Fires of the Past

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ep	3
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"Fires of the Past"
Production company	Mainframe Entertainment
Airdate	October 2, 1999
Written by	Marv Wolfman
Animation studio	Mainframe Entertainment
Continuity	Beast Wars continuity

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

• Japanese Title: "Love's old scars'" (愛の古傷(しるし), Ai no Shirushi)

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 uses them to create three Vehicon Generals:

• Jetstorm - Aerodrone General.
• Thrust - Cycle Drone General.
• Tankor - Tank Drone General.

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.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Maximals	Vehicons
Optimus Primal Cheetor Rattrap Blackarachnia	Megatron Jetstorm Tankor Thrust Diagnostic Drone

Quotes

"3 mindless drones, shouldn't be a problem"

"3 Problems with that little theory, 1. We're not drones, 2. We're not mindless, and 3. "Problem" is my middle name."

Blackarachnia Misinterprets the generals and Jetstorm corrects her.

Notes

• This is the first time in Beast Machines that Megatron says his tradmarked "Yeeesss."

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 Megatron for real? Shockwave spent that long just sitting around waiting for the original Megatron to call while the latter was in stasis lock aboard the Ark! Obviously, given that fact, Cybertron is a lot older than Megatron makes it out to be.

Transformers references

He won the spelling bee by correctly spelling "Hun-Gurrr" and "Rartorata".

• 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

Trivia

• While Megatron is looking at computer screens, text in the Predacon version of the Cybertronix language appears. Among the messages are such gems as "these flowers taste funny," "we are the mcanimators from mcmainframe," "smoke some ganja," and "if you can read this seek help."