Epilogue - ReBoot: The Guardian Code

Honestly, I'd rather not be talking about this. I'd be much happier to forget that this misstep exists and be perfectly content with just sticking with the original series that I hold so close to my heart. However, since I've said in previous posts that I would be touching upon 2018's 'sequel' series ReBoot: The Guardian Code and because I feel this retrospective would be incomplete if I didn't at least talk about it, here we are.

However, I have no intentions of watching all 20 episodes of The Guardian Code for the purposes of this. Nor do I have any intention of re watching the three mediocre episodes that I did watch. Instead, I'll just be discussing why this show is so mediocre and why we're better off just letting it fester and die in the depths of Netflix. But first, how did we get to this point? Before we get to talking about The Guardian Code itself, I have to touch upon the 11 or so years leading up to it's release in order to fully articulate how disappointing this was.

In May 2006, a ReBoot fan going by the alias of Glitch Bob online had an idea. After nearly four years of waiting for a conclusion to Season 4's cliffhanger, Glitch Bob decided that the fans should start a campaign to bring the show back and get the cliffhanger resolved. This would involve contacting both the show's voice actors and employees at Mainframe. A MySpace group for the Revival was created, which was then followed by a Facebook group and then a website of it's own. Glitch Bob is quite possibly ReBoot's biggest fan, which can be clearly shown by his obvious passion for the series. He's also one of the only people (if not the only one) who Gavin and Ian themselves have personally told what they had planned for the rest of Season 4, which is something that they have otherwise been keeping to themselves in case they get the chance to tell that story eventually.

Then in late 2006, Mainframe Entertainment was purchased by a company called Rainmaker, who then renamed the company Rainmaker Entertainment. In July the next year, Rainmaker announced that they would be bringing ReBoot back in the form of a trilogy of movies. Alongside this, they would be teaming up with the website Zeros2Heroes to create a ReBoot webcomic which would be written by fans and driven by input from the fans. 5 pitches for the comic were made and fans got to vote on which one got to be made into a web comic. The five pitches were as follows (according to my memory as these aren't really accessible online anymore):

ReBoot: Arrival - A continuation from Season 4 where Megabyte's hunt has turned into a net wide war and our heroes need to deal with a program known as Gnosis. Also features The Codemasters from Season 2,

ReBoot 2.0 - After the end of The Hunt, a program gets installed into Mainframe that changes how everything looks.

ReBoot: The Last Guardian - Set 17 years after the end of Season 4 and following Dot and Megabyte's daughter.

ReBoot: Regenerated - A comic following a wholly original cast.

ReBoot: The Last User - A weird post apocalyptic story involving aliens with a very tenuous link to ReBoot.

The Arrival pitch was the clear winner, and the first issue was released in late May 2008 following a countdown clock leading up to it's launch on reboot.com. Then the rest of the comic was released in two page instalments for several weeks from August 2008 to early 2009. The comic was not well received by the fandom, and is considered non canon since it featured no input from the original creators of the series.

As for the movies themselves, very little was announced regarding them. The plan was to structure it in a similar way to Star Wars and The Matrix with the first movie being somewhat self contained and then the next two being a two part story. A writer was announced and then let go of and then that was it. Rainmaker's head at the time Paul Gertz said that while he understood that the fans wanted a resolution, they needed to 'reach a broader audience' in order to make this a worthwhile venture. He also said that he felt that the demographic for the show needed to be 'aged up', which would have been interesting to see if done correctly and not by making it overly dark and edgy for the sake of it.

However, Paul Gertz left Rainmaker around 2008/2009 and was replaced by Catherine Winder. While Gertz was in fairly regular contact with the fans, Winder did not communicate with the fandom at all. A brief teaser trailer was featured on Rainmaker's website in 2009, but that wasn't announced at all and was discovered by a fan browsing their website, same with a brief shot of a guardian redesign discovered in a showreel in early 2010.

The Guardian reveal in particular wasn't met particularly well by fans. Following this, there was no announcements regarding the future of ReBoot asides from the DVD box set getting released in 2011 and a ReBoot web store where you could buy merchandise from the show (i.e. everything that Rainmaker had lying around their offices). Then in late 2010, Rainmaker went around taking down anything and everything related to ReBoot they could find online, even if a lot of what they were taking down came under fair use.

After Winder was fired in 2012, Michael Hefferon became the head of Mainframe and, for a while, it seemed like Rainmaker were on the right tracks to bring the property back. A website called 'Bring Back ReBoot' was launched, and in 2013, it was announced that Rainmaker would be renaming it's TV division 'Mainframe' and that they would be producing a new ReBoot TV series. However, over the next few years more details were released and the more that came out, the worse things seemed.

The first major warning sign was the press announcement in 2015 that detailed the new show's premise. The show would be a live action/CGI hybrid that would follow four human teenagers who would go inside Cyberspace and protect it from hackers and other threats. This rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, but there was a massive divide in the fandom at this point between those who were declaring it as shit before it had even been released and those who were pleading the naysayers to 'give it a chance'. Hefferon said the reason for this new premise was because no networks were interested in bringing the show back like it was in 2001, which of course begged the question of why they didn't try something like Netflix or Adult Swim if conventional networks weren't interested.

Between then and 2018, more details trickled out. In 2016, a casting call was announced with descriptions for the new characters alongside a script sample which read like it was written by someone in their 30's or 40's desperately trying to appeal to kids. The first screenshots were revealed in March 2017 which lead to more discourse in the fandom. Then the first trailer was released in February 2018 and gained quite a lot of bad publicity.

Shortly after the release of the trailer, a 4chan post by someone claiming to be an anonymous Rainmaker employee was released. They claimed that a lot of the employees working at Rainmaker knew that this show was a bad idea and was just going to piss off ReBoot fans, but Hefferon refused to listen and just pressed on with the show anyway. Any ideas that Hefferon had needed to be included in the scripts no matter how bad they were, and he even brought his son into script meetings and any of his ideas needed to be used as well. On top of all this, it turns out that Austin, the show's protagonist, is named after Hefferon's son.

Then in March 2018, the first 10 episodes of ReBoot The Guardian Code were released on Netflix everywhere other than Canada. This was baffling since Hefferon had claimed that networks weren't interested in the original ReBoot, so the show was tweaked in order to appeal to the networks, yet the show was going straight to a streaming service rather than being aired on a network. Anyway, I've put this off long enough, so let's get onto the show itself.

The first episode starts with our four protagonists, Austin, Parker, Tamera, and Trey starting their first day of school. They are all in the top ranked team of a mobile game called 'Cyber Guardians', and they all receive a text asking them to come to their homeroom which is 'Room Zero'. This homeroom is hidden behind a holographic wall, and inside they find the 'Cyber Guardians' logo (the ReBoot logo) and lots of technology. They walk up to a device and get digitised in the net where they're greeted by their mentor, Vera. She tells them that they are all now Cyber Guardians, and they were selected for their skills in the Mobile Game. They are then sent to stop the Cyber Locusts sent by the show's antagonist, The Sourcerer - a hacker living alone in a warehouse who wants to destroy all technology and send humanity 'back to the dark ages' for some reason. Upon defeating his Cyber Locusts, the Guardians leave the computer and then Vera ends up getting transported to their world and is now stuck there for good. Then in the second episode, the Sourcerer reactivates Megabyte and 'upgrades' him. He then gets Megabyte to do his bidding and fight the Guardians for him. From that point, the show gets into the groove of the formula of 'deal with issues in the real world, fight in the computer world, the end'.

I'll get onto the third episode that I watched soon because that needs to be talked about separately since this show's biggest problem is that it's called ReBoot. If the show didn't have the ReBoot branding and was it's own thing, it would still be pretty mediocre, but it wouldn't have got anywhere near as much flack as it did. The young actors are trying their best with the material they are given, but given that said material feels like it was written by a 30 or 40 year old writing lines that they think a teenager might say, they aren't able to salvage the show. Megabyte's 'upgrade' looks more like a downgrade, and while new voice actor Timothy E Brummond is able to do a somewhat decent job of emulating the late great Tony Jay when he's not raising his voice, Megabyte as a villain is pretty lame in this show, lacking the menace that made him such a great foe to begin with. Visually, the whole thing somehow looks worse than the original show.

Now we get onto the show's absolute worst episode, and the only other episode I watched. When watching the show, I had no intentions of watching every episode. I watched the first episode to get the basic premise, then I watched the second episode as that's when Megabyte was introduced. Then I skipped all the way to the tenth episode 'Mainframe Mayhem' since that was the only episode that featured the characters from the original ReBoot. The other 19 episodes of ReBoot The Guardian Code are just mediocre and not really worth the energy to talk about at great length and it's better to just forget about them. This episode, however, is a massive dumpster fire that should be condemned to hell not just for how it mishandles the characters from the original series, but also manages to insult and belittle the fans at the same time.

The premise of this episode is that Megabyte goes back to Mainframe in order to recruit the assistance of Hexadecimal. Austin, Parker, and Tamara follow him in and meet up with Bob, Dot, and Enzo. Austin and Parker join Bob in a game of Starship Alcatraz and then Megabyte escapes with Hexadecimal. This episode's main failures come from it's treatment of the original characters. Oh, and we find out that Austin's dad installed Mainframe in Room Zero. Even though they did bring back the original voice actors for Bob, Dot, and Hexadecimal, even they can't salvage how out of character they are. Not only do they look worse than they did in Season 1, but Bob lacks all of his charm and is introduced by quoting his lines from the original intro which feels incredibly contrived and awkward, Enzo isn't in it enough, and Hexadecimal changes masks onscreen which breaks the number 1 rule of her character. As well as this, Hexadecimal is more than happy to work with Megabyte for no real reason when before, while they did sometimes team up when their goals aligned, Hexadecimal would have just blasted Megabyte if he stepped foot in her lair.

The character who's treated the worst, however, is Dot. As I have stated before throughout this blog, Dot's one of the best characters in the original show, which is because she is equally as capable as Bob and isn't simply a damsel for Bob to rescue every week. This episode throws that all out the window as while she isn't in it much, she cowers behind Enzo when a drone nearly crashes into her and she reacts with fear when Tamara mentions Megabyte. As well as this, the episode acts like Seasons 2 to 4 didn't happen. The worst part of all this? This isn't even the worst part of the episode...

Partway through the episode, we're introduced to 'The User' of Mainframe who's a middle aged, overweight neckbeard wearing a 'Bring Back ReBoot' T-Shirt and living in a room decked out in ReBoot merchandise. He's introduced running from the bathroom excitedly as Mainframe comes back online, allowing him to play Starship Alcatraz again. This whole set up makes zero sense, since if Mainframe is in Room Zero, how can he be The User and access the system, and why can't he just run Starship Alcatraz on a different system? Him living in a room with ReBoot merchandise makes just as much sense as was ReBoot a TV show that existed in the universe of TGC?

Of course, this is all just a means to mock and insult ReBoot fans as petty revenge for them rejecting The Guardian Code before it was released. When The User nears victory in Starship Alcatraz, he proudly declares 'I'm finally going to win! And Mom said all this time in the basement was wasted!' This scene is clearly meant to imply that ReBoot fans are all losers living in the basement of their parents house.

This character was played be the episode's writer, Mark Leiren-Young, who is also the credited writer for the last two episodes of ReBoot's second season, 'Trust No One' and 'Web World Wars'. A few months after ReBoot: The Guardian Code premiered on Netflix, MLY started writing a series of blog posts about working on the show. Here he mentions getting informed of the show's backlash, and how he thought that ReBoot Season 3 would have got similar backlash if Twitter was around in 1997 (when posts on alt.tv.reboot around that time tell that the opposite was true, and fans openly welcomed the change in tone) and it appears that he took this on board to mock ReBoot fans. Then he went and wrote posts about his time working on the original ReBoot where he takes full credit for writing the episodes he did and brags about how he was the writer who 'killed Bob' in spite of the fact that the 'story by' credits on both episodes list multiple people along with him including Gavin Blair and Ian Pearson themselves and he probably was working on an outline for a story planned out by the showrunners.

Now, we go back to Michael Hefferon and why the show ended up the way that it is. If you look at Hefferon's IMDB page, you will see that he is credited with creating a cartoon in 2006 called 'MP4orce'. Obviously, no one knew that the show existed until this point but upon further research, the premise of the show is literally exactly the same as ReBoot The Guardian Code. So rather than the show being the result of ineptitude in handling an existing IP, instead it's the result of Hefferon trying to use the show's brand recognition to relaunch his failed TV show that no one remembers. Thankfully, it backfired thanks to both the show's incredible mediocrity, and possibly the most bizarre release for a TV show ever.

As stated a few paragraphs ago, the first 10 episodes premiered on Netflix in March 2018 everywhere other than Canada, it's country of origin. This lead to those first 10 episodes being pirated and circulated online very heavily. Then the entire series was aired on YTV in June 2018 with one episode airing daily. This lead to the last 10 episodes getting pirated and circulated heavily online. Then the last 10 episodes came to Netflix in September 2018 as 'Season 2', making it seem like the show has two seasons when really it's only one season that they cut in two.

It's not all bad, however. While this show was bad, it did manage to get people to revisit the original ReBoot and remember how great it was. As for me, it's made me appreciate the original series a whole lot more. Sure, The Guardian Code was bad, but that doesn't take away from my experiences I've had watching the original ReBoot. The original show still exists, and I shall continue to revisit it while The Guardian Code slowly but surely gets forgotten about if it hasn't already.

And with that, we now end this retrospective look at ReBoot. I've had a lot of fun rewatching the show over the past year or so and watching how the show grew and evolved over time. It's been great to analyse every episode and talk about what I liked and didn't like about them. While some of my initial opinions have remained the same as when I started doing this (my overall thoughts on Season 3 as well as Enzo the Smart being my least favourite episode), I've found that I've gained a new appreciation for the first season even if it took a while to find it's groove.

I'd like to thank everyone who has read even one of these posts of mine. If you're a fan of the show, I hope you've enjoyed my look at the show and possibly learned something you didn't know regarding behind the scenes info or any references that might have gone over your head. If you've read this without having seen the show before, then I hope that reading this has at least inspired you to check it out.

Before I go, I thought I'd provide some links to some other great ReBoot content:

ReBoot Revival - the website promoting the show's revival with the aim of getting the show's cliffhanger resolved

Incoming Game Podcast - Part of the inspiration for this blog, this was a podcast where a longtime fan of the show and someone who's never seen the show before watch one episode at a time and then discuss their thoughts on it. The podcast also has post season wrap up interviews with Gavin Blair. The podcast finished about a year ago, but it's definitely worth a listen. I was a patreon backer for the podcast and as a result, I got given this awesome portrait of myself as a ReBoot character:

Bull Session - A YouTuber who has done a retrospective on ReBoot as well as some other shows that Mainframe produced in the 90's - Beast Wars: Transformers and Shadow Raiders. 

What will happen to this blog now? Well, for now it will remain dormant. It will still be online for those who wish to read it or those who stumble across it, but no new posts will be made. If by some miracle Gavin and Ian get given the opportunity to make another season of ReBoot and conclude their story, then I will be more than happy to discuss it here whatever form that venture takes. But until then....

Stay Frosty.

Intermission - Season 4 toyline

Due to the fact that Season 3 was not initially aired in the US, no toy line/action figures were produced in order to tie in with the season. However, Mainframe did send Irwin a showreel with a variety of characters from the upcoming season to potentially be made into figures. This interestingly features an early model of Matrix and AndrAIa, with Matrix sporting a spray painted 'M' on his chest. This was actually included in a shot in 'Showdown'.

Irwin did make prototypes for a line of toys with an interesting choice of characters including Matrix, AndrAIa and Mouse as well as characters who were set to only appear in one episode such as Zaytan (from Game Over), Rocky the Rabid Raccoon (from 'Between a Raccoon and a Hard Place) and Powerlock (from Where No Sprite Has Gone Before).

Then in 2001, with ReBoot set to be aired on heavy rotation on Cartoon Network, Irwin then planned a massive toy line with various waves of toys and figures. Sadly, this ended up getting cut down drastically after Cartoon Network's schedule for ReBoot was cut down, leading to the toy retailers losing interest in stocking the toy line. As the toy line was already so far along, they could only cut back a certain amount, which lead to Irwin going bankrupt.

This is a massive shame, as this line of toys are probably some of the best ReBoot toys ever produced. For these toys, Mainframe would send the data for the characters directly to Irwin, and that data would then be used to create the toys, meaning that the toys were more screen accurate than previous figures made by Irwin. The first wave of figures was the most common, consisting of Matrix, Megabyte, AndrAIa, Commander Dot, and Glitch Bob. While these figures look great and are very detailed, the characters had limited arm articulation.

The second wave of figures saw a much more limited release, supposedly only being released in Canada. These figures tend to be sold for quite a high sum on the rare occasions they end up on eBay. This wave of figures is based around the Web arc of Season 3, and consisted of Web Matrix, Web Bob, Ray Tracer, a Web Rider, and Captain Capacitor. Capacitor is particularly rare, and supposedly only three Capacitor figures exist. It's an interesting figure as the skull and crossbones on his hat is upside down for some reason.

One vehicle was produced for this line, that being the Exo Skeleton. This used the same mould as the Exo Skeleton toy released for Season 2, but was coloured orange rather than yellow. It also came with an exclusive AndrAIa figure who was practically the same as the standard figure but with slightly different colours.

There was also a pack of binome figures released called the 'Bucket of Binomes'. This came with four binome figures (Specky, the prospector from Between a Raccoon and a Hard Place, Cyrus, and Lieutenant Chauncy) that had interchangeable sections that could be detached and reattached in order to create new and unique binome characters. A second binome pack was shown on the back of the box, but this second pack was never released.

Two small vehicles were produced. These were the Saucy Mare in it's Web Armour and an ABC vehicle. These each came with a small plastic binome figurine. The Saucy Mare came with Capacitor (with an upside down skull on his hat) and the ABC came with Lieutenant Chauncy.

The highlight of this line, however, was the large 9 inch figures. These are possibly the best ReBoot toys ever released. While they were lacking in articulation, these figures were incredibly detailed and make for great display pieces. I have two of these figures and have them displayed proudly on my desk:

Only four figures were produced in this line, which were Matrix, AndrAIa, Megabyte (holding Phong's decapitated head), and Glitch Bob:

While sadly, the line did end up getting cut short, more waves and figures were planned. For instance, Daemon, Mouse, and Turbo were planned to get figures in the 5 inch range, and there were figures planned for Mouse, Hexadecimal, Dot, Web Matrix and Web Bob in the 9 inch wave amongst others. While the figures were never produced, there are pictures of some of the prototypes of planned figures.

It's a shame that all the figures planned couldn't be produced and that Irwin ended up going bankrupt due to the circumstances that lead to the toy line getting cut down so drastically. However, the toys we did get were of a pretty high standard. With that said, I would have liked to have had figures of Mouse and Season 3 Hexadecimal, and a little more articulation in the 5 inch figures would have been nice, but overall, the toys that did make it into production and were released were great.

Next week: We end this retrospective with a brief look at ReBoot's mediocre 'sequel' series, 'ReBoot: The Guardian Code' 

Episode 47 - Crouching Binome, Hidden Virus

Almost exactly one year to the day that I started this blog, we're finally here at the final episode of the show. While this won't quite be the end of this blog as there's two more posts that I will be doing to round of this look back at the show, it's been incredibly fun looking back on the show and documenting my thoughts on each episode. However, all good things must come to an end, so now we must discuss the final episode of the entire show, an episode that is decent in it's own right, but is a bit lacking as the show's finale.

We begin the episode in the Principle Office War Room with the Mainframers watching video footage of Megabyte taking on Specky's form at the wedding. Turbo is on the line via Vid Window, and he suggests sending a squadron of Guardians to deal with the problem. Bob refuses Turbo's help since he'd rather try and reformat Megabyte than delete him, justifying this decision by saying that Daemon would have destroyed the entire net if they'd deleted Megabyte and Hexadecimal when they first arrived in Mainframe. Bob then signs off, telling Turbo that they'll contact him if they need to.

AndrAIa is perplexed at how Megabyte managed to survive in the Web. Bob reveals that Megabyte was protected by Bob's code, which he managed to obtain when he crushed Glitch at the end of Season 2. Bob goes onto explain that he changed in The Web, but wasn't aware that he was missing some of his code. This is why Bob and Megabyte were only partially degraded by The Web, since they both had some Guardian Code.

This conversation is then cut short by Specky alerting them to a commotion outside the Principle Office. Some of Megabyte's former troops are starting a riot outside, chanting that they want to be viral. This ends up being dispersed by a CPU car being driven by binome versions of the Blues Brothers who declare that they hate 'Mainframe Neo Virals'. Then five large Vid Windows open around the Principle Office as Mike the TV gives a news report on Megabyte's return, which causes the citizens of Mainframe to panic. Bob is annoyed at Mike for doing this, but then they determine that this is just Megabyte trying to stir up panic. Welman suggests finding a way to ID Megabyte, but Enzo says this won't work as he managed to fool them all when he was pretending to be Bob, and Phong's scans couldn't tell the difference. They then decide to outsmart him instead, and to do that, they need to find Dot.

Phong sends out a message to the citizens of Mainframe to return to their homes, also including a terrifying artists rendition of Megabyte's new form. Elsewhere, Dot and Mouse are talking in a park. Mouse is trying to console Dot, who is incredibly distraught over nearly marrying Megabyte. Dot feels that the worst part of all this is that she gave up on the real Bob, and isn't sure that he will ever forgive her. Bob and Matrix then show up, but Dot isn't sure that Bob is Bob, thinking that it's Megabyte in disguise again. However, Bob is able to convince her to come with him, as they need her at the Principle Office to come up with a plan to stop Megabyte once and for all.

At Al's Diner, the Neo Virals are gathering and lamenting at their defeat, longing for the days when they were respected and feared in spite of their enslavement. Mike the TV butts in, and the Neo Virals threaten that he'll be the first to go when the revolution arrives. Mike continues to taunt them, which clearly antagonises them. Then it turns out that this isn't Mike, but Megabyte. He tells everyone in the bar to surrender to him, shooting tentacles out of his hands at Al's Waiter, turning him into a zombie in order to show what happens to those who don't co operate with him.

A transport carrying the gateway command being piloted by Bob and Matrix leaves the Principle Office, escorted by a handful of CPU's. Dot's plan is to use the gateway command as bait for Megabyte. The bait works, as a swarm of ABC's instantly attacks the convoy, and the transport carrying the gateway is commandeered by viral binomes. However, no one appears to be flying the vehicle at this point.

Once he has retrieved the gateway command, Megabyte attempts to use it to access the Super Computer only for it to fail - this isn't the real Gateway Command. Then Bob, Matrix, AndrAIa, and Frisket along with some CPU's spring out the back of one of the ABC's, springing the trap and causing a firefight to break out in the room. Matrix uses gun to leave a target on Megabyte, meaning they'll always be able to track him even if he shapeshifts. Matrix eventually corners him, and shoots at Megabyte. This traps him in a tear which Bob turns into a portal that transports Megabyte into a holding cell. Dot contacts Bob and lets him know that Megabyte is in the holding cell. Bob tells Dot that they make a great time, to which Dot replies they always did.

We then cut to the holding cell where Bob and Matrix are doing a scan of Megabyte. Bob explains that the plan is to reprogram him so he won't be a virus anymore. Megabyte considers this a 'fate worse than deletion. And they call me a monster', which brings into question the ethics of Bob's theories. Once the scan is complete, it turns out that there's nothing there. Matrix deactivates the Firewall of Megabyte's cell by shooting the lock and then grabs Megabyte by the throat. Bob reveals that this is just an alias, meaning that the real Megabyte is still out there.

Bob contacts Dot in the war room to tell her about the situation, determining that the real Megabyte is in the war room with them. We then cut between several still frames of the characters in the war room until we eventually get to Frisket, who then turns into Megabyte. Megabyte begins to wreak havoc in the war room as he infects the various binomes. Dot, Hack, Slash, Mouse and AndrAIa are able to escape, but Phong, Enzo, and Welman remain trapped in the War Room with Megabyte.

Bob and Matrix race to the war room, Hack and Slash drag Dot off elsewhere as they panic about Megabyte being back, and Mouse is trying to hack into a door to no avail while AndrAIa stands guard. Then Megabyte's voice booms over the loudspeaker. He informs everyone that the Principle Office is now under his complete control, and while it would be expected for him to give a speech about him turning Mainframe into Megaframe and bringing about a 'New Viral Dawn', this isn't his plan at all. He has no grand scheme, and this is about revenge. He then tells everyone to 'Prepare yourselves for The Hunt!', ending the episode and the series on a cliffhanger.

Before I get into my thoughts on this episode and the season as a whole, I imagine a lot of people's thoughts (especially if you haven't seen the show before) are something along the lines of 'Why would they end the show like that? Did they intend to end on a cliffhanger?' The short answer is 'no', the long answer is related to the incredibly tragic behind the scenes issues that impacted the initial plans for Season 4.

Some time after they'd aired Season 3 in 1999, Cartoon Network expressed interest in funding another season of ReBoot. Initially, Mainframe planned a 13 episode season, 12 of these would be broken up into three arcs with four episodes each, and the 13th would be a musical episode. At one point, there was even talks of going up to 26 episodes. Whether this would have been a full 26 episode season or two 13 episode seasons is unknown. YTV decided that they would prefer to have movies instead of episodes, so the three arcs would be edited together as movies for YTV and broken down into individual episodes for Cartoon Network.

Cartoon Network had big plans for ReBoot - their plan was to show ReBoot in heavy rotation every day in prime time. During the week, they would be showing Seasons 1 to 3 in heavy rotation, and then on the Friday night, a new Season 4 episode would air in prime time. This lead to toy retailers such as Wal Mart and Toys R Us expressing interest in selling toys to tie in with this, so Irwin Toys along with Mainframe planned out an extensive toy line with multiple waves and several characters. Mainframe's production wing also told Gavin, Ian, and Phil that they didn't need to worry about deadlines and they could use as many animators and directors as they needed. Since they felt they struggled to fit all their story into 20 minutes in previous seasons, Gavin and Ian decided not to worry about it for Season 4 - they would write the episodes as long as they needed to be. While the episodes would be cut down for broadcast on TV, the extra scenes would be included in the DVD of the season, with the selling point being that viewers could get the whole story.

Then Warner Brothers, Cartoon Network's parent company, got involved. They weren't happy with Cartoon Network giving so much coverage to a property they didn't own as opposed to something like, say, Batman or Scooby Doo that they did own. The decision to show Seasons 1 to 3 in heavy rotation was changed so that they would run through seasons 1 to 3 once, and then Season 4 was moved from Friday night prime time to something like half 11 on Saturday evening. The toy retailers weren't happy about this, and tried to cancel as much of the toy line as they possibly could. Since the toyline was already so far along, they couldn't cancel the entire line so the toys that had already been produced were sold, and Irwin, having invested a lot of their own money into the production of the toys, ended up going bankrupt as a result. Then Mainframe's production wing turned round and said that they needed to work to the deadlines they had in place, and the 13 extra length episodes was cut down to 8 standard length episodes. This meant that they then had to cram as much of their story for the first two arcs as possible into these eight episodes.

This brings us to the ending. 'The Hunt' which Megabyte mentioned at the end of this episode was supposed to be the third act of the episode, and it had an ending. While this wouldn't have wrapped up the story completely, it would have resolved The Hunt while setting things up for the next arc. However, when writing the scripts, it became clear to Gavin and Ian that they wouldn't have time necessary to fit The Hunt into the episode alongside the rest of the story, especially as they had already pushed the start of the episode back into the end of the previous one. It then came down to two choices - try and cram everything in with an episode that feels more like a trailer, or end the episode on a cliffhanger with there being a slim chance that they'll get another season for them to resolve the cliffhanger. They thought the latter choice - a decent episode with a cliffhanger would have been a better choice than a crappy episode.

Now, for my thoughts on the episode. Overall, this isn't a bad episode. It's pretty engaging, it's got some great action, and also brings forward some great themes which we'll discuss in a moment. However, while it's a great episode in it's own right, I feel it somewhat lacks a little as the finale to the entire series. I know it wasn't intended to be the ending, but this episode's biggest problem to me is that it feels more like the beginning of a story than the end of one, which becomes incredibly jarring when you remember that this is the final episode of the entire series.

Megabyte's return is well handled for the most part. His ability to shapeshift allows him to mess with the heroes in more ways than he was able to previously, such as creating mass hysteria or infiltrating the Principle Office. His way of thinking has also changed. While for most of the episode, we're lead to believe this is the same Megabyte as before with the same agenda - to take over the system and rebuild it in his image as well as access the Super Computer and take that over. However, Megabyte already did this in the previous season. He doesn't see the need to do this again, but he's making it seem like that's his intention to the other characters. Then once he gets the opportunity, he reveals his true intention - to hunt down all the main characters for revenge.

While sure, Megabyte did manage to take over Mainframe and then caused it to crash to the extent they needed to restart the entire system to fix the damage he'd caused, he was also utterly humiliated in his defeat by Matrix at the end of the previous season. Not only did the operation planned by Dot allow Matrix and the rebels to take back the Principle Office, but he was defeated by the 'mere delivery boy' he was used to intimidating and mocking. Then when he tried to flee, he ended up having his escape route blocked by a portal to the Web which dragged him in. Because of this, he has a personal vendetta to settle with the rest of the characters. This is an incredibly interesting plot point, and it's only a shame that it comes up at the very end of the series as it would have been awesome to see Megabyte attempting to execute his planned revenge.

We also get the flip side of Bob's views on converting viruses into sprites. Megabyte describes it as a 'fate worse than deletion'. He loves being a virus, and clearly doesn't like the idea of being forced to be someone he's not. His line also suggests that it's not too different to what he does - infecting a program against their will to perform how he wants them to. Based on how many times this gets brought up throughout the season and some vague comments made here and there by Gavin Blair, I can imagine that the unmade third arc/movie for this season would have covered this idea a bit more. It's just a shame that they never got to tell that story.

As for the season as a whole, I feel it's a mixed bag overall, and not as good as Season 3 or even Season 2. The Daemon Rising arc was a brilliant start and that's almost on par with Season 3 for me. The stakes were higher than they've ever been, we got more exploration of the characters and the backstory of the show, and while the pacing could have been a little better, overall, Daemon Rising genuinely feels like a ReBoot movie (which is a given since that's how it started life). My Two Bob's is kind of where things begin to fall apart for me. For the most part, the plot isn't as engaging and, the characters are somewhat out of character, and the plot kind of just stops abruptly at the very end just when it's starting to get interesting.

Ideally, I'd have liked for this season to have been made as it was intended with the 12/13 extra length episodes. However, if I was in the position that Gavin and Ian were in of having to condense the story down (although I don't have the benefit of knowing what was planned for The Hunt or beyond), I would have possibly merged the second and third episodes, maybe having Glitch Bob try and separate from Glitch during the planning for the wedding between Bob and Dot (Dot seemed to have made up her mind at the end of the first episode anyway before still struggling to choose between the two in the next one) and then have the next two episodes deal with Megabyte and wrapping up that storyline as planned while leaving the plot open for the next arc. Heck, even if we ended it a scene or so earlier than what we got where Bob and Matrix have just captured Megabyte. It wouldn't be a perfect ending, by any means, but it would end the show on a somewhat positive note. However, who knows, it could have turned out even worse if executed this way.

Sadly, Gavin and Ian never got the chance to finish their planned story. In 1997, Mainframe became a publicly traded company complete with shareholders. The downside of becoming a publicly traded company is that you then have to appease these shareholders. As a result of this, Mainframe then began focusing more on work for hire projects (i.e. a company like Mattel would send them a script for a Barbie movie and then Mainframe would have to animate it) as opposed to original projects. This saw Mainframe produce movies based on Barbie and Casper as well as producing a Spider Man series for Sony in 2003.

Not liking the direction that Mainfame was taking, Gavin, Ian, and Phil one by one left the company, leaving the rights to ReBoot behind with them. The franchise remained dormant for years until a fan campaign known as the 'ReBoot Revival' started in 2006 with the aim to get the series back on the air and get a conclusion to the cliffhanger. Then in 2007, Rainmaker Entertainment (who purchased Mainframe and all it's assets in late 2006) announced that they would be bringing ReBoot back. Little did fans know at the time that it would take them 11 years to do so, and when it finally arrived, it proved to be a case of 'be careful what you wish for'...

Next week: We take a look at the toy line produced for Season 4