Making Sense of Generation One: Part 4

The aftermath of Transformers: The Movie left a lot of fans wondering what was coming next for the robots in disguise. In the span of 90 minutes of animation, a huge percentage of everyone's favorite characters had been killed off or reformatted into new characters. Also, the setting shifted to twenty years in the future. If there was ever a time that people didn't know what was next, this was the time. In September of 1986, season three of the animated series began. What fans discovered is this season was more than meets the eye.

Season three began with a five part mini-series called Five Faces of Darkness. This series took place one year after the events of the film (2006) with Rodimus Prime in command of the Autobots and Galvatron still missing from the Unicron War. The Decepticons have been forced off of Cybertron and Earth and have taken refuge on the burned out planet of Charr. The mini-series also explained the origin of both Cybertron and the Transformers themselves revealing the mysterious five faced Quintessons were their creators. With the conclusion of the mini-series, the Autobots now had to face not only the insane Galvatron and the Decepticons, but also the evil Quintessons intent on reclaiming Cybertron and destroying both the Autobots and Decepticons.

The third season was a season of highs and lows. The first half of the season was animated by a new animation company called AKOM. Their work was pretty poor with AKOM only producing a few quality episodes (Dark Awakening for example). Other episodes like Carnage in C-Minor were some of the worst episodes ever animated in the series with errors and inconsistencies every few seconds. Toei Animation took back the duties of animating the show close to halfway through the season which meant there was a huge step up in animation quality. The season's writing however was among the best right from the beginning with only a few episodes that were just bad (Surprise Party anyone?). The previously mentioned Dark Awakening along with Ghost in the Machine, The Ultimate Weapon, The Burden Hardest to Bear, and The Return of Optimus Prime (Parts 1 & 2) were incredible episodes to watch. There was also a greater continuity between episodes which was a welcome revision, and head writer Flint Dille made an effort to make the show more mature in its story lines.

Overall, season three was a great season. The largest problem for fans with the season was the complete overhaul of the show. All of the familiar faces were missing (barring cameos from Bumblebee, Starscream, the Airealbots, and memories of Megatron), and fans were still bothered by the death of Optimus Prime (even though Hasbro restored Optimus Prime to life in the season finale). The human characters were also different with Spike being all grown up with his son Daniel as the new teenaged character for the fans to connect with. Also, the futuristic style and the new focus on adventures on different planets was a shift as well. It was a season of a many changes, and some fans found it hard to embrace these changes. Although the 1986 toys were amazing and selling very well, this year began the decline in the popularity of the Generation One franchise in the United States.