Cliffjumper wrote:The one thing that occurs to me is that Dark Awakening and TRoOP were, IIRC, subcontracted to different studios (AKOM and Toei respectively, IIRC). It's possible the episodes were produced more or less at the same time, or at least near enough that neither saw each others' work - Toei could have been working from a rough script of Dark Awakening rather than finished animation, for example; turnaround would have been pretty tight, there can't have been much more than a month between air dates and there were a lot or rush jobs in Season 3 (hence the noticeably large proportion of AKOM episodes).
I cant deny the probability of your production date theroy since I dont know the dates the episodes were produced, but I dont find it likely give the episodes air dates.
Also, were you suggesting that the air dates for "Dark awakening" and "TRoOP" were a month apart?
If so....
Dark awakening first aired on 10/1/1986
TRoOP first aired 2/24/1987
My bad, for some reason I thought they were on a daily schedule still then...
But I do suspect it was something like that... Season 3 seems to be riddled with budgetary and/or production problems, and probably weren't in the sort of position where redoing either the end of DA or the start of TRoOP were viable once the animation had been done in the first place.
Second-hand stuff I half remember reading somewhere is that Toei got badly behind for some reason and a chunk of episodes were sent to AKOM to do catch-up (and then Call of the Primitives and IIRC parts of Money is Everything were sent to a third studio), hence the patchwork of animation styles... So it's possible Toei were plodding away on TRoOP and their other late season episodes while AKOM tore through the balance.
Cliffjumper wrote:My bad, for some reason I thought they were on a daily schedule still then...
They were.
Dark awakening was episode 8 of season 3
TRoOP were episodes 29 and 30 of season 3.
But I do suspect it was something like that... Season 3 seems to be riddled with budgetary and/or production problems, and probably weren't in the sort of position where redoing either the end of DA or the start of TRoOP were viable once the animation had been done in the first place.
Second-hand stuff I half remember reading somewhere is that Toei got badly behind for some reason and a chunk of episodes were sent to AKOM to do catch-up (and then Call of the Primitives and IIRC parts of Money is Everything were sent to a third studio), hence the patchwork of animation styles... So it's possible Toei were plodding away on TRoOP and their other late season episodes while AKOM tore through the balance.
Cliffjumper wrote:My bad, for some reason I thought they were on a daily schedule still then...
Don't forget American TV seasons don't run straight through but get broken up by repeats, so there'd be an episode on every weekday day but not necessarily a new one (though Transformers seems fairly unique in sticking whatever the current title sequence is on reruns, hence some DVD's having season 1 shows with the Omega Supreme credits or Five Faces with the normal season 3 ones).
inflatable dalek wrote:Don't forget American TV seasons don't run straight through but get broken up by repeats, so there'd be an episode on every weekday day but not necessarily a new one (though Transformers seems fairly unique in sticking whatever the current title sequence is on reruns, hence some DVD's having season 1 shows with the Omega Supreme credits or Five Faces with the normal season 3 ones).
Another thought on the production side of things... I think it's a fairly good bet that Dark Awakening was already very far along the road to completion before the film was released, because I think if they'd been in a position where they could easily have abandoned or drastically altered it once they realised the problems killing off Prime in the first place would cause they would have.
TROOP on the other hand was expressly commissioned as a reaction to the negative feedback on the movie and, depending on how quick the turnaround was, possibly even to the fall in viewing figures that early season 3 shows received. So I'd say there was likely at least a small gap between the first being finished and the animation on the second being started.
Though of course that still doesn't mean the different studios had much co-operation, it was really Sunbow's job to make sure inter episode visual continuity matched up and even in a smoothly run year the end of the season is where deadlines start to get on top of American TV shows.