Interviews – Steven Melching

Stephen Melching here, and you are listening

to All Things Transformers. What is this I sense?

The taint of Primus? Hello and welcome to All

Things Transformers. I am one of your hosts,

TF2 and Mike, and joining me is Steve Megatron.

Hello. In the latest ATTF interview, we welcome

the writer of Transformers Prime, X -Men, Jackie

Chan Adventures, Batman the Brave and the Bold,

The Mask, and so much more, Mr. Stephen Melching.

Hello. Hello. How are you? I'm good. Glad to

be with you. Yes, very good, very good. Before

we get started, can you give us the scoop on

what's going on in the world of Stephen Melching?

Any upcoming projects or any continuing projects

you can kind of tease for us? Well, I just had

a graphic novel, a Clone Wars comic book, a digest

-sized comic book from Dark Horse. It came out

about a month ago that I co -wrote with Henry

Gilroy. Bridges seasons four and five of the

Clone Wars TV series and gives you some more

background into Darth Maul and Savage Opress.

And I've been working on the side some episodes

of the new Hulk and the Agents of Smash TV show

for Disney XD. Sweet, sweet. All right. So where

did you grow up? I grew up all over this great

nation of ours. My father was in the Air Force,

and like most military brats, we had to relocate

every few years as my father was transferred

from base to base. So I was born in Colorado

and subsequently lived in California, New York,

Nebraska, Hawaii, Virginia. and back to Colorado.

Cool, cool. It would be interesting if ground

bridges would have helped you move around a lot

more easily. Yeah, that would have saved a lot

of time sitting in the back of the car. Yeah.

Did you always want to be a writer, or was that

not your top choice for profession? Well, when

I was a little kid growing up in the 70s, I was

all about dinosaurs. And I really wanted to be

a paleontologist. And I read everything I could

get my hands on about dinosaurs and used to draw

pictures of them and even found a fossil trilobite

in my driveway in Nebraska. But then a movie

came out, or then I started watching Star Trek

reruns on TV. And I became a big fan of that

kind of stuff too. And I was probably about six,

seven years old when I started reading the credits

on this show, on the TV shows. And the only credit

I really understood was writer. I didn't know

what a director was. I didn't quite know what

a producer was or any of that stuff. But written

by I understood because I read books. And books

are written by writers. So I thought maybe I

could write for television. That's a job. That's

kind of cool. And I like watching TV and movies.

Then a couple years later, I saw a movie called

Star Wars. You might have heard of it. And that

just blew my mind. And I was nine years old at

the time and realized then and there, you know,

walking out of that theater, that that's what

I had to do. I needed to create for a movie for

television. Yeah, I remember the first time I

saw Star Wars, it was 86, I was six years old,

and the first question to my mom that I posed

at the end of the movie was, wait, that's it?

It's over? Because that ending is like, you know,

the whole medals and it just ends and I'm like,

wait, that's it? Wow. Yeah, but if you saw it

in 86... You could go watch the other two right

away. You could go to the video store and rent

them. That's true. That's very true. I had to

wait three years to find out what happened next.

Let me tell you, that wait between 77 and 1980

was interminable, although actually not as bad

as that wait between 80 and 83 when Empire ended

on that cliffhanger. Like, what the hell? Oh,

my God. We were just hung, you know, this pre

-internet days. You were just. hungering for

any scrap of information you get your hands on.

We just read all those great magazines like Starlog

and Cinefantastique and all that stuff. And the

flip side of that now is that it's instantly

in your hands no matter where you get it from

at this point with the internet. It's like a

complete switcheroo. Oh yeah. Everything is so

fast now. It's like you don't really have time

to digest anything. It's like you're inundated

with so much media. Back in the day, we had time

and sort of quiet to be able to sort of digest

what we had seen. We weren't able to immediately

throw on a DVD or go on YouTube or download something

to watch the next thing. You really had all that

time to just sort of ruminate on what you had

seen. Which, you know, that's the way it was.

I can't say it was any better or worse. So tell

us the story about how you broke into the business.

Oh, yeah. Well, following my inspiration to be

a filmmaker or writer, I... I tried to learn

everything I could about how Star Wars was made

and read all the books and watched the TV specials

and stuff and learned about this George Lucas

guy and how he went to film school. And that

was a revelation. Like, I could go to college

and study movies and television in college? How

cool is that? And he went to this place called

USC. My parents were from the Los Angeles area,

and my grandparents all lived in L .A., so I

had visited from time to time. And so I just

set my sights on attending the film school at

USC and worked hard in school, got good grades,

didn't do drugs, and got accepted to the school

and made a lot of friends there and graduated.

I was out here in L .A. and immediately just

started trying to find work in the business.

And initially I wanted to be a film writer and

wrote some spec screenplays and actually sold

one to Paramount that was never produced. But

at about the same time, I had made a lot of friends

at the Fox Kids Network. which in the early 90s

was where it was really starting to happen. They

were airing Batman the Animated Series and X

-Men and Power Rangers and Tiny Toons and Animaniacs

and all that stuff. They were huge. They were

the biggest network around for kids' programming

at the time. And it was a very small operation.

There were only a handful of people there. And

I got to know... everyone, but one of the programming

execs there, Sidney Iwanter, who was the exec

in charge of Batman and X -Men, most of the action

shows there, knew I wanted to be a writer and

encouraged me to read all the scripts as they

came in. Gave me free use of the copy machine

there, so I would go and make copies of all the

Batman animated series scripts as they came in,

because I was a huge Batman and comic book fan

also. And this was the Batman show I had been

wanting to see all my life. So it was great to

be able to read those. And I wrote a spec Batman

script that impressed Sidney and might have been

passed along to the guys at Warner's had it not

had the exact same story as a script that Paul

Dini turned in the day before. Oh, geez. It was

uncanny. I worked on this script for two or three

months. turned it into the executive literally

the day before Dini's script came in, and it

was the story Trial. Dini's was called Trial.

Mine was called Trial of the Dark Knight, and

it was essentially Batman is taken captive inside

Arkham Asylum and put on trial for his crimes

against the criminals. I love that episode. I

know it's Dini's, but I so love that episode.

Well, the twist in mine that I'm very proud of

is that Harvey Dent was both the defense and

the prosecutor. Oh, nice. That would have been

so awesome. I think a lot better. I was I was

I was crushed that I didn't get that chance because

I love Batman. But Sidney, to his credit, you

know, he thought it was a good script. And he

said, you know, Batman is winding down. There's

really not any opportunities there. But we got

X -Men starting. You should write for X -Men.

So he recommended me to Eric Leewald, who was

the story editor on X -Men, and teamed me up

with my old high school chum, Dave McDermott,

who was working at Fox Kids at the time. And

we pitched a story, an adaptation of one of our

favorite X -Men comics, Longshot, to Eric and

the X -Men team. And they liked our pitch, and

they gave us a shot writing the script. And we

wrote the script and didn't screw it up. So they

gave us another shot, and we wrote another one,

and another one, and another one, and we ended

up doing eight or nine for X -Men. And from then

on, I just continued to work in animation. I

see that one of your very first projects, and

for myself personally, I really love this show,

you worked on The Mask. Yeah, that's... that

wasn't the first thing I really did, but I guess

chronologically, however it aired, like the long

shot episode, I don't know. There were, there

were some production problems with a bunch of

a cluster of episodes that for X -Men that they'd

sent to a different studio. And there were horrible

delays overseas and a lot of retakes and stuff.

So that episode was the first episode. that Dave

and I wrote, but it was actually probably, I

don't know, the eight or tenths that actually

made it to air. But The Mask, yeah, that was

working for Bob Skier and Marty Eisenberg. I

think that might have been the first project

I did for those guys. Marty had also been working

at Fox Kids as kind of his day job while he and

Bob were writing scripts for X -Men and all those

other shows. Yeah, I blame IMDb, because that's

how they have it listed under your writer credits,

is they have the mask listed very first in 95,

and then if you move up... It does have X -Men,

but they put it up farther because it lasted

longer. Yeah, and who knows? It might just be

the air dates. I don't remember. As I recall,

the very first episode of animation that I wrote

to actually air was the X -Men episode, Weapon

X Lies and Videotape. The big Wolverine flashback

Weapon X episode. They actually aired that in

prime time. Oh, cool. But that was the fourth

episode, I think, that Dave and I had written

for that show. But, you know, so I don't know.

Anyway, that's IMDB. Yeah. No, I mean, you know,

I know a lot of people. will sit there and review

the old x -men cartoon and be like this animation

is crap these stories are crap this i'm looking

at i'm like what is wrong with you people This

stuff was amazing. This, to me, was this show,

the X -Men show, the Spider -Man show, regardless

of what the animation or the bleeding colors

or whatever, the stories in the cartoons made

me want to go read. Like, I never really got

into comics before cartoons. Like, cartoons made

me to want to go get comics. That's what it was.

And those X -Men stories just brought so many

things to life. I actually just watched, again,

I went on Netflix and I watched Weapon X Lies

and Videotaped Today before we did the interview.

There's some crazy stuff in there. I mean, we

had Jebediah Creed beating his son, basically,

in that episode. And we did another one called

Descent that took place in the 19th century in

London with the origins of Mr. Sinister. and

The Mutants, where we had their ancestors on

the trail of Jack the Ripper. And you actually

see the foot of one of Jack the Ripper's deceased

victims in the foreground in one shot. It was

pretty crazy. And we had debates about evolution,

evolutionary theory, natural selection in that

episode. That was kind of a transitionary series.

Between that and Batman, those were sort of the

new wave of sort of mainstream, more sophisticated

storytelling, I guess you could say. Before that,

it was Super Friends and stuff like that. When

it came to action -adventure, there really wasn't

a lot that sort of took it seriously and did

more complex types of storytelling. The Batman

show had a lot more money for their animation

and music, which was tremendous. It was a really

beautiful show, and it sounded fantastic. Shirley

Walker's score was fantastic. X -Men, you know,

Haim Saban, he's not a man who was known for

spending a lot of money on his productions. That's

why we outrated Turbo. What's that? I'm sorry?

i said hence why we have power rangers turbo

exactly i mean yeah i wrote a couple episodes

of that too and you know that was a show that

was produced you know on the cheap but was hugely

successful for them and obviously continues to

be successful to this day so he was doing something

right there i i remember going into the offices

there when they were just thinking of buying

the show to put on the air and Dave and I watched

an episode of the Japanese version and we thought,

is this a joke? You're going to put this on your

network? Are you going to do it like MST3K and

have people making fun of it? And, you know,

they had a vision and they put out that show,

which was, you know, you can't argue with the

success of that show. It was huge. Oh, yeah.

I think that... Like you were saying with the

evolution of the shows, I really do agree that

in the early 90s, that pretty much set the tone

and the future interpretations of all the comic

book hero animation. Yeah, well, I went to school.

One of my good friends from film school was Bryan

Singer, who directed X -Men and X2, among others.

The X -Men animated series was a huge inspiration

for him when he was putting together the first

X -Men feature film, and he watched the entire

series, and he wanted to capture something of

that tone or that sort of serious approach to

the subject matter and the allegory of mutants'

rights being an allegory for civil rights, basically.

Yeah, yeah. And then the next thing that I kind

of knew you from was the sequel to Beast Wars

and Beast Machines. Oh, my God, I love that show.

Yes. That was another show I did for Bob Skirib,

Marty Eisenberg. That was a real treat to work

on because I was a fan of Transformers from G1.

I used to come home from school. from high school,

maybe a little too old to watch it, but I've

always loved watching cartoons. I'd come home

from high school in Colorado and turn on the

TV, and that was in the 80s, so I was watching

G1 Transformers and G .I. Joe and Thundercats

and all that stuff. And actually, Dave McDermott

and I went and saw the original Transformers,

the movie, in the theater, and we were the oldest

people in that theater when we watched that thing.

We were teenagers. We're the oldest people in

there watching this thing. So I had been a Transformers

fan going back to the beginning and had a collection

of toys that I still have. I still have my original

Optimus and Megatron, which I was pleased to

go get signed by Peter Cullen and Frank Welker

during one of our Transformers Prime recording

sessions. Oh, wow. That's awesome. You lucky...

Yeah. I got my Starscream and, you know... I

got about a dozen of the original G1 toys. Oh,

that is awesome. In their boxes, because I was

one of those weird kids that saved everything.

I still have most of my boxes to my original

Star Wars toys. Oh, sweet. Yeah, with Beast Machines,

it was such like... We interviewed Larry Dottilio

a couple years ago. And it was during the time

because we actually did a full on Beast Wars

Beast Machines review podcast where each podcast

episode we would review two, three, four episodes

of each each cartoon. Cool. And. We interviewed

Larry to tell you, and I was like, so, Larry,

if Beast Wars went into Season 4 and Season 5,

what would you do with the characters? He goes,

we'd probably send them back to Cybertron. I'm

like, hmm, that's interesting, because that's

what happened with Beast Machines. But no, Beast

Machines, what's so funny about that is you have,

you know, a comical yet sinister character in

Megatron and Beast Wars. In Beast Machines, he

gets so much darker. He was staring in that show.

Yeah, he is scary in that show, especially around

the time when he's trying to separate himself

from his organic half. I thought he loved that

organic half, though. That show was, I have to

admit, I had never really seen Beast Wars before

working on that because, I mean, that was the

late 90s. I don't recall it being readily available

on home video. formats, so I couldn't just get

tapes and watch them. I don't remember it being

on television at the time. I had to work on the

show. It all came together relatively quickly,

so I was sort of riding in a vacuum with that

series. With regards to Beast Wars, I only knew

what I had learned from the Bible for Beast Machines

that Bob and Marty wrote and our conversations.

We would gather over at Marty's house. with Bob

and Marty and me and Marv Wolfman and some of

the other writers would get together and we'd

discuss the stories that we wanted to tell and

the relevant background, backstory material.

I just love, for me personally, what I love about

those two series, and I know you mainly only

had dealings with Beast Machines, but between

the two series, Beast Machines is most definitely

a sequel to Beast Wars, even though it's... It

does stand on its own with its own story, but

just taking those characters and putting them

on a barren Cybertron was just such... I think

the mainframe did a terrific job with realizing

those environments and doing a CGI show has,

and we can get into that later if you want, has

its own set of challenges when it comes to the

storytelling. I mean, it has its strengths and

weaknesses in terms of animation and also its...

strengths and weaknesses in terms of, you know,

the stories you can tell. And I thought that

was a really clever move on Bob and Marty's part

because those sort of artificial environments

always look better in CGI than a natural environment,

especially back then. And the idea of doing all

these drones, you know, the Viacom drones, gave

the villains a large... contingent of versatile

enemy forces that the heroes could go up against

and you could make some really epic, dramatic

stuff. Oh yeah, and I just love that there was

no rubber ducky in Beast Machines. I need my

rubber ducky. Yes. We interviewed David Kaye

a couple years ago for the Beast Wars show. And

I had Steve do his Megatron for him, and he's

like, wow, that's pretty much second best to

mine. Funny thing is I actually did it at TFCon,

and people were looking around like he was there.

What I really liked about Beast Machines was

Bob and Marty were not afraid at all to go into

the metaphysical realm. And we really sort of

explored those. concepts of the all spark and

you know uh the the afterlife and and stuff like

that i thought that was it was kind of religious

in a way yeah it was really interesting it was

nice it added new depth to the uh the whole uh

history of it exactly yeah yeah Exactly. And

then I didn't even know because I actually spent,

I don't know, two and a half days watching all

39 episodes of this series. I didn't even know

at the time that you were a writer on the 2002

Masters cartoon. Oh, yeah. I think I did six

episodes of that for Dean Stephan. That was another

show I watched after school, He -Man. That was

a little young for me, even for some high school

kid who was watching cartoons. He -Man was a

little young for me. It was mostly just sort

of, I hate to say background noise, but I just

had the TV on when I was working on my Dungeons

& Dragons stuff. Of course, I was a dungeon master

when I was in high school, which I think was

terrific, was great training to be a writer.

Because, you know, back in those sort of pre

-computer days, you want to do adventures like

that, you needed a dungeon master to sort of

create the world for the players and create a

storyline for them, a quest, you know, a storyline.

And you had to be able to think on your feet

and improvise to, you know, when the players

might want to do something you didn't intend

for them to do, you got to, you know, keep the

story alive for them. Yeah, and that's the great,

like... I love, because I grew up watching the

filmation, He -Man and She -Ra and all that stuff,

and I love that for what it is, but once I found

the 2002 series, I'm like, yes, continuity, strict

continuity, yes. One flowing story, amazing.

Yeah, Dean Stephan is a terrific writer and really

had a good vision for that show, along with the...

I guess he was the producer. I mainly knew him

as the Mattel executive, but I think he has a

producer credit on the show, Ian Richter, who

is a great guy and is one of the most passionate

young executives I've ever worked with. I mean,

this is a guy who just loved the material that

he was working with, and he's the guy that would

get up and act stuff out in the room. I mean,

he just loved. His material, whether it was Max

Steel or Hot Wheels or He -Man, he was 110 %

committed to that material and kept pushing us

to make it cooler and more exciting and sort

of tamped down the Mattel instincts to want to

throw in every crazy toy they wanted to include

in the show. Like, okay, well, can we find a

way to... stick that in there that's not ridiculous.

Yeah. But that was a fun show to work on, and

when we came on the idea of bringing in the Snake

Men, I thought, oh, you know, if I do a really

good job in the Snake Men, the first Snake Men

story, that seems like a kind of a, I had a choice

of episodes to do, and I picked the one, or a

choice of concepts to develop, and I went with

the Snake Men because I thought, you know, if

I do this right. They might want to bring the

Snake Man back, and I'll be their go -to writer

for Snake Man stories. That actually worked out

pretty well. Almost every story I did was a Snake

Man story. Awesome. Very, very awesome. All right,

now we're going to jump into what all of the

listeners actually want to talk about and hear

about, which is... Jackie Chan Adventures. Oh,

no, I'm sorry. Transformers. The current project

that you're working on, the epic Transformers

Prime. Now, I've heard on the Season 1 DVD set,

I forget which person said it, but someone said

that they hope that Prime is, you know, some

parent's child's Generation 1, essentially. You

know, that fans of the old shows will get their

kids into this, and this will be that child's.

And I totally agree with that. First off, I love

the entire series. So, you know, so far all of

the episodes to me play like one big long story.

Like to me there is, and I know people will nitpick

and say, oh, well this is a throwaway or that's

a throwaway, but every episode always has something

that connects the entire story. I agree. There's

always some element and it's not necessarily,

you know, it's not a strict serialized. each

episode flows directly into the next with a cliffhanger

or some giant mythological overarching story.

It's often just character, character threads,

emotional threads, or plot threads. There's usually,

generally, there's always something. You don't

approach any single episode of that series as

simply a throwaway. We always want to explore.

you know, at least one character and, you know,

do something new with the storyline. Right. Was

it a goal of the writers to homage all generations

of Transformers in Prime? I mean, there are homages

everywhere to multiple generations, yet the story

is its own and very unique. I would say that

that was, it certainly wasn't a mandate. Right.

As far as the people in the writers' room, in

season one we had four staff writers, myself,

Marsha Griffin, Joe Coor, and Nicole Dubuque,

and then Dwayne Capizzi, who was accredited as

a supervisor and producer, but he is also in

charge of the writing staff. And he's sort of,

as far as the writing goes, the last word. In

terms of what we do. And we run everything past

Jeff Klein, our executive producer, who is a

very shrewd, smart guy. He's terrific. And then,

of course, everything also goes through the network,

Hub Network and Hasbro. Hasbro brand signs off

on everything. But as far as the people in the

room. I was probably the one person in there

that came to the room with the most knowledge

of Transformers, of the Transformers universe.

And it was never really something that I pushed

in the room. But at the same time, I mean, even

though they sort of set up Prime as being part

of this, I think they call it the aligned continuity.

Hasbro. came to this show with a desire to create

a single continuity going forward that would

include their video games and books and comics

and television series. Not really the films,

although we echo the films in some ways. Yeah,

in a few of the designs and stuff like that.

Yeah, and some of the story concepts and visuals

and stuff. We echo the films, but they're not

really, they're not part of our continuity. Yeah,

and I, as much as the little kid in me wants

Dan Gilbert in. Which is the reason why we couldn't

have the base be in a dam, like Hoover Dam, because

they had their base in the dam in one of the

movies. Oh, right, yeah, yeah. I think our base

is cooler anyway. It is. Yeah, it's so much cooler.

And as much as the six -year -old in me wants

Dan Gilvezan's voice to come out of Bumblebee,

I'm glad. I'm actually probably the only person

that is glad that the Bumblebee in Prime is R2

-D2 beeps versus radio stuff that happened in

the movies. Yeah, in the beginning we toyed around

with maybe doing that kind of stuff with B, but

that was just going to be too complicated. to

try to do and thought, screw it, you know, he'll

just bleep and we'll kind of understand what

he's saying through context. And through Raph

with all the exposition. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But yeah, I don't know if I answered your question.

No, you did. We tried not to, we didn't want

to, we didn't want to, we were never sort of

beholden to any past continuity. from the previous

series. But we were respectful towards it. We

didn't want to do anything that was outright

contradictory to something that was important

to a character or a storyline or something. And

we would have our writer's assistant, Marigrid,

who also has written episodes in the show, is

very knowledgeable about the Transformers universe,

and she would always have her computer out and

could look stuff up on the different wikis. reference

books. So often when we were looking for something

to use in the series, whether it's one of the

sort of MacGuffins that we've used or locations

on Cybertron, we would do our research and try

to find something that has already existed and

plug that in. Instead of creating something new,

yeah. Yeah, and we might do a different twist

on it, but that became sort of our way to homage

the earlier incarnations. Transformers. For probably

most viewers watching it, they have no idea that

when we say you make somebody's reference that

it's actually something from a previous series.

But for the hardcore fans, we hope that they

will appreciate those little nods. We hardcore

fans get a lot of those references and it's just,

it's just amazing. It's fun for me. Cause I like

doing, and I think Joe court likes to do research

also. You know, it's fun to go in and to the

wikis and try to find something really cool.

Like, Oh, what can we, what can we do to, you

know, bring out, bring back to have fun with

in some way. Yeah. All right. I know this probably

is going to get a no, but. Can you reveal any

new characters coming up in the ending of Season

2? There's not many episodes left in Season 2

that haven't aired. Let me think. I know we just

got Smokescreen. We just got Smokescreen and

we saw Alpha Trion for the first time. And we

saw Shockwave. Yeah. Is Shockwave going to be

coming back? Can you tell us that? I would say

what Jeff Klein has said, which is in doing these

kind of CGI shows, it's very expensive to create

a new asset for a show, whether it's a character

or a location or a prop. Each one of those things

has to be designed. And especially a Transformers

character, it's not just a single build. from

what I understand, they have to build it three

times. They have to build the vehicle mode, the

robot mode, and the transformation. So it's expensive

to build a character. So when you see someone

like Shockwave turn up for one episode, it's

a pretty elaborate build. And we tend not to

let things like that go to waste. I think it's

safe to say that we will be seeing him again.

Cool, cool. I try explaining this to a couple

of friends that just don't get it. In Prime,

that has to be the most unique way of bringing

Unicron into the story. How is that thought out?

I mean, Unicron is the center of the... Oh, my

God. My brain broke when I saw that. That came

out very early, actually. I want to say possibly

it was the first week of our writer's room back

in 2009, October 2009. It might have even been

the second day. But it was definitely the first

week. And that was a really fun week because

that was the four staff writers, Dwayne Capizzi,

Jeff Klein, Merigred. I think Merigred was on

board by then. And then we had Roberta Orsi and

Alex Kurtzman in the room, as well as some of

their people from their production company. They're

people that are like Mandy Safavi and Roth. Rafael

Rothschild and some of their guys were all just

throwing ideas around. And all we really had

to go on at that point was a Bible that wasn't

particularly fleshed out. We mainly just had

the major characters and the tone of the show.

And Dwayne had an idea for the story for the

beginning of the, for basically part one. Yeah.

That's for the series in general. And, um, one

of the people in the room, uh, I, gosh, I don't

remember how it came out, but somebody just said

it in the room. Just make Unicron the center

of the earth. Yeah. Unicron is the earth. And,

and there was like a half beat where people had

sunk in and it was like, Oh, we have to do that.

That's awesome. So that's, so that, that became

the genesis of that. So we knew that literally

from the first week of creative meetings on the

show that we were going to do that. Wow. Are

there any other type characters that you guys

have been itching to try and pull in there or

haven't been able to? Oh, you mean Autobots and

Decepticons that we want to use? Yeah, or even

some of the, yeah. Well, we... I mean, there

are such a large number of characters in that

universe, and I know we would love to have more

characters in the show, especially early on,

but it just was simply not in our budget to create

those characters, simply from a budgetary standpoint,

but also from a storytelling standpoint. It's

difficult with the premise of our show, with

a small group of Autobots sort of stranded on

Earth, and Megatron and his crew there trying

to not only hunt them down, but reclaim all of

the energon that had been stored there during

the war. It becomes an issue of what do you do

with all of those characters if they're all around?

I remember running into this problem back on

the original X -Men series where we had like

eight or ten X -Men as part of the core cast.

And after a while, you've got to figure out,

what do I do with all these people? The show's

only 20 minutes long. Everyone's got to get a

line. Everyone's got to do something cool. It

becomes a challenge in the storytelling. So if

Megatron had... You know, he's outfitted with

this army of sort of essentially clone soldiers,

basically, that have just sort of rudimentary

personalities. They're not real characters. But

if we had, you know, two dozen characters, you

know, Thundercracker and, you know, just all

these different name brand Decepticon characters

with personalities. everyone would be constantly

wanting to see them in every episode. Like, oh,

why wasn't so -and -so there? Why wasn't so -and

-so there? Why didn't he do this? And it just

becomes unwieldy to try to manage, we call it

traffic control. How do you manage that many

characters in an episode? I would think that

you could introduce, and not necessarily, it's

almost like what you guys did with Wheeljack,

where you introduced him, he went away for a

while, and he came back, and he's kind of with

the team, but he's not. I'm almost thinking,

I don't know where you guys are going to go with

the story. I'm itching to find out with Season

2 and Season 3 eventually, but I would think

that characters, they wouldn't have to be in

every episode. You could just, you know... continue

the story and you know and yes that's true and

with the autobots you know there's what five

of them five core autobots at the base the problem

there is they're just they're kind of stuck there

in that base i mean they have a ground bridge

so they can be sent around the globe to do different

missions and stuff and and we've done that from

time to time like you know small kids out on

patrol or rc's checking out an energon reading

or something like that um that's That's easy

enough to do, but if you have a larger contingent

of Autobots, you start to wonder, what are they

doing? Could what they're doing be more interesting

than what we're watching now? Why don't we see

them? Why don't they come back when there's a

battle? Why don't they radio for help and they

come back and join? It becomes difficult to manage,

but I will tell you this. You will be seeing

more new characters in Season 3. Nice. Both Autobot

and Decepticon. So we were able to expand our

cast. Very cool. Very cool. I don't know. That

said, I don't know when Season 3 is actually

going to air. I don't know if they've announced

that yet. That's okay. That's okay. Uh, how many

colors of Energon are there? Because you've got,

no, no, seriously, you've got the blue Energon,

which is the good regular Energon. You've got

the purple stuff, which is the dark Energon.

Now you've got red Energon that Starscream found.

I mean, what's, what's, and you've got synth

Energon, which is the green stuff. So you got

four colors right there. What's next? Yeah, I

think we're done with Energon flavors. Uh, but,

uh, yeah, Hasbro sent over a, uh, We were kind

of looking around for inspiration for stories,

and we were thinking about, you know, like the

old Superman comics where there's all those different

types of kryptonite that do different crazy things

to Superman. And we had already introduced the

concept that, you know, there's energon and there's

dark energon, and we had the idea of synth energon,

synthetic energon. So we thought, well, are there

any other types of energon? And Hasbro sent over

like a chart. And there were like eight or ten

different colors on there. There's one that was

like a chronogen, I think it was called, or something

like a time displacement energon. Oh, wow. There

was, what else did they do? You know, there are

several others that exist in the Hasbro pantheon.

Right, right. But we won't be. far as I recall,

we won't be seeing any more new Energons beyond

those four. That said, you have not seen the

last of Dark Energon or Synth Energon. Or Red

Energon, for that matter. Very cool. I don't

know if this is a Hub thing, a Hasbro thing,

or if it's on the directors and producers side,

but Why is season three only going to be 15 episodes?

Is that a budgetary thing? It just seems like

it's a short season there. Well, most series,

that was always the plan going in, more or less.

Most TV series, once they hit 65 episodes, they

don't need to make any more. in order to make

money they can syndicate them overseas it's not

as big a deal here now it used to be here they

you know you want your 65 episodes once you hit

65 you can keep going but for the company for

a lot of the companies it's like you know what

we could keep spending more money making additional

episodes or we could just stop and syndicate

these and make something new and uh so we went

in at the very beginning hoping to get to 65.

I mean, it was never a guarantee, but it's rare

or it's unusual for a lot of shows to really

go beyond 65. Well, I wish it would because it's

such a great series. What were you going to say,

Steve? I said, so here's hoping that we get another

few seasons on top of what's already been confirmed.

Yeah, well, I can't confirm anything, but I don't

know. We came into it knowing how we wanted to

end the series. So we weren't rushed into anything.

And we were very happy. The way it's proceeding

is we're very happy with Season 3. So with the

current storyline in Season 2 being... Now at

this point, when it's airing, it's the Omega

Keys and the Omega Lock. A friend of ours is

hoping that Cybertron is not going to come to

life and transform. That's funny you should say

that. In the early discussions of Unicron being

at the core of the Earth, we thought, will he

transform? Will he bust out of the Earth? Is

that going to be an issue? And we actually, early

on, thought about this image of this, like, giant

hand erupting out of the crust of the Earth,

like, you know, the size of a, you know, half

a continent or something. And it was a really

cool image to think about, and then we thought,

you know, that's kind of ridiculous. That would

kind of destroy everything, wouldn't it? Be a

quick way to end the series. Yeah. Boom, there

we go. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. I, I, I don't

know. Um, can you, um, can we get any, uh, season

two ending or season three beginning teases?

Anything that you could give us would be lovely.

Well, the, uh, the, uh, I can probably reveal

this cause I think it will be, I think it will,

it will become knowledge within the next few

days. Anyway, the title of the season, two finale

is darkest hour. And at least it was last I looked

at the last minute, but it's a, it's an app title.

Um, it really puts, uh, team prime, uh, at their

darkest hour. It's, it's our sort of our empire

strikes back ending. Uh, season two does not

end well for team prime. And I hope we'll make

people really eager to come back for season three

and see how the heck they get out of this. I

think I've seen, I've heard there are complaints

about our show always resetting to status quo.

And there will be no doubt that we are in a whole

new place for season three. Wow. The status quo

will not be an issue in Season 3. Yeah. I've

always said, lately with the history of Transformers

between the films, and not necessarily Prime,

but between the films and the games, what I really

dislike is how the classic line of one shall

stand, one shall fall, Optimus will start it

and Megatron will finish it. really really dislike

that but what i really love about prime is how

you guys work in classic lines like um uh in

in the episode where optimus got the uh the star

saber that just aired a couple weeks i think

it was um i think it was legacy just last week

yeah last yeah last week's episode when at the

end it at the end in in the nemesis it pans to

megatron and he and he says that this is truly

the decepticons darkest hour i just I just cracked

up so much because I thought that was just so

amazing how you could just twist the line around.

Oh, yeah. It made you feel bad for him. Yeah.

That's always a fine line and kind of a judgment

call on how much or how often to do this kind

of dialogue. callbacks, because it can be groan

-inducing, like, oh, for God's sake, they're

saying that again. And that was an issue in the

Star Wars, the Clone Wars also, where, you know,

we were all huge Star Wars fans working on that

show and wanting to find ways to, different ways

to insert sort of classic lines of dialogue,

and maybe we did that a little too much in the

early going, but it was kind of irresistible,

because it's just cool. And it's such a switch

around, though. It's not, you know, it's not

Optimus just saying it. It's not him lying on

a stretcher with, you know, his Matrix in his

hand or anything like that. And because it's

Megatron saying it, it makes it that much more

epic. And I didn't groan at all at that line.

I found that amazing that that was written in

there. Yeah, we like to do stuff like that when

we can. And the actors like it, too. Let me tell

you, that recording room, that's one of the most

fun things. I mean, it's fun to be in the writer's

room and sort of plot out the scenes. It's hard

work because we'll be in there day after day

sometimes just throwing ideas around and sort

of plotting out every story. We break every story

in the writer's room with the whole team. And

when we use a freelance writer, we usually, if

we can, we'll bring the freelancer in for that

session. But the show is so continuity heavy

that we write almost every outline internally

and then give the outlines to our freelancers

to do their scripts from. Because it's just a

lot to ask for the freelancers to try to learn,

you know. 40 episodes of prior continuity. Oh,

yeah. It's much easier for us to do it and guide

them. Yeah. But I don't know why I completely

lost my train of thought. Oh, the fun of the

writer's room. So it's great. It's a lot of fun

to throw out ideas and often... And as often

as not, the ideas go down these sort of blind

alleys. It wouldn't be cool if, oh, yeah, we'll

talk about something for a couple hours and then

realize there's really not a story there. And

other times, you know, a little digression will

lead to a great story. And so that's a lot of

fun. And then at the complete other end of it

is going into the recording studio with the cast,

who are just a delight to work with. so much

fun to to be in the booth and you know some of

those guys are you know they're just hilarious

nolan north and kevin michael richardson and

steve blum and jeffrey combs and you know and

obviously frank and and peter cullen i mean that

would be just hilarious sorry i said that would

just be epic sitting there listening to those

guys Oh, yeah. And they, you know, between takes,

they'll be in there telling stories or goofing

off and telling jokes and stuff. And, you know,

Kevin Michael Richardson particularly just goes

off on these crazy, you know, they do conversations

in different characters. And it's just a blast.

That's always the most kind of the most fun part

of any show I've worked on is getting to go to

the recording session. It's like having your

dessert at the end of the meal. You know, you

just get to sit back and listen to your script

come to life. socialize with a really interesting

array of characters. I remember when we brought

in Tony Todd to be the voice of Dreadwing. I

was a big fan of his from Star Trek The Next

Generation and Deep Space Nine. I just had to

totally drop my professionalism for a minute

and geek out with him over an episode of Deep

Space Nine that he did called The Visitor in

which he played an elderly Jake Sisko which is

Oh, wow. If you've never seen this episode, it's

one of the most... Yeah, that's awesome. It's

absolutely fantastic. It makes me weep every

time I watch it. It's just a brilliant hour of

television, and he was very grateful that people

remember that work. Yeah, that was... And I forgot,

re -watching the show, I had forgotten he played

Worf's brother. And I had seen every single episode

of Next Generation Deep Space Nine, often multiple

times, and I had completely forgotten until I

re -watched... one of the Next Generation episodes

that Tony Todd played Worf's brother, Moog. Wow.

So it's fun when people like that come in. We

have cool guest stars come in. We had George

Takai in playing Alpha Trion. It's fun to get

to meet him. I find it very funny that... George

has now voiced two Transformers elders. He voiced

Yoketron in Transformers Animated, and now he's

Alpha Trion in Prime. I didn't realize that,

because I actually never got to see Transformers

Animated either. Marty Eisenberg approached me

about working on it in the very beginning, about

writing for it, and I was interested, and I read

the Bible, but at the same time, I just wasn't

available. I had a commitment to another series

or something, so I just never had time to work

on it. And I just never got a chance to really

watch any of the episodes. But I hear it was

fun. I don't know. I didn't see it. Getting into

some of the convention areas, have you ever been

to any of the fan conventions? Or do you have

any thoughts on going to them? I love conventions.

I've been going to conventions. For 30 years,

I used to go to the creation conventions back

in the day. And there were a couple of sort of

literary conventions that I went to. And I've

been going to Comic -Con San Diego for almost

20 years now. And I go to WonderCon in San Francisco.

And I've been to BotCon when they had it in Pasadena

a couple years ago. And that was a lot of fun.

I'd probably go to, those are the main ones I

go to. I love conventions. I love walking around

the dealer's room and looking for cool stuff.

And I like going to the panel discussions. Although

at Comic -Con, it's become really difficult.

That's a whole other rant. San Diego Comic -Con

now is just unwieldy. It's too big. It's too

big. It's a victim of its own success, unfortunately.

Yeah. Too big and too expensive. But I still

go. I keep saying I'll keep going until I can't

get a hotel room there anymore. And I've been

resigned to not going to San Diego Comic Con

for about the last three or four years now. But

I put in my hotel request and I keep getting

hotel rooms. Like, okay, I guess I'm going this

year. That's awesome. But I know the day will

come when I fail in that lottery. And it's like,

okay, I guess I'm not going this year. Would

you like to inform the fans of where they can

interact with you online or anything? I don't

know if you do Twitter or any of that kind of

stuff. I know you're on Facebook, but I think

you pretty much keep that to family and friends.

Yeah, I don't really have a – I guess my Facebook

page is just a personal page. I don't have a

fan page. I'm on Twitter, but if you follow me,

the joke's on you because I don't really tweet.

I just kind of use it to follow people, mostly

comedians. But, you know, I'm accessible and

happy to talk to fans, you know, if they come

up to me at a convention or something. I'm always

happy to talk to fans because I appreciated the

time that, you know, professionals before me

took the time to answer my stupid questions or,

you know, listen to my nerdgasms. Before we let

you go, remind the listeners of what you have

coming up or what's currently going on with you

as far as your writing stuff and whatever else.

Well, Transformers Prime, I have an episode that

I story edited that's on not this week but the

following week called Inside Job that was written

by Bob Skier, and it was a fantastic script.

I haven't seen it yet, but I heard it turned

out really well. I'm really proud of it. And

then I wrote the season two finale, Darkest Hour,

which is totally epic. It's awesome. Haven't

seen any of that either, but I was really proud

of the script and how it turned out and really

excited to see it. And, of course, season three

of Transformers Prime, I wrote five episodes

in season three. and Marsha Griffin wrote five

episodes of season three. So we wrote the bulk

of season three internally. That's awesome. We

could finish out the story the way we had, you

know, it was such an inside baseball kind of

show anyway, you know, it was so mythological,

so myth heavy at that point that it was easier

for us just to do it all. So, you know, between

me and Marsha and Dwayne and Merigrud, we wrote,

you know, probably 80%. of uh of season three

and um gosh uh and then uh and then like the

clone wars comic the sith hunters and uh hulk

and the agents of smash coming to disney xd i

i don't know when next year sometime cool cool

we'd like to thank mr melting for taking the

time to chat with us in this all things transformers

interview we will ask you to hold the line and

we'll be back after this who in the pits of chaos

is that So there you go, folks. That was just

slightly north of an hour -long interview with

Stephen Melching, writer from Batman the Brave

and the Bold, X -Men, The Mask, Transformers

Prime, Beast Machines, Batman the Brave and the

Bold. It was awesome talking to him. Yeah, it

was really fun and nice getting to hear some

of the background thoughts on the various series

he's worked on. Yeah, I mean, you can tell he's

a huge Star Wars buff, he's a huge superhero

comics buff, and he's a huge Transformers fan

as well, and that's absolutely amazing. He's

a geek like the rest of us. Yes. Yeah, I don't

think he heard me, but in the interview when

I asked him a question about the multicolors

of Energon, I made a Skittles joke, and I don't

think he heard me because I said, See the rainbow,

taste the rainbow. That is funny. I didn't catch

that either. Usually I'm the first to say, taste

the rainbow. That's just creepy, dude. I wonder

how it would sound if Megatron said it. Taste

the rainbow. That's even more creepy. But there

you go, folks. We had a fun time, absolutely

amazing time with Stephen Melching. He's a great,

great guy, amazing writer. Transformers Prime

Season 2 is currently airing. We're not sure

just yet when Season 3 will air, but go check

this show out. Keep an open mind about it. I

know most of you G1ers are like, oh, no, this

isn't my Transformers. But it's the G1 for the

new generation. In my opinion, it is the best

show since Beast Wars and Beast Machines. And

I will argue that it's pretty much neck and neck

for me, even though I'm still biased. Yes, we

know. But yes, I do love that show very, very

much. All right, so there you go, folks. We will

catch you next time on All Things Transformers.

Anything else you'd like to mention that we already

know? Nothing I can say in front of the children.

We Decepticons now face our darkest hour.