S1:E8 “Double Jeopardy”

Originally aired October 7, 1996
Screenplay by Jesse Winfield

Dinobot accuses Rattrap of being a traitor. Optimus agrees with this suspicion and sends Rattrap on a mission to test his loyalty. – Netflix

Alfred Hitchcock once said something very clever about the difference between surprise and suspense, and bombs, and it’s a little much to get into right now. The main takeaway is that it’s almost always better to inform viewers and let the suspense wring out of a scene than keep them in the dark so you can jump out and yell “Boo!”

I think about that every time I watch a disappointing movie or TV show that rests far too heavily on a surprising twist. I wonder if it could have done differently, and if it would have engaged me more if it wasn’t intentionally holding me back so the writer could feel smart by throwing something unexpected at the screen. The answer is almost always “yes” but because Hitchcock was way out of his league trying to give lessons on suspense, everyone still goes for the trick-the-viewer strategy anyway.

The only thing worse is when a movie or TV show rests on a “surprising” twist. You know, the kind where quotation marks indicate sarcasm. And yes, this is a show that was made for kids, but there is no goddamn way that any kid in America, or Canada, or wherever else this show aired, thought that Rattrap could be a secret Predacon spy. And yet somehow, that’s the shocking plot of “Double Jeopardy.” (The quotation marks here are just a convention to indicate an episode title, not sarcasm.)

All the same, I’m not sure how the title actually relates to the episode at all. The only thing that comes to mind is that it describes the “jeopardy” that results from “doubling” up with two plots that have nothing to do with each other. Because this is also the episode that sees the introduction of Blackarachnia, which should be a very big deal! But isn’t, really. All that really happens with her this episode is that the Predacons steal her from a crashed stasis pod, reprogram her as a Predacon, and leave the beast mode decision up to Tarantulas. Then she immediately slips into the background to make a few quips so that the camera can cut to Tarantulas being blatantly horny about a lady robot spider, which I didn’t need.

I like a lot of things about Blackarachnia, but planting the question of whether these robots need to get off is not one of them.

Anyway, how much more can you clash than by pushing a plot about questioning a robot’s loyalty in the same episode that shows you can just program robots to be loyal to one side? The only real connecting point between the plots is at the very beginning: the initial protoform theft prompts a brainstorm session about how the Predacons are ambushing so well lately, and Cheetor spitballs that it’s as if “a rat” is feeding them information. Dinobot picks up on the phrasing and Optimus runs with it, sending Rattrap on a mission to the Predacon sector as a test of loyalty. There, Rattrap surrenders so he can infiltrate the Predacon base and disable the codebreaker chip that’s been responsible for all the ambushes.

I guess the idea is that Optimus figured out their transmissions were being hacked, and thought up this plan on his feet so that anyone listening in would buy it hook, line, and sinker. But how he communicated this to Rattrap so he knew what to do, and why he couldn’t also communicate it to his team so they weren’t racked with guilt and internal conflict, isn’t clear. On top of everything, nothing in the episode suggests the Predacons were at any point caught up in the subterfuge. So the whole ruse only really caught Dinobot (acting stupidly out of character) and child viewers who are now adults that think climate change is a hoax.

The only reason the scheme actually works, and what almost makes the episode for me, is that Rattrap surrenders to a patrolling Terrorsaur, the only guy who absolutely would go for it. Why this guy this utterly disloyal is even allowed to live is beyond me, but the Predacons seem to operate on a Dothraki principle that challengers to the throne are fair game, and it’s always great to see Terrorsaur go all in with a pair of deuces. He makes a grand Mussolini speech to the Predacons that having secured a tiny robot rat will turn the tides of war in their favor, and proves that he is their best bet for victory.

Nobody really seems to give a shit one way or the other, except Scorponok, whose only personality trait is being loyal to a fault, and who over the course of the series can’t seem to decide if he should speak normally or in dumb third-person Hulk-speak. Actually, I’m prepared to amend my “toss up” from the last post and declare that Scorponok is easily the worst character on this show. He had some good will from blowing open Cheetor’s chest cavity in the third episode but that’s long since dried up.

Anyway, “Equal Measures” already showed that sneaking around the enemy base can be fun even if the reasons for being there make no sense, and that’s twice as true for Rattrap as it was for Cheetor. I have to assume that Winfield knew Dinobot would have been a much easier sell as a Predacon spy than Rattrap, but that it would be more fun to see the tiniest member of the team play the cloak and dagger role. There’s even a fairly literal spider-and-fly thing going on when Rattrap falls into one of Tarantulas’ web traps, and then cuts himself free in what would have been a remarkably redundant move if this episode actually ran directly after “The Web” as planned.

I really enjoyed the part when Tarantulas tracks Rattrap down and starts to shout “terrorize!” to transform into a robot, and Rattrap just pulls a Harrison Ford and shoots him before he can finish. He must have felt so smart to be the first guy to think of that. Maybe that’s why they just start transforming without shouting as the series goes on.

With the codebreaker chip disabled, the Maximals perform what I think is the first attack on the Predacon base to extricate Rattrap. It’s kind of surprising that they don’t launch frontal assaults more often considering how well they pull it off, and even at a disadvantage in numbers. But the scales might be tipped by Megatron’s tactical strategy to let Terrorsaur keep wearing the big boy pants long enough to shit them. “A wise tyrant always allows a fool to take lead in a crisis.” Hmm, I must have missed that chapter in The Art of War.

Blackarachnia briefly tries to reassert herself as the new hotness by pulling a Terminator walk through Cheetor’s gunfire, even as he blasts off all her spider legs. But after she knocks his punk ass down with one well-placed kick she just walks off, and later gets declared missing by Megatron. It’s almost as if the show, briefly stirred by the changing events, forced her out to return to a status quo, sort of like the same bullshit they pulled in not immediately integrating Tigatron into the main cast.

I wonder if these were last-minute changes added to the script to accommodate a rocky airing schedule that would have made Tigatron and Blackarachnia conspicuously absent from earlier-produced episodes that ran afterward? If that’s the case, it doesn’t seem warranted, because the next episode features both Blackarachnia and Tigatron very heavily. Suck on those eggs, foresight!

Side Notes

• Rattrap has to jump from a hanging cage to a far away ledge over a boiling lava pit, but he doesn’t go through that “swing the cage back and forth for momentum” thing first, and just does a standing leap. Christ, who missed the tropes  memo?
• Until looking it up for this episode, I thought Blackarachnia’s name was Black Arachnia, like (black) Debbie from Sealab 2021. Man, I should be reviewing that show instead of this.
• Oh hey, you thought Tigatron’s voice actor Blu Mankuma sounded like a cool robot? Blackarachnia is voiced by Venus Terza! Holy shit.
• Rattrap says “I’m blowing this taco stand!”OH COME ON HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT TACO STANDS?
• Dinobot here plays the part of Dennis from the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode “The Gang Broke Dee,” being the only asshole not in on the joke. Goddamn it, why am I not reviewing that show instead of this?

S1:E7 “Fallen Comrades”

Originally aired September 30, 1996
Screenplay by Bob Forward

A stasis pod, containing the spark-soul of a robot, lands on Earth. Both Maximals and Predacons race to claim the spark as one of their own. – Netflix

One of the greatest quotes on the craft of voice acting can be credited to Orson Welles for his work on the 1986 Transformers: The Movie.

I played the voice of a toy. Some terrible robot toys from Japan that changed from one thing to another. The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all bad outer-space stuff. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I’m destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen.

Welles passed away less than a week after completing his lines for the film, his life’s work completed. Life is beautiful.

One of the many aspects of toy-based drama that Welles no doubt recognized and admired is the built-in momentum of the cast: you gotta introduce new characters to sell more toys. It’s just that simple. That was true enough in the Transformers movie, swapping out Optimus and Megatron to introduce Rodimus Prime and Galvatron, and in Beast Wars it leads to a pretty solid reusable plot: another blank Maximal “protoform” falls to Earth, and Predacons can reprogram it as evil if the Maximals don’t get to it first.

This prefab plot is set in motion in the first episode when the protoform escape pods are ejected from the crashing Maximal ship, and it forms the backbone of “Fallen Comrades,” with Tigatron as the series’ #1 draft pick. The plot works better than the Energon hunt that stinks up a lot of season one because the stakes don’t need to be explained: whoever gets there first wins a new soldier for their team. Numbers matter, people. Plus, there’s a creepy Re-Animator vibe in the concept of reprogramming a robot in a coma to wake up evil. I can’t really make sense of it when there are guys like Dinobot around, navigating the good/evil morass in a normal, human way, but who am I to argue with a good sci-fi conceit?

I wonder if there would be such a rush to get to the protoform if they knew it would turn out to be Tigatron. He’s not the worst character in the series (that’s a toss-up between Scorponok and Terrorsaur) but he’s painfully bland in voice and personality. I mean, he’s a Smash Bros. clone of Cheetor, so purely from a new toy perspective he’s a waste of space, and he has that annoying in-touch-with-nature personality that comics seem to drop on African or Native American characters. To add insult to injury, he’s a white tiger, something that doesn’t actually exist.

Yes, white tigers exist, but they’re just mutant Bengal tigers, not some separate species of snow tigers that this series seems to think are a real thing. To be fair, I had to look this up to be certain, and I’m glad I did, because Googling it reminded me that Kenny The Mentally Disabled Tiger exists. That really made my evening, because I love this guy.

My main gripe with this episode is that it’s a chase with no consideration whatsoever of the concept of time. The entire episode is based on the Predacons going all Dick Dastardly on the Maximals, first by ambushing Optimus and putting him in the hospital, and then by destroying one of those conspicuous canyon bridges that seem to be the geological mainstay of Beast Wars’ setting. But then everybody, including Optimus, end up at the pod at about the same time anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

In the interim, there is a fun side-plot with Megatron trying to lure Dinobot back to the Dark Side while Dinobot is watching the base with Optimus crippled inside. Dinobot dishes the series’ best use of robot vulgarity with his counter-offer: “Eat slag!” It’s a perfect robot analog for “shit” and it’s also human vulgarity in places like Britain, where it means “slut.” I wonder if they edited in a new line in other countries, so kids didn’t hear “Eat slut!” in the middle of their Saturday morning Froot Loops.

As much as I like the guy, I really enjoyed seeing Dinobot get blasted in this exchange, because he has to pull a cool combat roll to avoid getting murked. It’s a really good micro moment of solid action direction followed by an even better moment of comedy direction. When Dinobot switches the auto guns online, they slowly open out of a hatch right next to Tarantulas and Scorponok. From the autoguns’ perspective, we see the two dudes stand there frozen for a second before Tarantulas chances a small shuffle, at which point he’s blown away.

Back at the main plot, everything seems like it’s gearing towards the gotcha moment where Tigatron turns out to be one of the very tigers that Megatron was threatening in order to get the Maximals to give him the protoform. I guess it makes sense that the Maximals wouldn’t want a tiger to get hurt, but it seems lazy. Especially since the Maximals just lower their guns rather than throwing them away or something. These details matter!

It’s all a big fuckaround anyway, because Tigatron, like his good brother Kenny, has some damaged circuits that make him unable to integrate with society. So after all this, he’s a committed D-lister who will only pop up now and then.

Side Notes

• Optimus says he’ll have to miss the epic funeral Dinobot is planning, since he’s not quite dead. “Are you certain? It would be a triumphant passage.”
• I really don’t pay attention to sports, so I hope that draft pick analogy made sense. If not, sorry sportsos.
• Tigatron is voiced by Blu Mankuma, which is such a cool name it actually sounds like a way better robot than Tigatron.
• I’m completely lost on the time/distance measurements in this show. The Maximal base, which is in some hot, gorilla-ridden area (Africa?) is “100 clicks” from the stasis pod crash site on Hoth. Is a click a mile? Is it 10 miles? I thought clicks were a time thing, like the equivalent of a second, but Rhinox reads out a countdown in seconds.

S1:E6 “Power Surge”

Originally aired September 25, 1996
Screenplay by Larry DiTillo

Terrorsaur discovers a floating mountain that’s rich with Energon. With a surge in his power, he scraps Megatron and takes control over the Predacons. – Netflix

There have been some bad episodes of Beast Wars so far, maybe even the majority of them. Gimmicky plots, out-of-character moments, and false stakes are in full effect as the series finds its footing. But none of the first-season jitters feels nearly as wooden and cut-rate as “Power Surge.” And maddeningly, this is actually the eighth episode in production order, so they should have sorted this shit out by now. And even more maddeningly, it’s written by the co-creator of the series, who’s responsible for 13 episodes overall!

The only memorable thing about “Power Surge” is that it has a floating mountain. And for anyone counting, this marks the third time a mountain chock-full of Energon has appeared on Beast Wars. The first one came in the second episode, and it was such a big damn deal it was considered a game over for the Universe if Megatron got his hands on it. Another one crops up in the opening shot of “Equal Measures,” and Optimus is so bored by the sight that he doesn’t even bother reporting it.

Perhaps “Power Surge” is intent on fighting that kind of deflation by finally showing someone get his hands on Energon and what happens as a result. Generally, Beast Wars treats Energon’s properties in the same teasingly vague way that Smallville treats Kryptonite: it’s a magic crystal that can make screenwriters’ every zany wish come true. But other than the indulgence of a goddamn flying mountain, “Power Surge” makes things pretty straightforward: Energon lets you become Super Sonic.

In addition to a less ridiculous-sounding voice, Terrorsaur’s Energon-OD mode has better guns, an impenetrable chassis, and some kind of rocket in his anus that shoots sparks when he flies. (I think this is so you know that he’s flying very fast, another depressing reminder that this show is for children.) Anyway, in Beast Wars’ most relatable moment, Terrorsaur’s first thought upon achieving godhood is to go kill his boss.

He does just that, and his next move is to do the same thing to the Maximals. So, yes, the creative dynamo powering this plot is the same mind-bender that Dragon Ball Z tried to capture over the bulk of its episodes and a dozen films: what if there was a REALLY STRONG guy?

The only fun to be had is when Terrorsaur’s powers suddenly run out in the middle of ordering battle commands, like the testosterone suddenly draining from a crackly-voiced teen. When he bashfully excuses himself to recharge, it’s somehow reminiscent of a British comedy, and I can’t tell you how much I would have loved to see the next 10 minutes dedicated to an awkward social entanglement, Terrorsaur hopelessly trying to save face in front of his newfound acolytes. Instead, he runs off holding his belly like he’s about to poop his pants, which is very funny, but he still gets back to the mountain without anyone pointing it out.

Aside from everything else, it’s this kind of remarkably obtuse and straightforward writing that damns this episode. It’s a story focused on the Predacons for once, but with no interest in fleshing out any of their characters. With little time to work with, the Maximals’ contribution is extremely linear—Cheetor spies the superpower-giving mountain, and Optimus and Rattrap plan to blow it up, and do—and there’s nothing left to build into a story.

This is an episode in which Megatron is gunned to death like a dog in the street and yet nothing comes of it. Terrorsaur flies away, and then Tarantulas leaves, and then Scorponok decides to put Megatron back together. Then at the end, Megatron shows up and Terrorsaur goes pale, like it’s the payoff to some great joke.

Without any zigs or zags to the plot, there’s no fun. That might be why Terrorsaur’s unexpected going-limp moment was the only time that I felt like something interesting might happen.

He actually goes limp twice, but the second time there’s nothing unexpected about it, and it only adds insult to injury by blatantly breaking a rule that had been set up very clearly and consistently. Throughout the episode, we see time and again that nobody, not even Optimus, can stay in robot mode near the Energon mountain for more than a few seconds without having to revert to beast mode to avoid imminent stasis lock. And yet suddenly, for no reason at all, Optimus is able to stay in robot mode for so freaking long that Terrorsaur’s overcharge wears off again. Whoa, what? The overcharge lasted at least several minutes the first time, and at least several minutes this time, too! I mean, wh-what are we supposed to believe here? That this is some sort of magic Energon? What the fuck is this, some kind of bullshit for little kids??

Side Notes

• Dinobot is conspicuously absent from this turd of an episode. Tell me that’s a coincidence.
• Optimus busts out a new catchphrase: “Sometimes crazy works.” Optimus didn’t get the memo that boring leaders have to be boring, and is actually very cool.
• The Predacons have a lady voice for their OS, but the Maximals have a manly voice. It also matches the voice of each group’s ship, so does the ship’s computer monitor their bodies or is it just different copies of the same software? Guess it depends if Dinobot’s is a lady or a man.
• Cheetor’s slang gets better the more he channels Burt Ward: “Jumping gyros!” (pronounced like a gyroscope, not the delicious Greek sandwich)
• Scorponok’s dumb legs made me question how many legs a scorpion actually has; is it eight legs AND two claws, or six legs and two claws for eight total? Internet says it’s eight legs plus two claws, which is cheating.

S1:E5 “Chain of Command”

Originally aired September 24, 1996
Screenplay by Jesse Winfield

Optimus Primal is abducted by an otherworldy probe, leaving the Maximals leaderless. Amidst their bickering, the Predacons launch an attack. – Netflix

As I’ve stated before, I’m a fan of Beast Wars’ “all episodes are equal, but some are more equal than others” semi-serial format. But as a rule, the strongest Beast Wars episodes are those that advance the bigger plot bubbling under the surface: ancient aliens, the Golden Disks, and the space-time continuum as a four-dimensional battlefield. High stakes stuff. So the question is: am I an idiot, and the series would be better without all the filler? Or is “Chain of Command” so satisfying because it follows a two-episode intermission with Cheetor the Incorrigible Boy Soldier?

Either way, “Chain of Command” is a return to what Beast Wars is really about, once you strip away the fluff. Yes, it brings the alien subplot that would soon dominate the series to the forefront, with an alien probe appearing and subsequently abducting Optimus. But it’s also a fast-paced story with conflict pouring through every minute of its runtime. There are basically non-stop shootouts between Maximals and Predacons, and they all feel like they’re battles over something tangible, not “take over the galaxy!” hot air. And at the heart of the episode is an internal struggle over the titular chain of command—specifically, that the Maximals are embarrassingly lagging behind the pathologically-treasonous Predacons by not actually having one.

The power vacuum that results from Optimus’ abduction builds on the friction of Dinobot’s uneasy initiation into the Maximal camp, pitting Rattrap and Dinobot against each other for leadership. It leads to a great moment where Rhinox forces Dinobot to consent to a democratic vote, but the vote ends up a 2-2 tie anyway, so Dinobot flips a table.

Dinobot rides high here, providing the central catalyst to the internal conflict while also sticking to the overly honor-bound personality that makes him interesting. Sure, he’s willing to kill Rattrap to “break the tie,” but once Rattrap is in command Dinobot apologizes for not following orders well enough. What a guy.

It should be pointed out that Dinobot wasn’t following orders because he was kicking the ever-loving shit out of Megatron, which is delightful. Foreshadowing one of my favorite episodes later in the series, Megatron and Co. attack the Axalon while Optimus is presumed dead, and Dinobot, Cheetor, and Rattrap defend the base while Rhinox stays inside trying to find a way to bring Optimus back. Only in this case, the tension doesn’t come from our heroes’ impending doom, but rather from the question of how many hundreds of times Dinobot can punch Megatron in the face before he injures his weird two-thumbed raptor hands.

There’s a nerdy glee that comes from seeing our favorite characters wreck shop in a punchout, and that’s very much at play here. I love seeing Dinobot beat the other characters, and this series is kind to people like me. And yet I always thought that Megatron and Optimus occupied a kind of privileged space where they were the only ones tough enough to face off against each other. But really, this fight is so one-sided that the whole thing is best captured in the image of a 100-yard flying kick that even Liu Kang would consider excessive.

Remarkably, the episode’s best thrill doesn’t come from Dinobot’s epic beatdown, but from the sudden and incredible introduction of Rhinox’s weapon of choice: a massive hand-held rotary cannon. Rhinox always reminded me of X-Men’s Beast in that he’s the brawny-but-smart guy who seems almost cruelly withheld from combat in this series. The times when Rhinox even opens fire are few and far between, and never matched by the sight of 20 solid seconds of magazine-emptying gunfire that reduces Waspinator to a twitchy corpse.

Somehow, Waspinator’s sparks activate a Stonehenge-looking formation to glow and pop Optimus out of the probe, and while this is a stupid idea, I like that Rhinox’s actual invention to get Optimus out was useless. There are things I will believe when watching a show about animal robots fighting over alien probes in prehistoric Earth, but I would have walked out if that thrown together contraption actually worked. Thankfully, as is so often the case, violence was the true answer.

I have to imagine that the spectacle of Waspinator staggering backward as bullets tear off his limbs is the exact reason we see so little of Rhinox’s Paul Verhoeven–esque gun in the future, and also the reason for the slide from genuine violence to cartoonish slapstick that the show makes by the end of its first season. It’s a good thing that this trade off coincides with the series’ steady drift toward more continuity-extending, character-driven plots like this. But it’s still another example of moms ruining absolutely everything.

Side Notes:

• Rattrap can’t be all gems: “Excuse my error message” makes no damn sense at all for a robot.
• My gut tells me that Cheetor, enamored by Dinobot’s bad boy style, was the race traitor who provided Dinobot with his second vote.
• Rattrap calls Dinobot “an innocent orphan in a B-movie,” which really brings me to my suspension of disbelief to its breaking point.
• For anyone keeping score, the revelation that they’re fighting on Earth comes about 20 episodes before I claimed it would. Unless it just happens to be a planet with a continent that looks remarkably like post-Pangaea South America. I dunno, maybe it was a give-away as soon as we saw gorillas and dinosaurs.

S1:E4 “Equal Measures”

Originally aired September 23, 1996
Screenplay by Greg Johnson

When the Maximals try to set up a detection system, somehow Cheetor and Terrorsaur are transported. Dinobot plans to beam a bomb to the Predacon base. – Netflix

One week after Cheetor learned the value of teamwork under the the cruel tutelage of torture, I never would have expected to see the spotted dick on the receiving end of another “If you ever pull a stunt like that again” speech. And yet here we are.

If I was Greg Johnson, I would be upset to have this story preempted by Larry DiTillo’s “The Web,” which was produced as the sixth episode but aired just before this one. In fact, I’m not Greg Johnson and I’m upset about it. The jump in air order means we have two episodes in a row—the only two since the pilot—that revolve around Cheetor getting into trouble after bone-headedly ignoring orders. I didn’t even want this plot the first time. Maybe a suit upstairs was trying to push Cheetor into being the star of the show, who knows.

The real bugbear for me is that “The Web” had a sense of finality to it: narrowly escaping hideous murder is a good stopping point for Cheetor’s antics, and the boy seems to be scared straight. You could imagine he spends months as Rhinox’s lab assistant before working back the courage to even set foot outside the base. But here he is a week later acting like the third Duke boy again. He even sasses back at Optimus’ tough talk with a snappy “Okay okay, I’ll never do that again… until the next time!” I hope you do put his tail in a sling, Optimus! Whatever that means.

That said, I’m not sure I even understand the plot of “Equal Measures.” The Maximals plan to lay out survey posts, which are basically radar posts, and these are supposed to help them deliver a bomb to the Predacon base. They delay the plan due to a storm, but Cheetor tries it anyway, and then lightning hits a post, and Energon… does something, and it makes a warp point between the bases.

The whole idea is wacky and slapdash, but it does give us our first glimpse into the Predacon base, which is sort of a massive hangar half-filled with lava.

As gimmicky as the core concept is, it’s actually pretty fun seeing Cheetor zip around with an air-cart and dodge explosions in the enemy base. Compared to “The Web,” it’s a better showing for Cheetor overall, since he pulls off some derring-do rather than concluding in a heap of utter ignominy and shame.

On the other set, Terrorsaur pops into the Maximal base and almost immediately turns traitor to ally with Dinobot. It’s kind of a running gag of the series that the Predacons have absolutely no loyalty to their army whatsoever, and will turn on Megatron when they come upon even the most meager advantage. I mean, the best use for the warp point that I can think of is the one Dinobot comes up with: chute a bomb through the thing to blow up the other base. But Terrorsaur goes completely deep-end over it: “Think of the cosmic magnificence!”

The only thing I don’t really like about this episode, beyond being Cheetor-heavy, redundant to “The Web,” and generally crappy, is that Dinobot seems more like a schemer that his usual warrior persona. He dupes Cheetor into planting the relay posts when he could just as easily do it, and it seems like normally he would. There’s some side talk about how only Cheetor is fast enough to do the job, but the guy is a velociraptor. His name literally translates to “speedy… uh, raptor.” It’s Latin.

The best thing I can say about this episode is that it is very GIF-friendly. Take Optimus’ introduction, where he just pops up an elevator tossing a dropped bomb to himself and coolly asks his cowering squadmates “Some sort of trouble?” The way the shot lingers on his smug face for one extra glance around the room is just great. So great, in fact, that I learned how to make GIFs just to post it here:

In the process of making the above shitty GIF, I also stumbled on a tumblr full of much-better Beast Wars GIFs, and I’m going to end with the best ones from that site. I won’t make this a habit, but dear lord, there are a lot of great ones from this episode.

These images come from Beast Wars GIFs but are rehosted here to avoid hotlinking.

Side Notes:

• Okay, those survey posts are bullshit. You can’t just have a 10-foot tall antennae shrink to the size of a hockey puck and pretend that the idea of “transforming” has any integrity to it at all.
• Rattrap mentions the storm is trashing the comm-links “worse than usual,” so there’s our comm-link continuity.
• “Bugbear” would be a cool name for a Fuzor, and maybe his specialty would be creating annoying hang-ups for his teammates. But he would be gross looking.
• Who was fist-bumping in 1996?  Was Dinobot in NWA?
• How fucking cool would it be if your fist-bumps caused an electrical disturbance? That would be the coolest goddamn thing.