Aired today!

I was waiting for this topic to show up.

I liked the episode pretty well. Made me think about that NYCC set, though Miko was there instead of Raf and no one had a deco change.

The subway sweeper, I've already forgotten his name, was pretty cool. Lil kooky, but cool. I found it amusing that his little car managed to flatten Knockout twice. I also liked how Megatron doesn't have any patience left for Knockout's antics, especially after he let Ratchet escape with the data in the first place. Undoubtably his return to the Nemesis will have a cold reception.

Miko was enjoyable this episode. She wasn't being too impulsively idiotic, and actually showed some reasonable jealousy.

With a whole fleet of Insecticons and Vehicons at his disposal, you'd think Megs could afford more than 4-5 guys per mission, especially when 3 of them are now basic goons, but I guess he's being somewhat sneaky as well. Though I don't really see a reason for the Cons to worry about remaining undetected, as the government knows about them already and the civilians can't do anything about them.

It was a mediocre episode, even by Prime's standards.

Though I did appreciate the continuity nods, and the Insecticon being a real threat again.

I'd kinda like to see more of Vogel. Not necessarily a LOT more, but I'd be cool with him showing up again. maybe it's just because I like John Dimaggio?

I kind of hope Knock Out doesn't repair himself, perhaps as punishment for his failures, so he's forced to look all jacked up from now on. It'd give his appearance more character. I did enjoy seeing him take so much damage from that subway sweeper. It was pretty brutal and Daran Norris's performance reminded me why I like him so much in the role.

Miko being jealous made sense. Sicne day one, she's been more excited about hanging with the Autobots while Jack's been apathetic about the whole thing, yet *he* got to go to Cybertron and she didn't. I can understand the resentment.

And it's nice to see the Insecticons are still a force to be reckoned with... when encountering them solo. Get a big group of em and they're cannon fodder. Ah well; a nice change of pace from the Vehicons.

Mentally-challenged subway guy's sweeper is going to be the train transformer that one of the creators mentioned that they wanted to do. CALLED IT.

Youtube

Great episode, loved the sense of urgency and constant motion. Awesome fights too.

Vogal seems like a cool guy.

That was a well-structured, plotted, paced and animated episode. Definitely one of the better ones this season. It almost makes me forget Armada.

Those one-liners from Arcee and Knockout were sure weird though (dodge & kick, shock & drop): all I could think was "Guys, why are you talking like that, what happened to your sentence structure, talking like that is just weird." A minor hiccup, thankfully, but it stuck with me.

This episode reinforced that the Insecticons are way more effective in close quarters. We got a glimpse of that before with the fight against Megatron, and we saw it again here. However once out in the open, they are much easier to shoot down.

Nice to see them not suffering as much from into episode powered down syndrome as a lot of characters in this franchise.

I really enjoyed it.

I'm a sucker for canonical nods and this one had them in spades.

Miko was actually an asset this time. She wasn't overly stupid and actually contributed positively to the outcome.

Vogel was pretty cool too.

Pretty sure this is the only show EVER to have an episode set in New York where you only see ONE New Yorker though.

Watch Miko be a Decepticon spy.

My guess is that the writers are going to have her and Jack hook up.

They've got the "arguing" and "polar opposites" part down pat, so the writers just need a "massively scary moment in which they very nearly get whacked" sequence to complete the cliche trilogy.

Don't forget the fact that the one back on Cybertron nearly whacked Arcee and Jack.

My guess is that the Insecticons are basically brute muscle.

They have an incredibly awesome degree of strength (probably more so than Bulkhead or Megatron), but I don't recall seeing any sort of actual firearms.

Great for use as a security trooper, not so great as a combat grunt.

I rather liked this episode. We got some more Knockout time, which is nice since his presence in the show is becoming more and more unneeded. It was fluid and Vogel was fun to watch.


The one-liners were a play on words after Knockout said "nip and tuck". Arcee then responded by saying "Dodge and kick" and so on.

Knockout got to mention that Breakdown was dead... so at least we know HE Knows ... >_> could have been more there, but it speaks more to Knockout's view of the team as much this way as it would if he'd reacted more.

and again Raph is made all the more pointless ...

maybe he should have died last season ?

there's a Powerful episode potential in that character but, at this point the amount of times "do I even care?" follows the thought is about a 1:1 ratio

I liked this episode a lot. John Dimaggio brought a real sense of naive wonder to the character that shows his range outside of being a sarcastic jerk (Bender). Vogel was a really likable character and I'm glad to see how they handled the reveal to him. I was worried Fowler was just going to go Men in Black on him and say that if he ever talks about anything he saw that day then he'd end up in gitmo

I also loved the damage that Knock Out took. He got hit by a train.. TWICE. Having him being so scuffed and beat up just adds another layer of quality to the series.

As for Raf, he'll probably get paired of with Ratchet or something in one of the other missions. Remember,. this is all happening at the same time.

And although no Transformers in G1 could phase shift, it is interesting to see that there are devices that could give them 'powers' like they each had in G1.

All in all a spectacular episode.

Given that the breakdown thus far is for Prime, Dreadwing and Starscream next episode, and Ratchet, Wheeljack and Soundwave after that, I'm guessing Bulkhead, Raf and Megatron will make up the fourth part.

I'm wondering just whose mission Fowler was overseeing when Miko called about Vogel.

Add me to the camp in liking Vogel. I just wish they made him look less like Fowler.

I thought they did it to save time on modelling Vogel.

That's...not even close to how CGI works.

I was cheering when Knock Out got all scuffed up (and lost a wheel!) at the end. That's really gotta hurt his pride.

Also, I love the sound the insecticons make. Creepy buggers. I want a toy of one.

Really? It seems like it would be pretty standard to cut corners by taking an existing model, copying it and tweaking it. Look at WoW.

I just assumed RCX was being blatantly racist

I was wondering why they didn't call in Wheeljack. Glad to hear that's apparently what they're doing.

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

Yeah, I'm quite sure they don't have to make every new character from scratch if they can just tweak an existing one. Especially when they clearly don't have an infinite budget. I've seen it done in lots of games for minor characters.

I was surprise by how much we actually saw of New York, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard to take Jack's mother, change the color of her hair and her clothes and have her walk past in the distance, just to give evidence of at least one person. But wait, that's not how CGI works. Never mind.

I hope the Decepticons get to keep at least one relic. Maybe one that warps... sky. Or cracks thunder. Or something. Even in a children's cartoon the good guys can't win all the time.

The Autobots haven't been winning all the time...

True they usually score big wins in the end, but they've lost a -lot- of crap to the cons.

It never said which part of NYC they were in, and so just seeing traffic was pretty much enough to establish the shot.

Oh, I was!
To me, it just looked like they tweaked Fowler's "chubby" slider from 70% to 20%, and then his "barrel-chested" slider from 20% to 70%. Seems kinda lazy, but if that's all they're gonna do to cut some corners, at least click the check-box marked "caucasian" or something!

Pretty sure it is. Almost all the background characters in The Incredibles were tweaked from a single character.

Eh, the only time we've seen the Insecticons being treated like cannon fodder, was when Optimus & company were going at them. And that was a relatively small force, that hadn't headed off to fight Megatron. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief & think that the Autobots were able to rally their forces against them.

As for the Decepticons & the Nemisis. Well, that fight, in my memory was pretty much in favor of the Insecticons, until Airrachnia was shut down.

While their power levels haven't been super consistent, they've at least appearred to be the relative same strength. When they start coming off as being weaker than humans, then I'll start compaining.

And take a look at this link:
http://www.boundless-creativity.com/galler...d-characters-3/

Check out the pool pictures and read the captions.

They were saying Vogel? I'd never have guessed that by the pronounciation. Certainly makes more sense than what I heard, "Wougle".

I don't think altering a character to make a single static shot and altering a character which is required to be animated and have facial expressions is quite the same thing.

Plus there are a lot more difference between Fowler and Vogel than just build. They have completely different clothing and while the face shape is superficially the same, everything about it is different to Fowler's. I'm assuming that clothing is part of the model, given how it took a whole season before we got a main character in a different set of clothing.

While it's possible they started from the Fowler model and changed just about everything about it, I don't think it can be stated definitively without someone from the animation team going "oh yeah, we totally did that."

Why not?

Animated characters have virtual skeletons and all sorts of other stuff for changing facial expressions and so on. I assume that makes changing a character several orders harder.

Maybe they could do a making of doumentary. I'd love to learn more about how they're animating this show.

Most 3D models (including the ones in the picture) have the same thing.

Heck, even Energon pulled it off.

If you look carefully, you can see that in Crash Course several of the bots in the background (both in the crowd and in the pits) are white repaints of Inferno.

Ever play the Elder Scrolls games? Second Life? Made a custom character in Soul Caliber IV?

There are hobby-level applications like Poser that create characters on the complexity level of Prime's humans by fiddling dials in exactly the same way. Modelers using the grown-up packages can build that kind of flexibility into their models to do the same thing.

Wuggle?

What's a Wuggle?!

I wish there had been some ambient NOISE in the establishing, above-ground NYC scenes. I can live without the extra setup and render time to stuff a crowd in there, but it's deathly silent. It's never quiet like that in any city, let alone the one that reportedly never sleeps.

I do love how the camera consciously avoids looking at street level. What a tease!

FUN THING TO PONDER:

How did Arcee and Bumblebee get to the Subway tunnels from street level without being seen?

2 seconds thought answer:

They drove down an access ramp.

Through the construction site they showed and said "This is how we'll get down there."

This one had a red blaster-thing that popped up from his arm. Couldn't shoot worth scrap, though.

My headcanon is that Insecticons are Von Neuman machines (making them unique among TFs); designed to shred and devour scrap material and build more of themselves (explaining the egg/cocoons, and the G1 clones). They're strong and aggressive, but not terribly bright, and not built for ranged combat; that "gun" was probably more akin to a cutting beam or a stunner.

I'm just disappointed they couldn't find a reason to make TaxiBee fit in

This was a very good episode, because it gave some real insight into Knock-Out's character. Especially funny was Megatron yelling at him, to "..stop preening..". Knock-Out may not be the pure sadist that Airachnia was, but he still takes far too much delight in using his medical experience to hurt other people. It's just too bad that we may never see Vogel again, because he could be a very valuable ally. So few humans could have seen what he did, and accepted it, so easily. The one thing that's gonna make me laugh for a week, is just how badly Knock-Out's precious finish was damaged. He's gonna be pissed off, for at least a megacycle, because that's how long it's gonna take to buff out all those dents and scratches.

If Megatron lets him.

On the subject of Vogel:

The rationalization for the continued presence of the kids at the start of the series was that they were basically in the "witness protection program". They saw the Transformers, the Transformers saw them, now the Autbots have to keep an eye on them and keep them safe 24 hours a day so the Decepticons don't get them.

Vogel saw the Decepticons, the Decepticons saw him... but he didn't get any "protection". The Autobots come up with a hasty and fake excuse to get rid of him so they don't have to worry about him.

I guess they only become your "guardian" if you're an adorable teenager or something.

Thing is, Vogel's a legal adult and so can likely take care of himself; in fact, with the way he snapped to when he was dealing with Fowler, it's possible that he might even be ex-military. What's more, there's no guarantee that the Decepticons actually saw him or that they got a good image of him if they did.

In contrast, the kids are still legal minors and didn't initially have a lot to recommend them. It wasn't until after they started going out into the field that they began showing themselves able to take care of themselves. Even then, Optimus usually makes sure that someone isn't too far behind them.

And, with the phase shifter secured, Vogel is likely safer staying where he was than he'd be with the Autobots. The Decepticons have no real reason to go after him, or even to return to New York --the only one who'd carry a grudge is Knockout, and he's likely more fixated on Arcee & Bumblebee (and possibly Jack and Miko, after their humiliation of him).