Fires of the Past



Stymied time and again by his Maximal foes, Megatron brings three new Generals online.

Summary
While the Maximals search the Cybertronian Archives for answers to what has happened to the population, they are attacked by Vehicon drones. Rattrap, who went inside to look, returns and explains all the history of the planet has been erased. Overwhelmed by drones, and Blackarachnia having odd visions, the Maximals retreat. Optimus is not incredibly happy about the failures of the team. Blackarachnia sneaks off on her own to the Central Space Port, Rattrap sneaking after her. Megatron, annoyed by the incompetence of his drones, summons three sparks and places them in three Vehicon Generals: Blackarachnia and Rattrap flee to another chamber where Blackarachnia locates their Autobot shuttle used to reach Cybertron. Blackarachnia plans to download the backup memory files of the shuttle to find out what happened, but Megatron also plans to downloads her memories to locate the Maximal base. Rattrap learns of this and has to cut the power of the shuttle. Thankfully, Blackarachnia remembered the missing members of the team - Rhinox and Silverbolt. The Generals attack, but Optimus and Cheetor leap in to save their comrades.
 * Jetstorm - Aerodrone General.
 * Thrust - Cycle Drone General.
 * Tankor - Tank Drone General.

Stats
Writers: Marv Wolfman Original Air Date: October 2, 1999

Major Characters (in order of appearance): Blackarachnia, Cheetor, Optimus Primal, Megatron, Jetstorm, Thrust, Tankor Minor Characters (in order of appearance): Tank Drones

Technical/Animation Glitches

 * Glitch

Continuity Errors

 * Optimus Primal seems very insistent on Blackarachnia reverting back to beast mode despite not knowing the reason why she should until much later in the episode.


 * Why would a Diagnostic Drone be so grossly inaccurate when he told Megatron that his organic purging was complete? He even chalks up the mistake to 'random residual biological-', right before being blasted by Megatron's extremely biological beast mode.


 * Four Million years of cybertron history? Is he for real? Shockwave spent that long just sitting around waiting for Megatron to call while the latter was in stasis lock aboard the Arc!

Transformers References

 * A giant statue of Optimus Prime holding two Golden Disks stands in front of the Hall of Archives.
 * Writer Bob Skir claims that neither the statue nor the golden disks in its hands were mentioned the script. However, he suggested that they were either the disks from the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, or that Optimus won them in the 2,395,989th Annual Cybertronian spelling bee. We're betting on the latter.

Real-World References

 * Reference