From kendrick@io.com Wed Nov  1 11:39:28 CST 1995
Article: 25260 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 11/1 - Surprise Party
Date: 1 Nov 1995 11:39:00 -0600
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TF Weekday Nov 1 1995 - Surprise Party

The EI/AD: The alien device is an Autobot Archive Asteroid allimanting
aimlessly around the asterous absence of atmosphere.

The plot: Daniel's surprise birthday party is cut short by a Combaticon
attack on a Cybertron shuttle bay. Wheelie and Daniel are impressed that
Magnus is more concerned about having the Peace Conference shuttle
repaired than having himself repaired, and come up with the idea of
throwing HIM a surprise party. While Earth delegates arrive to talk about
peace, Wheelie and Danny-boy probe the Hall of Records for Magnus' date of
creation, only to discover that the info is stuck on an Autobot Archive
Asteroid, whose coordinates have been lost. While the Decepticons covertly
surveil, Wheelie cunningly steals a garbage scow for Daniel, and the two
of them get caught in a meteor shower and seredipitously land on said
Asteroid. After dealing with metal parasites, they are pinned down by
sentry robots in the archive computer room. They are saved... by Cyclonus
and Scourge, who program the asteroid to fly on a collision course with
Cybertron. They contact the Autobots and strong-arm them into doing
nothing by virtue of the poor human hostage. Magnus and Sky Lynx run a
rescue mission; while Magnus fights Cyclonus, Sky Lynx blows up sweeps and
Wheelie sets the asteroid to self-destruct. Everybody runs away while the
Asteroid goes foom, and later on Daniel confesses his plan to Spike, who
arbitrarily declares that day as Magnus' own celebration day, since even
Mags himself doesn't remember his own creation date.

The characters: Daniel must represent the luck o' the Irish. All this
stuff happens to him this episode and he STILL doesn't die. Wheelie is
much less annoying when he isn't playing straight man with Blurr; this is
the episode which establishes him as the human buddy, like the
relationship between Spike and Bumblebee. They'll take this and run with
it in the Japanese Headmasters series, where they squeeze every bit of
cuteness they can out of it. Interesting take on Sky Lynx in this
episode... Instead of being able to split separately into his dino-bird
and lynx modes, he's a quad changer, and his bird mode is absorbed by the
lynx part. Presumably the opposite happens too. Since when is Blast Off
able to carry other Decepticons inside him? Chalk it up to another scale
problem, but I always thought that Blast Off was much smaller than
Astrotrain in that regard.

The plot holes: This asteroid must have a nicely maintained atmosphere
for Daniel to survive as long as he does on it. Say that they WERE able
to get Magnus' birthday out of that damn uncooperative computer (data
error data error please enter command bad file name)... How would they
use that information? There aren't really years on Cybertron, seeing as
how it doesn't orbit a star anymore. Would they go by Earth years?
Centaurian years? Did Daniel think this through?

Moving pictures: Nothing really impresses me about the animation this
time around, although it is competently done. You only get a few silly
mistakes, like Wheelie talking with Sky Lynx's voice, or Magnus' missile
launchers being colored blue instead of white. The scene at the beginning
where Daniel walks into the dark room to be surprised kind of falls flat
because the first darkened figure who gets up is obviously Warpath... Who
else has that huge gun sticking out of his chest? Cool how Wheelie's
canopy flips open on the side though. Too bad they can't seem to make up
their minds when he has metal parasites hanging on him and when he doesn't.

The cuts: First time I've seen this ep, don't know. I suspect that
there's some filler at the end that was cut out. A few strangely-placed
symbol transition flips make me think that they cut out their usual
amount of 2 minutes though.

Toys they should reissue: Anybody for a better Wheelie toy? I'd like to
see one that actually looks like he has that silly baseball cap helmet
rather than a big flip-out canopy thing.

Quotables:
"What is this place?"
"It's a... ice cream factory."
"You are insolent, Earth-boy."
"Yeah, thanks."

KKC, somebody keeps telling me I look like Shang Tsung from the Mortal
Kombat movie. If you know this person, will you please shoot him? Thank you.
--
Kendrick Kerwin Chua - "London? You put the Eiffel Tower back... in London?!"
kendrick@io.com - WTB: 1980s Transformers, US and Japanese, and GIJoe figures
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