Mod Post - Off Topic Tuesday

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat amongst yourselves.

The devastating effects of Hurricane Irma have been widely covered, though the full scale of the dmaage is still being

At the same time, there has also been catastrophic flooding due to monsoons in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, with over 1200 dead reported and what infrastructure there was in outlying areas.

More news is coming out about the Colin Trevorrow's firing from Star Wars Episode IX, and it seems that the director, whose last two directorial efforts were the less than well received Jurassic World and The Book of Henry may have managed to piss off just about everyone with his... well, they keep saying "confident" but you know they mean "arrogant".

In the UK, the Government won it's first vote for it's EU Repeal Bill, which hands unprecedented powers to Government Ministers to change laws without reference to Parliament, as part of the infinitely expanding snafu which is Brexit. Even Jeremy Corbyn seems to stirring on this one.

In the US, Ted Cruz appears to have "liked" a hardcore porn Twitter post, Back in the day this would have ended a pplitical career, and Ted Cruz would probably have been one of the ones insisting thatit did, let's see what happens (or doesn't) here, shall we?

The iPhone X:10 is apparnetly set to be a major upgrade (Have they really only been around for 10 years?)

The Doctor Who Experience at Cardiff closed it's doors for the last time as their lease is up. It seems likely it will become a touring exhibition, but Peter Capaldi had a farewell for it.

In related news, the BBC has confirmed that it is not renewing "Class" the Doctor Who spinoff that it never seemed that interested in, which is a shame, as whilst it's not perfect, certainly had potential, and some interesting character beats.

The critics reviews for Seth MacFarlane's new not-Star-Trek-spoof "The Orville" have been... pretty much overwhelmingly negative, I'm posting a link to the only positive one I could find out of kindness more than anything., though in fairness that's never stopped McFarlane from flogging a dead horse for waaaaay longer than anyone would ever have predicted (Family Guy is starting season 16 for pities sake and American Dad is on 14)

Comments

[spider_man6]

Prime is like the BTAS of Transformers tv shows. A good meter mark.
By the way, Soundwave did appear in MTMTE, and I'm pretty sure Starscream bit the dust in Predacons Rising.

[janegray]

Yeah. I know that there are many vocal TF fans who hate Prime, and I can certainly see its many flaws... First and foremost, the sudden random dropping of interesting characters and plot threads (I'm still salty we never got to see what the deal was with Breakdown and the Wreckers). Also Miko and Raf were extremely, extremely bad human characters, and Smokescreen annoyed the hell out of me. And Starscream was played too much as buttmonkey and comic relief, so that people got the impression that he was an ineffectual clown even when he actually had a pretty decent track record of accomplishing things.

But I really think that overall it has way too many merits to dismiss it. Knock Out, Breakdown and Airachnid were fantastic characters. Agent Fowler was an excellent human character, and I actually liked Jack most of the time. The Prime take on Soundwave was my favourite in the entire franchise, and I greatly enjoyed their take on Shockwave and Wheeljack. Silas was an interesting antagonist. The dialogues were, most of the time, really good, and they even managed to turn a recurring joke into a gutpunch ("We needed that"). The animation in the third Season was stunning. And the plot of the episodes ranged from insane in a good way (Starscream unleashes the zombie Apocapypse!) to moving (Arcee has to move on after the death of her partners), with plenty of fresh ideas (while I would have much preferred it if they had kept Breakdown alive, using his corpse as some kind of EVA mech was a great twist). They even brought the franchise in a brand new direction when they came up with a portrayal of Starscream that actually developed past the usual treachery and became loyal to Megatron.

The "Optimus is literally Jesus" thing was immensely, deeply, profoundly idiotic, and pretty much killed my love for the character. But The Covenant of Primus came out after TFP finished its run, so I blame it rather than the cartoon itself.

Thankfully, a semi-recent episode of the new cartoon revealed that Starscream survived the encounter with the Predacons :) *cough*like I'd be saying for years*cough*

[ozaline]

I didn't mind the humans in Prime, honestly, though it's been a while.

[icon_uk]

Not sure I'd say Prime filled that role, that would seem to be Transformers: Animated IMHO, which features examples from every previous take of the series, but keeps the small cast of Beast Warsm si guves each some quality time.