TF Prime episodes

[JediTricks]

And thus Ultra Magnus descended from the heavens and saved all the days. Voiced by Michael Ironside, casting has ensured the character will be a massive dickbag but probably heroic. Oh, and he looks nothing like the figure we already have, instead clearly aiming towards the repaint of Optimus - dull.

This episode was ok, really didn't excite me or draw the story forward enough though, we've now used up a quarter of the final story and all that's happened is most of the team has rejoined, Ultra Magnus has brought a big ship with a very generic interior to bear, Shockwave returned and recovered Predaking, and Predaking also lost a battle with the Autobots because that's what bad guys do, they lose.

Oh, and Optimus seems bent on dying and leaving the forge of Solus Prime as well as the leadership to Smokescreen. Um, I guess this Orion Pax never heard of how things went with Rodimus Prime. But to be fair, Smokescreen isn't as useless as Hot Rod.

[Tigermegatron]

Spoiler

it appears the TFP/BH writers are writing a character persona for AEC Hotshot but calling it Smokescreen

Episode 4 next week will no doubt be epic & end in a cliff hanger that will get resolved in episode 5. sadly viewers will have to wait a few weeks for episode 5 to air.

In my perfect world,Smokescreen is handed the matrix,inserts it in his chest cavity,then a upgrade/transformation happens where he becomes something bigger in both modes similar to Rodimus Prime. even if this last a episode or two till optimus returns,this will be pure epic on a media/toy front. As I'd love to own a $32.99 Weaponizers or $40 leader sized toy of this Matrix powered upgraded toy. OFCAUSE NONE OF THIS WILL HAPPEN BECAUSE HASBRO HAS ALREADY DECIDED THE WORLD NEEDS 20+ BUMBLEBEE TOYS IN DIFFERENT SIZES FOR THE 2011,2012 & 2013 TFP/BH TOY LINES.

I WONDER HOW MORE EPISODES WILL PASS BY WITHOUT ULTRA MAGNUS TRANSFORMING INTO HIS ALT MODE. It seems like BH Ultra Magnus is the Reverse version of 1986 Season 3 Grimlock.

[Tigermegatron]

Spoiler

My highlights list of stuff I liked in the BH Rebellion episode.

1- George Takei/Sulu providing the voice for Alpha Trion.

2- The decepticon fortress being destroyed.

3- those cool new weapons the autobots were using compliments of ultra magnus.

4- Shockwave transform into his tank mode.

5- Optimus talking to alpha trion & ready to join the matrix/allspark.

6- clever strategy plans to scatter the drones,so the autobots would have a better change of winning.

7- Ultra Magnus verse megatron fighting scenes.

8- Starscream being a total idiot by falling for the autobots tricks.

9- Smokescreen throwing down the hammer on optimus & giving optimus the last energy of the hammer to rebuild himself into his newer stronger form.

10- Optimus joining the battle flying in & defeating all the decepticons.

11- It was interesting to see optimus & megatron fight each other in their flying modes.

12- The whole episode had that epic heavy fighting scenes that I love.

[Tigermegatron]

Does anyone know how long it will take the Hub network to air episode 5 of BH? Will the wait be a few weeks or will it stretch over a month?

My solid guess is that since their are only 13 episodes for BH season That Hasbro is not going to rush all 13 BH episodes. most likely they'll take a few hiatus breaks to stretch out the episodes through out the year as best as they can.

[Onslaught Six]

I wanted to spin this out of the emotionally-stunted thread because it seemed to be in a better place here:

The "Prime" cartoon, for all of its misteps, is an attempt by Hasbro to build and refine its IP. And, it is more polished than previous cartoons, including precious G1.

I would actually argue that Prime is so "polished" that they are actually wearing off the chrome. (So to speak.) Prime seems like it's been bio-engineered to be "THE Transformers series," which is arguably what Hasbro is pushing with it--a be-all end-all TF cartoon, going forward. The problem with this is that it has to retread a lot of ground that has been heavily hoofed through the last decade or so. (Between RID and Prime, the franchise was arguably rebooted 7 or 8 times in the mainline, not including micro-continuities or things published by FunPub.) It's at the point where, when Cullen and Welker were announced as the voice actors for Prime and Megatron, I sighed and was disappointed--there's an entire burgeoning industry of voice actors, why can't we find someone new and interesting to play Optimus Prime?

Prime (the show) is less its own thing and this weird splattering of old shit that has been removed so far from its original source material that it loses any character it might have originally had. "The Wreckers" is a term used, but it's relatively meaningless. Wheeljack is in it, but he's so different from the way Wheeljack is that he might as well look like an entirely different guy--or BE an entirely different guy. (Why not Drift? Seriously, why not?) When Breakdown was announced as not getting a US toy, I didn't blink because he was just a big dude with someone else's name and no real personality.

The plots are vapid and paint-by-numbers. Any sense of the show trying to do anything unique and interesting is often scraped away through numerous script revisions and corporate influence. Someone in Hasbro is trying to create something that doesn't have any flaws, and that itself is what makes it flawed--in a bad way.

I loved RID because of how wacky and different it was, but such a thing would never be allowed in Prime. I loved Armada because Starscream wasn't a "traitor" because he was an insufferable jerk who wanted to displace Megatron, but instead a noble character who saw the horrors of being a Decepticon. I loved Energon because it opened at peacetime with Decepticons working alongside Autobots as displaced soldiers. (Which lasted for all of three episodes before the entire series went to shit.)

[Gomess]

If it wasn't for unpolished cartoons, we wouldn't have Acid Storm.

...

[JediTricks]

Well, that was another pointless entry. We're a third the way through this season and so far almost nothing new has taken place, it's just business as usual the minute Optimus is reborn. Maybe I'm not excited enough over Optimus getting a giant new flying body, but that's not really storytelling to me. Apparently the Autobots all suck and will lose without him, but they're super awesome and fantastic with him. Starscream acts foolishly simple-minded and over-confident where earlier he was more cautious. Megatron sits around waiting for others to do something. Shockwave steps into battle and is the next "big guy to fight". Predaking gets suckered into a pretty bland standard trap. And the Decepticons' new giant death fortress is destroyed with ease.

Oh, and the Autobots immediately give away their only tactical advantage, using the old Decepticon ship as a base. That was super smart.

I wanted to spin this out of the emotionally-stunted thread because it seemed to be in a better place here:

The "Prime" cartoon, for all of its misteps, is an attempt by Hasbro to build and refine its IP. And, it is more polished than previous cartoons, including precious G1.

I would actually argue that Prime is so "polished" that they are actually wearing off the chrome. (So to speak.) Prime seems like it's been bio-engineered to be "THE Transformers series," which is arguably what Hasbro is pushing with it--a be-all end-all TF cartoon, going forward. The problem with this is that it has to retread a lot of ground that has been heavily hoofed through the last decade or so. (Between RID and Prime, the franchise was arguably rebooted 7 or 8 times in the mainline, not including micro-continuities or things published by FunPub.) It's at the point where, when Cullen and Welker were announced as the voice actors for Prime and Megatron, I sighed and was disappointed--there's an entire burgeoning industry of voice actors, why can't we find someone new and interesting to play Optimus Prime?

Prime (the show) is less its own thing and this weird splattering of old shit that has been removed so far from its original source material that it loses any character it might have originally had. "The Wreckers" is a term used, but it's relatively meaningless. Wheeljack is in it, but he's so different from the way Wheeljack is that he might as well look like an entirely different guy--or BE an entirely different guy. (Why not Drift? Seriously, why not?) When Breakdown was announced as not getting a US toy, I didn't blink because he was just a big dude with someone else's name and no real personality.

The plots are vapid and paint-by-numbers. Any sense of the show trying to do anything unique and interesting is often scraped away through numerous script revisions and corporate influence. Someone in Hasbro is trying to create something that doesn't have any flaws, and that itself is what makes it flawed--in a bad way.

I loved RID because of how wacky and different it was, but such a thing would never be allowed in Prime. I loved Armada because Starscream wasn't a "traitor" because he was an insufferable jerk who wanted to displace Megatron, but instead a noble character who saw the horrors of being a Decepticon. I loved Energon because it opened at peacetime with Decepticons working alongside Autobots as displaced soldiers. (Which lasted for all of three episodes before the entire series went to shit.)

Prime is at least as threadbare as any major TF cartoon, it's just using better tools to hide that. It's poorly written in a small sandbox with a small number of toys to play with. It's incompetent with writing human and Cybertronian characters alike, characters being thinly-motivated and having no real pasts to talk about, just shortcuts. Villains rarely get any real problems to face, instead leaving it to the poor Vehicons to take the brunt of the death, and Autobots to take the brunt of violence which then they shrug off (aside from Cliffjumper). And then it uses pieces of G1, Animated, and the movies to slap together ideas that are hollow and unoriginal.

[Sparky Prime]

Some thoughts on the past few episodes..

Darkmount, NV
Picking up from the aftermath of season 2 finale, we see the Decepticons making themselves at home while trying to find the remaining Autobots. Apparently Megatron wasn't so attached to the name "New Kaon" as he's already changed the name of his new citadel to Darkmount. Nice touch having Bumblebee change his color scheme slightly in order to throw off the Decepticon scouts. Good to see they followed up on the relics that they spent all of the last season finding, with the Decepticons in possession of most of them and digging out the rest on Cybertron, and even Airachnid's stasis pod survived the destruction of the Autobot base completely intact. Smokescreen's story about going back to base before the groundbridge portal closed makes no sense. They make it seem like he was the last one out, when that was actually Ratchet. And there is no way he could have gone back through the portal with out Optimus and Ratchet noticing him before they closed that portal so Ratchet could leave the base. And somehow he had been able to pick up the phase shifter back on Cybertron? When did he have time to do that unseen by everyone?

Scattered
Raf and Bumblebee find Ratchet, which continues the continuity errors about the groundbridge in the last episode. Ratchet claims they have no idea where any of the other Autobots are because Optimus was the one who set all of the coordinates. But Optimus only set the coordinates for Ratchet. The rest were set by Ratchet himself. Ratchet also seems to easily figure out Starscream had previously used the Harbinger as a base of operations during his exile, and decide they could use the ship for a new base themselves. Why didn't he think of this earlier? Guess it must have been "obvious in hindsight"? The Decepticons try to pump Wheeljack for information and let him escape to find the Autobots for them. Ultra Magnus shows up, finding Arcee and Jack and with his ship are able to find the others. And Predaking is introduced.

Prey
Predaking is sent to hunt down Wheeljack, who has located Bulkhead by now. The two Autobots are outmatched by the Predacon but Ultra Magnus saves the day and defeats Predaking by ramming him into a mountain. Seemed like an anti-climatic way defeat Predaking for his first time in action. Smokescreen is able to steal the Forge of Solus Prime from Darkmount, but Optimus refuses to use it on himself because they need to save its power to remake the Omega Lock... Despite Optimus saying last season remaking the Omega Lock with the Forge was beyond his skills.

Rebellion
With all of the Autobots, except Smokescreen and Optimus, together again, Ultra Magnus leads an attack on Darkmount. Despite the Autobots overcoming endless hordes of Vehicons many times in this show, for some reason they can't in this episode and Soundwave easily figures out the Autobots are using the Harbringer as a new base given how they are pulling off this operation. They release Predaking but Autobots are prepared and send Predaking to freeze via Groundbridge making his second time in action completely anti-climatic. Optimus dies and Alpha Trion welcomes him to the Allspark, but Optimus hesitates, although Alpha Trion assures him a worthy candidate to be a new Prime is nearby, cementing Smokescreen as the Hot Rod/Hot Shot of this show. Smokescreen however refuses the Matrix and places the Forge in Optimus' hand instead, which turns Optimus into the Hulk and completely drains the Forge of its remaining power. Now able to fly, Optimus saves the day and Darkmount is destroyed.

I was expecting Darkmount to last longer than 4 episodes. It was one of the biggest threats the Decepticons had in this series. Now they're back at the status quo using the Nemesis as their base. Predaking has also been fairly disappointing, having been defeated so relatively easily. I expect his role will grow however, seeing as we have yet to even see his robot mode. It is good to see 3 new characters added to the cast so early in this season. Only wish they hadn't taken so long with how small they have kept the Prime cast in the first two seasons. Finally feels looks like Wheeljack will be sticking around the Autobots with his ship destroyed as well. And this storyline is a clear example of back-writing with Smokescreen's return to the Autobot base before it was destroyed to save Optimus. Not the best start for a short season if you ask me, but we'll see what they do with the next 9 episodes.

[JediTricks]

Some thoughts on the past few episodes..

Darkmount, NV
Picking up from the aftermath of season 2 finale, we see the Decepticons making themselves at home while trying to find the remaining Autobots. Apparently Megatron wasn't so attached to the name "New Kaon" as he's already changed the name of his new citadel to Darkmount. Nice touch having Bumblebee change his color scheme slightly in order to throw off the Decepticon scouts. Good to see they followed up on the relics that they spent all of the last season finding, with the Decepticons in possession of most of them and digging out the rest on Cybertron, and even Airachnid's stasis pod survived the destruction of the Autobot base completely intact. Smokescreen's story about going back to base before the groundbridge portal closed makes no sense. They make it seem like he was the last one out, when that was actually Ratchet. And there is no way he could have gone back through the portal with out Optimus and Ratchet noticing him before they closed that portal so Ratchet could leave the base. And somehow he had been able to pick up the phase shifter back on Cybertron? When did he have time to do that unseen by everyone?

Scattered
Raf and Bumblebee find Ratchet, which continues the continuity errors about the groundbridge in the last episode. Ratchet claims they have no idea where any of the other Autobots are because Optimus was the one who set all of the coordinates. But Optimus only set the coordinates for Ratchet. The rest were set by Ratchet himself. Ratchet also seems to easily figure out Starscream had previously used the Harbinger as a base of operations during his exile, and decide they could use the ship for a new base themselves. Why didn't he think of this earlier? Guess it must have been "obvious in hindsight"? The Decepticons try to pump Wheeljack for information and let him escape to find the Autobots for them. Ultra Magnus shows up, finding Arcee and Jack and with his ship are able to find the others. And Predaking is introduced.

Prey
Predaking is sent to hunt down Wheeljack, who has located Bulkhead by now. The two Autobots are outmatched by the Predacon but Ultra Magnus saves the day and defeats Predaking by ramming him into a mountain. Seemed like an anti-climatic way defeat Predaking for his first time in action. Smokescreen is able to steal the Forge of Solus Prime from Darkmount, but Optimus refuses to use it on himself because they need to save its power to remake the Omega Lock... Despite Optimus saying last season remaking the Omega Lock with the Forge was beyond his skills.

Rebellion
With all of the Autobots, except Smokescreen and Optimus, together again, Ultra Magnus leads an attack on Darkmount. Despite the Autobots overcoming endless hordes of Vehicons many times in this show, for some reason they can't in this episode and Soundwave easily figures out the Autobots are using the Harbringer as a new base given how they are pulling off this operation. They release Predaking but Autobots are prepared and send Predaking to freeze via Groundbridge making his second time in action completely anti-climatic. Optimus dies and Alpha Trion welcomes him to the Allspark, but Optimus hesitates, although Alpha Trion assures him a worthy candidate to be a new Prime is nearby, cementing Smokescreen as the Hot Rod/Hot Shot of this show. Smokescreen however refuses the Matrix and places the Forge in Optimus' hand instead, which turns Optimus into the Hulk and completely drains the Forge of its remaining power. Now able to fly, Optimus saves the day and Darkmount is destroyed.

I was expecting Darkmount to last longer than 4 episodes. It was one of the biggest threats the Decepticons had in this series. Now they're back at the status quo using the Nemesis as their base. Predaking has also been fairly disappointing, having been defeated so relatively easily. I expect his role will grow however, seeing as we have yet to even see his robot mode. It is good to see 3 new characters added to the cast so early in this season. Only wish they hadn't taken so long with how small they have kept the Prime cast in the first two seasons. Finally feels looks like Wheeljack will be sticking around the Autobots with his ship destroyed as well. And this storyline is a clear example of back-writing with Smokescreen's return to the Autobot base before it was destroyed to save Optimus. Not the best start for a short season if you ask me, but we'll see what they do with the next 9 episodes.

Pretty much right on the money all around (although I still think BB's color shouldn't have affected the scanning based on the way they had been scanning vehicles in previous episodes at a deeper level). You caught more inconsistencies than I saw, you have been cursed with "paying attention" this show. I like the take on Optimus turning into the Hulk, that's a good take with him all bulked out like that.

[Gomess]

So is everyone actually watching and enjoying this series? I hear very little about it. And what I mostly hear is "it's pretty but vapid".

A surprising amount of my friends who don't care about TF watched Animated with me. Not one of them suggested we follow it up with Prime.

Perhaps Prime isn't aimed at the Casual Viewer...