like Airazor was the creation of Mr. DiTillio
>himself. I guess it's a back-and-forth process with no set guidelines...
Actually Hasbro came up with the name (I really want NO credit for that) and my
basic contribution was arguing daily that the character be female... That is
one of the arguments I won.
>THAT would have been neat to see... it also touches on another
>question: were the Vok possessing TH in "Other Victories" destroyed when
>Tarantulas bought it? Or is that supposed to be one of those up-in-the-air
ambiguous things designed to make us wonder?
NO, the Vok part of TigerHawk was indeed destroyed along with Tarantulas. I
wouldn't call it a case of "possession" however. Rather it was a blending of
consciousness.
I might say more on this when I get the time to do my big wrap-up post on Other
Victories.
Larry D!
DiTillio
>season, anyway? These things happen, and I'm glad we got you and Bob for as
>long as we did. Good luck on your next project.
Re: Season 4... About all we had in mind was getting the Beast Warriors off
that damn planet and back into space, where we thought the show should have
been set all along. I imagine we probably would have had a "long voyage home"
to Cybertron and then once our heroes and villains arrived we would deal wiht
the changes wrought by the brief time storm.
But that is only speculation, since Hasbro pulled our plugs pretty early and we
simply dropped any notions of Season 4 and worked to wrap up as many loose end
as we could in Season 3 (No, we didn't get to all of them and I regret that,
but c'est la guerre)...
Larry D!