Other Voices, Part 2
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 Here we go again... | |||||||||
| "Other Voices" Part 2 | |||||||||
| Season | 1 | ||||||||
| No. in season | 26 | ||||||||
| Airdate | April 1, 1997 | ||||||||
| Written by | Larry DiTillio | ||||||||
| Directed by | Ezekiel Norton | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars continuity | ||||||||
 Watch this episode on YouTube
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As the alien machine begins destroying the planet's energon, Optimus devises a desperate plan to destroy the device.
Contents |
Synopsis
Out on patrol, Cheetor and Tigatron stare in awe at "the light at the end of the world", as the alien machine continues powering up in space. Optimus Primal makes contact and orders them to return to base. Rattrap is pessimistic about their chances of survival, but Primal assures him that Rhinox will find a way for them to survive.
The alien bungalow finishes transferring power to the moon, and in a flash, the aliens depart: "Termination sequence engaged. Return to Nexus Zero."
Megatron and the Predacons observe this from their base. Confronted with a machine intended to destroy them, Megatron activates a special program and scans the Maximal base, locating the spiders and Inferno within.
Tarantulas is nearly finished converting a stored stasis pod into his escape ship. Blackarachnia observes that it's a little cramped for two... but, weapon drawn, she has no intention of sharing the ride. Inferno arrives just then, blasts her, and sets Tarantulas on fire, knocking him out. Back at the Predacon base, Megatron detects the aborted flow of data to the stasis pod ship and reacts with fury.
Inferno starts to examine Tarantulas's work, but is attacked by Blackarachnia, who eludes him with a display of gymnastics before blasting him with his own gun. Picking up Tarantulas's cyber-link goggles, she forms a link with the unconscious Tarantulas to obtain the data needed to finish the pod ship—but finds that staring into the abyss of the spider's mind means that it also stares back...
The Maximals arrive at base, alarmed to find the shields down. Inside, they find Rhinox and Dinobot cyber-webbed to the ceiling. Optimus Primal sends Rattrap and Airazor to bring in their unwelcome visitors.
Megatron observes the data flow resuming, just as the altered moon opens fire on the planet with a broad, blinding power ray. Optimus Primal charges the Maximal base's shields as the external temperature begins climbing and deduces that the aliens intend to ignite the energon deposits. Megatron notes that this will obliterate the entire planet, an incredibly ruthless strategy that he rather admires. He assures his panicked troops that Tarantulas will save them, albeit inadvertently.
Blackarachnia finishes the pod ship, only to be discovered and held at gunpoint by Rattrap and Airazor. With Rhinox still out of commission, Optimus Primal is beginning to despair, when Rattrap summons him to the stasis hold. Primal is impressed by the ship and immediately orders Blackarachnia to change the command codes to respond to him. He intends to fly the ship up to the Planet Buster and detonate the transwarp cell to destroy it. With little alternative, Blackarachnia complies.
Soon all is ready, and Optimus Primal has poignant parting words with his worried crew - at which point Blackarachnia comments on the Maximals' sentimentality and is knocked out by Airazor for it - before sealing the ship and launching it. Megatron scans the launch and notes with delight that Primal is flying the vessel. Primal soon reaches the Planet Buster, starts the ignition sequence, and gives the order to blow the hatch seals. But the hatch is sealed and locked! Megatron appears on his comm screen to gloat that he'd come up with exactly the same plan—only in his version of events, the ship's pilot goes "up with the ship". As the timer counts down to zero, the Maximals frantically wait for Optimus Primal to make his escape. Primal pounds on the sealed hatch, to no avail. As the Maximals wonder what is going on, Blackarachnia tells them it's too late... in Tarantulas's voice.
The transwarp cell explodes, and high above the planet, the Planet Buster is annihilated... along with the pod ship and Optimus Primal.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Maximals | Predacons |
|---|---|
|
Quotes
"Sufferin' circuits. What could it be?"
"The light at the end of the world."
- —Cheetor and Tigatron, watching the Planet Buster power up
"What is it?"
"Well, I'd say it was the instrument of our destruction. Impressive, yesss..."
- —Scorponok and Megatron upon seeing the Planet Buster's true form.
Megatron: Brilliant! They're causing a chain reaction which will rip this planet to atoms and destroy all traces of them—simply to deal with us! Such sheer ruthlessness. Such disregard for sentient life! ...I rather like these aliens.
Terrorsaur: Like them?! They're trying to destroy us!
Waspinator: Waszzpinator not want to be destroyed! Waszzpinator has plans!
Scorponok: Megatron will save us!
Megatron: I think not. I've reserved that task for Tarantulas.
- —The Predacons react to the Planet Buster.
Blackarachnia: We—I did it!
Airazor: Hooray for you.
[Blackarachnia finds herself held at gunpoint.]
Blackarachnia: Did you know we have a truce?
"Cozy."
"Just like a coffin."
- —Optimus Primal and Blackarachnia
"Oh, you Optimuses do love to sacrifice yourselves, don't you? Well, fortunately, this time your foolishness will destroy you and your Maximals. The Beast Wars are over, Optimus. You lose."
- —Megatron rubs his victory in.
"MEGATROOOOOON!"
- —Optimus Primal's last words before he kicks the bucket.
Notes
Script timeline
- First draft: 11th November 1996
- Second draft: 5th December 1996
- Finalised: 12th December 1996
- As Air: 2nd April 1997
Animation and technical errors
- In the first scene at the Predacon base, as the camera zooms over to Megatron after Terrorsaur says "What do we do?", the middle toe on Megatron's left foot is pointing upward.
- When Blackarachnia grabs Inferno's gun, she clips into Inferno for a split second.
- During Airazor and Rattrap's search for Blackarachnia, Airazor's gun floats in her hand when they jump into a hallway, and then gets "stuck" in her armpit as they walk towards the camera. Meawhile, her hands are posed grasping at nothing.
- When Blackarachnia asks Tigatron and Cheetor to unhand her, her mouth isn't animated.
- As Optimus Primal lies back into the stasis pod, his shoulder pads are much smaller than they usually are. This was done to avoid clipping with the sides of the cramped stasis pod model. It is an odd animation choice, however, given that simply folding his shoulder pads down is a normal part of his transformation, in much the same way he actually does do with his feet to allow the pod's canopy to close.
- When Megatron gloats to Optimus at the end of the episode, his hands seem to be switched, with his right arm ending in a normal hand instead of his beast mode head. (It's easiest to see when Megatron is laughing triumphantly at the end of his speech.)
Continuity errors
- When Blackarachnia and Tarantulas attacked Dinobot in the previous episode, they caused him to fall through the glass of the elevator on the right hand side of the Axalon's command center (from Dinobot's perspective). In this episode, the smashed elevator glass has been switched to the other elevator on the other side of the room.
- The piece of cyber-webbing Airazor steps on when she exits the elevator was not present during the close up of Rattrap as he complained about the missing Rhinox and Dinobot.
- Optimus asks Rattrap for a 30 nano-click timer on the self-destruct charge, but it's a 60 nano-click countdown when he activates it. Perhaps Rattrap felt his estimate wasn't generous enough.
Continuity notes
- Tigatron volunteers to pilot the stasis pod ship, citing that he "owes this world." This likely refers to his decision to destroy the Vok's self-propelled-completely-peaceful-heavily-armed-floating-island-paradise-of-death in "The Trigger, Part 2".
Transformers references
- Megatron's line, "You Optimuses do love to sacrifice yourselves", is a reference to the original Optimus Prime and his numerous deaths.
Real-world references
- Tigatron describes the Planet Buster's death ray as "the light at the end of the world", which might be a reference to the album of the same name.
Trivia
- At the script stage, this episode had the subtitle "Termination Day".
- Regular Tarantulas actor Alec Willows was evidently indisposed during the recording of this episode; while all of Tarantulas's screams and laughs are his, as well as the character's final line ("Too late! Goodbye Optimus!") all of Tarantulas's other dialogue is provided by Scott McNeil, doing his best Willows impression.
- Inferno's got the moves in this episode! During his fight with Blackarachnia he pulls off all sorts of kung fu moves and even does a little Jet Li roundhouse kick. This still surprisingly doesn't keep her from blowing his head off though.
- This episode is the first of two where Inferno refers to Megatron by name rather than as "Royalty" or "my queen."
- A planned but never-produced Generation 1 cameo was planned for "Other Voices" Part 2. The intent was for Megatron to gloat to Primal while the latter was trapped in the stasis pod—by projecting an image of the Autobot leader, Optimus Prime, on Primal's viewscreen as Primal raced for the false moon and met his demise.[1]
- When you see the little parts of Primal flying towards the camera near the end of the episode, you can see Optimus's head fly at the screen very quickly with a distressed look on his face.
- In Madman Entertainment's Beast Wars Season 1 DVD set, on a commentary track for this episode with fan consultant Ben Yee and story editor Larry DiTillio, fellow story editor Bob Forward popped in to explain the significance of the slang term "slag". He explained that he looked up on refineries as he figured that robots would be made of steel, and one of the waste byproducts of creating steel was an unusable detritus called slag, which he thought would be an appropriate swear word for robots to use.
- Tarantulas is aware that Optimus will be unable to eject far before the Maximals (or Blackarachnia) find out, hinting that he was aware of Megatron's machinations.
- Just as the pod enters the Planet Buster, you can actually hear the sound of Optimus' arm-cannon firing, and glass shattering. It appears that he attempted to blast his way out, but was too late to actually escape.
- The overall plot of this episode (and, to a lesser extent, the previous episode), has several similarities to "Web World Wars", the season 2 finale of ReBoot (perhaps not coincidental, as both shows were produced by Mainframe):
- Both episodes feature the heroes and villains working against a common foe (The Vok in Beast Wars, The Web in ReBoot) who intends to destroy them all with a powerful weapon (The Planet Buster in Beast Wars, a giant Web portal in ReBoot).
- Both episodes involve the characters developing a plan to eliminate said foe's weapon (destroying the Planet Buster in Beast Wars, closing the portal to The Web in ReBoot).
- At the end of both episodes, the main villain betrays the heroes, shooting their leader into the enemy weapon right before its destruction (in Beast Wars: Megatron traps Optimus Primal in the stasis pod-ship as it detonates in the Planet Buster; in ReBoot: Megabyte traps Bob in a missile, firing it into the Web portal before using the Hardware to seal it).
Foreign localization
French
- Title: "Les Voix d'Autre Monde - 2e partie" ("The Voices from Another World - Part 2")
- Title: Les Voix 2 (Canada, "The Voices 2")
German
- Title: "Andere Stimmen, Teil 2" ("Other Voices, Part 2")
- Original airdate: 26 September 1998
- Megatron's line "I rather like these aliens." is translated slightly differently here ("I'm beginning to like these aliens.") than in the preview from last episode ("I somehow like these aliens.").
- After reprogramming the stasis pod, instead of the original "We... I did it!", Blackarachnia says the somewhat nonsensical "We... Got it!"
- Blackarachnia's line "You'll blow yourself to atoms." is strangely mangled. She responds to Primal's plan about creating a Transwarp explosion with "We should take that chance.", seemingly approving of the idea. Primal then tries to convince her to agree to his plan, which she seemingly already did.
- Blackarachnia's "Unhand me, pussycats. I've got work to do." line is completely missing. In the dub's defense, her mouth isn't animated in the shot in question.
- Either an error or a strange dubbing choice, but when Tarantulas takes over Blackarachnia's mind and speaks through her, she says "Have a nice trip, my Optimus." in her own voice.
- Megatron tells Primal "You gorillas do love to sacrifice yourselves." instead of "You Optimuses..."
- A voice-over at the end poses the question "Is this really the end?" This was the final episode of the show released in Germany.
Italian
- Title: "L'arrivo - Parte 2" ("The Arrival - Part Two")
Japanese
- Title: "Heiwa o Mamoru Tame ni..." (平和を守るために・・・, "To Protect the Peace...")
- Original airdate: 25 March 1998
- For some inexplicable reason, beginning in this episode, Megatron now addresses Naviko-chan by screeching her name in a very high-pitched voice. Every single time.
- While taunting Primal in the capsule, Megatron does not reference the previous sacrifices of Optimus Prime. This is actually the second time the Japanese dub deliberately eliminated a reference to Generation 1. Waspinator's brief identity crisis as Shrapnel was removed from the dialogue in "Dark Designs".
- As is expected, the ominous "The End?" text was replaced with the Japanese "To be continued?" (つづく?, Tsudzuku?).
- Various characters introduce themselves in the end credits, and there is no preview for the next episode (The season 2 and 3 episodes were not released there yet).
Portuguese
- Title: "Outras Vozes Parte 2" ("Other Voices Part 2")
Spanish
- Title: Otras Voces Segunda Parte ("Other Voices Second Part")
Mandarin
- Title: Mòrì Jiànglín (末日降临, "The Doomsday Comes")
Home video releases
- VHS
1998 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers — To Protect the Peace... (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2001 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Beginning: Vol. 4 (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 4 — The Predacons Advance! (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)
