More Than Meets the Eye, Part 1

The Transformers: Generation 1
Season 1, Episode 1
Released: September 17, 1984
Written By: George Arthur Bloom

The Transformers has long been an icon of modern culture. Starting as a collection of toy vehicles that can be transformed into robot action figures, and becoming an international phenomenon with the launch of the first Transformers TV Cartoon, it's no wonder that this franchise continues to remain popular. Everyone knows the names Optimus Prime and Megatron, and what Autobots and Decepticons are.

It all starts with the first episode of The Transformers, the first part of a three-part series. We begin on Cybertron, the native homeland of this robotic species. We're greeted by Wheeljack and Bumblebee, who find energy conductors outside of Iacon. While returning to Iacon, they find themselves facing a bunch of Decepticons who intercept their travel. Wheeljack pushes through the group, and Bumblebee gets injured during the fight.

Back at Iacon, the Autobots are moving forward with their plan to leave Cybertron in search of better sources of energy. Of course, they are followed by the Decepticons, who left Shockwave behind. After getting past the remains of two meteors that collided with each other, the Decepticons board their ship, and a fight begins. They crash into a volcano on our home planet, Earth, and find themselves dormant for millions of years.

When the volcano erupts, one of the Decepticons, Skywarp, is shaken into a repair beam, which leads the ship to repair him. Once functional, he brings Megatron to be repaired, who then instructs him to help get all the other Decepticons repaired. They leave the ship, though Starscream shoots some rubble on the volcano, inadvertently shaking Optimus Prime into that repair beam, who then brings the rest of the Autobots to be repaired.

After this, things move pretty quickly. Megatron and the Decepticons plan to loot Earth's rich resources into Energon, while the Autobots plan to stop them. The episode ends with the Decepticons invading a ship to loot it of its resources, with the Autobots showing up to stop them.

All in all, this is quite a fun, action-packed episode of this series. It serves as a great introduction to the franchise. There are, unfortunately, quite a bit of animation errors -- many of which are extremely obvious. For example, when the Decepticons board the Autobot ship, the scene in which Optimus Prime instructs the Autobots to prepare for battle is played twice, once when Optimus actually delivers his instruction, and again when Megatron instructs the Decepticons to attack. At another point, when Wheeljack and Bumblebee are intercepted on their way back to Iacon, Bumblebee shoots away from the Decepticons that are attacking for seemingly no discernible reason.

Fortunately, most of the errors don't detract from the overall fun in the episode, and they are mostly forgivable today, considering just how old this episode is. And overall, we learn a lot about the premise of the series all throughout, and are left with excitement to see how the Autobots save the humans!

Nevertheless, I am still left with a couple confusions. At the end of the episodes, Megatron leaves, saying "Have a nice swim". Now, maybe these robots do have some concept of swimming back on Cybertron somehow. However, Optimus Prime also says to the humans to keep their head above the water. How on Earth would Optimus have any idea that humans can't breathe underwater??? Do they even have any concept of what breathing even is??

In any case, I had quite a bit of fun exploring this old episode. And I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I'll see you in the next one!

 - Stay Safe, and Keep Exploring