The Transformers (seasons 3 & 4)

While the first two seasons were amazing, these two seasons are Less Than Meets The Eye.

The Transformers is a animated television series created by Hasbro, and was released in 1984. This show is based off of the Transformers toy-line, is the first installment of G1-Era of the Transformers series and is overall, the very first cartoon media to be based off of the Transformers series.

While the first two seasons were well-received by Critics and Fans alike, the third and "fourth" seasons received more mixed reviews.

Summery

Season 3

Season 3 picks up where the movie leaves off, with the Autobots now in control of Cybertron once more, working to restore their homeworld and serving as peacemakers for worlds all across the galaxy. The Decepticons, meanwhile, are in exile on the ruined world of Chaar, led now by Galvatron. Interconnected episodes, running plot threads and small story arcs became more common in the series, including the return of Starscream (following his death in the movie) as a ghost, frequent battles between the giant Autobot and Decepticon cities of Metroplex and Trypticon and the threat to both sides posed by the alien Quintessons, introduced in the movie and revealed in the season's premiere miniseries "Five Faces of Darkness" to be the true creators of the Transformers. This season also saw the debut of three new combiners: the Predacons, the Terrorcons, and the Technobots.

This season saw story-editing duties transfer from Marvel Productions to Sunbow, overseen by Flint Dille, Marv Wolfman and Steve Gerber. Animation for around half the season was provided by producer Nelson Shin's animation studio AKOM, creating a different "look" for the show that encompassed its opening sequence and commercial bumpers.

The death of Optimus Prime proved a controversial move and did not sit well with the viewing audience, resulting in a letter-writing campaign that ultimately compelled Hasbro to resurrect the Autobot leader in a two-part season finale called "The Return of Optimus Prime", which aired in March 1987. Optimus Prime was revived with help from a Quintesson during the threat of the Hate Plague.

Season 4

The fourth season, consisting of a three-part finale miniseries named "The Rebirth", was broadcast in November 1987. Written by regular series writer David Wise, the Autobots and Decepticons encounter the alien world of Nebulos, where they bond with the native Nebulans to become Headmasters and Targetmasters. The Nebulons led by the evil Lord Zarak were able to transform the animal Decepticons with Scourge and Cyclonus into Headmasters while some of their weapons were transformed into Targetmasters. While Lord Zarak was able to become the Headmaster to his creation Scorponok, Spike Witwicky was able to operate the Headmaster unit so that he can control Fortress Maximus to fight Scorponok. The miniseries concludes with the successful restoration of Cybertron, but the Decepticon threat not yet quashed as Galvatron and Lord Zarak argue over who will rule the galaxy upon their victory over the Autobots.

Qualities That Less Than Meets The Eye

1. While not outright terrible, these "two" seasons lack any of the creative and fun charm that the previous two seasons had as a bunch of problems in the second season return here in these seasons, such as nonsensical scenes, characters randomly disappearing for no-reason, animation errors, mediocre or generic episodes and writing, graceless, flat jokes, scenes that go on for much longer than they should, the lack of ideas and more.
   • In addition, most of the seasons takes place in both Cybertron and outer space, and while the former is understandable as the Autobots now hold control over the planet, the outer space setting feels a bit strange for the show, even for Transformers standards. Some other shows at the time had already established an outer space setting that was executed way better.
2. Arguably some of the biggest shortcomings that ravaged the seasons are due to the fact that most (if not all) of the characters from the previous seasons were killed in The Transformers: The Movie, thus having the characters that appear in the movie serves as the main characters, this can serve as a huge turn-off to fans who are used to the main characters from the previous two seasons.
   • Additionally, due to how some fans might have never watched the film, they would get confused as to what happened to characters such as Wheeljack, Ironhide, Prowl, Brawn, Ratchet and others.
3. Because of the new characters that take the role, the new characters are quite divisive compared to the characters from the previous seasons, as some of the character development is usually bland and even boring.
   • Rodimus Prime himself is a very divisive protagonist when compared to Optimus Prime of Seasons 1 & 2. Despite his well-intentioned nature and practical attitude, he makes plenty of arrogant or questionable decisions throughout the series which certainly highlights the good and bad in his portrayal here as the main protagonist. Also, while Rodimus does have a good heart and is willing to help, he can be depicted as an arrogant hero who's also single-minded, ignorant, selfish, and somewhat incompetent novice who we're supposed to root for, but much like another show with a different main character, it's almost hard to sympathize with him.
   • Wreck-Gar serves as generic comic-relief who barely appears in the show despite being introduce in the film previously, and randomly shouts quips from popular TV shows. He could be compared to Wheeljack in that he's skilled with technology and builds things, but the comparison really ends there..
   • Daniel, Spike and Carly's son, is basically Spike from the previous two seasons of The Transformers series who is characterized as being an annoying kid-type character and usually gets into trouble.
4. Fan-favorite characters such as Cliffjumper, Jazz, Spike, Bumblebee and a few others are pushed to the side in these "two" seasons, as they have less prominence in the two seasons then they did previously due to the season(s) focusing mainly on Rodimus Prime and co., as well as having less dialogue do little to nothing to the series.
   • Speaking of which, much like the previous seasons, characters just disappear for no reason whatsoever, special mention goes to Carly, Jazz and the Dinobots (with the exception of Grimlock), both of which are entirely forgotten about near the end of the series and are never seen or mention again.
5. The humor, while can be clever, is a bit of a downgrade when compared to the previous two seasons.
6. Some of the characters got flanderized:
   • Spike goes from an adventurous action loving young man into a generic stoic father character which has been done better in prior media.
   • Galvatron (formerly Megatron) becomes more of a paranoid psychopath that attacks anyone for no reason after the destruction of Unicron. While he was generally aggressive in the previous two seasons, Megatron knew when to lay back and treat his minions with respect.
     • This can be explained though, as Galvatron spent a year in a lava pit on the planet of Thrull, which eroded his brain and drove him insane after his battle with Rodimus Prime.
7. There are a few standout episodes which are divisive amongst the fandom, such as Carnage in C-Minor - the most infamous one, due to it's prominent animation faults - and Dark Awakening, which brought back Optimus Prime as a zombie only to kill him off again.
8. "The Quintesson Journal" was a disappointing way to have the Quintessons(as in the four main ones who first appeared in The Transformers: The Movie and later on become recurring villains if the Third Season) be destroyed once and for all after all the havoc and chaos they created, as all that happens is Rodimus Prime and Ultra Magnus destroy their ship thats filled with bombs and that's it, you don't even get to see the Quintessons' destruction on-screen.
9. There are also other times when an episode will feel very rushed to unfinished, a particular mention goes to the Season 3 episode "Only Human", it goes SO fast that it makes it feel like it was originally meant to be a multi-parter episode.
10. As stated in the #1 Segment, many episodes have nonsensical plots, with episodes such as "Webworld", "Carnage in C-Minor" and "Only Human", they feel out-of-place and don't feel like Transformers episodes.
11. There are noticeable plot-holes and continue errors in both the third and "fourth" seasons of The Transformers, most of which never gets explained:
    1. This season revealed that the Quintessons were the ones who created the Transformers many, many years ago, but in the Season 2 two-parter episode "The Key to Vector Sigma", its been explain that Vector Sigma was the one that created the Transformers.
    2. In the episode "Nightmare Planet", the Quintessons kidnap Daniel who was sleeping as to have him operate a machine that will make dreams turn out real and attack the Autobots, instead of kidnapping a child, why can't one of the Quintessons operate the machine on their own?
    3. How the heck were the Autobots that get turn into humans in the episode "Only Human" are able to get used to their Human forms so quickly?
    4. In "Dark Awaking" Optimus Prime was fully destroyed in his ship, yet in the two-part season finale of Season 3 "The Return of Optimus Prime", he is rebuild and is completely new again, where, when and HOW was Optimus Prime at any point in the show rebuilt, and also most importantly, WHO rebuild him in the first place?
       1. And also in that episode, Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime advise Sky Lynx to find a Quintesson to repair/revive Optimus Prime, out of ANY characters that could repair/revive Optimus Prime (such as Perceptor or even Wreck-gar), why would Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime have a Quintesson (the same race that destroy worlds, and kidnapped both the Autobots, Spike and Daniel)repair/revive Optimus Prime???
    5. In the second part of the three-part series finale "The Rebirth", why would Spike agree to work with the Nebulon, despite the latter idiotically faultlessly accusing the Autobots for enemies and attempting to blow them up?
       1. Additionally in the second part of the three-part series finale "The Rebirth", after Daniel gets injured, they advise by having him be a Head Master for Arcee, why would they want to make a child a Head Master for a robot?
12. In some (if not most) incidents after the episode of Season 3, there are clips that explain events (E.G. how the Autobots arrive on Earth, the backstory of the Deceptions and etc) in either the previous Seasons or early in Season 3, while they are a neat addition as they can instruct the fans of the show who might have started with Season 3 first, they repeat the same thing though later episodes, and do nothing but pad out the length of some of the episodes, in some incidents, they have two clips, leading to believe that they were rushed.
13. Similar to the sixth season of Ed, Edd n Eddy and the fifth season of Ben 10 (2016), the fourth "season" of this show only has three episodes (or one if counting both segments) which is disappointing. With just three episodes, calling the fourth season a season doesn't sound too convincing.
14. Some scenes are also somewhat violent or not very kid-friendly at all, specie mention goes to the three-part series finale of The Transformers, "The Rebirth", not only dose Daniel (who keep in mind, is a child) get both mauled and toss around by Snapdragon after attempting to rescue Arcee from the latter, but later on after both he and Arcee gets captured by Scorponok, Skullcruncher (one of Lord Zarak's minions) attempts to tourter Daniel by attempting to pull/rip off one of his arms to have Arcee hand over the key.
15. The three-part series finale, "The Rebirth" is not only unnecessary as the two-part episode "The Return of Optimus Prime" had a good ending, but it is also underwhelming as this episode was EXTREMELY rushed as it was original meant to be a five-parter and is such, the plot of this finale goes WAY too fast that it makes in hard for Fans to know whats going on, its ending also feels like a cliffhanger due to how Galvatron and Lord Zarak are still out in space.

Qualities That More Than Meets The Eye

1. The animation is still great despite some errors and is a huge step up from the previous 2 seasons.
2. This season introduces Scorponok, a Decepticon who will make appearances in later Transformers media.
3. The voice acting is still amazing with great choices.
4. Despite the #3 Segment, the characters are still likeable and memorable, and the new characters that were previously introduce in the film such as Blurr, Cyclonus, Scourge and others are still memorable.
5. There are still a hand-full of decent to awesome episodes:
   1. Five Faces of Darkness (which started the third season on a high note)
   2. Chaos
   3. Starscream's Ghost/Ghost in the Machine (the two episodes were Starscream makes an appearance)
   4. Surprise Party
   5. Grimlock's New Brain
   6. The Return of Optimus Prime (which ended the third season on a high note, and would have been a great way to end The Transformers series)
   7. The Rebirth (The series' finale.)
6. The soundtrack is still outstanding.
7. While underwhelming and rushed, the three-part series finale, "The Rebirth" was a decent finale and did ended The Transformers series on a high note.
8. There are some fans that might also like these seasons.

Trivia

• According to David Wise, the multipart series finale of The Transformers, "The Rebirth", was original meant to be a five-parter with a much better explain story, a proper introduction with the characters and ect, but for reasons unknown, the creators drop it on him that they were cutting it back to three parts after it was written, so because of this, David had to try to structure the episodes in a way that could work. This also explains the issue with the finale's pacing and the rushed ending.

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