Talk:The Big Broadcast of 2006 (issue)

There's no exclamation point in the title of my copy. Was it added for a later printing? It should move to "The Big Broadcast of 2006 (issue)" otherwise. -- Repowers 02:30, 28 June 2009 (EDT)

US continuity "errors"

The errors section added for US continuity was unnecessary.

Rodimus Prime and Galvatron's origins are unexplored.

• The same is true for dozens of Transformers, in every continuity.

Cyclonus and Scourge are also present, but they previously appeared to US readers without explanation in Brothers in Armor!!.

• And nothing from that issue makes them being present later unlikely, so what's the problem?

Rodimus Prime mentions a past battle between him and Galvatron inside Unicron. This event is... highly unlikely in the mainline comic continuity, especially if this Rodimus Prime is a Matrix-enhanced Hot Rod.

Slingshot was consumed by Swarm in the Generation 2 A Rage in Heaven! (which happened chronologically before this issue).

• Here, you were trying to reverse engineer continuity errors, because #43 doesn't fit with stories that happened years after it. If anything, the later stories would be the "errors" because they contradict Big Broadcast.

But seriously, #43 was clearly not meant to be in continuity with the rest of the comic. So just accept it as an alternate timeline, or a micro-continuity, and let's not analyze all the different ways it doesn't quite match up with a story it was never intended to match up with. --Xaaron 22:50, 20 September 2009 (EDT)

Good points, except I personally disagree that it should reflexively viewed as an alternate timeline or micro-continuity. It (the US version) is presented straight-up as an event that happened in 2006. It may be true that the production staff didn't give much thought about continuity, but so what? - Starfield 23:05, 20 September 2009 (EDT)

Well, at the very least, it's definitely set in the future and not in the mainstream Marvel US continuity. We should note that in these articles, like we do with the Rhythms of Darkness! stuff. The fact that this future doesn't interact with the present in any way should be noted too. Finally, articles should NOT repeat the same information verbatim if they happened substantially identically in two different continuities. That's just silly. A one line 'This also happened in an alternate future of the marvel comic' should be fine.--Jimsorenson 16:46, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

I don't know why it's "definitely" not the mainstream continuity. As Xaaron pointed out, there are no identified continuity errors in the issue. It starts "It is the year 2006..." and ends with "...Next Issue: we flash back to the present!..." Rhythms of Darkness explicitly has Unicron telling Galvatron II that he is not the Unicron he knew or some such. Sure if you apply the US version to the UK continuity you would have some problems, but that is why there is a UK version, right? - Starfield 17:17, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

The fact that it is set in the future makes it by definition not in the mainstream (i.e. present) Marvel continuity. Any future would pretty much be an alternate future.--Jimsorenson 17:27, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

What happened to change the future making these events "alternate"? I don't quite understand yet. Was it when Primus was woken up, or when Unicron brought Galvatron II into this reality or something? - Starfield 17:59, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Well, I suppose from an in-universe perspective, the moment time-travel was introduced (i.e. Rhythms of Darkness) the timeline would have started diverging. So I suppose one could, for personal canon, accept that #43 would have been the future of the universe until Unicron screwed that up by summoning Galvatron. From an out of universe perspective, it's that this was a filler issue that neither Budiansky nor Furman nor editors like Tokar had any intention of hewing to. They said as much on the letters page once people wrote in to complain. --Jimsorenson 18:54, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

I wanted to include a letters page citation in the article, but I couldn't find one. I scanned through a bunch of them, but I don't think the website I went to had them all. I did, however, learn that both the Transformers comic and Dreadwing are brill. - Starfield 20:55, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Are you looking at US letters? I didn't know those were available online. I'll check my originals tonight. --Jimsorenson 21:49, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Which continuity is it again?

All right, I wasn't 100% on-base, though I wasn't 100% off-base either. In the letter page for #53, readers are asking about both the movie adaptation and the Big Broadcast of 2006 adaptation. A writer posits that they took place in an alternate universe. Don Daley allows that that might be happening, but teases that we'll need to wait till 2005 to know for sure. They also acknowledge that adapting a tv script was not popular, partially because of continuity headaches, and promise not to do it again.

I don't want to read too much into the tea leaves here, but my take on this is that the editors are acknowledging that Broadcast (and the movie adaptation) MAY be in an alternate continuity. That means that we the wiki should probably make that our official position as well. These events may or may not be in continuity with the rest of the comics - who are we to judge? We note it and let the readers decide. Thoughts?--Jimsorenson 23:30, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Just to add in another relevant piece of info from the letters pages, the letters for #63 specifically clarify that the cartoon and the comic are divergent continuities. "The closest in terms of a possible future is the movie, but even then it might not be what eventually happens." In the same answer, Simon writes "Issue #43 was the only episode that tied in directly with the cartoon series." Obviously there's the issue of how much we should listen to writer's intent, especially since Simon was answering the letters page by this point and he had nothing to do with #43, but I think it lends credence to the idea that #43 is out of step with the mainstream continuity. --Jimsorenson 23:47, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Up to issue #65. Here Simon states that because Unicron has shown his face in the present, the comic is NOT leading up to the movie. "2005 in the comic will be completely different." --Jimsorenson 23:57, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

Thanks for looking that up. That makes sense. In issue #53 they probably didn't know how the Unicron thing would work out so they didn't know if the Adaptation would be in continuity and they were reserving the right to take a different path. Or just trying not to spoil the surprise. The common sense approach is take the Movie to be the backstory to #43 which it obviously was when it was written. This would knock #43 out of continuity as well. I was ripping #43 out of real-world context with an indeterminate backstory to see how it fit as a one issue window into the events of 2006. By itself it doesn't explicitly clash with much. There is just a lot of empty backstory. I think that is more fun than dismissing it as a cartoon episode adaptation that (to be honest) is what it actually is. - Starfield 01:08, 22 September 2009 (EDT)