From kendrick@io.com Tue Sep 26 09:08:11 CDT 1995 Article: 23453 of alt.toys.transformers Path: news.io.com!io.com!not-for-mail From: kendrick@io.com (Kendrick Kerwin Chua) Newsgroups: alt.toys.transformers Subject: TF Weekday - Fire in the Sky Date: 26 Sep 1995 09:07:46 -0500 Organization: Illuminati Online Lines: 123 Message-ID: <4491fi$j73@bermuda.io.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: bermuda.io.com Status: RO X-Status: TF Weekday Sept 26 1995 - Fire in the Sky The EI/AD: The Evil Invention/Alien Device this episode is a pipeline siphoning heat energy out of the Earth's molten core, courtesy of Decepticon Public Works and Sanitation, bringing you a colder and bleaker future. The plot: The Autobots race to the arctic circle, discovering that the Deceptions are draining the Earth's heat energy to make energon. Whilst they're enroute, the Decepticons discover a huge Cybertronian buried in the ice; it's Skyfire, an old scientist friend of Starscream's who landed on Earth millions of years ago and never came back. Drafted into the Cons by Megatron, he 'captures' Spike and Sparkplug with the intent to prove that he is in the right, then is forced to rethink his position when the humans are incarcerated and some Autobots who haven't done anything to him are incinerated. When the Autobots show up for the Really Big Fight at the End, Skyfire switches sides, defeats the Decepticons and sacrifices himself to bury the crystal shaft through which the Decepticons were draining energy. The Autobots can't rescue him, but will remember. The characters: Megatron and Starscream do seem to be civil to each other every once in a while... And just what does it take to become the friend of a back-stabbing miscreant, anyway? This episode alone adds layers and layers to Starscream's character. Skyfire is no slouch either, torn apart by the inner conflict of two philosophies, the Decepticon goals versus the ethical and moral bounds of his former life as a scientist. This also seems to be a slightly more-realistic-than-usual portrayal of the humans' role in the fight, as they don't save the day, and are in fact captured inside two minutes of fighting. Anybody who thinks the movie is the first time TFs have dealt with death doesn't remember this episode. It's an early episode, so it's entirely possible that the writers did not intend to bring Skyfire back. But it's Marvel, where nobody really dies. The execution of Hound, Gears, Ratchet, and Ironhide by Starscream is gruesome for children's television, with parts strewn everywhere. Of course, this is only a Houndo-Holo, so it's not real... But it still must have caused shouts of disbelief from your average 8 year old. The plot holes: Very few. We don't even have the usual errors associated with miscolored Seekers or Autobots in places they shouldn't be. Only the technical nitpick of how and where the Decepticons are getting energy remains. Theoretically, the right kind of crystalline structure would be able to focus and direct light and heat upwards through the Earth's crust, but it's hard to imagine this happening without the crystal deliberately being placed and positioned. That, and there's no crust in the arctic circle, only ice. Portrayal of dry ground and rocks and stone caverns in this episode were horribly inaccurate. One last thing; in the flashback, Starscream describes Skyfire's story as it is shown on his memory monitor and Red'n'Grey is shown in his Earth vehicular mode. Either the animators decided that nobody would recognize Starscream as the old Pyramid mode, or Starscream was manipulating the monitor to show only his side of the story. Perhaps he and Skyfire WEREN'T such good friends as he made them out to be. :) Oh yeah, and is it believable that Skyfire can take on nine Autobots all by his lonesome? It makes his defeat of Megatron more believable at the end, at least. Moving pictures: If Divide and Conquer was a textbook example of the best and worst in TF animation and storytelling, Fire in the Sky is an ideal example. Animation is smooth and flawless; kudos to the effects boys for giving us believable snow, northern lights, and energon glow. Prime and Megatron remind us that they're robots and not human beings in the RBFatE; Megatron turns his waist a full 180 degrees to circumvent a judo-hold and throw by Prime, and Prime counters by spinning his right hand to form a shield with his crystal sword. We also see Prime detaching >from his trailer when in the caves searching for the humans, a rarity throughout the series. Prime also brings in 'reinforcements' by flipping out his battle platform to take out Skywarp and Thundercracker in one shot. Oh yeah, nice dramatic close-ups of peoples' faces again, with that sparse but relevant detail that Toei is so good at. Look at Soundwave's head-on shot when Megatron tells him to eject Ravage, or Starscream's look of disgust when Megatron throws the energon cube at him. The flaws were few and far between. Rumble moves his mouth but says nothing when Skywarp asks if the 'big bad ice' is too much for him, which suggests that maybe there's some dialogue here in the Japanese version of this episode. Megatron gestures to Ravage to go find the Autobots, and it seems as if some dialogue and mouth movement was supposed to go here too. Oh yes, and one really horrible scale problem is when Spike and Sparkplug are being put away. Megatron and Starscream fit comfortably into a cave, but Skyfire is too big and has to wait outside. However, they draw the big guy standing at the mouth of the cave, peering in as if it were knothole in a hollow tree. At that scale, Jetfire is bigger than Bruticus. The cuts: Agh, the whole first minute of the entire episode is absent, where Spike goes exploring the snowy Oregon plains, and they cut straight to where he runs into Jazz. Also missing are a few witty lines of dialogue from beneath the caves. It's funny, for the first commercial break, when Skyfire declares his intention to destroy the Autobots, they do the A/D switch scene, then go to a commercial. Did the Sci-Fi channel use an old commercial video tape for this broadcast, rather than the studio cut of it? Toys they should reissue: The tapes were easily some of the most popular toys. I remember them being perfectly innocuous in the fifth grade when the teacher decided it was time to take a look in your desk to see what it was you were fiddling with. Perhaps we should get a Rumble with piledriver attachments, or a more articulated Ravage. Of course, if these molds were destroyed along with the Minibot molds, then there's little chance of that. Quotables: "It is time to make the change from science to war..." "Is the big, bad ice too tough for ya?" "Very pleasing to my optic sensors." (a comment by Prime about the Aurora Borealis, the standard bit of garbage dialogue in the show to justify it being classified as an educational program by your local independent TV syndicate. They've since closed this loophole in television regulation, but it's interesting to note where and how it happens.) "I got a tingle in my sensors, like we're about to fall into a... TRAP!" KKC, really wants to retool that extra Jetfire he has into an Omichi Skyfire now. The only problem is that the intake vents on the Omichi version are backwards from the way they're actually drawn, which makes the robot mode look right but the jet mode look silly. Or maybe I should just stick to that old Action Master project and leave the remolding stuff to people who HAVE that amount of free time... -- kendrick@io.com - Kendrick Kerwin Chua - WTB: 80s Transformers and GIJoe toys "What would you have me do with Washington,Destro? Pepper it with spitballs?" Necronomcon FAQ home page at http://www.io.com/~kendrick/necronomicon or anon FTP at io.com:/pub/usr/kendrick -Personal home at http://www.io.com/~kendrick