Mr. Goodkat wrote:Do you (or Mark) have the option to scan it?
I have a scanner, but it sucks. Also, I had to wipe my computer, so all the software relating to the scanner is long gone. The CD containing it gone, too. This particular scanner is several years old and my old room at my mom's house is a mess with things frequently lost or thrown out over time. And on top of this, although I
can use XnView to scan things somehow, it likes to randomly crash my crappy computer apparently for no other reason than its own sadistic pleasure, so scanning the script, page by page, would be, on my end, tedious in its own right.
I daresay having the open script in front of me to copy from and typing it up into a .txt file would actually be
less tedious for me.
However, I do want to get a physical copy to someone who can scan it (or ask Mark if he can), if only to prove that it's real, as my greatest fear throughout this has been someone accusing me of making this all up wholesale.
Ty-Chou wrote:I just think it's interesting that if a weakness of this script is pointed out, the knee jerk reaction is to bring up more "flawed" episodes to compare it with.
Because I think you're dismissing it for the same things you're willing to forgive or overlook in other episodes made at the same time. You're right that
Succubus! doesn't deserve a free pass. But I'd ask you: why do the other episodes I listed? Because that's the implication I'm getting, intended or not.
Ty-Chou wrote:Why is the standard on the low end of the scale?
This exists in a weird sort of limbo where it's both an abandoned episode, but also one Hanna-Barbera fully intended to air. So I look at it as being, from a writing standpoint at least, pretty much just as "done" as the other episodes. Done and ready to go, and would've been finished and aired if the show had lasted. So I think it ought to be held to the same standards as its other season two brethren. This is one reason why I don't hold it to higher standards, acknowledging but also accepting its flaws because "it's a
SWAT Kats episode," and I see the show as highly flawed but enjoyable.
Ty-Chou wrote:The Deadly Pyramid which had, in my opinion, one of the tightest, well written scripts of the series?
The story is tight, yeah, but there are two problems I have with it. Firstly, the Pastmaster's plan prior to Callie losing her glasses is... to kill Mayor Manx using giant mummies, someone he's never met before and has no reason to care about. The obvious explanation is Glenn Leopold needed him to be up to something, anything, suitably villainous before he notices Callie's similarity to his long lost crush, but he could've thought up something a little more creative.
I also have never liked the ending. After all the abuse heaped upon poor little Cybertron, his fate is left unresolved and Leopold seems to think a joke about Hackle offering the SWAT Kats Arnold Schwarze-Bot will cover for it. Why not ditch the gag with the bigger robot entirely and just show Hackle reviving Cybertron successfully? It felt like a very weak ending.
So even an episode that's tight and well-written - for this series, anyway - has a few issues with it I can find which needed some work. They're negligible compared to other episodes' issues, I admit, but I think that's largely because the story is so economical. When there's less to mess up, there's fewer screw-ups. In contrast, most of the problems in
Succubus! seem to stem from Leopold trying to do way too much than the episode's allotted 22 minutes allowed, causing it to feel a bit jumbled.
He seemed to have learned his lesson by the time he recycled the story for
Jonny Quest, since
Eclipse was more streamlined, but in doing so I felt like he made it
too economical. For example, combining the servants into one single character irked me. In a live-action show, I can see the need for smaller casts, but an animated show has no such constraints, so giving Elise just the one evil servant seemed like an odd, needless downsizing. Removing the servant's ability to turn into a monster like his employer was also mistake (at least, I don't recall him being able to do this).
And as much as he ruthlessly pruned things in some areas, Leopold also made
Eclipse complicated in others. The conflict between Elise and her servant wasn't needed, I thought, and splitting the villain's target into two characters by having Elise being romantically interested in Hadji while wanting to drain Jessie complicated things a bit too much. Katrina's love interest and the target being the same character was not one of the problems from
Succubus! that needed fixing.
Ty-Chou wrote:It had many really good episodes with good scripting and characterization.
Does
Succubus! have its problems? Yes. Exposition at the beginning is clunky, a lot of Callie's decisions early on don't make much sense, I find the name "tri-head" for the three-headed monster a little too trite and on the nose, even for Leopold, I wish more of the story was told with Feral himself as the focus, as a subject rather than an object, I found Felina and T-Bone's jovial attitude despite failing to save the foreman to be aggravating, a little too similar to Razor's virtual non-reaction to the subway train being eaten in
The Giant Bacteria, and I wish, wish, wiiiiiiish that the script didn't sideline Felina to minion cleanup duty at the end while the SWAT Kats stole her thunder, as much as I accept that, yes, that was expected. And although your problem is that Otto brings Felina in, period, my problem isn't so much that, but rather that he and Laszlo didn't even frisk her beforehand. That's an amateur mistake, and these guys are supposed to have been working for Katrina doing this kind of stuff for
how long...?
And I wish the final battle had gone differently. As written, it was hard to follow, and I admit I cheated slightly and re-ordered some small things - like when, exactly, the falling Feral is saved (it happens last of all, after Katrina dies, meaning he falls for a rather improbably long time).
So, yeah, even though I like it overall, I can bash the crap out of it and acknowledge its (often goofy) shortcomings.
But for all of these issues, I find there is more to like than dislike in it. I like the leisurely pace, the time taken for the characters to interact with one another, the focus given to more minor characters, in what seems to have been an effort on Leopold's part to prove the show didn't need to focus exclusively on just T-Bone and Razor.
I also liked the villains. Katrina was a little one note, especially at the end when she won't
shut up about how her evil plan is almost finished, etc., but I enjoyed some things about her, particularly the notion of a powerful female villain, and I found the idea of her wearing her pet ferret-like creature as a fashion accessory to be a suitably eccentric/subtly creepy choice (for some reason it reminds me of something
The Real Ghostbusters would've done to give a seductive villainess an "otherwordly" air) and I got a kick out of the creepy servants with their stereotypical Eastern European sounding names, and all the nods to
Hollywood Boulevard, which was also about an older woman trying to regain her lost youth, albeit in a far different way. Heck, Leopold's decision to model Otto on Erich von Stroheim even calls that film to mind, since he played the creepy chauffeur in it.
I liked the idea of Jake being a classical music fan, further establishing him as the more intellectual of the duo. It was great seeing him and Chance doing stuff related to their garage and their civilian lives after an entire season of the show seeming like it wanted to pretend that side of their lives didn't exist. I liked seeing Chance's latest ill-advised "upgrade" to Callie's car, completely with it almost failing spectacularly. It was a cute callback to the similar scene in
The Giant Bacteria. Heck, I liked the fact that, despite this initial setback, he and Jake manage to make it work regardless, and Callie both acknowledges and enjoys it.
And yes, many of these things aren't executed terribly well, but they tickled me enough that I found it an overall enjoyable readthrough, and I tried to make that come through in my summary.
