The Transformers (1984)
First episode title: More than Meets the Eye, Part 1
How familiar with the show am I?: I've watched the whole show before, and many other Transformers series.
The Transformers! The concept, if you've somehow avoided it until now, is that there are two factions of alien robots - the peace-loving Autobots and the conquest-hungry Decepticons - who have each come from their dying planet of Cybertron to search for fuel sources that can keep them operational, and hopefully help them win their war. Both sides have landed on Earth and are using Earth vehicles and other machines as disguises, hence "Transform"-ers. Oh, and you can go and buy toys of them right now!
The opening sequence shows off the characters and concept. I particularly like the shot of Skywarp fighting Jazz (above) because of how well it illustrates how the concept of transforming robots can be used in a fight scene.
An appropriately dramatic narrator tells us that our story takes place millions of years ago, as the planet of Cybertron is introduced. An entirely metal planet populated by robots, not put there by anyone but apparently entirely natural. I'm appreciating the inventiveness here as it's easy to forget that this concept is pretty original to Transformers. We're also told that the planet used to be rich in energy sources but that they are all but used up thanks to the war - a change in circumstance that will drive the whole rest of the narrative, at least in this stage of the series.
The first Transformers we actually meet are two Autobots - Wheeljack and Bumblebee. They've discovered some "conductors" with a meagre amount of energy in them. I'm not certain what the conductors are modelled on - to me they look like yellow tube lights. I've been informed by an engineer friend of mine that the phrasing of "conductors" is technically accurate but unlikely to be used in real life - capacitors and batteries store electric charge in them, and those things both have conductors in them, but not everything that's a conductor can be used to store power.
The two of them head off to Iacon, namedropping Autobot leader Optimus Prime for the first time in the process. Wheeljack transforms into a Cybertronian car form (since they don't have their Earth disguises yet), and Bumblebee climbs inside him with no regard for scale. We then see Wheeljack driving around this huge metal city, and the vast scale of it but lack of any other visible beings for a while really serves to emphasise how empty the planet is.
The next thing they encounter is "a Decepticon welcoming committee". The first evil robots we see are a bunch of near-identical jet Transformers in different colours. At this stage they are just generics, although some of them are drawn to look like the named characters we'll meet later. They begin firing on Wheeljack, so he stops to let Bumblebee get out and start fighting.
Bumblebee: Prime told me there'd be days like this!
Wheeljack: And you didn't believe him?
Bumblebee: I do now!
One snazzy purple Decepticon launches a ring of fire around the two Autobots, but Wheeljack uses a pair of front-mounted turbine-like things to cut through the flames, as Bumblebee transforms into his own car mode to follow. The two of them plough through the Decepticons, two of whom transform to jet mode in order to chase them. The Decepticons initially fire with Stormtrooper-like inaccuracy, but eventually they score a hit on Bumblebee, who escapes further pain by driving inside Wheeljack.
Bumblebee: I think it's my rear axle.
Wheeljack: Well, hang on to your crankshaft - I'm shifting into overdrive!
Just in case you forgot they were cars, you know. Wheeljack drives underground to escape the jets, who ominously announce that they will report back to Megatron.
We've just reached the first of the show's "insignia-flip" scene transitions. These always show the appropriate insignias corresponding to the factions seen immediately before and after, so the above animation, where the Decepticon insignia flips to become the Autobot insignia, takes us from the jets' brief chatter to our next scene with Wheeljack and Bumblebee. The show could easily have gone with a generic scene transition that would work for all cases, so I like the extra attention to detail this shows.
As Wheeljack enters Iacon - a huge dome which we can presume is the Autobots' base of operations from the information given here - a nearby lamppost transforms into a dark blue Decepticon with a computerised voice.
The blue guy, who we'll later learn is Soundwave, ejects a bird robot named Laserbeak from his chest - yes, from his chest, which opens like a tape player to reveal Laserbeak in cassette form - and instructs him to spy on the Autobots, which he does perched on a window looking into Iacon, with cute little spy microphones emerging from his head. Soundwave briefly resumes lamppost form when another Autobot approaches the dome.
This Autobot, Jazz, encounters Optimus Prime inside the dome, and informs him that he hasn't found any energy on the "north side" of Cybertron, which appears to be a pretty tiny planet. Optimus announces that they will launch a search mission imminently, and this information is of course picked up by Laserbeak, who reports back to Soundwave, who flies off to arrive at the Decepticon base, where we now encounter... Megatron and Starscream!
Megatron is on top cartoon villain form from his first moments on screen, declaring that the Decepticons will find any source of energy before the Autobots do, and immediately being ready to launch the Decepticons' own ship on receiving Soundwave's report. He entrusts Cybertron's care to Shockwave, who has a really cool head that's just one big eye and who will not be appearing again in this episode.
Then Starscream makes the first of his proclamations that he would make a better leader than Megatron. If you're unfamiliar, that is their entire relationship in a nutshell - the leader, and the second-in-command who wants to be in charge. Seeing the two of them argue is always a highlight of any episode.
The Autobots prepare to launch their ship, and we get a nice expansive view of the various robots at their stations inside, right before the actual take-off.
The Decepticons similarly blast off in pursuit, right before the astronomic impossibility of the millennium - two asteroids collide, right in front of the Cybertronian ships!
Megatron declares that the resulting meteor shower is making their ship lose its power. I'm not sure why - perhaps it's the difficulty of navigating through it putting more strain on the engines? The Autobots blast their way through the debris with their ship's laser, manned by resident tough guy Ironhide, and the Decepticons follow them. Once they're through, the Autobots realise they're being followed, and the Decepticons somehow realise the Autobots have realised this - did Soundwave bug them?
Starscream is eager to just blow up the Autobot spaceship while they can. This sort of thing will be a recurring problem for him. Megatron would rather know what it is the Autobots are looking for, and orders a tractor beam to be used to join the two ships together. The Autobot ship's laser is now out of power at the worst possible time - but given how they just used it, and the known state of energy supplies on Cybertron, this shouldn't be a surprise.
Megatron orders "Release the boarding chute!" A long cylinder emerges from the Decepticon ship and penetrates the other craft, allowing a lot of unwanted intruders to make their way aboard.
While the Autobots and Decepticons are fighting, WHO'S FLYING THE SHIP? That's right, no-one, and it gets trapped in the gravity well of a nearby planet - a suspiciously Earth-like one. The Decepticon spaceship gets flung away as the Autobot spaceship falls down towards the planet, and crashes straight into a mountain. We cut to an ad break, and when we come back, we see the same mountain with the caption... "FOUR MILLION YEARS LATER". Forget Avengers Endgame, this is a dramatic time-skip.
The mountain decides that the scenery needs some remodelling and erupts into a volcano, partially uncovering the spaceship. On board the ship, a computer suddenly comes back online, and sends out a tiny satellite-like machine while saying to no-one in particular, "Explore! Explore! Repair! Repair!" The satellite finds what looks like a military airbase and scans one of the jets, and the ship computer uses this information to rebuild one of the Decepticons into that form using some kind of beam. The awoken Decepticon (Skywarp), seeing what has happened, drags Megatron's body into the path of the beam so that he will be repaired next.
Skywarp: Megatron, my leader... we are alive again.
Megatron and Skywarp start getting all of the Decepticons repaired, while still surrounded by the damaged Autobots. Once they have flown out of the ship, Megatron takes a moment to explain the situation to his fellow Decepticons, and reckons that this new planet might contain the resources they need to "conquer the universe". This guy is much more optimistic about the sustainability of Earth's resources than most of us.
Starscream decides to fire some parting shots at the Autobot ship as they leave, despite Megatron warning him to conserve energy for now, and in doing so he accidentally knocks Optimus's body into the path of the repair beam. Congratulations, Starscream! You just brought back the only guys who can stop you! The satellite proceeds to find an appropriate truck form for Optimus.
Ooh, yes. Now that's Optimus Prime.
The Decepticons arrive in the middle of nowhere and Megatron decides a random group of rocks will be their base of operations. I do not know what is so significant about the rocks, how they can be a base of operations, or how someone from an entirely metal planet knows what rocks are (although I suppose he could have checked some scans from the Autobot ship before leaving). His first priority is to start work on a new spaceship, and he sends Starscream, Soundwave, and Rumble (another guy ejected from Soundwave's chest in cassette form) to look for materials. Soundwave tells Rumble to "activate piledrivers" to destroy a nearby power plant, but the order seems to have come prematurely, as what the three of them actually do is fly over there first (the non-jets simply fly in robot mode).
We return focus to the Autobots, who need to find the Decepticons before they cause too much harm to this planet. Optimus asks a jeep called Hound and another car robot called Cliffjumper to search for them, but Cliffjumper is way too eager to fight the Decepticons rather than just find them:
Cliffjumper: I wanna boot some Decepticon right in his turbo-charger!
As the two of them drive off, we catch up with Starscream's party. He's ranting to Rumble about how he'll be the one giving the orders some day, but Rumble is apparently Megatron Fan Boy #1 (wouldn't you be?) and defends him in his absence. Rumble now gets to activate his piledrivers, making the power plant collapse. The Decepticons are supposed to be mostly concerned about retrieving energy, but they've decided to use the power plant as materials instead of using it to power themselves? Perhaps they didn't know what the power plant was.
In the time it takes for Hound and Cliffjumper to locate the Decepticons, they've made a lot of progress on the... "space cruiser". Honestly I'm not sure about the shape of what they're making (see above). Looks more like a building than a spaceship. Hound activates a wrist-mounted listening device just as Megatron conveniently states his plans for the planet Earth out loud for no reason. Soundwave introduces us to the idea of storing Earth's energy in "Energon cubes", which we'll see more of later.
Cliffjumper produces a massive gun out of nowhere and decides to fire on the Decepticons, despite Hound's warnings. He misses, and the Decepticons are alerted to the Autobots' presence, so yes, I would say that Cliffjumper should have listened to Hound, in retrospect. Soundwave sends out Laserbeak, now in a more Earthly bird shape, to investigate. As the Autobots flee...
Cliffjumper: What is that thing up there?
Hound: I don't know! But we can't seem to shake it!
This is interesting because it implies that Laserbeak is a form of life unfamiliar to the Autobots. Cassette animal robots will continue to appear in the series after this point without the suggestion that they're anything unusual.
Cliffjumper and Hound split up, so Laserbeak simply separates one of his guns from his body, the gun chasing Cliffjumper and the bird chasing Hound. Cliffjumper blows up the gun with some explosive gas, but Laserbeak is much more successful against Hound...
Poor Hound goes careering off a cliff after Laserbeak shoots him, and ends up a smoking wreck on the ground as Laserbeak flies away triumphantly. Laserbeak is pretty awesome.
The next ad break gives Cliffjumper some time to call for back up and get Hound rescued. Autobot medic Ratchet helps to diagnose the problem - I've always loved the little detail of "Can you transform?" as a routine question you would ask a patient if you happen to be a giant transforming robot. Hound sounds as though he's dying from the effort it takes to speak, but he's still able to share a joke with Cliffjumper about the latter's aiming skills.
We now see a couple of new Decepticons - Thundercracker (another generic jet) and a weird guy(s) called Reflector who has three bodies that talk in unison and transform collectively into a camera. The two of them are surprised that the Autobots survived (survived the same conditions that didn't kill the Decepticons?) and Thundercracker uses Reflector's camera form (you know, the incredibly futuristic spying technology of Polaroids) to try and see what's approaching them. It's not an Autobot, though - it's an ordinary van, which means we're about to get our first sighting of some humans! Megatron is informed of the approaching vehicle and ominously gives the command to "release Ravage".
And here we are - two humans approach the remains of the power plant, baffled by the damage. We're unfortunately never told the name of the first guy who speaks, though he handily identifies his co-worker as Joe.
All of a sudden, a robotic panther pounces on the two of them, and they only just make it back to their vehicle alive. Joe's co-worker actually looks pretty dead in the shot where he first gets hit, so he's pretty tough to have gotten up again!
At the Autobot ship, Ratchet is repairing Hound, who is explaining to Optimus how he heard the Decepticons say they would put the energy into "some kind of cube". I'm mostly keeping my knowledge of the wider Transformers franchise out of this post, but I have to remark on this - Energon is so essential to Transformers in later incarnations that hearing a Transformer call an Energon cube "some kind of cube" is like hearing a human refer to water as "some kind of clear liquid".
Optimus asks Jazz, evidently the second in command, to organise a battle unit, and he promptly gets a bunch of Autobots lined up. I particularly like the animation of Wheeljack transforming. He looks ready.
The Autobots roll out, while Laserbeak returns to the Decepticons with information about a source of energy - an offshore oil rig. We're almost at the end of the episode and we're just now going to meet the main human characters of the show - a boy called Spike and his father Sparkplug (the latter unnamed at this point), who are both working on the rig. The Decepticons land on the rig and immediately start attacking the humans, although luckily no-one seems to get killed - some of these guys seem as tough as the worker from earlier, throwing random stuff at the Decepticons, and Spike even punches Rumble, for all the good it does!
It's just occurred to me that literally all humans in this episode wear hardhats. The only shots of humans without hardhats are where they've come off.
...Anyway, Spike was knocked into the water by Rumble and Sparkplug dives in to save him. Starscream uses a "null ray" to quite literally freeze some machinery. Soundwave prepares some Energon cubes, which, like his cassette buddies, simply emerge from his chest. The Decepticons fill the cubes with oil and then compress them into glowing slabs. Starscream is eager to take the energy straight back to Cybertron, but...
Megatron: You FOOL, Starscream!
Megatron would prefer to drain as much energy from the planet as possible. Their little argument is interrupted by the Autobots flying out of the sky - Megatron transforms to his handgun mode and Starscream catches him, firing at the Autobots. See? They can play nice!
The Autobots land and start to fight the Decepticons, Megatron transforming back to robot mode to physically tussle with Prime. Some of the other characters are firing on each other, although Starscream and Ironhide seem to have agreed to a duel of metal poles. Skywarp and Reflector try to get away with the Energon cubes, but Jazz and police car Autobot Prowl interrupt them and manage to blow some of it up. Laserbeak gets all up in Optimus's face, which is hilarious, and distracts him long enough for Megatron to get away.
Megatron has some awesome villain moments here - telling Prime to "have a nice swim" as he blows up the oil rig, and "here's something to keep you warm" as he sets the oil alight. The Decepticons are getting away, and the workers, including Spike and his father, are trapped in the wreckage and need saving. The Autobots are good enough good guys to stick around to help instead of chasing after the Decepticons, and Optimus telling them to grab onto him is the cliff-hanger that ends this episode.
Wow, I didn't expect this post to end up so long! Thank you for reading, and I hope to write many more of these posts in future!
