BCP Interview – Eric Calderon talks TRANSFORMERS: COMBINER WARS
Episode one of “Transformers: Combiner Wars introduced us to Windblade.
The second episode sees the council deciding to use the Enigma of Combination to create an army of Combiners in order to fight the other Combiners. In today’s episode, we find out what drives Windblade as she faces off with a familiar character.
The Big Comic Page had a chance to sit down with the series creator Eric Calderon and talk about the future of the Combiner Wars and the introduction of the all-female combiner “Victorian” to the series.
BIG COMIC PAGE: The G1 movie is very important to me. Can you talk about the tone of the show and whether we will see familiar characters fall and new characters rise to the occasion?
ERIC CALDERON: Hmm… Let me answer it this way. I agree with you the original G1 tone was so important to our history with Transformers. So what we tried to do in “Combiner Wars” was retain some of the emotional consequence of action. And so things matter and things change as the story goes, and that’s what makes this an adult cartoon in a way. But we were very careful too. We didn’t want to make something so dark, dark, dark that it’s this post-apocalyptic video game. We wanted to make sure there was levity and lightness, especially when characters who have known each other their entire millennia react to each other it’s kind of like an old family conversation so it’s kind of jokey, and it’s angry and it’s deep. Um but yes we’re very familiar with that G1 tone and we tried to keep it as much as we could. OH and there is a very big G1 Easter egg in episode four.
BCP: You mentioned a quote by Gareth Edwards about daring to do something new or risky. What is it that you guys are bringing to the table to push the series in a new direction?
EC: What we try to do with ours is be more emotionally complex. When people think adult, sometimes they just think of violence, blood and gore that doesn’t make an adult series. What does make an adult series is an emotionally complex story with dimensional characters. So what I wanted bring is Megatron is complex, Optimus Prime is complex, Windblade is not one dimensional so as we go through the story we’ll have very sophisticated story ideas and sophisticated visuals.
BCP: During the panel, you guys talked about how Transformers is on multiple platforms. Are there any plans to either continue the series through epilogues similar to the preludes or even a spinoff?
EC: “Combiner Wars” is a digital series and the preludes were a build up to help educate the audience. That’s kind of up to Hasbro and Machinima if there’s more outside of that, but for right now. Let’s just enjoy the combiner series animation before we talk about all the other stuff like spinoffs. But the story is a very self-contained story.
BCP: As a fan, how long have you had these stories kicking around in your head?
EC: Transformers has been close to me since I was 14-15 years old. So I’ve had many stories that have always played in my head. And with the short 40 mins, I tried to put all I could dream up in that. But as you know, storytelling is a discerning process. You have to remove fan service and only put in what is essential to storytelling.
So um gosh I guess I didn’t really answer your question. But some ideas were very quick and we did have so many other ideas we wanted to put down but it’s a 40 mins storyline so it has to be very streamlined.
BCP: This is more of a fan question, Does Soundwave make an appearance in Combiner Wars?
EC: He will not make an appearance in Combiner Wars. Sorry. Yeah I love him too.
BCP: Victorian comes off a bit utilitarianism, can you talk about her character and her motivations?
EC: As F.J. said we wanted to create specific ideas for all the combiners and Hasbro had all these great explanations already. People have been reading it that way, but I really see Victorian as a paladin or a Valkyrie. You know when a character is immaculately conceived almost heavenly by the Enigma of Combination – she wasn’t built by Wheeljack or built in a factory – she has a divine sense of entitlement, which isn’t villainous necessarily.
To be a super nerd about it, it’s lawful good. And when a character is lawful good, you firmly believe in your mission and her mission is good. She does want to save the galaxy, she does want to stop the Combiner Wars. That’s a warrior.
And those warriors don’t have doubts or second guess themselves or even have humility. They are there to protect the universe and that’s what she’s all about, so I don’t actually think of her as a villain at all.
BCP: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us and creating this series.
EC: No problem it’s was my pleasure.
Make sure to catch “Transformers: Combiner Wars” exclusively on Go90 (in the US only) every Tuesday at 9:00 am est.
The writer of this piece is: Laurence Almalvez
Laurence tweets from @IL1511
BIG COMIC PAGE 
Honestly feel a little bad for these guys; this show isn’t good at all and a good number of Transformers fans who have seen it have called it the worst Transformers show ever produced. Wonder what went wrong behind the scenes?