Maybe you can explain to me how exactly this ever felt like what was going on in the show, given that is not the take I got whatsoever. Outside of Cliffjumper getting mobbed at the very beginning, the show's very essence revolved around how overpowered the Autobots were. By the end of the fifth episode they've already casually just walked onto the freakin' Nemesis virtually unopposed by anybody of significant strength. Prime and Ratchet were on their own against an entire group of zombies and they hardly suffered a scratch.

Worst of all - Megatron seemingly did nothing but monger for more power because despite having a battleship and an entire army of Vehicons, the show has to make him a moron in order to get away with the entire Decepticon armed forces being unable to defeat five Autobots. He even gets incapacitated by a pile of falling rocks. And then, when he finally makes a move and blows up the Autobot base to create new Kaon...three episodes later that's all gone and the only significant detriment the Autobots have suffered? A change of address from a decommissioned missile silo to an active military base.

Numerically, yes, the Autobots were outnumbered...but that doesn't mean a whole lot when one Autobot could slaughter dozens of Vehicons to the point the balance of power always felt firmly slanted to the Autobots that more often than not the plot had to bend backwards to prevent them from simply exterminating the Decepticons outright.

Additionally, the show has one crippling flaw that is often overlooked: there is no reason for why the Autobots and Decepticons are even on the planet. Sure, they were fighting a war, that's the usual set up, but the actual reason for why this war moved off Cybertron and ended up on Earth is not disclosed beyond Cybertron being dead, which again is par for the course.

They aren't there initially to hunt relics as they don't know they're even on the planet, they're not there because of Dark Energon since Megatron ditched his own army to go space spelunking, and they aren't there because of the stupid Predacon fossils because, again, they don't know those exist on Earth, so there never is a reason why the war ends up specifically on Earth. The war itself is literally nothing but set dressing trying to explain why these two sides hate each other without explaining critical aspects like how exactly the Autobots got to Earth since they never have a spaceship of their own capable of holding them all. They also generally don't act like they're in a war, either, given Arcee's sole defining character trait is her trauma over Cliffjumper dying (Tailgate is such an empty extension of this that he's literally white Cliffjumper) as if that's the only instance of her having somebody she was close with die...in a war spanning millions of years.

Prime's problem was that it wanted to try and set itself up as having Autobots who routinely beat the odds...but it doesn't lay the groundwork sufficiently enough or even do proper portrayal of the characters as actually having truly experienced war to the point they give more of a damn about Bulkhead almost dying as opposed to Cliffjumper who the majority of Autobots seem to forget even existed.

 

10 years already....

I remember Prime (the show) having so much promise through the earlier half of its run, and regularly defending it on the boards. The animation was fantastic; the voice acting was consistently phenomenal, and the initial set-up looked to have shades of Beast Wars about it, with the small "marooned" cast and greater focus on character interaction. It's a shame that the show ultimately squandered its story potential, and limped to the end without payoff for most of what was promised at the start (MECH, Terrorcons, Orion Pax, Smokescreen becoming Prime, crippled Bulkhead, Airachnid, Breakdown's allegiance, synth-en, etc etc).

The toyline was another thing entirely though. I loved the First Editions for their complexity and the mainline just as much for its fun-factor....but Cyberverse was the absolute standout for me. The fact we had the entire cast (including Insecticons) in roughly the right scale, and even vehicles like Wheeljack's ship and energon-drillers still blows my mind today.

 

Megatron and those Vehicons were my favs. Blum's performance with Starscream was also a highlight.

Was hoping the series would further evolve the toys with arms that tform into weapons.

 

Man, time flies. It feels like yesterday that rumors of a mysterious new TF series started surfacing on the web; it's hard to believe that series is now ten years old. Prime was an ambitious take on the TF mythos, the echoes of which, are still felt in the fiction today, even after the death of the Aligned Continuity. Though it had its faults, it also brought with it a lot of good moments to experience and fun toys to collect, and so I'm glad it exists.

 

I will admit (especially in the later seasons) it was ludicrous how penetrable the Nemesis was.

 

Even with its numerous problem, Tf prime remains the best looking and best feeling TF experience I’ve had. I can’t say it’s a masterpiece but I’m happy I grew up watching it. It is pretty much what made me love Transformers and what had set a president for character development. Perfect that it’s anniversary is on thanksgiving, cause I’m definitely thankful for it.

 

Damn 10 years what a amazing show

 

Cant believe i was 9 when this shit came out

 

Favorite Transformers show to date. I am still waiting for the next great Transformers show, but Prime is a high bar to beat.

 

Buddy, I was 7. Animated came out when I was 3. I remember watching every new episode on Friday on the HUB.

 

Happy ten years! Here’s to another ten years more! I’ll be celebrating with my usual tradition to do so every time it’s the show’s birthday

 

If anything but praise isn't what you're looking for and you just wanna fondly reminisce over Prime then please skip past this comment.

I still fondly remember watching the series as it aired, I remember enjoying it and getting quite invested in the show, I remember playing the game and enjoying it, reading the novels associated with the Aligned continuity and etc. I played Transformers Universe while it was active and had quite a bit of fun with it. I even read the entirety of the Covenant of Primus, twice.

The show gave us some pretty enjoyable performances and had some decent ideas, as well as one of the best original characters to pop up in TF for quite a bit. Frank Welker basically nailed modern Megatron's voice, we got a really bad-ass iteration of Soundwave as well as a great human character in the form of Agent Fowler. Tony Todd's Dreadwing was also pretty excellent, and Adam Baldwin's Breakdown is a personal favorite of mine.

All that said, I think ultimately the show was a very expensive series of bad decisions that have possibly lead to the current stagnation in regards to story-based content. The writers and people who worked on Prime were clearly not the right ones for the job, and it lead to a situation where Hasbro didn't have any control over this thing that they were clearly very invested in making work. The Aligned continuity was meant to be the foundation of multiple Hasbro franchises going forward, and a lot of work, time and money was put into this thing.

The idea was to take the best from every TF universe and import it all into one, to ideally make the ultimate new universe that had something for everyone. To this day very little of what was in the (somewhat pretentiously titled) Binder of Revelation has been made public, many different creators as well as fans were consulted in order to flesh out as much as possible.

The staff of Prime basically rejected the binder, any form of continuity with the rest of Aligned and essentially rejected anything other than the nigh universally disliked Michael Bay movies, is it any wonder this thing turned out as it did? It got to the point where the staff was fighting amongst themselves leading to the mess that is Season 3 and the oddly titled "Predacons Rising".

It was better than the films, but let's be honest that's not exactly the most difficult thing to achieve. Ultimately I think the overall end-result isn't that great, if you wanted to go against the grain you could even call it bad. Hasbro clearly needed to have more control over the project, I'm not saying there should be no creative freedom whatsoever but what we got is the total opposite, which is just as bad if not worse. They could have had direction, they were given a wealth of resources and they just rejected it because they felt like direction and everything that people liked about Transformers was stifling to their creativity, it's just a shame they weren't that good at being creative to begin with.

In 2012 the new TMNT series began to air, and it turned out to be one of the best TV adaptions of the franchise to date. It was basically everything I wanted TF: Prime to be, what it possibly could have been if the creators weren't such amateurs.

Where is the binder now? Apparently gathering dust somewhere at the bottom of a drawer. All that work, ultimately meaningless.

The Covenant was also a pretty terrible book overall, written by someone who's never really delved into Transformers before (and it shows). Turning TWO of my favorite antagonists into an angsty emo with a stupid name who talks like a thug and turning The Liege Maximo into a Loki rip-off, but that's less the fault of Prime and moreso just a bad book in the same continuity.

 

10 years... 10 years since we’ve had a good Transformers show, is pretty sad. Hopefully Hasbro will sooner or later realize they need professionals (not FJ) and hire good staff to make another quality show in the near future...

 

It always seemed like the writers were going out of their way to ignore previously established continuity.

 

I remember they were once asked if Dark Energon was inspired by Angolmois from Beast Wars II since they're virtually identical except Beast Wars II gave it a more creative name, they said they had no idea that Angolmois was a thing.

I used to think they were not being entirely honest but now I can genuinely believe they had no idea because due to their lack of care for anything other than their show. That's bad enough but they even didn't want to keep continuity with OTHER ENTRIES In aligned!

I remember the High Moon studios guys were glad to alter some elements of their game so it would fit more with the new continuity Hasbro wanted to make, but Prime's staff wouldn't even be that courteous. To them nothing outside of the show was canon, which is kind of a middle finger to Hasbro and anyone else trying to make this thing work.

 

I will say that the writers constantly ignoring continuity did irk me when I started playing the Cybertron games. I know that people say studios should stay out the creative choice and let the writers/directors make what they want, but in this case with the B.O.R and other parts of the aligned continuity, I'd say the studio should have exerted more control since they knew what they were doing.

I do still like Prime as it's own thing, but not so much taken the rest of the continuity into account.

 

I totally understand why people like Prime and as harsh as I am I don't wanna take that away from anyone.

Well put with the first part, I'm not at all advocating for Hasbro to have 10000% control, but with this situation it was basically the opposite. The fact that we were in a situation that HASBRO had no control whatsoever over this thing, that sounds like kind of a big problem.

 

I spent so much time carrying a lot of angst and annoyance at the show. I still do, but frankly it just doesn’t do me any good to bitch since I’ve bitched plenty about it. But I think the fact that the show did have such good stuff is part of why I’ve bitched so much, that it was a true shame that so much good stuff was thrown away for the shit like the relic hunting, Breakdown’s pointless death, the melodrama, Megatron being an idiot, Arcee’s “my partners are dead”, the status quo, etc.

The good stuff was definitely the more open, experimental Season 1 which while far from fleshing out its cast like BW S1 (and even then by the end of that season you wonder why they bothered trying to flesh out a dope like Scorponok), still left us with a decent impression of just about everybody. With the way the voice acting has shifted to New York, this show has left me with fonder memories of Peter and Frank getting to go at it for another show together, even if their characters weren’t written well. Cyberverse was great for pretty much every character, even the diminutive Legion Breakdown still has great character to him.

But TFP’s claim to fame for me was the amazing Formspring roleplay I participated in for the entirety of the show’s run, playing Ratchet, and later Wheeljack. The family I formed on there, from a fat idiot tyrant Animated Straxus portrayed in the vein of idiotic villain Flintheart Glomgold; a Unicron who trolled people with NSFW memes and actions; Derrick J. Wyatt being a mischievous bringer of chaos; to portrayals of Miko and Airachnid I genuinely loved, it was always such a blast. It’s why I was willing to forgive stuff like Orion Pax and Darkmount being quickly resolved since we really lived through the season hiatuses without Optimus or a base to call home. Just a lot of fun.

It’s surprising to see Prime get such a wave of recognition and love, but then again, all things eventually get their fan base thanks to nostalgia and fans who grew up with it, just like the Star Wars prequels did. So I can’t judge. Happy birthday, TFP.

 

Transformers Prime is the BEST Transformers show EVER!
Idgaf what anybody else thinks

 

Happy anniversary Prime. One of my three favorite Transformers cartoons, and the show that played a big part in getting me back into Transformers, for the second time in my life (after Beast Wars did the same in the 90's).