B.O.T. (episode)

Worst. Episode. Ever.

Act One
The Combaticons show up in a city for no discernable reason and form Bruticus for no discernable reason. He is immediately destroyed with a single shot by Defensor, who then just leaves the pile of parts alone and unsupervised, apparently not bothering to alert the other Autobots or anything. This enables Swindle, who has somehow survived the explosion that reduced all the other Combaticons to a pile of parts without a scratch to gather up the bits. No human authorities are involved either.

Swindle then visits the generically evil foreign guy "El Presidente" on his ship filled with weapons in order to buy parts to repair the Combaticons.

Meanwhile, Megatron is running a simulation of his new orbital disruptor cannon. After Starscream whinges, Megatron explains that once the Moon is knocked from orbit, they will use Soundwave’s new device to control the tides. They will then use this colossal power to flood a single canyon, creating “a limitless source of power”.

At the Combaticons’ base, El Presidente’s men load up the weapons and more advanced computer systems from the wrecked robots, as apparently Swindle forgot about that whole “repair” thing. Swindle then leaves to take the remaining parts to a dump. Shortly after they all leave, Skywarp arrives, noting no-one seems to be home. He discovers a piece of one of the Combaticons, then notices there’s a trail of them. Confused, he asks Megatron what to do.

Swindle arrives in a junkyard, where he threatens a junkyard worker before he starts to dump the leftovers. Starscream and Skywarp discover him in the act and capture him as he tries to escape. Back at the Decepticon base, Soundwave installs a bomb in Swindle’s head; he has 15 hours to re-assemble the Combaticons before it goes off. Swindle takes the parts back from various mid-80’s evil foreign stereotypes and re-assembles the team. However, they are unable to combine into Bruticus because Brawl’s personality component is missing. Swindle is charged with getting the component back or the bomb will still go off.

Meanwhile, at Benjamin Franklin Pierce High School, Mr. Robbins' demonstration of a laser is sabotaged by two sociopathic students, Roland and Martin, who boost the laser's power output so high it instantly burns a hole through steel. Rather than involve the authorities, Mr. Robbins threatens them with an "F" in his class if they don't win a blue ribbon at the science fair, and assigns Elise Presser to assist them for no discernable reason.

Outside, the two jagoffs met the nebbish and spineless Elise. They realize a high-rise is on fire across the street, and witness the Protectobots coming to the rescue (well, four of them; Blades appears to blow two window-washers off their rig with the wind from his rotors. The bastard). This inspires them to build a robot for their project. the three rummage through the same junkyard Swindle dumped the Combaticon parts in for parts, and Elise discovers a random piece of machinery. They spend the night in the school's lab assembling their machine, and Martin dubs it "B.O.T.". After several failures, Elise installs the random piece of machinery, which turns out to be Brawl's personality component, and naturally, Brawl-B.O.T. goes postal and starts trashing the place.

Act Two
Martin grabs the laser and fires, and B.O.T. runs off. The kids run to the school's preposterously-advanced computer lab, and use it to call the Protectobots. Teletraan 1 gets the S.O.S., and Optimus sends Gears, Ironhide and Bumblebee to investigate.

Swindle re-threatens the junkyard worker, who says that maybe some kids took the part Swindle is after. Swindle mutters "you better hope so"... then proceeds to rummage through the trash, seemingly instantly forgetting that whole "kids" angle.

The Autobots arrive at the school. The kids seem disappointed that they didn't get the Protectobots, but quickly lead them to their runaway creation in the school's cafeteria. Brawl-B.O.T. knocks all three Autobots over with a single serving pan of corn on the cob (that high-school food, I tell ya, huh? huh?), then deflects Gears' blaster-fire with a pot lid. Ironhide shoots molten lead at Brawl, but he leaps to grab a light fixture, avoiding the attack, and the now-weakened floor collapses under Ironhide. Brawl runs for it, barricading the door out with remarkable speed, and heads for a seemingly abandoned building... as Swindle watches.

The Autobots follow, telling the kids to stay put. They enter the building, and find that Brawl-B.O.T. has taken an elevator thirty floors up. Ironhide wedges a stick into the doors, and the trio run up the stairs. Outside, the future serial killers grow instantly impatient, and drag Elise inside the bulding. They remove the stick and enter the elevator and head up.

A blast erupts behind the Autobots, and Ironhide orders them to shoot up. They shoot at absolutely nothing, Ironhide declares they hit whatever it was, and they run right into Swindle. Meanwhile, the elevator has stopped. Roland is lifted up so he can open the emergency hatch, and discovers B.O.T. is trying to break the elevator cables...

Act Three
Sadly, B.O.T. is prevented from snapping the cables by an energy blast to the back. The Autobots pick themselves up, seemingly having been soundly thrashed by Swindle all by himself. They all run outside to witness Swindle driving away. Back at Decepticon HQ, Brawl is restored and the bomb removed, and Bruticus is formed again.

At the school, Elise inspects the remnants of B.O.T. to find that the "funny component" is gone. Martin decides to hunt it down by reworking the machine that read B.O.T.'s "brain response" so it can track the signal. The three drive to the ocean, and Elise rewires B.O.T.'s speech synthesizer so it receives and decodes signals rather that creating them, letting them hear what Brawl hears. Megatron insists on a test-run of the cannon, and picks Autobot headquarters as the target (because it's in orbit, you see. Wait, no it isn't). The kids rush off to warn the Autobots, who send a signal to the Protectobot's base.

The Autobots apparently just sit around and wait for Megatron to set up his giant cannon, get his troops into position just outside their base, and for the Combaticons to assemble Bruticus before starting to defend themselves. Bruticus basically stumbles around until he falls apart. The Protectobots arrive and random fighting ensues. Inside the base, the kids think they need to help, and Elise has a rare moment of spine.

Using Teletraan 1, she sends B.O.T. out into the battlefield on a beeline to the disruptor cannon. The Protectobots combine into Defensor and generate a force field, protecting about four other Autobots. The Decepticons wait until the force field wears off, then one shot blasts Defensor to pieces. Bruticus re-forms and tries to fire the cannon, but it turns and blasts Starscream and Soundwave instead. B.O.T. is working the cannon using a conveniently-places control panel at the base, and causes it to explode by hitting the clearly-marked "overload" button, sending Bruticus flying away and forcing a Decepticon retreat.

Back inside, the Autobots thank the kids for their help and offer their apologies for the loss of their robot. Elise asks if they have any spare parts so they can try again... and Roland and Martin duct-tape her mouth shut and drag her away while the Autobots just watch argh argh argh...

Stats
Original airdate:

Production number:

Written by: Earl Kress

Featured Characters
(''Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notable quotes
"Call sanitation. There's junk all over the street!"
 * --Defensor, leaving his mess for the humans to clean up.

"Megatron, I-I-I couldn’t find Brawl’s personality component! I didn’t think it would matter..."
 * --Swindle

"We should've just taken the 'F' in Science."
 * --Martin

"If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I'll melt you down for scraptutonium!"
 * --Megatron threatens Swindle with gibberish

Animation and/or technical glitches

 * Argh.


 * The scenery in this episode is always huge. In the opening scene, the five Combaticons are driving down a downtown street in a row (yes, even the fliers are driving on the ground) with plenty of room. Humans are drawn tiny compared to the doors of their own buildings, and the Autobots fit easily inside human structures.


 * There is no indication as to what jet-mode Starscream uses to capture jeep-mode Swindle.


 * The kids create and lose B.O.T. in the middle of the night. When the Autobots reach the school, it's bright and sunny outside. If this isn't an animation error, then we are forced to assume that Brawl-B.O.T. spent several hours not doing much at all staying inside the school the whole time while the kids waited for the Autobots to arrive.


 * The "shooting at nothing upstairs" bit might be attributed to animation/script mismatch. The animation puts the Autobots in a circular staircase so they are plainly shooting at the clearly-lit black curved wall ahead of them. It's possible the writer intended them to be shooting up a straight staircase into darkness... but that's pure conjecture.


 * Elise's VW Beetle goes from yellow to red depending on which shot it's in.


 * A wall appears behind Megatron and Soundwave as they face down Hot Spot in the middle of the desert.

Continuity errors

 * Argh.


 * Swindle goes to El Presidente to buy parts to repair the other Combaticons. The next time we see them, he's sold the Combaticon parts... for what, we don't know. There is no explanation as to why he suddenly completely changed his plan.


 * The kids don't seem to recognize what Transformers are, but by this point in the series, they're internationally recognized, there are holidays and tributes to them, etc. Despite this, they seem to instantly accept the existence of Transformers.

Other errors

 * Argh.


 * Megatron's plan seems... severely overwrought. Build a giant cannon to knock the Moon out of orbit, build a device to control the tides in the Moon's absence... and use all that power to... flood a canyon that contains a hydroelectric generator that they also built. Considering that in "More Than Meets the Eye, Part 1" all they needed was the already-made Sherman Dam and Rumble shaking up a river...


 * Why does Megatron have only Swindle go looking for the lost personality component? Why risk permanently losing Bruticus that way?


 * The teens completely fail to notice a hundred-story building that is almost completely engulfed in flames and surrounded by emergency vehicles until they hear somebody fifty stories up call for help.


 * Groove claims to use liquid nitrogen to put out the fire. Liquid nitrogen boils at -198 °C (-320 °F), so it would basically boil away to a gaseous state almost instantly upon exposure to the air, and with catastrophic force to boot.


 * Streetwise catches the two falling window-washers with his metal arms after they've fallen about fifty stories, and somehow they're not splashed all over him.


 * Three high school kids can build a robot out of junk bits and Brawl's brain that is stronger and smarter than the Autobots. (The latter would be a little more believable if it weren't for the "Brawl's brain" part.)


 * The high school's computer is astounding. It is exceedingly and hugely sci-fi in design, plus, how the kids were able to use it to send an S.O.S. to the Autobots over the phone is... magic or something.


 * Autobots are weaker than kitchenware.


 * There is a fully-functional elevator within a seemingly-condemned building.


 * How did Swindle get above the Autobots on the way up? And how'd he get past them on the way down again?


 * It's never really specified why Megatron needs Bruticus in specific to fire the cannon. If it's a size thing, he also has Devastator and Menasor. But the size thing is debatable because the cannon has a human-level control panel on it. Oy.


 * On that note, the human-level control panel has a great big button cleanly marked "Overload" in English. Why did he install that? No, really, why?

Real-world references

 * "Benjamin Franklin Pierce High School" is a reference to Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, the character from M*A*S*H* (who was also the inspiration for the Mini-Con Hawkeye's bio).

Transformers references

 * This episode establishes that the Combaticons have their own separate base. As this was the last episode before the jump to 2006, this is never touched on again.


 * Starscream says to Megatron "Your stupid warrior" in reference to Bruticus... but Starscream was the one who made him.

Miscellaneous trivia

 *  Argh .


 * Mr. Robbins’ class is made up of... a very odd collection of students. The least odd are the two women who are just recolored character models from Jem, Hasbro's then-current cartoon-advertised foray into girls' fashion dolls. Towards the back, however, appear to be thugs in business suits.


 * This episode introduces the most loathsome Transformers characters ever, Roland and Martin. Boosting a laser to a level that could grievously injure or kill someone as a prank, the misogynistic duct-taping of Elise's mouth and constantly dragging her places against her will, and a general smarmy smugness level that makes Starscream seem humble...


 * Astrotrain appears in the simulation of the disruptor cannon knocking the Moon from orbit, but is never seen elsewhere.


 * The billboard over the Protectobots’ urban headquarters seems to be advertising for E Cola. Mmmmmmm.


 * This episode was lampooned at the BotCon 2006 MSTF presentation, and as far as the writers are concerned, it is the single dumbest episode in the entirety of Transformers animation.


 * It is also possibly the worst advertisement for the combiner teams possible. Bruticus is destroyed with a single shot from Defensor, and later stumbles around like a concussed baby as the Autobots shoot at him. Defensor's force field is rendered utterly pointless as the Decepticons just wait for it to run out, then he too is blasted to bits with ease.


 * Can you imagine if this was the last episode of Transformers?


 * I need a stiff drink.