Blaster Blues: Generation 1 Revisited

We're reviewing episode 21, Blaster Blues, of Transformers Generation 1 season 2, so let's get after it. This is Energon Entries.

Welcome to Energon entries, everybody. As always, this is your host, Matt Fraits, and I hope that this finds you well. I want to say thank you out front to some people who have reviewed the show on Apple Podcasts, that is Autobot Victory Saber in Orlando Coria, if I'm saying your name incorrectly, I do apologize. Both of them had some really nice things to say about the show on Apple podcasts, and it means a lot to me to see that people are enjoying what we're doing here.

So of course I say this at the end of every episode, but if you're somebody who feels a certain way about the show and you want to let me know, I really, really do appreciate it, and I do appreciate everybody that comes to this podcast every single week. I do want to make a slight announcement, and it's really a tweak to our normal cadence. Normally I come out with episodes every Friday, but I do a lot of other content, and a lot of that content does come out on Fridays.

And so to kind of make sure that I have enough time and that my bandwidth doesn't get eaten up, I'm going to start putting these episodes out on Saturdays. And I know that a lot of podcasts don't usually do their work on Saturdays, but for me, that's what's going to work because I want to make sure that I can come out with content every week and I want to make sure that you enjoy it. So speaking of content, let's get to the episode recap.

The episode begins with Spike, Carly, and Blaster at a rock concert, where Blaster decides to share the music with the rest of the Autobots by broadcasting it across their channels, much to the frustration of Optimus prime and the others.

Meanwhile, at the Halley Observatory, Professor Halley tests his new Voltronic Galaxer, a device for communicating with extraterrestrial life, only to attract the attention of the Decepticons, who quickly sees it after receiving a distress call.

The Autobots arrive at the observatory to find the device gone, and Optimus vows to retrieve it as the Decepticons set up on the moon to disrupt Earth's communications. Blaster and Cosmos locate the Decepticons, but are captured and forced to power the Galaxer. The Decepticons interference causes widespread chaos on Earth, with the Autobots struggling to maintain control. Recognizing Blaster's music in the Decepticon signal.

Carly, Spike and the Autobots track the signal to the moon. Omega supreme brings them into battle, where Blaster and Cosmos cleverly overload the galaxy, causing it to explode. The episode ends with Megatron retreating and Blaster back on Earth, broadcasting his music once again, much to the Autobots exasperation. So we're going to start off with non robot thoughts, as we always do. And I hope that people are appreciating the new format of the show. It's really helping me organize my thoughts.

So this episode starts with a rock concert. And in every single episode where music is played in this show, it is always the same exact rock music that is used even at the very beginning of the show. Way back in season one, we heard it from jazz, and we hear it all the time now. The band looks cliched for the 80s. It's supposed to be, I guess, extreme music. But how is this the only music that exists in this universe? Just something that I actually kind of. I don't know.

I wish there was a little bit more attention to detail put into some of these episodes, but hey, I really can't complain. And speaking of the music, Optimus prime and Sparkplug kind of channel this old man energy when their ears hurt from listening to this music. And that's something that you always heard. And my dad would always say the music's too loud, and that's kind of what they were giving. And here, blasted Blaster is a phrase that Optimus prime used.

And while it is sort of an homage to the episode title, it does kind of speak to the way that Blaster is portrayed. We're going to get to that a little bit later. Last episode, I talked about Bumblebee being the third wheel on a date, and this time it's Blaster on the date. But the funny part is Blaster turns into a boombox, which is something that is dated for people like me and even older.

So him at a rock concert, it looks like he's playing his music, but apparently he's broadcasting it to the Autobots. And so just another third wheel. Blaster seems like he's a lot of fun, and I said that Bumblebee seems the most human, but certainly Blaster is probably portrayed as the most fun Autobot out there. This is another episode, though, with another failed attempt at humans keeping anything secret from the Decepticons. Now the galaxy is something that sort of broadcasts out.

So you would think that the Decepticons would be able to intercept these transmissions and find out about it. And Obviously, they did. They were there within seconds in the episode, and there were no Autobots there to protect this. However, in other episodes, we have seen the Autobots be there, and it just didn't matter. So in this case, Megatron gets away with the galaxy and all as well. So getting to the humans.

Now, throughout this entire episode, we see a bunch of humans and we see a lot of human beings with professions. And a lot of these professions look cliched as what they would have looked like back in the 80s. You see conductors, you see pilots. They all have a very cliched look for what humans with those jobs look like back then. It's almost like when you see nurses in shows that predate a certain time and they all kind of have that same look. They don't look like that anymore.

And now I think that's something that dates this show when you look back on it, because conductors don't look like the way that conductors look. They don't have this cliched look with the overalls and the big hat. But you saw that here, and you do see that throughout the show. And I think that's probably something that's more akin to the time period than necessarily the people animating it. It was just something that kind of caught my eye and was quite amusing.

But Carly makes another appearance in this episode. And in this episode, she once again shows her worth, for the most part. As Power Glide is going down. He has been shot. They're going to crash. She remembers that there are jetpacks within, and she gives Spike the jetpack. And Spike ends up looking really, really good by putting the jetpack on the side of Power Glide, saving their lives temporarily.

And I think that just shows that Carly really, again, is great. She is great for Spike, she's great for the Autobots. Spike is looking better and better each episode. While you could say that Spike was in trouble because he was in Power Glide, it wasn't Spike going off on his own and getting in trouble. But the only problem with this plan, something I'm kind of surprised that Carly didn't foresee. Obviously, a jetpack of that size, it's not going to be able to power a Transformer for very long.

And they were going to go back to Autobot Headquarters with Optimus Prime. And of course, the jetpack was running out of fuel, so it was a little short sighted in that regard. But overall, Karlie once again shows her worth.

And as we move on to the Autobots here, I think this is the first time we see Omega Supreme. It May also be the first time that we see Cosmos, at least Cosmos in any way that we know anything about him. But Omega Supreme, I'm almost positive for sure. And until now, the Autobots have not been able to travel into space. So obviously Omega supreme is going to fill that void. Cosmos fills that void. On a smaller scale, Omega supreme is massive, and he is an entire space station. He also has a tank.

He's incredibly powerful. He is incredibly large. He also seems to be the size of Devastator. Now, we also talk about the fact that in this show, there are a lot of size discrepancies, but so far, throughout this episode, they seem to animate Omega supreme very, very consistently, even at the end when he grabs Astro Train. Now, Astro Train is a space shuttle. We'll get to him in a minute. But again, Omega Supreme, I think, was consistently sized throughout.

Maybe the size throughout the entire episode wasn't consistent in this episode because the Autobots have to be spread so thin. We do see a lot more of the OG Autobots. And I have to admit, it is nice to see that, because this is the core of the show. The Autobots that started out in the first season are still the core of the Autobots that came to Earth and started this whole thing.

And so it's nice to see Sunstreaker and Sideswipe and Mirage and Trailbreaker now, most of them, at least the three out of the four that I just named, we don't see them after the transforming and rolling out scene. But Trailbreaker does help out a lot of the humans that are in the snow with his force field. And his force field is very, very powerful. I believe I alluded to in a previous episode a couple back how his force field stopped Megatron's fusion cannon.

So Trailbreaker is very, very helpful, and it's nice to see him here and some others like Huffer in this episode, because again, the Autobots need to have all of their ranks at their disposal in order to win this war so they can get back Cybertron. So it's nice to see them in episodes. Even as we're introducing new Autobots to the fray, the Autobots still have an inability to fly.

And even though they have added Autobots that can fly as part of their transformation, overall in robot form, none of the Autobots can fly. And it does delay them from getting to save the humans and the galaxy when they're slightly delayed by blasters blasting of the music within Autobot headquarters. But they get there, and they're far too little, too late. And Then they have to drive away to go find the Decepticons, which they can't do.

And so this is a limitation that they have, especially on Earth, that seems to be very limiting. In other episodes, they can get places very quickly. In this episode, they can't seem to do that. So there is a little bit of a continuity shift here, because it seems like the Autobots should be consistently either able to get there fast or not able to get there fast. And this observatory seemingly was in the United States, where in other episodes, they've driven all the way to Peru without problem.

So this is just something that you chalk up to probably different animation studios, different writers, things like that. But it is what it is. And we talked about Cosmos already. So Cosmos has to go to the Moon because he's the only Autobot that can do so outside of Omega Supreme. But we'll get to that a little bit later. So Cosmos is the only Autobot outside of Omega supreme that can actually get to the Moon.

And so Cosmos takes Blaster and they go to the Moon to try and find the Decepticons, because they're unable to find the Decepticons on Earth. So they find them, which is awesome. Cosmos, though, lands right in the direct view of Megatron, within their new layer, or whatever you want to call it, on the Moon. And he sees them immediately, and they immediately get captured. And that seems really bad. He's the worst Hydro of all time.

If you're going to go there and try and spy on the Decepticons, you're going to do so by hiding, not by being in plain sight, especially as something that looks nothing like your surroundings. So Cosmo's really not, to me, showing his worth here. And Blaster, in all of this, gets captured. So Blaster obviously seems like a lot of fun, and it seems obvious to me that the writers or Hasbro has put Blaster in there to be a counter to Soundwave. Here's the thing, though, is Soundwave is very useful.

He has a lot of utility, especially with the fact that all of his tapes, like Ravage and Laserbeak, all have some kind of function that they actually are really good at. I think I said that Laserbeak might be the most useful Decepticon. Ravage is certainly up there as well. And so Soundwave is not just some sound player. He actually has a function. He definitely is into the espionage part. He spies. So what does Blaster do?

Blaster seemingly is just a robot that can transmit sound places, which is helpful in certain Regards. But as he's portrayed in this episode, it seems like he's very, very useless. And I don't think that the comparison is really fair, because I think Blaster has his strengths, but it's not obvious what they are based off of how he's portrayed, especially in this episode and especially during this.

Now, the Autobots are spread very, very thin, trying to save the humans from all these different disasters that are popping up over the planet. And as I'm thinking about it, the Autobots once again are being held back by the humans because they are trying to save them, and they're putting themselves in very vulnerable positions. The Decepticons have all of the leverage here, but they don't actually do anything with it, and that gets us to the Decepticons.

So at the beginning of the episode, Starscream is involved in taking over the galaxy, and he nearly destroys the Galaxer when they get there, that he shoots the observatory. Now, the thing I was thinking about was these massive Decepticons land on top of this observatory. Yes, it's made of concrete and other things, but it seems like, would they be able to stand up there without the structural integrity of the observatory failing? Obviously, if you're going to shoot it, that's going to help too.

But Megatron keeps Starscream so close to all of these plans, so close to High Command, and I really don't understand it. Outside of this being the major blind spot that Megatron has, Starscream always, always, always gets them into trouble or reverses some kind of good fortune that they have. And in this episode, it just so happened that it didn't necessarily ruin it, but it almost did, and Megatron still keeps him around.

We talked earlier about the fact that this is the first time we saw Omega Supreme. I'm very positive this is the first time we see Astro Train. However, this is not the first time we see a triple changer, and we saw Blitzwing, I believe, one or two episodes ago. But Astro Train specifically, I think, is the poster child for the triple changers. He can change into a space shuttle, he can change into a train, and obviously he can change into his robot form.

So this is very useful because we see Astro Train in all of his forms in this episode. They don't necessarily give Astro Train a lot to do outside of being the go here, go there guy, but it's obvious that the ability that he has to be able to change into multiple forms is going to be very useful. I just think it's very, very nifty and he's able to capture Cosmos very easily with his tractor beam.

And so these are secondary powers that Astrotrain has that seemingly give him a leg up on, especially Cosmos, because Cosmos can fly into space. But other than that, I'm not really sure what he can do. So the Decepticons do a great job. Once they get the galaxy, they hide very, very well from the Autobots and the humans, and they do so by going to the moon. And I think that using the moon as a new base of operations for this specific plan was really, really smart.

And of course, now the Autobots have Cosmos, which is convenient, and so they can go look there. But Megatron is scrambling all the communications on Earth as part of this, using the galaxy. That's very, very smart. Causing chaos just about everywhere on Earth. Now, I said earlier that the Autobots had to go save that, but we saw that in one place, and I can only imagine where all of these different disasters kept popping up. They don't really allude to that.

So Megatron's plan seemingly is very one dimensional. And at the end of the episode, despite all this blustering he did about taking over Earth and not giving back Earth unless he got what he wanted. Optimus prime, who was compromised in this episode after getting hit by either Durge or Ramjet, I can't remember which, pushes Megatron off of him in a fight, grabs his cannon and says stop or go away or whatever. And Megatron basically says, okay, we'll just do that. He easily retreats.

So this episode is very strange in that regard because the planet seemingly was great, but it was not executed well. There were no animation quirks that I could see during this watch. I'm sure that there are, but again, when I have to look up and then look down to type notes, I won't necessarily see all of them. I'm sure that some kind of wiki page has all of these listed out and everything, but I didn't see any during this watch. How did I feel about this overall?

Admittedly, I do not understand why Blaster was the focus of this episode.

It really didn't do anything for character development for him. It just made him look like a teenager who blasts his music. They did say that he saved the day, but to me, that's extremely loose as a plot point. It didn't really make a lot of sense. All of the happenings in this episode could have happened without Blaster at all. And so I'm just sort of confused by this episode being Blaster Centric when I didn't really learn anything about him except he's not really that useful.

He's really there for comic relief. Also, Megatron's plan was awful in its execution. Megatron throughout the series has had a propensity to have great plans that don't work out, but usually they get to a certain point because he has done something to get the plan to a place where he can almost succeed. Here, he steals the galaxy, scrambles communications, has everything in chaos, and then does nothing. Absolutely nothing. Multiple times in this episode he tells the humans or else. Or else what?

He doesn't do anything. It just kind of fell flat for me, this episode. It was unnecessary. It didn't do anything to develop any character. It didn't bring any story along. It didn't introduce us to some new Transformers like Omega supreme and Astro Train, and hopefully that will be some fruit that can be bared later on.

But overall, not a fan of this episode.

Episode Next time we're going to review a Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court, do not forget you can find us on Instagram. Energonentriespod is the handle and if you want to follow me on YouTube, Energon Entries is what you would Search subscribe like all of that good stuff. I do have some ideas that I'm working on to bring more content to that page, possibly even something larger than that, so stay tuned for that. Those of you have subscribed. I hope this finds everybody well.

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