Episode 119 - The Optimal Optimus

Some Men of Steel are actually MONKEY! Case and Jmike are joined by Derek Van Dyke to talk about what is undoubtedly the "Optimal Optimus" (as well as "Code of Hero" because we are not monsters).

 

Transcript

(Subject to error)

00:00
Case Aiken
Season one has a couple, like, events that feel like this should be the season finale. Like the floating island one. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, no, we're just gonna keep going.

00:07
Derek Van Dyke
Season one just did a lot of great, like, mini story arcs leading up to. Yeah. Watching Beast wars, like, out of order on syndication, over the air was.

00:17
Jmike Folson
Yeah, that would have messed with you.

00:18
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, because it's like every other week there's some season finale, and you're like, what is happening?

00:40
Case Aiken
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I am an optimal case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my rat trap, J. Mike Falson.

00:51
Jmike Folson
I gotta be rat trap, though. Why couldn't it be Cheetor?

00:53
Case Aiken
Oh.

00:54
Jmike Folson
Anyway, hey, welcome back, everybody.

00:55
Case Aiken
I mean, honestly, you're probably the rhinox of the team.

01:01
Derek Van Dyke
A higher compliment you cannot give.

01:05
Case Aiken
Well, and there's the peacemaker right there. So that's the tiger Tron, Derek Van.

01:09
Derek Van Dyke
Dyke, although I do not have nearly as deep and dulcite of tones as Tigatron's voice actor.

01:16
Case Aiken
What's his name? Blue Mankuma.

01:18
Derek Van Dyke
Beautiful, beautiful voice.

01:20
Case Aiken
An incredible voice. So we're not going to mince words here. I tried to do a bit and it didn't quite work. But you know what? We're going to maximize this effort here. Today we're talking about maximize Transformers, Beast wars, and specifically, we're going to talk about Optimus Primal and how I would argue that he is a Superman analog. And before we started recording, Derek and I were talking about how probably of any Transformers character, especially any Beast wars character, Optimus prime is the best example of a Superman type character in the series.

01:50
Derek Van Dyke
And that also, I think that primal specifically is probably the best version of Optimus to make that analog with in terms of the ways that Primal is a unique character from G, one Optimus, or, like, prime or Energon or any of those other versions of Optimus Primal, very much stands out in that regard to me.

02:11
Case Aiken
Yeah. I mean, so much so that in the episode victory, there is a direct, like, it's a bird, it's a plane. It's exactly. I mean, we're all 90s babies here. This seemed kind of like an appropriate little session of just, like, nostalgia and looking at a thing that definitely, even if the metaphor is forced, it is the heroic archetype that we try to talk about on this piece, where a character has the power of action and does his or her best to make the world a better place, regardless of threats and regardless of the ability to do more in a way that would be harmful to others and trying to avoid those types of situations. So we picked out a bunch of episodes from the first season to really focus on for this. But we'll talk about the series as a whole.

02:56
Case Aiken
We'll talk about some of the other characters. We're obviously going to talk about code of Hero because we're not monsters on this podcast. And that has to be discussed if we're talking about beast wars. But we are going to try to frame the conversation mostly about Optimus Primal, who is just goddamn awesome. And I think a good place to start, then, before we actually get into the episodes, is just how Optimus Primal is not Optimus prime. They're very similar characters. They are obviously both the leader types for the group. But for one thing, Optimus Primal isn't just the biggest fucking dude in the room.

03:28
Jmike Folson
Always.

03:30
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, he's interestingly, like, perfect middle size. Rhinox and Dinobot are bigger than, like, several characters. Outsize him in stature, so he's not the big guy of the team like Optimus traditionally is.

03:45
Case Aiken
Right? I mean, Skyfire aside, or Omega supreme or any of the other really weird ones out there, Optimus prime was always sort of positioned as being the biggest one. And some of that is japanese toy convention of having the leader types always be the biggest action figure, which is true for the Optimus primal gorilla figure. Although of course, for those of us from the 90s who remember when the Beast wars toys first came out, Optimus Primal was a bat.

04:09
Derek Van Dyke
Oh God. That's right. I forgot that the first toy was a bat. Wow.

04:15
Case Aiken
Yeah. And Megatron was a crocodile.

04:17
Derek Van Dyke
I don't think I ever saw the megatron crocodile.

04:20
Case Aiken
Yeah, well, and then they got phased out and they put out. Right, right.

04:23
Derek Van Dyke
And then we got the ones that.

04:24
Case Aiken
Are the monkey nut truck version of Optimus. While the figure was the biggest. There's a little bit of a weirdness when you look at Rhinox. Like, depending on the shot, rhinox is clearly bigger in beast form, but sometimes a little bigger. A little. Maybe not quite as tall, but wider in terms of sizing. It's still early.

04:40
Derek Van Dyke
They don't always make him, like, way taller than everyone else. Rhinox is the big guy because he's also just wide and stock. He's built like a linebacker.

04:49
Case Aiken
Yeah. Meanwhile, Dinobot is definitely the tallest of at least the season one maximals, and just is one of the biggest of the show, just generally speaking, which continues to be useful for him even when he does not get some of the upgrades that the others do. But yeah, no, Optimus, he's not the biggest one in the room. He is pretty tough, and he is actually pretty capable. One of the big differences that they make in Beast wars versus g one transformers is that they can't all fly explicitly whatever the hell was going on in the more than meets the eye pilot. And then in later episodes where it's like, oh, I guess we forgot how to fly. Optimus Primal is the unique one on the early team. He's the flyer for the group to.

05:27
Derek Van Dyke
The point that's a huge advantage for the enemy team, the predacons, because they have multiple flyers, and we've just got Optimus on the good guy's side. And since he's also the commander, it's risky to have him flying around on basic scout duty.

05:42
Case Aiken
Right. Scouting, you would think, would go to the flyer. He's also not the heaviest heavy, but he's a heavy on the team. They make a very big point early in the pilot of, like, in terms of COVID fire, Optimus can move faster to a location, but he's also going to be a better person to lay down suppressing fire in a situation. You kind of need him to be able to move into those spots. And so what that means is that Optimus primal in Beast wars is a generalist for the majority of the show. Yeah.

06:09
Jmike Folson
Mid tier character.

06:10
Case Aiken
That's a niche that a Superman type often falls into when they actually scale the power levels accordingly for a team, as opposed to having the big fluctuations of a full on Superman in the group. Because Optimus is durable as hell. He's strong as hell. He can fly, and he's got firepower, but he's not necessarily the top for any of them. He's the red mage on the team, which, if you're seeing everyone as having stats that get spread out and some people focus on some, the Superman type is going to be. Yeah, fast, strong, durable, good up close.

06:39
Derek Van Dyke
Good from afar, good at thinking out a plan while not necessarily being, like, the master tactician. Like you said, a little bit of everything.

06:46
Jmike Folson
Yeah, I thought that was because this iteration, like, when the first episode, they clearly say they're explorers.

06:52
Case Aiken
Yes.

06:52
Jmike Folson
So I was like, okay, they're not, like, beefy types that we're used to seeing. So I thought that kind of got explained away right there. I was like, okay, they're just doing their thing, and this optimist is just like, copernicus, Galileo.

07:03
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, well, and that's kind of a good point too, that this optimist is not a definitive military leader with a ton of experience. This is a scientist and a man of peace, and he has doubts. I think that, like, g one Optimus, who was really the only other version of Optimus that existed at the time that beast wars came out, right?

07:27
Case Aiken
I think, yeah, I mean, there's g two Optimus toys and comics, but there hadn't really been, like, a mainstream transformers.

07:34
Jmike Folson
I remember Megatron saying throughout these episodes is that at this point in the Transformers timeline, the Autobots had won the war. The Autobots had won the war. And the predicons, decepticons were underneath them. Now, I don't know how that figured out and everything else.

07:49
Case Aiken
Well, it's a weird part, and I'll go into it, because I watched these to death back when I actually got them dvd. I watched these back in the day. Initially, I taped these off of vcrs and rewatched it, but I bought the dvds and I listened to the commentary tracks a ton. So I have some input from that which I did not get a chance to re listen to. So I'm only going touch on it a little bit. It's a weird series of a show in that it is technically in continuity with the original Transformers show in a way that is different from all the other transformers stuff that has come since. There has been a ton of Transformers material of all types, including additional versions of Beast wars characters and so forth.

08:23
Case Aiken
What we're saying, though, is at the time when this came out, there was Peter Cullen as Optimus prime, and now we're getting Gary Chalk as Optimus Primal and setting those two up as different characters.

08:35
Derek Van Dyke
Yes, and spoilers for a late 90s animated series. But it's both a sequel and prequel to the original transformers as opposed to a reimagining. And I just think that's also so interesting because to me, gen one Optimus is not a lot of a character. He's cool, right? But because it's Peter Cullen, and he just has some raw lines to lay down. But to me, it's the more dynamic personality of primal, of being somebody who does have doubts, being somebody who does fail more, somebody who is a boy scout, but also kind of aware of the ways that holds them back sometimes and has to struggle with that, I think makes him a more interesting character for actually engaging with the question of what it means to be a leader.

09:26
Case Aiken
What it means to be a hero.

09:28
Derek Van Dyke
Even sometimes, if you don't want to be, but just because you're the one.

09:32
Case Aiken
Who is best able to be, right? I mean, he was the leader of a scientific exploration vessel and all of a sudden had to do a police action against war criminals. And it's stuck in this situation where in a Dino riders style pilot sequence, they transport back in time and crash land on ancient Earth and have to contend with weird histories and all that. I think this also goes for the fact that the supporting cast is so strong. And part of that is that this is a mid to late 90s CGI cartoon wherein they couldn't have that many characters. Like the original Transformers had, like, a fuck ton of characters, especially, oh, my God, we can't keep track of. And on purpose, like, to the point where they just start introducing characters. They don't need to be like, oh, here's the new guy.

10:16
Case Aiken
It's just like, this guy's always been here, right? Like, you know, Perceptor, the microscope guy. You know him, right? He's been in all these episodes somewhere.

10:25
Derek Van Dyke
He was just off screen.

10:26
Case Aiken
Yeah, no, he was down in the science lab doing science stuff. And this episode has science stuff. So here's Perceptor. You know the guy. And so with Beast wars, the show had a very small roster. It's five characters on each side initially, where they make up for the fact that they don't have the virtue of Transformers properties in general, which is that you like the ones that you think is cool, and then you have so many that everyone's going to find one that they think is cool, and you keep going. In this case, they had to be like, here's the distinct personalities for the five that we can animate on each side.

11:00
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, here's the personalities they have. Here are the skills that they have, how all of this stuff informs each other, and then how those characters have to change over the course of the episodes. Because Beast wars is really good about having characters start at one place and then have to change and grow, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, as events affect them and stick with them in a way that was kind of rare for a lot of animation of the time. You have a lot of these animated shows of the time, and especially the original Transformers. Right? Where the point was, like, we have our episode plot of the week, and at the end, everything's going to go back to the status quo, right? And Beast wars really threw that out.

11:42
Case Aiken
The window, for one thing. We have such dynamic supporting cast members like Rattrap and Dinobot on the hero side, where Rattrap is insubordinate, a coward, super competent, and a prick. Like, it's great, that whole combination right there. And then you have Dinobot, who was a reformed bad guy, and anyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for reformed bad guy. No, like, Anubis is my favorite character on Ronan Warriors, Dinobot is one of my favorite characters. Piccolo is my favorite dragon Ball Z character. The honorable bad guy who realized the errors of his way and has reformed in ways that are logically consistent and not just because we needed a heel face turn for the sake of the plot, is so fucking good. And Dinobot is that.

12:31
Case Aiken
And again, we're going to talk about code of hero, because we have to talk about code of hero. It's so goddamn good. But that means that right from the get go, we've got people who are arguing against Optimus Primal. Rattrap, who is on his team, who was part of his crew, asks him if he's up to the task constantly because the mission is different. First episode all the time. Like, Rattrap refuses a direct order, and so Optimus Primal has to put himself in danger. And then later is like, here is why I did this thing. Here's why I explained it this way, and I asked you to do it because it made more sense that way. And instead, we did it this way, and now we're hurt, and we're not in a good position where we can actually easily fix ourselves. Things are bad.

13:13
Case Aiken
And then Ratchup still is giving him shit. It's not like a one time, and then it's fine. Every single time afterwards, he's giving him crap until eventually he finally learns to trust him.

13:23
Jmike Folson
Optimus had to tell him early on. He's like, I'm not going to put you in positions and things that I wouldn't do myself, so you're going to have to trust me. And Raptrap's like, man, whatever.

13:34
Case Aiken
Sure, Optimus. And that's such a good line.

13:37
Derek Van Dyke
Better you than me.

13:39
Case Aiken
That honestly has stuck with me in terms of my management style so much more, probably more than it's, like, healthy in some regards, where I'll throw myself out there to work on a project where I'm like, I probably should have been focusing on the macro. There have been plenty of times where it's like, oh, yeah, this project that needed to be done by the end of the month. I'm now cramming to finish because were in the weeds about something else somewhere earlier in the month kind of thing. But I think that's such a great aspect of his character. He is completely prepared to lead from the front, to take the hits, to do all that, even if he sees the best way to do it is this. And that's the plan I'm going to go with.

14:13
Case Aiken
But when something doesn't work, when circumstances change, he'll get out there. There's no problem with that. And it's not for glory. It's not for honor. It's not for anything like that. This is the best plan. And does it make the most sense for me to be there? Yes. No. But it's never out of cowardice. It's never even self preservation from the standpoint of, like, well, I'm the commander. I have to survive so I can keep making new plans. Like, when the plan fails to make a new plan type character. No, he's not that. He just is aware that he's also pretty well equipped to do a bunch of different jobs because he's the red mage on the right. Yeah.

14:47
Derek Van Dyke
And especially bringing up rat Trap and the way that rat trap kind of does not respect Optimus's authority at first.

14:55
Case Aiken
Can we just pause before we go further on a discussion of rat Trap? And let's just say for anyone who has not watched the show, rat Trap is Rocket Raccoon.

15:03
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, I mean, that's a great point of comparison for modern audiences, like, to.

15:08
Case Aiken
The point where I'm wondering if when they kind of rebooted rocket raccoon to be the character that he is in the comics, if they were looking at, like, they're that close. Yeah, we're all going to die, right? That's his catchphrase. We're all going to die.

15:22
Derek Van Dyke
God, Scott McNeil is just so good as half the cast of this show. Yeah, but, like Rattrap, it's a great example of. One of the most powerful aspects of Optimus Primal, to me, is the effect that he has on the rest of the cast. Rat Trap is somebody who starts off as very cowardly, very insubordinate, and obviously, he's always going to be the team loudmouth and the team cynic. But over the course of especially that first season, you really watch rat trap, like, one step at a time. Have to learn from Optimus's example and from Cheetor some. But in that case, it's still indirectly Optimus, because Cheetor adores Optimus and is trying to do everything he can to mirror that behavior, sometimes to overly enthusiastic.

16:12
Derek Van Dyke
But, like, it's that drags rat trap into being more of a team player, being more heroic, putting himself at risk more when he's the best person for a job you can watch over the course of that first season, how much he changes. And that's entirely Optimus's influence as a leader.

16:33
Case Aiken
Yeah, that's the best part about Optimus, which is that the team becomes better because of his presence there. He inspires people to better, which is exactly the kind of thing we talk about on this show and why the archetype of, like, a hero who is doing their best is important.

16:51
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, it's not enough to be the leader and be like the jack of all trades. You also have to be a little bit the Paladin. Right? Like, you have to be somebody who, it's not just the actions that you take, but how you empower the people around you to better, to teach young and impressionable Cheetor to think a little bit more ahead, to teach rat trap to be kind of braver, to be an example for Dinobot to clash against. Right. Which is so fascinating because Dinobot never fully takes on Optimus's ideals. But I think especially by code of Hero, we'll get to it. You do see how much he has learned by his time with the maximals.

17:33
Case Aiken
Why don't we actually dig into the episodes that we wanted to talk about? The ones that we highlighted specifically were the two part pilot BSors, episode ten, guerrilla warfare episode twelve, victory episode 24 before the storm, which is really just the first part of the three part finale, and then the two part finale of season one, which is other voices, and then Code of hero, because again, we're not monsters here. Yeah. So talking about beast wars, the Pilot, I emailed you guys when I was watching it because right from the get go. Oh my God, this show is so good at economy of storytelling.

18:06
Derek Van Dyke
Yes.

18:06
Case Aiken
We've got the whole transwarp. We've come through time and space and we're having this whole fight over this weird alien world. And we set up elements about all the different characters on the ship. We set up like, it's an exploration vessel, not a battle cruiser. Like all those little bits right there. We set up the proto forms, which is such an ingenious little element of like. Yeah. Now we know we're going to want to introduce characters more over the course of the season, at least. How do we do that? Here is an element that will work, but we don't have to worry about it right now.

18:37
Derek Van Dyke
Here's a massive number of ticking time bombs for new characters that we can introduce as many as we want whenever we want down the road. But they're not here now, right?

18:46
Jmike Folson
They're floating in space.

18:47
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, they're just sleeping.

18:50
Case Aiken
There's the whole inner John situation that is on the planet in season one, where their robot forms are unable to function for prolonged periods of time in the environment. And so that they have to turn into animals as a way of basically, like, Terminator style clothing themselves in meat as a way to bypass a thing. And that's a really fun exposition bit that they set up very quickly. They bring up the great War, which, according to the commentary tracks, they didn't fucking know what that meant. They didn't know they were necessarily talking about the original transformers at the time. That all came later. And the fact that it fit so smoothly is incredible.

19:24
Derek Van Dyke
Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you say the phrase the Clone wars, and you figure it out later.

19:30
Case Aiken
You know what I mean? We introduce all these characters. We set up all that, and then we start setting up their capabilities very quickly.

19:38
Derek Van Dyke
Right.

19:38
Case Aiken
When they leave the ship for the first time, we start seeing the zooming in eye effect that Optimus Primal has, even in ape form, which I think is such a great way of one reminding everyone they're robots and they can do XYZ. I always thought that their augmented reality vision stuff was, like, one of the coolest secret abilities that they had, as opposed to the really obvious, like, I have a gun that comes out of my ape arm kind of thing. Yeah, no, they're still robots here. And just to continue the comparison with Superman. Yeah, he's got supervision on top of flight, and he's a robot. Yeah.

20:11
Derek Van Dyke
Every character gets moments that are, like, establishing the most important pieces of their personality at the start of the show. Right. Like, rat trap is going to be cynical and cowardly from the get go. Rhinox is going to be the Peacekeeper and also the big guy who's like, nope, you know what? I don't care if there's a rock I can break through that know Cheetor is going to run off on his own when everyone says, stop, wait, he's already gone.

20:40
Case Aiken
Right. And then establish that the communications are limited because of the environment that they're in, so they can't just, like, radio everywhere.

20:47
Derek Van Dyke
The energon is such a brilliant little piece of plot BS in Beast wars, because the way that they've made the energon out to be in this, it is a resource that they desperately need and can fight over in however many episodes they feel like. It is the reason the bad guys are there, which makes it accidentally the reason the good guys are there. It is a limiting factor. Right. Because it is incredibly dangerous and forces them to arbitrarily whenever the plot demands it. Right? Oh, there's so much energon. We've got to stay in Beast form. Right? Like, it can be a limiter for the plot of the episode, which is used to great effect many times.

21:29
Derek Van Dyke
And then finding out new weird things and ways that it interacts with a lightning strike or a certain piece of technology gives them the ability to bs in the plot. For a bottle episode, it's one singular element that really makes the show kind of by how it gets to both be the prize and the hazard. Yeah, if that makes sense.

21:54
Jmike Folson
I feel like later on, they kind of forgot about a lot of the energon stuff they set up.

21:58
Case Aiken
Yeah, because at first they're like, oh.

22:00
Jmike Folson
We can't be in our robot forms for more than, like, two minutes. And by season two, they're having full on guerrilla warfare out there for hours at a time, like killing each other. And like, oh, wait, the season two.

22:14
Case Aiken
They deliberately say all the energon because it's unstable energon, as opposed to what we had seen in OG transformers, where it's like, here's just cubes of stuff that soundwave emitted from his chest that can soar up the coal energy from this furnace or whatever. They make a point that it is different. It's unstable. It's dangerous, and there's so much of it and that the season one finale destroys most of it and transforms what's there into a stable version that does not affect them.

22:42
Jmike Folson
Energon cubes.

22:43
Derek Van Dyke
Unless you're, like, right up on it.

22:45
Jmike Folson
Right.

22:45
Case Aiken
Really, the split between season one and two is like a complete, like, we're just like, wiping the floor with all the status quo that we had set up in season one so that we can get away with doing a much weirder season two. And I like a lot of season two, but it loses some of the vibrancy of the first season. It's way more deserts and it's way more like battleground vistas as a.

23:04
Derek Van Dyke
Just mesas and stuff.

23:05
Case Aiken
Yeah, exactly.

23:06
Derek Van Dyke
As far as the eye can see.

23:07
Jmike Folson
So what you're saying is you don't like silverbolt? Shame on you, Casey.

23:10
Case Aiken
I actually like silverbolt. But you know what? If fucking Silverbolt showed up in season one, he'd be interesting showing up in season two, right when they're showing up, like, being like, here's transmetals and here's all this other stuff going on, and here's Jesus fucking gorilla, man. Like, Silverbolt gets lost in the gouache at that point.

23:26
Derek Van Dyke
He's just here to be very beautiful and stupid.

23:32
Case Aiken
I mean, yes. So, like, the pilot does a lot of great stuff here. We set up the stakes. We establish, like, yeah, at first it's four on five as far as teams go, because dinobot, very quickly, you think he might be like the starscream of the team gets into a fight with Megatron. I love it where it's like leadership takes cunning and cleverness as well. Wouldn't you say? So Scorponok, like, just shoots him away.

23:55
Derek Van Dyke
I do like, also, the pilot is the only time Scorponok is ever a threat. Very quickly becomes the butt monkey of the enemy team.

24:07
Case Aiken
I mean, is he the worst butt monkey? It's hard to really say.

24:11
Derek Van Dyke
Look, nobody out. Butt monkeys. Waspinator.

24:14
Jmike Folson
Hey, we put some respect.

24:20
Case Aiken
Secret best characters, the same. God, we love some of these characters. And some of these best characters are all voiced by the same person.

24:33
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, I know, right? I do love how they have a completely unsubtle like, yeah, this is the actual starscream in pterosaur. To the point of, like, he just sounds, looks, acts like everything like him gets possessed by Starscream.

24:48
Case Aiken
In an episode.

24:50
Derek Van Dyke
Waspinator gets possessed by Starscream. That's right.

24:53
Case Aiken
When Starscream shows up in that. Not exactly a deep cut, but the fact that the Starscream ghost thing had been set up already, it's like, oh, that's fun.

25:02
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah.

25:02
Case Aiken
And also, as one of my favorite lines in the show, which is when black Arachnia betrays starscream and says, are all your dreams in Technicolor? But getting back to the pilot, so we've got this power imbalance, which I think is really fun. We also established that they are not that fucking big. Like, it's not Transformers OG style, where it's like, yeah, he's a truck that turns into a robot, but what if he's even bigger than that truck? What if the microscope guy is as big as the truck guy? What if the boombox is four stories tall?

25:33
Derek Van Dyke
What if the bad guy turns into a regular handgun?

25:37
Case Aiken
At least it made sense with G two when they turned him into a tank.

25:40
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, but, yeah, all the transformers are like, roughly analogous to human size. I think they're mostly a little bigger than your average person if you scale them against the pre humans in later seasons. But they're like six to 10ft tall, not 18ft 45.

26:00
Case Aiken
Yeah, we know that Cheetor is the same size as a regular cheetah because of direct comparison there, we know that rat trap is very big. For a rat. But it appears that Optimus Primal is about the right size for a gorilla, which means that he's big for a person, but not terrifyingly big. And rhinox actually seems kind of small. And actually, Megatron seems kind of small for a T Rex.

26:20
Derek Van Dyke
I mean, again, getting into the arachnids, I've never seen a tarantula that size. And if I ever did, I would die on.

26:30
Jmike Folson
Snap my own neck.

26:32
Derek Van Dyke
I'm out.

26:35
Case Aiken
And what a roster of villains. We talked about terror sore being just the starscream. Like, he's there for that role. We've got Waspinator as the bumbling ally that we like, and we've got Scorponok as the bumbling ally that we don't like in terms of the bad guys, but fucking tarantulas, man.

26:52
Derek Van Dyke
Fucking tarantulas. And it's crazy to go back to the first few episodes of the show and realize, like, a, they hadn't quite nailed down how much Waspinator was going to suck, and they hadn't quite nailed down what they wanted to do with tarantulas yet. Right. It takes a few episodes for them to really be like, actually, tarantulas is going to be the smart guy.

27:11
Case Aiken
Well, they, right off the bat, say that he's the only one who has the skill to break down the giant rock of inner John that they find. And then the next episode is the web episode where he captures and tortures Cheetor. So I think at the very least, they were like, he's going to be the scary spider, right?

27:26
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, yeah. That's why they gave him the. It's. It's perfect. But the amount to which tarantulas becomes a capital p problem, I don't know that they had really planned out at that point.

27:40
Case Aiken
No. And that's fair. This show is so good at. Yes. Ending in a way, once you know how little they knew what they were doing in the pilot, it fits so goddamn well. When you get to the end of season one and you see all the machinations of tarantulas and Megatron and how it plays out and all that. That's all really good. And you get to the shit at the end of season two where it's like, oh, man, it's g one transformers. And they're all there. But they didn't know shit about transformers when they made the show. They didn't know what they were doing. They were told, make a fucking show with these toys. These are the reboot guys.

28:19
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah. Even the pilot is a perfect example of how they. Yes. And did from the beginning. Because I think you look at the pilot episodes compared to the third episode, and you see that within the pilot, there is so much more of transforming has to come with the full.

28:37
Case Aiken
Yeah, they have, like, an activation mode.

28:39
Derek Van Dyke
Or Cheetor maximize and then lengthy transformation sequence. And from as early as episode three, they're like, okay, we can cut down on the dramatic yelling at the sky and then stock footage. That's not the tone that's working for us. Let's minimize that a bit. I think it's interesting to see how much more expositional dialogue is in that first episode or two in a way that works great. Like you said, to set up, like, economy of storytelling, to set the stage in one or two episodes. But the format of dialogue changes so much by the third episode.

29:14
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's kind of nice in the first episode to have them all do individually their activation codes where they say their full name and then what team they're on. If they say maximize or terrorize and go through that, also establish that it's just a code word that they can just change because Dynobot does it, which is a nice detail there. That's fun. That's power rangers for you.

29:34
Derek Van Dyke
Changes his tattoo.

29:38
Case Aiken
It's the 90s. We were suckers for it then. I'm still a sucker for it now. But you don't need to do that going forward. And eventually we get an episode where they full on are just like, oh, no. They're all in sync with their animal selves. Now. The call of the wild episode where they all regress to their animal forms and then, like, tiger Tron gets them stoned and, like, no, man, you just need to vibe with your animal self. But that does allow for really cool moves, like rat trap, like rolling as a rat and then standing up as a robot and shooting things. All those kind of maneuvers that really come into play in the second half of the season, which also goes for what kind of choreography can they do in the early episodes, if you're really paying attention?

30:14
Case Aiken
Even some of the shots where it's like a different angle, it's still the model in the same motion. They can move the camera around, but the gunfire motions are oftentimes the same animation. Just like, move which angle that they're looking at the model from. And that's because this is a 90s CGI show. This is the reboot studio. This is the show that the reboot studio did right after reboot. Yeah, I was going to say to.

30:34
Derek Van Dyke
Clarify for a lot of folks who don't. There was a show called reboot.

30:38
Case Aiken
That is not the recent show called Reboot.

30:41
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, there's a CGI show called Reboot before this. This is not a studio that does reboots. It's a capital r reboot. I remember nothing about reboot, to be honest.

30:52
Case Aiken
Reboot is great, but this came out between season two and three. And so season one and two of reboot is rough, particularly season one.

31:01
Derek Van Dyke
It looks rougher to look back at, for sure. I think part of it, too, is that because beast wars, the designs are robots and toy animals, they don't have to look as off putting as, like, we made blue people.

31:15
Case Aiken
Right.

31:15
Derek Van Dyke
You know what I mean?

31:17
Case Aiken
And even that was choices that were made to get around the fact that it was Tron as a tv show. It was set inside of a computer so that they didn't have to be that realistic because it was a tv budget CGI show, which at the time was really difficult to do. Side note, there is a call out to reboot, which is one of the catchphrases for the main character, which is there's just no pleasing some people. Optimus Primal says to rat trap at one point in the pilot.

31:40
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, I remember that line.

31:43
Case Aiken
But the point is, this is the show that they pick up after that before they come back for the amazing season three and the lackluster season four of reboot. Season three of reboot, one of the best things you can ever watch. I will continue to sing its praises forever. It's fantastic, but this show is very clearly part of this phase of a group of people learning to work with their budgets and using the restrictions of the medium that they're working in to jumpstart creativity. We have such a defined, cool supporting cast in the show because they only have the resources to make five models for each side. We've got ten characters total, and we have a pretty clear idea of what they're able to do in all cases.

32:24
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, well, and that's why, again, new characters come in at a semi steady pace, but paced out, it takes a bit for Tigatron to show up, and then it takes a bit for black arachni to show up, and then it's eraser and then Inferno. Right.

32:40
Case Aiken
And there's a reason why the first two that come in, I mean, also this kind of ties into the toys, which is that they're palette swaps. Like, yes, they have design changes, but a lot of the foundations for the models are based on the same characters. Tiger Tron is Cheetor.

32:55
Derek Van Dyke
They're clone characters.

32:56
Case Aiken
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

32:57
Derek Van Dyke
Down to the same rifle with the brain in the back of the gun for some reason.

33:01
Case Aiken
It's a marthroy situation. Yeah. And black arachnia with tarantulas. And it's great there because. Oh, my. Like, what two wonderful characters did they spawn from this whole thing? Yeah.

33:13
Derek Van Dyke
Holy shit. Those two being at each other's throats the entire time is just.

33:18
Case Aiken
Yeah, just great details. But we don't get them until later. And they're fun additions, but they have to pick and choose their battles for when they bring a new character in who's going to be important, and yada, yada in the pilot, right off the bat, it's like, all right, well, here's, like, a little first confrontation. There's, like, a little pit and a rock, and we can establish some character stuff. And they do really good stuff because this is where Rattrap refuses to jump into battle. And we get, like, rhinox being, like, the big tough. Like, they need cover fire.

33:45
Case Aiken
So I'm picking you up, and this is a whole groot rock and raccoon situation right here, where he's holding Rattrap, who's firing in one hand, using Cheetor's gun in the other, because they didn't really want to show off his Uzi as his main weapon in the pilot.

33:56
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, the chain gun with a buzzsaw blade on it for some reason.

34:01
Case Aiken
Buzsaw blade within three. It's so weird.

34:08
Derek Van Dyke
He never once used that thing to hit him.

34:11
Case Aiken
No, but he does shoot some people at point blank rage several times.

34:14
Derek Van Dyke
He sure perforates some folks with it. That's for sure.

34:18
Case Aiken
Is so great. And we will mention beast machines at the end of this. But there is a reason why I hate beast machines.

34:24
Derek Van Dyke
There's no human being who loves beast. I cannot believe that's possible.

34:30
Case Aiken
So we get, like, this wonderful confrontation between them that sets up all this character stuff. We set up the efficacy of the Predacons, and then the first episode of the two part pilot ends with, well, now we've got to have a battle for victory between Dinobot and Optimus Primal, which is nice to set up. I love Dinobot. I love him having this, like, well, I need honor. Like, I can't just beat you with treachery. I wouldn't have earned leadership there. And that's such a good way of setting up. He's going to work here because he's the bad guy, but he's lawful evil. And you guys are fighting chaotic evil right now. Yeah. And he's powerful.

35:06
Case Aiken
He's got those fucking eye beams and he's big and he's got a weird tail spin blade thingy, which, thank God, in code of hero, he uses as like a helicopter device. Yes, man, dinobot. So here's a weird thing. I love the Megatron design in season one. I think it's really cool. I love the Trex head as the arm. I feel like it's a great shout out to the g one transformers, where Megatron, weirdly, it's the scope of the gun, but it acts as a blaster that's on his arm. I feel like it works very well there. I always thought it was weird though, that they didn't just use the Grimlock design. And then I realized that Dinobot is Grimlock. And in fact, there is an alternate color toy of dinobot that is called Grimlock.

35:47
Derek Van Dyke
Oh, I didn't know they did have Beast Wars. Grimlock.

35:50
Case Aiken
Never in the actual series. Yeah. But if you look at his transformation sequence, it has actually the same positioning that's going on where the head goes down to the chest, the legs extend out from the chest and are not part of the main body. And that the legs of the dinosaur form slide up and become the upper torso arms.

36:08
Derek Van Dyke
Okay.

36:09
Case Aiken
And then the tail splits open. And on grimlock, it splits open and becomes like part of his back. In this case, it becomes a separate spinny weapon thing with his spine being his sword.

36:19
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah. Or something.

36:21
Case Aiken
That's the extension of the spine.

36:23
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah. It's one long thing. One long spaghetti noodle. Right.

36:28
Case Aiken
So there is some weird headcanon of like. Well, but maybe Dinobot is the descendant. The point is that they went with this very tried and true design for the character to be then this weird villainous lancer character.

36:44
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah.

36:44
Case Aiken
In a five man band. That sort of makes the most sense. Right. Because then, yeah, he was effectively the.

36:50
Derek Van Dyke
Number two on the predicon side. And then he defects. And because the maximals just do not have that same explicit sort of hierarchy structure, it's like, okay, well, I'm not the leader. What am I? And it's like, here's the guy. Here's one of the boys now. And clearly he struggles forever to figure out how he is supposed to work as a soldier, as somebody who believes in hierarchies, as somebody who believes in a chain of command. Again, like there's science. This is not a military that he has joined.

37:24
Case Aiken
Yeah. And it's like a small crew. It's not the starship Enterprise. Like, yeah, we've got rhinox. He's really good at scanning shit. And Rattrap's really good at fixing machines and making bombs.

37:35
Derek Van Dyke
He's sort of the engineer.

37:36
Case Aiken
Again, Rattrap is just fucking rocket raccoon.

37:40
Derek Van Dyke
Technician, demolitions expert, snarky little guy, and I love it.

37:48
Case Aiken
It's definitely not plagiarism in terms of rat trap, and it's archetypal, but it's just so well done here. Yeah.

37:53
Derek Van Dyke
It's a defining version of that archetype for me.

37:57
Case Aiken
We have this wonderful face off between the two of them where we get to establish Dinobot's credentials as being honorable, and we also get to see Optimus primal showing that. Yeah. In addition to having guns that come out of his body and rockets and guns that come out of his arms, he also has swords. He has, like, dual scimitars. Yeah.

38:17
Derek Van Dyke
Like a copesh or something.

38:19
Case Aiken
He is very capable. And then we establish, like, all right, well, the predacons show up, and they fuck up the whole thing, and then they blow up a mountain. It's like, oh, there's a big energon thing, and they both have to separately go to it. And again, economy of storytelling, or at least, like, seeding what's out there, they're like, this is a really weird world with, like, two moons and all this other shit. Also, that's fucking Stonehenge right there. That definitely was not put here by a thing we've seen so far.

38:41
Derek Van Dyke
And I love, too, how it kind of confuses you of, like, okay, well, we've landed on earth, clearly, because there's earth animals and there's Stonehenge, but there are two moons that they call attention to. And the geography and landscape is still very alien and full of energon in a way that it is not by transformers g one time or just the modern day. And I love how they even use the pilot to set up things that will be the focus of several episodes separately down the road, and then many of which will loop back around for the season finale.

39:16
Case Aiken
Yeah. And then the pilot kind of concludes with a big five on five battle in the energon field. So they can't transform because it's too dangerous. And we get.

39:25
Derek Van Dyke
You get to watch the aminels fight.

39:27
Case Aiken
I mean, some really, like, right off the bat, they are okay with reminding people, like, yeah, no, a t. Rex would be really, like, there's a shot, and they use it. In the opening credits of Megatron trying to bite Optimus Primal's neck.

39:41
Jmike Folson
Oh, yeah.

39:41
Case Aiken
And you're like, yeah, no, that's real bad. And side note, a gorilla would not have been able to survive. We gorillas are strong compared to us gorillas are not strong compared to Tyrannosaurus rexes.

39:54
Derek Van Dyke
Right. There's a mass difference. Know.

39:57
Case Aiken
But he's also a small T Rex.

39:59
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, but also just the way that, like, coming into that sequence, like, megatron, like, stomping in and the fact that it shakes the camera as he strides in ahead of the rest of his crew. It's very like, yes. Okay. Yep. You're selling that. This guy's big. Like, way bigger than everyone else on the field.

40:18
Case Aiken
Right. But we also got a Mario 64 styled Optimus primal spinning it.

40:24
Jmike Folson
Optimus swinging around, which I have to.

40:26
Case Aiken
Imagine is just easy to animate because they're not really moving. You just spin the model around.

40:32
Derek Van Dyke
But it's so good. It's so good to watch a gorilla swing a T Rex around. Right. And just yeet him there. Well, and also you get to see, like, rat trap. Do whatever rat trap does to tarantulas. That counts as an attack.

40:47
Case Aiken
I don't know.

40:47
Derek Van Dyke
It kind of seems like he tickles them.

40:49
Case Aiken
I'm not really sure what it is.

40:50
Derek Van Dyke
He goes, that's not even close to the sound. I give up.

40:56
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, the pairing is okay, but as we pointed out, there's two flyers on the predicon side already. And it's not really, like a one to one kind of comparison right there. But it is close enough that it would fit any of the myriad two opposed army kind of tv shows that we had grown up on. At this point. If you could pair.

41:19
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, you could pair any of them off against any of the others. But I do like how the predicons and the maximals do not have clear analogs between each other. You don't have the clear cut good and bad version of the archetypes. You have pretty different dynamics on each team.

41:39
Case Aiken
Yeah. Like, season one especially has just, like, very clear, different characters there. And then as we start adding people, they usually come in pairs. So that kind of puts them as opposite each other. Like, Tiger John and Black Arachnia are the first two that come in, and then Airazor and Inferno are the next two that come in for those fill in the slot of like, well, were missing this thing on our team. And then we get the fusors, where we get quickstrike and Silverbolt at the same time. Yeah.

42:08
Derek Van Dyke
It's interesting to think of each character that gets added. And like, what is it that they're adding to each team? Right. And with Tigatron, we get the heroic character who can't be relied on to always be part of the super 6th.

42:22
Case Aiken
Ranger when he shows up.

42:23
Derek Van Dyke
Yes, the heroes get a one up, but it's not a one up that counts. And then Black Arachnia shows up. But Black Arachnia is even more double timing than pterosaur and tarantulas are. So it kind of doesn't fully count for the Predacons. And then we get Air razor and Inferno, who both do kind of fill out. But like, Inferno gives the predacons even more firepower. Air Razor gives the maximals another flyer they desperately needed.

42:52
Case Aiken
But when Inferno joins, he's also a flyer in addition to being a heavy.

42:57
Derek Van Dyke
Completely unreliable, no, he's reliable.

43:00
Case Aiken
He's just. He's an idiot, though.

43:03
Derek Van Dyke
Reliably going to fuck up everything in.

43:05
Case Aiken
Front of him for better and for worse. Like, if you tell him, follow them, he will dig a hole underground below the level of a force field to make sure that he gets there because he's going to do his job. He's going to live up to the demands of his queen. For the colony, for the royalty. For the royalty. Yes, my queen, I do. She wouldn't call me that. But the pilot does his job is what I'm trying to say here. It's not an intensely complicated story that happens, but it sets up the first season so well.

43:39
Jmike Folson
We will call these the beast War. He said the thing.

43:43
Case Aiken
He said the thing.

43:44
Derek Van Dyke
It's definitely cornier than the rest of the show, but it does a miraculous job of doing so much setup in just the first half of the pilot. You could do a writing class using that as an example of setting the foundation for what's to come. Most tv shows do not do that well.

44:03
Case Aiken
Yeah, like, you know, the stakes. You know, everything that pops up after this point is introduced in the pilot. You have a clear idea of all of the characters, even if some of them end up being more of a fuck up than they are set up in this episode, and some of them end up being more of a fucking asshole than they are set up in this episode, they do a pretty good job of making sure you're aware of what are the players and what are they like. And God damn it, we haven't talked about Megatron that much yet. We got to talk about Megatron a little bit because his whole talking to himself thing and talking to his T. Rex hand especially is so good.

44:38
Jmike Folson
Yeah, that got interesting.

44:39
Derek Van Dyke
Later on, he gives it a rubber ducky.

44:41
Case Aiken
Yeah.

44:41
Jmike Folson
Because at times it looks like the arm is sentient and it's like looking back at him and communicating with him. But he's also kind of doing his.

44:51
Case Aiken
He's not well, he's also doing the.

44:52
Jmike Folson
Whole Dr. Claw thing where he's like.

44:54
Case Aiken
Rubbing the arm, pets it like a cat.

44:56
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah.

44:59
Jmike Folson
Oh, yes.

45:01
Case Aiken
I think in terms of setting up how different he is from, like, g one Megatron. He's fucking insane. He talks to his hand for the majority of season one.

45:10
Derek Van Dyke
Yes, he's crazy, but he's crazy like a fox.

45:13
Case Aiken
Yes.

45:14
Derek Van Dyke
Because he is genuinely incredibly cunning. He is usually one step ahead, if not several steps ahead of Optimus and everybody on his side who is trying to murder him and take his place. Because that's the dynamic of the Predacons is like, most of them think they'd do a better job than him, and all of them are wrong.

45:34
Case Aiken
Yeah. That's such a fun dynamic of the Predacons in general, where unlike in the original transformers, where it's two opposing sides and this is the army, that's like, kind of in the winning position. Like, the Decepticons have Cybertron mostly under control at the start of the series and pretty much cements their hold over the course of it. And so Megatron is the leader of this army. And while there's starscream, the majority of the people are like, people in the army with him. The Predacons in this are all criminals. And by that I mean there are predacons on Cybertron and they have their own governing body. Sorry. We're recording this in 2023. And you can probably make some weird comparisons to geopolitical stuff going on right now. But suffice it to say they are a subsidiary state with the maximals being the dominant power.

46:19
Case Aiken
But the maximals are the good guys and kind of nice. And the Predacons are kind of like, well, we're working with them and we would like to not be doing this, but right now we've got our government and whatnot. And Megatron is a terrorist and he has criminals working with him that all have their own goals. And they're all criminals amongst the predacons.

46:38
Derek Van Dyke
Yes, because there's a major plot point of the actual predicon leadership wanting him fucking taken care of. Because his actions destabilize the peace that they are currently in. And it's like, look, we don't like the maximals either, but we have our plans, and we're operating within the realm of politics, and you are operating within the realm of car bombing. You know what I mean? And we cannot have this.

47:05
Case Aiken
Right. And that's a really interesting dynamic for these characters. You have to assume that some of that comes from the fact that this is a 90s show as opposed to an 80s show. The original show. Yeah, you could probably make a cold war parallel. And this is like the end of history. Everything is technically fine. We're at peace with everyone. But, oh, hey, there might be these terrorists out there. It's pre 911, but it's not pre the concept of terrorism.

47:30
Derek Van Dyke
I mean, look, diehard existed before, you know what I mean?

47:35
Case Aiken
And I also don't want to assign too much thought about the larger state of the world, but it is the zeitgeist that the show comes out of.

47:42
Derek Van Dyke
Right. I think it gives us, like, a really interesting squad of villains in that regard. And I think to this day, it makes the Beast Wars Megatron the most memorable and version of Megatron out there.

47:57
Case Aiken
Yes. Why do you always talk to yourself?

48:01
Jmike Folson
His best and biased impersonation.

48:03
Derek Van Dyke
I don't talk to myself.

48:04
Case Aiken
I'm not intelligent conversation. It's not until episode ten that we really get a real optimus focused episode, and that is guerrilla warfare. And I love several things about this episode. For one thing, while it is a goofy as fuck, like, we learn something about this plant and it becomes, like, important for later element, which is very much a part of early beast wars. Like the first half of season one has a lot of these kind of like the natural world. We're studying these things, blah, blah. We get one, an incredible use of the biology of the different species that we're in, which is that we see that the dinosaurs have issues when shit gets attached to their neck.

48:42
Derek Van Dyke
Oh, yeah.

48:43
Case Aiken
Like the way dinobots tiny arms when it's happening is so good. We get some fun uses of Optimus primal, being a giant gorilla in that when he has to move a boulder, he uses his foot to move a stone to shift. Things like those are fun. Right there. We get Scorponok attempting to be the mad scientist archetype that he was intended to be, but then everyone immediately remembering that he's a giant fuck up in everything he does.

49:11
Derek Van Dyke
Yes. And we get Optimus with the limiters removed.

49:17
Case Aiken
And this is actually the thing that I really wanted to get to when I was saying, like, well, Optimus has the power of action to do a lot more than he necessarily does in the majority of the show, like, he's typically one of the strongest members of the team until he's definitely the strongest member of the team.

49:33
Derek Van Dyke
Right.

49:33
Case Aiken
The fact of the matter is, he could probably go into a bloody fight and kill a lot of people or lead a lot of people into a situation like that. But he's not about murdering people. He's about apprehending people who stole something. Like the death penalty is actually not what is required of that. He has restraint all the time up until he doesn't hear when a giant fly attaches to his chest and really fucks with his central nervous system. Yeah.

49:59
Jmike Folson
Isn't the kryptonite.

50:00
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, well, and it's like, it's a great look. Everybody knows the famous world of cardboard speech with Superman. And that kind of applies here as it's the reminder that Optimus is holding back, because from his concept of morality, he is not supposed to be killing if he can avoid it, that's not what he is here to do. He is not comfortable with that. But also in terms of, like, he puts himself greatly at danger by going full berserker rage, and his team can't afford to lose him. So he could probably take out. As the episode establishes, most of the predacons single handedly die in the process, but then his team is left without him, and then where are they? It's multiple ways in which there's that recognition of, like, this is why I hold back.

50:49
Derek Van Dyke
This is why I am not the ace on the team.

50:52
Case Aiken
Yeah. When he is taken off the team, they fuck up trying to be like him, where we have to negotiate, and what they do is they spoil everything. They're like, here's a heads up that Optimus is coming your way. He's out of his mind. You can expect him anytime in the next hour.

51:07
Jmike Folson
Perhaps only Optimus can think like Optimus.

51:10
Case Aiken
Yeah, no way. So, yeah, I mean, he takes on tarantulas and he takes his anchor thingy. That is like, such a toyetic element. I remember, actually, that toy. It's like a spring loaded, like, grappling hook that fires off, and he uses the other end of it, which is sharp, to impale him against the wall.

51:25
Derek Van Dyke
It's brutal. This episode goes hard.

51:28
Case Aiken
Tanks. Like, all of these shots throughout these, which is such a Superman sequence of him just like, walking through gunfire to go into this whole fight. Fantastic stuff there. I mean, we're reminded, like, oh, yeah, big, scary, flying super monkey is kind of a scary thing.

51:43
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, it's fitting making him a gorilla because it's like, just like a gorilla. Right? We tend to not remember, oh, yeah, those things can rip your arm.

51:53
Case Aiken
Yeah. It's a gentle giant situation. Yes.

51:55
Derek Van Dyke
And be happy when they're being a gentle giant. Like, that's much preferred. Do the alternatives.

52:02
Case Aiken
But in this episode, he decides to stop monkeying around and just truck on through everyone. And at the very end, we get the callback to the first part where it's like, oh, just shit. Attached to his neck. But in this case, it's Megatron, and he's got even smaller arms he can't even reach. It's a fun episode. I mean, it's not the deepest episode. It's like, well, what if he went angry and bad? And wouldn't that be bad? And I think it's good for this point in the show. It's ten episodes in. To remind us, like, yeah, no, the leader could be, like, a more aggressive Rob Liefeld style character, and that would be a problem because X, Y and Z and X, Y and Z here is like, he would probably die. You guys would probably die. The amount of devastation isn't worth it.

52:43
Case Aiken
Like, the collateral damage, death, they are fighting, but they can be rebuilt. Most of the characters here take really bad punishment over time, and that doesn't kill them because they're robots. The rules are a little different. The rules get laid out over the course of the series for, like, what is a fatal kind of thing. But the death penalty is not just an automatic thing here. And that kind of incident is a big deal. Like, when a character actually dies. Dies. That is taken as a very serious thing, but it's also always on the table.

53:14
Derek Van Dyke
This is a great example of a sort of a bottle episode.

53:17
Case Aiken
Great.

53:17
Derek Van Dyke
Like, first half of season. One example of we have a plot that wraps itself up by the end that doesn't drastically change the status quo and is informed by and also tells us more about certain characters. One of the things that does happen is there's a lot of collateral damage to equipment and bases, and that's the sort of thing beast wars makes a huge point of keeping you abreast of that. Damage to the ships matters because eventually these things have to get fixed and fly off. And you can put a somewhat damaged robot in the tank, and they will slowly recover over time if it's not a fatal injury. But when something gets broke, it's broken. When a door or a side of the ship gets blown out, now you've got a side of the ship that needs to get repaired. Resources are limited.

54:05
Derek Van Dyke
Manpower is limited. That stuff matters.

54:08
Case Aiken
And by this point in the series, we had seen a bunch of these kind of gimmicky episodes. Like, I think we had already had the teleporter episode at this point, the chain of command episode where Optimus is taken away and Ratchet has to lead. All the stuff that we kind of need to do just to be like, yep, this is the show we're dealing with here, but this is just a fun episode in terms of being like, we really need to establish what the leader is capable of and why is he not doing some of those things. Yeah, and I think you make a great point in terms of the damage to equipment. While the show has a status quo, more or less in season one, there are big shifts.

54:42
Case Aiken
And when things happen that damage the two ships, that does have lasting impact in terms of the capabilities of the group, even while they are becoming more effective in their warfare, in developing new technology to fight with each other.

54:55
Derek Van Dyke
But yeah, guerrilla warfare. Great. First half of season one episode, the pilot gives us the hero. We get to see Optimus continue to be just the leader in the background of several episodes leading up to that. And then we get to see, okay, no, he can rip ass in the right circumstances, but also here's why he does not.

55:15
Case Aiken
Yeah, so moving on to. It's sort of the midseason finale, which is victory. I remember seeing this episode a lot, which I feel like the block probably ended somewhere about here. It's episode twelve. There's no actual victory. It's a fake out episode. It does do a really good job of setting up a recurring theme, which is that every time the maximals think that they have figured out espionage, they are reminded that the predacons are way better at espionage than they are, which I love because every time it's like, yeah, we figured out how to spy on their camera system. It's like, it's a good thing we figured out they're spying and now we have like fake information being fed to them. Right? Yeah. That's really great.

55:52
Jmike Folson
Yes.

55:55
Case Aiken
We open with. Were you guys deep Space Nine fans? There's an episode called the Pale moonlight, which is seen as like one of the better episodes of Star Trek in general, wherein there's kind of a similar thing where via deception, they are using a fake prerecorded sequence to mess with people in it. And in that scenario it's like way more fucked up than this. But it's still a scenario of the predacons have figured out that the maximals have been able to hardwire a feed from their security cameras. And so they pretend to die.

56:23
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, they stage, like, a fake rebellion and fight that leads to a horrible accident that kills them all, right?

56:29
Case Aiken
Which, knowing going into the episode, it's like, okay, they're really playing it up in it all. But on the same token, pterosaur is a piece of shit who has betrayed Megatron multiple times at this point and continues to betray him because he is just fucking scream. The show knows that we're transformers fans.

56:47
Derek Van Dyke
Starscream, but less intelligent, to be clear.

56:50
Case Aiken
So much worse. Which is why they bring in real starscream, just to be like, oh, better Starscream here.

56:56
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah.

56:56
Case Aiken
And a reason why Pterosaur does not make it into season. You know, it's plausible. The only part that really threw me is that Scorpinok is on the side of pterosaur in that sequence.

57:06
Derek Van Dyke
That should have been the giveaway, I think, to a lot of people.

57:09
Case Aiken
Right.

57:09
Derek Van Dyke
Because Scorponok's main defining trait for most of season one is that he's the one who stays loyal to Megatron. Unquestionably. Which probably also like the fact that Inferno comes in and is just that, but funnier is probably why Scorponok gets written off.

57:25
Case Aiken
Right? Yeah, we're not going to talk that much about Inferno here, but I actually really like Inferno. He's a giant fuck up, but in a way that I really adore.

57:33
Derek Van Dyke
Oh, incredibly funny.

57:37
Case Aiken
But yeah. So they stage this fake death and then abandoned their base. And apparently black arachnia has developed some kind of tech that hides the signature from their sparks so that no one can actually identify that they are still alive and allow the maximals to raid their base, take all the stuff they would need to get their ship able to fly again, with the intent of then attacking the maximals and stealing the ship and flying off of it. I do have questions about how that all works based on the timeline that we see in this episode. But the big focus, and while Optimus is part of it, the big focus of this episode is Dinobot being like, well, if I go back to Cybertron, I am a criminal who was part of a massive theft of one of the great relics of our world.

58:21
Case Aiken
And I left, and you guys pursued me and I was a turncoat and joined you when you pursued me. I have nothing to go home to.

58:29
Derek Van Dyke
You're all going home. And I'm going to prison, right?

58:33
Jmike Folson
Forever.

58:35
Case Aiken
And it's an interesting moment because he decides to stay. And they are like, well, we got to get the ship going. We're going to go. And he's like, I'm going to conquer this world. It's like, well, that's kind of fucked up. I don't think that's a good idea. It's like, well, yeah, I'll probably die eventually. That won't be tomorrow.

58:50
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah.

58:51
Case Aiken
So it's Dinobot focused at the beginning of this whole episode. Dinobot deciding not to go is why he's like, wandering around and stumbles upon the cave that the predacons are all hiding in. And then they are like, well, we have to kill him before he reveals that we're still alive. Except they just chase him to the ship as it's taking off. And that's why I'm confused where I'm like, so what was your plan? They said that they're waiting for them to get the ship online and that they're going to take it. And Megatron even tries to hop on alien queen style. And that's kind of the idea, right? It's not just like we're going to let the maximals go.

59:29
Derek Van Dyke
Our ship can't fly. If they take shit from our ship, then they can make theirs fly, and then we'll take their ride and get out of. But, like, it also doesn't totally work because we know that Megatron doesn't actually want to leave. And I guess that's like a retcon, right? Because there's stuff we don't learn about till later as to why Megatron's on the planet. So clearly they just hadn't thought that far ahead yet. We're at middle of season one, and.

59:56
Case Aiken
You could argue that part of that is that at this point in the show, they didn't realize that they were on Earth yet.

01:00:02
Derek Van Dyke
That could be true.

01:00:03
Case Aiken
Yeah, because that became clear once the vox plan at the end of season one kicks in and all of a sudden there's only one moon.

01:00:16
Derek Van Dyke
I've been lied to.

01:00:17
Case Aiken
They set up at the beginning that they don't think it's Earth. The question is, when does Maker run realize it? Because he definitely has an idea before the start of season two, which is when it becomes clear to everyone else. But it's just like, where in this timeline? But like I said, what's the plan if the ship is taking off? Because they weren't going to make it. They barely make it as it is.

01:00:39
Derek Van Dyke
What's funny about this to me is it works if you consider that most of the Predacons are not actually smart. Like, Tarantulas is intelligent smart, but Megatron's kind of a dumbass. He's just very cunning. And there's a major difference there. Megatron is instinctually very intelligent, right? He is a very sensing, feeling kind of intelligence. Because a lot of his plans aren't great. And a lot of his plans that are great is basically about inflicting damage. He is great at sowing chaos. This is not to excuse the fact that it's a bad plan, but to megatron is not. He's not David Xanatos, you know what I mean? He's just a devious bastard who turns.

01:01:30
Case Aiken
Into a T Rex. So I would say that he's like a tier above, like Cersei Lannister who thinks she's smart, but all of her plans are bad. Like, Megatron's plans typically are not that bad. He's not an idiot.

01:01:42
Derek Van Dyke
I said he's a dumb ass. He's not a dumb ass. But my gripe with this episode is.

01:01:47
Case Aiken
Honestly, because it's a 27 minutes animated show for kids. They needed the dramatic stakes of the ship taking off when it happened, as opposed to being like, well, here's our plan to get on the ship. They didn't have time for it because they had to also have Dinobot discover them and then they chase them and all that.

01:02:03
Derek Van Dyke
But if Dinobot hadn't stumbled over them and then chased them, then they would never have made it to the ship because it would have been gone.

01:02:09
Case Aiken
But we don't know if there's a different plan. And again, cheap animation. They couldn't really show them having a secret base or something like that.

01:02:15
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, it does end up being interesting getting to see. And this is where the episode does get to stand out for me and where I kind of overlook a lot of the stuff that doesn't work is you do get to see the way that all the maximals react to thinking they've won for good. And obviously there's a lot of excitement there. But you get to see, especially Optimus kind of unsettled in victory, of like, it's good to go home. But even to our enemies, this is an awful fate. And this is not how things should.

01:02:43
Case Aiken
Have had to know.

01:02:45
Derek Van Dyke
Showing that even in victory there is like, decency there.

01:02:49
Case Aiken
Death is on the table, but it's not necessarily what they're trying to serve. Optimus doesn't like. That's the circumstances. Ratrap loves that. That's the circumstances. He's like, yay, good. Fuck those guys. He's like, fuck this.

01:03:01
Derek Van Dyke
We're going to a titty bar. When we get back, he almost says.

01:03:04
Case Aiken
That in the episode. He's like, there's a tiny little corner bar we're going to go.

01:03:08
Derek Van Dyke
He says, they have their chest plates off at this place where the servers have the chest plates off or whatever.

01:03:12
Case Aiken
Yeah, right.

01:03:13
Derek Van Dyke
He says, I'm taking you to a titty bar, Cheetor.

01:03:17
Case Aiken
I know you're technically a child. We're going to go see some poop. But the reason why we had to talk about this episode, though, is that as the ship is going off, first of all, Dinobot doesn't quite make it, and Optimus goes and saves him, because it's Optimus. And that's exactly the kind of thing that we're looking for here. Cheetor is his support, but it's Cheetor. Optimus successfully gets Dinobot on the ship, but he is affected by the energon surge, and so he has to revert back to his beast mode. And then he gets shot in the hand by Scorponok. And so from dangling off the side of the ship, he then falls, and we think he's dead. The ship gets damaged, and it's crashing, and then Optimus flies up.

01:03:58
Case Aiken
And this is where we actually get the moment of them doing, it's a bird, it's a plane, Superman. Except it's like, nah, it's Optimus. And he doesn't catch the ship and move it somewhere else. He just slows the distance so it doesn't crash.

01:04:11
Derek Van Dyke
But it's a very, like, moment straight from the page.

01:04:14
Case Aiken
Superman.

01:04:17
Derek Van Dyke
Pushing against the.

01:04:19
Case Aiken
Yeah, it is the most Superman sequence in all of transformers. Full stop right there.

01:04:25
Derek Van Dyke
They even do, like, a little style.

01:04:30
Case Aiken
Like the royalty free version of the John Williams score right there. It's actually kind of like theme song for the show, actually. And it's just a great sequence there. And this is, like, really the spot where this character is the superman of the series. On that note, I do actually want to call attention to the design of Optimus Primal in season one, because we haven't really talked about that. I don't want to get into the whole mouth for snowmouth thing that they vacillate back and forth between. I think that the unified design of the front part of his face coming down and forming that vent structure on his chest with that circle shape in it, but then having the predominant part be eight tissue and then exposed metal.

01:05:09
Jmike Folson
Parts, that was a little weird.

01:05:11
Case Aiken
I think it actually does a really good job of having a very streamlined, Superman ish kind of form to him, it draws attention to his chest in a way that is appropriate. He's got dimensions that look human ish enough in good ways. Maybe the color scheme could be different instead of white and red for his under parts.

01:05:28
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, he's got, like, the red for the joint parts and stuff.

01:05:32
Case Aiken
But I think he looks really good in season one. I think it's the best that Optimus primal ever looks. I am not a big fan of his season two look. His season three look is just a different character. But season one, I think it's a good fusion of, like, here's the beast stuff, here's the Optimus prime stuff that we're doing with it all, and then it comes together in a pretty solid design. And I think in this episode is where you really see it. I like that it's the guns rotate forward to shoot or rotate back to act as, like, rockets or at least as, like, boosters, because I think he's had it up and fired at the same time. But it definitely acts as, like, boosters here.

01:06:07
Case Aiken
And you see these huge rocket flares as he's, like, giving it his all to keep the ship from crashing, and you're like, this is a really cool moment. It's really pushing a character who we've established is a heavy hitter, but not broken heavy on this team to his fullest.

01:06:22
Derek Van Dyke
But this is also a perfect circumstance for him to cut loose in the moment in a way that he normally wouldn't.

01:06:28
Case Aiken
Yeah. As we said, optimus is typically not the focus point of the show. He's the leader, and so usually not like, the one who has to learn the lessons. So we kind of jump to the end of the series next when we talk about before the storm and then other voices, which is basically a three part sequence.

01:06:44
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah. The end of the lengthy season one.

01:06:48
Case Aiken
I think these episodes are incredible for several reasons. One, it ties in so much that has happened in the season so well. The allusions to all the encounters with the alien artifacts throughout is really good. Setting up Tarantulas's betrayal and what his plans are right from the get go. Setting up all of Megatron's shit right from the get go is really good. Setting up Black Arachnia's shit is great. All the characters have interesting things that they're doing in this episode, and if they don't do an interesting thing, they're gonna die for good. Yeah.

01:07:19
Derek Van Dyke
Every villain who matters gets some heavy stuff to do and, like, big reveals around them, because it's going to be megatron Tarantulas. And black Arachnia, who are the plot important predicons here forward. Like Inferno and Waspinator will stick around because they're great soldiers. Yeah, exactly. And great, like cannon fodder. But it is the three that are going to be the most impactful to the plot get their big reveals at this point.

01:07:49
Case Aiken
Right? And I think at this point, we have all gotten very tired of pterosaur.

01:07:53
Derek Van Dyke
Pterosaur and scorponok by this point. This is like 20 something episodes in. They have been extremely one note characters. The problem is that Tarantulas is becoming a better star scream than pterosaur by far.

01:08:07
Case Aiken
I mean, tarantulas is creepy. That's the biggest thing. Pterosaur is just a whiny bitch who wants power.

01:08:15
Derek Van Dyke
Pterosaur is a superficially starscream analog, but Tarantulas is a better, actual scheming character. He is unique. Instead of just trying to retread the same personality traits. You truly don't understand what the fuck he's up to. And also his vocal affectation doesn't make you want to dig your ears out.

01:08:34
Case Aiken
Right?

01:08:35
Derek Van Dyke
Like, pterosaur works. You can only hear him talk like this for so many episodes before you want him written off the show. And with Scorpinok, it's just that Inferno is better than Scorponok. Right? Like, we have a better, loyal doofus. So of course those two get written off the show.

01:08:52
Case Aiken
Yeah. Not to mention that they chose quick strike as the replacement in the following season, which is like, yeah, let's have the exact same base animal, but cooler looking and kind of manticore ish instead of a straight. Like, I wasn't tired of Scorponok at this point because it's fine. He just wasn't doing anything new.

01:09:09
Derek Van Dyke
I didn't have feelings about him because he just didn't have shit to do.

01:09:13
Case Aiken
Yeah, it's just like, oh, he's dumb. He wishes he was the scientist.

01:09:18
Derek Van Dyke
Quickstrike is dumb, too. Good news.

01:09:20
Case Aiken
Yeah. But quick strike is also dumb in a fun way. He stands out at how dumb he is. Yeah. Wonderful set up for what's to come. It's like, oh, yeah, they're coming. This is going to be bad when they show up. Let's rally our forces together here. I don't have distinct things to really say about before the storm versus the other voices episodes because it all flows together so well.

01:09:42
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, really. You might as well have called it part one, part two, part three.

01:09:46
Case Aiken
Right. Which when we actually get the aliens arriving and doing their stuff. I mean, we get the golden disc set up, which is nice that we're like looping back in the golden disc idea from the pilot, which I don't think we've really cared about.

01:09:56
Derek Van Dyke
I don't think they did much with the whole first season.

01:09:59
Case Aiken
Well, because they didn't think it earth. So it's not a thing that they really care about. But like, oh hey, here, new golden disc. And Inferno is a part of that whole sequence because Inferno is like, I don't think I can express how wonderful it is having a fire ant character who thinks he's ant at all points. He's so fucking good.

01:10:18
Jmike Folson
Flamethrower.

01:10:20
Case Aiken
But Airazor gets kidnapped. There's a truce between the maximals. It's kind of funny the way they handle it. Again, the maximals try to be deceptive and they try to do like a double faint kind of thing. And then the predacons are already doing a triple faint, so it doesn't even fucking matter. Which is just a wonderful part about that dynamic where it's like, even when the maximals are being like, no, we're playing chess. And it's like, yes, but we're playing 3d chess.

01:10:42
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, you cannot out double cross the masters of this shit. That's the predicon Olympic sport. Which does make it fun though, when rat trap like legal loopholes his way into a fight with waspinator, right?

01:10:59
Case Aiken
But so the aliens arrive. They initially have air razor captured inside this weird biological dome that they set up.

01:11:07
Derek Van Dyke
It's like a big bush.

01:11:09
Case Aiken
Yeah, it's weird. Weird. It's like thing texture. Like Marvel's the thing, but green.

01:11:15
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, it's very much an n 64 texture.

01:11:18
Case Aiken
You know what I mean? That's the weird part about this era, which is watching this show. I'm like, oh, right, this is what high res version of what was in 64, which was coming out at the same time. If you're a video gamer and you're like, oh, remember that weird banjo Kitsuy.

01:11:32
Derek Van Dyke
Ass wall texture over here?

01:11:33
Case Aiken
Right? It's that nostalgia for that PS one era in 64 era where there is weird nostalgia for that level of CGI because it was so fucking new when it came out. But this is where they actually were like doing a show as opposed to doing a video game for it. Yeah. Anyway, they're like, well, they have complete mastery of Energon. They can create energon. Like they're not worried about Energon. You can't just shoot this with like a laser. So they have Scorponok do one effective thing in this, which is he's got a stinger that he can charge up with venom. He pierces a hole in. So Optimus primal goes in, takes Airazor out, and stays to parlay with these aliens who take the form of Unicron. Yes.

01:12:14
Derek Van Dyke
What a great shout out.

01:12:17
Case Aiken
Yeah. And this is the point where the show definitely knows what they are trying to build towards, because like I said in the pilot, the creators of the show have said, yeah, we just threw this idea of a great war out there. And people were like, oh, you mean like, that was the original Decepticons versus Autobots? And we're like, here. We're there. Exactly what we meant, man. Unicron, voiced by the same voice actor as Tigatron, because you just need someone with the deepest fucking voice.

01:12:44
Derek Van Dyke
Oh, I didn't realize it was also the same guy. Yeah, the fake Unicron's voice is so heavily modulated.

01:12:50
Case Aiken
Right. Well, they weren't getting Orson Wells to do it at this point. Right. Because he's dead. And also, it's still weird that he did it in the first place.

01:12:59
Derek Van Dyke
We have not mastered necromancy at this point.

01:13:02
Case Aiken
No, not quite yet. We're getting close, though. But it's fun having Unicron show up. For one thing, it's a big villain of the Transformers lore. It's specifically the movie. So it's actually likely to be a character that people are familiar with, even if they only were tangentially familiar with Transformers stuff, because the movie is likely to be a thing you've seen. So that's always cool. Unicron, just in general, is, like, fun and has a crazy design because he's just galactus, but a transformer.

01:13:28
Derek Van Dyke
Galactus who turns into a planet that is also a blender.

01:13:32
Case Aiken
Yeah. It's ego, the living planet transforming into Galactus. It's great.

01:13:36
Derek Van Dyke
He's a robot, which makes him even fucking cooler, right?

01:13:39
Case Aiken
Yes. And it's fun to be like, no, we just picked a thing that was important to you.

01:13:44
Derek Van Dyke
We hope this gets the message across. Yeah.

01:13:47
Case Aiken
Which I do like, though, because Unicron, despite the fact that he's the villain of a movie and moves on, it's like, no, this was, like, legitimately a planet came to eat my homeworld. This has left a deep scar in our psyche thousands of years in the future.

01:14:00
Derek Van Dyke
This is the cosmic robot devil. Are you kidding me?

01:14:03
Case Aiken
And then we get this great setup where it's like, no, this was an experiment, and you have contaminated it. It's no longer a good experiment. We're going to wipe the board and it's like, oh, you guys are fucking evil too.

01:14:13
Jmike Folson
It's going to nuke everything.

01:14:14
Case Aiken
And at that point they revealed that the second moon is not a moon.

01:14:18
Jmike Folson
That's no moon, it's a battle.

01:14:22
Case Aiken
And this gets pretty gnarly. I love the way it works, which is that one. It's like really cool looking, the way that the rock artifice of the moon blows off and reveals this fully mechanical spiked.

01:14:35
Derek Van Dyke
And then it unfolds and refolds in on itself.

01:14:40
Case Aiken
Yeah, first there's all these turrets and the light kicks in this line across it, and then it reshapes into this ring structure and it's all very shitty CGI. Honestly, I don't want.

01:14:53
Derek Van Dyke
Still goes hard.

01:14:53
Case Aiken
I don't want a new Beast War series, but I would not be that mad if someone wanted to do like a remastered Beast wars series. Yeah, I mean, like, do some edits, beast wars abridged, but with better graphics would be awesome. But that fucking moon is so goddamn creepy. And it's not just like, here's a laser gun, it's a heat beam that is going to ignite the energon that we've already set up. Literally has been like the big plot point of the show. And so we can establish that the beam itself is not necessarily going to kill you just to be in it's just eventually it'll burn you up. And so if you have like four shields or something, you could probably move in it for a little while.

01:15:27
Case Aiken
It's going to be kind of destructive and damaging, but it's not just an energy weapon. It's deliberately trying to have the energon be ignited and blow up and it's like everywhere. So it's going to kill everyone. And that's a really cool plot point there. And then we find out that fucking trader tarantulas, along with Black Raknia, who had been sent to kind of betray him, but also betray mega like webs upon webs of deception.

01:15:52
Jmike Folson
They're spiders.

01:15:53
Case Aiken
Yeah, they're spiders. They're all figuring out this thing and it's like, oh, well, were just going to fuck off because we're pretty sure we're all going to die. So we do actually have a working spaceship that we used from our parts and then we stole one of your space coffins.

01:16:06
Derek Van Dyke
Space coffins.

01:16:07
Case Aiken
I mean, they do describe it like a coffin when Optimus, it's snug. Like a coffin. Yeah. And Optimus is like, well, yeah, I'm going to fucking go do this. And shooters like, I could do it. It's like, what are you going to do, dude? You're going to pilot this thing and then just die? No, I got to be the one to do it. Which is an echo to the pilot, where it's like, he would never put someone in that situation that he wouldn't do himself. And it makes sense. He's more likely to survive the blast than air razor, who's pretty frail. He's monkey.

01:16:33
Derek Van Dyke
Well, just also, he's the captain, right. It is his responsibility to save everyone else. He has taken that responsibility completely to heart.

01:16:45
Case Aiken
So he gets in, and he pilots it, and he is successful in the mission, but not in the, well, it'd be nice if no one died situation.

01:16:55
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, they make it seem like he has died in the process. It seems like a sacrifice.

01:16:59
Case Aiken
I wouldn't say seems like, yeah, he died.

01:17:04
Derek Van Dyke
I don't know enough about the behind the scenes of, like, they planned on leaving themselves out to bring him back or not. But, I mean, yeah, it's played as a sacrifice because he thinks he's going to get out, but, yeah, Megatron has actually seen ahead. He has predicted betrayal and therefore programmed the flying coffin to not open up.

01:17:26
Case Aiken
Right.

01:17:27
Derek Van Dyke
So that Optimus can't get out and fly away.

01:17:29
Case Aiken
Yeah. And he makes a really good line about anticipating the betrayals of the spiders and being able to be a good leader because he can plan for the backstabbing, and that's a really cool moment there that allows for him to win the situation. And I got to say, mainframe entertainment, who did this and did reboot, they love having these alliances at the end of a season between the heroes and the villains against the greater threat, and then having the villain betray the good guys, because that's what happens here, where Megatron locks Optimus into the pod. And so Optimus just stuck there as it flies in to explode against this moon, and he dies. When you look at the debris, there's actually a spot where you can see his chest piece. Like, he's destroyed in this.

01:18:13
Case Aiken
Now they decide to go, like, a weird, messianic route.

01:18:17
Derek Van Dyke
That's right. Yeah. I'm remembering now how they actually get right bringing him back.

01:18:23
Case Aiken
So, yeah, season two goes into the lore in a weird way that when I started watching the season two premiere, I was like, oh, right. They start talking a lot about shit from Transformers, the movie that was not in the show prior to that, like they say by the Matrix, a lot which is a reference to the matrix of leadership. They allude to stuff like that, but, yeah, no. Optimus Primal dies.

01:18:47
Derek Van Dyke
If there's one thing you optimuses are good at, it's dying.

01:18:50
Case Aiken
But unlike Optimus prime, who they just put the pieces together, and you're like, well, why didn't you just do that? In this one, they're like, no, he's fucking dead. We had to go to heaven, find his spark. Find a brain dead body, and put his spark into it.

01:19:02
Derek Van Dyke
It's a great finale to the season. You have to assume that they're going to bring Optimus back somehow in the same way that, you know, the death of Superman wasn't going to. You know, there's no way. But how are they gonna navigate this? And the fact that the entire beginning of the second season is okay. We've got to address what we're doing with Optimus.

01:19:28
Case Aiken
Yeah. And they go two episodes without him. Yeah, only two.

01:19:31
Jmike Folson
Thought it was more than two.

01:19:31
Derek Van Dyke
And defining, like, and the show is very defined by his absence in those couple of episodes before we get him back between the finale and the beginning mini stretch of season two really helps refocus, even though we don't get a lot of Optimus episodes through the rest of the show, like, how important he is to the rest of the team.

01:19:53
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, they're at a loss without him. And in fact, we get a character like Silverbolt, who is clearly supposed to be the same type of character as an Optimus primal. He's not lose effective, but he is that Paladin type character. And he is swayed to be a predicon at the beginning because he doesn't have an obvious example like an Optimus primal. It's when Optimus Primal shows up that he completely flips sides again.

01:20:16
Derek Van Dyke
That's actually a really interesting comparison point to make, because also, like, Silverbolt is in so many ways the closest thing to Optimus. He's clearly one of the heaviest hitters on the maximal side. He's also a flyer. He's good at pretty much any task. And he is very much like a moral paragon. He's just kind of naive and inexperienced almost to a higher degree than even Cheetor is and needs Optimus to be like that guiding point of how to actually be the thing that he wants to be in his heart.

01:20:49
Case Aiken
It's just so apparent how important Optimus Primal has become for everything in the season two premiere. They are just completely lost without him.

01:21:00
Jmike Folson
Yeah.

01:21:00
Case Aiken
It's not just a manpower situation. It's really just a rallying point. They don't know how to function because they needed that beacon in order to move forward.

01:21:10
Derek Van Dyke
Nobody is ready to step up and be the new team.

01:21:12
Case Aiken
Dad. Yeah. Season two opens up with the whole shockwave of the impact and we get them all, not all transformed. Rewatching it. One thing that frustrates me is that they do a really good job of setting up why several characters are not impacted by the blast. And then there's just like, Air Razor and Tiger Tron who just are right next to everyone else and not impacted at all.

01:21:35
Derek Van Dyke
It's also weird because a lot of these characters had, like, there's a transmetal rhinox. So why Rhinox get done?

01:21:44
Case Aiken
Know, it makes enough sense. The characters who are in the healing spaces, because waspinator falls in it right when the blast occurs. Rhinox and Dinobot are in the healing pods. Sure, it's fine. It makes enough sense that they're shielded in that regard. But it is really weird that Cheetor and Rattrap are both glowing and being like, we're being hit by a blast. And then right next to them, Airazor and Tigatron are both like, we're being hit by a blast. And they point out that they're not starting to like, the shot happens. It's like, that's weird. I love that both scorponok and pterosaur look like they're about to transform and then they both just fucking fall into the lava. Fuck those.

01:22:25
Derek Van Dyke
And like, I honestly wondered if were going to get something, like, were they going to fuse or something and like, no, we're just dropping them in the magma, right?

01:22:32
Case Aiken
Yeah. Also would have been an interesting twist on the scenario, but nope. Yeah, I don't love the transmetal designs in general. Megatron is fine. I think it's boring compared to the season one Megatron design. I love the hand T Rex head design, but I think his is overall fine. I think ratraff is fine. I think that Cheetor's looks terrible, particularly his robot mode. It's garish and weird.

01:22:59
Derek Van Dyke
I think tarantulas is the one that I would say is a flat improvement to me. And part of that's just because of how closely it sticks to the design and aesthetic of the first version of tarantulas. Everybody else gets major color, like, palette swap changes, major changes to the way their face is designed. Like, optimus gets big, giant bushy eyebrows.

01:23:23
Case Aiken
And like, this is actually why I say it. I fucking hate the Optimus transmetal. Wand design.

01:23:30
Derek Van Dyke
I like most of it, but that face and head is bad.

01:23:33
Case Aiken
I hate that the robot form is so different from the ape form. If the ape form was what translated over, or vice versa. But they look like completely different characters between the two modes. And it seems to be alien things that just don't link up between each other.

01:23:51
Derek Van Dyke
Why does he have blue pectoral muscles as a monkey and then have what looks like a regular brown and skin tone?

01:23:59
Case Aiken
Why does Hector as a robot but not as an ape? Right.

01:24:05
Derek Van Dyke
It's really a bizarre aesthetic choice.

01:24:09
Case Aiken
And, like, quick strike is fine, but quick strike I don't think is enhanced or made worse by being a transmetal. Like, the snakehead looks like could have been scales. It's, like, kind of gold looking. I don't think it's really affected by it.

01:24:20
Derek Van Dyke
Well, he's a fusor, but quick strike.

01:24:22
Case Aiken
Is a transmetal fusor. Silverbolt is not. And I think Silverbolt would have been much more interesting in season one, where it would have been something different from what we had seen at that point, but he still would have looked biological. The point is, neither of them really changed the game. And then all the later ones, it's just kind of like, well, whatever. It's like the original dinobots on Transformers, where it's just like, yeah, they just are made to be animal like for some reason. Like rampage. And then death charge are like, yeah, they're technically transmetals, but it loses the meaning of the part.

01:24:55
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah. When do we ever use depth charge's alternate mode? Like, basically never. Rampage gets a little use out of it. Like, Cheetor gets to become a team flyer, especially in the absence of Airazor, so that's good. But they get used for gags. More like rat trap. Having a car mode is mostly so people can ride around on him. And it looks like dudes in the Cosair shrine, like mini cars in a parade.

01:25:19
Case Aiken
It's extremely funny having dinobot ride rat trap. It's a good, dynamic rat trap. I'm not really bothered by his robot mode looks fine. His rat mode looks fine. Like, the fact that he has, like, wheels is fine. It's not a huge change.

01:25:32
Jmike Folson
He has legs and wheels, doesn't he?

01:25:34
Case Aiken
Yeah, it's mostly that I just dislike that Optimus primal doesn't make sense. Yeah.

01:25:40
Derek Van Dyke
To me, the first generation of designs are the iconic looks for all of the characters, and most of them are, at best, kept similar. So cool toys, not great redesigns. The quality of writing in season two is still very good.

01:25:58
Case Aiken
Absolutely.

01:25:59
Derek Van Dyke
I mean, because especially season two is where we get code of hero.

01:26:02
Case Aiken
Yeah. Which, why don't we get over to that? So some shit happens in season one. Like, code of Hero is about halfway through season two, but it's real goddamn good. With the shift in season one to season two, we established this is, in fact, earth, which means that all of the shit that they were doing beforehand that they thought, well, it's for not because we didn't actually make it to Earth, they're actually on Earth. It just had been obfuscated by alien technology, which means that the golden disc, which turns out to be the golden disc from the Voyager.

01:26:31
Derek Van Dyke
I fucking love.

01:26:32
Case Aiken
I love that detail. It's so good. It's a lot of information about Earth. And ultimately, it will mean that they're on Earth after the arc ship from Transformers has crashed, landed on Earth. But before we get to that point, we have to establish that, how the time travel rules work. And this show decides to go with the idea of, like, well, yeah, you're in the past, so you can modify some stuff and remember it, but you can change shit in the future, and the digital record of it will change. They test this by having rampage, who. I like Rampage's personality. I forgot how much he is a douchebag and hates Megatron.

01:27:07
Case Aiken
Yeah, I understood that he is only loyal to Megatron because Megatron cuts his spark out and has one of those hand grip kind of workout devices to squeeze it and hurt people, which is just great. So he's able torture Rampage, who is this unkillable thing, by basically having his heart and squeezing his heart in a way that hurts him. Rampage is, however, a giant crab with, like, cannon for his alternate mode. And so he's able to just blow up mountains. And that mountain that was on this recording is now not there anymore.

01:27:36
Derek Van Dyke
The peak is broken up the way that it is because we blew the peak off of it.

01:27:39
Case Aiken
Right.

01:27:40
Derek Van Dyke
So that means that by blowing up the peak in the past, we've changed it in the future.

01:27:44
Case Aiken
And we watched the footage change, which is like, a very clear, like, okay, yeah, no. So everything's different now, which means that if we kill all the humans, they won't be able to help the Autobots in the future, and they decide we're going to fuck up these australopithecus that are down there. So we get this episode where the predicons just are like, yep, this is the population of hominids that will eventually become humans, that will eventually help the transformers, the Autobots create the situation. So let's murder them all. And we get to see some very scary predicons on human violence going on here.

01:28:17
Case Aiken
We get the great setup at the beginning of the snake attacking a human and probably killing it, but we get to be reminded of, like, oh, yeah, black arachnia has machine guns all over her arms with all those different legs. Inferno gets to be scary with his giant flamethrower gun. They all get to be effective for a moment there. Meanwhile, dinobot has betrayed the team at this point because the whole time travel thing was making him feel like he was predestined to be in the situation. And finding out that time travel works differently means that he realizes that, oh, actually, I made a bunch of choices that were bad. It wasn't because I was required to. That's not good.

01:28:53
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah. The context of all through season two, dinobot has been grappling with the question of whether or not he even has free will in the first place, or if everything's predetermined. Is he the way that he is because he has to make these decisions? Is he permanently fated to go back to the predicons? So, yeah, learning, like you said, that the future can be changed kind of breaks him into realizing, like, no, then my code means something, and I need to stand by the concept of honor that I have.

01:29:28
Case Aiken
Yeah. A concept of honor that he was grappling with so much that he almost commits supuku at the beginning of the episode.

01:29:34
Derek Van Dyke
It's a really heavy episode.

01:29:36
Case Aiken
Yeah. Side note, while rewatching this, I realized that in the back of his chambers, he has the flesh of the dinobot clone leathered out and set up as decoration on the wall. And that's so fucking cool. Particularly because he established that he ate the dinobot clone in season one and he has his skin as just a trophy.

01:29:59
Derek Van Dyke
Don't overthink that.

01:30:01
Case Aiken
I love it. It's also great because it's a reminder of the clone, because the clone is important for later in the season. Weird details there, but, yeah, super heavy on this whole thing. Just the writing is fantastic. I need to call out that the show has a lot of really good writers on it, writers that we know for other stuff, like Marv Wolfman wrote episodes. Larry Wean wrote episodes. Like, guys working in comics today were working on the show. This episode is written by Ian Weir, who I am not familiar with, but fuck, does he write a hell of an episode. Like the speech Dinobot gives when he realizes the time travel paradox. He realizes the circumstances. He realizes that because of various things. He ended up giving the disc back to Megatron, so that this is all his fault.

01:30:41
Case Aiken
And he realizes the power that he gave Megatron as a result of this all is incredible. When he says it's like, oh, my actions are my own, my decisions are my own. But I find at this moment, I cannot make any other choice.

01:30:54
Jmike Folson
Where he says, I am warrior. Let the battle be joined. And I was like, that's kick ass.

01:31:00
Case Aiken
I don't think this is weird to say. I think that every person who has ever played DND has wanted this to be how their character dies.

01:31:07
Jmike Folson
Yes.

01:31:08
Case Aiken
They just have that really indulgent last stand kind of moment. Like the executioner at the Bridge of Hell from Walt Simonson's Thor. Run. It's just fantastic stuff here where Dinobot has to go in. And we've established that the transmetals are more advanced than the non transmetals. They no longer have just, like, way too much power all the time. So there is that as a restriction. And he has to deal with collateral damage, which is a Superman thing we talk about. And, yeah, Dinobot is not the Superman character, but if enough people die, they lose. Yeah.

01:31:40
Derek Van Dyke
And lose, for it's over.

01:31:42
Case Aiken
Yeah. So Dinobot goes in. I mean, first off, he takes on tarantulas. I love the whole, like, the stench of your perversion revealed yourself line. Tarantulas, even when he's, like, fully a robot, is just so fucking creepy. He just wants to melt that deer and just drink that deer. Yeah.

01:32:04
Derek Van Dyke
Dinobot going full guerrilla warfare and using just superior tactics to take out each of these predacons, like, one after another, eventually leading to the hammer.

01:32:17
Case Aiken
Yeah. Same way Optimus, he takes the machine gun fire from black arachnia with Inferno. He completely cuts his body in half with his weird spine sword. Yeah, the fighting is incredible. Quick strike shows up, and Quickstrike's not effective. But Dinobot is running out of power, so he can't laser blast him anymore. So he just has to beat him into unconsciousness. And then Megatron shows up. And Megatron one is just. He's big, he's a t Rex, he's a transmetal, and he's got human hostages. That whole sequence is so good. Right down to the spot where Dinobot has already run out of power. His system is trying to shut down. He's overriding it, and they're like, your spark is going to die. There's no walking away from this one.

01:32:58
Derek Van Dyke
Disable the limiters. It's time to just finish this out.

01:33:02
Case Aiken
And the whole sequence where it's like, what are you going to do against a transmetal? And he says, improvise. And he takes a stick that he tried to use, slams it into a rock to turn it into an axe, and uses it to do just enough damage to Megatron that he's able to rest the disc away from him and use the last of his power to do an eye beam that we've established is like a big energy waste for him to destroy the golden disc and thus render Megatron's powers inert because they also set up very well. Megatron has not made copies of this disc because he doesn't trust anyone.

01:33:32
Derek Van Dyke
So by making that sacrifice and using the last of his energy to the point that he cannot be revived, he has stopped Megatron's ability to change the future effectively.

01:33:42
Case Aiken
Just in time for the maximals who were racing as fast as they could to get there and all talking about being like, fuck, fuck, fuck. We're not going to make it in time.

01:33:50
Derek Van Dyke
We're not going to exist if we fuck this up.

01:33:54
Case Aiken
But also, it's like, there's no way he's going to be alive when we get there. And they're right. Ultimately, they're all worried. And we get to see some of the characters who are mad at Dinobot. Like, Rattrap is really pissed off at Dinobot because Dinobot betrayed them. And they had this whole scene of Rattrap being like, you know what? He might have been like a something slagging Sorian, but at least we knew where you stand. But he's super worried about Dinobot. Like, we know that they care about this guy at this point, and they're moving as fast as they can to get there, and they arrive just a little too late.

01:34:23
Derek Van Dyke
I like how they get to use the we know where you stand line, both to express the disappointment when he betrays them and then also after his death. It's a great bookending of his arc.

01:34:34
Case Aiken
In season two, but then also with one last barb from Dinobot being like, upwind of you, for preference. Yes. Such a great relationship between those two characters. This whole show had such a great rivalry, so much banter that has been just delightful. And that we get that at the end too. It's so good. Carrie chalk as Optimus Primal being like, you saved. Like, I want that voice at my deathbed. You did good, kid. Can't imagine a better thing. Yeah, it's very much a ship out of danger. Like, yes, Spock, the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few or the one.

01:35:11
Jmike Folson
Sorry I didn't tear up watching this.

01:35:13
Derek Van Dyke
How do you.

01:35:14
Case Aiken
Not easily the most episode of the show, you give it to anyone. They're like, that was really fucking good. Sorry. This was 90s transformers. Yeah.

01:35:23
Derek Van Dyke
It turns out beast wars.

01:35:25
Case Aiken
Yeah. God, it's just incredible. Even though this wasn't, like, an optimist, primal, focused episode and isn't really about that kind of archetype, it is still about a character sacrificing a position of security to give of themselves to make the world a better place. And it's just so well written. It's so goddamn good. Even in this episode. Like, Danobot is not a nice person.

01:35:48
Derek Van Dyke
No, he's not a nice person. He's not even really a good person, necessarily. But I think the show makes it clear that there is a difference between a good person and an honorable person. Right. It's not even necessarily about whether or not Dinobot redeemed himself at the end so much as, like, dinobot was true to his concept of morality. His arc in season two is about him losing touch with the things that he believes in and coming back to that and believing in that self actualization and believing in that concept of honor and defending the helpless, not because they're innocent, not because they are good, but because it is injust. If the humans had been better fighters and it had been a closer fight, then he'd have left them to be.

01:36:40
Derek Van Dyke
And I think it's understanding the full complexity of that character is kind of what makes him so fascinating, even at the end.

01:36:47
Case Aiken
Yeah, and at the end, his spark leaves his body and joins the Matrix, which is like their heaven. This season brings up more the whole idea of the matrix of leadership and everything from Transformers, the movie, less so. The show, they were kind of more like flying by the seat of their pants. But this expression of Till all are one and it's a Valhalla for this character. His spark continues on, and we know that it is a thing that they have addressed in this season because Primal died and was brought back from it all. But here, Dinobot is actually given arrest after so much struggle, internal and external, and really making that valiant last stand and fuck, man, it is so good. If you have not seen this episode, even if you haven't seen the show, I would say watch this episode.

01:37:35
Derek Van Dyke
It's a great, singular episode. Stands on its own, but also within the context of the show.

01:37:41
Case Aiken
Right.

01:37:41
Derek Van Dyke
The fact that Dinobot has probably the most impactful death in the show. Other than Optimus is undermined by the fact that they bring Optimus back. But it also kind of makes the fact that Optimus is the one that gets to come back kind of makes that special. We couldn't have done that with Dinobot. We could do that with Primal, which is, to your point, is, like, because primal shifts kind of away from a Superman archetype and almost into, like, a Jesus character. Like, the further into the show, you get regular prime.

01:38:16
Case Aiken
Yeah. Season one, he's allowed to be, like, a little unsure of himself a little bit, kind of figuring things out. But season two, Primal has become the team leader, and things are kind of locked in getting into the end of the show, which is at the end of season two, they find the arc from classic Transformers. They find the giant robots that are inside, and it's staggering to see the scale difference. And Megatron kills Optimus prime, or at least he, like, shoots him in the head.

01:38:46
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah.

01:38:47
Case Aiken
And so to prevent Optimus prime from dying, Optimus Primal makes the dramatic decision to absorb his spark into himself while they fix the body. And that causes him to transform into this crazy. What they call the optimal Optimus, which is this giant robot. Giant by the maximal standards, but not as big as a full g one transformer standards.

01:39:11
Derek Van Dyke
I kind of took him to be like, g one transformer scale, honestly, no.

01:39:16
Case Aiken
You look at Optimus prime head size versus the rest of them.

01:39:19
Jmike Folson
Like, oh, he's massive.

01:39:21
Derek Van Dyke
I'm probably lightly misremembering here.

01:39:24
Case Aiken
He's real fucking big. Like, he's real fucking big.

01:39:26
Derek Van Dyke
They turn him into a gigantic blue and orange Optimus with, like, four different forms.

01:39:31
Case Aiken
Right. And still some ape details for some reason, but they never really do the ape thing.

01:39:35
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, he's an ape jet motorcycle robot.

01:39:38
Jmike Folson
I think when they finally see him, see Optimus in the arc, and they look up at the scale, he's ginormous sitting in the chair.

01:39:49
Derek Van Dyke
And I'm like, oh, yeah.

01:39:53
Case Aiken
He'S g one. Optimus is like, a kaiju fighting kind of size thing. Like, he's, like, three or four stories tall. Optimal Optimus is, like, two stories tall. He's real fucking big. He's just not g one transformer big.

01:40:10
Derek Van Dyke
So we have this moment of, like, we're going to play up once again. It's the season tween. So we have to have Optimus make a big sacrifice like we did with the end of season one. And I don't know that it hits as well. The stakes are incredibly high, obviously, but what ends up happening is he does a risky thing that just turns him into the most powerful character on the cast. So powerful that, as you pointed out, they just have to write him out of every episode.

01:40:36
Case Aiken
Yeah, that's the thing. After this point, he is not the main character in any episode because he is just way too.

01:40:42
Derek Van Dyke
He's barely a supporting character. You can't do anything with him because he instantly solves every problem if he's allowed to interface with the plot.

01:40:51
Jmike Folson
This has been the point to bring back that theme from the movie where Rod takes his.

01:40:59
Case Aiken
Arguably the point where he actually becomes a prime because, yeah, he's an optimist. But the primal part is more like a joke almost. In the pilot, it's Megatron who calls him that for the first time.

01:41:12
Derek Van Dyke
They append that onto his name because he's got a new gorilla form.

01:41:16
Case Aiken
But, like, the prime part is the important part. It's actually not the Optimus part. The prime part is what the matrix of leadership bestows on you because Optimus is a name.

01:41:28
Derek Van Dyke
It's like, it's not. It's not the fact that he's Gary. It's that he's Gary.

01:41:32
Case Aiken
Right.

01:41:32
Derek Van Dyke
Like, that's what matters.

01:41:34
Case Aiken
I mean, it's a cool name. Like Orion Pax doesn't have the same ring to. But.

01:41:37
Derek Van Dyke
Right.

01:41:38
Case Aiken
But yeah. The prime part comes from the matrix of leadership being infused into you. And they make a point that the Optimus prime spark has that and that primal takes it into himself. The thing is, though, he is not able to be a major player aside from when later, Megatron does the same thing with the Megatron Spark and turns into, like, dragon Megatron, which I want to like more than I do.

01:42:02
Derek Van Dyke
Look, again, 90s kid. I should be all into the dragon shit. Right? And this doesn't hit right. He's already a Trex. You don't have to go this hard.

01:42:12
Case Aiken
Doesn't help.

01:42:12
Derek Van Dyke
He's only there for, like, three episodes as a dragon, if that.

01:42:15
Case Aiken
Also that. Yeah, it's so short. He's in more episodes in beast machines that way than he is in actual beast wars. Season three is fine. I enjoy several parts of it. Transmetal two, Cheetor has some issues. I don't mind the werewolf story that they do to introduce it. And the design I actually rather like. Compared to transmetal one Cheetor, the fact that it's like an adolescent kind of thing where he's kind of into black arachnia. He discovers sex is kind of weird. And then black arachnia, I don't really like the transformation becomes a good guy. I think that arc is good for her, but her getting her transmetal form just never quite works, right? No, the dinobot clone that they make, first off, they make, like, dinobot drones, which I think are really dope.

01:43:00
Case Aiken
I actually enjoy whenever you take like, here's a plot convenience of an early episode, and how do we make it kind of fucking scary in a later episode that I think is really cool. It's akin to in Star Trek U space nine. To bring that up again when they're like, well, we have replicators and we have cloaking devices. What if we make mines that self replicate and are also cloaked? Those are really cool. Like when you combine all those things together. Or, hey, we have transporter technology and sniper rifles. What if the sniper rifle transported the bullet into the person's head? Really cool shit that you can do, combining all the different Macguffins. And so that's a fun thing that they do, and I like that. Then they create the dinobot two character. I don't mind the design that much.

01:43:41
Case Aiken
I think it's overall, like, fine. I like the arc of the character. Discovering who he is as issues of the rampage kind of go on. Like, he has a good moment at the end, I guess, is the big thing.

01:43:52
Derek Van Dyke
The problem with cloning Dinobot is like, eventually Dinobot's going to do the thing that dinobot did, right? That's the whole idea, is that part of him that is noble in some, even if it's lawful evil way is still going to be there.

01:44:06
Jmike Folson
Watch out when you see him off in the corner quoting hamlet.

01:44:09
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, right. You see him quoting the tempest to get the fuck out.

01:44:18
Case Aiken
Those are all good. And then the show ends. And then beast machines picks up where they've left. And even though for some reason, Waspinator was explicitly left behind, Waspinator is like one of them. Beast machines fucking sucks.

01:44:29
Derek Van Dyke
They never made a sequel to Beast wars. They never did. They never did. And I don't do that joke about anything, because sometimes we just have to live with bad sequels. Beast Machines does not get to exist.

01:44:42
Case Aiken
It ruins the character of Optimus Primal.

01:44:44
Derek Van Dyke
It ruins every character. Like, every single character is done. So dirty. I don't know who it's for. I don't know what the point is. It is a deeply angry and mean spirited show that walks away with a sort of cynical nihilism. I truly don't understand who hurt these people.

01:45:09
Case Aiken
It's such a bummer because Beast wars has so much fun in it. It is a war. There's some 90s isms going on in this whole thing. Like, the fact that the pilot ends with, like, here's a five on five brawl in their animal modes. Yeah, sure. Whatever. Extended sequences of them all saying, like, yada, maximize, yada, terrorize yada, maximize, like, going back and forth on that one. Super 90s cartoon cliches, but incredibly well written, really well paced. Sure, there's, like, macguffins and bottle episodes, and here's the weird shit of the week kind of episodes. But, like, call the wild, which we didn't talk about that much, is like, such a fun episode of them getting into their animal mode vibe.

01:45:52
Derek Van Dyke
Do an ayahuasca at the end.

01:45:55
Case Aiken
The heel face turn for black Arachnia is so good.

01:45:58
Derek Van Dyke
And again, it's the fact that so many of these things, it's not like, here's the episode where Blackarachnia becomes a good guy. It's that black Arachnia's character development happens visibly over the course of dozens of episodes.

01:46:12
Case Aiken
It starts in season one. Her relationship with tarantulas starts the whole thing. Not just the fact that she's, like, betrays everyone by default, because that's just her mode, the way that she is manipulated and the fact that she's part of teaming up with them at the end. She's the one there making the escape shuttle that Optimus pilots, that starts off the arc of them actually being alive. And that doesn't have payoff until season three.

01:46:36
Derek Van Dyke
Good show. Good character writing.

01:46:39
Case Aiken
Animation sucks. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

01:46:42
Derek Van Dyke
It's aged.

01:46:43
Jmike Folson
It's a product of his time.

01:46:45
Case Aiken
Yeah, exactly. It was really impressive at the time. I was, like, blown away. It was so fucking cool because it was brand new.

01:46:51
Derek Van Dyke
If you can take it with the understanding that, yes, the models and textures and all that stuff is a little older. I still think some of the actual animation can be surprisingly good at times. I think a lot of that is that they know really well how to set up a scene, how to block a shot, how to move the camera. There's excellent filmmaking going on with really rough assets. And I think that if you're somebody who is into that kind of stuff, it's actually fascinating to see how high quality a lot of the production work is on this, even with assets that have aged very, like.

01:47:31
Jmike Folson
Yeah, because there was a shot, I think it was when Optimus is coming back after he died, where they're, like, trying to protect the ship against the predacon onslaught and Cheetor rat trap and dinobot get blown backwards, and the frame rate just drops to, like, two as they're falling back. And I was like, oh, yeah, there's.

01:47:54
Case Aiken
A shot where I saw that sequence, and I'm like, man, if this wasn't a 90s cg cartoon, I would have believed that was, like, a cool, artistic thing going on there. And it's definitely not here. It looked like StarCraft PG cutscenes, and it's fine. The episode's amazing, but there are spots where you're like, oh, yeah, they just couldn't render that in a way that was smooth.

01:48:27
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, it's really fascinating to go back to because it's a really good show for somebody who's trying to develop that eye right, for cinematography and things like that. To see something that is well crafted in that regard but looks kind of ugly because the graphics just aged relatively poorly. But good filmmaking is good filmmaking. Good shot blocking is good shot blocking. So it's very fascinating to look at in the modern day with a critical eye and see how much passion and craft did go into this.

01:49:06
Case Aiken
I mean, just looking at, like, dinobot in season two versus season one, they start adding more, like, crud and rust to his body. He's beaten up a bit more, but there's just texture in a way that is just not in season one. And his model looks so much better just with that level of difference. You can see the technology advancing. And like I said, this is the second big CGI show, but it's so well written with such interesting characters. It's funny at the times where it needs to be funny. It's a 90s kids cartoon. Like, we're not trying to pretend that this is, like, gold, but it's really well done for what it was.

01:49:41
Case Aiken
And it is a reason why this kind of an archetype of heroic characters and the larger five man band, when they're done well, we're like, yeah, these are cool fucking characters that I want to see do well and prosper and succeed, and I want the villains to do well because they're interesting and exciting, and I like the dynamic and back and forth between them all.

01:50:00
Derek Van Dyke
This is good writing, good filmmaking, even given the budget and technical limitations they're working with. There's some characters, especially on the predicon side, that really didn't find their character until partway through that first season. But even that part's kind of fascinating to see which characters they understood from the beginning they knew. Especially with, like, Optimus, Megatron, Rat Trap, Dinobot, they knew what they were doing with them from episode one, and to see kind of everybody else get found in the process is just, yeah, really fascinating.

01:50:35
Case Aiken
Derek, thank you for coming on.

01:50:37
Derek Van Dyke
Thank you for having me.

01:50:38
Case Aiken
I've wanted it on for a while now and I was looking for a good excuse, and I knew you and I both had a shared love of Optimus Primal and this show in general. I've written the thread that will eventually become a video, and maybe if I time it right, we'll be coming out as a video for the Superman analog series about the time this episode drops. So we'll see. But thank you for coming on just so that we can kind of gush about this and chat, because it's always fun to talk to you and it's such great work to chat with you about, but you talk about a lot of fun stuff online and where can people find you, follow you? Who are you? What's your deal? We didn't do that.

01:51:13
Derek Van Dyke
We were so excited. We skipped past guest introduction, which to be fair, I've been on enough different cpov podcasts at this point. Some people may recognize me. Anyway, my name is Derek Van Dyke. I am on most websites that I am on as Derby City Derek. What I do primarily is two shows. I do SDGC, otherwise known as Super Deluxe Games cast, that is a weekly progressive gaming podcast where we talk about what we've been playing. We talk about the latest news headlines, talk about developments within the industry. We do some streaming and some reviews and stuff like that.

01:51:48
Case Aiken
It's a big group of us.

01:51:50
Derek Van Dyke
I also do Castle Bravo, a Godzilla vs. Retrospective, which is a podcast where we've gone, me and my sister Charlote chronological release order. We're going through everything Godzilla and immediately Godzilla related, digging more into the politics of these movies and the craft behind these movies, the historical context of what was going on, like why each movie.

01:52:13
Case Aiken
Is the way that it is, that.

01:52:15
Derek Van Dyke
As of time of recording, has been on break for a couple of months because there was some personal tragedy that happened. But I'm actually getting the next episode ready for this week. So I don't know when this is going up, but Castle Bravo should be back in full swing by the time people are listening to this.

01:52:31
Case Aiken
I will say that this episode will be dropping quite a bit after when we recorded.

01:52:36
Derek Van Dyke
Well, then we might be back on a pause because I have to stop again when we hit the 1998 Godzilla because I cannot cover struck work currently.

01:52:45
Case Aiken
Yeah, even though this is canadian and voice actor work is its own weird little subset, I probably am going to hold on this one at least until the SAG strike is resolved. I'd rather not blur the lines if I could help it.

01:52:57
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, I'm good doing the japanese movies, but once. I don't care that it's 1998. I'm going to wait a bit. We're just going to do it indefinite hiatus until the strikes are over before we cover the Matthew Broderick Godzilla.

01:53:09
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, hopefully by the time that it even would be coming up.

01:53:13
Derek Van Dyke
I would fucking hope. I hope there's a deal tomorrow. Let's go.

01:53:16
Case Aiken
I mean, it's November 5 6th now, because we've been recording for multiple hours. But again, thank you so much for coming on. Again, you're just a blast to chat about. Castle Bravo is a ton of fun. FTGC is also, but I've actually been on Castle Bravo, so I can be like, yeah, no, it's been great to be on there.

01:53:36
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, we have at least one episode you've been on that you can plug. We'll be more in the future.

01:53:41
Case Aiken
You and Charlote have been on another pass because we talked about King Kong, the 1970s remake of that.

01:53:46
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, that's a great episode of that too. It's a meaty episode.

01:53:52
Case Aiken
A lot of fun chatting with you, and I'm so glad to get you on here, especially because if you're not, like, a hardcore Superman fan, we've covered a lot of the big material that people are familiar with, so it's, like, nice to find the things where I'm like, yeah, we could just gush about a really cool fucking guy like Optimus primal.

01:54:08
Derek Van Dyke
Yeah, Optimus Primal is a good superman. And if people watch beast wars, they can see that for themselves.

01:54:15
Case Aiken
Fun fact, in college, in my fraternity, my pledge name was Optimus prime. Less than meets the eye. So even though Transformers is not really part of my brand, kind of is. And people should check out stuff that is part of my brand and also J Mike's brand. J Mike, where can people find you and follow you?

01:54:32
Jmike Folson
I am on Twitter at jmike 101. Yeah, Eric and I just started following each other a little while ago mid.

01:54:38
Derek Van Dyke
Podcast, as one does.

01:54:42
Jmike Folson
I post, like, funny gifs and memes and things occasionally here. You reach out and talk. I will chat back.

01:54:48
Case Aiken
Yeah. And also you have blue sky because I gave you my code.

01:54:51
Jmike Folson
I'm working on it.

01:54:53
Derek Van Dyke
Most of us have blue sky. We just haven't gotten around to using it regularly because we're waiting for birdsight to die. Die. It's hard to give up.

01:55:02
Case Aiken
Yeah, I know it is because the engagement is like more there. But I will say blue sky is where a lot of comics Twitter has gone to. So it's a fun place and it's a healthier place. Oh, by far. Most of the time I go to Twitter for two things. One is to look at what people I know are actively saying about a thing, and two is to block the people in their good. I, like, look at their profile. Like, were they making a joke or were they being serious? Oh, serious block. Moving on with my life. On that note, you can find me on Twitter at ksaiken.

01:55:34
Case Aiken
You can find me on Bluesky at ksaiken, where whatever the whole follow up part for that is, you can find me on Instagram at ketzlecoattle five because I'm holding on to my aim screen name for dear life there and on Twitch. But I also don't stream. So if you see a comment from a kettle coat of five, that's a me. But you can find the stuff I [email protected]. There's a ton of great shows. Let's plug Sidequest, which you've been on to talk about stuff.

01:56:02
Derek Van Dyke
I've been on sidequest several times.

01:56:04
Case Aiken
Yeah. So Sidequest is a fun side series to the Fun and games podcast, which Matt, our former editor, and Jeff, our current editor host. Sidequest is where people can just gush about a game that meant something to them, the same way we have just been gushing about this goddamn show this whole episode. It's a really fun time. We've all been there to talk about video games. They're just like a lot of fun. And it's a great podcast for that purpose because positivity on the Internet is at a premium, and that is a show that is all about that. So check that shit out. Because it's about people caring about things. That's the best way I can describe it.

01:56:39
Derek Van Dyke
You should listen to more people talk about the things that they love rather than the things that they hate.

01:56:44
Case Aiken
Exactly. Otherwise, you can find tons of great [email protected]. You can find a link to our discord server. You can find a link to our YouTube page where I do all the certain POV YouTube videos stuff. So check all that stuff out. We'll be back next time with something I'm not entirely sure at the moment. Based on a release schedule, things have gotten weird. I have a seven month old. My brain is Bush. But until then, stay super. Man.

01:57:18
Jmike Folson
Of Steel is a certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and Case Aiken. The show is scored and edited by Jeff Moonin, and our logo and episode art is by Case Aiken.

01:57:39
Case Aiken
Our unique medium. They can tell stories, immerse us in.

01:57:43
Derek Van Dyke
Strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality.

01:57:48
Case Aiken
But at the end of the day, video games are fun.

01:57:51
Derek Van Dyke
Whatever fun is to you.

01:57:52
Case Aiken
I'm Jeff Moonan. And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon. And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games.

01:58:01
Derek Van Dyke
It's a celebration of all the games.

01:58:02
Case Aiken
We play and all the fun we find within them. And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us. Fun and games podcast with Matt and.

01:58:12
Derek Van Dyke
Jeff find us on certainpov.com or wherever.

01:58:14
Case Aiken
You get your podcasts and happy gaming. You get back up and you drink that horse. Hav certainpov.com close.