Support The Wertzone on Patreon

STICKIED POST

After much debate (and some requests) I have signed up with crowdfunding service Patreon to better support future blogging efforts. You can find my Patreon page here and more information after the jump.

Thunderbirds 2086

In the year 2086, Earth and the Solar system are governed by the Federation, a supra-national organisation that evolved out of the United Nations. In a world of advanced robotics, artificial superintelligence, climactic disturbances and natural disasters, it falls to the International Rescue Organisation to fly to the rescue of anyone in trouble on or off the planet.

I think I can guess what you're thinking here: what the hell is Thunderbirds 2086? You've heard of Thunderbirds, the 1965 original puppet-and-explosions classic, and you've (probably) heard of Thunderbirds Are Go, the 2015 CGI-and-models reboot show from the Lord of the Rings effects team. You may have even heard of (and tried to forget) the ill-advised 2004 live-action movie directed by Jonathan Frakes. So what in the fresh heck of obscurity is this show?

Thunderbirds 2086 is an English-language dub of a Japanese anime called Scientific Rescue Team Technoboyger. The anime was developed by Jin Productions after a possible collaboration with Gerry Anderson on his new show Terrahawks fell through in the late 1970s. The team were huge fans of Anderson's work and, even after Gerry went back to the UK, they decided to honour his work with an animated "spiritual successor" to Thunderbirds. This successor featured the Scientific Rescue Team attending to disaster zones with their high-tech vehicles, the "Technovoygers." Amusingly the team deliberately mistranslated the name in English characters in the show as "Technoboygers," meaning the vehicles were dubbed "TB-1," "TB-2" etc as a further homage to Thunderbirds. More amusingly, this meant they could sell the show to ITC in the UK (the Thunderbirds IP holders) direct as a successor show, which ITC followed through on in its dub.

In this iteration of the franchise, the International Rescue Organisation (IRO) operates from the Arcology, a gigantic city-building rising out of an island in the South Pacific, as well as Thunderbird 6, a city-sized space station in orbit. The IRO has tens of thousands of people working for it and no less than seventeen major Thunderbird vehicles, alongside numerous less-impressive vehicles. The IRO was founded as a private enterprise by Commander Simpson, but now operates as an official arm of the Federation, the UN-descended government of Earth and its colonies across the Solar system. The IRO operates effectively as a space-age version of the US Coastguard, ensuring both the safety and security of people from natural disasters on and off Earth.

Despite the IRO's gargantuan size, the organisation is heavily dependent on a team of just five pilots: Dylan Beyda, the pilot of Thunderbird 1; Thunderbird 2 pilots Jesse Rigel and Jonathan Jordan Jr.; Thunderbird 3 and overall team commander Gran Hanson; and Thunderbird 4 aquanaut Kallan James. Commander Jared Simpson oversees their operations from the Arcology, and the commander's young nephew Skipper lends a hand as he prepares to apply as a Thunderbird cadet when he is older.

The vehicle roster is much larger than the original show. Thunderbird 1 is a large space shuttle which operates as a fast recon vessel and can more directly help in rescues than in the original show; Thunderbird 2 is still a huge transporter (though blue rather than green) which can bring other equipment to the danger zone in its various pods; Thunderbird 3 is a ground-control mobile command centre, basically a massive APC; Thunderbird 4 is still a submarine, but much larger than the original, and can carry smaller vessels inside it; TB5 is a firefighting vehicle which also has a large drill on the front; TB6 is the orbiting space city; TB7 and TB8 are fast interceptor vehicles stored on TB1 (and can also be used as drones); TB9 is a mech suit; TB10 is a spacecraft used for fast travel to other planets; TB11 is a high-speed ground vehicle carried inside TB3; TB12 is a large bulldozer carried by TB3; TB13 and TB14 are smaller underwater vessels (a flying mini-sub and bathysphere respectively) carried on TB4; TB15 is a ground drone and mobile computer; TB16 is basically the Mole from the original show; and TB17 is a huge spacecraft with an experimental near-light drive that can cross the inner Solar system in a matter of hours.

This massive and impressive vehicle roster is made a bit less impressive given that several vehicles never show up and almost every episode relies on TB1, 2 and 3, which can combine together into a larger vehicle capable of space travel. TB4 plays a major role in only a few episodes, so Kallan spends most of her time acting as a co-pilot on one of the other vehicles.

Like the original show, we have a mixture of natural disasters and problems caused by criminals. Unlike the original show, we also have something approaching a story arc as the sinister Shadow Axis - an alliance of asteroid settlements that want to break away from the Federation - launches various terrorist attacks on Earth to try to secure its independence. We even have a recurring villain, the Shadow Axis's unseen leader, General Starcrusher. Before you get too excited, this story arc is not very well-developed and left unresolved at the end of the show (though given the last half-dozen or so episodes don't even mention the Shadow Axis, this is not a major problem). More impressive is that the characters actually show some development and internal characterisation. Captain Hanson is the oldest and most experienced member of the team and the only one to have a wife and family. In at least one episode, he struggles to reconcile his calling to help people with the time it takes away from spending with his family. Dylan and Kallan have an unresolved mutual attraction, whilst Dylan also suffers from a clash of duties when his friends are put in danger and he has to choose between helping them or saving thousands from impending disasters. It's no big thing, but very different from the much more limited character arcs in the original.

Some of the disasters are very clever and well-portrayed. Arguably the best episode deals with a tidal wave striking the South Pacific after the weather control system goes haywire and has the four main Thunderbird vehicles having to work in concert to save thousands of lives across multiple islands. Another episode about a research station in danger of crashing into the Sun (a clear homage to an OG Thunderbirds episode) has a lot of superb tension given the limited running time. Most of the episodes are in fact pretty decent, with a strong sense of character and tension. The worst episodes are the ones that phone in some dodgy stock-SF plot, usually about aliens (Mindmeld and Trial are the worst offenders here) which are otherwise largely missing from the setting. The Shadow Axis/Starcrusher storyline is promising but doesn't really go anywhere, and without an on-screen face for the villains, it falls a bit flat. Starcrusher ends up being a less compelling villain than the Hood, which is really saying something. Other episodes are goofy but somehow pull it off: one episode about a dolphin joining the organisation ends up being surprisingly enjoyable, and an episode about a forest fire caused by the never-ending battle of wits and wills between a prize hunter and a cyborg stag (!!!) is one of the strongest episodes of the season.

The show is arguably a little darker than the original, even granting that the English dub pulls its punches way more than the Japanese original in terms of casualties, but the sense of worldbuilding and the scale of the Federation is really well-realised. There's a lot more work here in terms of scene-setting and continuity than the original show attempted.

The animation is mostly decent, especially by the standards of 1983, and the music is superb, with a mixture of themes from the original Japanese version and ITC's Barry Gray library. The use of themes from the original Thunderbirds and other Supermarionation shows is restrained and will raise a smile when they appear. The voice acting is mostly fine, especially from the regulars, but the guest cast can be hit or miss. The English-language dub has some very witty dialogue and pop culture references, though one episode where the redshirts who are about to die in the opening disaster refer to themselves as redshirts is a bit too on-the-nose. Some of the guest voices in the last couple of episodes are awful, possibly due to a budget crunch as they tried to finish the project on time.

As an alternative, Next Generation-style take on the classic premise, Thunderbirds 2086 (***½) is a decent show. It has some clever ideas and pretty entertaining episodes. It lacks the full charm of the original puppets, but the shorter running time means the show is much more dynamic and faster-paced, and the advantages of animation in portraying things the puppets and small sets could never even attempt are obvious. It definitely gets weaker towards the end of the run and the serialised elements never really take off, but you can do much worse than giving this curiosity a spin. The show has never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray, but a remastered version is available to watch for free on YouTube.

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

New NARNIA movie gets its first trailer

The third attempt to adapt the entire Chronicles of Narnia book series by C.S. Lewis to film has received its first trailer.

For the first time, this attempt will adapt the seven books in chronological order rather than publishing order. Previous efforts always began with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the first book written and released by Lewis. This new effort from Netflix starts instead with The Magician's Nephew (1955), the sixth-published book but the chronological oldest film in the series. The prequel acts as an origin story for the world of Narnia, the lion Aslan, the witch Jadis and even the wardrobe itself.

The first attempt to adapt the entire series was in the late 1980s, when the BBC adapted the first four books in the series - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952) and The Silver Chair (1953) - from 1988 to 1990. Declining ratings and increasing costs saw the project cancelled before reaching the later books in the series. More recently, Walden Media released three films based on the first three books from 2005 to 2010, but plans for further movies entered development hell and were cancelled when Netflix optioned the books instead in 2018.

The film stars David McKenna as Digory Kirke, Beatrice Campbell as Polly Plummer, Emma Mackey as Jadis, Carey Mulligan as Flora Kirke, Daniel Craig as Andrew Ketterley and Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan. The film is written and directed by Greta Gerwig and is due for a widespread cinema and IMAX release on 12 February 2027. If successful, presumably adpatations would follow of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy (1954), Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair and The Last Battle (1955).

WING COMMANDER III to get a surprise remaster after the discovery of the original source tapes

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger is to get a surprise remaster and re-release. The space combat game was originally released in 1994 and remains one of the most popular and lauded games in the venerable franchise.

The remaster was apparently made possible during a project to digitise all of Electronic Arts' copious assets still on tape. During this process, it was discovered that most or even all of the FMV sequences shot for the Wing Commander franchise had survived intact, allowing it to be re-edited at a much higher resolution. The low-res nature of the original FMV, which made even an upscale very difficult, had made this project doubtful before. Now we should be able to enjoy Mark Hamill and John Rhys-Davies giving it their all in a cheesy action space opera.

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger - 30th Anniversary Edition (actually 32nd, but okay) will also include upgraded textures and controller support, and will be available on Steam, GoG and the EA App. No release date has been confirmed.

More intriguing is the mention of the "Kilrathi Saga Integration," which reportedly includes upscaled re-releases of Wing Commander and Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, along with their expansion packs. These games do not have the lavish FMV sequences of the later games, but are older, so are both easier and trickier to re-release.

Reportedly if this project is successful, remasters of Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom and Wing Commander: Prophecy may follow. It's unclear if Wing Commander: Privateer and Privateer 2 (starring Clive Owen as a hard-bitten space mercenary/trader!) are also in line for the treatment.

The original Wing Commander series was helmed by Chris Roberts, who is now orchestrating the release of ultra-ambitious spiritual successors Star Citizen and Squadron 42, the latter of which just got a Q2 2027 release window.

SQUADRON 42 gets a Q2 2027 launch date, after 16 years in development

The first part of the long-gestating Star Citizen video game project has finally gotten a firm release window, for the first time in its existence. The single-player campaign, Squadron 42, will be released in Q2 2027 (April-June) and has a Steam wishlist page, as well as a new trailer.

Early work began on Star Citizen in 2011, with the game hitting Kickstarter in 2012. The developers continued accepting donations via their own webpage after the Kickstarter ended, and as of today the game has raised over $1,051,189,523 in funding, making it the most expensive confirmed video game project ever made (although unofficial sources suggest that Grand Theft Auto VI may have spent comparable amount in development funds, and marketing will take it way, way over that). Although critics have called the game a white whale or marketing scam, an early access version of the game has been playable for some years.

Star Citizen will be a multiplayer extravaganza set across dozens of star systems with players able to pilot spaceships, use vehicles or engage in personal combat and exploration. Squadron 42 is a much more linear, story-based experience, casting the player as a new recruit as the Empire of Earth comes under attack by an alien species and has to fight back, helped by an all-star voice cast including Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill, Henry Cavil, Mark Strong and Liam Cunningham.

Here's hoping Squadron 42 hits that launch window and is finally worth the long wait and immense cost. Star Citizen itself remains firmly undated.

Thunderbirds 60th Anniversary Edition

With humanity threatened by an ever-increasing array of technological, manmade and natural disasters, billionaire philanthropist Jeff Tracy has founded International Rescue. Operating from a secret base in the South Pacific, Tracy and his five sons take part in rescue missions around the globe using an impressive array of vehicles, the Thunderbirds. The organisation also finds itself the target of international criminals, so has a network of secret agents around the globe working to defend their interests.

Back in the 1960s, British television producer Gerry Anderson wanted to make ambitious, impressive TV shows mixing action, technology and stunts. Unfortunately, 1960s British TV was not swimming in cash and could not realise his vision. Anderson hit on a solution to save money by building very small sets, model vehicles and using puppets and a tiny number of voice actors to stand in for a much larger cast. This format proved successful through a number of projects: The Adventures of Twizzle (1957-58), Torchy the Battery Boy (1960), Four Feather Falls (1960), Supercar (1961-62), Fireball XL5 (1962-63) and, marking his move into colour, Stingray (1964-65).

Lew Grade, the head of ITC, was incredibly impressed by what Anderson was able to achieve on a limited budget, so for Anderson's next show, they went bigger, with more money and a more ambitious premise. Inspired by real-life disaster stories and his brother's experiences as a pilot in World War II, Gerry and his wife Sylvia created Thunderbirds. Whilst their previous shows had usually focused on two to four protagonists and a single notable vehicle, Thunderbirds had nine regular characters (not including recurring characters like Grandma Tracy and arch-villain "the Hood") and five main Thunderbird vehicles, augmented by a large number of different "pod" vehicles that Thunderbird 2 could carry into action, as well as recurring vehicles like Lady Penelope's FAB-1 and the Fireflash hypersonic aircraft. Filmed in colour at a time when most British homes still only had black-and-white, Thunderbirds was a visually sumptuous, astonishingly ambitious project.

Anderson would go on to make many shows after Thunderbirds, including additional puppet projects Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-68), Joe 90 (1968-69) and The Secret Service (1969), followed by live-action projects UFO (1970-71, infamously the inspiration for the XCOM video game franchise) and Space: 1999 (1975-76). Anderson's later career was spottier, with throwback project Terrahawks (1983-86) being well-regarded, the live-action Space Precinct (1994-95) less so.

But of all his works, many of them very good, it's arguably Thunderbirds which has withstood the test  of time the best, and has spawned the most successors. As well as two contemporary movies, an unauthorised Japanese anime quasi-sequel series (released in Europe and America as Thunderbirds 2086) was made in 1983, followed by a live-action movie directed by Jonathan Frakes in 2004 (reviled on release, though at least moderately more fondly remembered these days) and then a full-blown successor show, Thunderbirds Are Go, in 2015, which mixed model work and live sets with CGI. Thunderbirds was hugely influential in Japan (hence the unofficial sequel anime), but the show has ultimately sold to over 50 countries around the world.

The core appeal of Thunderbirds is that it's about an organisation that helps people in trouble. Some episodes have identifiable bad guys, but in many cases our heroes are up against the forces of nature or technology gone awry. Sometimes the Tracy boys have to engage in gunfights with villains, but this is rare. Thunderbirds has a very positive message about helping people and how to use technology responsibly to save lives, even as warning about how overreliance on or reckless use of new, untested technology can be very dangerous. It's a simple theme, as befits the intended audience of young children, but a powerful one through its repetition.

Watching the show in 2026, several things stand out. The first is the absence of much kind of serialisation. Occasionally our characters may recall a prior episode if its events are germane to the present one (such as after they save the Fireflash airliner in the pilot, it enters regular service and appears in several subsequent episodes, with even the same pilot and captain) but otherwise there are no long-running story arcs here. This is particularly notable with the appearance of the Hood. Given the rest of the show is realistic-ish-if-you-squint science fiction, the Hood's psychic powers and glowing eyes feel a bit out of place. The Hood's desperation to learn the secrets of International Rescue is never adequately explained, and the potentially explosive revelation that he is the brother of IR butler Kyrano and uncle of their ally Tin-Tin simply never comes up. IR in fact never really connects that their several confrontations with the Hood (usually in disguise) were encounters with the same guy. By modern standards this is all very odd - and successor show Thunderbirds Are Go enthusiastically embraces longer-form storytelling with gusto - but it does mean that each episode stands completely alone from the rest.

The main thing is the sheer artistry involved here. The miniature sets are a work of beauty, and the numerous vehicles are phenomenal pieces of visual design. Each Thunderbird vehicle has a readily-identifiable silhouette and function. The modelwork is impressive by modern standards, let alone 1965's. It also has to be said that no human being before or since has taken as much absolute pleasure in blowing the absolute ever-loving hell out of miniatures than Derek Meddings. This guy is an artist at blowing things up and watching how he manages to blow something up in each episode, even when it's not evident how, is a genuine joy. If explosions are your bag, Thunderbirds has you covered (there is even a series of massive explosions in the title sequence for no reason; Art). The puppets are also extremely impressive and charm, conveying a reasonable level of emotion when coupled with the accomplished voice cast.

The soundtrack is also exceptional: Barry Gray's music for the show is big, broad, bombastic and impressive. The "Thunderbird March" itself is arguably the single best-known British musical theme of the 1960s, only exceeded by the Doctor Who and James Bond themes. The only problem is that whilst Gray composed some amazing music for the show, he didn't compose a lot of it. Within a few episodes you'll have heard everything he made for the show and there's then a lot of re-use of the themes, which can get a little repetitive during a thorough binge of the show.

The episodes themselves, as with any show, can be a bit of a mixed bag. The show is at its best when there's a huge disaster unfolding and the IR team have to deploy the Thunderbirds and come up with a clever solution. The show blasts out of the gate with a bunch of episodes strongly exemplifying this, between Trapped in the Sky (IR has to rescue a hypersonic aircraft that can't land because of sabotaged landing gear), Pit of Peril (the team have to rescue a massive walker-mech that's fallen into a giant pit), City of Fire (the world's tallest skyscraper catches fire) and Sun Probe (a manned mission to collect material from the Sun gets into trouble). Unfortunately, these sort of episodes are also clearly very expensive, and by mid-season the show is starting to see less of these kind of epics and more character-focused and smaller-scale stories, such as Lady Penelope and her driver/bodyguard/manservant Parker having to take out some criminals. These episodes can be fun, but the need to save money is sometimes painfully obvious.

The show also suffers from a pacing problem. As is well-known now, Thunderbirds was originally a 25-minute show extended to 45 minutes by Lew Grade, resulting in last-minute rewrites and the addition of new scenes to already-filmed episodes. In fact, we're more than halfway through the show's 32-episode run before we start seeing episodes made end-to-end with the longer running time in mind. The retroactive expansion of the earlier episodes can result in a lot of filler, repetitive dialogue exchanges and the full, mildly impractical, launch sequence for each Thunderbirds vehicle in full. These launch sequences are awesome, but they do get a bit wearying the third time you see them, let alone the tenth. Some of the later episodes in the season do overcome the issue by having more substantive A and B (and sometimes C) plots, and cutting the launch sequences down considerably. The show can also be a little bit more po-faced at the start, but in its latter half it relaxes considerably and there's some more relaxed joking and more naturalistic dialogue (reaching its apex in the very funny Attack of the Alligators!).

These negatives are not overwhelming, but they make it hard to recommend bingeing the show straight-through, where the repetition and limitations become much more obvious. Watching an episode or two a week to savour the impressive production values and fun scripts may be the best way to experience Thunderbirds today.

For the show's 60th anniversary last year, the entire show was re-scanned in high definition and additional clean-up work was done to remove film blemishes and enhance the colour (a prior HD remaster in the early 2010s had been somewhat less accomplished in this regard). However, fans may be rest assured that no wire removal work was done here: all of the wires for the puppets and vehicles have been left intact. A formidable package of extras was also added, including several new documentaries and features, and a multitude of older interviews and documentaries dating back to the 1990s, and several behind-the-scenes features recorded during the making of the show itself. The package is extraordinarily generous, spreading across 11 Blu-Ray discs. The only niggle is the absence of the theatrically-released movies, Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) and Thunderbird 6 (1968), due to rights issues. There is also an ongoing 4K release of individual episodes, no doubt to be followed in time by a 4K box set of the whole show, but that will no doubt be much more expensive. The 4K image also arguably makes the wires and some of the compromises in making the miniatures and sets a bit too obvious, but views may vary on that.

More intriguing is that the set includes three new adventures of the show! Shot with painstakingly recreated-from-the-original sets, puppets and vehicles, the three new episodes use a series of audio dramas made in the 1960s for their soundtracks, meaning the original voice actors from the show return, sounding pretty exactly the same as they did back in the day, in scripts written by the original writers. Whilst the quality of the three episodes is variable, it's a great treat to see some new Thunderbirds material shot in the exact same way as the original show was. These new episodes are also only 25 minutes long, and benefit a great deal from the tighter running time.

The Thunderbirds 60th Anniversary Edition boxed set (****½) is a terrific way of experiencing one of British television's all-time classics. Yes, the show has aged somewhat, and its slow pacing and lack of continuity may occasionally be distracting. But the artistry is phenomenal, especially given the superb high-definition remaster present here, and the archive and new documentary material is exhaustive and informative. The boxed set is available worldwide and from the Anderson Store.

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

Live-action CYBERPUNK 2077 movie in development at Paramount

Paramount Pictures and CD Projekt Red have confirmed they are partnering on a movie set in Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk universe, most famously used in CD Projekt's video game Cyberpunk 2077.

Mike Pondsmith developed the setting for a tabletop roleplaying game, Cyberpunk (now referred to as Cyberpunk 2013 to avoid confusion), released in 1988. It was followed in 1990 by Cyberpunk 2020, its best-known edition, and Cyberpunk v3.0 (2005). Cyberpunk Red, the current edition of the game, launched in 2019.

CD Projekt optioned the setting for a video game in 2012, beginning development in earnest after the release of The Witcher III in 2015. Cyberpunk 2077 launched in late 2020 in an infamously bugged state, resulting in significant criticism before the game recovered through an extensive series of patches and, in 2023, the massive expansion Phantom Liberty. Cyberpunk 2077 recently crossed 40 million sales, with Phantom Liberty hitting 15 million sales by itself.

In 2022 Netflix released the anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which is set in Night City one year before the events of the video game and even uses vistas and locations from the video game as a backdrop. A second season drops later this month, also on Netflix.

The new movie will be live-action and CD Projekt Red will be involved as consultants, though it's unclear if Mike Pondsmith will be on board in a consulting role. Despite some early jumping-the-gun reports, it's also not confirmed if Keanu Reeves and/or Idris Elba will be reprising their roles from the video game as Johnny Silverhand and Solomon Reed. It does appear that the movie will tell a new story, and will not be an adaptation of the video game (trying to cram the ~125 hours from a single thorough playthrough of the game into a 2.5-hour movie would clearly not work).

CD Projekt Red is also developing a direct sequel to the game, provisionally entitled Cyberpunk 2. The only thing that is known about the game is that it will see the return of Night City but will involve a trip to a new city as well.

British TV heavy-hitter Jed Mercurio makes DOCTOR WHO bid

The BBC is considering multiple pitches from some of the biggest production companies in the UK on how to revive Doctor Who. In surprising news, one of UK television's heaviest hitters, producer Jed Mercurio, has thrown his hat into the ring.

Mercurio has had an eclectic career, studying medicine and serving in the Royal Air Force before switching to writing television in the 1990s. He made his name with Cardiac Arrest (1994-96), a grittier and more realistic hospital drama than was normal at the time. He also created The Grimleys (1999-2001) and Bodies (2004-06). His first foray into science fiction, Invasion: Earth (1998), was only a moderate success.

He then achieved a massive, cross-generational success with Line of Duty (2012-21, with a 2019 spin-off movie, with a new season planned next year), a police procedural drama series. One of the biggest British shows of the last twenty years, the show had huge audiences and critical acclaim over an extended run, with a comeback planned.

Mercurio also penned the blockbuster mini-series Bodyguard (2018), which was another big success. His more recent work includes Bloodlands (2021), Trigger Point (2022), DI Ray (2022), Payback (2023), Breathtaking (2024) and Trinity (forthcoming). He is also a successful novelist, having penned four novels and a graphic novel.

Hat Trick Mercurio has made a formal bid to take control of Doctor Who, with Mercurio himself slated to write and produce the series. Mercurio has described himself as a casual Doctor Who fan in the past, someone who enjoys the show but is not steeped deeply in the lore and backstory. One suggestion is that the BBC wants someone less immersed in the minutiae of the show to produce the series moving forwards, with former showrunners Russell T. Davies (2005-10, 2023-25), Steven Moffat (2010-17) and Chris Chibnall (2018-22) all emerging from fandom or writing books etc during the show's long hiatus period in the 1990s.

World Productions, ironically the Line of Duty production company, has submitted another bid, with CEO Simon Heath acknowledging his admiration of the franchise. World Productions is collaborating with ITV Studios, which, if the bid were successful, would mean ITV and the BBC, Britain's two biggest TV networks, joining forces on the show. Formerly fierce rivals, greater ITV-BBC cooperation has been mooted for some time now as a way of generating enough revenue to continue producing good television in the face of international competition.

STV Studios, a Scottish-based company, has also bid on the show. STV is currently riding high with five seasons of Blue Lights, a critically-acclaimed show about policing in Northern Ireland. STV and Screen Scotland have apparently made an ambitious proposal which would include relocating production to Scotland. For twenty-two years, Doctor Who's production has been based in Cardiff, Wales. The BBC is apparently leaning towards keeping production in Wales due to the brand's value to the local economy, including tourism, but may be open to a strong argument for moving to another part of the UK. STV also shoots in Northern Ireland and there may be some scope for the show to make use of locations there as well.

At least two different labels in the BBC Studios family have also bid for the show. Apparently it was considered a shoe-in for BBC Studios to take on the project, but Jed Mercurio's involvement has thrown an unexpected chaos grenade into the process. Mercurio would add interest and gravitas to a show that's been seen as run-down and past its prime for a while now, even though some fans may be wary of Mercurio's relative inexperience in science fiction.

The BBC is expected to declare the winning bid in March 2027.

Blogging Roundup: 1 August to 30 September 2026

 

The Wertzone

News

• SAGA creators speak out after unplanned hiatus

• TRANSFORMERS fuels sales of the ENERGON UNIVERSE comics to over 7.5 million copies

• GAME OF THRONES movie greenlit

• TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE surges into profitability forty years after its original release

• DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN to end after its third season

• BBC planning a 2028-29 return for DOCTOR WHO

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

• IKEA launches SKYRIM mod featuring Matt Berry as a talking Kallax shelf

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

• Netflix cancels FORGOTTEN REALMS TV show mid-development, pivots to RAVENLOFT

• GAME OF THRONES: WAR FOR WESTEROS gets new trailer

• METRO 2039 gets first full trailer

• CD Projekt Red unveil THE WITCHER III: SONGS OF THE PAST and THE WITCHER III REMASTERED

• Microsoft wind up ELDER SCROLLS fans by hinting at the next title

Features

• Discworld Review Index

• RIP Peter Cullen

• RIP Tim Curry

• RIP Dolly Parton

• A Game of Thrones at 30

Reviews

• Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 2

• Small Prophets: Season 1

• Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 1

• Star Wars: Zero Company

• Red Dwarf (XIII): The Promised Land

• Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files - Volume 05

• The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett

• Red Dwarf X

• House of the Dragon: Season 3

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope

• Red Dwarf (IX): Back to Earth

• Red Dwarf VIII

• Metro: Exodus

• Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

• Snuff by Terry Pratchett

• Game of Thrones: The Mad King

• Daredevil: Born Again - Season 2

• Wonder Man: Season 1

• Project Hail Mary

• Cloudpunk: City of Ghosts

• Masters of the Universe (2026)

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

Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 2

The Autobot-Decepticon War is now raging on two planets, their homeworld of Cybertron and the organic world of Earth, which the half-stranded Decepticons plan to loot for its energy resources. Both sides are battered the loss of their leaders. Decepticon fuel auditor Ratbat arrives to oversee operations, to the despair of the overly-logical Shockwave. Meanwhile, the Autobots elect Dinobot leader Grimlock as their new commander, praising his single-minded devotion to getting them off the planet and fighting the Decepticons. But Grimlock's ruthless leadership style and disdain for human casualties soon has multiple Autobots considering their loyalties. Elsewhere in space, the conflict has spread to the peaceful planet Nebulos, and even through time, with future Decepticon commander Galvatron running riot on modern-day Earth, and Ultra Magnus vowing to stop him.

I covered the first compendium volume (of four) of Transformers: Til All Are One previously, noting both that it's great that Skybound and Image Comics have brought the Marvel Transformers run back into print in four, easy-to-collect volumes, but it's also annoying that these volumes were only available in a Kickstarter campaign. The mass-market paperback editions split the UK and US stories apart from one another, an act of editorial madness that will long live in infamy. This should be the definitive way the comics are collected from now on.

For the stats, Compendium 2 collects issues #24-44 of the monthly Transformers US comic, the four-part Transformers: Headmasters mini-series and issues #96-187 of the weekly Marvel UK comic, noting that half of those reprint the US comic anyway, so it's not quite as impressive as it sounds. However, this is still almost 1,250 pages of Transformers action, published from approximately October 1986 to October 1988.

This is dumb.

The collection kicks off with the "kill the leaders!" story arc that both the UK and US comics followed for a while. Everyone knows that Transformers: The Movie killed off Optimus Prime and replaced Megatron with the even more powerful Galvatron in a storyline set twenty years in the future, but for the comic book, American writer Bob Budiansky was tasked with likewise getting rid of them in a completely different story. Prime's death - getting blown up after losing a video game duel with Megatron (!) - is infamously stupid, so British writer Simon Furman tried to make it resonate a bit more with a UK-original story beforehand showing Optimus Prime wanting the Autobots to carry on and thrive in his absence. As usual, the British story arc, which also incorporates Megatron's battle of wits with the disembodied head of Lord Straxus and both Prime and Megatron returning to Cybertron, is well-written, better-characterised and milks the situation for pathos, action and even a little bit of comedy. The American storyline is borderline nonsensical in comparison. It's clear Furman didn't quite have the full outline for what Budiansky was planning, resulting in some awkward plotting (the Predacons showing up in both storylines requires some cheesy rewriting of American speech panels to give Megatron amnesia).

After Prime and Megatron return to Earth and promptly die (it will not shock you to learn they will return, eventually), Budiansky develops one of his better notions, namely making Grimlock commander of the Autobots. This is one of those ideas that initially seems insane, but Budiansky makes it work: none of the other Autobots is really a viable candidate, and Grimlock is both the most powerful Autobot at large after Prime's dispatch, and shows a determined level-headedness in stopping an attack on the Ark by Trypticon, the largest single Decepticon warrior ever created. Grimlock secures his election when he turns down the job after realising his own selfish motives, in a very rare moment of self-reflection. The Autobots, moved by his wholly uncharacteristic selflessness, make him leader anyway and about three weeks later realise they've made a horrendous mistake when he makes himself a crown and starts referring to himself in the third person. Grimlock sends Goldbug and Blaster on a mission to apprehend a rogue human villain who has stolen Autobot equipment and order them to kill the squishy human with prejudice. After having him arrested by the police instead, Blaster and Goldbug realise their new leader is too barmy and go AWOL, which Grimlock predictably does not take well.

Literally the only reason Goldbug and Wreck-Gar survive this is because Galvatron is so bewildered that they'd even think they were any kind of threat to him.

You may be asking, "who the hell is Goldbug?" At this point we have to rewind a little bit and follow what will the dominant strand of the UK comics in this collection: the return of Galvatron from the future. Having previously visited contemporary Earth in the classic Target: 2006 arc, Galvatron secretly kept hold of his time travel device and, after being booted into space by Rodimus Prime at the end of the movie, triggered it. His arrival on present-day Earth is not well-received by anyone, as he beats the hell out of Perceptor's newly-arrived resistance cell from Cybertron and even bests the Dinobots in combat. When Shockwave joins the fight, fearful that Galvatron will usurp him, Galvatron is forced to retreat, since there are so many Transformers present that he knows will survive until his time, he can't just kill them without disrupting the timestream (that ship has already sailed, but nobody knows that yet).

With Galvatron MIA and the war on Cybertron resuming in the year 2007, Rodimus Prime puts a bounty on Galvatron's head. The incredibly resourceful mechanoid bounty-hunter freelance peacekeeping agent Death's Head conducts a subtle investigation (by finding Cyclonus and Scourge and beating them up) that concludes Galvatron probably returned to the past, so Death's Head goes after him. He immediately meets Bumblebee and immediately blows him into a thousand pieces, to show he's not messing around. Rodimus Prime, aware of the threats he has unleashed on Earth's past, time travels back to solve the problem, and Wreck-Gar takes it upon himself to rebuild Bumblebee as Goldbug. After some more shenanigans, the Autobots and Death's Head engage Galvatron in combat and fail to stop him before being forcibly returned to their own time. It falls to Goldbug and present-day Ultra Magnus to, at least temporarily, halt Galvatron by burying him in lava (as you do). Unfortunately, Magnus suffers the same fate.

American readers may vaguely recall Bumblebee being instead killed by the human counter-terrorist organisation G.I. Joe and rebuilt as Goldbug. However, Simon Furman and the UK editors took one look at the G.I. Joe and the Transformers mini-series, realised it was possibly the worst-ever comic about either franchise that could possibly be published (the passage of forty years has only solidified this impression) and ejected it from their continuity. The replacement story is much better and Wreck-Gar being able to rebuild a basically-dead Transformer is something that was already established in the movie with future Ultra Magnus, so it makes more sense than G.I. Joe somehow being able to rebuild a Transformer from scratch. There will be many more crossovers between the two franchises and absolutely all of them will be much better than the initial one (although, for the sake of completionists, Compendium 4 does include that story).

The Transformers equivalent of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Move Along Home. Yes, its dumb, but it's also aware it's dumb, and does some funny things with it.

The volume continues to flip between stories on contemporary and future Earth and Cybertron. The present-day US stories focus on Goldbug and Blaster in exile, during which time they find new allies like the Throttlebots and new enemies like the Scraplets, who threaten to destroy all mechanical life on Earth until it turns out they have a very dumb weakness. Grimlock's relentless pursuit of the exiles, to the point of ignoring the Decepticons moving to a new base of operations in the Florida Keys, continues to gnaw away at the loyalty of his Autobots, eventually resulting in Wheeljack calling in his friend Sky Lynx from Cybertron to help resolve the situation which, predictably, goes sideways. Meanwhile, the ignored Decepticons, now jointly commanded by Shockwave and Ratbat, whose pedantic budget calculations for Decepticon fuel expenditures threaten to drive the usually coldly logical Shockwave completely insane in one of Budiansky's more amusing double-acts, are allowed to run riot on Earth, leading to the Autobots' human allies having to fight them instead (with mixed results).

The UK stories divide into two groups. One continues to entwine around the American stories, providing better rationales for what the hell is going on in the American strip. For example, Furman has a story about the Throttlebots fighting the Combaticons and even defeating them (albeit with help), which better explains why the Combaticons are so incessant in chasing the Throttlebots down in the American stories. The other is largely set in the future, with the big-ticket story being The Legacy of Unicron.

It's a bit mind-boggling that this creation myth is still being expanded on almost forty years later.

This story is a genuinely impressive epic, in which we learn that, after the events of Transformers: The Movie, Unicron's head didn't go into orbit around Cybertron but instead flew through space and crashed on the planet of Junk. Unicron has mind-controlled the Junkions into rebuilding his body. Using his mental powers to reassert control of his creations Cyclonus and Scourge, Unicron has them usurp command from future Shockwave and unleash a massive assault on the Autobots which, with both sides so evenly-matched, threatens to wipe out both sides, leaving Cybertron ripe for Unicron's return. Obviously this plan does not work out. The story is impressively epic and give Furman the chance to his give own origin story for the entire Transformers franchise, here casting the Transformers as the creations of the light god Primus, designed to stand as the last line of defence against Unicron, the Chaos-Bringer. Furman had apparently seen the "the Transformers are the creations of the Quintessons, despite the Quintessons having no idea who they are in the movie," idea and roundly rejected it.

However, the story is also a nice piece of continuity-straightening. At its conclusion, Death's Head is ejected from the Transformers universe altogether and into his own comic, whilst Cyclonus and Scourage end up in Cybertron's distant past, where they come under the command of Scorponok.

The story then switches to a completely new - and enormous - cast of Transformers in the four-part Headmasters mini-series. An Autobot resistance cell led by Fortress Maximus and including the contemporary versions of Hot Rod, Kup and Blurr (so far all their appearances in the comic have been of their future selves from the movie timeline) tire of the war and flees to the planet Nebulos, hoping to live in peace alongside its inhabitants. The power-hungry Nebulan Lord Zarak constantly disrupts their attempts to make peaceful contact, forcing Fortress Maximus, Highbrow, Hardhead, Chromedome and Brainstorm to remove their heads as a sign of goodwill, which the Nebulan leader Galen accepts. Frustrated, Zarak contacts Maximus's nemesis Scorponok, whose Decepticon army quickly reaches Nebulous and starts laying waste to the planet. Galen and several friends "binary-bond" to the Autobots, replacing their heads and becoming the titular Headmasters. The Decepticons rapidly copy the trick and capture the Autobot Headmasters, reducing Nebulous to a dystopia under Zarak's rule. The remaining Autobots come up with the Targetmaster concept, turning Nebulan companions into powerful weapons, and are able to rescue the Headmasters. Aware they are laying waste to the planet, the Autobots flee on their starship, the Steelhaven, and the Decepticons follow.

Beware the pitiless gaze of hundreds of thousands of 8-year-old kids collectively saying, "what kind of fresh gimmick hell is this now?"

This isn't the best mini-series ever (though it wipes the floor with the G.I. Joe crossover) and Budiansky struggles with the mind-boggling weight of the size of the cast. As well as the Autobot and Decepticon Headmasters and Targetmasters, we also meet the Monsterbots, Terrorcons, Horrorcons, Technobots and, er, Sixshot (who makes his only Marvel G1 appearance in one panel, has one line of dialogue, and is never seen or head from again). Nebulos and its people, who are basically just human (not even green, as the cartoon suggests), are also fairly undeveloped. What does make the story work is its better-than-normal musings on the price of peace, how pacifism can be sustained in the face of mindless hate, and wouldn't it be awesome to turn into a giant robot's head or gun? Thoughtful stuff indeed.

Having fled from Nebulous, it's not a surprise that the two groups find their way to Earth, responding to a distress call sent by Goldbug. There's some creaky continuity-twitching as we meet Buster's somehow-never-before-mentioned (remember the comic was over four years old by this point) older brother Spike, who promptly replaces Galen as Fortress Maximus's companion. The cast somehow immediately gets bigger as both sides invent the Pretenders, Transformers clad inside bio-genetic shells for...reasons that are never entirely made clear. You can see Budiansky struggling here as even he can't introduce twelve new Transformers in one issue and give any of them more than the most cursory characterisation (in his defence, he does try again later on, and manages to give at least Cloudburst, Landmine and Skullgrin a bit more to do).

Not for the first time, Optimus Prime makes a shocking (note: not that shocking) return from the dead.

He does rally to the occasion, however, as he brings together the arrival of the Headmasters, their first stormy meeting with Grimlock (who has really lost the plot by this point, despite his success in getting the Ark back into space again) and a full-scale battle with the Decepticons as the catalyst for the return of Optimus Prime. There is some very nice plotting here as Goldbug travels to Nebulos to rebuild Prime only to find the planet's fuel sources poisoned to defeat any future Transformer incursion. However, the villainous Hi-Test has created the Powermaster process to negate the poison, empowering two Decepticon warriors in causing havoc on the planet. Hi-Test's angry former mento, Hi-Q, agrees to undergo the Powermaster process to save Optimus Prime. I think Budiansky put more thought into this storyline than he did the Headmaster mini. Anyway, Prime's back and the first thing he does is...visit the circus? It's to rescue Sky Lynx, but still, some odd decisions there.

The volume is rounded off by another future Furman epic. Set wholly in 2008 (future time is advancing at the same rate as in the present), the comic sees the Quintesson homeworld on the verge of total annihilation, sparking their decision to invade Cybertron to use it as a replacement. They also attack Autobot City on Earth to split the Transformers' attention between the two planets. This is a pretty good story, even finding a way of incorporating the otherwise inexplicable American adaptation of the (awful) TV episode The Big Broadcast of 2006 into the main continuity. The characterisation given to the various Quintesson characters like Lord Kledji and General Ghyrik is surprisingly good, and it feels like this is Furman redeeming both the Quintessons and Rodimus Prime as characters (Rodimus gets demoted to Hot Rod for a bit here, allowing him to reflect on what elements the Matrix draws out of him to make him a better leader). We get some of the best battles seen to date, and the sole appearance of Metroplex in the entire G1 Marvel continuity. The main mike-drop is left for the end, however, when we discover that Quintesson was destroyed by a growing rift in the fabric of space and time, one that may threaten the entire universe. What I really like about this is that the astute reader probably already knows what is causing this, and what may be able to fix it, but that's for Compendium 3.

This Transformers homage to zombie movies is surprisingly good.

This volume does cover a lot of ground and there's a lot going on outside of these main arcs. There's a solid stand-alone Christmas story about Starscream being brought back online and joining forces with a human to "do good," though in reality it's just a way of pettily annoying Streetwise, who keeps expecting him to do something evil instead. A team-up of various female human characters encountered during the saga so far feels like it could be complete cringe, but surprisingly it works reasonably well (though Swindle's repair bill may disagree). There's even a whole mini-Furman epic arc set on Cybertron with the Wreckers discovering that Megatron got a lot further in his plan to turn Cybertron into a mobile battle station than anyone thought possible, and a mad Autobot scientist now wants to complete his work. And also raise an army of Transformer zombies because...why not? Some very nice characterisation for Ultra Magnus, Xaaron and Springer here. We also have Furman's own G.I. Joe crossover as the Joes' UK branch, Action Force, comes face-to-face with Megatron in London. This is a bit of a throwaway action story, but it's fine, with some nice Geoff Senior artwork.

This compendium is mostly very good stuff. The absolute insanity of putting Grimlock in charge of the Autobots is one of those great ideas that almost writes itself, and Budiansky does some of his best-ever work see the consequences play out. Furman remains the stronger writer, though his Galvatron arc feels a little unfocused here. Target: 2006 was phenomenal because of how it was really epic and quite tightly-written at the same time, but the arc here drags out too long (bearing in mind Galvatron returns to Earth in the opening issues of this compendium and is still skulking around, not doing that much, at the end). Galvatron is such a powerful character, it's hard to use him and have him not just win instantly, and I'm not sure Furman does his best work here in having Galvatron in stealth mode instead. However, The Legacy of Unicron and Space Pirates, both future epics without much interaction with Galvatron, are both all-timer classic stories. Also, this compendium handily collects all of Death's Head's appearances in Transformers, making it clear what a great character he is.

Where the compendium suffers is the sheer, unrelenting avalanche of new characters it constantly introduces. You can see Budiansky railing against the dying of the light, having a strong arc focused on Blaster and Goldbug (formerly Bumblebee) and even throwing some bones to old favourites like Ratchet and Wheeljack, whilst trying to fob off the entire Headmasters and related cast to a mini-series, but eventually it gets a bit much for him. Modern Transformers fans may be completely bemused to see big-hitters like Trypticon appear in all of two issues, Metroplex in one, and Sixshot in one panel, whilst characters like the Throttlebots, Sparkabots, Flywheels and Sandstorm get much more substantial appearances.

Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 2 (****) is still pretty decent stuff. The growing pains of the first compendium are gone, and the consistency is much better. The constant appearances of new characters may get wearying after a while, even if both the primary writers are adept at using them in interesting ways. But there is some fun action here, and the totally unhinged deliciousness of Grimlock as Autobot leader cannot be overstated. If you can find a copy without pawning a kidney (or waiting an indeterminate amount of time for the near-inevitable Kickstarter reprint), this is reasonably recommended to any Transformers fan.

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