MSTF 7: Generation Why?
The Annotated Script

Fourth Skit

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SKIT FOUR : SCREW THE MAGIC
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SIPHER: Ridiculous. Just ridiculous.

PHIL: I know I'll regret this, but... what?

SIPHER: The most powerful energy source in the world... is ruby crystals.

PHIL: Okay, that's a little silly...

SIPHER: Little silly? Screw nuclear power, PILE UP THE RUBIES!

PHIL: You do realize that back then they were more or less forbidden to
	mention nuclear power, right?

SIPHER: Maybe, but RUBY DAMN CRYSTALS? They'd have better luck using 'em
	to make a whole bunch of slippers and WISHING their way back to
	Cybertron! If they were running out of impressive-sounding power
	sources and had to just make crap up, why not make up some top-secret
	experimental magno-MacGuffin energy generator? Cartoons pull that off
	all the time!

DOUG: And speaking of limp cartoon conventions and time, what about all
	this stuff that happends AT THE DAWN OF TIME? By whose watch?

PHIL: Oh, not you too.

SIPHER: You're really on about that, aren't you? But at least they don't
	base entire scripts are that. What about time-travel? Because THERE'S
	a whole kettle of bad fish.

PHIL: I think you guys are taking this a little too-

DOUG: There's always two kinds of time-travel stories. They either go into
	the past then do things that bring about the present as it happened
	anyway, giving them the ability to make some halfassed genesis story
	for stuff they didn't think about before...

SIPHER: ...or they go into the future, which is all terrible now because
	the person is no longer in the present, or what is now the past,
	because they're now in the future, which is now the present.

DOUG: ... right.

SIPHER: That's a beard they'll have. In the FUTURE.

PHIL: Okay, now you're just blathering nonsense.

DOUG: You want to know what gets me about the jump-to-the-bad-future
	stories, though?

PHIL: (cradling his head in his hands) Please, no.

DOUG: The entire episode is almost invariably set around the time-displaced
	character setting right the wrongs in the future... WHILE IN THE
	FUTURE. If the future dystopia is caused by the character's absense
	from the present past, why bother fixing the future while then since
	all it takes is their re-emergance into the original timestream to
	render the future present impossible in the first place?

SIPHER: Which then begs the question as to how said character is then able
	to retain memories of actions they didn't do anymore in the future
	that has ceased to exist!

PHIL: (Exasperated) Look, maybe the future thing ends up happening in an
	alternate dimension, okay? Jeez.

SIPHER: And that's another thing. The bloody alternate evil dimensions
	where bad guys are good and good guys are bad.

PHIL: AUGH.

DOUG: And we get to see the bad guys beat the good guys without it being a
	bad thing, right.

SIPHER: The now-bad good guys are always in a position of power, which is
	also how the good-good guys are in the first reality. So if the bad-
	good guys are dethroned from power, shouldn't the whole negative-
	reality paradigm cause a shift in the original universe, bringing a
	rise in power to the bad-bad guys to maintain equilibrium?

PHIL: Guys... it's CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT. It's like watching you two
	skin a kitten! Isn't tearing this apart with overanalysis destroying
	the magic that ATTRACTED you to the whole enterprise in the first
	place?

(There is a slight pause)

DOUG & SIPHER: BIG BLUE GRIFFIN.

PHIL: That's it, I'm outta here.

(Phil throws up his hands and leaves)

SIPHER: So how come whenever two characters swap minds, their larynxes are
	similarly exchanged?

DOUG: Do the Scooby-Doo kids wash their clothes every day? If not, where do
	they keep a huge wardrobe of identical outifts inside that small van?

PHIL: (From a distance) I HATE YOU BOTH!

OFFSTAGE: LIGHTS!

(House lights down, unpause tape)

[A skit where we get to just make fun of different cartoon conventions.
Phil screwed up his line at the end and said "I HEARD THAT.  STOP IT."
instead of "I HATE YOU BOTH!".  He apologizes for ruining the joke.

The Big Blue Griffin is Megatron's big weapon from "Aerial Assault", FYI.]

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