S1:E13 “Dark Designs”

Originally aired November 4, 1996
Screenplay by Ian Weir

Megatron captures and reprograms Rhinox into a Predacon. It doesn’t turn out very well. – Transformers Wiki

Rhinox finally gets his long-overdue spotlight episode in “Dark Designs.” It’s mostly a retread of “Gorilla Warfare,” showing that like Optimus, Rhinox could single-handedly destroy Predacon HQ if he only had the noive. But, also like Optimus, Rhinox’s military ambitions take a backseat to his infatuation with flowers, the sissiest preoccupation in the Transformers or any other universe. I wonder if these guys would take their station more seriously if they knew how many of their friends would die from the war they can’t be bothered to wage.

We join our Maximal heroes on the latest of many detours into perfect spots to be ambushed. This time, it’s at the bottom of a canyon, where they are using some kind of energy radar to find Energon. Until now, I didn’t even know they needed it, but if they do they could stand to start with the vein that runs directly under their base and spans miles.

Anyway, every single Predacon sneaks up on them from above and uses their vantage point to blow Optimus out of the sky before he can even rocket-boost out of there, and then rain down fire on the rest of the helpless Maximals. It’s weird, because last episode showed that Rhinox actually has a device that can detect Predacon energy signatures, so they should really never get caught unawares like this at all. But maybe he only had enough room in his fanny-pack for one kind of radar device, and he chose the Energon one.

Rhinox makes up for this foible by keeping a clear enough head to just shoot the rocks above the Preds, causing an avalanche. But I can understand why everyone else was all haywired, because the action sends the jitter-cam off the register and almost made me throw up. This marks the next great leap in Beast Wars directorial style, being the first episode where I really couldn’t tell what was happening in the action scenes. Michael Bay must have been taking notes.

With the Preds all smashed by the convenient enemy-targeting rockslide, it’s as if Rhinox finally took off his Coke-bottle glasses and brushed the hair out of his face, because Optimus and Megatron simultaneously realize the dude is a hunk. Optimus starts career-planning Rhinox’s future leadership positions, which makes sense to me. Way back at “Chain of Command,” it seemed odd that everyone didn’t immediately agree Rhinox should be the second-in-command. He’s smart, he packs firepower, and he never wavers on what to do next. But Rhinox turns Optimus down because “aw, shucks” or something. Megatron goes the hostile takeover route, and has Tarantulas kidnap Rhinox with one of his turbo-webs, or whatever they’re called.

Oddly enough, even though Megatron only this very day realized how cool Rhinox would be as a Predacon, it turns out he already had a Turn-You-Predacon machine in his office, ready to go! Apparently it took a really long time to make, so it’s weird that he only seemed to decide to use it on a whim. Come to think of it, where is that machine they already had that forces a robot to stay in beast mode? Or what about that megacannon that Scorponok recovered in the third episode? These would all be useful as the foundation of future battle strategies. Predacons have terrible assets management.

With their buddy mysteriously missing, the Maximals patch into his comm-link so they can overhear where he is. Rhinox is tied up, though, so I guess this process doesn’t require his consent or even his knowledge. Sounds ethically dubious. But it comes just it time fore everyone to hear Rhinox grunt out “If you’re going to finish me anyway, then do me a favor: shut up and get on with it!” Not even a single second of this episode deviates from the core lesson that Rhinox has massive, sand-dragging balls.

Megatron flips on the machine and Rhinox turns into a Predacon, which of course gives him evil red eyes. I mean, they’re evil and red in Beast Mode, which normally has kind of shitty cartoon eyes. His robot mode always has red eyes, but they’re not evil. So to make up for it, his robot mode also has a slight palette swap that switches his brown and gold for grey and silver. He still pretty much looks the same, but it’s amazing how his naturally blank expression becomes incredibly creepy as soon as he whips out his sinister/sarcastic voice. Evil Rhinox is very reminiscent of Wolverine from the ’90s X-Men cartoon, at least when he was being sarcastic at people.

The Maximals freak out and hasten to battle, with Cheetor ghoulishly saying “better dead than Pred!” right to Dinobot’s face, the little shit. But luckily Optimus knows what kind of episode this is, and he decides to leave Rhinox alone so he can wreck the Predacon shop from the inside. I guess having been there himself, he’s aware that Rhinox will be much more effective at his primary goal in life if he’s blind with aggression, which is a little sad for him to realize. I wonder if Optimus looked into getting testosterone supplements so he could overlook foliage long enough to free his team from a mindless war.

Anyway, Optimus is right and Rhinox manages to destroy or mangle every Predacon on the ship in his bid to scrap Megatron and take his place as leader. It’s kind of boring to watch, though, because the only person who clues into the thing is Terrorsaur, who immediately takes the opportunity to defect to Rhinox’s side, because of course he does. I really liked this development, but Rhinox shuts him down immediately so it doesn’t really go anywhere other than letting Rhinox bring it up later to stir more confusion in the Predacon ranks.

As Megatron notes, Rhinox’s Predacon rewiring makes him too prone to gloating, which he does while standing right on the Evil Maker machine. Megatron fires a laser blast at it, which is the way that you turn a machine on—especially if you want it to do the exact opposite of its intended function—and the machine turns Rhinox back into a Maximal. Not to be pedantic, but couldn’t he have just shot Rhinox instead, and then shot him again and again, killing him permanently? It’s the first thing he does once Rhinox is a Maximal again anyway,  but I guess Megatron knows what kind of episode this is, too, and that the clock is ticking on wrapping everything up.

The Maximals bust in and start busting heads. Cheetor blasts Waspinator out of the sky, but he was still loopy from a Rhinox-related injury earlier and in no condition to fight, so no points for Cheetor. Dinobot immediately chucks his sword at Scorponok, but tis merely a flesh wound, and Scorponok tackles him and goes all Jim Carrey from The Mask, scoring about 50 punches that don’t seem to matter, because Dinobot just lifts him from the neck and smashes his skull in against a ventilation fan. Optimus, perhaps feeling inadequate after all of Rhinox’s battle competence, whips out his scimitars and cuts Megatron’s arm clean off. This is a very good kids’ TV show.

Optimus orders Dinobot to grab Rhinox and “go go go!” which he says almost like Mario would say. It’s not the tone I would use on the battlefield, but he was probably really excited from that awesome arm chop. It’s a dumb order anyway, because why do they need to go? Every single Predacon is decommissioned and the Maximals can basically take them prisoner in their own base. Of course, the very next thing that happens is Dinobot retorts: “No, this is our chance to take command of the base!” Dinobot is the only thinking character on this show.

They leave anyway, and the Predacon base blows up for the third time in as many episodes.

With Rhinox back, things are is back to normal with everyone doing something they never do: relax in a garden smelling flowers. Optimus leans against a tree reading some sort of robo-book. I guess with all the Predacons presumed dead, it’s time to kick back to give their enemies a fair chance to regroup.

Cheetor tosses a great episode-ending assist by asking Rhinox what it was like to be a Predacon, and Rhinox dunks it: “Like you’re three gigabytes of attitude on a two-gig hard drive. No wonder they have personality problems!” He starts laughing. One by one, everyone joins in, and the happy fade-out music starts to play as everyone chuckles louder and louder, until the camera pans out to show that Dinobot is actually present, and duly offended. They continue to laugh regardless, as Dinobot curls his fist up revenge-style. The laughter does not abate. This guy saved them countless times and they’re laughing in his face about his in-born nature, which he has overcome to help give them winning battle strategies that they ignore for no reason. Maximals are terrible.

Side Notes

• I guess if I had to elevator pitch this episode, it would be: “have you seen the ’90s X-Men cartoon? This episode is about Rhinox changing from Beast into Wolverine.” The people who matter would get it.
• When Waspinator gets knocked loopy he starts ranting “I am Shrapnel,
  Decepticon hero.” I don’t know who that is, but it’s cool that they mention it. He also says that he is “Wunco the Sane,” and I don’t know who that is either, but I don’t think I’m supposed to.
• Optimus indicates the number “7” with one full palm and devil horns on the other hand. Dude would never make it as an undercover SS officer.
• A TWO-GIG HARD DRIVE, PEOPLE. For the record, this was a standard hard drive in ’96, and apparently on Cybertron.

S1:E12 “Victory”

Originally aired November 1, 1996
Screenplay by Wendy Reardon

An explosion at the Predacon base leaves no survivors, and the Maximals assume victory. However, Dinobot makes a discovery that changes everything. – Netflix

They should have called this one “Ronin,” to better play off the theme of what the hell Dinobot is supposed to do once Megatron’s dead. Ronin, as all Robert DeNiro fans know, were former samurai who became driftless when their master died. In Dinobot’s case, he becomes rudderless in a more Inigo Montoya sense: once Megatron is dead, he no longer has a reason to stick it out with the Maximals. As Rattrap puts it in this episode: “He’s only with us cuz he knew we’d win, not because he believed in what we stood for. He’s a soldier—with the enemy gone, who else is he gonna fight?”

The satisfying answer for Dinobot fans is “the entire goddamn planet.” Yes, with the Beast Wars abruptly over, Dinobot chooses to stay behind on prehistoric Earth and become a global warlord.  But clearly he doesn’t follow through, or else we never would have made it far enough as a civilization to invent Transformers!

Obviously, Beast Wars loves to yank little kids’ chains, and the whole idea that the Beast Wars are over is a lame psycheout. We join the bots in media res, with a lot of exciting developments already in motion. At some point between episodes, Rattrap managed to sneak into the Predacon base and set up a nanny-cam, and now the Maximals all sit around watching the thing like it’s Big Brother. But it turns out that Terrorsaur tripped over the camera’s cable—which speaks volumes about Rattrap’s shoddy workmanship–and the Predacons turned the tables on their voyeurs by staging an elaborate ruse. The ruse goes like this: they attempt an Energon refinement experiment, and when it fails it pisses everyone off so much that they try to kill Megatron and blow up the base in the process.

The Maximals buy it, and I would, too, because these guys really set a low benchmark for teamwork. Everyone on the Maximal side seems bummed out in a kind of 4th-wall reflection of how disappointed the kids watching would be to realize their favorite show was ending anticlimactically after only a dozen episodes. They decide to loot the Predacon base for spaceship parts so they can journey home, but everything is very somber, like the first act of Alien. They shuffle around the Predacons’ desolate ship speaking in hushed tones, and Dinobot seems especially on-edge. Rattrap’s breaking point comes when Dinobot no longer engages in the antagonistic Johnny Storm/Ben Grimm dynamic that Rattrap had become emotionally-invested in.

Cheetor finds a way to get the catatonic Dinobot’s blood flowing again, by dangling Tarantulas’ spider legs over his shoulder in a horror-movie gotcha moment. And it’s enough of a shock to Dinobot’s sense of decency that he busts out his first of many Hamlet quotes.

Alas, poor Tarantulas. I knew him, Cheetor! This is the leg that stalked so many victims. That it should come to this…

Cheetor gets a rare zinger in when he asks if Dinobot needs a hug, and maybe that’s what pushes him over the edge. When they get back to base, Dinobot announces he’s done with this crew, but he’s very classy about it. Optimus is also very classy about Dinobot’s intentions of going on a global military conquest. So it’s a very positive goodbye all around.

I checked the clock, and it’s only around 8:30 into the episode by the time Dinobot struts across a field, lord of all he surveys, and happens to see every single Predacon hiding in a hobbit hole in the ground. The entire rest of the episode is dedicated to an extended action sequence, with Dinobot trying to haul ass back to the soon-launching Axalon and the Predacons pursuing with intent to kill.

It doesn’t really make sense, though, because when we see the Predacons all tucked underground, Megatron does some exposition about their plan which details how they found the spy cam, how they faked their own deaths, and what the goal was from there. I just assumed the goal was to get the Maximals off the planet so the Predacons could go about their business of fucking up Earth unimpeded, which would make it a nice little twist of fate for Dinobot to only discover them because he was so bummed about their fake deaths. But it turns out it’s actually a much more complicated plan with no clear upside, which is a situation that the Beast Wars writers seem oddly talented at creating. I can’t tell if this is supposed to be a running joke, like Megatron is a robot that has its Master Plan programming gimped so it keeps coming up with terrible Dr. Evil-style schemes, or if this is unintentional.

The meat of it is that Megatron tricked the Maximals into plundering his own base for parts so they could leave the planet—which is what Megatron wants, or at least what he should want. But instead, he’s going to wait for the “right moment to attack,” like, thinking it’s easier to attack a ship when it’s taking off than when it’s not. He doesn’t explain why this is better than attacking it normally, or what they plan to get out of it, so it seems like a meager amount of leverage at huge cost and risk. And obviously, the Maximals are launching their ship at this very moment, so without Dinobot’s accidental prompting they would have missed the window entirely. I have to ask, why not just ambush the Maximals while they were in your base?

Anyway, the ship starts to take off, but Optimus opts to muster the troops for a quick extraction mission for the outnumbered and very quickly getting shot in the butt Dinobot. Actually, he tries to go alone, but Cheetor decides to jump in to help (he doesn’t help). It’s actually a rather long debate over whether there’s time for Cheetor to join, which seems to defeat the purpose. Tigatron tries to join as well, possibly as a way to get off the ship so he can go live in the jungle instead of journeying to a robot planet that will terrify his every waking moment, but Rhinox shouts him down.

Optimus flies out with a riot shield and grabs Dinobot, whose Spock-like response to being rescued is “This is tactically unsound.” Sure is! With Cheetor being fucking garbage at providing cover fire, Optimus takes a hit and has to swap to Beast Mode when he goes all Energon-tingly. Cheetor also gets shot, and barely manages to crawl onto the ship’s landing bay just as it starts to lift off. But Tigatron, the only guy who doesn’t even live on base, thinks fast and sets the ship’s autoguns on, which kills every single pursuing Predacon.

Optimus limps back to the ship and throws Dinobot’s body onto the lift, and then makes something like a 50-foot vertical leap to grab Cheetor by the hand. All’s well until Scorponok shoots a missile that (embarrassingly for him) doesn’t explode and take all three bots with it, but just knocks Optimus’ hand free. Optimus drops to the ground in dramatic slo-mo, but come on. He could swap back to robot mode for the matter of seconds it would take to get safely on the ship. Instead he plops onto the ground like a loser, and it’s funny because it looks exactly like a gorilla falling out of a plane.

Megatron, perhaps using the unspoken advantage of attacking a flying ship, grabs onto a dangling wire and stows aboard like the queen from Aliens. Once aboard, he smashes the flight controls and blasts every single Maximal on the bridge, other than Rattrap. Why doesn’t he shoot Rattrap? He keeps gloating about how he’s about to kill Rattrap but he doesn’t do it. Maybe he has something personal against Rattrap from when Rattrap tased him while pretending to be Terrorsaur’s partner, or maybe he’s upset about the nanny cam thing. In any event, he instead opts to crush Rattrap in his T-Rex jaws, which gives time for Rhinox to wake up and punch him. Rhinox is very good at punching Megatron.

The Axalon starts crashing, but Optimus wakes up and remembers he has rockets, and I shit you not, a full on Superman pastiche takes place. “Wait, down in the sky… is it a bird?” Dinobot says. “Maybe a plane!” Rhinox answers. Now how in the fuck would there be a plane, Rhinox? How in the fuck? Nevermind that pointing out a bird in this situation is ridiculous. But how would there even possibly be a goddamn plane, dude?

A royalty-free version of the Superman theme plays as Optimus somehow manages to wrangle the entire ship down with his tiny rockets. I guess the trick is the animators were able to show a ton of white stuff coming out of his rockets, like they’re just magically shooting out a ton of propellant now, and it’s enough to land the ship. Makes me wonder where all that oomph was a few minutes earlier.

I do want to say, between the counterintelligence ruse, Dinobot’s post-bellum blues, and Rhinox punching out Megatron in the nick of time, this episode is awfully liberal about borrowing from previous episodes. And the briefly-aloft Axalon is basically a perfect metaphor for the trajectory this episode takes: from the bittersweet death of one’s enemies peppered with Shakespeare to a pulled-out-of-the-ass feat of cartoon physics, set against a fake Superman theme.

Side Notes

• When Optimus maximizes it has a weird Windows bootup sound.
• Rattrap is angry that Dinobot ruined their journey home. “You want me to show you how velociraptors got extinct?” Did Rattrap just let on that he knows they’re in the past?
• Even though it would have ruined the “surprise” that the Predacon mutiny was a hoax, I would have loved if the whole thing was an appropriately poorly-acted affair with silly Wes Anderson effects.
• Rattrap scores some good digs at Optimus this time: “scrape ape” and “wimp chimp.”
• When the ship takes off, there’s a cool Fight Club effect that shows the warp core starting up. The animators and directors seem to be having fun with the freedom of CG.
• Speaking of David Fincher, it’s possible some moment in this episode perfectly mirrored Alien3 and readers were waiting for me to go for the hat-trick, but I’m sorry, I didn’t see that one.
• Dinobot should know that Tarantulas only got his spider-legs once they came to Earth, and the only victim he stalked since then was Cheetor. Kind of dick to mention to Cheetor as if it’s sad that he’s gone.

S1:E11 “The Probe”

Originally aired October 15, 1996
Screenplay by Craig Miller & Marv Wolfman

As a probe from Cybertron approaches the planet, the Maximals desperately try to make contact with it, but Megatron has other plans. – Transformers Wiki description

“The Probe” marks a new beginning for Beast Wars, as the series finally dips its toes into the lurid waters of roboterotic fiction. When Optimus is infected with a cyber-virus that Rhinox must identify by entering his exhaust port, can Rhinox contain the growing curiosity that his admiration could be the seed of something more? Deftly navigating the social dynamics of same-sex relations among ranks of the army corps (the only cartoon to do so during the Clinton “don’t ask, don’t tell” years), it balances drama with sensual direction and cinematography, making “The Probe” the first episode of the series that compelled me to pleasure myself (but not the last).

More than this, “The Probe” is a tight, entertaining episode that shares none of the plot schism from the previous two-writer episode, “A Better Mousetrap.” It does feature two distinct plot elements that could just as well feature in completely separate episodes, but they blend together much better than children’s television and masturbation jokes.

Actually, the biggest triumph of the episode is the fact that it finally gives the Predacons a victory. Instead of revolving around an unattainable goal of the Predacons (to kill the Maximals), this gives an unattainable goal to the Maximals: the Gilligan’s Island mainstay of finally going home. We know from the outset that they can’t achieve this, and that gives the antagonists a sick kind of power that they haven’t had for the entire series.

The episode begins with an unseen meeting on Cybertron which reveals that the Maximals’ disappearance has not gone unnoticed. A search commences, and a spaceship fires out probes in a haphazard Empire Strikes Back fashion to find Optimus’ lost ship. For any kids still reading after all the sex stuff: this is not a realistic way to find things in space. But then, against odds that would make C-3PO shit himself, one of these probes actually manages to follow the bots through time and space to the prehistoric Solar System.

Rhinox finds the probe’s energy signature, and realizes that they have some very excitingly low number of megacycles to hail the probe before it flies out of range! To do this, they need to replicate the transwarp signature of their defunct spacecraft, which means building a radio tower thing! And they only have a limited number of megacycles to do it in!!

While the Maximals build a radio tower, Tigatron pulls double-duty by scouting for Predacons and also discovering the other plot element at play: Tarantulas has invented a ray gun that forces bots into Beast Mode, unable to transform back. Tarantulas nets two hostages for the price of one when Cheetor hops onto the scene and proves predictably useless. The two cats are held captive in the Predacon base, where Cheetor spills the beans about what the Maximals are up to. In the process, he calls Megatron “Megadumb” which is pretty bad even by Cheetor standards.

From there, the two plots converge: the Predacons attack the radio tower and bring Tarantulas’ device with them to tilt the odds. But the inevitability of the tower’s destruction is held at bay by a third subplot, in which Dinobot points out that even if they succeed, he’s probably going to get executed as a Predacon criminal. This concept doesn’t really go anywhere, since obviously they don’t get off the island, but it’s a nice script technique at play: make viewers consider the complications of success so they aren’t bored by the unlikelihood of it.

Inevitable or not, the confrontation at the tower is a fun bit of back-and-forth as the Predacons and Maximals whittle each other’s forces down one by one. Scorponok tries to missile the tower, so Rattrap blows his fucking hand off. Dinobot gets blapped by the Beastinator ray and Blackarachnia kicks him in the face about twenty goddamn times before he even realizes he can’t transform. Rattrap shoots Blackarachnia off a cliff, but then he gets blapped himself.

Tarantulas tries to straight-up strangle Optimus, but Optimus shoves his forearm-shotgun in his chest and shoots a hole straight through him. This is my favorite part, because Alec Willows has such a perfect scream of “Oh nooo!” He’ll get a lot of chances to refine it over the years, and it’s always worthwhile. I’m pretty sure it’s the last thing Tarantulas ever says in the series, too.

Anyway, Megatron gets the last laugh by blowing up the signal array once all the Maximals have been transformed into harmless, enormous, savage beasts. The ensuing explosion replays on loop for nearly a full minute, with a weird dissolve of Megatron’s laughing face over it. This is maybe the first episode with an aggressively stylish directorial technique (but not in a good way). One of Megatron’s missiles earlier in the fight also results in this re-re-replay effect, so maybe that’s just what his missiles do.

Tigatron and Cheetor escape the Predacon base and show up in time to shoo off Megatron, but the episode still ends in a satisfying, near-total failure for the Maximals. Their tower is destroyed, the probe is off to another galaxy, and they’re stuck on this rock with a squadron of assholes. It’s maybe the best ending the series has had so far. You really don’t need life-or-death galactic conquest stakes; you just need some dudes trying to build a Tinker Toy tower while some other jerks try to knock it down. That’s real tension.

Side Notes

• Rattrap continues to be inventive with the catchphrases: “Strip my gears and call me a floor lamp!”
• When Terrorsaur runs from battle under a hail of gunfire, Rattrap calls him “leather-puss,” which I guess answers my question about the bots sneaking through a pussy-taunt. They didn’t even hide it.
• Rattrap does not actually appear to fit inside his beast mode, even though it’s much larger than a standard rat.
• Cheetor is saved in the Predacon base by Tigatron grabbing his tail. “I knew that was good for something other than swatting flies,” he says. Cheetahs actually use their tails to regulate their balance during high-speed pursuits. No wonder he can barely outrun an obese rat.
• In all the POV shots that show weird robot vision, Scorponok’s is by far the shittiest. It looks like someone trying to take a camcorder video of their TV screen.