Escaping from strange new foes and unable to transform to fight them off, the four surviving Maximals' journey, as they are now targets hunted by these new Transformers, leads them into encountering a mysterious supercomputer which remakes them into a whole new kind of Transformer, far more beyond what they've ever seen or been before.
- Japanese title: Densetsu no Fukkatsu (伝説の復活 The Legendary Revival)
Summary
Not so tough without your trukk and munky and plane form, huh?
On Cybertron, a single flower bizarrely grows out of a tear in the street. Suddenly, a Gorilla, Optimus Primal, races past, pursued by a horde of drone-like tank Transformers; one of which flattens the flower under foot. In an even stranger vein, Primal has lost his Transmetal properties and is now in his original pre-Transmetal body and, to make matters worse, mysteriously in Beast Mode. A hunting scene ensures as he meets these drones from every direction at every turn without pause.
After a couple of minutes of cat-and-mouse with these newcomers, Optimus, stumbling upon a dead end, decides the time has come for no more running but to face them down Maximalo e Tank drono and prepares to Transform. But his Beast Mode parts refuse to move and he screams in pain as he is tortured by electrical shocks. He enquires to himself why he can't Transform. The answer is revealed by his intercomp (internal computer): "System error. System error." He avoids the Tank drones' firepower with the mode he is stuck in as he desperately tries to find salvation.
Suddenly, his eyes glow and he receives a strange signal from an alien source. It directs his attention to a monorail vehicle nearby, and as such, he swings away from the drones, and finds another one of his missing comrades; Rattrap, who explains that he has had a lot of trouble Transforming as well, as evident by the shocks and pain he too is suffering from, and has no memory of returning to Cybertron after the end of the Beast Wars and the capture of Megatron. They escape from the transport after the drones blow it to pieces and Rattrap tries to use his command code repeatedly, to no avail.
Fortunately, a silhouette quitely creeps on a high supported beam behind the drones, before it leaps and reveals itself to be Cheetor, playing Blind man's bluff with one of the drones. Its head spins wildly, and it takes pot shots, destroying one of its companions; Cheetor compliments this act as "Deep freeze cold". As the attacks continue, Rattrap slides through the legs of a single file of these drones; they watch him slide, but the Maximal commander quickly takes the incentive to charge at them and knock down one, thus beginning a chain reaction of the Earth variety. Cheetor is hoping to find a CR chamber and use it to eliminate the Transformation lock virus that plagues them all. Rattrap points out that Cybertron seems to have changed a lot in their absence. But there is no time to discuss matters, as new Tank Drones are readying a renewed assault. Plunging (more like falling) into a hole, the Maximals bounce on a web, courtesy of Blackarachnia, the Predacon-turned-Maximal, unable to Transform and stuck in her pre-Transmetal body much like the others.
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Nor-mal view! Nor-mal view!! Nor-mal view!!! NOR-MAL VIIIIIEEEEEEWWWW!!!!!!!
Primal decides that the best course of action is to head deeper underground, where the drones have failed to look. Using Blackarachnia's webbing as a climb, they head deeper into the bowels of Cybertron, passing layers and layers of ancient Cybertronian times as they descend. Brushed metal and steel give way to rusting iron, which gives way to stone. Eventually, Blackarachnia's webbing begins to dry up and, too weak to climb, they fall sharply from the makeshift descent rope, plunging into complete darkness below them. Determined not to give in to death, Primal throws a piece of scrap metal, shattering some kind of covering and awakening the supercomputer called the Oracle. A wall of flames happens to be behind the covering as it stands in the team's way and daunts them. Undaunted by the seeming threat, Optimus walks straight through them and extends his hand into it, revealing it to be nothing more but just a defensive hologram, which drops and reveals the Oracle. Recognizing his Spark as being "receptive", it speaks to Primal, initiating an download interface with him and taking him into the bowels of the Matrix.
Granted visions that he could not yet understand, he sees images of an Earth-like planet transformed into a purely Cybertron-like world. Concluding with the mysterious statement that "the seeds of the future lie buried in the past", the Oracle declares that it is time for him to begin his "reformatting", tapping the power of the Matrix and converting his purely organic gorilla body into a perfect blend of organic tissue and machine, and, by some extent, changing his Beast Mode to that of a silverback gorrila. Stepping back into real-space in pure a wash of white light, the other Maximals simply watch on as he emerges and admire his new body. Primal says that if they wish to survive, they must be "reformatted" by the Oracle as well, and one by one, Cheetor, Rattrap and Blackarachnia are all reformatted in a similar premise, in new, Technorganic bodies.
A long tradition of Running Away begins here right now.
Suddenly, the Oracle warps out of existence, to which Rattrap enquires where to, and a hum fills the cave; this is another squadron of drones, but these ones are motorcycles, which means they're coming fast at high speed. Lining up in a four-way battle formation, the team initiates a (failed) group Maximize; although no pain ensues, nothing happens and they still remain in Beast Mode much to their own dismay. After escaping a small group of them for a few minutes as that group plummets to their doom down a pit of darkness, Optimus realizes they must learn how to Transform as it has somehow become a lost art after the first Transformers "came" to Cybertron. Realizing this, the Maximals resign to combat in their beast modes, and Cheetor, Rattrap and Blackarachnia all split up in three directions with at least one drone chasing them down. Meanwhile, Optimus now has his hands full as he engages the approaching squadron. Rattrap attacks his Cycle Drone's wheel with his teeth and sends it uncontrollably skidding to its destruction, Cheetor zooms into the shadows before he pounces on his Cycle Drone and attacks it with lightning-fast movements, and Blackarachnia uses her webs to snare number three and crawl towards it for its fate, which her approaching of the camera for the next scene does not reveal. Primal, strugguling with one drone, and, dangerously standing near an edge heading down for the darkness, is shot from behind, and plunges into the pit. Panicking, a voice from the Oracle reminds him that "To unleash the warrior within, you must tame the beast without".
Finding his inner balance as mentored, he manages to Transform. A blue light spreads throughout his entire body, converting him to Robot Mode through a magical, mystical liquid-morph style transformation, before he booms a new, somewhat spiritual, transformation phrase: "I... AM... TRANSFORMED!!!". Activating his new jets, he flies out from certain doom and jet-upper cuts a watching drone. Grabbing the two nearest Drones, he demands answers from them as the others return and watch on at the sight before them, but gets none as they flash him in the eyes and make their escape. His anger has made him lose his newly-found center, and he converts back to Beast Mode as a result. Awed at everything he has just seen, Cheetor expresses his interest in this new transformation style. Optimus declares that they must re-learn the art of transformation and learn also of their new style of combat if they are to stand a chance against the new threst.
Meanwhile, inside the Council Citadel, a mysterious figure has been watching the battle, and vows to destroy the "impure" organic Maximals. As a computer shows him that Optimus' Spark signature has been detected and that his transformation capabilities are still operating, this figure is quite surprised that they had actually survived the transformation lock when it had put them on the verge of permanent deactivation. The figure now seeks to once and for all destroy them, claiming that their Beast Modes are 'contaminating' Cybertron in a way that implies he must have major plans for the planet.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Maximals | Vehicons | Others |
|---|---|---|
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Regulars
Cameos
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Quotes
"What makes you think it's gonna be any better down THERE?"
(tower/container/object creaks and begins to descend)
"I withdraw the question."
- -Rattrap saying the worst words possible before imminent doom.
"The seeds of the future lie buried in the past, Optimus Primal."
- —The Oracle, being all mystical.
"Rattrap: Maximize! Rattrap: Maximize! Rattrap: pretty please Maximize!"
- - Rattrap being Rattrap.
"Uh...do these upgrades come with a warranty?"
- - Rattrap on the new bodies and their inability to Transform with onboard computers.
"Whoa. I guess you can teach an old ape new tricks."
- -- Blackarachnia upon seeing Optimus in robot mode.
Notes
- A special advance screening for this episode was held at BotCon 1999, where it received an overwhelmingly positive reaction.
- This is the episode in which the characters act most like they did in the Beast Wars.
It goes downhill from this point on.
- The Maximals return to their forms from the beginning of the Beast Wars, and lose the ability to transform in this episode. Towards the end, they undergo the reformatting, gaining new Technorganic forms, but only Optimus Primal uses the ability to transform as the others are yet to learn how it is done.
- The Veicons are introduced, but only the Drones. The Generals will not be introduced until "Fires of the Past". Only two types of drone have debuted; the Aero Drones will make their first appearance after this episode.
Technical/Animation Glitches
Continuity errors
- Although the Maximals' original beast modes from Beast Wars are shown in this episode, there are some rather strange inconsistencies here. Optimus' fur is brown instead of grey, Rattrap's feet are dark orange instead of pink, Blackarachnia's skin is a lighter shade of blue and smoother, and Cheetor has black eyes with two black streaks running down his face. It would seem that the actual texture mapping isn't as complex as that of the Beast Wars.
- While it is an easy mistake, Optimus cannot have regressed to his organic (pre-Transmetal) Beast Mode. His organic body was destroyed during the Planet Buster crisis and with it the DNA sequence of the gorilla he scanned in the first episode of the Beast Wars. So technically, Optimus should have returned to his basic Transmetal body. Anyone who additionally attempts to factor in the effects of Optimus Prime's Spark and its (dis)similarity to a normal Transmetal upgrade or the permanent effects it would have demonstrated is without a clue on how the transferrence of the Autobot leader's Spark into Primal's own body links with or influences the devolution from Super Transmetal straight to pre-Transmetal at the hands of the virus.
- It is possible that due to the events of the time storm in "The Agenda (Part III)", Optimus' body contained the memory of his original form which the virus affected.
- The Oracle, which for all intents and purposes is Vector Sigma, has a female persona whereas in the original cartoon Vector Sigma had a male persona.
- However, the Oracle was later revealed to be a shell program that was surrounding Vector Sigma.
- In this episode as well as the next two, Blackarachnia's Technorganic webbing is blue and looks like steel. However, from the fourth episode to the end of the series, it is green.
Transformers references
- It was from this episode that the term "reformatting" started to pass into general use amongst Transformerdom as a term used for when a Transformer is given life in a new form of body, not counting evolution, which happened with pre-Transmetals to Transmetals.
Real-world references
- Rattrap's phrase "Ground Control to Major Optimus" is a reference to the 1969 David Bowie song "Space Oddity."
- Optimus Primal's reformatting is very remeniscent of the final scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Furthermore, a group of black monoliths are briefly seen.
Items Of Note
- As Cheetor, Rattrap, and Optimus fall down the pipe towards the first sub-level of Cybertron in the first act, the scream of Transmutate can subtley be heard. However, this scream is hard to notice, which means that viewers may have to listen carefully. Why exactly Transmutate's scream appears is unknown.
External Links
- Link