Call of the Wild
From Transformers Wiki
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 Scopes munky trial? | |||||||||
| "Call of the Wild" | |||||||||
| Season | 1 | ||||||||
| No. in season | 19 | ||||||||
| Production company | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Airdate | January 7, 1997 | ||||||||
| Written by | Bob Forward | ||||||||
| Directed by | Jonathan Goodwill | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars continuity | ||||||||
 Watch this episode on YouTube
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The Predacons steal the rectifier coil from the Maximal base, which causes the Maximals to revert into a more feral state.
Contents |
Synopsis
A cheetah enthusiastically chases some antelopes, when the ground around it breaks up and it is sent falling into hot lava. Before the cat gets burned, the sequence ends, revealed to be a dream of Cheetor's. Cheetor awakens from his nightmare in time to hear the alarms triggered by a Predacon assault. As the other Maximals prepare Sentinel, Dinobot drags Cheetor outside to battle.
Primal exits the Maximals' control room via the roof hatch, but is unable to prevent Waspinator and Terrorsaur from grabbing a piece of Maximal hardware off the roof and retreating with the other Predacons. A well-placed rocket from Megatron prevents Primal from chasing the fliers. Airazor is just able to catch the Maximal leader before he crashes into the ground, but lowering Primal after taking a hit from Terrorsaur seriously taxes Airazor's systems. On the upside, the Predacons are no longer attacking.
Inside the base, recuperating, the Maximals suddenly feel the harmful effects of energon build-up. Rhinox explains that without the rectifier coil the Predacons stole, the Maximals will have to stay in beast mode. Meanwhile, the Predacons, after an uncharacteristically successful mission, enjoy a hearty laugh together.
Days later, Rhinox interrupts a dream Primal has (of being a real ape) to mention that Predacons are still haunting the local area. Rattrap suffers frustration from his beast mode's diminutive size and limb length. Primal and Rattrap almost get into a fight with each other, their minds suffering from bestial traits leaking into their personalities, but Rhinox lays down the line. Once the Preds leave, the Maximals take some much-needed rest.
In his dreams, Primal is tormented by eyes glowing in the dark, Dinobot dreams of hunting surprisingly tiny hadrosaurs, and Rattrap dreams of rat stuff. The dreams overpower their respective dreamers, and the Maximals awaken, trapped in the mindsets of the creatures whose forms they wear. The animals all eventually exit their base. Their foes' intellects gone, Megatron and the Predacons begin their hunt.
Airazor exits the CR chamber to meet Tigatron in the empty Maximal base. Tigatron resolves to reform his Maximal companions before they're killed, while Airazor has her own mission. She heads to the unoccupied Predacon base, deftly dodging the automated defenses. Inside, the rectifier coil is under no protection she can't destroy.
In the jungle, Tigatron comes to face the feral Cheetor and Rhinox. The two follow him for reasons their animal minds don't comprehend. Next Tigatron recruits the primal Optimus into his party, and finally Dinobot and Rattrap. His friends gathered, Tigatron speaks to the dormant minds of his friends. He explains how the schism that exists between the Maximals' two modes is a side effect of a programming block, and as long as that program exists, the animal and Maximal identities will never reach cohesion. Now embracing the beasts within, the restored Maximals are ready to "Slag some bot!"
Primal swings Megatron off of his throne as the two Maximal cats tackle the two Predacon goons who were carrying their leader. Dinobot's raptor mode conquers Blackarachnia. Rhinox knocks over a tree to ground the Predacon fliers, and a ratball special puts Rattrap into position to pump gunfire into Terrorsaur. After the Predacons start to feel the effects of energon build-up, Megatron orders a retreat, and Optimus beats his chest, roaring in victory.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Maximals | Predacons |
|---|---|
|
Quotes
"Man, I swear them polka-dots go clear through to the brain."
- —Rattrap on Cheetor.
"Trouble with the neighbors again."
- —Airazor spots the Axalon under attack.
"Predacons, fall back!"
"Now he tells me!"
- —Megatron's order comes a wee bit too late to save Tarantulas.
"Waszzpinator love it when prey cannot shoot back!"
- —Waspinator in a rare moment of having the upper hand... It won't last.
"Hunting from the air with automatic weapons—now that's a sport!"
- —Terrorsaur
"She stoops to conquer!"
- —Airazor shows some wit.
"Rat...robot. Rat...robot. I'm a robot and a rat! Yeahh, I like it!"
"Hrmf, I do not see why."
- —Rattrap and Dinobot
"Remember; do not fight your beast instincts. Let them help your robot forms, both in battle and in peace. But for now, let us Maximize..."
[Tigatron transforms, and cocks his gun!]
"AND SLAG SOME BOT!!"
- —Nothing short of poetry from Tigatron!
Other notes
Script timeline
- First draft: 29th August 1996
- Second draft: 11th September 1996
- Finalised: 20th September 1996
- As Air: 8th January 1997
Animation and technical errors
- When the Predacon hunting party arrives, Terrorsaur's gun appears to be floating between his hands.
- Tigatron's legs clip through a nearby rock after he beckons gorilla-Optimus to follow him.
- When he transforms after completing his speech, Tigatron's right arm passes through the moonrays, which seems to make its reflection textures vanish.
Continuity errors
- At first glance, Megatron's plan seems to have a rather large glitch / continuity error. If his theories are based on researching Maximal programming, why would Dinobot be affected as well? Still, none of the dialogue explicitly denounces the idea that Predacons rely on similar programming -- perhaps Megatron started from an identical flaw in Pred programming, and his research merely confirmed Maximals would have the same flaw. (They could have probably saved themselves the bother by having him say "Cybertronian programming", but oh well.)
- Primal seems obsessed with not letting the Maximals transform in case they are attacked. Would it really be that bad just to convert to robot mode for 5 minutes to clear their heads, especially if they did it one at a time? For that matter, what exactly was the plan? The Maximals clearly knew that their beast mode instincts were taking over, but seemed to be making no plans to either retrieve or repair the rectifier coil. Were they really just going to wait around for Tigatron to turn up and hope he'd solve everything?
Continuity notes
- When Optimus is dreaming in his quarters, the plant that Dinobot left for him at the end of "Gorilla Warfare" can be seen next to his bed.
- Rhinox mentions that the Predacons have been attacking the base off and on for "two days", an increasingly rare use of non-cycle based unit of time.
- Gadgets and powers:
- This episode marks the only use of Megatron's right arm-mounted missile launcher, which fires from the same port the laser beam emanates from. What is with Transformers and the one-use weapons?
Transformers references
- Tigatron says that once, the Maximals were merely "robots in disguise".
Real-world references
- The episode was likely named after Jack London's 1903 novel The Call of the Wild.
- Airazor's "she stoops to conquer" line is a double reference: first, and most obviously, to 1773 play She Stoops to Conquer, and secondly to a stoop, which is the dive of a bird of prey.
Trivia
- An unproduced Beast Wars episode named "A Greater Ape" would have adopted the basic premise of a Maximal believing themselves to be a real animal, focusing specifically on Optimus Primal. It's unknown if this episode was written after Mainframe scrapped the aforementioned concept, citing the need for too many expensive models.
- Similar concepts regarding how well Maximals integrate their beast and robot modes would later surface in Beast Machines. The idea of the Maximals temporarily turning feral was revisited in that series in "Forbidden Fruit", but for different reasons.
- When the Maximal computer announces that the Predacons are withdrawing from the area, text in the Maximal version of the Cybertronix language scrolls by the bottom of the screen, and more text flashes in blue in the middle of the screen. The blue flashing text reads "area clear", and the text on the bottom reads "its been a long time since ive had sweet thistle pie".
- In his beast dream, Dinobot—supposedly experiencing the instincts of his beast mode, Asia's Velociraptor—dreams of chasing what appears to be a Parasaurolophus, which only lived in the Americas and which furthermore is portrayed as far too small. Since the creature is never actually named, it may be taken as representing a different dinosaur species as-yet-undiscovered.
- When Megatron "suggests" to his troops to laugh with him, Blackarachnia is the only one who refuses to pay him that courtesy. Clearly, Dinobot is not the only who's got some bearings of chrome steel.
- Despite them regularly sporting Predacon symbols since "Chain of Command", Scorponok's missiles are yet again shown with Maximal insignias when he attacks the Axalon.
- This is the first and only appearance of Megatron's double-barreled hunting gun, a weapon that seemingly conceptualized out of nowhere rather than being taken from his toy, which included no such accessory. The purple scaly skin texture of the weapon suggests it originates from Megatron's Beast Mode construction as opposed to having been made just for the occasion, in the same vein as Cheetor's Gut Gun.
- If you look closely at the start of the hunt, Tarantulas seems to be struggling under Megatron's weight. Scorponok seems okay, though.
- Inferno appears but has no lines, despite this being his first appearance under Megatron's command. Perhaps Jim Byrnes wasn't available?
Foreign localization
French
- Title: "Chassez le Naturel" ("Hunt the Natural")
- Title: "Appel Sauvage" ("Savage Calling")
German
Italian
- Title: "Il richiamo della foresta" ("The Call of the Wild")
- In some scenes Rattrap calls himself a mouse instead of a rat. Similar cases already happened in previous episodes, but in those cases it could be considered a nickname (like when Dinobot in called "lizard" or when Cheetor is called "cat").
Japanese
- Title: "Yomigaere Beast Power!" (よみがえれビーストパワー!, "Revive, Beast Power!")
- Original airdate: 4 February 1998
- During the opening assault on the Axalon, Tarantulas seems to have adopted Cheetor's habit of shouting "Utsumashi!" ("Fire!") every time he fires his weapon. He also giddily sings to himself as he opens fire on the base.
- After Scorponok fumbles and falls off his hover platform, the other Predacons all chant sayonaraaaa in unison.
- The tortured squealing of the small dinosaur Dinobot eats in his dream has strangely been dubbed. It now sounds "cuter", making high pitched, processed "peeping" noises like a baby chick.
- Even when he's trapped in an animal mindset, Rattrap continues to speak and mutter asides to himself about food and danger... which completely defeats the purpose of the Maximals going feral and losing higher reasoning capabilities.
- Perhaps the most infamous change made for the Japanese version of this episode (thanks to being prominently showcased in the clip movie "Clash! Beast Warriors"), when the Predacons begin their safari and start beating the drums, they sing a musical number. The lyrics aren't especially clever, as it's mostly each Predacon sounding off and then the others chanting their unique verbal tic ("Orya! Orya!" for Scorponok, "Bun! Bun!" for Waspinator, etc.).
- Airazor's dramatic declaration, "She stoops to conquer!" is altered into the rather bland, "I will return the Rectifier Coil!"
- After Megatron sees the explosions and says uh-oh, Optimus Primal does the famous Tarzan yell (or tries to, anyway) as he comes swinging in on the vine.
- In one of the worst moments of character brutalization, even by the Japanese dub's standards, when Dinobot pins Blackarachnia down with his foot and hisses at her, she pathetically cries, "It hurts! Stop!"
- When the Predacons each retreat into the jungle upon defeat, each character calls out a humorous "excuse" for running away. Megatron whimpers a pathetic, "I have to return to my piano lessons" as he dashes away.
Portuguese
- Title: "Instinto Selvagem" ("Wild Instinct")
Spanish
- Title: "El Llamado de la Bestia" (America, "The Call of the Beast")
Mandarin
- Title: "Yěxìng de Hūhuàn " (野性的呼唤, "The Call of the Beast")
Toys inspired by this episode
- Masterpiece MP-43 Megatron (Beast Wars) (TakaraTomy, 2019)
- Megatron includes the hunting rifle he wields during the Maximal hunt.
Home video releases
- VHS
1998 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers — Resurrected Beast Power (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2001 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Beginning: Vol. 3 (Universal)
1998 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Predacon Edition (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
- DVD
2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers — DVD Box (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
2003 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete First Season (Rhinomation)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 1 (Shout! Factory)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2005 — Beast Wars — Classic Episodes: Volume 3 — The Battle Rages On! (Alliance Atlantis) — English and French audio.
2005 — Beast Wars — The Complete First Season (Alliance Atlantis) — English and French audio.
2006 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 1 (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers: Beast Wars — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
External links
Official uploads (Japanese)
- Beast Wars Again re-airings:
- "Revive, Beast Power!" on YouTube
- "Revive, Beast Power! (Part 2)" on YouTube
