I must admit I have never even tried it LOL.
I must look out for a DVD or try and download some episodes of Visionaries again.
It’s something my mother always swore by (the whisky part at least, not the hot chocolate), and occasionally when I was feeling grotty, she’d put some in my bedtime cuppa. She was still recommending it even in my adult life, and one time even lent me a bottle for that purpose. I was quite amazed last year, not long after her funeral, to find myself breaking open the seal of one of the bottles still in her cupboards to pour into my hot choc - it was the first time in my life I had ever done that! Amazing to think at 31 there were still things I was doing for the first time.
Visionaries was released on DVD a decade ago, and was in the first batch of DVDs I bought in 2004 when I first got a DVD player (along with the best of The Two Ronnies, and a Paul McCartney concert, although the latter was returned because they kept going away from the concert to all this interview/documentary stuff, which should have been put in the bonus features, not the main program!)
It’s a little thin on the ground nowadays. On amazon they start at £8 used (or £34 new!) - if you’re interested, the cheapest used one on there as I type this is from a seller that I’ve got a few things from over the years, and described as “very good”.
Yeah for some reason the Visionaries, Dino-Riders and Inhumanoids DVD seems to be quite expensive new.
I actually bought the DVD from HMV in September 2004. I sold it a couple years ago when I was selling off some of the DVD collection. Counting full boxsets as 1, I had 500+. I got a bout £10 for it.
When I got the DVD I also tracked down a Cindar only missing his weapon. I really should have also got the Skyclaw and Mortdredd and completed the set.
I was looking at the Dagger Assault on EBay it makes quite a bit. I had mine for years but it was in rough shape when I sold it after all the years of play, but it still displayed well. I think it sold for around £40.
The Dagger Assault (and of course Reekon) was the only one I never had as a kid. I had all the other Visionaries toys, but I never saw that one in the shops. I have a distinct memory of this particular collection, because I started off getting about half of the toys in one go on holiday in London; Leoric, Arzon, Darkstorm, Cravex, and the two smaller vehicles; she said I could either get both smaller ones or the Capture Chariot. Then I got Lexor on the same holiday as well, well, just as we were heading home. Later that year, on another holiday, I found Cryotek and then Witterquick, and was delighted. But still, mum wouldn’t let me get the Capture Chariot, even though I had enough money for it. Come christmas, I found out why, she’d already got it for me. Then, some while later, she found Cindarr and picked that figure up for me, I remember that well because I was ill that day; and I also remember that for some reason, an error at the factory I guess, his staff had Darkstorm’s hologram! But I never found the Dagger Assault.
Even with (almost all of) the actual toyline in my possession, I would still make the vehicles up out of lego. Although never as well as I did in 2002, the versions in the photos you saw the other week! That said, my Capture Chariot was always pretty damn good. I never got the Dagger Assault quite right though - probably because I didn’t have the original to work from!
The Dagger Assault was pretty fun with all the other figures on it but I think it would have been better with a better ****pit for Reekon to control it from when the 3 ships detach.
The prison was really fun also.
As I said I only ever seen the Visionaries in one shop here and that’s where I got all of mine and it wasn’t really a shop as such it was a Cash and Carry. With the exception of the Skyclaw I seen at a petrol station in the south in the late 90’s. Must have been 98.
Of the three vehicles I had I think I had the most fun with the Lancer Cycle.
My Lancer Cycle and Capture Chariot were still in excellent condition when I sold them even though they got a ton of play. But having said that the Dagger Assault had a lot of separate parts and pieces and some were made from Hasbro’s famous delicate brittle gold plastic. :mad:
I recall my cousin had the Mortredd figure but not the vehicle. I think somebody at school gave it to him or he swapped them something for it.
Three? There was only the Dagger Dart detached in the series.
Actually, when it comes to the cocpkit, I do have issues with that vehicle even in the show - sometimes Reekon is seen in other areas of the vehicle, but presumably still driving? Initially, he’s seen in one of the two frontal cocpkits in “The Dark Hand Of Treachery”, and then in the other in “The Price Of Freedom”. OK, maybe it could be driven from either (it’s clear that Reekon is driving in both cases). In “Feryl Steps Out”, however, he’s up in the Dagger Dart, while Darkstorm and Virulina are in the two driving compartments. Now, it’s possible that Virulina was driving it here, she flew the Sky Claw in “The Power Of The Wise” (the first episode I recorded, and had a good memory of, so her flying it was completely normal to me, I was phased the following week when Lexor talked about Mortdredd flying it!). But then, in “The Power Of The Wise”, we see the Dagger Assault initially, and Darkstorm and Cravex are in the two driving compartments, AND Lexor is in the Dagger Dart. Is Reekon driving the vehicle still? If so, where from? If not, who is? The knights with staffs can’t drive the vehicles, and Virulina and Mortdredd are up in the Sky Claw!
What you are saying of them being the driving compartments makes sense and that’s what I usually used them as but on the toys they detached very easy so I used them as separate flying vehicles as well.
Ah. I don’t think they were meant to be detachable, but obviously the Visionaries vehicles had to be assembled, so maybe you just did a loose job on them?
No they just held on with pegs the same as the type on G.I. Joe figure backpacks that attached to their backs. So I always assumed they were removable. Maybe it was a feature designed for the toy they just left out of the cartoon.
Interesting conjecture, but unlikely. After all, where would the vehicle be driven from if that was the case?
That said, I remember assuming the blue tip at the front housed the driver the first time I properly saw the vehicle in action in “The Power Of The Wise”. Of course later on I saw where it was actually driven from, although depending on who was talking, the characters moved about a lot on that vehicle - especially in “The Power Of The Wise”! First of all we see Darkstorm and Cravex in the driving compartments, with Lexor in the Dagger Dart, then a short while later, during which time nobody but Cravex has disembarked (although Virulina and Mortdredd have boarded the vehicle after the Sky Claw crashed), Darkstorm is seen in the Dagger Dart and Mortdredd in one of the driving compartments.
Also, it’s worth remembering that the description of the magical powers on the back of the toy packs had more in common with the comic than the cartoon; when Cryotek used his staff of strength in the comic, he just got super strong, similarly Witterquick’s staff of speed just made him super fast (well, that’s sort of how it worked in the show, but the comic didn’t show the messenger-of-the-gods effect); and Arzon’s staff just made him super-clever. Darkstorm’s staff was used to corrode armour or even buildings, Cindarr’s staff caused earthquakes, Lexor’s staff just made him invulnerable for a time, while Cravex’s staff simply made everyone feel frightened, as opposed to what happened in the cartoon where it gave one person (or creature) a frightening hallucination/nightmare.
Also in the comics, Galadria and Virulina, after a few issues, had shields imbued with the powers of healing and disease respectively. In my stories, I stick to the cartoon universe, where they could be stand-in drivers. More useful in the long term! And indeed, in my story about Feryl being captured, Galadria has to quickly get good driving the vehicles, Ectar gives her a crash course! Actually, in the first draft of that story, Galadria was teaching herself while Ectar went looking for clues with Arzon in Khemir. When looking at it again a year or so later, I thought, “that’s wrong - Ectar should be teaching her!” so he stayed behind in New Valarak and Witterquick took his place in Khemir. Doing it that way enabled me to open both scenes up a little bit. I just had the right characters in the right place. (And of course, this is the story where Witterquick and Ectar were having their “is Leoric fit to lead us?” worry, which also was absent from the first draft, so they ended up having a LOT more to do than they did the first time!)
Don’t get me wrong but In some ways I didn’t really see the point of the staffs. In one way the large beast things that came from them were cool but I think I like the idea of them just powering up the user or affecting the intended target more. In some ways though maybe it was a bit to much magic considering they could all already change into animal forms.
You will have to refresh my memory but how come it’s just the vehicle drivers that can drive the vehicles again and not the others.
I never got any of the comics. I know some issues were printed in the UK Transformers comic and took the place of the G.I. Joe/Action Force story but I never got any of those issues. In fact I don’t think I was getting comics when they were being printed. The TF comics I got seemed to be in the last year and a half of the comics run.
I can understand their reasons for doing it both ways - they suited their respective formats better. The toy method worked better on the back of the card, and also in the limited vision of comic strip stills, while the way it worked in the cartoon was more visual for animated purposes.
You will have to refresh my memory but how come it’s just the vehicle drivers that can drive the vehicles again and not the others.
The vehicle drivers were the ones without staffs. When Merklynn tells them to dip their staffs into the pool for additional magic:
Mortdredd: What about those of us who have no staff?
Merklynn: You will discover in time that you also have great power.
Later on, when Mortdredd and Reekon find the Sky Claw and Mortdredd gets it working:
Mortdredd: Do you think we have the ability to infuse other vehicles with magic?
Reekon: Yes - this must be the great power Merklynn promised us!
And then when they get back to Darkstorm’s castle, Darkstorm insists on driving it himself, but . . .
Darkstorm: What happened? The engine works but the magic avoids me!
Reekon: It appears that any Visionary can pilot a vehicle, but Mortdredd and I are your only knights who can breathe magic into the metal.
Although Reekon’s line there could have been put a LOT better.
I never got any of the comics. I know some issues were printed in the UK Transformers comic and took the place of the G.I. Joe/Action Force story but I never got any of those issues. In fact I don’t think I was getting comics when they were being printed. The TF comics I got seemed to be in the last year and a half of the comics run.
Back in 2003, a friend in Canada sent me all six of the original American comics. The first one is pretty much the first episode, then the story goes off on a different tangent right away, the vehicles are discovered differently, and the last two issues are the first half of what would have been a four-part adventure, “Quest For The Four Talismans” - and because they only got halfway through the story, on the last page, there’s a line by Feryl saying, “the others must have found the other talismans by now” - just so that the reader can have some sense that there was a happy ending, and not feel cheated at being left on a cliffhanger.
Yes the way it’s done in the cartoon is more visually interesting.
So basically the other Visionaries can use the vehicles/weapon stations as long as one of the drivers is in the vehicle? Like Leoric piloting one of the flying pods from the Capture Chariot would only work as long as Feryl is in the Driver seat or is it any of them could use it since one of the drivers used their magic on it?
Is the UK comic different or just reprints of the US stories?
Absolutely. Like I said, horses for courses. Arzon just getting super-brainy for instance just wouldn’t have the same visual impact as seeing the Bearer Of Knowledge (Jim Cummings, who was also Witterquick!), in that deep accentless voice that he did so well. About the only one that would work the same if they’d been done a la the comics would be Witterquick’s staff of light speed. In the cartoon, his is the only staff that affects the user directly.
So basically the other Visionaries can use the vehicles/weapon stations as long as one of the drivers is in the vehicle? Like Leoric piloting one of the flying pods from the Capture Chariot would only work as long as Feryl is in the Driver seat or is it any of them could use it since one of the drivers used their magic on it?
That’s the problem with Reekon’s line in “The Dark Hand Of Treachery”! It muddies the waters a lot. I think the best answer is, only the unstaffed knights can be the main driver of a vehicle, although of course the other knights can operate the extraneous parts, such as Leoric and Witterquick operating the Capture Chariot’s hover pods (the normal breakdown of occupants of that vehicle was Feryl in the driving seat, Leoric and Witterquick in the hover pods, and Cryotek and Galadria manning the big cannon, although Witterquick was never seen flying one of the hover pods out of the vehicle - the only other Spectral Knight never to do that was Ectar, who was never seen on the vehicle at all; Witterquick and Arzon were the only two knights to be seen riding on both vehicles).
In the case of the Dagger Dart, it was never seen being flown by any Darkling Lord with a staff; only Mortdredd and Virulina were ever seen flying it, although Darkstorm, Reekon and Lexor were all seen manning it at rest on occasion.
Is the UK comic different or just reprints of the US stories?
Not sure on that one. I’ve never seen the UK comics. As far as I’m aware, the US comics are the definitive version of the line anyway.
Considering the Transformers UK comics run was about 40% US reprints, and I am pretty sure the main story featured on the covers of the comic were the US stories, I thin it’s safe to assume they were US reprints.
I have a friend who is a bit of Transformers and comic expert so he is bound to know. I will ask him when I see him or message him and see if he can confirm they are US reprints or Marvel UK original stories.
I think it would be safe to say that the pods and dart could be used by anyone as long as a driver remained piloting the main vehicle.
In “The Price Of Freedom” and “Sorcery Squared”, the Dagger Dart was seen in flight when the main vehicle was unmanned, but it was being piloted by Mortdredd and Virulina respectively, so they’d be able to anyway.
Also in “Sorcery Squared”, Feryl stops the Capture Chariot, and he and Cryotek take the hover pods up to an eagle nesting sight.
Interesting. I think this really is something they should have worked out better LOL. I guess we will just have to put it down to magic.
I found out this regarding the Visionaries comic.
As a contemporary of Transformers, Visionaries received a similar dual-pronged advertising push. The line was given an animated series (lasting only one season of thirteen episodes) produced by Marvel Productions, featuring many voice actors who also worked on Transformers and scripted by Flint Dille, Buzz Dixon and Douglas Booth, and most importantly as far as this article is concerned, a comic book from Marvel Comics. Like everything else to do with the line, the comic book did not last long, running to only six issues and being cancelled halfway through a four-part story. Regardless of this failure, the UK branch of Marvel Comics reprinted the series, but it performed even worse there, and their comic only managed to reprint four of the six issues before folding. They also reprinted the first issue again in an annual released in 1988. The final two issues of the original comic were then split into eight smaller parts, and printed as back-up strips in the UK Transformers comic, running from #183 to #190, during which time the series was branded The Transformers & Visionaries. A few months later, Visionaries returned to the UK comic when the first issue alone was reprinted yet again, this time split up into seven parts and included in issues #213 through #219.
Well, in all cases, a “designated driver” was still manning the dart/pods, so it’s just about OK. At no point in the series did a knight with a staff ever jump into an unmanned vehicle and activate any part of it, so I think they got away with it!
Actually, I remember a few years back, pointing out that Witterquick’s normal position in one of the hover pods was another aesthetic pointer to his seniority, but the guy I was arguing with was having none of it, he countered with “you don’t want to put all your magical firepower in one place”, as an argument against Cryotek manning a pod. Ironically, there’s tactical arguments against all the other knights (apart from Leoric) manning a hover pod, and that one is the weakest of the lot!
Galadria (or even Ectar) shouldn’t occupy a hover pod, because if anything happened to Feryl in battle, they’d want to be near at hand to take over the controls.
Arzon by default doesn’t get a pod (unless there’s a maximum of one other knight on the vehicle besides himself and Feryl) because of his eagle totem. If he had to change and fly off somewhere . . .
Witterquick’s staff could hold the same argument as Arzon’s totem, if he had to suddenly get somewhere else in his staff while flying a pod . . .
The argument against putting too much magical firepower in one place is sound in theory, but there might be times when you need more than one shot. It’s never come up in the series, but something close to it happened in my story “Shape Of The Mind”, when Leoric and Witterquick took the hover pods up to rescue Arzon, Cryotek and Galadria who had all been captured by Cravex and the Sky Claw’s flying creatures. They first had to get past the Sky Claw and the Dagger Dart, without using the pods’ fireballs, which they needed to retain to destroy the magical flying creatures. Cryotek’s staff would have come in useful at that point!
I can’t recall the episode but as I was reading your post this came into my head. Arzon is wounded (I think) and riding on the Capture Chariot with Feryl. If I am not mistaken I think it’s ‘The Price of Freedom’ or ‘Horn of Unicorn, Claw of Dragon’.
Right first time, it’s “The Price Of Freedom”. Actually, in that episode, Arzon is flying a hover pod and changes into his eagle form to rescue Feryl after he crashes the vehicle, so presumably the hover pod also crashes. Arzon is wounded shortly afterwards by one of the Sky Claw’s flying creatures, and they have to drive home at a greatly reduced pace.