The way I see, to add an element of realism to the story would have to include both the light and dark. Nobody walks around all serious all the time, we use our humor to break up monotony. Thats how the stories should be, more serious with no slapstick type humor just the normal everyday kind.

 

Things like Kicker kicking Ironhide all the time and Ironhide actually saying ouch was beyond stupid and not funny in the least. Human characters have to stop being portrayed as a bunch of drama queens on crack too.

 

Ditch the one long story arc and get back to the old ways of individual stories. It's really nice to be able to watch episodes that don't have to depend on seeing all of them to know whats going on. For those who like the epic story arc you can still drop subtle hints throughout each episode building up an epic conclusion that don't take away from individual episodes themselves. Think of a more compacted version of the Babylon 5 type of storyline. The epic part of the story could be saved for the last 5-10 episodes meanwhile the rest of them can stand on their own, that way everyone gets what they want.

:pfx :pfx :pfx :pfx :pfx :pfx

 

especially about the 'epic' storyline part.

I'd prefer to see darker storylines. After all, this is an intergalactic war, isn't it?

 

At the same time, I do enjoy the occasional bit of horsing-around. As well, I tend to dislike sorta "plot of the week" style writing, and find it to be often too redundant.

 

I'd really like to see a Transformers series written with the same kind of atmosphere as, say, Full Metal Alchemist. A serious storyline, but able to goof around sometimes, too.

Light,dark...I prefer realistic which, as said before, contains both. In most series they are fighting a war which has dragged on for a long time, so it's supposed to be a bit gritty with characters suffering under the continuous presence of war.

 

But it also needs lighter parts (comedy) to lighten the dark moments and to enable the character to go on.

 

 

As for the comment on the long story arc. I'm all for a large story arc, but it shouldn't be the main focus of the series. On occasion one or two episodes dealing exclusively with the main arc, then going back to single contained episodes in against the background of the larger arc.

 

The original comic was a lot like this and BW as well. (ST:DS-9 was like this as well.)

The best series series I've seen in terms of "realism" and balance were Buffy TVS, and The X-Files. They both had self contained epis, running story arcs, very dark epis, total humor epis, and most others were in between. That's what I'd like out of any series, esepcially TF.

I can take it in both extremes though I really like the tone of The War Within series, and ongoing G1 series. The darkest I have ever see Transformers is Marvels 1-12 Generation2 series. Really well scripted but the brutality, and carnage inflected against the characters is a bit much and uncomforting. G1 the cartoon, picked up a much darker tone following the movie, though some of it as with Season2 was hit and miss. Armada in apperence was kiddie and juvinile but some of the scripting was exceptionally dark. Two things that come to mind is seeing Megatron firing a hole straight through Smokescreen momentarilly killing him, and the Megatron/Starscream rivalry went well beyond what was established in G1. Rid is as light and silly as any series could get, if not for the Predicons, but for Side Burn always chasing around the same woman in the red sports car, and for a Shakespererian voice acting Skybite. Rid was a lot of fun, but I prefer the darker more realistic themed Transformers and have yet to see a series developed with the tone incorperated in the ealy 90's Bat Man, and Gargoyle series, both of which I am a huge fan of.