Escape (episode)

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"Escape" それゆけ脱出大作戦 () (Sore Yuke Dasshutsu Daisakusen) "The Big Escape Plan Go"
Production company	TV Aichi, We've, Tōkyū Agency
Airdate	September 10, 2005 (Japanese) September 7, 2006 (English)
Writer	Kenji Sugihara
Director	Masashi Nagao
Animation studio	GONZO, Azeta Pictures
Continuity	Unicron Trilogy cartoon continuity

With Sideways on their tail, the kids and the Mini-Cons must navigate the labyrinth of the Atlantis and alert the Autobots on Cybertron to their plight.

Synopsis

In the starship Atlantis, Coby, Bud, Lori and the Recon Mini-Con Team are confronted by Sideways, but are able to quickly escape through one of Jolt's dimension gates. They teleport to another location within the ship, and begin a plan to shut down the electromagnetic jamming shield that is keeping them from contacting the Autobots on Cybertron. Coby brings up the map of the Atlantis that he downloaded into his communicator, and the team set off to find the jamming signal controls.

On Cybertron, Vector Prime, Scattorshot and Red Alert continue to use the base computers to scan for some trace of the kids and Mini-Cons, while the battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron's forces continues to rage outside. The only Decepticon not actively getting involved in the fight is Thunderblast, who has been ordered to retrieve the Omega Lock by Starscream. Fearing for her life if she does not complete the mission, the scheming Thunderblast contacts Starscream, who is observing the battle from a safe vantage point out in space, and asks him to come and help her carry the Omega Lock.

Back on the Atlantis, Bud comes up with a very good point: since the kids and Mini-Cons have identified the location of the control room, why are they walking there instead of warping? Jolt tries to open a warp gate, only to discover that he cannot, at which point Sideways emerges from the shadows and reveals that he has set up an anti-warping energy field within the ship. The team turns to run, but Sideways hurls his sword to block their path, and the kids push their luck, trying to distract Sideways by claiming that Megatron is standing behind him. Recalling their previous trick with the hologram, Sideways doesn't fall for it, so they push it even further by claiming Optimus Prime is there instead. While he doesn't buy it for a second, Sideways decides to play along to mock the kids, but he only winds up giving Coby time to use his communicator to activate a fire extinguisher in the roof of the corridor. The extinguisher blinds Sideways with a faceful of foam, and the kids and Mini-Cons all leg it.

Back with the battle on Cybertron, Optimus Prime and Leobreaker decide they are took evenly matched against Megatron and Nemesis Breaker, and so they decide to switch up their tactics and pull back. Megatron moves to pursue them, but is shot out of the air by none other than Thunderblast, who then claims Starscream ordered her to do it! Starscream himself promptly arrives, and the two Decepticons are about to fight when Optimus Prime returns with Wing Saber. As they merge into Sonic Wing Mode, Thunderblast slinks away, exploiting her self-made distraction to make a break for the Omega Lock.

On the Atlantis, Coby downloads his map into Jolt's brain, so the Mini-Con can lead them to their objective quickly. Although they have to drive because of the anti-warp field, they are able to move around comparatively quickly, since Sideways is also unable to warp after them. The team stops in the engine room, where they realized that the ship's self-repair function isn't working, and that Sideways has been fixing up the ship himself, putting an idea in their heads...

Meanwhile, down on Earth, Mudflap despairs over his current situation. Although he is done with the Decepticons, he realizes that he cannot return to the Autobots after his traitorous actions. Lugnutz observes his passage, and sagely acknowledges his plight, before wondering whatever happened to Starscream. Little does the hipster realize that his former boss is currently battling most of the Autobots on Cybertron!

Back on the Atlantis, Jolt leads the kids to the ship's control room. Well aware that Sideways is waiting for them on the other side of the door, they trigger their plan for the engine room, remotely triggering an explosion there that Sideways heads out to investigate. Once in the engine room, he finds only an insulting doodle scrawled on the wall before the kids, now in the control room, eject him out of the ship through the garbage chute. Unable to warp himself to safety, Sideways is shot out into space and with his threat removed, the kids shut down the jamming signal and make contact with the Autobots on Cybertron.

Vector Prime picks up the kids signal and immediately informs Optimus Prime before opening a warp gate to the Atlantis through which he, Red Alert and Scattorshot depart. Before the gate shuts, however, Crumplezone and Ransack jump through it after the Autobots. As they appear in space near the Atlantis, they radio Megatron to inform him of their discovery, and the Decepticon leader breaks off the fight on Cybertron, heading for the Atlantis through a dimension gate of his own.

Starscream, meanwhile, has also left the battle on Cybertron and returns to the Atlantis, calling for Sideways to ready the ship for warp. Sideways, unbeknownst to him, is still drifting through space, so he activates the warp system himself. Realizing what Starscream has done, the kids and Mini-Cons immediately make for the escape pods, while Vector Prime's team prepares to meet them outside. The pods successfully launch but alas, the pod containing Bud, Jolt and Reverb collides with Sideways's drifting body, and as a result, fails to escape the reach of the Atlantis's warp field. Megatron and Nemesis Breaker arrive just in time to witness the ship warp away...taking Bud and his two Mini-Con friends with it!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Oh no! Optimus Prime?! I'd better completely let my guard down and look! Like I'm gonna fall for that! I'd have to be a complete WAAAGH!"

—Sideways is, in fact, a complete waaagh.

"Forget about holding your own in this battle! This time you're taking the express train to Loserville!"
"Oh please. 'The express train to Loserville'?"

—Wing Saber's battle-cry gets critiqued by Optimus

"Another malfunction in the engine room? Slaggit! This is the crummiest evil hideout ever!"

—Sideways reacts to the kids' sabotage.

"Aw, now that's just mean!"

—Sideways is not impressed with the kids' drawing of him.

"Why do they care about those annoying kids anyway?"
"I think they know stuff about that Omega Block thingy."
"So, if we told Megatron where they are, maybe he'd give us a big reward!"
"Maybe he'd even make us co-rulers of the universe!"
"We could crush anyone we wanted!"
"Or have your people do our crushing for us!"
"Aw, Ransack, you used to be all about the crushing! Now look at you!"

—Crumplezone and Ransack let power go to their heads.

Notes

Differences with Galaxy Force

• Galaxy Force includes a "previously on" segment that summarizes the events of "Memory".
• Galaxy Force has Coby actively radio Vector Prime to let them know they are boarding the escape pods, while Cybertron has Vector Prime determine this independently by tracking the signal of Coby's communicator. Not exactly drowning in differences, this episode!

Animation or technical errors

• Thunderblast's voice is once again very heavily amplified in this episode.
• Ransack's voice is changed to Thunderblast's voice when he tries to destroy Landmine and Crosswise.

Continuity or plotting errors

• Sideways spends the vast majority of this episode just standing around when he could be doing things. It takes the kids and Mini-Cons five whole seconds to get through Jolt's warp gate, and he just stands there and watches it happen, and when he confronts them in the hallway soon after, he just stands there and lets them plot instead of, I don't know, just stepping on them, or something.

Transformers references

• Thunderblast refers to Starscream with the nickname "Screamer", an epithet used to refer to another Starscream in the original The Transformers cartoon episodes "Fire on the Mountain" and "B.O.T.". The nickname is used much more frequently in the fandom than it ever is in official material, to refer to all the different Starscreams down the years.

Real-world references

• "Wherever you go, there you are," Lugnutz comments, quoting the title of the book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and/or Buckaroo Banzai.
• In addition to mistakenly calling the Omega Lock the "Omega Block" (as quoted above), another of Ransack's misnomers for the device is the "Elmyra Lock", apparently referencing the character of the same name from Tiny Toon Adventures!

Trivia

• This episode is remarkably over-padded, even for Cybertron. The random Autobot fights with the Decepticons, already essentially filler, are padded even more by the addition of several stock transformation sequences. Starscream's full transformation sequence is shown twice, as is Sonic Wing Mode's. In fact, Optimus Prime separates from Wing Saber to converse with Vector Prime, and then initiates the combination again only 50 seconds later (the excuse, presumably, being that they needed the Matrix to create a warp gate and that Optimus was unable to open his chest plates to retrieve it with part of Wing Saber stuck to his torso while in Sonic Wing mode).
• Nemesis Breaker makes one of his two exceedingly rare non-stock-footage appearances in robot mode this episode. The other is in "Warp".

Home video releases

DVD

2006 — Transformers: Galaxy Force — Vol. 09 (Victor Entertainment) — Japanese audio only.
2008 — Transformers: Cybertron — The Ultimate Collection (Paramount)
2014 — Transformers: Cybertron — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)