Another year, another Retrospective... and another occasion where I started writing this in early January, specifically because one of my predictions for the year had been borne out by the end of the first week of the year.
While it may not be a particularly significant for this blog, specifically, this year marks my half-century... which somehow just doesn't feel possible. Most of the time, I try not to think about it, lest I fall into the rabbit hole of wondering where by 40s disappeared to (and, for that matter, my 30s!).
Highlights of 2024
- Nature Walks - living within easy walking distance of an ecology park, one might think I'd have taken the opportunity to visit sooner, but this year was the first time. Courtney saw that a guided walk, with a focus on the many different types of tree in the park, was being put on in late January, and booked us in. It was a very cold day, but an interesting trip nonetheless. I invited my folks along to the second one, in early June, and my sister and niece were around for the third, at the end of July. Toward the end of September, my folks were fortunate enough to obtain enough tickets to invite Courtney and I to join them on a guided tour of the Ealing Beaver Project (site of the first beaver kit births in London for 400 years) which was a lovely afternoon's walk... even though my boots fell apart before it even started, and I had to quickly buy new footwear.
- RetCon - I've listed this as a highlight for the last few years, and for good reason: it's been one of the best things about being a member of the Greenford Computer Club... but this year's was discernibly better than the last for several reasons. First and foremost, I'd been on antidepressants for about a year, and was feeling more like myself this time round. Secondly, the event was the day before my birthday, rather than the day after, so I was able to actually relax on my birthday, having had a fantastic, albeit exhausting day at RetCon the day before. We had a great selection of SAM Coupé stuff, both software and hardware, and I managed to get a look at more of the exhibits than in previous years. I was even able to have a brief chat with one of the guests, who had played a character in Kasumi Ninja on the Atari Jaguar, in between helping out in other rooms. I heard later on that several monitors packed up on the day (hopefully fixable) but, other than that everything seemed to run much more smoothly behind the scenes. However, RetCon is an annual event, so I should really also mention...
- The Greenford Computer Club - it hit me only recently that I've been attending the Club for almost five full years now, playing games both old and new, looking at computers/consoles from around the world and across the decades, fixing stuff, learning stuff, and generally larking about with a room full of like-minded guys who I'd never have met otherwise. I found out about the Club when they advertised in the Crash Annual 2018, having missed the inaugural RetCon that year, and it's been a great little get-together every couple of weeks.
- SAM Coupé developments - it's a bittersweet thing, but development for the SAM has never seemed more alive than it has this year. Aside from the games I've completed work on (The Lower Caverns still awaiting publication alongside the next issue of SAM Revival, Fantasy World Dizzy not yet commenced, as far as I'm aware, Arkanoid 2 due anytime now), and those that are still in progress (Westen House, NetKarts), there's L'Abbaye des Morts from Blackjet, released on Boxing Day, and a smooth, full-screen 50Hz scrolling routine - this latter being something long considered "impossible" on the hardware.
- New Managing Agents getting things done - when I first learned that the freeholder of my building had appointed a new Managing Agent during the summer of 2023, I - along with the other leaseholders - was rather sceptical. The news arrived at a point where we thought we were making progress toward renewing the roof, and by appointing a Managing Agent, the freeholder brought that to a halt. He had obstructed the previous lot continually, and their service charge fund kept getting mysteriously emptied. This new lot, though, seemed to be taking a no-nonsense approach, and started making improvements within a few months of their appointment (once the leaseholders agreed to start paying a service charge), starting with new, lower energy lighting, additional bulkhead lighting, and fixing a door which had offered no security for about two years, while the freeholder 'managed' the property himself. When residents observed that pigeons were attempting to roost in the stairwell, they installed new doors on the first floor within a couple of weeks, and were even able to get the freeholder to acquiesce to the renewal of the roof, with work completed by the end of May.
- Poor Things - my attendance at the cinema has been substantially reduced over the last few years but, it's slowly improving. When my best mate invited me to a screening of this curious movie, I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd read that it was a Frankenstein-like tale, centring on a female character, but was otherwise ignorant of its content... It was a beautifully presented, occasionally quite trippy fairy tale, and frequently hilarious. Having seen such a good movie at the start of the year probably set me up for months of cinematic disappointments... Though some folks seemed to see it as a tale of abuse, exploitative of the "born sexy yesterday" trope. I read the book sometime later, and found it perplexing, as the final section of the book is given over to the protagonist's refutation of everything described in the main part.
- Joker: Folie à Deux - The original film ostensibly presented an interesting take on Batman's nemesis, but mostly painted a bleak picture of the US healthcare system via an unreliable narrator. This movie takes the unreliable narrative to a whole new level, introducing Harleen 'Lee' Quinzel not as a psychiatrist treating or studying Arthur Fleck, but as a former psychology student who put herself in Arkham Asylum just to meet him, then push him along the path to embracing his 'Joker' persona. When it was first announced, Folie à Deux was billed as a musical... then the studio backtracked (due to negative fan buzz) and insisted it wasn't. It is... and, frankly, it's all the better for it: the musical numbers are often a total break from reality. The conclusion of the movie is intriguing, hinting that it might link into Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy... And that's possibly the most disappointing aspect of the film, because it almost feels like a bait-and-switch, the likes of which was used in the TV series Gotham, because they weren't allowed to introduce the Joker. This seems to have upset some fans of the original, leading to the usual online histrionics from the usual pundits, but there's a sense that they've missed the point of the films... After all, it was observed in the original that Arthur Fleck was too old to be the Joker that goes up against Batman, since Thomas Wayne was still alive and Bruce was still a child. Arthur Fleck was a catalyst, who spawned a fandom... which then, most directly in the form of Lee Quinzell, rejected him for not being what they wanted him to be. Sound familiar? This is a film about obsessive fandoms and their habit of tearing down the thing they once claimed to love, because its creator did something unexpected... And the audience response largely proves its point.
- Alien: Romulus - surprisingly, this was a film I went to see with Courtney rather than with my best mate. He wasn't interested because reviews indicated it was basically just a "greatest hits" compilation of elements from all the other movies. They're not wrong, and I could certainly have lived without some of the more pointless callbacks ("Get away from her... [uncomfortably long pause] ...you bitch!") and the 'black goo' connection to the ponderous, pseudo-intellectual nonsense of Ridley Scott's Prometheus and Covenant, but it turned out to be far better than I'd expected. Yes, you could play bingo with the obvious rip offs and references. Yes, some of it was terribly predictable. Yes, the zero gravity sections were as much a callback to Dead Space as anything from the Alien franchise. Yes, the xenomorph's behaviour and gestation cycle was modified for plot convenience, and it's not entirely clear where they got so many facehuggers (presumably from LV-426, though). For that matter, the reappearance of the original creature from the first movie (harpoon and all) was glossed over rather too easily... but, at the end of the day, the practical effects and puppet work were phenomenal, the film moved along at a decent pace (I read somewhere that the story plays out in real time once they're aboard the space station - interesting if true), and made for a halfway decent prequel, wedged between Alien and Aliens.
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - while fairly nonplussed by Mad Max: Fury Road, not least because the titular hero wasn't even the focus of the story, I'd have to say Furiosa is the better film, even if it does start to outstay its welcome toward the end. It's strange, after watching so many Marvel films over the last few years, that a movie that tells a coherent story - which may or may not include action scenes - is such a rare treat... but it does feel as though movies over the last few decades have increasingly become collections of action scenes strung together by the barest of stories. It could be said that Furiosa tries to pack too much into a single movie - after all, it follows its protagonist from young childhood to adulthood, linking back to the beginning of Fury Road, in a touch under two and a half hours, but it shows only a handful of significant events in her life. Any more, or any attempt to turn it into a two-parter, would likely have only added unnecessary padding. Then again, it might have given the star a few more lines of dialogue in what was probably one of the shortest scripts in Hollywood history, in proportion to the length of the finished film.
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse - I'm over a year late to this, despite the fact that I got the Blu-Ray for Christmas. The first movie was a surprise, and truly cemented the difference between Sony Pictures (absolute trash-merchants that they are, never learning from their mistakes) and Sony Pictures Animation who, with Across the Spider-verse, have created one of the most awe-inspiring works of visual art I've yet encountered. Coupled with a heartfelt script and a coherent story, I wish I'd got round to seeing it in the cinema. I am a little salty about the cliff-hanger ending, though.
- The Many Saints of Newark - Courtney and I finished watching The Sopranos the year after this movie was released (2021) and it took us quite a while to find the time to watch it. Being a prequel, there were naturally very few surprises but it was, nevertheless, a brilliant way to round off the story of Tony Soprano. Casting was perfect - particularly Vera Farmiga as Livia Soprano and Michael Gandolfini as the younger version of his father's iconic character - and the story captured the best/worst of each and every character.
- Whodunnit [Unrehearsed] 3 at the Park Theatre - after enjoying #2 last year, we were keeping an eye out for news of the third show at the Park Theatre. Gillian Anderson was announced as one of the guest stars, and Courtney was instantly sold. In the end, we were a week or two late for her show, but we were quite impressed by Angus Deayton. Unbeknownst to me, Courtney had also bought into the audience member cameo raffle, and got picked - playing the role of a former colleague of 'Inspector' Deayton, hand delivering an old case file to help wrap up the mystery. It was a fantastic show, with a couple of musical/dance numbers, and Deayton performed particularly well when technical issues hit the second half.
- The Tempest at the Theatre Royal - We saw ads for this, promoting Sigourney Weaver as its star, and immediately booked tickets. I can't speak for Courtney, but I went into the theatre without having looked at the rest of the cast, so Mason Alexander Park as Ariel was an interesting surprise, particularly as much of the character's dialogue was sung rather than spoken. Mathew Horne as Trinculo - half of the comic relief team - was good fun as well. The staging was deceptively simple, with some excellent lighting effects, but the icing on the cake of our final theatrical excursion for the year was that our seats were upgraded: the area we'd booked was closed, so we ended up in the Royal Circle, at no extra cost.
- Tituss Burgess: The Indecisive Warrior (An Intimate London Residency) at the Phoenix Arts Club - Courtney introduced me to The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt years ago, and thereby the vocal powerhouse that is Tituss Burgess. The Indecisive Warrior was an amazing night of songs presenting an emotional journey, both for the singer and his audience. We had a restricted view of the stage, but that hardly mattered, as he spent most of the show wandering through the audience. Plus, the food was great, the drinks were amazing.
- Dame Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock at the RI - it's been quite a while since Courtney and I caught at lecture at the Royal Institute, but this talk by the space scientist, writer, and current presenter of The Sky at Night was something we were both keen to attend. Billed as "Webb's Universe: Our Cosmic History", it was equal parts the speaker's backstory, influences, etc. and talk of the present and future of stargazing and space science. Aderin-Pocock's enthusiasm for science communication is thoroughly infectious.
- Doctor Who at the BFI & Riverside - I hadn't been aware that BBC Studios had fairly regular screenings at the BFI to promote the release of their Doctor Who DVD boxed sets until my best mate dropped me a line about the Series 15/Horror of Fang Rock event in early February. It included Q&A sessions with one of the effects team and three of the actors, including Louise Jameson (Leela). Due to the timing of the event, we had to have an early lunch, and I started nodding off during the first couple of episodes, but it was great to see a full 4-episode story from the show's heyday of classic horror. It really shows how little the new version of Doctor Who resembles the original, both in terms of formatting and the quality of its writing. A later event featured four episodes from separate stories, which seemed a bit odd, while another was the three episode story, Dragonfire, which introduced the Seventh Doctor to his final companion, Ace. It also featured Patricia Quinn (Magenta from The Rocky Horror Picture Show), who joined three other cast-mates for the second panel, while Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred came on for a Q&A toward the end.
- Operation Mincemeat at the Fortune Theatre - while dimly aware of the historical premise, I had no idea what to expect about a musical based upon one of the most audacious exercises in disinformation in military history. However, like other such musicals, the songs are somehow the perfect complement to the dark story... Though I have to admit, it was hard to find the public school attitude of the protagonists even remotely amusing some of the time... Particularly in the light of the last 14 years of Tory government in the UK.
- Single Spies at the Questors - it was a source of both regret and shame for me to realise I'd never been to Questors Theatre in Ealing, despite it being one of the closest dedicated theatres for my entire life. My best mate invited me to see Single Spies - actually two single-act plays - and, despite knowing nothing about them, I was thrilled to accept. Unfortunately, on the day, I kept falling asleep during the first half, and had to resort to chugging a can of Coke in the interval, because we were in one of the front rows, and it's rather embarrassing to fall asleep where the performers can see you clearly throughout.
- Kittens! - no, we haven't got pets (yet), we went to Java Whiskers' Kitten Lounge in February (essentially my Valentine treat for Courtney, albeit not on Valentine's Day). I was intending to arrange a return visit for Courtney's birthday, but circumstances prevented that from happening.
- Moonshine Saloon - as a belated 50th Birthday treat, Courtney booked us into this immersive cocktail experience, in which a tale of illicit alcohol trafficking, murder and intrigue plays out while the bar staff mix up a range of cocktails using whatever bottle you 'smuggle' in. While not as extensive a story as The Murdér Express, it's a fun experience and the cocktails were awesome. Definitely something we'll visit again, possibly in a larger group.
- Atari Jaguar GameDrive - I've been hoping to pick one of these up since I learned of their existence. After completing a freelance job in February, I decided to order one, thus opening up the full Jaguar library of games... not that it's a particularly large library (far from it!) nor a particularly high-quality library... nevertheless, it's nice to be able to play games I hadn't bought back in the day - and which would likely be far too expensive now - though the magic of a MicroSD card. It also means that I have easy access to homebrew games, which I suspect are going to be the most exciting part of owning a Jaguar going forward. Larking about with this new acquisition also encouraged me to have a second go at getting some games running on the JagCD (largely because getting those games to work on the JagGD is a pain), with far more luck than the first time.
- Twin Peaks - while I saw the show when it first aired on UK television back in the early 90s, it was mostly new to Courtney (who thinks she may have seen the first episode previously). I was disappointed when the show got cancelled due to flagging ratings but, watching it again, I'm baffled as to how that happened. It's a really fun, quirky show with incongruous Film Noir tropes spliced into the sleepy country town murder mystery with a supernatural twist. The 'Limited Event Series' follow-up from 2017 was a fascinating watch, very different from the original series and, much as I enjoyed it, I think it compounded the problems of the original... on which I'll say more below...
- The Dropout - Courtney had listened to the 2019 podcast, and both of us had read Bad Blood, John Carryrou's 2018 exposé on the massive fraud and dangerous pseudoscience of Theranos, so we were strangely late getting round to this 2022 drama-documentary. There were no real surprises beyond the sheer scale of the bamboozle, and seeing the story play out through this mini-series was just as bafflingly full of what I would call obvious red flags as it was when I read about it. I find there to be something uniquely credulous about Americans, and this trait was magnified dramatically within the Silicon Valley startup investors community, where belief in an idea or a dream takes precedence over rational assessment of evidence. People were so focused on Theranos' figurehead and, in the case of the retailers, fear of missing out on a groundbreaking technology, that they allowed themselves to be fleeced out of millions of dollars over an idea that was deemed impossible before Theranos was even established. Holmes comes across as equal parts driven and optimistic ignoramus and manipulative sociopath, and it's not clear when the image of success became more important to her than success itself. Balwani comes across as a narcissistic groomer with no regard for the law, but it's fairly obvious that image was everything to him. Most everyone else comes across as shades of stupid... But the show is a fascinating dramatisation of a landmark 'long con' event in recent US history.
- Midnight Mass - Courtney and I were slow to pick up on this miniseries, but ploughed through it quite quickly. As well as being an effective horror miniseries involving vampires - a rare enough treat in itself - it's also a meditation on religion, how it's reinterpreted and corrupted, and how it impacts people, both for better and worse. Most specifically, it highlights what a simple thing it is for humans to twist what is ostensibly "the word of God" to benefit themselves.
- Fallout - While I'm not familiar with the games, the premise - retro-futuristic dystopia - was compelling enough to pique my curiosity. The three leads and sharp writing did the rest. It ran to just eight episodes, but it offered a bleak insight into the fractured world of today. As a result, it's possibly one of the 'wokest' TV shows around at the moment - hell, there's a non-binary character in several episodes, and they're just there, their gender identity isn't even mentioned, let alone being a significant aspect of the character, as portrayed - but the writing was of such a high quality, even when it threw all subtlety out of the window, that it was thoroughly entertaining even when it was pointing out exactly how fucked up everything already is, let alone how fucked up it could become in a few years' time.
- Penny Dreadful: City of Angels - we didn't finish watching the original three seasons of John Logan's Penny Dreadful when I first got it on DVD, mainly because Courtney lost interest (in retrospect, she suspects it may have been due to things going on in her life at the time), but the 2020 reboot sounded interesting, and we finally got round to watching the DVD in the summer. With a completely different, more contemporary setting (1938, rather than late 1800s), a story based around racial tension and so-called 'deviant sexuality' in Los Angeles, city politics, religion, and the insidious encroachment of the Nazi movement into the US, played out by a stellar cast (including Brian Dennehy, in one of his final roles), it was a fantastic watch. Not as gory as the original, nor as unremittingly dark, and my only complaint was the rather flattering implication that the Nazis were courting American students to help with their V2 rocket programme, when the reality of Operation Paperclip clearly belies that idea entirely. Then again, it also attributes an even greater threat to the same student, when a certain Professor Oppenheimer would likely have already had the necessary calculations in hand, just a few hundred miles up the coast. The ending is bleak and somewhat open (the series having been cancelled the month after it finished airing)... however, we enjoyed it so much, we agreed to revisit the original series. Seasons 1 and 2 were every bit as good as I remember them, but season 3 was new to both Courtney and I. It was clearly a little truncated, and there were obvious signs that the show could have continued - not least the newly-introduced characters, including Doctors Seward and Jekyll, and the lack of resolution for some of the original set - but it was, nevertheless, an intriguing take on some of the great literary monsters.
- Paramount+ - as usual, I'm a bit late to the party with this, but Courtney found the first couple of seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks available on Amazon Prime, so we gave it a look, and thoroughly enjoyed it. While I suspect Gene Roddenberry would be turning in his grave over some of the content, it presented a more honest and hands-down better iteration of Star Trek than any of the more recent live-action efforts. Toward the end of the year, she subscribed to Paramount+ and we ended up basically binge-watching Seasons 3 to 5. During this time, I realised this also gave us access not only to Strange New Worlds, but to the complete library of Trek movies, which we've been talking about watching since we finished TOS. We only got as far as the second TNG movie, Insurrection, but it was great to revisit all of them... even the not-so-good ones.
- Spooky Podcasts - Courtney effectively introduced me to the concept of podcast-listening a few years ago, with the likes of Levar Burton Reads, StarTalk Radio, My Favourite Murder, Criminal, Oh No! Ross & Carrie, No Such Thing As A Fish and My Dad Wrote A Porno. While I enjoyed all of these, the format took on a life of its own when I discovered original fiction podcasts, invariably of the spooky or sci-fi variety. A particular favourite was Spirit Box Radio, though I have to admit that I might not have looked into Hanging Sloth Studios' stories if I'd been aware of their LGBTQ+ slant in advance. That said, it would have been a hugely disappointing error on my part, had I presumed their stories were "not for me" for that reason alone. Other highlights include The Magnus Archives, Selene, WOE.BEGONE, Lost Terminal, Unwell, Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature, and, on a less spooky note, The Happiness Lab (a scientific approach to becoming happier, recommended by an old schoolmate of Courtney's) and The Allusionist.
- Unexpected Third Party reveals - with the massive decline in the quality of Hasbro's output over the last few years, Third Party figures have increasingly become the focus of my currently-meagre budget. This year, Unique Toys released Red Dasher, their awesome version of AoE Dino/Mirage, then presented not just their take on RotF Skids and Mudflap, but also a truly breathtaking interpretation of Stinger, followed shortly by an Optimus Prime from the first three movies, to complement their Challenger from 2018. Around the same time, TianYi - a company I'd never heard of before - revealed images and a stunning MPM-scale figure of RotF Sideways, matching the CGI remarkably well in robot mode, while also delivering an accurate-looking Audi vehicle mode. Rumours emerged later on that it had been cancelled but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. If it's of comparable quality to early knockouts like MetaGate's Haiku, there's plenty to look forward to, at a much better rate of bang-for-your-buck than anything Hasbro has to offer.
- The UK General Election - there was a sense that Fishy Rishi realised that there was no good reason to prolong the agony of his Prime Ministership to the end of the year, and that calling a General Election in the summer would mean he could fuck off on a good, long holiday earlier. Whatever the reason, it seemed unlikely that the Conservative Party would win, and the only real surprise was that it was such a huge landslide toward Labour. It remains to be seen what difference the change in Government will make in practical, everyday terms.
- Progress in Ren'Py - I've been working on a particular project since the summer of 2020 and, while I thought I'd found a decent artist a couple of years ago, the state of my finances slowed progress on the art for a couple of years, only for that artist to ghost me (more on which later). The good news is that, having found a new artist, with whom swifter, more assured progress was made, I was inspired to revamp the UI some more to better fit the amazing new character art, and figure out a shorter demo version of my Visual Novel that, with any luck, I should be publishing soon on itch.io.
- Rediscovering Sophie B. Hawkins - like most guys of my age who are aware of Sophie Ballantine Hawkins, I got into her music through her breathy, seductive anthem "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover", a whopping 32 years ago, and promptly lost track of her output around the time her second album came out. On a whim, over the Christmas break, I looked her up on Spotify and started listening to her material on shuffle... then dived into her background, including the fascinating bit of trivia that her mother is a writer - something of a 1960s/70s American Jane Austen - whose novels are both semi-biographical and satires of New York and Massachusetts 'high society' nobs. She originally published her first novel, Underwater, using the nom de plume 'Joan Winthrop', because her parents (understandably) didn't want their family name dragged through the mud. Coincidentally, Winthrop is the family name of both one of her forebears and a prominent character in my main Ren'Py projects...
- Christmas games with the 'in laws' - Courtney and I spent the Christmas break visiting her mum in Lincoln, as well as her sister and brother-in-law in Crewe, which included a card game session after Christmas Dinner. As if further proof were needed that Courtney and I share a brain, playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine which team of three would go first in one game, we chose exactly the same option about half a dozen times in a row.
- More work in the New Year - my regular two clients got in touch toward the end of the year, with the expected projects. One is a content refresh of the guidebook I put together this year, which is likely to be a fairly small job, and is only going to press in February, the other is the usual website material for an event. They seem to be rolling the deadline for this forward each year, with ticket sales going live in mid-January this time. Shouldn't be too taxing, though.
- TransFormers Retro G1 Gears - while the majority of Hasbro's G1 output has been either straight repaints of original G1 molds or the ongoing Generations lines, through Legacy to the upcoming Age of the Primes, the appearance of the first two Retro G1 figures managed to pique my interest. Given that the Missing Link figures are comparatively expensive for what they are, remixed versions of contemporary Generations toys with G1 toy-style heads is precisely what I've been wanting since the War for Cybertron series came out. Naturally, Hasbro fumbled Bumblebee, and left him with the animation-style head sculpt, but Gears looks pretty good. The Legacy version was an obvious pass for me, but it's amazing what having the 'right' head can do to improve a lacklustre mold. Will I actually buy it, though? That remains to be seen...
- More plaudits for this blog - back in mid-2019, I made it into Bots Vs Cons' Top 40+ TransFormers Websites list (#41 in a list of 42, presented "in no particular order"), but only found out about it early in 2020. Just a few days ago, trying to access this blog on my phone while out of town, I discovered that I'm #5 on FeedSpot's Top 20 TransFormers RSS Feeds. I've no idea who FeedSpot are or how significant this ranking is in real terms, but they've placed me above quite a few people I consider to be 'celebrities' in the TF community. Thus, it was a cool bit of news in the aftermath of a Christmas spent to-ing and fro-ing between London, Lincoln and Crewe, visiting Courtney's family.
Disappointments of 2024
- TransFormers 40th Anniversary - things got off to a curious start with the announcement of RiD2001 Omega Prime as the Haslab-funded centrepiece of the 40th Anniversary, not least because the original toy isn't even 25 years old yet. Hasbro also announced a "four-pack" which contained just two figures: one Voyager class figure, one Deluxe class figure, with two Targetmaster accessories. Not even the type that were referred to as 'Battle Masters' in the Siege toyline, these were the same simplified type that they included with Needlenose, largely because the Deluxe is a partial retooling of Needlenose. Amusingly, by the time it appeared on Hasbro Pulse, it was more correctly listed as a two-pack. Then you get toys like Legacy 'G1 Universe' Quake... and it becomes abundantly clear that Hasbro's designers have just stopped trying. It's supposed to transform into a tank, but it's just a brick - a retooling of the nonsense brick that was Legacy Skullgrin - with a few extra parts stuck on top to make it look a bit more like a terrestrial tank. A series of fan streams emerged during March, none of which showed anything that hadn't already been leaked weeks, if not months before, while new toys - such as the Cybertron universe Starscream - appeared on shelves without ever having been announced, let alone covered in a fan stream. In many ways, the Missing Link line felt like the best thing to come out of the 40th Anniversary, as well as being the most appropriate celebration, while Age of the Primes looks to be every bit as avoidable as Legacy.
- TransFormers One - For a movie released in the 40th Anniversary year, there was precious little celebration to be had in TFOne. I was nodding off repeatedly during the first half (as was my best mate) the first couple of set-pieces were dull and served no real purpose in the story, and none of the main four characters had much of a story arc. "Better than Bayverse" goes without saying. "Peak cinema" was blatant hyperbole, spouted by the elements of the fandom who clearly have precious little experience of good movies.
- Hasbro's SDCC Presentation - this gets a special, separate mention from the above because there were only two surprises, everything else seemed to be either repacks or material that's been widely known about for months. The Knight Rider collab is something I might have been interested in back in the 80s or 90s, and it hints at a potential Omnibot Overdrive in the future. The next GI Joe collab was only surprising because it's Kup rather than the rumoured Optimus Prime. Of no surprise at all was that it looks like crap.
- Studio Series #144 Hatchet - since I bought TLK Berzerker (aka knockoff Crankcase) and SS Crowbar, I feel a nagging inevitability about the much-delayed Hatchet toy. I already have the Commander class figure that (for no discernible reason) turns into a jet, but it would be nice to have the full set of three SUVs... even if all of them are rather lacklustre.
- Studio Series '86 Optimus Prime - while this was officially revealed at SDCC, images had been widely circulated earlier in the month. The trailer might be an improvement on the wobbly, undersized Earthrise box-on-wheels, but Prime himself is remarkable only in his mediocrity. Well, that and the crummy QC. On a similar note...
- Legacy United 'G1 Universe' Optimus Prime - how utterly fucking ridiculous, how absolutely creatively fucking bankrupt is Hasbro now that, in a line composed mostly of G1 reboots and G1-ifications of other continuities, they decide to release a cut-down reworking of Takara Tomy's Missing Link Optimus Prime as a standalone Deluxe class figure? Studio Series '86 had already presented what is effectively their latest-and-greatest G1 Optimus Prime as a Voyager class equivalent bulked up to the Commander pricepoint by its trailer and other accessories. They had already pumped out re-release after re-release of the Siege and Kingdom molds, not to mention a couple of different Core class options. They also re-released the original G1 toy for the umpteenth time this year. The toy based on the possibly-aborted Reactivate game came out this year, and was heavily G1-styled. Quite why they thought an undersized version of the G1 toy with better articulation but a miserly paint job was worth the plastic is anyone's guess.
- End of the Masterpiece line - while I lost interest in TransFormers Masterpiece when it switched over to animation accuracy in its robot modes, I was nevertheless saddened to see that Takara were planning to close the line with their Ginrai, with Super Ginrai moving to the new MPG line. The MP line started strong, and includes some excellent figures... but they really started to go downhill when the started aiming for animation accuracy, and it's not ending on a high note. Conversely, MPG started with a bunch of train-bots targeted squarely at the Japanese market and, in the west at least, Super Ginrai was considered a lacklustre follow-up.
- John Warden returns to TransFormers... and then gets laid off - Warden's return was initially billed has his becoming Director of Product Design for both TransFormers and GI Joe. The guy who gave us 10+ years of G1 reboot after G1 reboot and more recently presided over the stagnation of Power Rangers... So I immediately expected Legacy to be followed by another G1 reboot (or just more of the same), after Legacy turned everything else (bar Armada and some of Cybertron) into G1. Honestly, Legacy has been bad enough, the prospect of things getting even worse from 2025 onward is sounding the death-knell for my interest in official TransFormers merchandise. Never have I been more dismayed and enervated about the future of the franchise. Or so I thought. Bizarrely, toward the end of mid-October, it was announced that Warden was among another one hundred Hasbro employees to be laid off this year, following last year's layoffs, which occurred just days before Christmas. What are the odds that Chris Cocks will be giving himself a huge Christmas bonus for saving the company so much money in its 'streamlining' and a push toward purely digital content?
- Skybound/Image's TransFormers comics - from the outset, I was disappointed by the regression to the Marvel/Sunbow character model style, but the art quickly devolved into a style more akin to Sunbow as if drawn by a cocaine-snorting 13-year-old edgelord, with a story to match. There's occasionally some visual shorthand that can be amusing, if not genuinely clever - such as the scene of Optimus Prime running into battle, with the phrase "YOU KNOW THE SONG" plastered across the panel in place of an actual background - but the brutality of it is straight out of Bayverse, and the first dozen or so issues were been spent killing off characters left, right and centre, before they've even had a chance to really do anything or demonstrate why we should care. The craziest thing is how much of the fandom is lapping this nonsense up, proclaiming it to be better than IDW's run (which, admittedly, I barely read) and collectively jizzing in their pants when, for example, Optimus Prime single-handedly flips Devastator onto its back, because he's using a recognisable wrestling move. Of course, any criticism made about it causes the current band of noisy fans to get their knickers in a twist because, apparently, Starscream throwing up the horns and laughing maniacally while Devastator stomps on things is something that constitutes "peak fiction" these days, and any dissent will be summarily stomped on. Bizarrely, this somehow resulted in the TransFormers comic winning an Eisner award for its edgelord writer/artist, Daniel Warren Johnson.
- Dune Part 2 - I could potentially add Part 1 as well, since I only saw that on DVD a matter of days before seeing Part 2 in the cinema. As well made as both films are, some of the changes made to the story are as disappointing as they are confusing. I can understand omitting Harah, as she's a complication the story can do without... yet her presence would have offered a better look at the Fremen way of life than glossing over Jamis' death and getting Paul and Jessica accepted into the seitch than the combative approach they used. Furthermore, the way the end of Part 2 seemingly launches straight into a war against the Great Houses pretty much makes a mockery of nuanced politics of the books, bypassing both Paul's children and his sister's ascendancy. It also makes Chani seem extremely petulant, suggesting she has failed to grasp the meaning and strategic importance of Paul's marriage to Princess Irulan. I guess some sacrifices had to be made for the purpose of adapting the story into a trilogy of movies, but I don't agree with the choices made. The focus on the Bene Gesserit and the religious extremism angle, broadly analogous to modern day evangelical Christianity and so-called 'radical' Islam, isn't necessarily a bad move, but it has restricted the effectiveness of the adaptation, except perhaps as anti-religious propaganda. I also found smaller details to be hopelessly inconsistent, such as the Fremens' eye colour, which often looked no different from anyone else's due to the low lighting of scenes and the subtlety of the 'blue within blue' effect.
- Gladiator 2 (aka 'Gladiiator', apparently) - honestly not sure what I was expecting from this. I didn't bother with the first movie because, epic though it may have been, it just didn't appeal to me... Coincidentally, though, I watched the episode of Caravan of Garbage about it just days before my best mate invited me to see the sequel at a cinema in Ealing. I have to admit, I liked the story, and Denzel Washington put in a fantastic performance (as always), but in every other respect it was underwhelming. The lead actor, Paul Mescal, was a charisma vacuum (admittedly, he didn't exactly have much to work with) and some of the editing choices were bizarre. There's also the angle that having the movie's ostensibly sympathetic villain portrayed by an actor of colour is the latest example of a disturbing Hollywood trope, and it has me pondering how different the movie would have been had Washington instead portrayed General Acacius, with Pedro Pascal as Macrinus. The big question is, did anyone (other than Ridley Scott and the studio) actually want a sequel to Gladiator, 24 years after the original?
- 25th Anniversary of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace - re-released to cinemas for Star Wars Day (May 4th, for the uninitiated), this film caused me some existential angst because it's precisely half my age. It's also not aged well... While the special effects are easily still on a par with newer movies, and significantly better than some, the story and script are a mess that barely holds together, while Jar Jar Binks is a waste of screen time and budget... And I say that as someone who watched the first four Michael Bay TransFormers movies.
- Annihilation/The Southern Reach Trilogy - I didn't see the movie when it was released, back in 2018, and I hadn't read the books until this year. However, even what I remembered of the trailer suggested it was a very loose adaptation. So, having been utterly nonplussed by the books, I gave the movie a try with Courtney one weekend, and quite enjoyed it. Much like Under The Skin, it's a very different story to the book, with a very different (more consistent) tone, featuring only a small handful of similar story beats and a whole lot of artistic license. The happy ending is bizarrely anticlimactic, even after the dreadful anticlimax of the books... but then, it turns out the author published the fourth book in The Southern Reach Trilogy this year.
- Finishing Deep Space Nine and... Starting Voyager? - having finished Deep Space Nine, it was inevitable that we'd turn our attention to Voyager... but, three episodes in, we hit pause on the show simply because it offered nothing new. Episodes were formulaic, aliens were heavily derivative, the cast had nothing to work with and zero chemistry, and it failed to make the best use of its premise. It occurred to me in the very first episode that Neelix could have been put to better use simply by having the Universal Translator initially fail to identify any of the Delta Quadrant languages, and only able to offer barely adequate translations of some obscure language he tried out of desperation when he first encounters the Voyager crew. Tom Paris seems to be stating the obvious most of the time, and some of the crew assignments, once the Star Fleet and Maquis crews join forces, make no sense at all. We gave it a second chance in October and got through just six more episodes before looking for something else... anything else...
- Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series - as fascinating, trippy and unique though the follow-up series was, I found it every bit as frustrating as the original. 25 years have been skipped, and events from that period are only obliquely referred to toward the end of the 18 episode run. New characters are introduced (some being the children of characters from the original) who seem to have no real purpose in the overarching story that couldn't have been accomplished by other means. Returning characters present a small slice of their life that also has precious little to do with the main story, and seems to only barely connect with where they were at the end of the original series. Lynch is notorious for crafting movies and TV shows that are left open to interpretation, and for never explaining himself (not even to the actors!). I don't mind that, really, but I would have preferred to see a proper conclusion to the mysteries left hanging at the end of the original series, rather than piling on additional lore that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Much as I loved the experience of watching it - like gaining access of Lynch's dreams - the net result afterward was a sense of disappointment. Apparently, the showmakers were perfectly happy with this conclusion, so I suspect that's all there will ever be.... Though there was some talk in the early half of the year that David Lynch had ideas for a fourth season, so maybe not?
- Doctor Who - rebooted once again due to the new Disney deal, the show certainly looks more polished than ever before, yet the writing is not significantly improved over the appalling Chibnall era. The opening episode, Space Babies, was an interesting idea, executed very poorly through cramming it into a single episode, and through RTD's obsession with the 'humour' of bodily functions. The 'monster' looked like something out of the 70s version of the series, and only came across as well as it did through brief appearances in low lighting. I thought the Doctor came across as uncharacteristically mean-spirited by scaring the babies (and having a laugh about it) and by laughing at Ruby when she realised she was covered in snot. The second episode didn't to anything to change that opinion, though fans started speculating that the Doctor has found his way into a fictional universe, based on comments made in earlier series and some dialogue from the first couple of episodes... Not to mention the repeated fourth-wall breaks and the song and dance number at the end. Bizarrely, though, in a world where RTD takes a stand against disabled people being portrayed as evil (Davros no longer needing his life support vehicle), he still felt it was OK to have a drag queen as a villain? Steven Moffat's episode was far better, but came across like something written for Matt Smith and Karen Gillan rather than Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson. The following episode was a return to the nonsense, with a seemingly supernatural tale that actually wasn't, and followed no logic whatsoever, be it Sci-Fi, Fantasy or Horror. What I found most depressing, though, was the wave of 'fauxtraged' support for the new series where, just for example, a journalist for Metro's website featured an article with the - downright misandrous - view that Doctor Who was never 'for' straight, white men... characterising any and all complaints as the pathetic bleatings of racists and fragile 'alpha male' egos, rather than an expression of genuine concern from a fanbase dismayed at the direction the show has been taking over the last few years. This 'hot take' apparently led to Metro deleting their Twitter account. Doctor Who didn't upset fans because the Doctor became a woman, and it hasn't upset fans because the Doctor is now a gay black man... It upset the fans because the tone is inconsistent, while the writing is terrible, and pisses all over the long history of the show. The fans were equally upset by the portrayal of the first Doctor in the Christmas episode Twice Upon A Time, because it was a positively slanderous rewrite of his character and attitudes, just to make him the butt of some jokes. And that was Steven Moffat's swansong. That was before Chibnall, and before RTD's return. An old friend of mine reported that, having seen episode 2, his daughter (who had been a Doctor Who fan since the age of 5) was ready to give up on it. The only other halfway decent episode in the series was Rogue, co-written by a comedian I know of through her appearances on Questing Time. Saddest of all, almost any attempt at reasonable discourse invariably gets lumped in with the vocal minority of transphobic/homophobic/sexist/racist (and, yes, invariably white cis male) 'fans' and YouTubers, and gets ignored by those intent on steamrollering any and all complaints as being transphobic/homophobic/sexist/racist. That the stars of the show even engaged in the now-typical 'fan-blaming' just goes to show how much this has become a Disney property. It's no surprise considering how many internet pundits are characterising the situation as "viewers tune out/switch off due to woke content" rather than addressing the quality of the writing, perpetuating the idea that 'woke' is something new to science fiction television. The end of the short series - a mere 8 episodes - was disappointing, nonsensical deus ex machina (bringing death to death is bringing life?), and showed that fans generally have better theories about the story arcs than the writers. The two best episodes of the series were those not written by RTD and, much as I like Ncuti Gatwa's take on the Doctor (within the limits of the mostly abysmal writing), the fact that he spent so much time crying reminded me of similar issues with the equally poorly-written main characters in Star Trek: Discovery. The Christmas episode wasn't completely abysmal, but it took some cheap shots toward being a tear-jerker and, like the reasonable couple of episodes of the main series, could have been improved by having its story fleshed out and spread over several episodes... But that twist ending was the laziest, most unimaginative attempt to tie into Christmas out of all the NuWho Christmas episodes. Plus, I'd have to agree with the criticism that the Doctor had better chemistry with one-and-done characters Trev and Anita than with a whole season of Ruby Sunday.
- Cliffhangers - this is something of a general complaint about both TV shows and movies. As mentioned above, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse is just one example, and what led to this entry on my list, but there have been plenty of others. Several of the DC Comics TV shows ended a season on a cliffhanger, most frustrating when I reached the last DVD in the boxed sets I currently own. I understand why cliffhangers are used, but they are nonetheless annoying when one has to wait months, often a year, before the series continues. This is obviously mitigated by my habit of buying a series on DVD rather than watching it on television... but, when a show like the BBC's Ludwig sets up a big mystery right at the start, it feels overly-optimistic for them to deliberately choose to solve only a small fraction of it by the end of its six-episode run. Happily, season 2 has been announced.
- Reddit - many years ago, the great philosopher, Andrew Eldritch (aka the frontman of The Sisters of Mercy), described the internet as "text for people who can't read". Nowhere is this more true, I suspect, than on Reddit. In fact, one could extrapolate his sage words into "text for people who can't think", because the proportion of questions that get posted there - regardless of the topic - which could be more swiftly and usefully answered by a Google search is just mind-boggling. I joined Reddit a few years ago, and have only joined a handful of SubReddits. Any one of them can suddenly turn into r/AmItheAsshole because people seem to (a) have forgotten how to communicate in the real world and (b) believe they are the most important person in the universe. What bugs me the most, though - and this is 100% triggering memories of my job from about 10-20 years ago - is that, in subs like r/RenPy, there are people constantly post asking for 'advice', when what they really want is for someone else to do the hard work of learning and/or understanding the software for them, and preferably for free. In r/TransFormers, there was even one question about rub-signs from someone who, when directed to Toyhax.com for G1 rubsigns, asked Reddit if there were Beast Wars versions, rather than just exploring the site. Perhaps worse than this is the sheer number of people asking for advice in getting into a hobby, band, toyline, TV series, etc. And don't get me started on r/DnD...
- Crash Live - one of the other members of my local computer club kindly offered to give me a lift to the event if I bought a ticket and, since I'd been curious about Crash Live since its launch, I decided to take him up on the offer. The event was curiously muddled - rather than being fully Spectrum-centric, it feature myriad consoles, both old and new, and a space given over to PC gaming. The layout of the venue - a hotel - was a bit awkward, the main hall was crowded and noisy until later in the afternoon, but the talks I attended were great. I had a quick chat with a couple of the guests, but my overall impression of the event was underwhelming, and that it didn't really know if it was an expo or a commercial event... Not the sort of thing I'm likely to return to, unfortunately.
- Fishy Rishi attempts to resurrect BoJo's political career? - in mid-March, it was rumoured that PM Rishi Sunak was dragging his clownish predecessor back to campaign for the Conservative party in the areas of the North that traditionally vote for Labour. Not only was this ridiculous in that BoJo is precisely the sort of upper class twit the Northern Labour voters despise, it gave the impression that the Tories believe the UK population have a short memory, and must have forgotten the unmitigated disasters of Brexit, COVID-19 and Partygate. While Sunak was initially shooting down all rumours of yet another leadership challenge, he was reportedly "sympathetic" to the idea of stepping down as PM before the end of March. Of course, instead, he decided to call...
- The UK General Election - while it's certainly not a disappointment to be rid of the flagrantly self-serving, nonsense-spewing, economy-ravaging scum that was the post-David Cameron, Post-Brexit Conservative Party, the results of the election were still a disappointment. Labour gained most of the seats that the Tories lost, but this year seemed like the ideal time for the Liberal Democrats to make some serious headway by completely ousting the Tories and becoming the Opposition. Unfortunately, while they made significant gains, they nevertheless ended up with just a little over half the number of seats the Conservatives held onto. Had they managed to get just 50 more, they might have done it. Also, while many of the Tory cronies rightfully lost their seats, Sunak somehow managed to hang on to his and, worse still, Clacton elected the gurning worm-creature, and his odious party somehow convinced two other seaside towns and one inland to give his Reform UK party four seats in Parliament. Furthermore, some of the Labour Party's initial moves weren't exactly geared toward making the people happy, being exactly the sort of thing Labour are always criticised for.
- Zachary Levi endorsing Trump in the US Election - Courtney read one of his books this year, and was very surprised by this turn of events. She felt he came across really well in his writing, and found his 'spiritual' take on life "surprisingly compelling". Of course, the main reason for his self-professed "career suicide" was those most Christian of virtues, bitterness and entitlement. While I'd agree that it's unfortunate that Shazam didn't turn out to be a winning franchise, such a low-tier character was unlikely to ever catapult Levi into the big time, as he had expected, particularly while the DC film-making team were regularly producing ill-conceived clunkers. That James Gunn didn't want to keep him on (as Shazam, at least) is also sad... but nowhere near as crummy as the unceremonious death Taika Waititi wrote for him in Thor: Ragnarok. While he recognised his 2024 political endorsement could alienate him from Hollywood, Levi apparently said "What is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul in the process?"... sadly oblivious to the irony that this is exactly how some of his fans - myself included - will see his decision: attempting to gain what he feels he is entitled to, but has been unfairly denied, by selling his soul to a convicted felon, serial grifter and washed-up Reality TV 'star' whose only plan for America now is to line his own pockets as its vengeful god-king. Perhaps worse than that was his transparent post-election toadying, offering himself up for any service his new god deems him worthy of.
- The US Election - I mean... Wow... Just... Wow. It showed how broken the American 'Electoral College' system is when, back in 2016, Trump lost the popular vote by several million, yet still became president. This year's election was bizarre, though. After record levels of voter registration, he got only about 620,000 more votes than in 2020, the Electoral College gave him a huge victory, while Harris got just 3.5M fewer popular votes, which is much the same as the margin by which Clinton beat Trump in 2016. Clearly the Democrats ran a poor campaign, stooping to Trump's level as election day grew closer, by choosing ad hominem attacks rather than focusing on his ambivalence toward clear, coherent policy, and they would have lost either way, but the Electoral College system made his victory appear far more decisive than it actually was. Trump's cabinet appointments seemed like he thought the whole thing was Reality TV rather than, y'know, reality, with a TV host nominated for Secretary of Defence, and one of Trump's former presidential opponents appointed, along with Elon Musk, to the newly-formed 'Department of Government Efficiency'... And you just know that was Musk's idea, because it spells out 'DoGE', and manchild Musk is all about the meme potential. The concept of him overseeing any kind of 'efficiency' is laughable given his ravaging of Twitter. What's really crazy is that people only started educating themselves on the potential real-life impact of things like Trump's much-vaunted tariffs after the election, and the number of Redditors only now looking into who he is, what he stands for, and how government works is just mind-boggling. Worse still, apparently "how do I change my vote" was a trending search once he started announcing his cabinet picks. Too bad, suckers. You committed to another four years of him, and you'll be lucky if he's willing to give up the reins at the end. Trump kept reciting 'The Snake', yet none of his flock seemed to realise he was talking about himself all along. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so predictably pathetic. I'm curious to see if anyone dares suggest impeachment this time around, since he and Musk were already threatening their own party's senators, even before Trump takes office in January (leading a lot of the Democrats to start calling them President Musk and Vice-President Trump... but impeaching the President would leave them with... JD Vance.
- My girlfriend's job - Courtney quit her first full-time job toward the end of 2022, and her new job had initially seemed like a huge and positive change. However, during the course of 2023, she started to realise that some in her department were striving to do as little work as possible, instead spending their time complaining about colleagues... many of whom Courtney got on with very well, and who would start to specifically ask for her, by name, to collaborate with. She was despondent for months when her probation period got extended just before Christmas 2023, at a point when she'd expected to be confirmed... and then all kinds of red flags started to emerge in the first half of 2024. Her immediate manager is an old friend of the Head of Department and, despite having been there about a year longer than Courtney, was incapable of doing some of the simplest tasks the department was required to perform, even having been given clear instructions. In a training session for Adobe Premiere Pro - paid for by the organisation - he was one of three who questioned the purpose of the training, and who were then found to be lacking fundamental Windows skills. The reasons given for her probation extension were constantly changing and, frankly, bullshit. Her manager couldn't even be bothered to have examples to cite when he started talking about supposed shortcomings in her performance, then her behaviour, then her alleged failure to live up to the organisation's values. Her probation got extended a second time because she'd taken time off - at the insistence of her Head of Department - because she had a doctor's note signing her off due to stress, which she'd intended not to use. She was then told they'd clearly communicated at the last review that she should not take time off during the extension period. While she opted to work 'with' HR to avoid this sort of bollocks happening to anyone else, the experience soured her to the organisation, and she started looking for a new job, even after she was assigned a new (and vastly more competent, professional) manager - the closest thing to an apology and an admission of discrimination as we could reasonably expect. While generally more competent, the new manager nevertheless turned out to be unfamiliar with relevant policies, and communication was initially quite strained but, over the summer, HR admitted that Courtney's former manager had completely mishandled her probation, and the Head of Comms agreed to the mediation that the former manager repeatedly declined. This, however, turned out to be an unmoderated opportunity for her to once again blame Courtney for everything, and complain that mediation itself was a waste of her valuable time... So it's fairly obvious things aren't going to change dramatically.
- New leaks, caused by my landlord - during the early part of the year, the freeholder of my building visited the site unannounced, nosing about on the roof. Not long after, we had a roofing company up there, checking things out, seemingly for quoting purposes... but then, the very next day, they were back, and working on the roof. I queried this with the Managing Agents, and they explained that the freeholder had organised the installation of a tarpaulin over the entire roof, due to ongoing leaks from the roof into the other top-floor flats. Considering my flat has been leak-free since I got my section of the roof re-surfaced back in 2018, this seemed largely irrelevant to me... until the very next time it rained, and I started getting a leak again... The company that installed the tarpaulin didn't want to accept fault, in spite of the glut of evidence that the leak was the direct result of them screwing the tarps down to the roof. Naturally, I have asked the Managing Agents to at least attempt to ensure the freeholder takes no more unilateral action without consulting them, if not his leaseholders... I also asked for compensation, but I suspect I'd have to take him to court for that.
- Wasted time and money on an unreliable artist - a couple of years ago, I commissioned an artist to create a character sprite for a project I was developing in Ren'Py. It worked out so well that I went back to her at the start of the New Year for another couple of characters. We agreed on the scope of the job, as before, and I paid up front, as before... And then the artist went silent for a couple of months. They resurfaced just long enough to apologise and say they'd been bogged down in exams, before disappearing again. Another couple of months later, they started sending drafts of the new sprites for feedback, only to go quiet again after I gave the all-clear on the basic appearance and asked for an ETA on the expressions. I'd hoped to continue working with this artist at least as far as getting the first demo finalised, but the delays and piss poor communication soured the experience of working with her. Somewhat related, I started contacting other artists to prepare for the follow-up project. The first seemed promising based on an early sketch, but then didn't even invoice me, so that didn't go any further. The second did better, but wasn't familiar with the requirements, so the finished sprite had a few glitches. The third, found on Fiverr, delivered results so stunning, I decided to revamp the look of my project entirely.
- Selling off my Sega Saturn games - back in the 90s, I amassed quite a collection of games for the Saturn, most of which at knock-down prices after the end of the console's life. Of course, back then, no-one foresaw the Saturn's second lease on life as a 'retro giant', with something like four different options for ODEs, including two that didn't even require the CD drive to be removed. I've often said how ridiculous 'Collector prices' have become, but I'm more than happy to take advantage of them, since I can basically burn a CD-R of any game I sell, or just save up for one of the ODE options, and get them back digitally.
Predictions vs Reality
- Legacy part 3 is not the end of Legacy - While the announcement of a toyline intended to follow on from Legacy: United was broadly positive, the chosen name - TransFormers: Prime - raised a few eyebrows. To avoid confusion, it was later renamed to TransFormers: Age of the Primes. Even if John Warden hadn't been given the boot just months after returning to run the franchise, I'd fully expect that it wouldn't be anything worth collecting. With Hasbro shedding even more staff, company-wide, I'm expecting it to be a disaster.
- Further cuts to Studio Series - with the line extended beyond the '86 subline into both Gamer Edition and figures based on concept art, the quality of engineering and paintwork has suffered visibly, to the point where it just wasn't worth spending £50-odd on a Leader class figure that would inevitably get knocked off, upscaled and improved within months. The Voyager class version of Bumblebee movie Shockwave wasn't even as well articulated as the Core class version from a few years ago and, while the Concept Art Megatron looked excellent in robot mode, its two vehicle modes were clearly afterthoughts. Then the remixed Bumblebee movie Bumblebee toy emerged, and it still has an egregious backpack made up of car shell. Aside from the disappointing Concept Art Rumble, the last Studio Series figure I bought was TLK Hot Rod... from 2022.
- GI Joe Collaborative Optimus Prime will be a mess - perhaps it's a good sign that, instead of Optimus Prime, it was GI Joe Collab Kup revealed at the San Diego Comic Con. I'm still not holding out much hope, because these figures haven't been getting any better. Quite why they continue with designers only from the GI Joe team is beyond me...
- Hasbro to perform badly in the stock market - oooh wow. In the wake of the pre-Christmas layoffs at Hasbro/WotC, it was widely reported in the first week of 2024 that Hasbro stock had been cut quite substantially. The impression is that Hasbro's long-standing ambition - to be "an intellectual properties company that also makes toys" - has been backfiring spectacularly due to the piss-poor way they've handled their intellectual properties, coupled with their increasing reluctance to make toys of any reasonable quality, and sell them at reasonable prices. It was also observed that their attempts to become a producer of videogames wasn't helped by laying off the staff that dealt with the developers of Baldur's Gate 3 shortly after the game's release. The fact is, there are so many established publishers and developers of games that Hasbro would always be facing an uphill struggle to get into that market in any significant way, meaning their push toward electronic/digital products was hugely misguided. However, details of an interview with a former WotC employee soon emerged, confirming that this was the intention... because the toy arm of the company is apparently failing dramatically, even while rival toymaker Mattel is doing well. Thus, all the excuses about 'kids losing interest in physical toys' ring hollow.. Then you have the movies: 2023 brought us Rise of the Beasts, an underwhelming mess of a movie loosely based on a Hasbro toy property, with very little 'star power' to make up for the movie's narrative shortcomings... and Barbie, a successful, well-regarded, expectation-subverting movie based on one of Mattel's most prominent brands, pumped full of stars, and no doubt benefitting by the coincidental release of Oppenheimer, which led to the unprecedented, contrasting cinematic double-dip experience that quickly became known as 'Barbenheimer'. Considering the core concept of TransFormers - that of robots in disguise - has only really been explored in the 2007 movie (barely) and Bumblebee, the fact that more expectations were subverted by a movie based around a fashion doll, the most quintessential "girls' toy", just goes to show how poorly Paramount have handled Hasbro's IP, and what little interest Hasbro have had in exercising any quality control. On so many levels, it feels as though Hasbro, under the leadership of Chris Cocks, has been on a path toward self-destruction under a veneer of adapting to the economic climate. Mere days after this, photos emerged of the aftermath of a flood in China that hit one of Hasbro's warehouses. Granted, that was a supply issue for another country, but it's still going to hit Hasbro's bottom line in terms of spoilt inventory and lost revenue. Not even out of January, Kapow Toys - of all people - sounded the rallying call for a Hasbro boycott due to their daft preorder policy. In typical fashion, it was phrased in a way that reflected as poorly on Kapow themselves as it did on Hasbro - particularly the complaint that boils down to Hasbro Pulse being unwanted competition - though it nevertheless led to some online discourse. Personally, I've been boycotting Kapow (apart from buying a couple of Third Party items for which they were the exclusive UK distributor, at shows like TFNation) since my experiences of their confrontational customer service, so I can't muster a great deal of sympathy for them, despite completely agreeing with their broader point about pricing, and having my own objections to the quality of their current products. Then, near the end of the year, the news of a hundred new Hasbro layoffs, including John Warden, seemed to indicate that the company is headed for disaster, sooner or later.
- More Tory scandals - It didn't take long into the new year for people to start calling for 'Fishy Rishi' Sunak to resign. Not over scandals, as such, but he was called out during PMQs over his numerous failures, and his only response was his standard litany, that he was intent on "continuing to deliver on his promises to the British people"... basically ignoring the fact that his failures included his record on those very promises. Bojo was dredged up for the Tories' Election campaign, there were rumours that the UK might be leaving the European Court of Human Rights, and the enquiry into the Government's response to the pandemic concluded that it was appallingly mishandled. Very much a case of "No shit, Sherlock". Sunak limped on past the Election - which he resoundingly lost - and then the Tories had yet another leadership contest in which neither choice was particularly worthwhile. I suspect Kemi Badenoch's victory will be shortlived, as there are already Tories saying she's the leader "for the time being".
- Doctor Who will become ever more divisive - As with the Hasbro situation, above, this blew up quite quickly. With the new series airing in May, it was widely reported in January that Ncuti Gatwa might not be returning after his first season as the Doctor, though this seemed to be a misunderstanding and extrapolation of what he'd actually said. His first and second seasons were being filmed back-to-back, according to RTD, to ensure there was never a repeat of the year of David Tennant's tenure where there was no Doctor Who on screens, due to his other commitments. Gatwa stated in an interview that he didn't know what he'd be doing in the immediate aftermath of shooting his second season... but he has at least a year to consider other projects before he'd even need to return to shoot more Doctor Who. It may well be that he's leaving after his second season... but his comments don't really mean what some pundits have been suggesting. Moreover, there were rumours in the latter half of January that Millie Gibson was leaving after her first season - whether jumping or having been pushed was unclear - but it wouldn't be the first time an actor exited the series early due to behind-the-scenes issues. Whatever the story, it appeared that a new companion was to be introduced part way through Gatwa's second season, and RTD eventually insisted that Millie Gibson was sticking around. When the show aired, it was generally considered some of the worst Doctor Who so far - some saying it was actually worse than the Chibnall era - and that its 'wokeness' was insufferable.
Predictions for 2025
- Hasbro's plans to follow Legacy will be more of the same lacklustre G1 reboots - Age of the Primes will kick off with a blocky, ugly version of The Fallen from the Dreamwave comics, and I don't expect to see anything particularly exciting out of the rest of the line. The only vaguely interesting thing on the cards from Hasbro seems to be their Titan class Star Convoy... but I'll reserve judgement till they reveal images. The artwork looked like another variation on the low-effort Power of the Primes retool they put out under the Generations Selects banner back in 2019 but, thankfully, it is at least an entirely new mold. Almost nothing else revealed during their livestreams has been truly new, and what little new there was has been predictable.
- Hasbro will continue to push toward digital-only and AI-generated content - It's the ultimate cost-cutting exercise, but it's unlikely to do the company any good in the long run, as their fans and customers will leave in droves. Chris Cocks really seems intent on destroying the company by gradually laying off as many staff as possible, which is as far from 'efficient' as one could get.
- Leadership contests in UK politics - after a less-than-stellar first few months in office, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Kier Starmer falls victim to a vote of no confidence from his party. On the other hand, I will be surprised if Kemi Badenoch doesn't.
- Nigel Farage to quit the UK - now his 'friend' is getting back into the White House, I see no reason for Nigel Farage to keep up the pretense of being the MP for Clacton... That said, it's been rumoured that Edgelord Manchild will be funding Farage's play for power at the next election.
- More dangerous and divisive rhetoric from the US - it really says something about the self-styled "greatest country in the world" that such massive numbers of its people would vote to pour petrol all over themselves, their friends and families, believe they're doing the right thing, and laugh when they light a match. Amusing as it has been to watch them have their subsequent moments of clarity, it's unlikely to help them now. The repercussions for global politics - Europe, Taiwan and South Korea in particular - could be horrific... And, chances are, rather than even trying to be President, Trump will once again take to the golf course and continue to hold rallies and proclaim his own greatness as often as possible, allowing Edgelord Manchild, his VP and his cabinet to inflict some of the most heinous changes in law and policy upon the everyday people.
- Many battles being fought in US law - it was quickly pointed out that much of the rhetoric coming from the ultra-right-wing elements was unconstitutional... But Trump has already stated that he'd be in favour of "suspending" the Constitution if that let him do whatever he wants. Organisations have sprung up ready to counter and/or temper his more extreme decrees, but it remains to be seen how effective they will be against a man who presumes absolute authority and seems intent on remaining President for life, and a Supreme Court that has already granted him a degree of immunity. Funny thing is, I've been developing a suspicion that Trump was never the Republicans' real play: they wanted to use him to get back into power, and replace him as quickly as possible. Again, time will tell.
- Potentially more CEO deaths - For obvious reasons, I was reluctant to add the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson to either the Highlights or the Disappointments for this year, but I'd have to say the only surprise was that it took so long for something like this to happen. The US Healthcare system is not fit for purpose, with its ridiculous costs and 'insurance' companies that flagrantly profiteer by denying perfectly valid claims from their paying customers. That the Right-Wing Press condemned the murderer and tried to frame it as a Left-versus-Right issue came as no surprise to anyone. What was surprising - in a good way - was that it quickly became clear that this was something of a bipartisan watershed moment, with everyday folks all across the political spectrum realising that they had more in common with those framed by the Press as their enemies, than with this so-called 'murder victim', or with the proponents of outrage. One can only hope this situation continues to develop... though I suspect the incoming President will take a hard-line approach to dealing with it. He's certainly made no secret of the fact that's the plan. I sincerely hope the accused receives a fair trial, and gets the help he clearly needs... But, equally, a part of me hopes that others follow his example, and start a revolution over there. There was a funny meme going round, a photo of Edgelord Manchild looking pensive, captioned something like "when you spend a fortune trying to make America like Germany in the 1930s, but end up with France in the 1790s."
So, overall, looking back over the year, I'm inclined to view it positively on balance, but it's been very much a year of high peaks and low troughs.
As mentioned earlier, I've already started selling off my collection of Sega Saturn games, and I might end up selling some of the Wii games, not to mention some of the limited edition games for the various Playstations I've never owned. While I tend to agree with Courtney that it's good to recover some space in the flat (and it's certainly good to make some money while doing so), I have to admit that part of me is not entirely happy about it... even though I have the option to buy an ODE, and rebuild my collection once again without it taking up any space.
I said last year that I no longer consider myself an active collector of Hasbro's material, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. In fact, there's a good chance I'll be putting more of my collection on eBay in the New Year, out of sheer ennui. I don't foresee myself ending up with nothing but Third Party figures in my collection, but there are entire lines I could probably live without.It's a sad state of affairs that, for a TransFormers fan/Collector of 40 years, the brand no longer seems to want to offer anything new under the current leadership...
