Family of Heroes

Family of Heroes is the series premiere and the first episode of Transformers: Rescue Bots''. ''

Sypnosis
A small space shuttle with four Autobots outside the Milky Way Galaxy receives a message from Optimus Prime to meet with him on Earth. They arrive on Earth where Optimus Prime greets them. He is surprised to find out that they are a rescue team, as he thought none existed anymore. Meanwhile, in Griffin Rock, Cody Burns is riding his bike and finds his father riding a police car for the final time, as it was going to get replaced the next day. Cody is upset as he is the only one in his family to not be part of the rescue team, but his father encourages him that he will one day find his place.

Optimus Prime assigns each member of the rescue team an alternate form. He also assigns a new mission for the team: to help protect the humans of Griffin Rock. However, Optimus Prime invites Charlie Burns to help clarify what their mission is. Later, Charlie Brown presents the Rescue Bots to the citizens of Griffin Rock. He described them as robots built to aid them in protecting the public, and says they only react when their owners tell them to. However, a fire is reported in the museum in the middle of the presentation and they all hurry to go there. At the museum, the rescue team work quickly to put out the fire. When a loose head of the dinosaur exhibit starts falling on Charlie and Graham. Fortunately, Heat Wave catches the head before it lands on them. They then decide there is nothing to do there and leave. As they leave, the eye of a robotic tyrannorsaurus rex begins to glow Back at base, Heat Wave takes the other Rescue Bots to an underground bunker. Heat Wave is bothered that the humans are taking all the credit while they have to pretend they don't exist. Heat Wave then decides to leave, but Cody finds their hideout. The Autobots introduce themselves to him and Cody promises to teach them everything about Earth.

Cody shows the Rescue Bots a secret tunnel that leads out of the base and to the top of a mountain, where Boulder becomes amazed by the stars in the night. They then go see a drive-in theater where Cody teaches them how to act like normal robots. In the middle of the lesson, they see a giant robot tyrannosaurus rex causing chaos. They find out that it is attracted to light and they lure it away with their headlights. Cody calls his dad to help and the Burns family meet with the Rescue Bots in the forest, where they had lost the dinosaur. Charlie distracts the dinosaur while Cody formulates a plan. Blades picked up and carried away a cage that Boulder had found. Heat Wave then lured the dinosaur into a hole filled with mud that he created where Blades dropped the cage on it to trap it. Cody then shut down the tyrannosaurus rex with a switch on its back. The team later returns the robot the museum. When everyone is saying that the Rescue Bots are malfunctioning, Charlie shocks them all by revealing they are aliens.

Quotes
"I have a message for all Autobots scattered throughout the galaxies. Though Cybertron has fallen, we still stand, follow these coordinates to join us, Priority Prime."
 * —Optimus Prime's "Priority Prime" message plays on the Rescue Bots ship the Sigma's screen and reactivates the ship and the Rescue Bots aboard and heads for Earth.

"We need to remove the planters to create a fire block."

"But... I... That will destroy the harmonious nature of the plaza's design."

"What?!"
 * —Graham Burns and Boulder, who fails at being a robot.

"I don't know where you learned that... but no."
 * —Cody Burns draws a line between dancing "the robot" and actually acting like a robot.

"We can't use technology prone to malfunction."

"They're not malfunctioning... They're aliens."

"What!?"
 * —Charlie Burns reveals a shocking secret to the Burns family.

Continuity notes

 * Rescue Bots takes place in continuity with Transformers: Prime, though it's unclear exactly at which point in the other series this episode takes place.
 * We get a little information about what the Rescue Bots used to do. Heatwave notes that the fire engine serves the same function as his old job "back home".
 * Chief Burns comments "A dinosaur? Again?" Clearly this sort of thing happens a lot, as later episodes will demonstrate.

Transformers references

 * Optimus's message calling Autobots to Earth, which is received by the Rescue Bots' spacecraft riffs off a similar message sent into space by Optimus Prime at the end of the 2007 Transformers film.
 * When talking to their passengers in vehicle mode, the Rescue Bots display an image of their robot mode faces on a screen, much like the Autobots in the 2001 Transformers: Robots in Disguise cartoon.
 * The vehicle Chase scans is a police car that resembles a Ford Mustang. Barricade in the 2007 film also transforms into a Ford Mustang.

Real-world references

 * The below-ground bunker is a relic of the Cold War.
 * The robot in the drive-in movie bears a resemblance to Robby the Robot.
 * During the sequence in which Cody is attempting to teach everyone how to act like robots, Blades is seen doing the Robot.

Trivia

 * Optimus's mouthplate moves when he talks.
 * This episode was later adapted into storybook form as Meet Chase the Police-bot.