Fires of the Past

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Larry, Curly, and Moe.
"Fires of the Past"
Season	1
No. in season	3
Production company	Mainframe Entertainment
Airdate	October 2, 1999
Written by	Marv Wolfman
Directed by	John Pozer
Animation studio	Mainframe Entertainment
Continuity	Beast Wars continuity

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

Synopsis

I'm telling you, Optimus, they were all out of bananas.

A fleet of Vehicon Tank Drones roll towards the Cybertron Archives. A hiding Blackarachnia watches in horror as the tanks open fire, seemingly without provocation, on a statue of Optimus Prime holding a pair of Golden Disks. The tanks continue their barrage on the Archive center itself as Blackarachnia runs back to the rest of the hiding Maximals, who are there searching for clues to what happened to the missing Cybertronian population. Rattrap makes it out of the Archives, revealing that he's found... absolutely nothing. The Archives have been deleted in their entirety.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle...

Optimus Primal howls in rage, while a spying Megatron chuckles to himself that he's starting history over; everything prior to his reign is now simply a rumor. Inside Megatron's control chamber, a Diagnostic Drone assures him that he has been "purged" of whatever organic traces remained in him that caused his outbreak into beast mode in the previous episode. More Tank Drones appear to attack the Maximals, and Optimus orders yet another retreat. During the battle, Blackarachnia is knocked out by a blast and has a vision of a beautiful sunset-lit forest. In her dream, she falls into a chasm, but is saved by a mysterious silhouette.

In the waking world, Cheetor is carrying the woozy Blackarachnia away from the battle while Optimus draws the Vehicon fire. Rather than simply taking cover behind a building, he climbs straight up one while dodging more shots, and the accumulated damage causes the building to topple on the Tank Drone fleet, destroying almost all of them while Optimus leaps to safety. (Optimus planned it that way. Seriously.)

Nope. Totally won't come back around to bite him in the ass.

Megatron is so enraged at this turn of events that he loses all control and again reverts to his dragon form, disconnecting from the control armor. He becomes further enraged when he realizes he still hasn't been cured of his bestial tendencies and takes it out on the Diagnostic Drone with some fire breath. Collecting himself and returning to robot form, he ponders why his elite army of drones is still unable to capture four rogue Maximals. The only reasonable answer is simply "free will", so, Megatron pulls out three sparks from an enormous bank of stored sparks...

Back at the Maximal hideout, Optimus chews out the rest of the Maximals for their sloppy battle performance. Blackarachnia has another vision of Silverbolt while pretending to listen to Optimus' angry lecture, and so she decides to sneak off to the Central Spaceport. As she reaches the spaceport, she realizes that Rattrap has tailed her. Before Rattrap can get her to explain why she's out there in the first place, they are attacked by three Vehicons. Unfortunately, these three are no Drones—each Vehicon has a spark of their own! They are Jetstorm, a wisecracking Aero Drone General, Thrust, a smoldering Cycle Drone General, and Tankor, a Tank Drone General, whose only distinguishable personality traits are being very angry and stupid.

"See, I told you the Omega-Delta shuttle toy came with six figures."

The three Vehicons pretty much blow up everything around Rattrap and Blackarachnia. Blackarachnia loses concentration and reverts to beast mode, so she and Rattrap scurry off. Neither of them yet realize it, but doing so saves them—the Vehicons are unable to detect them on radar while in beast mode. Getting inside the spaceport control building, Blackarachnia accesses the aerospace records, finding the records of the Autobot shuttle they came to Cybertron on. She discovers that the ship was shot down by Cybertron's own automated defense systems and that there were six of them on the ship, though their memories of the missing two Maximals are hazy. Blackarachnia then plans to get to the ship itself to find its own backed-up data files.

"Come on, Neo, get off the other line!"

The Vehicons again attack, having locked onto Blackarachnia's Maximal signature, and she and Rattrap are again forced to flee, with Blackarachnia heading for the Autobot Shuttle and Rattrap simply heading home (he's had enough of being shot at for one day). As the Vehicon generals pass by, Rattrap realizes that the Vehicons are unable to track him while he is in beast mode. He scampers off to warn Blackarachnia. Megatron decides to call off the Vehicon attack once he realizes where Blackarachnia is headed, planning to tap into her mind when she accesses the Autobot ship's computer and find the Maximal base through her.

Blackarachnia successfully links up with the Autobot computer. She finally realizes that there were originally six Maximals aboard the shuttle, and the two missing Maximals are none other than Rhinox and Silverbolt! She can't get much further before Rattrap cuts her off. Realizing that Megatron is planning to download Blackarachnia's own memory files, the two rig the shuttle to blow to prevent Megatron from finding out the location of their hideout. The Vehicons resume their attack, and Optimus Primal and Cheetor save the day by crashing through a skylight. They hold them off just long enough to escape before the Autobot shuttle explodes. Optimus is, in a word, steamed that his teammates needlessly endangered themselves, losing their only chance at filling in the gaps in their memory. There's not much that can be done now, and the Maximals retreat to their hideout.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"How is this possible? My battle drones are models of technological perfection. They possess superior firepower and manoeuvrability, and yet they are continually defeated by a small pack of lowly beasts. Why?"
"Free will?"
"Hmm, interesting notion."

—Megatron and the Diagnostic Drone discuss the recent losses.

"Three mindless drones shouldn't be a problem."
"Only three things wrong with that little theory: One, we're not drones, two, we're not mindless, and three, problem's my middle name."

—Blackarachnia is introduced to Jet-Problem-storm and the new Vehicons.

"This is Captain Jetstorm speaking. Please feel free to move about the tarmac, and flee for your miserable little life!"

—Jetstorm enjoying himself way too much.

"They blew us out of the sky?"
"Yes, stranding all six of us."
"Why, those lousy— six?! Get real, Webs—if there were six of us then why don't we remember the other two?"

—Blackarachnia and Rattrap learn that their memories have been tampered with more than they realise.

"Well, well, well. Your situation exactly matches your location: TERMINAL!"

—Jetstorm finding Rattrap and Blackarachnia.

"Now just stick to beast mode and those Vehicon goons will never find us! ...Unless they happen to be standing right here in front of us."

—Rattrap's plan has one minor flaw.

Notes

Animation and technical errors

Don't even ask where his tail goes.

• The animators avoid directly showing Megatron's unveiled robot mode out of its control harness—in the previous episode, we barely see him transform, in this episode, any clear shot of it is partially obscured either by fast action or back-lighting. We do, however, see that his "cloak" is made up of his wings that would ordinarily arch out of his back in robot mode. Watching in slow-motion more clearly reveals however that the irregular design of his dragon wing "membranes" completely morphs shape between frames to become the long, even strips that make up his cloak.
• Also, although visible for barely a split-second in the previous episode, we now get a better (albeit still fleeting and incomplete) look at his robot mode mid-transformation, and the fact that in this state Megatron's character model entirely lacks the new metal-plated texture seen on his dragon mode. His barely-glimpsed robot mode under his "cloak" is the same model and texture used from the final episodes of Beast Wars, and does not match the currently frankensteinian state of his dragon skin when fully transformed.
• The tank drones advancing on the Maximals in the opening have their cannons on the wrong side in some shots, due to the shots being mirrored.
• When the Diagnostic Drone taps on its hand-held device to replay the footage of Megatron's dragon form, its fingers clip through it.
• The Drone and its gadget get charred when Megatron breathes fire on them. A moment later, they're clean again.
• During Optimus' "I failed my people once..." line, his body turns low-res.
• Rattrap's resting his foot on air when he asks Blackarachnia why she's staying in 'bot mode.
• After Tankor first transforms into robot mode, the sky texture jumps position between frames, albeit barely noticeably.
• Rattrap's body becomes low-res in a handful of shots during their clash with the Vehicon generals.
• When we see the Vehicons through the pipes, Thrust's model is low-res.
• After the computer notifies the generals that it doesn't detect Maximal signatures, there's a dark "aura" of sorts on Jetstorm's jet-head.
• After Optimus and Cheetor break in through the glass ceiling, all the shards just vanish.
• When Blackarachnia puts her arm around Cheetor, it actually clips through him.
• During Primal's little outbreak of temper at the end, the shadow that he casts on Cheetor freezes as soon as he walks out of frame.
• As Optimus transforms back into his beast mode, Cheetor's legs are all messed up, their parts clipping into each other.

Continuity errors

• Optimus Primal seems very insistent on Blackarachnia reverting 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.
• Since it's already clear that the Maximals are amnesiac, Rattrap's claim that they would remember their missing team members is a little inaccurate (but, then again, they did remember each other on the previous episodes).

Continuity notes

• Beginning with this episode, the Maximals have taken up residence at a ruined underground amphitheater that serves as their headquarters for roughly the first-third of the series.
• The Autobot shuttle is the same vessel that carried the triumphant Maximals off of prehistoric Earth in "Nemesis Part 2". It gets a proper name here.
• Blackarachnia's vision seems to be set on prehistoric Earth, where she was essentially "born".
• When Blackarachnia logs into the ship's computer, we get some brief glimpses of the Maximals in their Season 3 Beast Wars bodies. But why were the Maximals running around in their Season 1 bodies on returning to Cybertron? Hmm...
• Optimus is extremely distraught over his perceived failure to stop Megatron, becoming much harsher on his troops than in the past. This won't come back to bite him at all, will it?
• Gadgets and powers:
  • In robot mode, Blackarachnia can throw explosive discs of webbing.
  • Cheetor's two scimitars can be hooked together and thrown like a boomerang.

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 Cybertron 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.^[1] We're betting on the latter.

Real-world references

• Jetstorm refers to Rattrap and Blackarachnia as "Beasties", a reference to the Canadian name for Beast Wars.

Trivia

He needs an eye doctor more than he needs screentime.

• Starting from this episode, Blackarachnia's webs are green instead of blue.
• 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".
• If you pause at the right time (or have a really good eye), you can kinda see that Silverbolt has eyes pupils. And they look ugly!
• Though he says it much less frequently than in Beast Wars, this episode marks the first time Megatron utters "Yesssss", though in a much less hammy, more sinister manner than before.
• Tankor, Jetstorm and Thrust's personality traits are the exact opposites of the characters whose sparks they possess. Instead of being kind of dense and chivalrous like Silverbolt, Jetstorm is sarcastic and sociopathic. Instead of being a gentle genius, Tankor's a violent idiot. And Thrust is slick and cool, instead of being... well... Waspinator. Comments by Waspinator and Silverbolt in later episodes would reveal they were aware of what was going on and enjoyed being completely different people, both personas apparently being fantasies of theirs. This didn't seem to apply to Rhinox.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "Les Feux du Passé" ("The Fires of the Past")

German

• Title: "Spur in die Vergangenheit" ("Trail to the Past")
• Original airdate: December 4, 2000

The dub contains a handful of mishearings and other goofs. For instance, Megatron says "there is merely one ruler" instead of "it is merely a rumor", Jetstorm's command code "afterburn" becomes "After her!", and an off-screen Thrust says a line in Tankor's voice. But these technically still make sense in context and don't stick out unless one knows the original dialogue.

Italian

• Title: "Fuochi del passato" ("Fires of the past")

Japanese

• Title: "Ai no Shirushi" (愛の古傷, "The Scars of Love")
• Original airdate: November 13, 2004

Mandarin

• Title: "Jìyì zhī Huǒ " (记忆之火, "Fires in Remenberance")

Polish

• Title: "Demony Przeszłości" ("Demons Of Past")

Brazilian Portuguese

• Title: "Fogos do Passado" ("Fires of the Past")

Spanish

• Title: "Fuegos del Pasado" ("Fires of the Past")

Home video releases

DVD

2004 — Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Returns — Volume 1 (Geneon Entertainment) — Japanese audio only.
2006 — Beast Machines: Transformers — The Complete Series (Rhinomation)
2014 — Transformers: Beast Machines — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Season One: Volume One (Sony)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Season One: Volume One — Reformatting (Sony)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Complete Season One (Sony)
2009 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Intégrale Saison 1 (Sony) — French audio only.

References