Originally aired October 14, 1996
Screenplay by Greg Johnson
Scorponok plants a personality-modifying virus on Optimus that will render him a coward. But the virus malfunctions, and Primal gets very, very angry. – Netflix
It’s not often that cartoons explicitly teach children that violence is the answer, but that’s just what “Gorilla Warfare” does. Like all propaganda, it tries to appear the opposite of what it is; the episode pretends to be Optimus’ Atticus Finch moment where he shows he can shoot worth a damn and his peace-loving demeanor isn’t just a cover for wussiness. It ends with Dinobot learning a valuable lesson: that maybe Optimus’ poet-warrior approach is worth his respect and admiration. But what he should have learned is that the Beast Wars would have been long over if Optimus had just flown over to Megatron’s base and wrecked the place, because he totally could at any time.
Optimus and Dinobot pair up for their “arguing about non-violent solutions” double-act, this time pushed up to 11: Optimus wants to look at flowers, and Dinobot wants to focus on battle strategies so that they don’t get murdered by the band of mercenaries whose every waking thought is to murder them.
It’s hard not to take Dinobot’s side here, and I think most kids see through the bullshit of an action cartoon pretending to be anything other than a celebration of violent solutions. But it tries anyway, making Dinobot the butt of a weird joke: just as he completes his most surly plant-diss, the flower shoots out a burr that sticks comically to the back of his neck. He freaks out and Optimus claims a moral victory, but it should be pointed out that even if this is silly, it’s still violence.
Scorponok shows up and uses the element of surprise to shoot Optimus in the chest with a missile, killing him a dumb bug thing that makes him sick. More specifically, it’s a “viral bomb” that is supposed to turn him into a coward. It also rewires Optimus’ life support systems to itself, so he’ll die if they try to remove it. Then it will explode for good measure.
You might think “wow, if that thing just intentionally detached itself, it would kill their leader and destroy their base!” But that would be a meager prize compared to making the already-violence-averse leader afraid to fight stuff. Scorponok didn’t have time to mention the point of the serum before getting shunted off a waterfall, but thankfully, Dinobot is around to guess that the serum is supposed to make Optimus a scaredy-cat. This makes it a huge, worthwhile surprise about four seconds later when it turns out it turned Optimus into a roid-raging lunatic.
I have to say, though, that’s a pretty huge guess. I’ve never seen Scorponok invent anything, and in several episodes he seems to have trouble speaking in complete sentences. I have no idea what they’re going for with his character, but I guess now he’s some kind of scientist?
Dinobot’s next prediction is that the Predacons must have created an antidote to the serum to hold in their base. It doesn’t make any sense at all that they would even bother creating an antidote to a weapon they were using on Optimus, but amazingly, they did! Megatron clucks proudly about how the Maximals will be forced to come to their base for it, but he didn’t actually tell them he had one. And obviously, he could have just lied. This marks a low point for enemy HQ, where even stupid and pointless battle strategies go wildly awry.
Anyway, Optimus gits angrier ‘an a horned lizard and busts over to the Predacon base to get the antidote he imagines could be there. The Rambo-esque mayhem he creates is much less interesting than I remember from childhood. He only actually fights Tarantulas and Waspinator, both one-on-one; the Predacons knew he was coming but didn’t bother preparing for it in any meaningful way. The most memorable part of all of this is when Tarantulas unloads machine-gun fire on Optimus and the Big Bot just strides through it like the Terminator. I didn’t know being angry made you bullet-proof, but there you go.
The coup de grace comes when Megatron, who is in a great position to kill a bullet-ridden Optimus and win the Beast Wars, decides to offer Optimus an alliance. And why not? The guy is literally programmed to be unflinchingly good, so much so that he followed you across time and space and turned his exploration crew into an ad-hoc military unit to stop you, and now he’s in berserker mode, but yeah, he’ll probably just swap allegiances if you ask.
Optimus takes this chance to just rip the bug off his chest, which doesn’t kill him as fast as we were lead to believe, and he pulls the same trick as the flower by chucking it onto the back of Megatron’s neck. This seems even more like violence since it’s a bomb instead of a prickly seed pod, but what do I know? Megatron runs off and the bomb explodes, destroying the Predacon base and presumably killing Megatron and every other Predacon within sprinting distance, since those were the stakes as explained at the outset of the adventure. But not before Cheetor can bounce in, grab the antidote, and just kind of jam it into Optimus’ chest without even checking if that’s how you do it. All’s well that ends well.
Optimus wakes up on a hospital-style bed, even though that’s not how robots work, with Dinobot holding vigil next to him. There is a flower on the night stand, the same one from the beginning of the episode. Optimus smiles because he thinks Dinobot has learned something about the value of plants. Dinobot smiles because he thinks Optimus has learned something about the value of committing intentional murder when you have the chance.
Side Notes
- I wonder if Dinobot could just straight-up call Optimus a pussy if they did it in that robo-euphemism way. I could imagine Rattrap calling someone a “lubricated gear-socket” or something. Hell, “slot machine” would be perfect.
- This episode’s unusually high level of bad guy bungling made me realize the reason the show finally gets on its feet is that eventually the Predacon schemes make sense, and occasionally bear fruit. It’s more fun that way.
- The “man hellbent on a mission” idea is sort of an ancestor to Dinobot’s moment in the spotlight, season two’s “Code of Hero.” Hopefully that one holds up better.
- Both of the spiders are confirmed inventors. Did Greg Johnson just not want to make them look bad by having them invent such a shitty, stupid device?
- I really hope Johnson didn’t write any more episodes of this show.
Beast Wars in review 