EVIL RHINOX!
Sorry, sorry, I know I said Guardians
Vol 3 and Across the Spider-Verse this month, but I thought they’d
already been released. Not putting them Vol 3 until August 2nd is
really screwing with my release timeline, Disney! So, because I’m out of My
Adventures with Superman episodes to do, and because I was having fun with
them before, back to Beast Wars.
Last time on Beast Wars, The
Maximals thought they’d won the titular Beast Wars. A spy camera they’d set up
in the Predacon base seemed to show Megatron and his flunkies all killed in an
explosion and attempted coup. The Maximals go over to the Darksyde, find it
deserted and start scrounging for parts to repair their own ship. The only one
who doesn’t seem super excited about this turn of events is Dinobot. He seems
to have mixed feelings about his original crew and nemesis being dead. They get
the parts and begin repairing the ship, but Dinobot says he’s going to stay on
the planet. He’d rather rule a deserted world than go back to Cybertron where
he’ll be treated as a criminal by either side, regardless of his alliance with
the Maximals. He starts wondering the planet, and almost immediately finds
Megatron and the Predacons hiding in a crevice near the base. They’d found the
camera and faked their deaths to trick the Maximals into repairing their ship,
intent on stealing it to fly up and reclaim the rest of the pods in space.
Dinobot races back to the base, the Predacons in pursuit. The Maximals fight
the Predacons off, getting an injured Dinobot on board but seemingly leaving
Optimus behind when he’s shot down. The ship is too damaged to risk a landing.
Megatron gets onboard but gets the stuffing kicked out of him by Rhinox and
forced out the airlock. The scuffle damages the controls however, and the ship
starts crashing. Thankfully, Optimus is able to fly up and do a Superman to
help them touch down safely. Enough recap, let’s get to it.
We open on the Maximals hunting for
an Energon deposit. They’d climbed up a ravine next to a river to try to find a
new deposit, only for Rhinox to conclude that it’s ultimately too deep for them
to access. Optimus says that at least they get to enjoy the view with this dead
end. Rattrap whines that “what else do we got to look forward to” right before
a missile hits. Ya just know Megatron was waiting for an opening line like
that. The two sides start battling, Optimus attempts to fly up and get an
aerial advantage but is shot down. Dinobot says they need to storm their
position, Rattrap says they need to retreat, and Dinobot points out where could
they possibly go? Megatron notices that this seems way too easy, but assures
himself that he shouldn’t complain about good luck. Meanwhile, Rhinox is firing
but missing the enemy by several feet. Cheetor tells him to shoot straight,
only for it to be revealed that Rhinox was intentionally hitting the side of
ravine to cause a rockslide and bury the Predacons. He says that there’s more
than one way to skin a cat before they all revert to Beast Mode. He tells
Dinobot to lead them out, Rattrap and Cheetor to help Optimus and he’ll cover
the rear. Optimus praises his friend, saying that if he wanted to once they get
off this rock, he could apply for and be a great leader of his own expedition.
Rhinox says he’d rather leave that sort of thing to Optimus and that he prefers
to tag behind and smell the flowers.
The Predacons dig themselves out,
Megatron saying that he may have underestimated Rhinox and that he could find a
use for someone like that. He gives Tarantulas an order. Rhinox lags behind the
others in his rear guard position, and ends up getting webbed and poisoned by
Tarantulas. He’s taken back to the Predacon base. Rhinox is held in heavy
restrains to keep him in Beast Mode and in place. Megatron reveals a machine he
calls the Transmuter. He says it took him megacycles to design but it’s worth
the wait. The Maximals are on their way to save Rhinox. Rattrap is able to get
patched into Rhinox’s comm and they’re able to hear him get hit with the
Transmuter. The device, it seems, forcibly reprogramed him into a Predacon,
darkening his rhino hide to more of a black and turning his gold highlights to
silver. Megatron welcomes the newest Predacon. Oh no!
Outside the base, the Maximals are
all horrified to hear that Rhinox has been forcibly reprogramed. Rattrap loses
the signal. Cheetor and Rattrap are all for storming the base and freeing
Rhinox, but Optimus tells them they’re taking this slow. They’ll get closer and
into position, but will leave Rhinox with the Predacons for now. Rattrap asks
if he’s got some bugs in his systems directory. Optimus just smiles and says
that he thinks Megatron may have bitten off more than he bargained for with his
plan, and then goes on to mock Megatron’s drawn out “Yeeesss.”
Megatron, after a tour, brings Evil
Rhinox into his chamber intending to get information from Evil Rhinox about the
Maximals’ base defenses. Evil Rhinox is snide to him as the hologram display
shorts out. We cut over to Scorponok working on repairing the problem, and Evil
Rhinox coming in to yell at him for Megatron. Scorponok tells him to cool it
while he figures out what the problem is. He finds that a modem is missing from
the computer and goes to check it out. While his back is turned, Evil Rhinox
reveals he has the modem and crushes it in his hands. Rhinox then goes to a
stack of computers and shoves them onto Scorponok, crushing him.
Megatron and Waspinator find
Scorponok later, badly damaged. Waspinator is ordered to bring him to the
restoration chamber. Waspinator does so, only to be hit by a swinging weight
that Rhinox threw at him. This seems to really ring his bell and he starts
flying around in circles in a daze. HE babbles about being Shrapnel of the
Decepticons and that he must destroy all Autobots. Terrorsaur saw the whole
thing and thinks this is… interesting. Megatron and Blackarachnia find
Waspinator and when they hear his babblings, Blackarachnia dubs him wacko.
Rhinox thunders down the hall, Terrorsaur confronting him and tries to
blackmail Rhinox into working with him. Rhinox grabs shim by the throat and
makes him understand that he works for Rhinox now, to which Terrorsaur agrees.
Later, Megatron is reviewing
security data and finds both Tarantulas and Blackarachnia poisoned and caught
in their own webs. He shrieks “What is going on around here!” The Maximals hear
him from outside. Cheetor has finally figured out the plan, just leave Rhinox
in the base to cause chaos. Optimus reveals that he assumed that the forced
reprogramming would push Rhinox’s aggressiveness quotient right off the scale,
he was right, and now Evil Rhinox is having fun being the agent of chaos.
Dinobot and Rattrap then ask the question of, what are they going to do when
Megatron figures out what is happening?
In the base, a recovered Scorponok
explains to Megatron what happened to him. Megatron decides that he made a
mistake reprogramming Rhinox and that it’s time to bring this experiment to an
end.
The Maximals overhear this
discussion… somehow? It’s not very clear. Regardless, they know that Rhinox is
about to be taken out. The others want to go in guns blazing but Optimus still
suggests caution. Going in now would mean four Maximals vs. seven Predacons,
including Rhinox. He says they’re going to move in close but wait a little
while longer. Long enough for Rhinox and Megatron to have their final dance as
it were.
Megatron confronts Rhinox and calls
him a traitor. Rhinox immediately confesses and says that they’re “Playing our
song, Megatron. Care to dance?” Megatron calls in Terrorsaur and Scorponok to
take out Rhinox, Rhinox reveals that Terrorsaur saw him attack Scorponok and do
nothing, and so Scorponok switches to trying to kill Terrorsaur. Megatron,
clearly annoyed by this, tries to remind his troops that Rhinox is the enemy.
Rhinox takes both down and then shoots Megatron in the legs to disable him. He
leaps down after Megatron. He declares himself the winner and then tells
Megatron that making him Evil was the worst mistake he’d made. Megatron agrees
that that was a mistake, and that, even now, Rhinox is teaching him a valuable
lesson. That, sometimes, Predacons gloat too much. He then fires a laser from
his T-Rex head, setting off the Transmuter that Rhinox was standing on and
returning him to normal. Megatron prepares to kill Rhinox, only for the
Maximals to attack. They destroy the Transmuter in the scuffle but are able to
beat the wounded and disoriented Predacons back long enough to get Rhinox out.
As the base shakes from the explosion, Terrorsaur tries to explain himself to a
one-armed Megatron what happened. Megatron, exhausted from the day and extremely
pissed off, just grabs him by the next and says that he’s very, very unhappy
with him.
Later, the Maximals relax in a
grove by their base, Rhinox sniffing a flower as the others relax around him.
Cheetor asks him what it’s like to be a Predacon. Rhinox says it’s like being
three gigabytes of attitude on a two-gig hard drive. He says its no wonder that
they have personality problems as everyone, but Dinobot laughs.
This was a fun episode. As an
adult, I questioned how Megatron was able to build a machine to essentially
rewrite someone’s whole personality from the scraps and spare parts of a downed
spaceship, but that’s a nitpick. The focus on Rhinox was neat, as I feel like
he’s mostly been a support character up to this point. The fact he was able to
defeat most of the Predacons at the beginning by using a rockslide against them
was brilliant. And liked that Optimus said that he could be a leader if he
wanted to. With Rattrap and Dinobot constantly fighting over who is in charge I
felt like I was the only one that thought that Rhinox was a better choice than either
of them. Evil Rhinox is an interesting concept. I liked the fact that changing
him to be evil also required the complete overwriting of his loyalty as well as
his gentle nature but not at all his intelligence. A brilliant mind stripped of
loyalty, kindness or empathy is a recipe for a disaster for everyone else
involved. Richard Newman, Rhinox’s voice actor, does a great job with the evil
voice, being the same tone as Rhinox but just… louder, and maybe with a bit
more of a sneer to his words. It’s not surprising as he’s played several
villains in his career, including M. Bison for Street Fighter and Captain Ginyu
for the Ocean Group dub of Dragonball Z. I liked how efficiently Evil Rhinox took
everyone out as well. Like, he was there for less than a day, but he quite
literally took out every single Predacon by the end. Heck, if he hadn’t stood
on the Transmuter again, he might have really taken over the Predacons. I liked
the meta humor in this one too, with Optimus mocking Megatron’s “Yeeesss” and
Megatron acknowledging that Predacons can gloat too much. They’re just fun
little pokes at their own franchise. So yeah. Next time. Two Dinobots?? See you
then.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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