Transformation 74: The Enemy of Sludge's Heart.

11/10/2013

I'm back bitches

Exciting times this week as 9 missing episodes of Doctor Who have been returned to the archives (the opening of Enemy of the World, with Troughton running along the beach in his long johns clicking his heels with joy is going to become a staple of documentaries for years to come).

oh wait, Transformers? Well, in a nice coincidence, this week sees the one and only cover by long standing Who artist Alister Pearson. Which shows Grimlock is a big boy.

Also, conspiracies, love and a new look in what, despite the distractions, the longest entry to date:

In The The National Interest Part 1.

20 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

11/10/2013 05:34:16 pm

I wonder when the concept of shady government agencies doing their own thing and stopping at nothing to cover their tracks really took off. Here we have the concept full on years before films like JFK and Sneakers.

Interesting comments on the timing of the movie's release. I recall the announced date slipped a couple of weeks and assumed that was either somebody spotting when school holidays would roughly begin or a fast rush to dub on "Optimus Prime will return!" in response to the US reaction.

And if that's an Alister Pearson cover then can anyone identify the image he's based it on? Or is this a rare original pose piece from him?

Stuart

12/10/2013 02:03:34 am

The earliest secret government agency covering things up thing I can think of is obscure 1970's BBC Scotland show The Omega Factor. I suppose the advantage of such groups in present day set SF and fantasy shows is they help explain why no one knows about the aliens/vampires despite trying to take over the world every week.

Actually, I suppose UNIT is a fairly benign version, the Brig is always slapping D-notices on dinosaurs.

I believe (though whether this is a fact or just something fandom assumed is what I'm going to have to try and check in the next month) the original plan was the film would be released during the run of Target: 2006 (the Autumn half term being where I'd place my bet. I'm not sure if the dates of the half terms have shifted over the years, but if they're roughly the same as now the issue ending with Galvatron revealing he's Megatron (in the second half of October) would be a nice cliffhanger to lead into kids going to see the film, and means his later description of the first 15 minutes would have been after it had been on screens.

I don't recognise the source of the Pearson cover, it may have come from mucking about with the toys?

Tim Roll-Pickering link

12/10/2013 04:05:35 am

UNIT may have thrown around D-notices, but it wasn't really until the 1990s and in the spin-offs that this became anything more than a bit of lip-service. Then we started getting books focused on the activities of their cover-up wing C19. For all the rhetoric of Reagan and Thatcher, the 1980s culture doesn't seem to have been that paranoid about government.

As for half-terms, this could get seriously off-topic but it's my understanding that there was much less co-ordination of school term dates back then than now. * Even today education is devolved across the UK and local authorities set state school term dates which can result in all manner of discrecencies - here in London we have 33 different authorities plus a hinterland with several more within spitting distance which could chaos when the dates don't align because so many families are tied to more than one authority. There's been a move in recent years to get authorities to sign up to a common calendar (and it seems a lot of independents are broadly following it as well). I have many memories of having half-term in different weeks from my sister, Scouts, swimming lessons, children's television and so forth - and even when my sister (and just about everything else on that list) had the same week as me and we went to stay with grandparents we found the local children had school that week.

In general companies try to guess the most likely dates but at a national level they don't always get it right for everyone (it's not uncommon for anyone whose does a "back to school" special to get letters from Scots complaining they've already been back for weeks) and sometimes it's just too hard to pick a single week. I have memories of at least one half-term in either the 1980s or early 1990s when at least one of CBBC, CITV & TV-AM ran their half-term morning children's programmes in two consecutive weeks

* I go into this in more detail on my more political and less updated blog: http://timrollpickering.blogspot.com/2013/07/schools-out-or-has-it-been-for-some-time.html

Stuart

12/10/2013 04:35:35 am

Fascinating stuff, though as a kid we were aware different areas had slightly different holidays (again, from the holiday TV starting slightly off-kilter from our POV's, you're certainly right about the half term coverage often doing more than the one week,which was nice in terms of extra Batman) Hereford and Worcestershire (as was) was actually fairly standardised, or at least the Worcestershire part was. But then, we delighted in being different anyway with a three school system at odds with most of the rest of the country (it's only settled into the "Normal" first and secondary school pattern in the last few years).

A planned October release date based around the most common London (because generally no one cares about the rest of the country :p) holidays would catch most of the rest of the countries half terms across its run as well (assuming a successful long run in cinemas, which is of course what the distributors would have been hoping for. Though of course, movies stayed longer in cinemas in those days).

I actually wonder how close the film came to being straight to video considering how poorly it did in the US (though I was surprised to see when checking the American release date that the opening weekend was actually pretty decent over there, it might have survived the savage- and almost identical to what the Bay films got- reviews if the word of mouth from distraught kids hadn't been so bad, the drop off was apparently fairly drastic).

It certainly seems to have slipped under the radar a bit in the UK, Starburst- the big UK genre magazine- didn't even bother to review it so god knows what coverage it got, if any, in the more mainstream press.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

12/10/2013 09:48:56 am

Hereford and Worcestershire was a single non-metropolitan county at the time so all the state schools should have been on the same county-set dates unless some individual ones had special circumstance. I've got a memory of some of the Epsom (Surrey) state schools being seemingly out of line for at least one summer term, perhaps because someone at one of them had the idea that Derby Week was a better half-term locally than the Late May Bank Holiday but their counterpart realised how outdated this approach was. Although I didn't go to them myself I recall Surrey had been on the three-tier system but was stumbling its way into coverting to a two-tier arrangement duing my school days.

A straight to video release would have had its own problems with market penetration - I think it wasn't until the following year that VCRs reached 50% of households. (I wonder if consumer programmes featured complaints about direct to video product that not all could access.) Still if the movie was considered a write-off then even the limited video market might have raised something.

I've just looked at the Times Digital Archive and it seems the show was promoted & reviewed on the preceding Tuesday's Splash, a CITV show I can't recall at all, which seems to have been a magazine format. The listing describes it as "the latest hit film, Transformers". Otherwise there's not much from the period but next to the FT the Times was the least likely paper to have covered it.

(Also I saw one sign of where the cartoon's fall from TV was having an impact in a December 19th article about the fast turnover in the toy market. Transformers had been the top seller of 1985 but ISTR Wide-Awake Club/WACaday had now switched to M.A.S.K. and GoBots respectively and they appeared at #4 & #6 for the top sellers at Hamleys that week and TFs were nowhere to be seen on the top six.)

Tim Roll-Pickering link

12/10/2013 10:02:13 am

Grr - I get "There was an error submitting your comment. Please try again" and yet it submits it anyway.

Stuart

12/10/2013 12:32:46 pm

It happens to the best of us (I secretly do it to make the site look more popular, Shhhh).

Yeah, I think even a year later it would have taken the straight to video route, and they'd probably have been vindicated in doing so considering I think most of UK fandoms exposure to it seems to have come from rental tapes rather than seeing it on the big screen.

Splash vaguely rings a bell, I suspect it would mainly have been a puff piece. Has Furman on whatever BBC Saturday morning show was doing the rounds ever turned up on Youtube? That must have been around this point.

I can't find any actual info on how well the movie did at the UK box office, relatively speaking we would have been better prepared by Target: 2006 dealing with one of the film's bit problems (mostly being about a whole new cast) by at least introducing some of them first so they don't come completely out of nowhere (and the books readership at its peak would have certainly been enough to make a decent impact).

I do think the effect of the Timmy Mallett broadcasts tends to get overlooked, partly because of their piecemeal nature and partly because the comic is the big enduring thing of British fandom, But when you consider the unsuccessful Daybreak was at one time during Chilles run getting around five times the number of people who were buying the comic at its most popular watching (and that in an age with less channels there's a good chance TVAM would have had to be at least equally BBC Breakfast's current 1million plus), it really was a key marketing tool.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

24/10/2019 04:32:50 pm

"Has Furman on whatever BBC Saturday morning show was doing the rounds ever turned up on Youtube?"

It was in April 1987 and it has now, courtesy of the man himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPkGN5OaGAc

Stuart

24/10/2019 05:16:39 pm

Oh very good. Absolute legend Gaz Top.

Simon Hall

12/10/2013 01:37:08 pm

Timmy Mallet - or rather The Wide Awake Club is certainly how I remember being exposed to Transformers. I recall 'Arrival From Cybertron' (you can stick your 'More Than Meets The Eye' ) being aired and it being something of an event - a bit like it was when GMTV did Beast Wars. I remember Wacaday (run in the 9:00 - 9:25am slot at the end of TV-AM during the holidays) more for airing Gobots. I never got to see the movie as a child. I first got to watch it 1996, after borrowing a heavily worn copy from my mate Steve whom described it (quite accurately) as "a decent little film ruined by a rubbish heavy metal soundtrack". IIRC, TV-AM started trouncing the Beeb in the breakfast ratings once they hired Roland Rat (whom would later appear on the BBC in the imaginatively titled 'Roland Rat : The Series'), so I suspect its reach and the impact of any cartoon shown would be quite significant.

And you two sound like the lucky buggers whom got to see around a week's worth of kids holiday TV before we'd broken up for the hols..! My rusty memory does remember that my Primary School holidays did seem to fall broadly in line with holiday programming. Towards the end of my time at Primary school in the late '80s, the school holiday year did seem to be changing quite a bit, but I think that was a willfull move on the part of Leeds City Council to align Primary and Secondary school holidays. When I started Secondary School, my holidays did coincide with my sister's , whom was still at Primary school.

The old three-tier school system was long gone in Leeds. A few miles away in Bradford, they did still have the primary - middle-secondary thing, and its only in the last decade that has been phased out.

Suppose I'd better talk about the comic now....

'In The National Interest' is another story that I'm familiar with only through the Titan reprints. I enjoyed it, liked all the shady government stuff - quite mature for a kids comic, as noted! I found it noticeable for the 'normal' speech pattern Grimlock has, with Furman bringing the enjoyable cartoon enunciation across later on (I say enjoyable for the way Furman belied Grimlock's apparent primitive speech patterns by matching this with crediting the character with much more intelligence than the cartoon ever would ... strange then that uncle Bob would keep to the Sunbow version, despite the more considered spin he puts on Grimlock in his Universe entry). Will Simpson's art is much crisper here. Much less busy and scratchy looking. I was reading some old issues of forgotten 1991 comic Toxic! recently, and I'd forgotten that he provided the rather lovely painted artwork for 'Sex Warrior'. I love how Simpson draws emotion. His screaming/ shocked faces are brilliant. And how he draws fingers, when they're all splayed and pointy....I'd be a rubbish art critic, wouldn't I?

Tim Roll-Pickering link

12/10/2013 05:43:30 pm

I've got the impression from both memory and what I've read that the TF cartoon had a run on Wide-Awake Club in the 1985-6 year but it's very hard to confirm this because listings often treated TV-AM as a single programme and didn't always break down its offerings (and just forget any attempt to try and work out precisely which episodes were shown on it). I can't remember it all on WACaday but I often didn't have (what TV-AM determined to be) the "standard" half-term - my own pre-prep school in Epsom chose Derby Week over the bank holiday week whenever they were different (giving the absurd reason that parking would be a problem that week when the races are up a hill and the school quite some way down it). You can imagine the annoyance when Timmy Mallet would show up on a Sunday's Wide-Awake Club to promote the forthcoming week's WACaday as a great treat but it wasn't a treat I got to have.

Stuart

13/10/2013 02:10:01 pm

I can specifically remember Desertion of the Dinobots, and apparently all of season 1 and none of season 3 were shown, but how much of the rest in the middle is a mystery. Especially when peoples memories are going to be muddled with VHS and Sky (or its precursors) screenings.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

13/10/2013 04:07:55 pm

All my memories are of the first season - Arrival from Cybertron, the Ultimate Doom and War of the Dinobots - and from before the third season debuted in the States let alone over here.

TV-AM have an archive which may be the only place that can definitively answer this one. http://www.tv-am.org.uk/research-services

Simon Tilley link

15/11/2020 08:30:36 pm

As someone who was a huge Wac-a-day fan and ended up getting to appear on the show in 1991 (huge moment for 11 year old me) I know season 1 was show and when the show went through a change with the weekend wideawake club showing repeats, they dropped cartoon footage in favour of Timmy & Magic, this tied in with Mallett's own magazine that he had in the late 80s early 90s.

They toyed with other shows but figured they shouldn't compete like for like with Fun Factory/DJ Kat show on Sky who would show 3 hours of cartoons, so to the best of my knowledge it was just season 1 of Transformers that was shown on TVAM inside Wac-a-day.

Tim Roll-Pickering link

15/11/2020 10:28:05 pm

Discussions on Twitter and elsewhere seem to all be in agreement that only season 1 was broadcast - it appears that memories of Desertion of the Dinobots are confusing things with the VHS release. Some of the first TF screenings appear to have been on Roland Rat's TV-AM slot and the YouTube clip I saw years ago is dated to 1987 (and Michaela Strachan was present) and feels very much a repeat run.

Though I do wonder just how much a factor a show on Sky was in the shift. My memory of it is that take-up of satellite was slow and not helped by BSB launching with an incompatible dish (well squarial) and decoder when format wars often encourage a lot of people to sit the whole thing out until either the war is won or dual standards equipment is available. There also seemed to be a lot of snobbery against Sky (and BSB's magazine at least appears to have been promoting a highbrow image as though they had to distance themselves from it - why else would they make Sir Robin Day a prominent cover feature?). Figures casually given on the web suggest Sky had only reached about 1.5 million by late 1990 (and BSB 750,000) which wasn't trivial but equally not that huge a part of the market.

I wonder if CITV were improving their holiday morning offer? That would be a more likely reason for Wacaday to shift away from cartoons.

Stuart

17/10/2013 02:10:07 am

Belated, but thanks for the link. It's not completely clear what they charge for the service (I assume it's not free?), but that's definately something I'll look into when I have a spare five minutes.

[Watch me forget all about it now. This is where you need the dedication of a McFeely].

Nick

21/10/2013 04:40:43 am

Totally agreed on the comment on Simpson's art. I was way off being a fan of his toy-authentic style - as cool as the toys looked, their design just didn't translate into comic form; I felt some of them lacked 'weight', especially Megatron. Simpson's style also looked a bit 'sketchy', especially with a bad inker and colourist. He was on top form here though. Grimlock looks great in that panel Stu posted - the perspective is spot-on and the great colouring job really helped.

Felicity

30/8/2016 01:53:10 am

On the North American side of the world it’s generally believed that Watergate was the beginning of the era of being suspicious about what your government isn’t telling you. That was where the seeds were planted for the conspiracy theory boom of the early 1990s. You can see some early examples of the concept in things like “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962), “The Parallax View” (1974), and “Capricorn One” (1977) but you’re basically right when you say that it didn’t really become a huge trend until the early 1990s.

Colin H

26/1/2017 01:32:33 pm

Re; the Alister Pearson question, it's probably best just to ask him directly. Is he still an active Gallifrey Base member?

Sean J Hagins

10/11/2020 11:21:26 pm

I HATE to admit this, but as a kid, what I remember the most about this issue was the artwork of Joy's butt as she reached over to try to get out the passenger side of the car (as it was hanging over a cliff) and sees the terrorists. **I know, i know**

But bums aside, this really was a nice issue-I always found the UK comics to be miles better than the US stories. Much more intrigue and plot!

Transformation 74: The Enemy of Sludge's Heart.

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