That would be a good topic, and we’re recording a Cast today too.

2. Thank you. Yes, in a series you *can* develop more characters,thus have a larger central cast; 15 just seems entirely too much for my taste. I figure a good rule of thumb here would be to never have more central characters at one time than you would invite to a gaming table.

3. I apologize for broadening the scope of comparison when it didn’t really pertain to what you were discussing. You bring up a good point about precedence as an establishment of authenticity in pop culture. Actually, you may consider that for a show topic; Where in pop culture is innovation and change allowed/embraced and when is it unwelcome; what are examples of each?

2. Essentially agree. Vehicle voltron had a handful of main charaters with lots of side ones that served as comic relief at times, but would occasionaly get developement. It worked for GI Joe.

3. Im’ looking at Vehicle Voltron compared to Lion though. Not any of those others, though your point is valid. I wager that if car Voltron came out first it would be the same folk talking about gay lion Voltron being weird.

*Unlike the Lions which embodied primal, totemic forces that were being harnessed whose base recalled the mythic legends of Arthur, the cars were modernistic in their repetition of basic geometry and non-referential utilitarian design, the result of which a show that is as universal as it is alienating. (What? I have to put my overpriced college education *somewhere*)

*Less is more. Even when characters aren’t developed, when there are fewer of them, it’s easy to make them distinctive enough from each other so that at least they each can at least conform to a well recognized archetype; this leads to kids being able to connect to one or more of them; so it was with the lion pilots. When you triple that number what you get is a hodgepodge of people who can’t even serve in that capacity, I would even go so far as to say that the vehicles may as well have been autonomous drones who could trade empty one liners with each other like the onboard computers in Pole Position. Yes, that fact that there were more of them meant that they could be modular, but then, so is half the crap at IKEA. Yes, they could cover more types of terrain, but this only looks good on paper; sure if I were to randomly combine a nuclear sub, an Abram tank and a stealth jet, I would get something that seems fairly awesome, but in the end I’m still having to write stories that somehow explore all three and I think we all know what happened to Manamal.

*By becoming just another set of vehicles it ceased to have any distinctiveness as a franchise. OK, so they’re vehicles now, Just like Go Bots, Transformers, Airwolf, Blue Thunder, KITT, The cars from Pole Position, Turbo Teen, and later MASK and Centurions (who partially count), et cetera. They’re identity became another trend follower. Yes, I liked some of those other shows, certainly, I watched them all, but when you take what was different that you offered and you subsume it, why then should anyone care about *your* product any more?

So modernistic, superfluous and indistinctive; put them all together and you have a show that puts the Zune to shame.