Well, I think that is actually the only time the two are together in the American G1 series. I must admit, I didn't hate them in season three, but in the Japanese Headmasters cartoon... I just wished someone put them in a cannon and shot them to hell.  

 

On Five Faces of Darkness part 1, I wish it was episode 3 or 4 of the series, mainly because of Cyclonus line about the Decepticon having vast authority over a quadrant of the galaxy and now they are living on Chaar. I imagine that the Autobots liberated planets (the ones that competed in the Olympics) from Decepticon control and I love to see a Decepticon power struggle (there could have been a few since the end of the movie to the beginning of FFOD part 1). Maybe for a day or two Soundwave could have been Superior. So much room for fan-fiction.

I like most of the story for this episode, but I find it hard to believe the Transformers have virtually no memory of the Quintessons (especially Kup, Ultra Magnus, Soundwave, etc). I mean Alpha Trion must have remembered them and only died between 1985 and 2005, surely there must have been stories passed on from the old days.

I also wish that they linked the connection between Unicron, Vector Sigma and the Quintessons in an understandable way. For a long time, I wondered why the Quintessons did not attack Cybertron when it was virtually defenseless for the past 4M years. Maybe, Unicron would not let the Quintessons retake Cybertron for some reason.

On voice actors in the movie, I wished they saved some of the costs on actors and put it towards better animation in these episodes.

 

If we get around to watching Headmasters, I swear 90% of the recaps are going to be me ranting and raging about awful that series' versions of Daniel, Wheelie, and Arcee are.

 

FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS (PART 2)

THE SHORT VERSION
It's not often that another character is killed off after we've already finished the movie, but here we are. (And don't worry, that refernce will make sense soon enough)

REVIEW
Freed of the constraints of the introductory episode, things pick up in this one. We get a fair bit more background on the fate of the Decepticons post-film, some crazy Matrix supernatural shenanigans, and a bit more background on the Quintessons. So that's cool.

Problem is that the Quintesson plot features a significant rehash of the movie's Quintesson subplot (one that I noted in my review for the movie was totally superfluous. It does actually fit better here, which makes it a bigger shame that they had to repeat it.

Really this episode is a nice improvement over part 1 in terms of plot. This one feels more like the build towards a big, interesting climax. Galvatron is back (and fantastic. I almost like crazy Galvatron more than Megatron), the Autobots make some inroads towards unravelling the mystery of the attack on the Olympics (and they rescue the captured Kup, Magnus, and Spike), Rodimus has a near-death experience, and everyone almost gets killed a few times for good measure. It's definitely an improvement over part 1, though we're still waiting for the payoff that should come in the next part. Hopefully.

THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-As we recap part 1, a thought occurs to me: Why the hell did Wheelie get picked to be part of the vitally important mission to get the Transformation Cog to earth? He's been an active Autobot for... a couple of months maybe? Before that he spent who knows how long living in the wilds on Quintessa and fighting things off with an energy slingshot. In what universe is he trustworthy or well known enough to handle this?

-The Part 1 recap is also one of the handful of places you can hear untouched dialogue recorded by Ted Schwartz as the voice of Rodimus Prime. It's not DRASTICALLY different from Dick Gauthier's voice, but it is quite a bit higher.

-Look at gigantic, Soundwave-sized Rumble.  

- And then as the line of Decepticons advances... who the hell are those 2 in the front next to that badly rendered Breakdown? They're colored like Soundwave and Rumble, but look completely unlike anyone else I can think of. Seriously, this is messed up.


I mean, come on. What the hell is even going on here? Was it some animator's first day on the job?

-The Decepticons can't shoot back because they're out of energy to power their weapons. But somehow Rodimus and Grimlock's guns do basically no damage to them, even as they get shot point-blank in the chest as they're right on top of the Autobots. And to think not more than a couple of months ago bots were dying left and right from basically any direct weapons fire.

-Now we not only have extra-large Rumble, but extra-small Motormaster. Way to go AKOM!

-Springer? Dude? I would think the Decepticons would be on to you the moment the asteroid (sorry, sorry... "rockaroid") sprouted mechanical claws.

-"Rodimus, me Grimlock demand you wake up" says Grimlock, in the most sad, whiny voice you can imagine Grimlock saying. Does anyone remember when Grimlock decided he would just up and Kill Optimus Prime because he didn't like being told what to do? I miss that Grimlock.

-wow, it's the first time I can remember seeing the rainbow-colored energon cubes in... forever.

-And hey look, Kickback totally isn't dead, evne though there's now 5 Sweeps to go along with Scourge!

-Ultra Magnus posits a good question: Are the Quintessons reading Kup's mind? The answers that the one Quint manages to get in spite of the totally irrelevant answers he gives. Alright, a couple of his responses would be easy to figure out the truth of, but how would they go from Kup's final statement to knowing that he's really concerned about Earth?

-The way Spike says "Transformers" (with the emphasis on the "Trans" syllable instead of the "form" syllable) sounds weird.

-I'll say this for the series, they sure aren't giving up their love of irregularly shaped planets. That's actually pretty cool.

-Is Grimlock... crying? Seriously?

-Dammit Springer, I'm... whatever Arcee is, not a doctor!

-It's nice bit of continuity to have Rodimus repeat the same dialogue that Optimus gave on his deathbed in the movie.

-Now Grimlock really is crying? Good god..... Here lies Badass Grimlock. Born 1984. Died 1985. He will be missed. *Candle in the Wind plays*

-That's a really clumsy act break.

-Oh wow, Grimlock manages to be the smartest of the bots standing over Rodimus' not-corpse. That bodes well...

-Rodimus' near-death coma dream is apparently block numbers that say 3%57.(root sign)-something that blow up. For a guy who was the reckless and rash young buck of the team, that's pretty damn boring.

-I'm gonna give the animators credit for coming up with some effectivley surreal dream/near-death imagery for Rodimus. It's utter nonsense that sorta relates to everything that's going on. In other words: pretty perfect for dream imagery.

-Was that Grimlock's "hah-ha!" that didn't sound right.

-But who cares, Arcee's about to get some of that sweet Dinobot action. Who needs Rodimus and Springer? It's a love quadrangle now! And I'm mostly just surprised that "quadrangle" is a word and isn't flagged by my spellcheck  

-Yes, Rodimus. The strange thing was that you didn't know your crimes. not that there was a planet full of five-faced squid monsters with transforming "shark" guards that threw people into a pit whether they were innocent or guilty. I'd say not knowing your crimes was probably, at best, the 4th or 5th strangest thing you encountered.

-Kup (and I suppose, by extension, Flint Dille) is clearly not a football fan. 4th quarter and it's 4th and 30 and his idea of "the only thing you can do" is a rushing play? Clearly all those hours Spike spent playing football with Optimus and Hound in his sweet custom uniform were all for naught.   Either that or Kup is secretly a Cleveland Browns fan and all he knows is suffering and futility.

-Also check out Kup's giant King Kong gorilla arms as he announces his plan.

-Spike is able to hold a Quintesson back by hanging onto his tendrils. The legacy of superhuman Spike lives on!

-The Quintessons choosing to let their own die in the pit is a pretty awesome moment.

-Why does Kup feel like he's seen this before? Because he has seen it before. I guess the old memory is going.

-"Pay us no mind. We just like to watch." Kinky.

-Galvatron: the secret member of the Three Stooges. He's the Shemp of the Decepticon forces.

-No lie though: I love crazy Galvatron. He's a lot more fun than mediocre evil Galvatron from the movie.

-Ultra Magnus speaks but Kup moves his mouth. I missed those goofy errors when I was watching a competently put-together movie.

-The Quintesson defence systems: one rickety gun platform manned by sub-sapient Sharkticons. Awesome.

-Cyclonus has been under the retrieved Galvatron for about 5 minutes and already seems to be regretting it. That's gotta be a new record, even for the Decepticons.

-Why doesn't Galvatron ride in Cyclonus' jet mode like he did in the movie. It seems like a better idea than flying back under his own power.

-Arcee makes sure to strike a sexy pose as she rides Springer into battle (and boy, did that phrase come out sounding a lot worse than I expected it to in my head)

-It'd be a shame if poor defenceless Spike got eaten in teh Sharkticon pit because he doesn't have a gun to protect himself with.

-How strong is Springer that he can carry all of Arcee, Grimlock, Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, Kup, and Spike all at the same time?

-Hey, the Aerialbots! Remember them? From that time before the movie when there were a whole bunch of other characters who didn't die in the movie?

-So Silverbolt is big enough to take the entire rescued batch of bots in his cabin. That makes him huge. And then Broadside is big enough to take all the Aerialbots, including Silverbolt, into his cargo area. So... is Broadside the size of Metroplex or something?

-Also it's worth noting that this episode recapped Blurr and Wheelie's quest to return the Transformation Cog to Earth to repair Metroplex. Total time within this part of the story that was spent on that sub-plot? Zero minutes.

-I miss the "to be continued" cards.

FAVORITE LINES
"You are the Autobot called Kup. You are Cybertron's Chief of Security."
"Nah, my name's Teaspoon. And I'm Cybertron's Chief Dishwasher!"
-The Quintessons quickly discover Kup doesn't care to give kidnappers a straight answer.


Final Grade: B-

 

The Quintessons have grown on me since I was a kid, I find the line about 'just liking to watch' quite amusing, but it is definitely creepy.

On Wheelie, it is quite difficult to come up with a backstory for him. I think that he was created not a long time ago (maybe in the last 100 years or so by Alpha Trion) and sent on a mission, where his fellow crew-members all got killed and he had no way home.

Is that really Broadside, I prefer to think not (I admit it looks like it but it got blown up to pieces). With Broadside, I like to think that he was built after FFOD part 5 to look for Trypticon and fly Autobots around space (with more dignity than in Carnage in C-Minor), I like to think that Autobots in 2005 can build new transformers with no need to go to Vecta Sigma and can speak in a far more educated manner than the Dinobots (even if Grimlock is one my favorite Autobots).

We know from future episodes (files of Teletran 2) that Sky Lynx has been alive for a while. If both Broadside and SkyLynx were alive for a long time, why did then not overpower Shockwave in the last 4M years ago?

I like to think that unidentified Decepticons never traveled to Earth but instead got energy from other planets to fuel the Decepticons energy needs over the last 4M years.

 

I have to agree. Galvatron is a thousand times more interesting (and amusing) than Megatron. I think Frank Welker's insane performance really made the character fun.

 

FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS (PART 3)

THE SHORT VERSION
Actual progress!

REVIEW
Now we're getting somewhere. After a slow part 1 that spent all its time setting up all the various plot threads, and a slightly faster but still low-stakes part 2 that continued building but never really made much progress, we finally see real progress in basically every sub-plot moves forward a reasonable amount and the action and intrigue picks up.

As much as I have been very vocal in my dislike for Wheelie, his and Blurr's subplot was a welcome distraction at this point, letting crazy Galvatron breathe a bit (he works better in smaller doses and loses his punch if he has to be full-tilt crazy over an entire episode sometimes) and preventing the slower-burning Rodimus-and-company plot from dragging on and slowing things down too much. It got a little wacky with Jupiter sorta exploding and Io being full of aliens apparently, but it was a welcome change of pace and helped to start bringing together the threads as Galvatron intervened and brought the fought to them.

This also dovetailed nicely into the Quintessons making their move, recruiting the Decepticons to their cause and revealing more of their plot and their link to the Transformer history. It was refreshing to see that level of interconnectivity in the plots, bringing things together in phases and stages and staggered in such a way that it manages to build us to a climax without having to do it all at once and feel rushed. It really is quite refreshing. And after 2 parts where I began to question if this was the right way to open the post-movie season, I find myself becoming quite invested in the story as we move into the final two parts.

THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-Huh, this episode (at least in the Shout version) has a totally different opening sequence from the previous 2 episodes (which is also the standard title sequence for season 3). That's cool. TF Wiki says that originally all 5 parts had their own unique opening and that the sound mix was even different to accommodate (this one isn't, ill-fitting sound effects play over this that time up to the generic sequence but not this one). It's a shame those other ones weren't preserved in the DVDs (the wiki does say that one other part has its unique sequence. Presumably 4 or 5 since I haven't seen it yet). I don't think I ever noticed this before because usually I select the "play multi-part episodes seamlessly" option.

-This title sequence is actually quite cool.

-the recap at the start of this episode seems like it's missing its Victor Caroli narration... Oh wait, there it is. Man, it just took a long time to get going.

-Also it looks really rough. The masters of this episode didn't survive very well.

-"Rodimus Prime traveled deep within the Matrix to find the answer" Ummm... no he didn't. He nearly got killed and the vision was happenstance/random chance. He doesn't do something stupid like that until next episode.

-The action of the episode picks up with the Autobots piling onto Silverbolt, who then flies to and lands in Broadside, creating the beginnings of a matroyshka doll of Transformers. Side note: They should totally make a Transformers Matroyshka doll. Fort Max -> Omega Supreme -> Optimus Prime -> Hot Rod -> Bumblebee -> Matrix of Leadership. You're welcome, Hasbro.  

-Quintessa manages to look incredibly different each time we see it.

- The plane we see flying away from the explosion no longer looks like Broadside. now it looks more like a half-baked version of Fireflight.

-and then not-Fireflight explodes when struck by debris. Clearly he's dead.

-Seriously, there's shrapnel and debris and all the passengers floating off into the void of space. By all rights somebody just died.

-And speaking of, Spike all of a sudden has a helmet of some kind on, even though the design of it shouldn't logically protect him from the dangers of space.

-Among the floating Autobots ejected from the exploded shuttle (that's apparently not Broadside or Fireflight) are Silverbolt (now in robot mode for some reason) and Air Raid. Notable by their absences: All 3 other Aerialbos, including Fireflight. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

-Rodimus' reaction to getting ejected into space: Who cares, let's just chill out and let momentum send us where it may. You're not helping your case to be a capable, but misunderstood leader.

-This episode is the first instance of the big, doorway-shaped "warp gates" that replace space bridge tech as the series' primary mode of spanning large intergalactic travel distances. They make no sense as giant constructed concepts (unless we're supposed to believe they were built by someone not relevant to the series and just sort of exist out there for general space travel use. Kind of like the Relays in Mass Effect) but it's a minor nit.

-The Autobot sensors can't differentiate between a ship and a planet. Those are kind of drastically different in terms of scale. Far too different to be easily confused for one another.

-Ahh, Pluto. Those were the days before it stopped being a "real" planet and still got the respect it deserved.



(sorry, I've been watching that series (Psych) on DVD recently and I couldn't resist it after deciding to snark about Pluto here.)

-On a space station out in the middle of the solar system, with gun emplacements everywhere, there are still humans in space suits kneeling on platforms firing little laser rifles at the Decepticons. It's like watching a Godzilla movie and wondering why the military still bothers firing rifles and conventional guns at the hundreds-of-feet-tall radioactive lizard.

-Man, Galvatron's totally killing all those humans.

-What happened to Wheelie's voice on "planet I know, but Decepticons follow"? It's not just the lack of robotic effect applied to it, but the pitch is way higher too.

-Hey, it's Marissa Faireborn. Fun fact #1: It's Susan Blu again. She does a decent job of not sounding like Arcee. Fun fact #2: Flint Dille later confirmed that his intent was for Marissa to be the future daughter of GI Joe's Flint (real name Dashiell Faireborn) and Lady Jaye. Looks like they got their shared continuity (sort of) in the 80s, even if the Hasbro exects weren't keen on Optimus Prime and a drunken Shipwreck encountering talking ponies.

-Wheelie just took a direct shot from Galvatron's arm cannon and is left with just a small fire on his knee. Wheelie is confirmed more resilient than Starscream  

-speaking of all this: It took until part 3 to come back to the Wheelie/Blurr plot. It almost makes me wonder why they bothered introducing it at the beginning of part 1 if they weren't getting back to it until now.

-Who knew that the storms on Jupiter were so... explosive?

-Speaking of, Blurr says "the storm is imploding!", clearly demonstrating a lack of understanding of what differentates an implosion from an explosion.

-All the bots present nearth explosion react to the onslaught of... whatever is being released by the storm and shout accordingly. But in the background ther's this distorted, low-frequency voice that sounds like it's shouting "ooooh no! no! nooo oh no!!!". It almost sounds like a bad Yogi Bear impression.

-Love that crazy Galvatron.

-They live! They Live! not featured here: Rowdy Roddy Piper.

-The Quintessons are quick to decide they need Decepticon help. Rodimus and co are just drifting helplessly through space with no ship and no aid and are going to crash on a planet the Quints can identify.

-"I used to stick stuffl ike this under my seat at school" Don't lie, Spike. You never actually went to school. Everyone knows Carly is the brains in your family.

-After taking great pains to keep him with them for whatever reason, Kup just casually chucks Judge Deliberata back into the goo after he starts complaining.

-So are there no ramifications for the potential that Galvatron is potentially going to destroy Jupiter?

-This episode seems like it has a lot better quality animation and detail out of AKOM. It still mostly sucks, but it's better than their usual fare.

-Welp, Springer's dead.

-It's actually rare for Arcee to scream like... well, like a girl. Sadly this sort of behavior is rare here, but won't stay that way into Headmasters.

-Springah? Did Rodimus suddenly develop a New England/Kennedy accdent?

-I really like Dead End. I wish he got more to do.

-I also kinda like the fact that the Decepticons have hidden themselves in caves they buried underground, rather than just foxholes.

-Arcee's design seems to change sometimes in the background, with her shoulder pauldron things sometimes appearing to be set in between her shoulders and her arms, just like some of the rejected preliminary designs she had.

-Ahh yes, all 6 Combaticons are assembled into a group to mull over the Quintesson proposal. Onslaught, Brawl, Blast Off, Vortex, Swindle, and Bruticus. Wait a sec. Something about that doesn't seem right.



-What's up with Blitzwing's voice. It's radically different here as he claims to kind of remember the Quintessons.

-Speaking of that, we're not at the big reveal of the Quintesson ties to the Transformers yet, but if Blitzwing sort of remembers, that would seem to indicate that he should be among the older Cybertronians left. Older than, presuambly, many of the other characters in the series who show no recollections of the Quints. It raises the somewhat interesting question of how Blitzwing, of all bots, survived this long and yet is also still considered only a mere piece in the Decepticon army instead of anyone of prominence.

-Also hey, it's the first appearance of Octane.

-Blitzwing is the only holdout among the Decepticon army. It seems like he was set up to have an important or interesting role as the series progressed, one which would apparently be usurped and given to Octane once they realized he was the more interesting character (and by that I mean he was the one with the fresher toy to sell)

-Once again Chaar as seen from overhead looks incredibly mechanical and detailed, even though the only place we see the Decepticons hiding out is a barren rocky wasteland.

-Cyclonus' appearance changes from shot to shot.

-Also now Chaar shows a lot more blown out concrete ruins (complete with exposed rebar)

-Man, all my science classes lied to me. they never said a word about the weird glowing, acid-drooling creatures on Io. I feel so cheated.

-and once again Wheelie's voice is really out of whack. Did they really forget the processing this often?

-A for effort on the Goo scenes remembering to have at least one Aeiralbot in the background. Even if it's not always the same one. But that's just details.

-The shot of all the Decepticons leaving the Quintesson shop to attack seems to include weird, stylized designs for a bunch of cons, but also has a Constructicon-colored Shockwave and a strangely gray and ghostly-looking Seeker (a Starscream/Thundercracker/Skywarp style seeker, not a conehead). I'm amazed Hasbro never jumped on releasing redeco figures in those designs.

-A couple of cuts later and we get a close up look at the Constructicon-colored Shockwave along with... Shrapnel? Maybe that one seeker being a ghostly Starscream isn't so farfetched of an idea  

-credit for the laser blasts that hit the ground around Rodimus' group's feed for making splotchy "goop" sounds. It's a surprisingly detailed touch out of an episode that normally doesn't seem to concern itself with such things.

-And this episode ends not with a freeze frame like parts 1 and 2, but with a superimposed "To be continued..." Which is different from any other prior multi-part episode's closing continuation note. Stay consistent, dammit!

-I see that the unique title sequence doesn't beget a similar unique credits sequence.

FAVORITE LINES
"Galvatron, save me!"
"Please meet your end with dignity. I despise whiners!"
-A Sweep plummets to his death and Galvatron gets a handle on his crazy for 30 seconds so he can be a stone-cold bastard.


Final Grade: B

 

I friggin' love Blitzwing here. This is the third of what I've called on other boards, 'the Blitzwing Trilogy of Awesome." The first is Triple takeover, where he takes some half-mad ramblings by a scared-shitless football coach and manages to wreck havoc on the Autobots. The second is the 1986 movie, where he's the only Decepticon to remember, "Hey, I can fly!" and jumps out of Prime's way. And his shining moment, his crown of crowns, approaches.

 

Yeah, I feel Blitzwing was at his very best in FFOD. I mean, he was enjoyable in season two, but in this, he really became more than just another grunt. I mean, he wasn't the brightest Decepticon around, but this showed that he did have some decency and a sense of honor within him.

 

I intended to have my Part 4 review up tonight and some response thoughts on the Blitzwing discussion, but I'm falling asleep here. So I'm just gonna finish the last 3 or 4 minutes of the episode and write up the rest of the review stuff tomorrow ahead of doing Part 5.

It also occurs to me now that I never updated the active week listing in post #1 with the FFOD episodes, but it's a little late for that. I'll be sure to make the switch on Sunday to note the second week of Season 3. Which could be an interesting set of episodes.

 

FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS (PART 4)

THE SHORT VERSION
Rodimus Prime shows the kind of measured, considered, and sage decision making that signifies a strong leader. Nah, just kidding. He totally almost kills himself to learn something that, while important, doesn't really help the Autobots at all. Still an enjoyable episode though.

REVIEW
The upward swing continues. The Decepticon attack on the Autobots is in full swing, the Quintesson backstory and their connection to Cybertron is revealed, a significant piece of Transformer history is laid out for the audience, and we get the reintroduction of the Junkions from the movie into the series proper. There's even the surprising birth of Trypticon at the end of the episode, just in time to set up a big showdown with Metroplex in part 5. Oh, and Wheelie and Blurr are still around too. It hits all the major notes of the story and keeps things moving along towards the conclusion in the next part.

And all of it works. I sitll don't love Blurr and Wheelie's plot, but I do like the introduction of Marissa Faireborn as their new big human ally. All the threads begin to intertwine without it feeling forced or rushed, and getting a payoff for that slower build from parts 1 and 2 finally starts to feel worth it.

The biggest and best parts of the episode are, unsurprisingly, the results of Rodimus' I-swear-its-not-a-drug-trip journey into the Matrix to learn about the Quintessons and Cybertron's past. I may snark about how it's largely unnecessary for dealing with the actual fight that the Quintessons are spurring on right now, but that doesn't make it an interesting story that provides what is actually among the better bits of Transformers backstory and origin if you want to avoid the overtly theological nature of the Primus/Unicron version (which I'm not saying is a bad thing. It's just that the Quintesson origin makes for a somewhat harder sci-fi angle that might sit well with some people that want more grounded origin instead of the bots being created by planet-sized other robots who are basically God and Satan analogies). It does its best to not really contradict what we also learn in War Dawn, though it does famously bork up the stated bit of history from The Secret of Omega Supreme. Of course, that was also already sketchy thanks to Heavy Metal War, but for a series that's always played somewhat fast and loose with its own continuity, this time it manages to almost not screw it up beyond recovery.

We get enough fights between the factions to keep the episode from getting too bogged down in exposition and backstory, some more nice Crazy Galvatron moments to continue establishing his character as being definitely not Megatron, and really everything works out well right up to cutting out at what should be the climactic battle that is held for Part 5.

Whatever reservations I had about this story after the first two parts are a thing of the past now. and I greatly look forward to finishing off this tale with the final part next time.

THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-After Part 3's unique title sequence, we're back to the generic one for this episode. Guess that means it's Part 5 that has the other surviving unique sequence.

-Man, Victor Caroli sure made Part 3 sound a hell of a lot more exciting than it was. Not that it was boring, but you'd think we were watching the movie.

-It's a nice bit of continuity to see that Rodimus still uses his exhaust pipes on his forearms as guns sometimes

-I'm not sure if it's a positive or a negative that we're less than a minute into the actual episode and Ultra Magnus is admonishing Rodimus for not acting more leader-like. It's a plus because it does demonstrate that Rodimus isn't Optimus and does stil have that sort of rebellious kid at heart. But there's nothing like being the chosen one and having one of your subordinates undercut you on the battlefield.

-The giant mass of attacking Decepticons is full of utter nonsense, including (but not limited to)

• Motormaster (I guess?) but with the wrong face and colors
• Octane colored like Grimlock (badly)
• A bot that looks suspiciously like Snarl (terrible face, but obvious Stegosaurus tail on his back), but colored like Rodimus
• Assorted bots who make zero sense based either on color or design

-Galvatron transformed to cannon mode just to shoot Cyclonus in the face? I know that we can lay every crazy thing he does at the feet of him being... well, crazy. But even that seems like a bit of a stretch.

-It was bound to happen, but a bunch of bots don't sound like they should either, probably owing to the fact that nobody had any idea who was supposed to be doing or saying what in this sequence. Hell, Motormaster has consecutive lines in different voices at one point.

-Man, they really made Magnus a huge stickler for the rules and procedure here. I know it was sort of his thing in the movie too, but he didn't really use it before to lecture the way he does with Rodimus.

-Oh. Right. The Wheelie plot. I almost forgot about it for a bit.

-as Marissa flies to Jupiter to rescue Blurr and Wheelie, she passes by a bunch of planets/moons in the background, including one that looks suspiciously like Cybertron. But that wouldn't make any sense.

-Blurr and Wheelie are being attacked by bat creatures. They look the same as they did in the last part, but I didn't think they were supposed to be so small.

-Don't Blurr and Wheelie have guns? Wouldn't that make more sense than punching the weird bat things?

-Marissa calls the bat things "Bags of protoplasm", implying they're organic, but they transform into missile like forms, complete with the mechanical transforming noise that all Cybertronians use throughout the series. That's... weird.

-Also Marissa's gun is apparently a null ray blaster? Does Starscream know about this?

-Given how Marissa needs to take command of the situation, it sure looks like sending Blurr and Wheelie on this mission on their own was a mistake.

-That's a nice comedy splat sound as Galvatron whips one of the Quintessons into the ground.

-It's a nice touch that Deliberata is shown among the debris getting sucked into the Junkion ship. Even though he almost immediately escapes from the chute moments later.

-Was there ever a stated purpose for Goo? It all looks artificial, and seems like it's some sort of garbage dump, but it's never really expanded on.

-Man, as Galvatron whinges about the escape of the Autobots there's like seven Sweeps standing next to him. I'll grive that one of them is probably Scourge, and one of htem was likely meant to be Cyclonus instead, but damn if it doesn't make it more confusing. At least they got the number of Quintessons right.

-As much as it's just a shallow ploy, the concept of using a Decepticon Matrix to sucker Galvatron is a good plot. I'm glad it's not really a thing, but it's a fun idea to play with.

-Galvatron's belly laugh is fantastic.

-After nothing but Sweeps, suddenly the Quintesson ship also has Octane, Soundwave... a Seeker colored like Onslaught (seriously, Hasbro could probably make a mint selling that as another Seeker variant. I've just finished buying 6 different versions of the same WFC Siege Seeker mold including the cartoon cameo Rainmakers, so you know damn well there's a market for crazy off-beat stuff like this) and... a pair of Shockwaves badly colored like the Constructicons (this one I doubt there's a market for)... Huh.

Now that I write that down, I think I'd buy an Onslaught-colored seeker with a silly fan name and wink-wink, nudge-nudge type meta-joke background.

-So the Junkions fixed Ultra Magnus and now they'll fix Springer too. Does nobody think hat maybe they should go dig up Optimus Prime and see if they can fix him too.

-That's some soft, sappy romance music playing Arcee fawns over the revived Springer.

-Springo? This doesn't feel like a name that sticks.

-"He's not as dumb as he looks." Wow, Springer. Harsh.

-It's also weird that Springer calls him "the boy" even though his upgrade to Rodimus seemed designed in part to make him appear older and more experienced. Though it's an interesting conceit to have him still treated as being a kid who might be in over his head as Autobot leader. It's no wonder he develops such an inferiority complex compared to Optimus.

-I haven't paid a lot of attention to the commercial bumpers that are new for this season up until now, but man does that Rodimus one ever cheat his transformation. He leaps into the air and just sort of morphs through an oval-shaped blob into his vehicle mode.

-"We now return to the Transformers" ...where Rodimus prime has heroically nearly killed himself so he can experience a tripped out vision filtered through a mystical space crystal to maybe answer some vague questions about the strange aliens that have been harassing the Transformers for a couple of months now (and what is a couple of months to a race of robots that lives for millions of years?)

-Rodimus opened his chest to short himself out, so how did it close again?

-Let's be honest, this is basically a drug trip sequence.

-Man, they just front-load the Quintesson revelation into this vision. It makes sense so that they can focus on the history of the Transformers themselves (which is generally a really cool bit of history, and is perhaps the one part of the whole greater-scope species backstory and socio-cultural exploration where I prefer the cartoon version over Marvel's "naturally ocurring levers and pulleys" attempt to explain spontaneous natural evolution of robots (which they then basically wiped out in order to assert that it's all the will of Primus and Unicron as the Transformers' god-beings), but I wish that maybe they dodged the specifics of who exactly created the Transformers for a little bit until they had to reveal that the bots banded together to drive them off Cybertron, just to make it a better surprise.

-The audio balance here is kind of wrecking the drama of the flashback, as the music threatens to drown out the narration.

-During hte rebuild of Cybertron, that sure looks like some earth-vehicle-mode Constructicons in the background.

-which does beg the point: The Constructicons, even before their stated reprogramming in the flashback from The Secret of Omega Supreme, are always presented as having been Decepticons. But here the Decepticons are said to be descended from the Quintessons' military hardware line, which the Autobots come from the consumer-goods bots. So.. are we to assume that the Constructicons are some kind of... combat cranes and loaders and bulldozers?  

- History seems filled with bots that vaguely look like Rodimus Prime. Is this lazy character design, or a subtle hint that Rodimus' "Chosen One" status is tied to his design and style? Should the sacred texts be made more specific so that future generations can look for an orange, yellow, and maroon (or sometimes pink) bot with a massive spoiler fin on his upper back?

-Ahh, here we go. The most continuity wrecking shot in all these flashbacks into origin stories: the scene of 8 Constructicons making Megatron, evne though there's only really 6 of them and they should apparently be good at this point because it was Megatron who reprogrammed them.

-The current war is the third Cybertronian war? I always assumed it was at least the 4th.

-I enjoy snarky, smartass Springer.

-Who the heck were the bots we see prepping for Decepticon attack after the one Constructicon? The one that said "I'm ready with the Beacon" and "Sleep soundly, earth creatures. For your awakening shall be rude."? The former almost looked like Octane, but didn't sound or act like him. The latter. I've got no idea which decepticon is supposed to be blue and orange.

-Trypticon is acutally literally built out of a city, even though that doesn't make a lick of sense. Especially when you consider how the Constructicons managed to make a giant bot out of a human-occupied city without any of is inhabitants noticing.

-If I didn't know better, that shot of the Decepticons emerging from the Quintesson ship to attack Cybertron looks like an exact re-use of the last time a bunch of Decepticons emerged from a Quintesson ship at the start of the episode.

FAVORITE LINES
"Are you crazy? Why'd you short-circuit yourself? Wake up, you... you moron!"
"It was the only way... into the Matrix."
"I was wrong. He is as dumb as he looks"
-Springer is having none of Rodimus Prime's rash nature.


Final Grade: B+

As a final side note, I finally got my image uploads working again, so here's that Combaticons image from Part 3 that I never got to put up in its proper section (it will be added there now though to preserve readability for first-timers.)

 

I never ever took the scene of the Constructicons building Megatron to be literal. The vision was already filled with trippy shit. Why take that one literally?

And nowadays, I prefer this origin to Primus and Unicron. Itsone of the few robot rebellions where we're completely on the side of the robots. And them going into civil war is all the more tragic.

 

That Octane like robot is most certainly a miscolored Vortex. The other is a miscolored Long Haul. The only way you can tell it's them is by their voices (especially Vortex, since Johnny Haymer did sound kinda similar as both Swindle and Vortex).

And boy, Trypticon is finally introduced. I tell ya, I really love Brad Garrett in the role. Who would have thought that the guy who played this giant battle station who turns into a dinosaur would become a pretty big celebrity.

 

Good to know. Even after 30 years I still can't always correctly identify which Constructicon is which, so it's not too outlandish that I have trouble trying to pick out other less prominent characters when AKOM is busy screwing up their designs so badly.  .

And I agree on Trypticon. I remember watching the episodes for the first time in years when I got the Rhino DVDs and I did a double take when he spoke. Garrett is my favorite bit of random cast trivia in terms of recognizing people who were on the show from other stuff. My second favorite one is coming up when we get to Starscream's Ghost.

 

Yeah, I love this season to death, but AKOM's animation is just awful. I'll give them this, the character movements are a bit more fluid than in Toei's episodes, but that still doesn't excuse the number of animation errors we get in their episodes. The Rebirth mini-series was quite possibly their best effort IMO, but yeah, most of their TF work ranged from halfway decent (Ghost in the Machine, Dark Awakening) to atrociously bad (FFOD, Carnage in C-Minor).

Ah, yes. That would be Slap Shot's Jerry Houser as Sandstorm. He really did well in the role, and even though Fight or Flee is my least favorite episode of the season, Sandstorm's development in that really was well handled and Jerry's performance was pretty emotional.

 

FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS (PART 5)

THE SHORT VERSION
Hurrying to cram an entire climax and denoument into about 10 minutes: A proud Transformers tradition.

REVIEW
Finally, the ride is over. And this was worth the wait. 4 episodes of building and building and threading plotlines and playing with all the different scenes and actions running parallel to each other all comes together as everything meets up in an episode that is largely a big string of action scenes pushing us towards the enacting of the Quintessons' master plan.

For the most part, it all works. Blurr and Wheelie finally deliver the transforming cog just in time for Metroplex to have a giant fight with Trypticon. Rodimus and company get back to Cybertron to stand against the assault of the Quintesson-led Decepticons. Galvatron's search for the apparent Decepticon Matrix plays out in spectacularly Galvatron-ish fashion, and the Quintessons see their plan enacted and played out to a fun conclusion.

There are some missteps, but by this point in the series almost everything has some missteps. There are AKOM-standard animation and technical errors all over the place, the ending feels extremely rushed as it unfolds and resolves in the span of like 2 minutes at the very end of the episode, leaving Rodimus to just fire off a brief mini-speech type ending the same way they concluded The Movie. And the destruction of the pre-Movie Autobot base (which, by extension, also means the destruction of the Ark) almost feels like an afterthought given the way the "battle" is essentially a bunch of tiny Autobots getting stomped by Trypticon before he collapses the Volcano on top of everything. I get that they were still saving Metroplex for a bigger one-on-one, but Superion or Defensor showing up and at least making the defence of the Ark a bit of a sporting fight would've been much appreciated.

Still, this is a good way to wrap up the gradually improving run of the Five Faces of Darkness, and sets us up on a solid note to move into Season 3 proper. The question from here on out is how often can the rest of the season live up to this good first step?

THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

Spoiler

-It turns out that this episode doesn't have a distinct title sequence. It's the same one as Part 3. It makes me believe I misunderstood TFWiki's explanation and it's that the whole of FFoD had its own title sequence (this one) that was identical for all 5 parts, but different from the normal one used in the rest of the season afterwards.

-I get a bit of a chuckle out of the fact that the recap uses the term "Jovian" to refer to Jupiter, as if any kids watching the show are going to know what that means. I'll bet a bunch probalby thought it was a mistake or some kind of retcon to set things on another planet.

-The alien bat things get names now too. Lipoles. Or possibly "Lightpoles".

-The Junk planet is now called Junkion like the faction. Huh.

-It occurs to me now that there's all this backstory about the origins of the Transformers, but nothing about where the Matrix came from. It simply exists.

-Wow, that Decepticon group shot after the title card. Everyone just stands there, unmoving as the background srolls, destroying any illusion that they're actually moving.

-Rodimus and the others are apparently meeting in a place so lacking in security that they can all be directly hit by the giant invading swarm of Decepticons even though they should be in a building.

-Oh my god, it's Powerglide! A pre-movie bot who wasn't present in the movie gets a whole bunch of dialogue!

-That really janky looking shot of the Ark is probably fair foreshadowing that it's not long for the series. Otherwise they would've put more care into rendering it.

-This early battle outside the Ark seems like an excuse to burn off the debuts of the remaining mini-vehicle Autobots without much fanfare. Pipes, Swerve, Tailgate, and Outback all appear to no fanfare and no real significance and are then basically not thought of again after the action shifts to Autobot City and the newer characters.

-It's clearly daytime when Trypticon closes in on the Ark, but Powerglide's "damage report" is set to a background of a starfield as if it were nighttime (or on Cybertron)

-For all the times that Autobot City is referred to interchangeably with Autobot City, it's worth noting that the establishing shot of Metroplex here looks completely different from even parts of Autobot City as we've seen them before.

-And now for the debut of Sky Lynx. Full disclosure: I never really liked Sky Lynx as a character. His braggy, egotistical nature was fun for some comedy, espeically when coupled with his almost upper-crust and aristocratic type personality, but I just didn't like a Transformer with no robot mode at all, especially when his separatable "lion" piece is never established firmly for being either a) a roller-like secondary bot or b) a controllable part of him that he is just as much a part of as the bird-like shuttle.

-Oh wow. I sure hope the layout artist for the scene of Blurr, Wheelie, and Marissa fighting off the Lipoles/Lightpoles got a stern talking to. Because... yeesh.



-Blaster suddenly having a greater propensity to rhyme is a bit weird when played up against Wheelie's usual rhyming gimmick. And somehow it doesn't bother me as much when Blaster does it.

-More sky shenanigans as close up shots of Marissa have a blue, cloudy sky behind her while wider shots show the more sensible black starfield. AKOM really isn't doing themselves any favors considering this multi-part episode is their first effort out of the gate on a season where they carry a greater amount of the animation load than ever before.

-The Autobots really did leave a skeleton crew behind to defend the Ark. I suppose they couldn't have known that something as big as Trypticon would show up, but you'd think they might be better prepared if it was another large foe like the Stunticons. I mean... The Protectobots almost never seem to have anything better to do, why not give them some much deserved action?

-Trypticon speaks! And it's one of my favorite bits of voice actor trivia that he's performed by future sitcom standout Brad Garrett (aka the brother on Everybody Loves Raymond). This would've seemed a lot more apropos had I not just had the conversation with TheUltimateBum about this very fact in between writing this part of the episode review and posting the finished product.  

-The Autobots are supposed to hold Trypticon off until the cog arives, but it never really seemed like the Ark and Autobot City were that close to their location. At least not close enough for Metroplex to make a save there within the short period after the cog arrives and is installed..

-Since when did Bumblebee have a cannon on his roof?

-Warpath seems to be the one in charge of the defence, and he does a pretty terrible job if his whole plan is to just charge right at Trypticon, get swatted aside, then let Trypticon destroy the volcano and the Ark along with it. He's never getting a command assignment again.

-The Ark's destruction actually ends up serving a useful behind-the-scenes function as Casey Kasem's decision to leave the series coupled with this lets them avoid having to recast Teletraan-1 and have an excuse to debut the Frank Welker voiced Teletraan-2 (and continues to expand the portfolio of Welker, edging closer to their seemingly ultimate goal of having the entire show voiced by him alone.  )

-The act break by having Trypticon shoot the camera is a fun and quirky way to end a scene. it would've been cool to see more little inventive spots like that.

- It looks like Cybertron has moons again. But how? They got destroyed by Unicron. Well, ok, technically one of them got destroyed because Spike and Bumblebee blew it up trying to take out Unicron, but that's just semantics at this point.

-Did Ultra Magnus just kill Ramjet and Dirge? It sure looked like it given how they exploded.

-Nice bit of continuity to have Ultra Magnus and Galvatron acknowledge their brief fight from The Movie. Even if it wasn't so much a fight as it was the sweeps blasting him into scrap.

-Perceptor being the one to scream "meet your fate valiantly, Autobots!" as he shoots at the attacking Decepticons is a bit odd considering he was last shown preferring a non-combat support role. I guess he took all of Brawn's critcisms of his courage to heart.

-Blitzwing keeps getting fun little additional things to do in this multi-parter. Now he is the one to spy on the Quintessons and discover their plan.

-So there's a master off-switch for all Transformers buried deep in the planet and in millions of years nobody ever found it? Wow.

-Hearing Sky Lynx shriek and caw like a bird is kind of unsettling.

-The Predacons kind of get introduced like chumps. They seem to be easily trounced by one ADD-addled Autobot, one Autobot who mostly fights like Dennis the Menace, and a squishy little human with a jetpack and a pistol.

-Predaking is animated quite oddly, with stiff, minimalist movement and a ghosting effect on large movements. It's like the extra detail in his model made AKOM balk at doing it properly.

-Wheelie's line of "The Transforming Cog!" when he finds it is the exact same take as when he lost it. That's weird. I suppose it's potentially just Wally Burr wanting to cut a corner on how much dialogue he needed Welker to perform as Wheelie.

-Blaster shows sad/afraid eyes. It's unusual to see a Cybertronian character given this much facial animation/emoting in the series (in the Marvel comic it wouldn't seem out of place, but for sure it looks odd here)

-Laserbeak is suddenly huge. And somehow that's one of the least of this episode's problems technically.

-There's a point where the transforming cog just magically turns from its proper spheroid shape to a cartoony flat gear-style cog and back again for just the span of one scene.

-Hey, more Insecticons in this batch of episodes. No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories about the nature of Cyclonus, Scourge, and the Sweeps.

-This whole bit of Blitzwing having to turn to the Autobots feels like it was meant to set up for Blitzwing having loyalty issues later. Which would make sense until they decided to change that subplot to Octane instead.

-It's the big, long-awaited showdown between Metroplex and Trypticon!

-Actually, as far as climactic showdowns go, this one is pretty solid. There's lots of little flourishes and interesting attacks instead of it being a simple punch-fest or exchange of laser fire.

-Trypticon's flight into the ocean is really weird. He literally flies in an inverted arc, bottoming out as he hurtles over a mountain and then curving back up as he sails over a forest.

-It's perfect that Galvatron basically dooms himself and all Cybertronians becuase he's too hot-headed and paranoid.

-Does anyone hear banjos as those humans watch the immobilized Autobots? Or is it just me?  

-The Quintessons are back after "lo, these many centuries".... It's been like 9 million years at least. That's nearly 100,000 centuries. That's... a lot of centuries to still be using centuries as your frame of reference. But hey, there's only 6.3 million seconds until Christmas day 2019! (yes, I looked it up and it is accurate as of when I'm posting this review on Oct 12)

-Damn, Blitzwing. That's a ballsy stance to stand up to Galvatron like that.

-Galvatron promises that Blitzwing would suffer for his actions. Spoiler: he really doesn't. This is the last time he ever appears in a plot-relevant role in any episode, relegated to background appearances in Decepticon crowds (which would actually seem to imply that Galvatron let him back into the army). I've alluded to it a few times, but I'll talk more about what this was meant to set up when we get to Starscream's Ghost in a couple weeks.

-Who is Rodimus talking to? The only other bots there are Kup, Magnus, and Spike. It's a grand speech he's giving for an apparent audience of 3.

-Oh. Ok. There's a camera somewhere, I guess. That sorta makes sense.

-For a story with 5 parts, this is a very abrupt ending. It feels a lot like the movie did in that regard, though I guess that's not super surprising since this script was in part pulled from Flint Dille's rejected movie ideas.

FAVORITE LINES
"Deceivers! Betrayers! Five-faced slime of the nebula! I'll rip your tentacles from your..."
-Galvatron: Wordsmith.


Final Grade: A-

 

Funny you should mention the fluidity thing. Because one of the biggest oddities I noticed in part 5 was that the Predaking fight seemed to be animated oddly, with a bunch of frame skipping and ghosting that made it look stiff and janky. It almost looked like the Predaking character model was so detailed that they decided not to torture the animators by making them draw frame after frame after frame of it, opting to cheat it slightly to save time/effort.

And I'm dreading reviewing Carnage in C-Minor. Like "A Decepticon Raider..." before it, that's one of the rare episodes I usually outright skip when I've watched the series on my own time in previous years. So I probably haven't watched that episode in 6-10 years.

Bingo. I only even found out about that a couple years ago. I was doing what was basically the prototype of this thread as part of a Transformers thread on the hockey board I frequent, and when I included Starscream's Ghost in the small collection of season 3 episodes I did as part of a "12 days of TFsmas" lead-up to Christmas (reviewing a selection of episodes from each season of G1 and then from a variety of other subsequent series), I got a big kick out of getting to point out that Sandstorm was actually Killer Carlson. Unfortunately the limited audience of that thread meant that he trivia factoid didn't get to go over well, but it's stuck with me ever since.

 

Yeah, I think AKOM was attempting to do a slow-motion battle with that scene, but they failed miserably and it looks extremely godawful. But yeah, considering the detail of Predaking's character model, I think the animators must have had tons of trouble with it.

Yeah, well, although I find Carnage's animation to be incredibly poor, I feel the story is so weird that it's kinda amusing. However, the episode I always tend to skip when I rewatch season three is Fight or Flee.

Yeah, friggin' Killer Carlson in Transformers... whenever I hear Jerry as Sandstorm or as Sci-Fi in G.I. Joe, I always tend to imagine some of Killer's dialogue slipping in.  

 

So, thanks to that 'stellar' AKOM animation, it looks like Trypticon is destroying a mountain to the right of Mount Saint Hillary. Nice job, stupid!  

And yeah, that too is part of my headcanon. That the Ark wasn't destroyed. I mean it slammed into the side of a mountain and wasn't atomized. Tryps doesn't even directly attack it.

 

Five Faces of Darkness is a highlight for me. I just love how the story was packed and unfolds that made it felt like a movie. In fact, I'm in the process of editing together the 5 episode story to make it run like a sequel movie, just for personal consumption. Calling it "The Transformers 2 : Five Faces of Darkness" haha.

I suppose if it was a movie, it could've been more polished as there are certain plot threads and scenes that were just ambitious and were constrained by TV budget.