Revelations Part II: Descent
From Transformers Wiki
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 His crime is curiosity. | ||||||
| "Revelations Part II: Descent" | ||||||
| Season | 1 | |||||
| No. in season | 8 | |||||
| Production company | Mainframe Entertainment | |||||
| Airdate | November 6, 1999 | |||||
| Written by | Marv Wolfman | |||||
| Directed by | William Lau | |||||
| Animation studio | Mainframe Entertainment | |||||
Cheetor and Rattrap make a surprising discovery about their missing memories and the identity of Tankor.
Contents |
Synopsis
Optimus Primal swings from tree to tree in a mysterious forest, following a trail of floating sparks towards their nexus, the Allspark. Suddenly, the Allspark vanishes, and Primal is suddenly restrained by vines. As he watches, the placid forest disappears, the trees and grass replaced by buildings and steel. Before him, the face of Megatron laughs triumphantly as the organic vines become technological.
Optimus Primal awakes, shaken. The dream is revealed to be an Oracle-induced vision. Cheetor explains that he was worried about his leader's increasingly erratic behaviour. Primal rebukes him, saying that they should leave him alone... no matter how worried they are. With Primal on another vision quest, Cheetor takes over. Explaining to the Maximals that the Sparks of the Vehicon Generals are subverted Maximal sparks, he tells them that they must extract the sparks and return them to their original Maximal identity.
Cheetor suggests going after Tankor first, as he is slower then the others, in both speed and mentality. Blackarachnia suggests going after Thrust (for obvious reasons). However, she is the minority, so Tankor wins out. Cheetor splits them into two groups: Nightscream and Blackarachnia will distract Thrust and Jetstorm, while he and Rattrap will extract Tankor's spark and place it in a new body.
The three generals are entrenched at a spaceport, supervising work. Tankor is coordinating the loading of a spacecraft, Jetstorm supervises the defense from the sky, and Thrust... is doing something important too. Probably.
Nightscream distracts the two latter generals by destroying a building, leading Jetstorm on a wild goose chase. Nightscream manages to escape and drains the energon from Jetstorm's body, weakening the Vehicon. Blackarachnia tries to talk to Thrust about his past identity, and with some help from her he begins to experience flashbacks of prehistoric Earth. At the docks, Rattrap distracts Tankor by throwing a bomb at him, irritating him enough to give chase. Cheetor transforms to robot mode and leaps from Drone to Drone as Tankor fires at him. Rattrap interfaces with a crane and uses it to send Tankor flying, knocking him out cold. Rattrap then attempts to interface with his mind. After some effort he finally manages to access Tankor's past memories and break his own amnesia.
Rattrap discovers that Megatron broke free of the Autobot shuttle as the Maximals were headed through transwarp space, with Rattrap sardonically bidding farewell to their old nemesis. Eventually, the team reappear over Cybertron... where they're immediately shot down by orbiting satellites.
Rattrap takes a breather from watching these records to wonder why they all seem to be from his point of view. Returning to the memories, Rattrap sees Cheetor (in his Transmetal 2 form) and Primal (in "Optimal" configuration) escaping from tank drones. But the drones fire canisters that explode and release a green gas that envelops the Maximals, turning them back into their original organic bodies. Silverbolt and Rattrap are bombed by Aero Drones and meet a similar fate. Rattrap watches the Transmetals survive the virus, but Silverbolt lies paralyzed on the ground. Rattrap realizes that if he sees himself reverting, then these memories can't be his. Then he sees "his" reflection in an approaching tank drone, and the mirrored face is Rhinox's!
As Thrust and Blackarachnia talk, Jetstorm (now strengthened) arrives, buries Nightscream under fallen rubble, and accuses Thrust of fraternizing with the "enemy". Thrust denies this, and Jetstorm puts pressure on him to remove Blackarachnia's spark. Grudgingly, Thrust shoots her, but is tackled by Nightscream before he gets a chance to extract her spark. Thrust and Nightscream fight, eventually detonating a nearby tank, causing Nightscream to become pinned under some bars. As the Maximal watches helplessly, Jetstorm extracts Blackarachnia's spark.
Featured characters
(Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Maximals | Vehicons |
|---|---|
|
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Quotes
"If I'm ever to get to the heart of our quest, then it is vital that you leave me alone, no matter what you hear."
- —Optimus should at least give them a safe word.
"As of this moment, we are going on the offensive."
"And who are we offending today?"
- —Cheetor and Blackarachnia
"Nice try! Someone need his targeting system recalibrated? Ha ha!"
- —Cheetor, still a kid at heart, even as a leader.
"And it's a hard fly to left field. He's going, going...GONE!"
- —Cheetor, again proving that he's a kid at heart.
"And I thought I got the easy job."
- —Rattrap, riding on Tankor's back.
Notes
Animation and technical errors
- When grappling with Optimus after his dream, Cheetor's feet clip into the floor.
- When Thrust shows up during Nightscream and Blackarachnia's distraction, he's misrepresented by one of his drones. (Note the hands. Thrust's are yellow, drones' are purple.)
Continuity errors
- Cheetor mentions that Megatron "somehow conquered Cybertron" as though it's a mystery. In "Forbidden Fruit", Nightscream outlined very clearly what had happened while the Maximals were away.
- We never discover what the Tank Drones are loading onto the spacecraft or why. Sure seems to be important, though.
- Although the Maximals' Transmetal modes seem to be powerful enough to injure and occasionally kill other sentient Cybertronians, and their alternative forms have been shown to be pretty fast (with Transmetal 2 Cheetor having once been noted as reaching twice the speed of sound), there seems to be no evidence of the Maximals putting up a fight against the Vehicons, nor evidence of them using vehicle or beast modes to escape. Instead, we have the slightly odd sight of Optimal Optimus and Transmetal 2 Cheetor running in robot mode away from the tank drones (pictured right), rather than using their (much faster and flight-capable) alt-modes.
- Not so much an error, but certainly an ambiguity, is that the nature of the green gas and its relationship to the virus are unclear at best. Those who were "devolved" (probably better put as "de-Transmetallized") were also spared the immediate paralytic effect of the virus. But Silverbolt was one of the fully-paralyzed victims, despite the fact that he did have Transmetal qualities (as evidenced by his immunity to the Metal Hunter's weapon). Perhaps, as a Fuzor with no previous body upgrades, he simply wasn't Transmetal enough to resist the virus. Ultimately, there are no clear answers.
- Blackarachnia isn't seen escaping the Vehicons, though she is briefly seen aboard the shuttle. It is likely that she immediately fled underground after the Maximals run away (as indicated by the first episode), but not before being hit by the virus.
Continuity notes
- This episode finally clears up the ambiguous situation presented to us in "The Reformatting", filling in the gap between the end of "Nemesis Part 2" and the start of Beast Machines, while also explaining the fates of Rhinox and Silverbolt.
- Though it is not outright stated, it is obvious that Megatron's breaking free and falling out of transwarp space landed him in Cybertron's not so distant past, explaining why he had the planet completely conquered by the time the Maximals returned to the present.
- Thrust flashes back to prehistoric Earth, the setting of Beast Wars. In a bit of foreshadowing, he notes that in his memories Optimus, Cheetor, et al. don't seem very happy to see him, a situation at odds with Blackarachnia's assertion that Thrust is Silverbolt.
- There's some more foreshadowing about the history of Cybertron thanks to Optimus's vision. Optimus's insular behavior at the start of the episode highlights his increasing zeal toward the Oracle's mission, a drive that will have dire consequences down the line.
- Gadgets and powers:
- Rattrap's face-mask doubles as a television screen.
- He also carries around an explosive device in his beast mode toolkit. This suggests that his technorganic body isn't quite as useless as he thought it was, or that he's been taking steps to improve his combat capability.
- In both beast and robot mode, Rattrap has a tail-mounted interface that allows him to hack into computers.
- Blackarachnia uses slightly different web-bombs than her usual disc-shaped projectiles. These ones are green, with a crystalline thing in the middle.
- Much like Optimus in "Mercenary Pursuits", Blackarachnia displays some kind of telepathic ability as she tries to jog Thrust's memories, accompanied by E.T.-esque glowing fingers.
Real-world references
- While the Maximals ponder which Vehicon to attempt to free first, their images appear on a screen along with Cybertronix text saying "we the unwilling are led by the unknowing to do the impossible for the ungrateful", which is a quote from Mother Teresa.
- Nightscream calls Jetstorm "Rocketman", referencing the Elton John song.
- As the Maximals send Tankor flying, Cheetor shouts that it's a "hard fly to left field".
- When Cheetor tells Rattrap to carry on trying to unlock Tankor's Maximal personality, Rattrap replies "Your wish is my COMMAND.COM."
Trivia
- Blackarachnia's spark is green, as opposed to the usual electric-blue. Later episodes would confirm that all technorganic Transformers have uniquely-colored sparks.
- Technically, this would be the first appearance of Rhinox since his disappearance in Beast Machines, albeit from Tankor's unlocked memories.
- As scripted, Vehicons would have bashed the Maximals until they devolved through each previous body form. It was the animators who instead utilised canisters of gas to devolve the cast, much to the surprise of the showrunners. Marty Isenberg speculated that the episode as written was simply too complicated to animate.[1]
Foreign localization
French
- Title: "Révélations, Partie II" ("Revelations, Part II")
German
- Title: "Die Offenbarung" ("The Revelation")
- Original airdate: December 9, 2000
Italian
- Title: "Rivelazioni (seconda parte) - Le origini" ("Revelations (second part) - The origins")
- Optimus's line: «Until you came barging in» is translated using a singular "you" instead of a plural one... again!
- When Rattrap plugs into Tankor's memory, instead of saying that he "got back his old memories" he says that he "maintained his old memories", which is not exactly what happened... later, the line: «I unclogged my own memories» is translated as: «I blocked my memories»... making even less sense...
- "Rocketman" is literally translated in Italian, losing the possible reference to the song.
Japanese
- Title: "Tomo no Kioku" (友の記憶, "The Memory of a Friend")
- Original airdate: November 28, 2004
Mandarin
- Title: "Tūxí " (突袭, "The Assault")
Polish
- Title: "Rewelacje, Część Druga: Zejscie" ("Revelations, Part Two: Descent")
Brazilian Portuguese
- Title: "Revelações Parte 2: Origens" ("Revelations Part 2: Origins")
Spanish
- Title: "Revelaciones, Segunda Parte: Ascendencia" ("Revelations, Second Part: Descent")
Home video releases
- DVD
2004 — Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Returns — Volume 2 (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 Two (Sony)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Season One: Volume Two — Revelations (Sony)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Complete Season One (Sony)
2009 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Intégrale Saison 1 (Sony) — French audio only.
References
- ↑ Marty Isenberg at TFNation 2019
