Terminal Velocity

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"Terminal Velocity"
Season	1
No. in season	8
Production company	Allspark Animation
Airdate	September 30, 2018 (Xfinity X1) October 19, 2018 (CN app/website) October 20, 2018 (USA)
Writer	Gavin Hignight
Director	Jean Texier
Animation studio	Boulder Media Studio
Watch this episode on YouTube

Bumblebee explores a nightmarish memory of his visit to Velocitron while Windblade pilots the shuttle in a relentless dogfight with the Decepticon Seekers.

Synopsis

A travel agency's commercial tells everyone about the wonders of Velocitron while cars race around a challenging racetrack. Suddenly, rust consumes the screen.

In the present day, Windblade reports to Bumblebee that she couldn't find any trace of a Decepticon signal she had been tracking. Back at the ship, Bumblebee, bored with watching Earth TV, spots the cortical psychic patch equipment and decides to go for a dip in his own memory to see if he can find out if he can find any more useful info.

Bumblebee meets up with Hot Rod and Blurr on Velocitron via space bridge. After an exchange of friendly quips between the two racers, they decide to find a proper track to race on, as Bumblebee sees a news report about the Plague of Rust that is affecting remote areas of the Cybertronian territories. Turning back to rejoin his friends, he almost bumps into a stumbling bot with rust on their arm. Connecting this to the news report, he tries to bring it to the others' attention, but they're already speeding away; transforming, he hurries after the two racers.

"It's a bird, it's a plane, it's-"

Upon Windblade's return to the ship, she discovers that the Seekers have managed to locate it, with Acid Storm and Thrust attempting to infiltrate the vessel. She knocks them down with her Sonic Blast, hurrying inside the ship where she sees Bumblebee undergoing his memory dive. Observing that she hopes the memories he's recovering are important, she takes off as the Seekers, recovering, pursue. A little later, Windblade tries to outrun the Seekers, trying desperate maneuvers, lifting Bumblebee out of his seat. Behind them, Slipstream catches up the flying duo, demanding to shoot them down.

Bumblebee catches up to Blurr and Hot Rod, who are preparing to start a race. Hot Rod asks what Bumblebee had been trying to tell them, but caught up in excitement at the awesome-looking racecourse, Bee can't remember and shrugs it off. The three are quickly off, but soon discover that part of the track is closed for repairs - a fact Blurr had known and failed to mention, to Hot Rod's anger. The brewing argument is interrupted by the approach of a damaged track maintenance drone that crashes into the track just ahead of them. Deciding to take a closer look, they see that it is covered in rust, that spreads to the track and begins spreading rapidly. Desperately racing away from it and past some bots that have already fallen victim, a second drone seems to home on them, crashing just behind their fleeing wheels...

Faced with the three Seekers making escape impossible, Windblade manages to get the scout ship's weapons system online, firing missiles that successfully knock Thrust and Acid Storm out of the sky. Slipstream, however, manages to evade, and transforms to land on the ship's hull, attempting to smash through the cockpit transparency to get at her hated rival. Windblade manages to knock her off using a sharp maneuver, but Slipstream transforms and resumes pursuit.

"Mr. Bee, I don't feel so good.."

Blurr takes the two visiting bots to a hideout he's constructed. Bumblebee and Hot Rod demand that they get as far away from Velocitron as they can, but Blurr, saying that they'll be safe in the bunker-like hideout, refuses to abandon his homeworld. Sadly, his hopefulness is shortlived, as the three discover a victim of the plague has managed to break into the hideout, shouting about "red rust" as he lurches towards Blurr; Bumblebee knocks him down with a container before he collapses and dissolves against the wall, the trio looking on in horror as the rust rapidly starts consuming Blurr's hideout.

Realizing that staying on Velocitron is a death sentence, Blurr agrees that they have to get to the space bridge, but isn't quite fast enough to escape a patch of rust getting on his rear tires as they flee. Arriving at the bridge, they find the area devastated and desolate, the city and its inhabitants all but completely consumed. Bumblebee activates the space bridge, but he and Hot Rod realize that someone has to stay behind to shut it down so the plague can't spread through it. Blurr, revealing his infection, decides to stay behind, deactivating the bridge and disintegrating into rust as the two other Autobots make good their escape.

Back in the present, Slipstream remains in pursuit of the scout ship. Getting a bright idea, Windblade decides to head into space, which knocks out Slipstream's thrusters, leaving her to stall and start tumbling back to Earth. Bumblebee then wakes up, with each of them glad that their recent experience is over.

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

Blurr: "Nice paint job! Do those flames make you go any faster?"
Hot Rod: "...yeah, they do. Can't wait to get on the track and show you my taillights."
Blurr: "What are 'tail-lights'? I've never seen those on a racetrack!"
Bumblebee: "I knew you two would hit it off."

"I could do this course with my optics turned off."
"Whatever you say, Hot Shot."
"That's Hot Rod."
"Hot Rod, Hot Dog, nobody ever remembers who comes in second place anyway."

—Hot Rod and Blurr, oil and water.

"Windblade. Flying our missing shuttle. Shoot them out of the sky!"

—Slipstream has a nemesis...

Notes

Continuity notes

• Bumblebee has kept the Cube he and Windblade found in the scoutship's stores in "Cube".
• Bumblebee and Hot Rod are shown wearing Autobot insignias during their trip to Velocitron, and many of the Velocitronian civilians (including Blurr) appear to be as well. This suggests that this adventure took place early into the war, following the events depicted in the first half of "Megatron Is My Hero"; when combined with the news report mentioning "multiple planets" have been consumed by the Plague of Rust, it raises questions as to whether Velocitron's fate was entirely an accident...

Transformers references

• The colony world of Velocitron makes its return to television for the first time in more than a decade; first appearing in the Transformers: Cybertron cartoon, it put in minor apperances in both the "Aligned" and the IDW continuities since then. Blurr makes his first (and only?) appearance as a Velocitronian, per his "Aligned" counterpart.
• Bumblebee and Hot Rod are shown arriving and later leaving Velocitron via space bridge, a technology first established in the original animated series and later canonized in the Unicron Trilogy as the primary means of travel between Cybertron and her colonies. The flashbacks in Cyberverse mark one of the first occasions where these space bridges are shown to be still functional in the modern day, connecting Velocitron and other colonies to Cybertron. Alas, thanks to the war, that functionality wouldn't last.
• The Plague of Rust, aka the Rust Plague, is a re-imagining of the traditional Transformer ailment of Cosmic Rust; it was first established in The Covenant of Primus as an apocalyptic plague responsible for cutting Cybertron's many colonies off from their ancestral homeworld. Several aspects of this backstory find their way into the episode, including the decision to shut down the space bridge so as to prevent the spread of the disease to Cybertron.
• The plague victim's cry of "red rust" is also the name of another nasty rusting disease.

Real-world references

• With its wings retracted, the Decepticon scout ship bears a distinct resemblance to the Millennium Falcon, and some of the maneuvers Windblade pulls with it evoke the Falcon's nimbleness as well.
• The Plague of Rust victim in Blurr's hideout repeatedly cries "red rust", homaging the mantra "redrum" chanted by the character Danny Torrance in horror novel The Shining and its movie adaptation.

Trivia

Life? Don't talk to me about life!

• The Plague of Rust carrier uses a recolored version of Wheeljack's animation model.
• Blurr's character bio on the Cyberverse site notes that he speaks remarkably fast, not unlike his G1 and Animated counterparts. However, he speaks normally here.
• Blurr misremembers Hot Rod's name as "Hot Shot"; while it was not intended as a deliberate reference, this was an alternate name for briefly used by "Aligned" Rodimus for trademark reasons.
• According to Randolph Heard, Blurr's fate was originally written as more ambiguous: he would have been last seen at the space bridge's controls, but the portal would have closed between them before Bee and the audience could see what ultimately happened to him. The decision to show his demise on screen was made during a later phase of production.^[1]

Animation and technical errors

• The deployment and retraction of the scout ship's wings is rather inconsistent between cuts.
• When Windblade activates the ship's weapons, we see it firing a pair of energy cannons, but then cut to a pair of missiles pursuing and striking Acid Storm and Thrust.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "Retour à Vélocitron" ("Back to Velocitron")
• Original airdate: October 28, 2018

German

• Title: "Das Rennen" ("The Race")
• Original airdate: November 25, 2018

Hungarian

• Title: "Halálos iramban" ("With Deadly Velocity")
• Original airdate: November 18, 2018

Italian

• Title: "Velocità Estrema" ("Extreme Speed")
• Original airdate: November 10, 2018

Japanese

• Title: "Wakusei Speedia" (惑星スピーディア, "Planet Speedia")
• Original airdate: May 24, 2019

Portuguese

• Title: "Velocidade Terminal" ("Terminal Velocity")
• Original airdate: November 27, 2018

Home video releases

DVD

2019 — Transformers Cyberverse — Intégrale Saison 1 (ESC Éditions) — French audio only
2019 — Transformers Cyberverse — Terminal Velocity (Beyond Home Entertainment)

References