Ultra Magnus, Cyclonus, Marissa Faireborn, and Wreck-Gar are captured by a Quintesson scientist for experiments, but are sucked into a more dangerous problem - a black hole.
The Killing Jar (Japanese title: "Four Captives") is the sixth episode of the third season of The Transformers and is the seventy-first episode of The Transformers series. It is overall the seventy-first episode of the G1 Era of Transformers.
Detailed synopsis[]
As Ultra Magnus stargazes, he's being spied on by a Quintesson scientist and his Allicon guard. Disguising their ship as Sky Lynx, the pair lure Magnus on board where he's attacked by a fake Rodimus Prime. The scientist correctly predicts Magnus's actions as the Autobot attempts to restrain his leader without harming him. With Magnus safely imprisoned, the scientist sets course for Chaar. Once there, the ship is again disguised, this time as Broadside, and Cyclonus lured on board. Again, the scientist predicts that Cyclonus will behave in a similar manner to Magnus when confronted with a hostile illusion of his leader. On Junkion, Wreck-Gar is enjoying Lippo the Clown's TV show when the clown himself turns up in a spacecraft and lures Wreck-Gar on board. Naturally it is soon revealed to be the Quintesson ship. The scientist predicts that placing a Junkion in a clean, uncluttered room will cause him to go catatonic. Instead Wreck-Gar proceeds to tear up the walls to make the chamber more like "home sweet home".
Disguised as a shuttle, the Quintesson ship docks with an EDC space station, and Marissa Faireborn is lured on board by an illusion of her father. Once the ship leaves the space station, Marissa is shocked when her father's face changes into the Quintesson "death" face. She strikes the illusion to the ground and it disappears — the Quintesson scientist observes that violence is always the human way. Finally the bars on Marissa's cell appear and all four captives are able to communicate.
Morbius, something is approaching from the southwest
The scientist visits the cell area, instructing his guard to activate a submission field, pinning Marissa to the floor. As the pair move in, Wreck-Gar fires his fist, deactivating the field and allowing Marissa to attack the Quintesson and attempt to free Ultra Magnus. Before she can free him, the room begins crackling with electrical energy — the ship has flown into an electron storm.
As the captives are assaulted by the energy, the Quintesson and his guard head for the control room and attempt to steer the ship through the storm. After a wrong move, the guard manages to guide the ship out of the storm. In the cell area, Magnus grabs hold of the electron bars, short-circuiting the bars on all four cells and freeing everyone. When the scientist and guard return to the cell area, they're jumped by Marissa and Wreck-Gar while Magnus and Cyclonus fight over what they're going to do with the ship. Marissa gets the better of the Quintesson and begins to plot a course back to Earth, but discovers that the ship has fallen into the gravity field of a black hole.
She interrupts the fighting to let everyone know they've got bigger problems, but while the Allicon guard activates a distress signal, the Quintesson slips away to the rear of the ship where the escape pods are located. The others follow him, only to find that most of the pods have been rendered useless by the electron storm and only one remains operational. Magnus yanks the scientist from the escape pod, but the launch sequence has already started. Though Cyclonus intends to use it himself, Wreck-Gar tackles him so that Magnus can help Marissa into the pod. While they're fighting, the pod launches with no one aboard and Magnus is pulled out as the whole room begins to depressurise.
To Magnus's surprise, Cyclonus saves him with a tractor beam. The scientist explodes angrily at them for allowing the escape pod to launch unmanned but during the ensuing discussion, they begin to receive a transmission and spy a ship coming up behind them. Although they believe rescue is imminent, it turns out merely to be a derelict ship, which is dragged into the black hole ahead of them. Finally the Quintesson ship's engines overload, and the ship follows the derelict into the black hole...
Get on it, E-Hobby
...only to emerge into a negative universe where the color spectrum is drastically altered. While the Quintesson works on a plan to return them to their own universe, the others set about repairing the overloaded engines. Once repairs are complete, the Quintesson slingshots the ship through the white hole, re-emerging from the black hole into the middle of a battle. Magnus radios for help from Sky Lynx, who docks with the ship. The group goes their separate ways, Ultra Magnus, Wreck-Gar and Marissa returning to Cybertron in Sky Lynx, and Cyclonus leaves in Astrotrain.
Stats[]
Original airdate: September 15, 1986
Written by: Michael Charles Hill & Joey Kurihara Piedra
Featured characters[]
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Regulars |
Guests
|
Quotes[]
"This Ultra Magnus is a soldier first and foremost."
"This Decepticon and the Autobot are one of a kind. But he is good and one is evil. But to me, that is no difference at all."
"As an Autobot, this Junkion should have reacted as I predicted. Remarkable."
"Violence is always the humans’ way of solving problems."
- —Various observations made by the Quintesson scientist after capturing his test subjects
"Galvatron! Why would you attack me, your most loyal soldier?"
- —Cyclonus asks an almost rhetorical question.
"We wouldn’t be in this situation at all…"
"… if you had not captured us."
"Cyclonus, I can finish my own thoughts. I don’t need you to do it for me."
"Maybe the thought was not yours to begin with, Ultra Magnus."
- —Ultra Magnus and Cyclonus.
Other Notes[]
- Although he was not named, Marissa’s father has the same voice actor and sounds the same as G.I. Joe’s Flint, all pointing out to the suspicion that Marissa is Flint’s daughter. Also of note is that the file name presented on the pack of Flint's G.I. Joe toy packaging is "Dashiell R. Faireborn." This connection was later confirmed by Flint Dille, a Transformers writer and story editor.
Animation and/or technical glitches[]
The Quints have bad intel on Broadside - and so has Cyclonus
- The triple changer Broadside was the illusion that the Quintessons used to trick Cyclonus, which is really weird since Broadside is an Autobot.
- Wreck-Gar fired his hand like a rocket to free Marissa, but he is incorrectly shown with both hands for two scenes before we see him picking the lost hand up and re-attaching it.
- Cyclonus is seen mouthing the second half of a line the Quintesson scientist says although it's still in the voice of the Quintesson, "You all realize if the ship enters the whitehole at the incorrect trajectory, we will all be crushed or torn to pieces."
Continuity errors[]
- After smashing open the escape pod canopy & removing the Quintesson, Ultra Magnus says "Marissa, get up here. You're going home." How does he propose accomplishing that? He destroyed the canopy & presumably any means of keeping an atmosphere, inside the pod. Did Marissa bring her space suit helmet?
- Once timepod's launch timer runs down & it launches with no one aboard, the pod is shown going toward the black hole & Ultra Magnus is sucked out the open launch tube before it can close. Then we see the ship's aft end facing the black hole. If the launch tube was facing the black hole, why use it if it couldn't escape the gravity?
- Ultra Magnus appears unconscious, after he's blown free of the ship, yet he is just floating around stationary? Is some type of automated system keeping him from spiraling into the black hole?
- Cyclonus' arm mounted tractor beam must be really powerful. It pulls Ultra Magnus back into the ship, after we've just witnessed him & the escape pod going toward the back hole.
- Cyclonus requires an escape pod to escape from the Quintesson ship - even though he turns into a space ship.
- If Sky Lynx rescued Marissa and Ultra Magnus, and Astrotrain rescues Cyclonus, then who rescues Wreck-Gar?
Transformers references[]
- The Quintesson scientist refers to his guard's transformed mode as his alternate mode, the first use of that term in official fiction.
Real-world references[]
- A killing jar is an entomological tool for killing insect specimens, usually with gas.
- As usual, most of Wreck-Gar's lines are drawn from television, film and radio:
- When lured into the Quintesson ship, Wreck-Gar says, "No candid camera insta-clicks me!" This refers to the TV series Candid Camera, one of the earliest (if not THE earliest) prank/practical joke shows on television.
- When Marissa remarks she's in a zoo or a jail, Wreck-Gar responds with "Book me, Danno, I have the right to remain silent!" "Book 'em, Danno," is a catch phrase of Jack Lord's character from the '70s action-detective series Hawaii Five-O.
- As the ship gets struck by the electron storm, Wreck-Gar remarks, "What a revoltin' development!" This catchphrase originated on the 1940s radio show, The Life of Riley; in geek circles, it's probably better known as one of the trademark lines of the Thing, the powerful member of the superhero team the Fantastic Four.
- Shortly afterward, Wreck-Gar exclaims, "We've gotta get out of this place!", a likely reference to the song of the same name by The Animals.
- As Wreck-Gar deflects the guard's spear, he mentions "Shield is in good hands," referring to the slogan for Allstate Insurance.
- "Away go troubles down the drain" is the long-running slogan of Roto-Rooter plumbing services. Wreck-Gar even gets the tune and cadence right.
- When Wreck-Gar tackles Cyclonus during the escape pod feud, he says that Marissa will be staying up "All Night Long" quoting the Lionel Richie song.
- When Magnus dismisses the potential rescue ship as not being a "Decepticon junk", Wreck-Gar says, "Junk? Wreck-Gar phoned home!" This plays on the famous "E.T. phone home." quote from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
- When the Quintesson ship is about to go back through the white hole, Wreck-Gar says that they can "go back, Jack, and do it again," quoting the Steely Dan song "Do It Again".
- Despite the wonky science that unfolds in the episode's plot, the Quintesson scientist gives us a pretty accurate summation of what a black hole is.
- Star Wars sound effects:
- Sparking and clashing lightsabers throughout the electron storm sequence.
- A sped-up version of the TIE Fighter roar and X-wing engine whine as the derelict ship spirals into the black hole, and again as the Quintesson ship emerges from the white hole.
- Death Star super laser - once again, sped up and modulated - as the Quintesson ship makes its approach to the white hole.
- Millennium Falcon engine roar as Sky Lynx approaches Cybertron.
Notes[]
- The background music which plays during the "working together" montage in the final act is the first piece of new music composed for season three (besides the opening theme), and would appear to have been created specifically for the scene in question, as it is not re-used anywhere else in the series.
- This episode has the fewest number of Transformers characters in the series, with only Ultra Magnus, Wreck-Gar, Sky Lynx, Cyclonus and Astrotrain appearing, with the last two of which making minor appearance, not appearing until the last few seconds of the episode.
Keywords[]
(separate by commas and link each one so a page can be created for it if it does not already exist)
Black hole, experiments
External links[]
- IMDb's page for this episode
- Dossier at the Cybertron Chronicle
- Cybertron Chronicle list all the phrases Wreck-Gar uses in this episode and their origin.
