New Animorphs Television Series Discussion: Season Breakdown

[TobiasMasonPark]

     I know, I know, this topic has been done over and over and over. And I also realize that I myself have partaken in this discussion a billion times or so.

     But I want to have an actual lengthy discussion about the show. I'm talking art styles, scripts, structure of the seasons, the old voice-over/live action debate...All that stuff. I think this is a chance for the brilliant minds of RAF to get together an brainstorm. Think of it as a little project for us all.

     I'll start with the structure of the seasons for the show.

     I think the major problem with the TV series--other than the budget and the writing-- was how the seasons were structured. After the Invasion episode(s) aired, the whole thing was kind of sloppy. One minute, we'd be watching [some] of the plot from the underground, and the next week we'd be seeing the Capture. And then there were those non-canon episodes that were more enjoyable than any of the [slightly] canon episodes. Also, the season finale was just terrible. The reason we get hooked onto a show--the reason we start watching it, and the reason we keep coming back every season-- is the Premiere and the Finale! If you don't have a decent one, you may as well get to work on another attempt at an adaptation of a children's book--like Goosebumps.

     Alright, each season should follow a certain theme of sorts. Let's look at Smallville, for example. Whether you think it's a good show or not is irrelevant. I've noticed that there was a certain formula to the show. Season one: Clark is starting out as a kid, trying to live a normal life while saving his town from kryptonite-renegades. And, as each season progresses, Clark becomes more aware of his fate as Superman. Sometime after Five and Six, Clark realized this fate and starts the whole saving the world business.

     Animorphs should more or less follow this in the show. I think season one needs to focus on the themes of family, friendship, loneliness, isolation and innocence. We see those themes in the first ten books at least: The Invasion, the Visitor, the Predator, and the Stranger for family and friendship, the Encounter and the Alien for loneliness and isolation, in addition to the search for identity. This season should also focus on the kid's struggle to 1) keep their identities as the Andalite bandits a secret, 2) juggle saving the world with things like school and family, and 3) and getting used to their powers. Season One is NOT, in my opinion, ready for the ethic and moral dilemma that we see later on. But we need to cut the first season at a point where the kids have gotten used to their powers, begun to realize their place in the world, and have made some sort of breakthrough that is exciting enough to keep us watching until the next season.

     Here is my ideal first season for this series:

     1) The Invasion (Part One and Two)
     2) The Visitor
     3) The Encounter
     4) The Message
     5) The Predator
     6) The Capture
     7) The Stranger
     8] The Alien
     9) The Secret
    10) The Android
    11) The Forgotten
    12) The Reaction
    13) The Change
    14) The Andalite's Gift (Season Finale)

     Breakthrough: The kids have developed enough to continue their journey as adults, not children--yet they still have some growing up to do. Tobias is back in the game, with morphing powers and his human body. And the biggest breakthrough made is the Hork-Bajir valley. This may not be too exciting, if you're expecting the season to end with a battle, but I think it's enough. I think the ending of the Change is perfect: Tobias revealing his newly acquired body to Rachel.

     Now we have the Premiere of Season Two. A lot of good stuff for this season: David, mainly, and a lot of moral and ethical dilemma. The series, should it last this long, has matured enough for it. The question now, is how do we start of the show? Surely, we can't start with the Unknown...I mean, really...A Cassie based episode to start off the season? No. That won't do. This is the very tricky part of envisioning an Animorphs show--Seasons Two and Three. The books between 13 and the David Trilogy are a bit on the dull side--in MY opinon (feel free to disagree). Perhaps the solution here is to start with a non-canon episode that is well written and exciting enough to keep viewers interested...

     Of course, there's also an alternative that I am in favour of. Instead of keeping the David Trilogy as...well, a trilogy, we expand it. Now, this can go on for the entire season, or it could end sometime in the middle. Either way, David would be in the opening credits (feel free to discuss this [the opening theme/credits] as well!). This would give us a chance to see David in more missions than he was given, and also gives us a chance to see some personal growth. I always felt that David was too 2-dimensional in the series. We never really go to see his side of things. This alternative approach to the TV series might just convert a few of the haters.

     Anyways...Because it's difficult to plan out the second season, we'll leave the layout this way:

     14) The Unknown
     15) The Escape
     16) The Warning
     17) The Underground
     18) The Decision
     19) The Departure
     20) The Discovery
     21) The Threat
     22) The Solution
     23) The Pretender
     24) The Suspicion
     25) The Extreme
     26) The Attack

     Breakthrough: The kids are older, wiser and better at what they do. They're used to their morphs, and they've had their drawbacks (David). We see a lot of growing up and ethics in this season. The best way to end this is with the Attack. Crayak is introduced, and we learn more about that Ellimist guy from episode seven. It also opens up the theme for the next few seasons: free will vs determinism.

     Season three is less tricky than season two, because there are a lot more interesting things to see. We've got the idea of a Hork-Bajir rebellion, the strange case of two Rachels, the Torture of Tobias, the Yeerk Peace movement, and some more development for the Chee. The problem here is where to end the season. I think it's best to end sometime before Taylor returns. We want the books between the early forties and 54 to have their own season. This means that, excluding filler and non-canon episodes (as well as Chronciles and megamorphs episodes) Animorphs will have four seasons; five at the most.

     Animorphs 27: The Exposed
     Animorphs 28: The Experiment
     Animorphs 29: The Sickness
     Animorphs 30: The Reunion
     Animorphs 31: The Conspiracy
     Animorphs 32: The Separation
     Animorphs 33: The Illusion
     Animorphs 34: The Prophecy
     Animorphs 35: The Proposal
     Animorphs 36: The Mutation
     Animorphs 37: The Weakness
     Animorphs 38: The Arrival
     Animorphs 39: The Hidden

     Breakthrough: This is a mostly an opportunity to see personal growth in our friend Marco. We see the themes of identity, war, some family, and what it takes to be a leader. This may be the season that ends in a canon episode, more than anything. Either we end with an episode somewhere after book 43, or before 39. I doubt anyone would want to see a season premier that deals with the buffa-human. We need something exciting to end an exciting season.

     Season four and five (because I don't know if these would be separate at this point) is where we get to the really exciting stuff. This is the freaking series finale! It gets darker, harder decisions are made, and the group has reached the point where there is literally no going back. Despite being sixteen, they are not children, but soldiers. If only they could start off the show with this season, eh? That would keep just about anyone going. I mean, we'd gladly sit through gems like the buffa human incident just to get to this season! We've got Tobias' torturer returning, David's back, Jake grows a beard, Marco gets his mother, we get a lesson in civil wars of America, and Ax almost blows up California...And yea, themes, personal growth...All that stuff.

     Animorphs 40: The Other
     Animorphs 41: The Familiar
     Animorphs 42: The Journey
     Animorphs 43: The Test
     Animorphs 44: The Unexpected
     Animorphs 45: The Revelation
     Animorphs 46: The Deception
     Animorphs 47: The Resistance
     Animorphs 48: The Return
     Animorphs 49: The Diversion

     I think the diversion is an excellent way to end the season. The Yeerks know who the Animorphs are now. The war is about to be exposed. I imagine this being a two parter, actually; with the season premier of season five being part two. I can just see the ending line to part one: "They know we're human."

     And, of course, Season five ends with what we're given in season five.

[Zero_Messiah]

Season five can just be a tv movie where the final four books are combined into one never-ending show. Think the ending of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Also, i think there should probably include the Megamorphs series as mini-arcs. After book 7, you'd get the Veleek episodes (lasting one or two or three eps) before  heading back into 'the change'.

[NateSean]

               Here is my ideal first season for this series:

     1) The Invasion
     2) The Visitor
     3) The Encounter
     4) The Message
     5) The Predator
     6) The Capture
     7) The Stranger
      The Alien
     9) The Secret
    10) The Android
    11) The Forgotten
    12) The Reaction
    13) The Change

Agreed. Only to keep the series from being episodic (as in a reset button at the end of every episode), certain events should overlap. For example, during the first three "episodes", we should continuously flash to Ax every now and again so that in book four the viewing audience is sympathetic towards his cause. Sort of like how Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we kept getting glimpses of Angel in season One, up until we finally learned his true backstory and how he would fit into the universe from then on out.   


           

    Anyways...Because it's difficult to plan out the second season, we'll leave the layout this way:

     14) The Unknown
     15) The Escape
     16) The Warning
     17) The Underground
     18) The Decision
     19) The Departure
     20) The Discovery
     21) The Threat
     22) The Solution
     23) The Pretender
     24) The Suspicion
     25) The Extreme
     26) The Attack

Agreed again, however, I disagree about the Cassie bit. Weak season openings aren’t unusual, but with some careful planning you could make “The Unknown” more ambiguous. I mean, for all we know, David didn’t start school the very day before he found the blue box. He may very well have begun class on the day the Animorphs go out to find Zone whatever.

So as Cassie and company are out in the fields of horses, David’s family moves in. Viewers don’t know who he is yet, but we readers of the series will be familiar with him. Chapman, who is in charge of the Sharing and the default second-in-command, is laying the groundwork for the plan to infest the foreign diplomats and we see Erek and a few other Androids listening in on this. And that’s “The Unknown”, because the Unknown isn’t just the alien space toilet, but the threat that David poses will also be Unknown, as well as which of the diplomats is actually controlled by a Yeerk. (On a side note, if I’ve heard the word “yeerked” at any point during this series run I will hunt down the writers responsible and tack their eyeballs to a tree)

Animorphs 27: The Exposed
     Animorphs 28: The Experiment
     Animorphs 29: The Sickness
     Animorphs 30: The Reunion
     Animorphs 31: The Conspiracy
     Animorphs 32: The Separation
     Animorphs 33: The Illusion
     Animorphs 34: The Prophecy
     Animorphs 35: The Proposal
     Animorphs 36: The Mutation
     Animorphs 37: The Weakness
     Animorphs 38: The Arrival
     Animorphs 39: The Hidden

Here I would recommend overlapping the events of The Experiment with the Sickness. Maybe imply that whatever experiment Ax was exposed to while in monkey morph was what lead to his sickness. Whatever the Yeerks were doing could have been the reason he got ill and why it spread to the humans, who were the intended target of the experiment to “numb” human free will.

[TobiasMasonPark]

     You see? This is what I love about RAF! Fans with brilliant ideas! The show should be in the hands of these people, I swear...Though, I'm not necessarily saying that I should be the one to do the show I'm just saying the Rafians are brilliant.

     I think a holiday episode would be great, especially for Christmas. Now, the point here would not be to force Catholicism on the audience, but to allow the audience to see how the Animorphs would function during the war. Mostly, focusing on Tobias and Ax, maybe even Erek and how isolated they feel at this time of the year. And, yet, despite this lonliness, the group learns that they will always have each other. I think the episode should end with either a shot of the Animorphs having Christmas (holiday, in Rachel's caese) dinner with their families, or the four main Animorphs and their families having dinner at Jake's house.

[NateSean]

I wouldn't say Erek is isolated as such. He has the entire Chee network, plus his supporters. A Christmas episode would be nice though. The best episodes of Buffy, in my opinion, were the ones that centered around the holidays. They always seemed to be the focal point of all of the previous episodes, which was a great subtitute for a clip episode. (Again, proving that Joss was a genius)

Religion doesn't have to play into it at all. Or if that becomes a squeamish subject, you could just drop hints to the coming of Christmas by having the school decorated in festive colors. Maybe throw in referneces to Hannaka, etc.

[TobiasMasonPark]

     Script for pilot of season one in planning stages. There's a topic about it in the RAF Projects thread. Mostly posted here to bring the topic back to page one, saving me trouble of looking through topics again.

[Darth Revan]

I like the TV movies idea. Air them between the seasons to keep people satiated, waiting for the new season to start.

The only problem with MM1 airing after The Change is that Tobias can't morph in MM1. MM1 takes place after book 7. Unless MM1 is aired like a regular episode of course. Perhaps we should have the Megamorphs in the regular series; but have the Chronicles as between season movies. First Andalite Chronicles, then Hork-Bajir Chronicles, then Visser, then Ellimist Chronicles.

They could even film the Alternamorphs as interactive webisodes that the viewer gets to choose events.

[TobiasMasonPark]

     I only chose Megamorphs 1 to follow the Change because it seemed like a good season finale.

     I'd like to come up with additional original episodes, as well.

[Darth Revan]

Yeah; but it'd have to be rewritten to incorporate that Tobias can now morph. 'Cause one of the coolest moments is when Tobias grips a dracon with a talon and blows up a ship with a single shot through the bridge. It wouldn't as impressive of a moment if Tobias could just morph to something that can grip the gun and shoot.

[TobiasMasonPark]

     That was the encounter, wasn't it?

[Darth Revan]

Was it? I thought he did that in MM1.

[TobiasMasonPark]

     Yea. He blew up the Truck ship that held all the water from some valley in the mountains. The conflict in Megamorphs 1 was settled by Cassie morphing a whale and landing on the Valeek. Or whatever it was.

     It was the same move recycled in the Prophecy and the Hidden

[Cloak]

Actually it was pulling the Valeek down into the water, she didn't land atop it . . .

But I think this is a good idea -- getting a decent television series.  Granted the tv series is the thing that got me into Animorphs . . .

Sorry that I won't have much to contribute here, I don't know much about this kind of stuff.

[yeerkkiller]

Great idea for a tv series Empress Goose. I would definatly watch that.

[Ginkasa]

Lookin' good.  Lookin' good.  Personally, I would prefer to do things a little differently (not to disparage your thoughts; just giving my own $.02).  Because the series is meant to take place over a 3ish year period, I would keep the series restricted to three seasons.  It also would allow the show to have three full 20ish episode seasons using just the books.  I wouldn't inherently be opposed to completely original episodes, but that would probably require extra seasons.  Also, for the sake of simplicity, I wouldn't mess around too much with the order of the books.  The Megamorphs would probably be split into two part episodes.  The Chronicles books as well, with the exception of The Andalite Chronicles which would probably require three episodes.  I would probably be nice to have those multi-parters aired at once as mini TV movies, and then separated in re-runs and syndication.  So, this is how I'd break it down:

Season 1:
1) The Invasion
2) The Visitor
3) The Encounter
4) The Message
5) The Predator
6) The Capture
7) The Stranger
The Andalite's Gift pt. 1
9) The Andalite's Gift pt. 2
10) The Alien
11) The Secret
12) The Android
13) The Forgotten
14) The Reaction
15) The Andalite Chronicles: Elfangor's Journey
16) The Andalite Chronicles: Alloran's Choice
17) The Andalite Chronicles: An Alien Dies
18) The Change
19) The Unknown
20) The Escape
21) The Warning
22) The Underground
23) The Decision
24) In the Time of the Dinosaurs pt. 1
25) In the Time of the Dinosaurs pt. 2 (season finale)

So, kind of a long first season, but if you air the multi's together as "events" then it cuts it down to 21 "episodes."  I cut it off at this point because I like how, this way, the first season is more about the Animorphs, as Goose said, still being children.  These episodes would feel more like fun adventures with morphing.  Sure, they're still fighting a war.  Yeah, lives are still a stake.  And, okay, there are still a lot of real emotional developments.  However, its still a lot lighter than the series will become.  I chose Megamorphs 2 as my season finale because its a really big, really fun adventure which, like I said, is kind of the tone the series should have in this first season.

Season 2:

26) The Departure
27) The Discovery
28) The Threat
29) The Solution
30) The Hork-Bajir Chronicles pt. 1
31) The Hork-Bajir Chronicles pt. 2
32) The Pretender
33) The Suspicion
34) The Extreme
35) The Attack
36) The Exposed
37) The Experiment
38) The Sickness
39) Elfangor's Secret pt.1
40) Elfangor's Secret pt. 2
41) The Reunion
42) The Conspiracy
43) The Separation
44) The Illusion
45) The Prophecy
46) The Proposal (season finale)

So, a shorter season this time.  I like The Departure as season opener.  Its a little quiet, but I think Cassie's reservations regarding her role in this one lead off well from her action's in Mega #2.  I also like how it would swiftly introduce the idea of "good guy" Yeerks to the season.  Although they regrettably didn't play much of a role in the series as written, it really sets the tone as more serious and philosophical, and introduces more moral quandaries to the series.  Of course, we follow it quickly with the David trilogy.  I like the idea of David being introduced earlier as something of a side character, but care would have to be taken to make sure not to paint him as a "villain" type early on (otherwise, why would the Animorphs even think of recruiting him?).  As for the season finale, its obviously not an action packed finale and not even that great of a book (although it could be improved for television).  I picked it because not only does it have that great cliffhanger at the end, but it also serves the purpose as being setting the events of the final season as revolving around Marco and his mom.

Season 3:

47) Visser pt. 1
48) Visser pt. 2
49) The Mutation
50) The Weakness
51) The Arrival
52) The Hidden
53) The Other
54) Back to Before pt. 1
55) Back to Before pt. 2
56) The Familiar
57) The Journey
58) The Test
59) The Unexpected

I want to pause here a second for a couple of reasons.  First off, I think the season starts out great with Visser.  It leads off great from the cliffhanger from last season, sets up the events that will bring the series to a close, and I think the unconventional start will catch the "new viewers" who hadn't read the books by surprise.  I think it'd work well.  Unfortunately, I'm really disappointed in the quality of the episodes afterwards.  The Mutation is my least favorite of the books, and I think an absolutely horrible first "traditional" episodes to the season (especially the final season).  I would want to make this an original episode that wasn't horrible (or maybe switch it with an earlier Jake episode or something, at least).  Also, just the episodes leading up to #45 wouldn't be that great either.  A lot are silly and don't really serve much of a purpose.  I wouldn't mind re-working them while keeping the same basic plot to better fit a grand plan.  Either way, I could imagine there being a mid season break right here.  The pause could be long enough to air the entire series again, in order and on an accelerated schedule, to hype everyone up for the final stretch.

60) The Revelation
61) The Deception
62) The Resistance
63) The Ellimist Chronicles pt. 1
64) The Ellimist Chronicles pt. 2
65) The Return
66) The Diversion
67) The Ultimate
68) The Absolute
69) The Sacrifice
70) The Answer
71) The Beginning

And that would be that. 

In general, I would also expect there to be general changes to hopefully improve the overall cohesiveness of the universe.  A better defined Yeerk and Andalite culture.  Greater follow up on plot points that were mostly ignored in the series as written (Yeerk Peace Movement, Yeerk invasion of the Andalite homeworld).  There should also be smaller changes to tie the episodes closer together (such as the previously suggested idea of introducing David earlier).  Also, I wouldn't be opposed to re-arranging some episodes and altering some plots, so long as there was a legitimate good reason behind it.