Manic Ramblings and Delerious Ranting
re: Fallen Comrades, The Spark
11/13/96

  Through the wonderful world of the VCR, I finally saw Fallen Comrades 
last night, as well as The Spark.  Fallen Comrades was good, but it was 
The Spark which really kept me on the edge of my seat....

  Avast! 

   Thar be SPOILERS ahead!...





  Not having paid strict attention to the list of upcoming episodes (this
was partially intentional), I had no idea if the fallen protoform would
end up as a Maximal or Pred, and the episode managed to actually keep me
hanging till Airrazor emerged.  And her being a female was another 
surprise. 

  I love the Predacons' computer voice!

  Blackarachnia really shone in this one, coming across as quite the
villian.  First her questioning of Scorponok was great, addressing on the
show something that all of us on the NG have been wondering.  She didn't 
seem too upset when Tigatron waxed him.  Then, her battle with Cheetor 
was great.  You could tell that these two *really* don't like each other. 

  Poor Cheetor!  I found myself rooting for him in the fight with BA.  
What a move he put on her at the end!  Ha ha!  That'll teach her to take 
out Tigatron like that...  I felt even more empathy for Cheets  when 
the fliers showed up right after he'd barely scraped through his first 
battle.  He just wasn't getting any breaks that day.  
 
  I look forward to seeing more of Airrazor... she strikes me as a gentle
sort, not the kind you'd expect to see hanging out with the
rough-and-tumble Maximals (though she proved she is quite capable of
handling herself in combat.) I suspect we'll see her around Tigatron and
Rhinox a lot, as they're the most soft-spoken of the bunch. 

   Now, for Fallen Comrades.  

   Again, I didn't know how this one was going to come out at first... I 
thought the tiger we saw in the opening shots was Tigatron, so I figured 
it'd be Blackarachnia in the new pod... I don't remember which one, but 
one of the shots of the falling pod looked EXACTLY like the Enterprise 
burning up in Star Trek III, Search for Spock... 

   Dinobot was the highlight of this episode.  He looked like such an 
incredible warrior as he lowered himself down to scout the area for 
Primal -- almost worth of Bludgeon himself.  And he made no effort to 
hide his dislike of Rattrap -- "...vermin."  Ha!  I wonder if Dinobot 
really has any friends at all among the Maximals, besides Optimus.  Even 
they clashed in this one.  Boy, Optimus really had to fight to get his 
way on this one.  Overall, I get the feeling Dinobot is more "against the 
Preds" than he is "for the Maximals".

   Megatron in this episode was hardly the incompetent fool everyone's
making him out to be.  He had me pretty worried for the first half of the
episode; he sucessfully anticipated Primal's strategy, and did a pretty
good job of twarting it.  He almost even took the Maximal base, and 
Dinobot with it.  And he had sense enough to high-tail it out of there 
when the autocannons started up, and to check up on his 
less-than-brilliant fliers. 

  The laser bit was clever, but contrived -- why can't they do that for 
every pod that falls?  And just how does a laser bounce precisely off of 
a moon?  Furthermore, why didn't Megatron figure the transmitter that 
Dinobot was working on was something of importance, and blast it?  (OTOH, 
Dinobot probably could have defended it against that, easily.)

  Both episodes raised a lot of questions for me regarding the protoform
pods.  If, as Rattrap mentioned, the robots inside are in fact the
Maximals' "friends", why are they now "protoforms"??  Is this reduction to
a "protoform" a necessary part of going into stasis?  Why does this affect
the mind so much, almost to the point of amnesia?  Evidently the bodies
can quickly reform themselves into a fully-functional Transformer once the
right programming is in place.  But why would anyone voluntarily enter a
state which is known to affect the mind so badly? 

  Okay, that's all for now...