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TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE surges into profitability at the box office forty years after release

The 1986 animated film Transformers: The Movie has hit cinemas again as part of a limited re-release to celebrate its 40th anniversary. The film, which famously kills off a number of fan-favourite Transformers characters in a massive, opening battle, only made around $5.5 million during its original release against a $6 million production budget and was deemed a failure by Hasbro. However, the film has remained a cult favourite amongst fans thanks to its straightforward, action-oriented storyline, hard-rocking soundtrack and, obviously, its ludicrous death count.

The re-release has so far notched up another $5 million worldwide, with its theatrical run extended into October. The film's success has been put down to a popular toy line - Studio Series 86 - released over the past few years with ultra-screen-accurate versions of the movie characters (apart from Astrotrain, no idea what they were thinking there), but also the sad passing of voice actor Peter Cullen last month. Cullen voices both Optimus Prime and Ironhide in the movie. The franchise has also had a huge comeback success in comics recently, with Skybound Entertainment releasing massive compendiums of the original 1980s Marvel Comics run (including an adaptation of the movie and multiple tie-in stories, like the classic Target: 2006 and The Legacy of Unicron) and launching its own comic book in "the Energon Universe," which has become the biggest-selling Transformers comic since the 1980s and is now being developed as an animated series for television.

These successes, moderate though they are, may revitalise Hasbro's interest in the brand, which has flagged slightly after the disappointing performance of the last two theatrical movies in the franchise, Rise of the Beasts in 2023 and Transformers: One in 2024, despite the latter being very good and the best Transformers film since Bumblebee in 2017.

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN to end after its third season on Disney+

Disney have decided to end Daredevil: Born Again after its third season airs in early 2027. The show completed shooting several months ago.

Daredevil, starring Charlie Cox as the titular Man Without Fear and Vincent D'Onofrio as his arch-nemesis, Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk, originally aired three seasons on Netflix in 2015, 2016 and 2018, with the character also playing a key role in The Defenders in 2017. With the Netflix-Marvel deal ending in 2020, it was assumed that was it. However, the character made a low-key comeback, still played by Cox, in the film Spider-Man: No Way Home, followed by brief guest shots on She-Hulk and Echo (whilst Fisk also appeared in Echo and Hawkeye).

The entire Netflix Marvel-verse was made canon to the proper MCU with the release of Daredevil: No Way Home's first season in 2025, and then a second season this year, which continued the story from the original run. Both seasons were well-received critically, but the second season saw a significant drop in viewership. The closing moments of the Season 2 finale was also criticised for being decidedly implausible, even by normal MCU standards. A third season was confirmed and started shooting shortly after Season 2 concluded, with it being confirmed that many of the other Defenders will also be returning for a grand finale.

The decision was apparently made only after shooting was completed, with showrunner Dario Scardapane subsequently departing, before post-production was completed. This makes it sound like the original plan had not been to end with Season 3, and leaves open the question if there will be reshoots or edits to make it work better as a conclusion to the whole saga.

Although this is the end for Born Again specifically, it is possible the characters will live on. Jon Bernthal's Punisher, who originated in the Netflix show's second season before getting his own two-season spin-off, recently appeared in a Disney+ special before playing a key role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It's possible that Marvel may promote Daredevil to the movies, either a supporting role or leading his own picture. Future shows in the same continuity also cannot be ruled out.

Still, Disney is definitely winding in its slate of Marvel TV shows, having felt it made too many, too fast in the period after the pandemic, leading to quality issues. It recently un-renewed Wonder Man after an excellent first season, whilst the upcoming VisionQuest is expected to end the loose series of Scarlet Witch-and-Vision-affiliated TV shows which began with WandaVision .

Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 1

Cybertron, the metallic homeworld of the peace-loving Autobots for untold millennia. A brutal civil war is unleashed when the maniacal Megatron forms an army of power-hungry Decepticons and tries to convert Cybertron into a mobile battle station to conquer the galaxy. Although he is stopped, Cybertron is shaken loose from its orbit and sent hurtling through space. A thousand years later, the planet is threatened with destruction in an asteroid field. The Autobot leader, Optimus Prime, leads a crack squad on a starship, the Ark, in eliminating the asteroid threat, but a Decepticon attack threatens to wipe out the Autobots' best warriors. In desperation, Prime sends their ship plummeting into the atmosphere of a nearby planet, where it crashes into the base of a volcano.

Four million years later, the Ark is reactivated by a freak volcanic eruption. Its repair systems kick in and bring both the Autobots and Decepticons back online, now reconfigured to transform into various native vehicles. They discover that organic creatures have become the dominant lifeform on this planet and achieved a basic level of technological civilisation. Megatron plans to steal their energy and send it back to Cybertron, whilst Prime vows to protect this world and its inhabitants...no matter the cost.

When Hasbro created the Transformers franchise in late 1983, borrowing a large number of toys from Takara's pre-existing Diaclone and Microchange lines, they knew they needed a compelling backstory to explain what the hell was going on. Repeating the approach that had worked so well for G.I. Joe almost two years earlier, they called upon Marvel Comics to develop a backstory and ongoing storyline for the franchise, as well as giving names and characters to the entire cast. Jim Shooter at Marvel quickly established the basic idea of a resource war, whilst Daredevil alum Denny O'Neill came up with the name "Optimus Prime." However, his further suggestions did not excite Hasbro and he was quickly replaced by artist-editor Bob Budiansky, who famously spent the 1983 Thanksgiving weekend coming up with over two dozen Transformer names, abilities, tech specs and personalities, effectively creating a bible from which everything else, including the Sunbow cartoon that debuted a year later, was derived.

The Marvel Transformers comic launched in May 1984 in a blaze of publicity, accompanied by TV promos and, of course, the original twenty-four toys themselves. Industry-watchers thought that the project was too late, as Tonka and Japanese company Bandai had joined forces the preceding year to launch GoBots, getting the line onto shelves just before Christmas. Retailing at a cheaper price-point, the expectation was that GoBots would see off Transformers. However, they were wrong. Transformers became a decade-defining toy phenomenon that kept going all the way until, well, now, whilst GoBots would effectively disappear in 1987 after running out of ideas (culminating in the range of robots that transformed into, er, rocks).

One of the key reasons Transformers won was its comic book. The Sunbow TV show helped when it launched five months later, but that aired alongside the Hanna-Barbera GoBots cartoon and both suffered from mass produced, cheap animation and a "relaxed" (aka "non-existent") approach to continuity and character consistency, though the Transformers voice cast was undeniably superb (RIP Peter Cullen). But the Marvel Comic delivered fresh Transformers stories to fans almost every month from early 1984 to summer 1991 (early 1992 in the UK), creating an ongoing saga that kids could enjoy continuously. Sales peaked at a reported third-of-a-million copies per issue, and reportedly the comic was still selling 80,000 a month when it was cancelled, figures any comic company would kill for today.

Over in the UK, the comic launched a little later (in September 1984) and initially reprinted the US material, splitting one US issue over two UK ones, printed fortnightly. The comic was likewise a big hit and Marvel UK moved the title to a weekly release schedule, which meant they needed a lot more material, stat. To cover the gap, they started producing their own stories with top UK artistic talent (some 2000AD veterans, some up-and-comers) and their own writers. After a brief rotation of different writers, they settled on Simon Furman as their main guy. Furman weaved a narrative that maintained continuity with the US stories but focused on different groups of characters, or sometimes on characters the US comic had introduced and then dropped. Furman made excellent use of the mysterious disappearance of the Dinobots just two issues after their introduction in the States to weave an impressive storyline expanding on their personalities and desire to be different to the other Autobots, effectively turning Grimlock into the robot Wolverine we all know and love today. The superb quality of the UK comic later saw the team take over the US comic after Budiansky's departure in 1989, with the final two years of the US comic attracting rave reviews before the unwarranted cancellation.

Of course, sitting down to read the Marvel Generation 1 Transformers comic has ended up being more of a faff than it should be. Titan Comics released a scattershot number of collected editions in the early 2000s, followed up by IDW releasing their own collections about a decade later. The former were helped by Marvel granting them permission to use their own copyrighted characters (like Spider-Man, Circuit Breaker and Death's Head), but the latter couldn't afford the increased fees by then, so had to omit some stories or change artwork. Hachette released a full collection in the late 2010s which included everything, but was only available in limited qualities in the UK. Skybound, an imprint of Image Comics headed up by The Walking Dead and Invincible's Robert Kirkman, snapped up the licence in 2023 and have spent the last three years publishing their own original stories, but were also able to get the reprint rights to the Marvel comics collection, eventually publishing them in four gigantic compendiums.

Unfortunately, Skybound missed a trick by dividing the commercial compendiums between the UK and US stories, rather than merging them into a single continuity as was originally the case. To read the stories in order, you need some kind of reference guide and have to flip back and forth between Compendium One and UK Compendium One at different points, a decidedly suboptimal reading experience. Skybound did come up with a better answer, publishing a joint edition with the stories included in the correct order, known as Transformers: Til All Are One. Of course, they immediately shot themselves in the foot with a fusion cannon but making this edition, which should have been definitive, a Kickstarter-exclusive (develops spontaneous migraine). We can only hope for future mass-market reprints because Til All Are One is, by far, the best way to experience the original Transformers Marvel Comics story.

Till All Are One: Compendium 1 is a shelf-destroying hardcover volume totalling some 1200 pages, and is only the first of four volumes collecting the entire UK and US Marvel run together. For those who want the stats, this volume collects editions #1-23 of the monthly US comic and #1-93 of the fortnightly/weekly UK comic (though about half of those UK comics were just reprints of the US comic, so in reality the compendium is split roughly 50-50), running between them from May 1984 to December 1986. It also throws in the three-part Marvel comic adaptation of Transformers: The Movie towards the end, and a few of the UK hardcover annual and text stories as well.

Now, obviously, this is a toy tie-in-comic from the mid-1980s, aimed at 5-10-year-old kids to encourage them to annoy their parents enough to buy them a jet that can turn into a robot with lots of accessories that they would immediately lose (cough). The early issues in particular are prone to extreme bouts of exposition - the huge text boxes in issue #1 to explain who these twenty-four robot characters and multiple human ones are, remains a thing of legend - and attempts at nuanced characterisation are basic, at best. The artists also did not have access to the animation models that Sunbow Studios were developing until the third and fourth issues, so initially the characters all look like their toys and then shift into something closer to their more familiar cartoon appearance by the end of the fourth issue, which can be weird for those not ready for it.

"So, Spider-Man is canon in the Transformers universe?" "I CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT NOW!"

The early issues also feel a bit odd as Marvel briefly tried to include the events of the comic in the mainstream Marvel comic continuity of the time, hence Spider-Man showing up in the third issue in his then-new black suit, and brief cameos from SHIELD as they try to figure out what's going on. By around issue 5 or 6 Marvel had realised the permanent presence of dozens of giant transforming robots in the Marvel universe would be just way too distracting so dropped the idea, to the point of the Marvel Comics in New York themselves actually appearing and one of its writers turning into a (somewhat) major human character! It's a bit odd for the unprepared.

Still, the collection kicks off with the initial four-issue arc that was supposed to be a mini-series until Marvel looked at the (stupendous) sales and quickly turned it into an ongoing title. This arc has to introduce the initial characters, establish their origins on Cybertron, their battle in space that marooned them on Earth and their reactivation on Earth. Bob Budiansky sort-of orchestrates things from afar, but it's left to Ralph Macchio, Bill Mantlo and Jim Salicrup to actually write the scripts and it's a bit of a thankless task. The first issue is particularly clunky as hell, though one can't also feel slightly nostalgic for the broad strokes talking about the backstory, rather than the modern, exhaustively-detailed mythos that has much less space for mystery. The arc improves as it goes along, and there are some surprisingly deft touches, such as Sparkplug Witwicky's coma-induced flashbacks to the Korean War mirroring the Autobot-Decepticon conflict on Earth. It's only at the end that the story kicks into gear as the arrival of new Transformers causes major problems for the established players.

The next arc introduces the UK storylines, and it's initially a very strong effort. Steve Parkhouse's script for Man of Iron is not afraid to be weird and poetic, casting the Transformers as aliens with a very strange (even surreal) vibe. John Ridgway and Mike Collins's art remains impressive. Simon Furman, who has (almost certainly) written more Transformers stories than any other human, then makes his entrance with the bold and action-packed Enemy Within, in which both the Autobots and Decepticons have to deal with traitors in their midst (albeit one of them unwilling). This story is nicely-written and basically covers the now-overly-familiar "treacherous Starscream" arc in just one story, with it ending in such a way that it'll be some time before Starscream tries his BS again. Unfortunately, the follow-up Raiders of the Last Ark story is poor, mishandling the depiction of the Ark's controlling AI, Auntie (in a rare admission, I think I prefer "Teletraan-1," clunky as it is), and being too short to flesh out the idea of an Autobot-Decepticon truce against the Ark's raging Guardian robots. At least we get to see Windcharger having a brief moment in the sun.

Everyone at Marvel and Hasbro signed off on this, and thought it was a great idea to keep it going for the next eight months. The eighties, man.

Returning to the US stories, now written by Budiansky directly (and better for it), the next arc is downright bizarre. Shockwave, newly-awoken from four million years in a tar pit (long story), following a battle with the Dinobots shortly after their arrival on Earth on the Ark (okay, not that long), has taken over command from Megatron, knocked out almost all the Autobots and, er, decapitated Optimus Prime. For the next seven issues or so, Shockwave regularly chats with Prime's detached head (pure nightmare fuel for the 4-year-olds out there), which he is probing to try to steal the fabled Autobot Matrix so he can create new Transformer warriors, unaware that Prime has transferred it to his human ally Buster Witwicky. Shockwave is able to do enough to create the Constructicons, whilst Buster is able to reinforce the Autobots with the powerful Jetfire. Ratchet, the only Autobot at large, is able to rescue the Dinobots and defeat Megatron, with a splendid UK-original story depicting the Dinobots' return to the Ark and a battle with a nuke-equipped suicide robot that apparently results in one of the Dinobots being atomised and the rest, upset at the perceived ingratitude of the Autobots, storming off in a huff (neatly explaining their otherwise bemusing absence from the next few US stories).

These early stories are pretty decent with both Budiansky and Furman trading attempts to be as dark as they can get away with. Alongside Optimus Prime's detached head and our apparently first proper Autobot KIA, we have a story arc exploring Prime's PTSD at his own impotence and failure (made more interesting by the artistic debut of Geoff Senior, one of the best artists the franchise has ever known), Buster's own near-mental breakdown from carrying the Autobot Matrix and the visions of the future it has planted in his brain, and Bumblebee getting captured and shot up by the Decepticons as part of some elaborate stratagem, twice. We also have our first super-powered human properly entering the fray, with crippled computer programmer Josie Beller turning herself into the vengeance-obsessed, electricity-disrupting Circuit Breaker and doing surprisingly well at taking down some of the Transformers. Unfortunately, her inability - shared by the US military and government - to distinguish between Autobot and Decepticon becomes a major problem.

So far, so okay. There's some entertaining stuff here but, aside from being somewhat darker than you'd be fully comfortable letting a 4 to 6-year-old read, the early material is pretty middling. But Simon Furman levels up with Dinobot Hunt, a clever story that sees the Dinobots reverting to a savage state due to neural degradation from spending four million years in a tar pit. The Autobots have to split into multiple small teams to find each Dinobot and bring them down in different locations. This is the structure Furman would repeat years later on a much bigger scale with his Matrix Quest arc, but the shorter, sharper focus here works extremely well. It also shows the Decepticons (temporarily commanded by the brutally effective Soundwave) expertly manipulating Optimus Prime into a no-win scenario, to his own fury, restoring some menace and threat to the Decepticons over their more standard bumbling antics. A sequel, In the National Interest, pitting the now-repaired Dinobots against Megatron and the Constructicons, with a human-built super-mechanoid waiting in the wings, is almost as good.

John Higgins' original poster art for the Dinobots still slaps hard forty-two years later.

Not to be outdone, Budiansky shoots back with an arc that returns the story to Cybertron and we get to find out how the Autobot-Decepticon War on the homeworld has gone in the intervening four million years (the answer is...not well for the Autobots). We get a whole bunch of new characters, including Blaster. A happy go-lucky party bot in the cartoon series, Blaster in the comics is a glummer, grimmer warrior prepared to the right thing no matter the cost, and is easily Budiansky's best-written character. We also get a notable comic-original character, the menacing Decepticon overlord of Cybertron, Straxus. Some excellent stuff here.

At the end of the collection, the impending release of Transformers: The Movie finally gives Furman the material he needs to really go for broke. Target: 2006, still sometimes cited as the best Transformers comics story of them all (peak IDW might want a word, but even then it's close), is a huge epic spanning time and space. A mass-uprising on Cybertron spearheaded by the Autobots' most powerful, newest warrior, Ultra Magnus, and the elite commando unit known as the Wreckers, is thrown off-track when Optimus Prime abruptly vanishes without trace on Earth, and, with him, the Matrix, the only way of creating new Transformer life. Magnus travels to Earth to investigate, only to find the local Autobots and Decepticons distracted by the arrival of Galvatron, an ultra-powerful warrior who claims to have come from twenty years in the future on a mission of great importance. The result, as you may expect, is complete mayhem as Megatron joins forces with the leaderless Autobots, Ultra Magnus makes a series of bad choices, some Autobots also show up from the future and it turns out that events are being orchestrated from the unimaginably powerful entity Unicron (the character voiced by Orson Welles in the movie) from the future. A whole bunch of new characters are introduced, and we get some surprisingly complex Cybertronian worldbuilding and politics (A Game of Chromes anyone?). Along the way we also get a whole ton of superb artwork from Geoff Senior, Jeff Anderson and Will Simpson (who would later become one of the main concept artists for Game of Thrones, and share a convention panel or two with myself; small world). This is a story operating simply on a totally different level from the US stories and, sure, it's not exactly Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns, but it is both smarter and more creative than any glorified toy advert has a right to be. The concluding turn into hard-SF as the characters ruminate on how the effectiveness of time travel can be negated if the experience creates a parallel universe, is also unexpectedly excellent (and sets up a plot point that takes three years to pay off properly).

The collection rounds off with some more disposable storylines involving Runabout and Runamuck turning into graffiti artists (!) and the introduction of the Aerialbots going badly wrong for the Autobots. Can't they ever catch a break?

This first Marvel Compendium is all over the shop tonally and in terms of quality to start with, but settles down, more quickly than I remembered honestly, to deliver some entertaining stories. Nothing here is going to be competing for an Eisner, but the action intercut with musings on the nature of war and limited resources, with a cast of colourful and memorable characters, is better than it has any right to be, and things only get better through the succeeding volumes.

Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 1 (***½) is fun but difficult to acquire. It was only ever published in the Skybound Kickstarter set, which is now out of print and goes for absurd prices on eBay. Skybound have ruled out a mass-market edition, but a Kickstarter reprint is fully possible, as Skybound recently did one for their original G.I. Joe comic set. For everyone else, the alternative is to get the respective US and UK compendium sets in paperback and flip between them, which is suboptimal, but at least possible.

Technical note: this edition uses the IDW scans from the early 2010s as its base film, which is problematic, especially for the US issues. The image reproduction is mostly good and sometimes excellent, but a few (and fortunately only a few) times it can get a little vague or smeary. Not enough to disrupt the reading experience, but it is mildly irritating given the existence of the superior scans from the Titan Comics collection of the early 2000s. Reproduction of the (mostly better) UK artwork is generally much better throughout, though some busy panels can risk being a little on the dark side. I'd say, given the source material is over forty years old, the presentation is at least acceptable.

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BBC planning a 2028-29 return for DOCTOR WHO

Back in June it was confirmed that the most recent era of Doctor Who, headed by Russell T. Davies and produced by Bad Wolf Studios for the BBC, had come to a somewhat abrupt end. A Christmas special planned for December 2026 had been cancelled and the BBC had begun planning to put the show out to tender for a new production partner. This followed the BBC and international distributor Disney+ also cutting ties after two commercially-underwhelming seasons.

The expectation was that the show would be gone for an extended time, but in its formal invitation to tender published publicly for the first time today, the BBC has instead shown a more bullish timescale. That want interested parties to declare their interest by 2 October at the latest, with a view to announcing the successful tender in March 2027. The want the airdate for the next season of Doctor Who to be in the 2028-29 period, and are so far planning only a single new season with a new partner, with a view to extending to more seasons depending on other requirements (possibly - my speculation - including the contractual time period desired by any new actor playing the Doctor; a one-year contract will likely not be hugely compelling). The next season will apparently deprioritise complex lore and intricate existing backstories, and will take a fresh approach, with the BBC preferring the initial use of new monsters and aliens, but existing, iconic enemies are free to return.

It is known that BBC Studios is interested in the project and may be the frontrunner, but several other British production companies and potentially several overseas ones may be interested, though the BBC is apparently not actively looking at American studio partners at the moment.

The BBC likely is looking at international distribution deals, though. Netflix seemed to rule itself out of any such deal recently, but Amazon has expressed some interest. The BBC has also licensed its Doctor Who library to AMC in the United States, which may suggest they could be a preferred partner for at least American distribution; AMC also owns BBC America, the channel that aired Doctor Who at the height of its American success in the Matt Smith era.

It will be interesting to see how this moves forwards, but in the meantime 2026 will be the first year since 2004 in which no new episode of Doctor Who has aired at all, a remarkable milestone, and it sounds like 2027 will be the same.

Blizzard decides to release new titles in all of its major series

In news which is more surprising than it should be, Blizzard have announced new titles in each of its major franchises. WarCraft, Diablo and StarCraft will be getting new instalments released between right now and 2030.

First up is, bemusingly, a new expansion for WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos. Originally released in 2002, the real-time strategy title received an expansion in the form of The Frozen Throne (2003) but no further new material, as the franchise's forwards storyline and direction was supplanted by the online multiplayer phenomenon World of WarCraft (2004). The game had a remaster and re-release in 2020 as WarCraft III Reforged, but technical issues and creative decisions angered the fanbase, resulting in a very poor reception and apparently poor sales.

Blizzard and parent company Microsoft have at least not given up on the game, and yesterday launched version 3.0, a comprehensive update to the remaster that addresses some of the outstanding criticisms as well as improving graphical fidelity. More surprisingly they've launched a new expansion, WarCraft III: The Forsaken Kingdom. The expansion takes place shortly after WarCraft III's main narrative and expands on the fall of the city of Lordaeron and its conversion into the Undercity, paving the way for its appearance in World of WarCraft. The expansion reportedly has 30 hours of new content and over an hour of new cinematic cutscenes. The news will delight single-player and real-time strategy fans of the franchise, who've had no new material for twenty-three years. The expansion and update is out now.

On the Diablo side of things, Diablo IV will continue to receive updates and Diablo V is now in development for release in 2029. The game will be set 100 years after Diablo IV but otherwise little new information has been released.

More unexpected was news of the StarCraft franchise. The series began in 1998 with the giga-selling original StarCraft, followed by its expansion Brood War a few months later. The title went on to sell around 30 million copies, becoming the biggest-selling RTS of all time, and created the foundations of the modern esports scene in South Korea. It finally got a sequel over a decade later, via StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (2010) and its expansions Heart of the Swarm (2013) and Legacy of the Void (2015). The title never entirely eclipsed the original StarCraft in popularity in Korea, and with an eye to this Blizzard released the well-received StarCraft Remastered in 2017.

Although the StarCraft II project sold well, it didn't match the enormous success of either Diablo or World of WarCraft, and Blizzard seemed to move on with little chance that the franchise would be revisited. However, it is now getting a new game in the form of a single-player-focused, open-world shooter. The game doesn't have a name (it's just listed as "StarCraft" at the moment, which would just be confusing), though the trailer is called StarCraft: Dominion, and isn't slated to launch until 2030. Narratively, the game either takes place during the events of the original StarCraft or between the two games, with the Terran Dominion under the ruthless Emperor Arcturus Mengsk under attack by the Zerg and the Terran Marines being deployed to combat them. The fanbase so far seems to be divided between relief that the franchise will return, and annoyance that there is no new real-time strategy game or even an expansion in development.

Microsoft seem to be taking the view with both Blizzard and Bethesda that new titles in their best-known franchises are the way forwards, which feels like it should be obvious but both companies seem to have been slow to realise it. Hopefully these new titles will live up to their legacy. WarCraft III: The Forsaken Kingdom is available now, with Diablo V following in 2029 and what should be called StarCraft: Dominion following in 2030, though dates are of course subject to change.

Star Wars: Zero Company

The Clone Wars rage across the galaxy, with the Galactic Republic and its vast clone armies pitted against the Separatists under Count Dooku. In the midst of the chaos, small mercenary outfits are trying to survive. Zero Company, founded by ex-Republic soldiers dismissed after a military operation went south, is reliant on loans from the Hutts and finding itself spiralling into insolvency when it is given a lifeline by Republic Intelligence. The Republic will pay their debts in full if Zero Company works to bring down a mysterious cult known as the Infinite Coil, a distraction the Republic military can ill afford to engage at the moment. With little choice, Zero Company agrees.

Way back in 2012, when playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown from Firaxis, I thought "a Star Wars version of this would be cool." Modders agreed, and even other franchises, with Gears of War and Warhammer 40,000 both getting their own turn-based tactics spin-offs years before the galaxy far, far away (and Fallout Tactics, released in 2001, can smirk at being way ahead of the curve). But finally it's happened. We have "XCOM, but also Star Wars." And it's great! Mostly.

Zero Company is a turn-based tactics game in the Star Wars universe that has you controlling a mercenary outfit at the height of the Clone Wars. You have to manage your base, such as upgrading facilities or getting better supplies, whilst also recruiting and training new troops. You also have to manage your company's reputation on the galaxy map, increasing your influence in key areas to unlock new abilities. You have minor operations you can undertake, which are mostly text-based, with you sending troops to do a quick job for a fast infusion of cash or resources, and then proper missions, where you deploy to a planet for a full, turn-based mission. You control a character call "Hawks," who is fully customisable, and the only character in the game who can't be killed (if you die, it's reload time).

The metagame at your base is quite fun, and shows DNA from both the XCOM games and also the same team's last game, the solid-but-flawed Midnight Suns. You run around upgrading your base and capabilities but you can also talk to all your soldiers, learning their backstories and making dialogue choices that can improve or lower your bonds with them. Improving bonds unlocks new ability points, or allows you to improve damage or hit points or other bonuses for missions. Unlike Midnight Suns, your base is relatively small so it's easy to talk to everyone in a few minutes between missions, and you don't have to start a book club. Also, the writing and dialogue is far superior, making this part of the game less of a slog.

The actual strategic gameplay from XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 is sadly missing here. You don't get to make many actual strategic choices. The most you can do is delay a key story mission (every mission has a timer showing how long you have to take it) a couple of extra turns to fit in some more side-missions or companion missions, but beyond that you have a linear series of missions you have to perform, you can just fudge exactly when.

These three mission types dominate the game. Side-missions mostly involve going to a certain planet and either blowing something up, stealing something, rescuing some dudes or just wiping out all the enemies present. Companion missions are in the vein of Mass Effect 2's loyalty missions, you have key characters on your team with their own set of missions and goals, and helping them fulfil those goals improves their morale and increases your bonds. Your companions in Zero Company are almost uniformly excellent and interesting, so helping them all out is a lot of fun. Finally, the main story missions push forward the main narrative.

You have different types of companion characters. The narrative ones are assigned to your squad automatically and have their own cut scenes, tons of unique dialogue, loyalty metres etc. Astonishingly, they can all be killed in combat and the game will rock on without them. You also have a huge number of recruitable side-characters, who can fill out the roster (up to a possible maximum of 20). To be honest, this is wholly unnecessary and I got by with the narrative companion characters and then two extras, one of whom I literally never had to use. At different points in the narrative, some side-characters will leave for a while on their own side-missions, forcing you to dig deeper in your reserve bench, but there are usually ways of getting them back. Particularly fun are the droid companions. Droids have limited combat utility themselves, but are epic support characters, able to give other characters more action points or dolling out grenades and healing items, which they have a much higher capacity for. There's even an achievement for completing a mission with 4 droids, which is tricky but doable.

The actual missions themselves are very XCOM-ish. You have three action points per character, which can be spent moving, attacking or using items. You also have an Advantage metre. You build Advantage through base upgrades, or defeating enemies on the field. When you have a certain number of Advantage points, you can trigger special attacks and abilities which do not require action points. Judicious use of Advantage points can give your team a truly huge number of things to do each mission before the enemy finally get to take their go.

This is fun and hugely gameable, especially when you start working out how to optimise base upgrades to increase your Advantage points per mission, or how to reduce the Advantage costs for your most heavily-used abilities. However, it is very generous to your characters, even on the harder difficulty levels. Zero Company is the turn-based-tactics game as a power fantasy, instead of the cruel, head-banging exercise in frustration the genre can often be. You have very powerful synergy abilities of the kind you only unlock towards the end of an XCOM 2: War of the Chosen playthrough almost immediately at the start of the game, and they just get more powerful from there. Enemy abilities can be formidable, it has to be said, and on the harder difficulty levels the enemy AI can be quite canny in how it attacks, although sometimes the game also gives up and just hurls meatwaves (and metalwaves) at you instead, which can be more tedious.

Enemy variety is also a bit lacking, with you fighting droids, Infinite Coil members (who have funky powers to absorbe one another's energy), Separatist soldiers and street thugs and that's about it. Once you've taken down some super battle droids, droidekas and Infinite Coil heavies, the game has relatively little to surprise you with. On the other hand, you also have allies you can fight alongside, such as mercenaries, security forces, clone troopers and, on one memorable mission, a high-ranking Jedi themselves.

The game's length may also be somewhat contentious. This is launching at a cheaper-than-normal price point, which is nice, but a single playthrough of the game will take between 25 and 30 hours. There is enough variety in the game to warrant maybe a second playthrough at a higher difficulty level, maybe using a completely different A-team of characters (like dismissing the Mandalorian character who can curb-stomp many missions by herself), but beyond that there isn't enough variety to really warrant additional playthroughs. In contrast, XCOM: Enemy Unknown itself (especially with the Enemy Within expansion) is still mightily replayable fourteen years after release because of how open the strategic megagame is, not to mention an extensive mod scene. I'd argue if you want a much more open-ended, mercenary-managing, space opera war extravaganza, then BattleTech is a stronger bet with a lot more replayability as well as a truly immense mod collection.

But we are short on great Star Wars games these days, and Zero Company (****½) has superb gameplay, great characters, pretty good writing and a compelling main plot that a non-Star Wars fan can follow immediately whilst hardcore fans will appreciate deep lore cuts and obscure canon characters returning. It's immense fun, and not every game has to be some 200+ hour infinite title. The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Note: Zero Company launched with significant technical problems including frequent crashes, missions freezing and even crashes requiring a hard system reset. I would have marked the game down for this but an initial patch appears to have solved the most annoying and repetitive problems.

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IKEA releases SKYRIM mod featuring Matt Berry as a talking Kallax shelf

Yes, that is a real headline. Swedish purveyors of reliable flat-pack furniture IKEA have created a mod for 2011 video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The mod introduces a new companion character, a Kallax shelf, which follows the character around and is voiced by Matt Berry.

I'm not sure anything more can or should be said. This is a thing that has happened.

Hachette launches 100-novel DUNGEONS & DRAGONS hardcover collection in the UK, including Erin Evans's BRIMSTONE ANGELS series

Hachette Partworks is launching a hardcover novel collection of Dungeons & Dragons novels in the UK. The subscription collection will release 100 novels at a rate of two a month, meaning it will take around four years to release the complete collection. Hachette have form for this on numerous previous projects (such as their ambitious 100-volume hardcover graphic novel collection of every single Transformers comic ever published a decade ago, which remains definitive).

The collection will bring back novel series that have been out of print in hardcover for decades, if they even got hardcovers in the first place, and in paperback for over a decade. The collection will be limited to only the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance settings at this stage. Those subscribing for the duration will receive additional items, including bookmarks, bookends, dice trays and mugs.

Hachette have not so far released a full list of the books to be included, but have revealed the schedule for the first four books:

• Volume 18: Homeland by R.A. Salvatore (Book 1 of The Dark Elf Trilogy) - out now
• Volume 61: Azure Bonds by Kate Novak & Jeff Grubb (Book 1 of The Finder's Stone Trilogy) - late September
• Volume 2: Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Book 1 of The Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy) - early October
• Volume 19: Exile by R.A. Salvatore (Book 2 of The Dark Elf Trilogy) - late October

They've also indicated the following series and authors will be part of the collection:

• The Moonshae Trilogy by Douglas Niles
• The Legend of Drizzt saga by R.A. Salvatore
• The Finder's Stone Trilogy by Kate Novak & Jeff Grubb
• The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
• Elminster Ascending by Ed Greenwood
• The Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans
• The War of Souls Trilogy by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
• Richard Baker is also named as another author who will be featured in the collection

It's an interesting idea and many of these are beloved fantasy novels that have been out of print for a long time, especially in hardcover. The price of £11.99 per book for handsome hardcover editions is also very reasonable (especially with the first book at £2.99). However, subscribing to the entire thing would be relatively expensive and the quality variation between some of these books can only be called extreme. It is possible to stop a subscription when it hits a dull patch and restart it later on, but it would be a bit of a faff. Also, non-UK fans are out of luck.

It's also a shame to see other settings not given some love. The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King by Lynn Abbey in the Dark Sun setting might be the single finest D&D novel ever published, and I, Strahd in the Ravenloft setting would be a good way of catching up on the character ahead of the TV show in development for Netflix.

Still, an interesting idea, and hopefully might lead to renewed interest in getting some of the rarer books back in print in the US and other countries as well.

Red Dwarf (XIII): The Promised Land

In the 21st 23rd 22nd Century (probably), the mining ship Red Dwarf was subjected to a lethal radiation leak that killed the entire crew. The ship's AI, Holly, aimed the ship out of the Solar system to prevent contamination. Sealed in the hold of the ship, a pet cat named Frankenstein had a litter of kittens. Their descendants, over three million years, evolved into a humanoid lifeform. There was a huge religious war, the result of confused race-memories of their god/owner, Cloister the Stupid, and the humanoid cats fled Red Dwarf on their own fleet of hastily-assembled ships, leaving behind only the stupid and bewildered. In the modern Cat Fleet, great religious arguments are again raging. Three true believers set out for the ship of their origin, to find their God...they may be risking some disappointment.

The qualitative trajectory of Red Dwarf's history is well-known: okay first season (1988), a solid gold classic "imperial period" consisting of Seasons 2 through 6 (1988-93), then three very disappointing seasons on the trot (1997, 1999 and 2009). Fans had largely written the franchise off, but an unexpected return to, if not form, at least adequacy saw another three seasons that were pretty solid (2012, 2016, 2017). Not classic, but pretty entertaining with some good ideas.

Unfortunately, this run could not continue. The show's four main actors had other commitments and were also getting on a bit, with the oldest castmember Robert Llewellyn in particular becoming less and less keen at the extensive prosthetics and makeup work needed to embody the character of Kryten in his sixties. Writer Doug Naylor also found the task of handling the entire show, from writing through producing to directing every episode of the last three seasons, to be quite demanding, meaning that a new season every year or even couple of years was not viable.

To square the circle, Naylor suggested a new approach: feature-length specials, approximately the length of three normal episodes but which could be edited into single long movies, with filming for all the episodes done simultaneously to make shooting as tight and efficient as possible. This would minimise the workload for everyone and allow the show to make return appearances well into the future.

The Promised Land was the first project to appear in this format. Writer Doug Naylor surprised fans by actually answering a question they'd been asking for decades: what happened to the other humanoid cats who abandoned the ship before Lister's awakening in the first episode? The show had teased this question but never really answered it, resorting instead to the old standbys of bringing in more GELFs (Genetically-Engineered Life-Forms) and simulants (killer androids) whenever it needed an outside threat. Naylor deemed the special a big enough canvas to bring back the rest of the cat species in force and find out what happens when they meet their god, and discover he's a middle-aged, curry-obsessed, lager-guzzling, unambitious geezer.

The story is reasonably decent, with a rare, excellent villain, this case Ray Fearon as Rodon, the tyrannical leader of the cats. The guest cast is also generally great, though unusually large by Dwarf standards, meaning that each guest character is only thinly-sketched and doesn't have much to do (Lister's three acolytes are a bit one-note). This is enhanced by the special also reintroducing Holly (Norman Lovett, returning after a brief appearance in the Season 12 finale) and giving the main cast a lot to do, including a new "Diamond Light" mode for Rimmer which turns him into a superhero, at least until his battery runs out. Surprisingly, the least-well-served character here is the Cat himself (Danny John-Jules). With the entire supporting cast being made up of cats, it feels like Naylor doesn't have as many cat-things for him to do. One late-breaking storyline hints at a larger role for him but this doesn't go very far.

Whilst the story is solid and there's a lot of extra interesting ideas to play around with, like Holly being reset to factory settings and immediately going hard on the characters because they're not disciplined, proper crewmembers (shades of Queeg here, but the show doesn't make the connection), it does feel like the allocated time is too much for the concept. Perhaps a tighter 60-minute story, split into two episodes for repeats, would have been better. As it stands we do have several chase sequences, a brief-but-fun space battle, and in the scenes where Starbug crashes in the desert, easily the most impressive vfx sequence ever created for the show.

There's also some ideas that Naylor has wanted to pursue since the very start of the series. He and Rob Grant had wanted to portray the holograms in the show in black-and-white as opposed to their full-colour crewmates, but 1980s vfx just wasn't up to it. Here he gets his wish as Rimmer goes onto low-power mode and spends a third of the story traipsing around in black-and-white (and plugged in to a wall socket!).

There's some nice ideas as Lister has to convince Rimmer to go on living, and has to deal with religious faith and the motivating force for it. Red Dwarf is at its best when it throws some big philosophical concepts into the mix, and it does that here successfully, though not as much as you might think given the storyline.

Events culminate in a reasonably clever ending with some big moments for all the characters. And, unfortunately, that's it for now. Since The Promised Land aired in early 2020, there have been no further adventures on-screen. Plans for a series of TV movies to follow this one up fell through when co-creator Rob Grant took legal action to regain part control of the franchise for his own planned TV prequel and additional novels, something Doug Naylor maintained was unnecessary and basically blocked any chances of new episodes being made. The situation was resolved, but too late; by the time the smoke cleared, the Dave TV network had suffered savage budget cuts and could no longer afford to make much in the way of original new TV. The BBC maintained its curious decades-long indifference to making new episodes, and Rob Grant's attempts to interest a streamer in a rebooted version of the show came to nothing.

Even more tragically, Rob Grant passed away earlier this year, taking the wind out of the sails for a lot of fans. Whilst new episodes cannot be ruled out - this show has come back from the dead more often than Optimus Prime, Superman, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kenny from South Park combined - it does feel more remote than previously, especially as the actors start edging into their seventies.

If this is how it ends...it's an okay way to go out. Red Dwarf: The Promised Land (***½) is fine. It has some good ideas, some good performances, some thoughtful and introspective moments, some outstanding vfx and some good laughs, and even gives Holly some really good story and character moments for the first time since arguably Season 4. There are some painful jokes that just don't land, the cast is a bit too large to allow everyone to be serviced well, and the pacing feels off. But we're a long way from the show at its worst, and if the show and franchise can't go out with a bang, maybe going out with a miaow instead is fine.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.