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|| skip the intro ||

This page archives the "Transformers Weekday" reviews which were written many years ago by my friend, Kendrick Kerwin Chua, who was once a giant among TransFans. After BotCon 2000, I regained contact with Kendrick and asked him if he still had the TF Weekday reviews, and if I could stick them up on the web to share with the community. He said "yes" to both, on one condition, and here we are.

Kendrick's TF Weekday reviews:

In 1994 and 1995, certain episodes of the original "Transformers" cartoon were re-aired in "TF: Generation Two" and on the Sci-Fi Channel as part of their "animation station" programming block. At that time, TransFan Kendrick Kerwin Chua (KKC) was a regular poster to the newsgroup alt.toys.transformers, and posted reviews of many of the episodes on the days that they aired. These reviews were posted under the title "TF Weekday". Although nowhere near as detailed as Rob Powers' masterful Manic Ramblings reviews, the TF Weekdays provide some nice insights, and are generally entertaining to read. They also popularized use of the fan term "EI/AD", which stands for "evil invention / alien device", a catch-all term for whatever super-weapon-of-the-day serves as the MacGuffin for the episode. The G1/G2 "TF Weekday" reviews come in two sizes: short ones written for TF:G2, and a longer set with a more formalized organization written for the Sci-Fi repeats of G1. There are reviews for 71 of the 98 episodes of G1. As a bonus, I've also gone through Google's Usenet archive to grab the few non-G1/G2 reviews that Kendrick did. They are at the bottom of the page.

This archive:

The episode list below is derived from my list of capsulized G1 episode descriptions. That list is more portable in plain-text form (as are all things) so if you want a copy, I recommend the text version. At the top of the episode list below, you'll find Zobovor's list of comments and corrections to the TF Weekday reviews. Following that is a table containing the episode list and descriptions. The first column in the table provides links to each episode's TF Weekday review, if one exists. A non-linked "X" means there is no review. A "S" link leads to a short form TF Weekday, and "L" to a long form review.

I do recommend taking a look through the list of corrections that was sent by Zobovor. Kendrick was and is quite a TF expert, but these reviews were written in the mid-1990s, when online TransFandom was still pretty young, and we've learned a lot since then. There are some mistakes, but I imagine Zobovor caught nearly all of them. Checking the corrections list will prevent you from walking away from the archive with any outdated misconceptions. ^_^

Many thanks to Aaron Marsh for his classic G1 episode guide, to Zobovor for the corrections, and of course to Kendrick himself for writing the reviews and allowing me to host them here.

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G1 EPISODE LIST

||TF Weekday corrections by Zobovor||

		Pilot
X	More Than Meets The Eye 1	TFs arrive on Earth. Fight on oil rig.
X	More Than Meets The Eye 2	Sherman Dam battle. Roller in the ruby mine.
X	More Than Meets The Eye 3	Holo-rocket base. Mirage stops Con ship.
		Season One
S	Transport to Oblivion	Space Bridge. BB reprogrammed to trick Bots.
S	Roll For It	Chip has the anti-matter formula!
L	Divide and Conquer	Bots need spare parts from Cyb. Acid rain!
L	Fire in the Sky	Skyfire found in a glacier.
S	SOS Dinobots	3 Dinobots built, deactivated, reactivated.
X	Fire on the Mountain	Skyfire returns. Crystal in Incan pyramid.
S	War of the Dinobots	Dinos defect. 2 new dinos built to stop them.
X	Ultimate Doom 1	Sparkplug hypno-chipped. Cybertron visits.
X	Ultimate Doom 2	Natural disasters and a jaunt to scenic Cyb.
X	Ultimate Doom 3	Megs' ship blows up and knocks Cyb away.
X	Countdown to Extinction	SS & Arkeville try to blow up the Earth.
L	Plague of Insecticons	Insects show in South America. Lightning fight.
S	Heavy Metal War	Constructicons appear. Cons fall into lava.
		Season Two
X	Autobot Spike	Spike's brain in a Frankenformer's body.
X	Immobilizer	Megs steals Wheeljack's new EI/AD. Carly intro.
S	Dinobot Island 1	Dinos go on vacation, but the Cons crash it.
S	Dinobot Island 2	Time warps from the island wreak havoc.
L	Traitor	Has Mirage betrayed the Autobots???
S	Enter the Nightbird	Robo-Ninja babe steals World Energy Chip.
S	Changing Gears	Gears' switch turned from "grouchy" to "nice".
S	Prime Problem	Dup.Prime lures Bots to bot-killing crystals.
S	Atlantis Arise	Atlantians help Megatron take over Wash DC.
S	Attack of the Autobots	Bots turn evil due to sabotaged rechargers.
S	Master Builders	Hoist, Grapple, & Cons build solar energy tower.
X	Microbots	Megs installs Heart of Cyb. Bot shrinky-dinks.
S	Insecticon Syndrome	Insecticons get super-charged and take over.
S	Day of the Machines	Torq3 enslaved by Cons, destroyed by Bots.
X	Megatron's Master Plan 1	} Megatron deports the Autobots, but sets their
S	Megatron's Master Plan 2	} ship's course to go into the Sun.
S	Auto Berserk	Red Alert helps SS steal a superpowerful tank.
L	City of Steel	Megs takes Manhattan. Prime = Metal Alligator.
X	Desertion of the Dinobots 1	} Cybertronium depletion requires Dinos to go
X	Desertion of the Dinobots 2	} to Cybertron and back to save the Bots.
X	Decepticon Raider...	Low-energon TFs joust in jolly olde England.
L	God Gambit	Astrotrain is God to Titan's crystal-rich ppl.
X	Core	Dominator disks, Devastator, big drill.
L	Make Tracks	Raul carjacks Tracks. Con car drones run wild.
X	Blaster Blues	Blaster jams to stop the Decep's radio jammer.
S	Autobot Run	Charity race + Transfixatron = Bad News.
X	Golden Lagoon	Beachcomber's idyllic electrum pond goes boom.
L	Quest for Survival	Morphobots (plants) and Insecticon drones.
L	Secret of Omega Supreme	Crystal City & the Robo-Smasher. Much pathos.
L	Child's Play	The TFs are like toys for a giant alien boy!
L	Gambler	Smokesscreen hits the jackpot. Defcon hits Cons.
X	Search for Alpha Trion	Elita-1 time freezes to save Prime & her gals.
L	Auto-Bop	Blaster vs Soundwave at a hypnotic dance club.
X	Prime Target	Lord Chumley lays ridiculous traps for Prime.
S	Girl Who Loved Powerglide	Astoria's father's invention saves Powerglide.
S	Triple Takeover	3Changers start their own bizarre drone army.
S	Sea Change	Seaspray becomes a merman. Rumble, a tree.
L	Hoist Goes Hollywood	Hoist and some others star in a movie.
L	Key to Vector Sigma 1	} Stunticons and Aerialbots are given life by
L	Key to Vector Sigma 2	} VS. The Key can turn organics into metal.
S	Masquerade	Bots disguise themselves as the Stunticons.
X	Trans-Europe Express	Weather-controlling pearl. Big race. Stunticons.
X	Cosmic Rust	Perceptor's CORROSTOP clears Megs' complexion
L	War Dawn	Aerials visit the Golden Age, meet Orion Pax.
S	Starscream's Brigade	SS creates the Combaticons.
S	Revenge of Bruticus	Brut rampages on Cybertron until SS stops him.
X	Aerial Assault	Prince Hassan is Swindled. Aerialbots assist.
X	B.O.T.	Kids put Brawl's brain in their robot project.
S	Kremzeek!	Cute lil' Kremzeek overruns Japan.
		Season Three
L	Five Faces of Darkness 1	Metroplex needs a cog. Charr is depressing.
L	Five Faces of Darkness 2	Rod in Matrix, Galvy found, Quints resurface.
L	Five Faces of Darkness 3	Planet Goo. M Fairborne. Quints & Cons ally.
L	Five Faces of Darkness 4	Rodimus learns the TF origin from the Matrix.
L	Five Faces of Darkness 5	Trypticon. Predacons. Quints freeze TFs.
L	Killing Jar	Travel into a negative universe.
L	Chaos	Super-bazooka fires crystals shed by Mr. Chaos.
L	Forever... Long Time Coming	Time-switch. Gaurdian robots & A-3 guest star.
L	Surprise Party	Perilous quest to find Ultra Magnus' birthdate.
L	Madman's Paradise	Daniel & Grim in Quint's magic prison dimension.
X	Carnage in C-Minor	Sonic weapons and pre-school animation.
S	Fight or Flee	Pacifist Sandstorm loses his world to the Cons.
L	Thief in the Night	Octane and Trypticon steal Earth's monuments.
L	Starscream's Ghost	Cyclonus gets possessed and teams with Octane.
L	Web World	Cyc takes Galvy to a psychiatric planet.
S	Ghost in the Machine	SS's ghost gets a new body from Unicron.
L	Dweller in the Depths	Transorganics attack. Bots have new power core.
L	Nightmare Planet	Quintessons manipulate Daniel's dreams.
X	Ultimate Weapon	First Aid steals Tryp's cog to replace Metro's.
L	Big Broadcast of 2006	Quints send hypnotic TV shows to Junkion.
L	Quintesson Journal	Quint records of perpetuating a war are found.
L	Only Human	"Snake" turns the Autobots into humans.
L	Grimlock's New Brain	Grim becomes smart, builds Technobots.
L	Money is Everything	M Fairborne loves Han Solo. Technos & Terrors.
L	Call of the Primitives	Unicron's creator has a new masterpiece.
L	Face of the Nijika	A planet imprisoned by the Quints is released.
L	Burden Hardest to Bear	Rodimus broods. Scourge gets the Matrix.
L	Dark Awakening	Quints reanimate Prime.
L	Return of Optimus Prime 1	OP's body saved. Hate plague. OP revived again.
L	Return of Optimus Prime 2	W/ new undercoat, OP cures plague with Matrix.
		"Season" Four
L	Rebirth 1	Fight over PEC leads to Nebulos. HeadMasters.
L	Rebirth 2	TargetMasters. Scorponok.
X	Rebirth 3	Cyb gets engines, goes to Earth. Fort Max.
		Other reviews
L	Four Warriors From The Sky	Ep 1 of Japanese Headmasters series.
L	Master Planet Mystery	Ep 2 of Japanese Headmasters series.
L	Beast Wars 1	Premiere of BW series.