Ron Friedman auctions - Scripts! (Part 3 of many)

I'm rushing out the door for date night with the out-of-town wife, so this will be brief.  Here we have the treatment and the script to the first ever episode of Transformers.  Yup, the pilot episodes, More than Meets the Eye.  Enjoy!


Treatment: coming soon
Scrip: http://www.mediafire.com/?b6nl6d0t8egot13

The Ark Addendum - A Prime Problem and Ron Friedman scripts

Time for another edition of The Ark Addendum, picking up where  Transformers: The Complete Ark  (order it today!)  leaves off.  This week, I focus on the episode A Prime Problem, where the Decepticons clone Optimus Prime and attempt to lead the Autobots into a deadly ambush.

Sadly, this page is just a tad sparse.  The most interesting model from this episode, the autoscout, I already included in the Ark books, so I won't be reproducing it here.  There's a control helmet for the autoscout, though, that is shown here for the first time.

The choice of episodes was not entirely random.  I'm also including another Ron Friedman script.  This one, like the script to Enter the Nightbird, is incomplete, chopping off both the beginning and the end of the episode.  Still, it's an interesting piece of Transformers history.  Hope you enjoy!


A Prime Problem script - incomplete: http://www.mediafire.com/?y7ahzqledq5494d

Bish's Review: Marvel UK #99 "Under Fire!"

Under Fire! Is the 99th issue of the Transformers book published in the UK by Marvel. It follows straight on from the tense cliff-hanger ending to #98, where Prime is held at blaster-point by the Wreckers. The script is by Simon Furman, Jeff Anderson continues to provide the art, Anne Halfacree the lettering, Steve White the colours and Ian Rimmer edited.

The cover is by Lee Sullivan and shows the dire situation quite effectively. Sullivan draws his Transformers in a very colourful, naturalistic style that reminds one most of the Sunbow cartoon. His work is far removed from the stiffness of Will Simpson and, in this one image at least, probably beats Jeff Anderson for believable robot body language. That said, there are things wrong with the cover. To my mind the figures of Ultra Magnus and Optimus Prime are slightly too small, giving us too much of the background when the focus should be on Prime's desperate situation. A smaller nitpick would be that there are more guns in the image than Wreckers in the actual story, but I am a big believer in artistic licence in my comic covers and I think we can excuse this.

Before we find out what has happened to Optimus Prime we have a full page devoted to Outback charging along in his hovering vehicle mode, talking to himself. He lays out his character: a maverick who doesn't play by the rules and seems to survive despite an extremely unenviable tendency towards bad luck. He believes that the real Optimus Prime saved him (last issue) and feels a certain kinship with him, as another Autobot who has cheated death numerous times. He approaches a group of robots who turn out to be...

Optimus Prime, in restraints, being held by a Wrecker firing squad! I quite like the staging here. Prime looks anguished, struggling with his bonds, and, in a lovely nod to tradition, Ultra Magnus is brandishing an energon sword with which to administer the fatal order. The only thing I'm not so keen on in this scene is Outback's appearance as none of the characters are looking at him or reacting to him in any way. He transforms and tells Ultra Magnus to stop, that they are being played for fools.

Ultra Magnus is having none of it. Outback is well known for insubordination and Magnus would rather trust his spies over him. Outback persists however, accusing Magnus of acting rashly due to guilt over Impactor's death. On my first reading I was not sure if this was a very good assessment, as it seems likely that such guilt would make him want to make doubly sure that another great Autobot does not fall due to his mistake. However, given how much chaos and carnage a fake Optimus Prime could potentially cause for the Autobots, I am willing to accept that Outback might be right.

Outback pretends to back down and goes to apologise to Optimus, secretly planting a bug on him that dissolves the energy restraints. Outback throws a gas bomb and they escape in the confusion.

Optimus Prime is unhappy to be fleeing, because he feels that he should have been able to talk the Wreckers round. Outback points out that it wasn't going very well so far and that at least this way he can live to try again. Optimus agrees but still says that it "goes against everything [he] stand[s] for". Prime is rather unusually inflexible and perhaps even slow-witted here. Outback is so clearly correct that it is not even a usable source for conflict. It's fine that he says his priority is to clear his name, but there was nothing to be gained from staying behind, and it shows rather less gratitude for the risks Outback has taken than Optimus Prime usually displays. There is a slightly sinister panel where we see that Ratbat (in his first appearance in the UK book, and therefore, in the overall timeline) has been observing the whole time.

Back with the others we find Magnus ordering the Wreckers to stand down. He will take three Guardian units and take up the pursuit himself. This seems to be pride and bravado speaking. Optimus Prime escaped while Ultra Magnus was in command so it's down to him to get him back but I can't help but think this is also an acknowledgement that Prime might have been telling the truth. Note that the troops that Ultra Magnus chooses to take with him are unliving constructs who, by definition, cannot take blame for anything. He could have had his pick of Wreckers but instead decides to go it effectively alone. He does not believe Prime but if Prime IS telling the truth, then it will be on Magnus' head alone.

Back at Decepticon HQ, Megatron receives Ratbat's news of Prime's escape and reacts... badly... smashing his fists into the wall and raging. Straxus taunts him for his outburst but Megatron responds by pointing out the fragility of his life support system, although he needs him for now, so he can organise his troops for Megatron. Megatron exits, knocking Octane out of the way. This non-speaking role could have been anyone, or a generic, but Furman uses someone who he gave a cameo to in Target:2006 and will feature heavily in a couple of issues time. Good attention to detail.

Ratbat feels that Megatron is becoming a liability but Straxus tells him to tolerate him for a while as they are still assembling "the equipment" and that when Straxus "strikes" Megatron will be gone and Straxus will "truly live again". I wonder what he can be talking about?

Back with Ultra Magnus and we find that he is indeed having doubts, wondering if Outback might have a point about his guilt over Impactor. He is shaken from his reverie by an explosion and we find that the Guardians have found and engaged Prime and Outback.

They fight but are swiftly being overwhelmed. Outback shoots a Guardian to save Prime but leaves himself vulnerable and a second unit rakes its claws through his chest module. Prime manages to tear its head off and is left holding the critically wounded Outback. Prime delivers a soliliquy on the futility of war and how it turns its fighters into worse than the mindless drones. Prime decides that to prove he is any different he must do everything in his power to save Outback. From the shadows, Magnus watches, perhaps he has overheard and now knows that Prime is the real deal. Find out next issue!

This is very much an issue to move things along. Everything that happens is necessary for the plot to continue but none of it is very exciting. We knew Prime would either escape or persuade the Wreckers that he wasn't a spy and the former was the more dramatically interesting outcome. Optimus is definitely out of sorts this issue, if not necessarily out of character. He has been through an awful lot in the last four issues so I'll let you make your own judgement. My feeling is that the combination of seeing a bombed out Iacon along with not being trusted by his own Autobots has taken a serious, and understandable toll. Outback's plight seems to give him his determination back but will he be too late? Outback seems to think so.

More interesting this issue is the characterisation of Ultra Magnus. Furman seems to have an idea of Magnus as a solid, determined warrior type, who tends to work best alone. He had him largely one-on-one with Galvatron in Target:2006, has him hunt Prime alone in this issue and, later, in the IDW universe, would turn him into a solitary Autobot peacekeeper who roamed the galaxy in his personal spaceship, righting wrongs. It was a good look for him.

The Megatron and Straxus scenes are intriguing but do not really pay off in this issue. Decepticon power plays usually make for good drama though, so hopefully we will get more of this before too long. It's nice to see Ratbat here too, prior to his debut on Earth in the US issues. The little cassette would become far more important than anyone who just saw his toy would ever have guessed.

The other major character in the story is Outback. Furman goes to a lot of trouble to characterise him as a maverick who thinks his time is up but it falls a little flat to me. It doesn't make much sense that Outback would be cursing his perpetually ill luck while simultaneously pointing out how many times he has cheated death against impossible odds. Prime feels guilty about his own good fortune because so many others have died, sometimes even from his own orders, while he has carried on for millenia. Outback just feels like his personal luck is going to run out and he is going to die. Outback says he has nothing to lose but Prime has everything to lose. It's a false comparison. Outback comes across like a manic depressive with an unfounded problem against authority whereas Prime is a careworn leader who has been through too much. I can see what Furman is trying to do here but Outback's characterisation is too scattershot for it to work as powerfully as it needs to.

Jeff Anderson's art continues to be pretty good. The battle with the Guardian units flows well and is easy to follow and I am particularly fond of a panel where Ultra Magnus is striding through a cloud of gas, sword in hand. I have always loved Magnus' design and Anderson shows it off well here.

An issue where nothing Cybertron-shattering occurs but with events that should pay off next time. Not a bad issue per se, but far from a great one.

If you want to read Under Fire! you can purchase IDW's collection: Transformers Best Of UK: Prey

Review: Marvel G2 prequel - G.I. Joe Starring Snake-Eyes and Ninja-Force

Well, that's it, right?  Transformers is over, finished.  Or... is it?  After all, while Generation One ended back in 1991, Generation Two started up not all that long later in 1993.  Might we get some comic support?  We might.

Enter the G.I. Joe book.  It had been going strong for years, and managed to outlast The Transformers.  However, nominally, it was in the same continuity as the old Transformers book.  In issue 138, we catch a few glimpses of Megatron, and then we get a four-issue crossover story set entirely within the mainstream Joe book.

To really understand that story, though, one has to examine what came before, which was sort of billed as a four issue mini-series.  All four issues featured the same creative line-up.  They were penned by Larry Hama, as indeed all of the Joe books were.  Wildman and Baskerville provided pencils and inks, a treat for an old Transformers fan like myself.  Bob Sharen was the colorist, and Rick Parker, another familiar name, was the letterer. It starts with G.I. Joe #135, Ninjas Own the Night.  Scarlett is fed up with the lack of acceptance the Ninja Force has for her and storms away from them.  It turns out to be a ruse, though, designed to make it look like she's gone rogue so she can infiltrate Cobra.  We also meet one Doctor Sidney Biggles-Jones, a genius who has designed a rail gun that Cobra wants.  The Cobra ninjas, the Night-Creepers, kidnap the latter.  They also pull off various nefarious schemes, including staking out the Ninja Force. 

Issue #136, Reversals and Betrayals!, continues the battle. Naturally the Joes end up victorious, then help thwart a Night-Creeper assault at Andrews Air Force Base in Virginia.  Scarlett, though, is nabbed while on vacation and brought before Cobra Commander at a transforming castle recently reclaimed from Destro and The Baroness, who at this point in the story are allies of the Joes.  Biggles-Jones and Scarlett both wind up agreeing to join Cobra.  The creative lineup was unchanged from the previous issue.

Issue #137, The Traitor Strikes!, kick off with the ceremonial induction of Biggles-Jones and Scarlett into the forces of Cobra.  As a test of loyalty, they are sent off to sabotage a munitions manufacturer with their own rail gun.  They do so, and during the course of the ensuing battle with G.I. Joe Scarlett fires at a jeep containing General Hawk and Striker and seemingly causes an explosion that kills them both.  It turns out that they were wearing special suits to simulate severe burns, having been warned by Destro and The Baroness.  The ex-cobras have escape from the castle's dungeon and into the guts of the castle. 

Issue #138, Unfoldings!,opens with a Scarlett wracked with guilt.  She doesn't have long to wallow, though, as they and the other Cobra soldiers are sent into the castle to flush out Destro and The Baroness.  The latter two have requested an extraction from the Joes, and create a diversion to do it.  The diversion involves shifting the castle into a halfway state between its two stable configurations, causing continuous transformations to allow for relative stability.  However, someone, or something, notices the shifting castle...

Scarlett and Biggles-Jones track Destro and The Baroness to the roof, where they confront the G.I. Joe Ninja Force.  Seemingly without hesitation, in full view of the Cobra ninjas Slice and Dice, Snake-Eyes stabs her through the chest, a fraction of an inch from her heart.  As the Joes withdraw, she cries, though they're tears of joy, not pain.  Snake-Eyes never misses, which means he knows that she isn't really a traitor.  The issue ends with Megatron falling out of the sky, drawn by the transforming castle.  His annoyance is interrupted by Cobra Commander, who attempts to open negotiations.  Yup, the Transformers are back!

It's a decent tale, though I find all the ninjas running around just a bit silly.  Perhaps that's hypocritical of someone who loves giant robots who turn into cars and jets and tanks and sometimes have humans for heads and sometimes disguise themselves as giant undead samurai.  Still, G.I. Joe always seemed to me to be about the military, and the ninja imagery didn't quite fit in.  There's a fun bit early on where the audience is mislead to think that the male in the labcoat is 'Doctor Sid,' leading to some shock when the Cobras kill him instead of the attractive woman we assumed was the lab assistant.  There seems to be more going on with her than meets the eye, if you'll pardon the pun, as if Biggles-Jones has some sort of hidden agenda.  Perhaps we'll learn more about this brilliant scientist in the future.

Speaking of hidden agendas, I find it a bit hard to believe that Cobra Commander would so readily accept Scarlett as a member of his team, though the fact that he's such a megalomaniac makes me think it's just barely possible.  Slice certainly remains skeptical, even after she gets stabbed through the abdomen. Scarlett's dilemma was enjoyable to read, and her pain when she thinks she's killed two of her teammates.  Mind you, that plot point seemed a bit silly, but I'm willing to accept it for the emotional payoff we get.  I also like that Slice remains skeptical of the once and future Joe, even after Snake-Eyes stabs her.  Given his skill level, a non-lethal blow might make me a bit skeptical too.

Oh, but that's not what readers of this blog want to hear about.  Odds are good that you want to hear about giant robots.  Well, I'm happy to say that the one and a half panels of giant robots we see are quite lovely.  It starts with the mysterious bit midway through the issue where we first see a hint of the Decepticon presence.  We get the old, familiar square speech bubbles as Megatron discusses the situation with someone else.  Given the occupants of the Ark, logic dictates that he's speaking to either Starscream, Shockwave, or Galvatron.  Since Shockwave and Galvatron have a very different head-shape than the character we see, and indeed weren't going to have a Generation Two toy, it was most likely supposed to be Starscream.  That plot point would get dropped, though. 

Then, at the very end of the issue, we get a battered Megatron, with wires hanging loose and beat up panels.  This image makes me think that he only recently came on-line after the crash of the Ark, though that point too would be contradicted.  Though we only get a bit of time with him, his irritation at flying all this way only to find a non-sentient human construct seemed completely in-character.  Cobra Commander's proffered hand of friendship hold out all kinds of intriguing story possibilities.   Wildman's artwork is as lovely as ever, and the battle damage gives Megatron a great texture.

When I first read issue #138, I could scarcely believe that the Transformers were back.  The last twenty of so issues of the comic were so strong, had made such an impression on me that my flagging interest in Transformers was revived and would never again flag.  This issue helped fan the flames, made me excited all over again to read tales of the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons.  It's really nothing more than a teaser, at least as far as Transformers content goes, but it's an incredibly effective teaser.  That Baskerville, Wildman, and Parker were all involved was another happy accident, one that helped remind the audience of just how good Transformers was by the end.

To my knowledge they have yet to be reprinted, which is a shame though I can see that it'd be pretty hard to market. If you get the chance to read it, do so, though you can probably skip straight to G.I. Joe 138 if you're not a fanatic.  While 135-137 help explain what's going on with the Joes, all you need to know about the Cybertronian side of the action is contained in issues 138-142.  Next issue, we're promised Transformers: Generation Two!  I can't wait to see where they go with it.

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 43

The series finale of War of the Worlds is titled The Obelisk.  The Morthren, reduced to a mere forty members, are in dire straits.  The Eternal demands that Malzor steps down, but he successfully begs for his life on the strength of a desperate plan.  Using a sacred Morthren artifact, an Obelisk containing two crystals, he embarks on a mission to finally eradicate all life on Earth, or maybe just all life in the city.  Seeto, the alien child who forged a connection with Debi, won't allow this to happen.  He absconds with the Obelisk and seeks out the Blackwood team.  They learn the truth (?) of things, about how Malzor is pretty much solely responsible for the Morthren threat, and help Mana stage a coup.  Malzor objects, violently, and winds up shooting Seeto, prompting Debi to shoot him.  Thus is the way for peace paved between Morthren and human, and the team walks off into the sunrise. 

The Good: This is a decidedly mixed episode, with some really interesting elements but some really glaring flaws.  Starting off with the former, we have the acting, especially on the part of the late, great Denis Forest.  So many great scenes, Malzor has.  His desperate pleading with the eternal, his escalating confrontations with Mana, his insane rantings at the end.  This is someone who is slowly losing everything in his world.  "There are forty of us left.  DO WE ALL HAVE TO DIE IN THIS FORSAKEN PLACE?!?"  I could watch him perform all day.  He tries so desperately to keep his calm over the course of the episode, though eventually he descends into a complete emotional breakdown.

Mana's tension with Malzor reaches a boiling point, the culmination in a season of slow simmering buildup.  Her outrage at his plan, leaving them with a dead planet, was well done.  (But see below.) The scene where Malzor backhands her is particularly powerful.  I also liked her defending Malzor's policies, even though it is clear that she didn't believe in them, to Seeto.  She also has a lovely slight incredulity when she asks Malzor if consulting the Obelisk is the will of the Eternal and he informs her that it is.  She doesn't QUITE trust him, but the time for open rebellion hasn't come yet.

Oh, and on the subject of trust, Kincaid never really trusts Mana.  After all, in his words, "the bitch killed my brother!"  That was one of the best scenes in the episode, and a nice bit of continuity. Also nice continuity that Seeto and Debi meet back at the theater, and that Malzor is clever enough to figure that out. (But see below.)

I'm glad that we get to see the aliens in their natural form one last time, during Malzor's flashback.  It's interesting to see those monstrous forms used with tender music and directing. 

I like that Seeto, when he steals the Obelisk, uses a weapon set to stun.  After all, there are so few aliens left, that they shouldn't start killing each other.  (But see below.)

There is some nice symmetry in allowing Debi to avenge the death of Seeto.  Malzor is set up as the ultimate villain in this episode, manipulating his own people into a course of action they wouldn't normally take.  That a human youth avenges this wrong perpetrated on both their peoples feels right.

I enjoyed seeing the visual of Morthrai.   I was also glad to see Ardix, Bayda, and Seeto one last time.  I suppose Kemo wouldn't have fit in this episode, though Adam would have been a nice addition, even if just in the background.

Finally, the final scene of the team walking into the sunrise strikes a nice level of optimism, especially with the symbolism of Debi's plant.  Yes, the future isn't set and yes, there will still be challenges ahead.  The human race seems to face the same demons that literally destroyed Morthrai, but perhaps with remnants of that planet Harrison and co can help save this one.  After all, saving the planet was always what Harrison wanted, much more so than revenge.  With only 35 aliens left, (plus perhaps a few stragglers like Quinn & Kemo) the Morthrai will need Harrison's protection and advocacy, but I think he's pragmatic enough to do that.  Perhaps humanity, like Debi's plant, will flourish.

The Bad: I'll bet you thought I'd start with continuity.  Well, no, but I'll get to that.  This is a very weak story in its own right, though it's not a terrible series finale.  Huge swaths of the episode are devoted to expository flashbacks.  Is now, the climax of the series, really the best time for that?  There is a needless subplot of Kincaid running around apart from the team, meeting up with them later, but it serves no dramatic purpose except to eat up time.  We really shouldn't be killing time in the series finale.

Malzor bearing the entire brunt of the guilt for everything that happened is really cheap on the part of the writers.  He staged a coup and launched an expedition for revenge, tricking his race into going along with him. I don't like the lack of culpability for everyone else, even though time and again we've seen them commit atrocities without a second thought.

The obelisk.   It's awfully late in the series to be introducing a Deus Ex Machina like this.  Not only that, but it really serves little purpose.  It gives everyone flashbacks, which I don't think was really necessary, and it points Malzor towards the spores.  Wouldn't it have been better if he came up with the plan himself, rather than have it suggested by a crystal?  Hell, if for some reason the writers really wanted this to be an external idea, what's wrong with The Eternal?

For a show that's really about the Blackwood Project, the final episode sure was Malzor's tale.  Now, ok, I get it, he's probably the most interesting character in the show at this point.  Still, it's the series finale.  I can't help but feel that it should have been more about Harrison and his journey. 

Continuity.  Ugh.  Yeah, it's pretty bad.  Not the worst thing about the episode, but it's in the top five.  Normally I give continuity flubs a pass, but this episode makes itself, for no real reason, all about the origin of the conflict, which opens the door for this kind of dissection.  At the risk of being a petty nerd, here goes: 

• Starting at the beginning, apparently it WAS the atomic bombings of Japan that lured the aliens to Earth, as Harrison speculated back in Choirs of Angels.  We see the aliens setting off on a peaceful expedition, but the events of the movie CLEARLY depict an aggressive species that initiated hostility and rejected multiple overtures of peace.
• Moving on to the first season, the Morthren were the only life form in their galaxy... but we've seen that the Synths of Qar'to, introduced in Angel of Death, were from the same solar system.
• We also learned that the aliens had visited us multiple times in the past, PRIOR to the atomic bombings, in the episodes An Eye for an Eye and The Raising of Lazarus.
• For that matter, Malzor states that before now it was not in their best interest to eradicate all human life.  Ummm... that was their stated goal since almost the beginning of the series.  I guess that, with only 40 or so of them left, it makes sense to just subtly take over and let humanity do all the legwork for them, but I've always got the sense that they were working towards complete extermination.
• Ok, MAYBE it's forgivable to have blatant contradictions between season one and season two, since this was done by a new bunch of creative folks, but what about Seft of Emon?  Clearly the Morthrai encountered Seft's people before they learned about humanity, and that was just this season.  And don't try to retcon it away by saying that the Morthren visited the Emon after the humans, since the Morthren are using crystal-based tech in the flashbacks.
• Finally, a contradiction WITHIN THE EPISODE ITSELF.  Mana seems horrified to be using the Talesian Spores, since lifeforms like those are what wiped out life on Morthrai.  That could be beautiful symmetry, but later on in the same episode we find out that it was sending two expeditions to Earth that destroyed Morthrai.  Boo! 

The setting for the initial test of the spores, and the people they kill, doesn't feel very Almost Tomorrow at all.  I mean, really, it looks like a normal modern metropolis, with no hint of decay or despair.

Mana, unlike Seeto, does not set her weapon to stun and kills at least two of her people.  That's 5% of her ENTIRE RACE.  It's not like the weapons don't have a stun setting.  We JUST saw Seeto use it!

The producers, during the destruction of Morthrai, have Malzor inform Mana that she must pick the few of their race to travel to Earth, and that they'd abandon their history, memory, culture.  They'd become a new race.  This is a very clumsy attempt to, I assume, bridge some of the gap between S1 and S2.  By this point, no one still watching really cares.  The time to do this was somewhere from episode 1 to episode 4 of this season.  Add in all of the many contradictions with S1 that I noted above and it's a very strange exchange that serves no real purpose. 

A nitpick or two.  Why did Kincaid grab a walkie-talkie but then not use it until after he walks into a Morthren ambush?  I mean, there were ample opportunities for action, but that sequence felt forced. Also, is it REALLY plausible that atomic bombs would draw aliens from another GALAXY?  Little fission bombs?  I mean, there are supernovas happening ALL THE TIME with many, many orders of magnitude more power in them. 

The Ugly: The series has always been good for some grotesque imagery, and the series finale doesn't disappoint.  This time it's the death of Malzor.  I rather enjoy the drawn-out nature of his expiration. After all, like some kind of space Nazi Jesus, he's dying to absolve his race of sin.

---

And there you have it, the final episode of War of the Worlds, the series.  There are some high points, mostly emotional.  There are some low points, mostly around the logic, structure of the plot, and pacing of the episode.  At least we got a satisfactory resolution.  The team gets a happy ending, and the aliens get a shot to live in peace with humanity.  They have to cheat, a lot, to get to that ending, though, which undercuts it greatly.  Still, it could have been worse.  We could have ended on some random episode, or on an open-ended plot point as in Angel of Death.

So, what about season two?  Well... it's no season one.  I think, on the whole, it was a more ambitious and serious undertaking.  Season one was always marred by a tonal dissonance.  On the one hand, there were all these moments of goofy levity, but on the other you had these horrible monsters who seemed to enjoy the acts of torture and mutilation.  So much of the plot made little sense, most especially the frequent references to the events of the 1953 invasion and yet the complete lack of knowledge on the part of the general public about aliens.

Season two corrected many of those problems, crafting an overall more serious and more socially conscious show.  There were more attempts to look at real social problems, and an environment conducive to doing so.  However, to get to that point much of what made season one special was butchered.  I don't just mean the continuity disconnect, either.  Season one, at its best, was about FRIENDS striving against adversity to SAVE the world.  In season two, it's about COMRADES fighting for survival AGAINST a hostile world.  That's a pretty big change.

The second season also suffered from a serious structural problem.  In season one, with the resources of the US government, the team could reasonably be expected to discover alien activity and combat it.  In season two, even though the scope of the problem is localized to a single city, the team is an underground band of rebels.  They have no reliable way to find out about alien activity, and thus perhaps half of the episodes have some horrible contrivance to get things started. 

An aspect where season two did excel was their villains.  As much as I loved The Advocacy, Malzor and Mana were better villains.  You never get to know the Advocacy; they're such ciphers. Sure, watching them complain about humanity was fun, but it was a guilty pleasure. Seeing Forest and Disher every week (and Richings every other week or so) allowed the aliens to grow and change as characters, as impacted by the war as our heroes were.

On the whole, season two benefited from its ambitious premise and managed to tell some great stories. Getting past the abrupt changes from S1 to S2 takes effort, but in my view it's effort worth spending.  I'd rather S2 have been a brand new show, rather than a continuation of S1, but the S2 we got did manage to get some emotional payoffs from the set-up of S1, mostly in terms of the first couple of episodes of the season.  I don't think having S2 diminishes S1; if it REALLY bothers you that much, you can just stop watching at Angel of Death and pretend that that's the end of the series.  Aside from the S1/S2 transition, S2 really is quite a decent little science fiction show.  I dare say that if S2 was its own entity, it would probably have been the better remembered and more influential of the two. 

But what of the series in toto?  Well, sadly, there IS the reality of the S1/S2 tonal and premise shift.  That's a huge structural weakness in the show.  There is almost no synergy between the two seasons; the strengths of one are not the strengths of another.  S1 is fun, enjoyable, light-hearted despite the monsters.  It's almost like a fairy tale, with horrible monsters but at least you always knew your heroes would win in the end.  S2 has so much higher emotional stakes, even though the actual scope of the show was much narrower.  It felt like anyone could die, even the heroes.

Thus, there's little to recommend the series AS A SERIES.  As two separate series, with a strange relationship between them, I'd say yes, it's probably worth watching if you're into that sort of thing.  Black humor and cheesy sci-fi your thing?  Watch S1.  Do you like dystopian tales?  Give S2 a whirl.  That said, I don't regret watching it and analyzing it as thoroughly as I have.  Sure, it has myriad flaws, but both seasons have a ton of heart.  Just about every episode had something that I found praiseworthy, and it was a fun trip down memory lane for me.  I have fond memories of staying up late with my brother and sister and watching this show in the basement on a Friday night, drinking root beer and eating snacks.  I get the show on a whole 'nother level now, but it still works as a frightening story where monsters can be anywhere, anyone, just waiting to grab you.

War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season and War of the Worlds: The Final Season are both available on DVD for your viewing pleasure, easily affordable at Amazon.com.  Next week, I turn the Thursday/Friday TV review slot over to my buddy Bish, who has agreed to review all 22 episodes of Space: Above and Beyond.  I hope you're as excited by that prospect as I am.

Finally, and I do mean finally, I hope you enjoyed these 44 reviews, and to my regular commentors I want to say 'thank you.'  I didn't know if ANYONE else remembered the show, and was heartened to find out that so many of you did, and moreover enjoyed reading what I had to say about it.  You guys made this whole endeavor worth it to me.

Bish's Review: Marvel UK #98 "The Harder They Die!"

Although this issue continues straight on from Prey! Part 2 it has its own title: The Harder They Die! perhaps to reflect the massive change in setting that occurs here. The script was Furman's, the pencils were by Geoff Senior (yay!), the colours were by Steve White, the lettering, Annie Halfacree and the editing was by Ian Rimmer:

The cover art was by Phil Gascoine and unfortunately it's basically terrible. The idea of Megatron striding triumphantly through a bombed out Cybertron is a good one but the composition is all wrong. Megatron looks like he has been pasted into the environment after the fact. He has a white line around him and the lighting is completely wrong. The background is decent enough but the disparity between the Decepticon and the cityscape just kills the image, irredeemably. The speech balloon saying "Home sweet home" certainly does not help but unlike some better images, does not detract too much. (I do kind of want a free Galavatron badge though)

The Harder They Die! starts in my favourite way for a comic: in media res. Optimus Prime is on Cybertron. How did he get here? No time for that; he's got to rescue a little Autobot from a big mean Decepticon!

While Optimus is standing up against the bully Furman's captions give us wonderfully purple descriptions of Prime's impressions of his ruined homeworld. He is in a thoroughly depressive mode and talks about his "warped good fortune" at surviving when so many comrades have died. He underestimates the Decepticon's power and is surprised by the old eye-beam trick.

Blinded, Prime waits for the killing blow but it turns out, as the little Autobot tells him, that in his reflex flailing Prime managed to hurl the Decepticon onto a conveniently placed spike. The caption talks of cheating death. "How many more times?" he wonders. Optimus is the ultimate sufferer of survivors' guilt. Not only has he stayed online (and off) for milennia while countless Autobots have been crushed beneath the Decepticon jackboot, as the Autobot leader he has ordered many of them to their fates. We know this will not bring Optimus down in the end, but his guilt here is compounded by two factors. The first is that he is the only one of the Earthbound Autobots who have managed to get back to Cybertron, albeit, not on purpose. The second is that he was lying dormant in an Earth volcano while his comrades were fighting and dying.

The Autobot introduces himself as Outback and Optimus explains to him the fate of the Ark which gives us a nice excuse to drop in on the Autobots we left behind. We find them sadly loading the wreckage of the Optimus Prime facsimile into the back of Ironhide. This is, unfortunately, ridiculous. Wheeljack knew that Prime was going to fake his own death: he built the construct! Not only can he not tell his own work from the real thing but he assumes that the ONE wrecked Prime they find is the real one, despite his knowledge of Prime's plan! Luckily this plot strand is not going to come up for a few issues.

Prime reflects sadly that they will have to learn to get by without him and strides off, alone, like John Wayne about to right a wrong (which is fitting on both counts, I suppose).

Meanwhile we find that Megatron is also on Cybertron. He is pleased by the Decepticon domination and is trading barbs with an off-panel entity who seems to have some power over the Decepticons. Megatron finds a good spot here to explain exactly what happened to cause these events:

When the Predacons had Prime at their mercy they had suddenly ceased their attack and come after Megatron. They releaved Megatron of his fusion cannon and left him to Prime's mercy, however Prime fled in the confusion. Megatron caught up with what he thought was Prime and destroyed him, however he swiftly realised that this was a facsimile when the real thing tackled him from behind.

The two robots tussled, with Megatron on the back foot. His last ditch move was to summon the space bridge, possibily to escape, but Prime, sensing a chance to make a worthwhile sacrifice, hurled them both through the portal before it was fully open, causing massive instability and an explosion, and transporting them to random locations on Cybertron. This is a reasonable explanation but unfortunately Furman once again suffers for overthinking things. It makes little sense that Shockwave would have commanded the Predacons to merely set up a fair fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron when they could have destroyed both of them, especially if Shockwave bothered to help. What would be in it for Shockwave or for The Predacons if Megatron won. Shockwave predicts an Optimus Prime victory but it's far from certain, and why not remove both threats when they are at his mercy? I am not going to sit and rewrite it, but I am confident that the three-way fight could have been written convincingly enough to end with the same result - an accidental teleport to Cybertron.

Things pick up rather at this point as we discover that the wobbly off-panel voice is none other than Straxus, still just about alive after Blaster's defeat of him in The Bridge To Nowhere! He is now a head in a glass jar, being kept online by a network of tubes and wires. It's an effective image and although it doesn't make a lot of sense given what we know about how easily Transformers can be rebuilt and reformatted I think it would be churlish to complain about it. In any case, this is a universe where a bat-shaped cassette can be Deceticon leader, why not a head in a jar?

Megatron reveals his devious plan: he has passed word among Straxus' informants that there is a Decepticon spy abroad who is pretending to be Optimus Prime. The Autobots will do his job for him!

Unaware of this threat to his continued functioning Prime visits Iacon and finds it ruined. He can scarcely believe it. Before he can fully absorb the image he is smacked upside the head by a familiar looking hammer. Rack and Ruin have arrived! While he is trying to reason with them a Guardian unit appears behind him and beats him into the ground.

As Prime flickers back to consciousness he finds himself confronted by the Wreckers, led by Springer and Ultra Magnus, accusing him of being a spy and sentencing him to death! TO. BE. CONTINUED.

This issue is quite an improvement over the last two. The biggest complaints deal with the detritus left over from that storyline. The scenes of Optimus walking around a blasted Cybertron are effective and rendered even more so by some excellent work by Geoff Senior -surely by far the best artist working on the book at this time. Megatron's plan at least makes sense and is simple enough that it might work. Prime is bound to head for Autobot occupied areas and may well arrive before the Decepticons can find him. If he reaches his fellow Autobots then he will be a major boost to both their morale and offensive capabilities. This is not really spelled out in the issue, but since Megatron does not actually know exactly where Prime is, trying to drive a wedge between him and the Autobots is probably the smartest move. This also allows Furman to set up a cliff-hanger that is fairly decent, although obviously not going to end in anything other than Prime convincing the Autobots that he's the real deal. That's not really anyone's fault though, and the drama is still good for it's own sake. The audience is more interested in how Prime will get out of this than if he will, but that's the same for ninety-nine per-cent of these situations.

Prime and Megatron's disparate reactions to seeing their homeworld again after so long are believable and in-character and the lot of the Autobots certainly does not seem to have improved since The Smelting Pool and Target:2006. It's nice to see the Wreckers again a few issues down the line from Operation Volcano and Straxus is as brilliant as ever. One wonders what Megatron's endgame is. Surely he can defeat a head in a jar and take his planet back? Currently, however, he is fixated on Optimus Prime.

One of the problems that a reader who is more familiar with the US book might have with this storyline is that Bob Budiansky would soon be writing a very similar story involving traitorous Predacons, Megatron and the Space Bridge to Cybertron in US issue #25 and UK issues #107-108 (Gone But Not Forgotten!). Naturally this comes across as very awkward when you read the issues in the continuity that a UK reader would have done but credit should not be taken from this book for the mismatch. It was, after all, published first. I will deal with the continuity issues in more detail in a later review but suffice it to say that it does get worked out, the problem is that the workaround is very obvious.

As previously mentioned I am absolutely in love with Senior's art and although it's not quite as amazing with this style of colouring as it was back in Victory! I always look forward to a Senior issue.

The colouring is very good, as usual, with very few mistakes. A particularly effective usage is in a panel where we can see Megatron from Straxus' perspective and everything is green, seen through the fluid and glass of his fish-bowl.

A definite step in the right direction. Far from the best issue the UK book ever saw but certainly worthy of reading and hopefully leading to better things in the next few issues.

IDW has reprinted these issues in their Best of the UK collection, Prey, along with several other stories.  Check them out.

The Ark Addendum - Enter the Nightbird (part 1) and Ron Friedman Scripts

Another week, another Ark Addendum.  And just to sweeten the pot, I figured I'd throw in another one of the Ron Friedman scripts acquired collectively by the Transformers community.


Enter the Nightbird, a classic episode of the classic series.  Oh, how I wish I had the character models from this episode.  Sadly, I've yet to come across them, but I do have many of the background models,  featured here.

In a bit of an unfortunate parallel, the script that was in the binder of Ron Friedman material for this episode was also incomplete.  There were quite a few scripts that were missing pages, as it turns out.  We're only missing the last few pages, though.  Some other scripts were missing vast swaths of pages.


Partial Script for Enter the Nightbird: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?rpcpsy5rorb2728

I wanted to also take this opportunity to plug a related website, cartoonpaperwork.com.  Hosted by my friend David Thornton, who was spearheading the collection of the Ron Friedman Joe material, it's dedicated to bringing together collectors of Sunbow paperwork.  While I tend to focus on designs, he is more inclusive: scripts, storyboards, memos, all of that kind of stuff.  I think it's a great idea, effectively doing what we the Transfandom collectively did for the Friedman material but on a larger scale.  Check it out, and if you've got anything in your private collection that fits the bill, why not drop him or me a line and see if we can't arrange something.