They're BACK!
Last time on Beast Wars,
Dinobot had a relapse. A growing fear that Megatron would soon win the Beast
Wars by executing his mysterious grand plan coupled with an ill-timed kidnapping
by Inferno lead to Dinobot offering to rejoin the Predacon cause. Megatron was skeptical
of the sincerity of this request but decided to give Dinobot a shot. After
humiliating Quickstrike in a trial by combat, Megatron was willing to let him
back in. Provided Dinobot handed over the disks. He’d already given the Alien
Golden Disk to Rhinox but still had access to the Earth disk. He took Megatron
to the disk and turned it over. Megatron prepared to execute Dinobot from
behind, but Rattrap saved him by shooting the tyrant lizard. Dinobot disarmed Rattrap
with his laser eyes, but was then ordered by Megatron to execute him as a final
loyalty test. Dinobot couldn’t go through with it, thought. They scare off
Megatron when it’s revealed that Silverbolt and Optimus were enroute, but he
escaped with the disk. Dinobot turned himself over to Optimus for judgement,
saying that he’d been weak and foolish to think he wanted to be part of Megatron’s
grand plan. He says he wants to help the Maximals, going so far as to say he’ll
fight Megatron alone if he burned the bridge too thoroughly to be forgiven.
Silverbolt wanted to forgive him, and while he dithered for a moment, so does
Rattrap, so Optimus lets him stay a Maximal. Dinobot offers to explain to
Optimus the full scope of what is happening, but Optimus tells him they can do
that back at base. The episode ended with Rattrap giving Dinobot a lift home,
purposefully going over bumps to annoy/punish him. Enough recapping. Let’s get
to it, shall we?
The episode opens on Rhinox and Dinobot
cross referencing all their information on the alien artifacts and records into
a database. They’re able to map out all the sites that they’re aware of and
guess where a few more might be. Sentinel begins to map the most likely
locations, but Dinobot insists that doing this is a waste of time and that Megatron
is the greater threat. In a shockingly direct moment, Rhinox chastises Dinobot
by reminding him that giving Megatron the Golden Disk didn’t help their
situation. Dinobot looks downcast and says that he had his reasons, which he
told Optimus off screen, but Rhinox mutters that sometimes Optimus trusts too
much. They find out that the next site is right in the path of Tigertron and
Airazor’s trek across the planet. They try to radio them, but Megatron has
built more jamming stations, and they can’t get a signal out. Dinobot says that
he and Rattrap will go destroy the station and Rhinox has no comment for him as
he goes.
In his lair, Tarantulas is just
finishing up an Energon web and complaining that he didn’t have any help to do
it when his computer alerts him to a new alien signal. He calls the aliens his ‘prey,’
confirming that he has interest in them as well. He transforms into his cycle
form and drives off.
And in the Darksyde,
Blackarachnia complains to herself how dull being on monitor duty is and how
being loyal to Megatron is the worst. Not knowing that Megatron is watching her
from nearby. She’s served under him for at least several months in universe,
you think she’d guard her tongue more carefully. Before he can chew her out,
though, the computer alerts her to Tarantulas’ dash for the alien site.
Megatron and Inferno rush over to her station and Megatron demands Tarantulas
return to base for questioning, but the great spider ignores his hails. Inferno
offers to burn Tarantulas, but Megatron says not yet, and then yells at Inferno
for once again referring to him as Inferno’s queen. He starts strangling Inferno
when he does it again and tells Blackarachnia to track Tarantulas as she wants
to know what got him out of hiding.
We find Tigertron and Airazor as
they march across a plain. They see a weird plant spore dancing in the wind and
Tigertron says that it’s the first bit of vegetation they’ve seen since they
began their journey, and they need to find its source. Optimus, Silverbolt, and
Cheetor are doing their best to track them down before anything can happen, but
Megatron’s jamming station is making it difficult. Optimus has his jets switch
to Maximum Burn and they race to their location. Tigertron and Airazor find the
source of the floating plants in a valley. They transform to scan the vegetation
but get distracted when they marvel at the beauty of seeing something green
after weeks of constant burnt landscape. They hold hands and snuggle together
just as they’re attacked by vines. They’re pulled apart and engulfed in plants.
They reach for each other as they’re lifted over the alien plant. They clasp
plants and swear that their sparks will find each other wherever they go before
they’re hit with an alien beam of some kind. Cheetor arrives moments too late
to help, screams No and tries to get to them, but is knocked back by the energy
beam. He transforms and screams at the heavens for taking his friends.
Back at the Darksyde, the Predacons confirm
the presence of the aliens. They also confirm that this was where Tarantulas was
headed.
As Cheetor berates himself for
being too slow, Tarantulas pops up and attacks him from behind. He gets hit
with a stun blast and is knocked out, as Tarantulas shouts “welcome back,” to
the aliens.
Blackarachnia asks if they’re going
to go help Tarantulas, and Inferno reports that Dinobot and Rattrap are
attacking their jamming station and if they should help Waspinator and
Quickstrike to defend them. Megatron says no to both, reasoning that because
most of the Maximals are currently in the field, this gives them the perfect
opportunity to retrieve the alien Golden Disk.
In the valley, Tarantulas tries to
cut into one of the vines when Optimus and Silverbolt arrive. He returns to
beast mode and escapes. Optimus revives Cheetor, who tells him what happened to
Tigertron and Airazor. Rattrap and Dinobot let Optimus know that the jamming
station has been taken down and to warn the lady and the tiger. Optimus tells
him they were too late. He orders them to make sure the station has been taken
care of for good and then fall back to base.
At the Axalon, Rhinox watches
footage of the alien signal. It takes the shape of like a giant space squid
beaming a column of light towards the planet. Optimus tells him what happened
and tells him to see what he can find out. He promises they’ll be back soon. Rhinox
magnifies his image of the beam of light and sees Tigertron and Airazor within
the column. Sentinel warns him of Megatron’s arrival. He has the auto-guns come
online. They added this huge cannon array since the last time and it gets right
in Megatron’s face, though the Predacon leader claims to come in peace. Rhinox
tells him that he’s about to leave in pieces. Megatron distracts Rhinox while
Blackarachnia and Inferno sneak into the base. They fry the security system and
Megatron smugly marches toward the base. Inferno sneaks up behind Rhinox and
shoots him in the chest, knocking him down. Inferno and Blackarachnia attempt
to steal the disk, but Rhinox gets up and uses Inferno’s head as a punching bag
for shooting him. They actually make a Rock-‘em-Sock-‘em Robots joke where they
trade punches until Rhinox knocks Inferno’s head up. Blackarachnia goes for the
disk, but Rhinox pulls him machine gun on her and tells her not to do that.
Megatron sneaks up on Rhinox and tells him to stand down. Rhinox tries to knock
Megatron’s head off, but get’s his whole arm ripped off before he’s knocked
out. Megatron takes the disk and tells his troops to fall back, saying they don’t
have time for Maximals. Blackarachnia mutters to herself ‘when do we ever?
Except for maybe that hunky, Silver…’ but trails off before she can finish that
thought.
Later, the Maximals help repair
Rhinox’s arm and try to figure out what to do. Cheetor is for trying to save
Tigertron and Airazor somehow, while Dinobot has already written them off as
casualties of war and advocates for preparing for the aliens’ return. Optimus
says that he’s faced the void fighting the aliens before… but if that’s the
cost for saving their friends, he’s willing to pay it again. Rattrap mutters
they’re all going to die, and when everyone gives him a look, he waves his
hands, “I know, I know, shut up Rattrap.”
The Predacons place the pair of disks
in a new security vault and begin examining them. Blackarachnia asks how these
disks can help them with the aliens. Megatron says that they have secrets only
he knows, and Tarantulas then cuts in, saying that he’s the only one who could
implement the plans Megatron has. Inferno nearly shoots him, but Megatron
knocks him aside, saying Tarantulas is his. Megatron starts screaming at
Tarantulas for his impudence, but Tarantulas says he’s tired of hearing
Megatron’s tirades and claims that he is no longer under Megatron’s command.
This infuriates Megatron, who promises to extinguish Tarantulas’ spark atom by
atom. Tarantulas is nonplussed by this, saying that Megatron wouldn’t dare as
that will lose him his only line of defense against the aliens. Megs asks what
if they don’t come back, but Tarantulas is sure they will, and soon.
The Maximals try to formulate a
pln. Dinobot wants to take the fight to Megatron now. Rattrap points out that
they might need their help facing whatever the planet busters send next, but
surprisingly Optimus is on team ‘fight now.’ He calls their last truce a joke and
refuses to be as easily manipulated by Megatron this time. Before they can do
anything, they get an alert about a special anomaly.
The Predacons return to the valley and
begin setting up Tarantulas’ plan. They drive huge machines into the ground around
the giant plant. Megatron arrives with Blackarachnia and asks the big question,
why is Tarantulas helping if he’s declared he doesn’t work for Megatron
anymore. He tries to be cagey about it, but Blackarachnia reveals he just hates
these aliens. Tarantulas is shocked that she knows that. The she-spider reveals
she gleamed a lot of information about him from when they shared minds.
Megatron admits he can work with hate. They both start cackling evilly as Optimus
and the Maximals arrive. Megatron tells him to leave, as they’re handling this.
Optimus isn’t budging as he remembers how Megatron handled things last time. Everyone
transforms and prepares to fight, but the alien signal arrives, transforming the
plant into another of their temples. The Temple fires off a powerful EMP style
pulse that knocks out all the Transformers assembled around it, just before the
credits roll. Damn.
Salute to Tigertron and Airazor.
They aren’t gone forever, but we won’t be seeing them anytime soon. They were
ultimately removed for the same reason as Terrorsaur and Scorponok, to make
room in the computers for newer characters. It sucks because I loved those two,
but I get it. I do love that their last lines are both promising they’ll find
each other wherever they go. It’s extremely sweet. I like the fact that both
sides are wary of the aliens’ return. I mean, that makes sense given the last
time the aliens were on Earth they nearly wiped them all out and did cause the
deaths of two of them. Technically three of them, but Optimus got better. The raising
tension between Megaron and Tarantulas is nice. It’s clear that Megatron is growing
ever more vexed that his original chief scientist seems to only be around to
cause him headaches now. Meanwhile, Tarantulas seems absolutely giddy to just
be able to drop pretense and get into Megatron’s face with no fear of repercussions.
He's done what neither Terrorsaur nor their spiritual predecessor Starscream
was every successful at doing, separating himself from Megatron. It helps he
has his hidden lair to scurry away to when not actively antagonizing anyone,
but it still took some sizeable ball bearings to tell Megatron ‘I quit,’ to his
face. Also, as weird as it felt, I like that Rhinox also scolded Dinobot for
giving up the Disk, in his own way. Ya know you screwed up badly when Rhinox
isn’t just letting bygones be bygones. So… ya, Tigerton and Airazor are gone, all
of the Transformers have been disabled by the EMP, and the Aliens may have free
rein to do what they want. Not a great situation, but they’ve dealt with worse.
See you next time.
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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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