Feral Scream Part 1
From Transformers Wiki
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 "You! You're not Dinobot! You're one of those Transmetals... 2!" | |||||||||
| "Feral Scream Part 1" | |||||||||
| Season | 3 | ||||||||
| No. in season | 5 | ||||||||
| Production company | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Airdate | January 31, 1999 | ||||||||
| Written by | Greg Johnson | ||||||||
| Directed by | John Pozer | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars continuity | ||||||||
 Watch this episode on YouTube
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Megatron uses alien technology to create a new breed of warrior, and Cheetor is caught in the blast as the device malfunctions.
Contents |
Synopsis
It is a dark and stormy night as Optimus Primal and Cheetor battle Megatron and Waspinator for a stasis pod. Cheetor pulls out a massive rifle, but instead of hitting Waspinator, his shot explodes closer to Optimus, collapsing the ledge he's standing on and burying him in an avalanche. The two Predacons retreat with their prized pod, and Cheetor is left to see to the fallen Maximal leader. Depth Charge arrives and helps uncover Optimus by blasting some rubble away with a "power pizza". After it's clear Primal is still alive, Depth Charge flies off to hunt Rampage. Damaged, Primal drives back to the base, while Cheetor in instructed to wait for back up, and assist Depth Charge.
"Abby... someone"
In a dramatic ceremony, Megatron loads the stasis pod into a machine. With cells from Dinobot for an identity, half the spark of Rampage for life force, a blank protoform for a body, and the Transmetal driver to tie it all together, Dinobot II is born. Depth Charge crashes the birthday party, but the new Dinobot displays an intense ferocity against the manta. Cheetor arrives and "spices things up" by shooting stuff.
Dinobot transforms and inspects his new body, accidentally blowing off his own finger in the process. Cheetor grabs a Predacon hover-thing and uses it to snatch the Transmetal driver from Megatron's apparatus. Cheetor tosses the driver to Depth Charge. Megatron blasts Cheetor into the machine's electrical current, frying the cat bot. Cheetor spends a minute being tortured by the machine, and the assembled Transformers cover themselves as a large flash of white light explodes across the mountainside. Apparently, Cheetor is dead.
Back in the Maximals' base, Primal is repairing himself. Depth Charge arrives and reports Cheetor's death. Depth Charge heads into a cave to scan the driver, and finds that it's a device of alien nature that has been altered by Megatron. He decides to destroy the device by tossing it into some lava, but once Depth Charge's back is turned, Blackarachnia catches the device before it is immolated.
Outside, Primal blames himself for Cheetor's death—but as it turns out, Cheetor is still alive, though in bad shape.
In the Predacon base, Rampage expresses displeasure over having his spark's core given to the Dinobot clone. The king crab tries to reclaim the fragment of himself, but Dinobot has inherited Megatron's ability to crush the fragment of Rampage's spark, causing Rampage great pain. Dinobot is sent to recover the Transmetal driver. Rubber Ducky watches contently from the tub.
Depth Charge emerges from a CR chamber, and sets out to Subgrid Zarak to hunt Rampage. When there, he's ambushed and captured by Dinobot. Dinobot and the Predacons interrogate Depth Charge, but a feral monster jumps out of the darkness and strikes down Megatron. Quickstrike follows the blur of a beast behind a rock, but is quickly dismembered. When the strange feline monster jumps out again, Rampage and his "brother" try to shoot it, but only end up blasting each other away.
Megatron is left on his own, and overprotective of himself, he blasts away the wandering Waspinator. The beast hits Megatron in the back, and Megatron stumbles and plants his own tail-claw-weapon thing into the ground, causing himself to spin out of control and over a cliff. Depth Charge is left alone to wonder who or what saved him, but his mysterious hero sneaks away when Primal returns.
Back at the Maximal base, Cheetor stumbles onto the scene and passes out. Primal and Rhinox rush to help him.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Maximals | Predacons |
|---|---|
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Quotes
"From the tempest's fury, the spark ignites…to sire new life! Transmetal 2 life! Ahaha-haha!"
- —Megatron channels his inner mad scientist
"Waspinator not like new lizard bot!"
"I agree with the bug. But then, I'm not crazy about any of you."
- —Waspinator and Depth Charge
"Communications are still shot, and your systems aren't much better. You're in no condition to pick a fight."
"Fight's been picked."
- —Rhinox and Optimus Primal
"Where's Cheetor?"
[tosses him a piece of Cheetor's chestplate] "Cat was tough. He went out fighting."
- —Optimus Primal and Depth Charge
"Cheetor. This is my fault, Rhinox. I was rough on him, so he… so he tried to prove something."
- —Optimus Primal mourns Cheetor's supposed death
"You gave this the core of my spark? I shall rip it from his chest and restore it within me!"
- —Rampage is not impressed with Megatron's latest experiment.
"The other equipment has been salvaged, but you took the alien Transmetal unit. Where is it?"
"Gone. Ain't that a kick in the lugnuts?" [chuckles]
- —Megatron and a defiant Depth Charge
"No! He's mine! I shall feast upon his still pulsating spark!"
- —Rampage, still creepy.
Notes
Script timeline
- First draft: 19th May 1998
- Second draft: 5th June 1998
- Finalised: 14th June 1998
- As Air: 12th November 1998
Animation and technical errors
- During the top shot of the Predacon base, the ship is clearly mirrored. The (looking from top) left wing is whole and right wing is broken, when in reality the wings are reversed. It is shown correctly in part 2, however.
- Throughout the entire first act, Megatron's shoulder armor is strangely reduced in size. They're back to normal by the second half however.
- When Cheetor dismisses Optimus Primal's orders, his beast mode front legs are locked in a slanted position instead of their normal upright position. The right leg is also clipping through his backpack.
- Dinobot II shoots his finger off, but it's back by the time we see his hand again.
- When Cheetor is being electrocuted in Megatron's device, his screams are clearly a limited number of recordings, each prematurely cut short before a new one starts, with the same recordings repeating until the scene ends.
- When Optimus Primal and Rhinox are running towards Cheetor in the episode's final scene, their models are horizontally sliding along the ground.
Continuity errors
- Not an error, per se, but compared to most of the other alien artifacts in the show the Transmetal Driver is a complete mystery. No specifics are given about its origin, what its real purpose is, how Megatron found it, only that it creates Transmetal 2 Transformers.
- Optimus berates Cheetor for putting the blank protoform at risk, when in "Double Jeopardy" Optimus aimed at Waspinator when the latter was carrying a protoform...with a spark!
- How does the Maximal scanner know the Transmetal Driver was altered by Megatron specifically?
Continuity notes
- The large rifle that Cheetor accidentally shoots Optimus with is the same one used by the original Dinobot during the big battle with the Predacons in "Coming of the Fuzors (Part 1)" and "Coming of the Fuzors (Part 2)".
- The mountaintop at which Megatron and Waspinator create Dinobot II is the same one where the original Dinobot first hid the Golden Disk in "Coming of the Fuzors (Part 1)" and then gave it back to Megatron in "Maximal, No More".
- Dinobot II is a mish-mash of different ingredients, some of which made appearances earlier in the cartoon. Most notably, he incorporates half of Rampage's mutant spark, which Megatron extracted back in "Bad Spark" (and needed since the protoform inside the pod is stated to be a blank). The cells are probably from the same sample that factored into the creation of Clone One in "Double Dinobot", and the stasis pod is one of the many that fell out of orbit all the way back in "Other Voices, Part 2".
- Dinobot II is Megatron's third attempt to clone his treacherous second-in-command, following on from Clone One and the Cyber raptors from "Cutting Edge". This one manages to last more than one episode.
- The previous episode established that Megatron has been working on Transmetal 2 technology for a while, with the cyber-raptors serving as prototypes for Dinobot II.
- Blackarachnia saves the Transmetal Driver from the lava, continuing her secret quest to upgrade her body into a Transmetal, which started last episode.
- Gadgets and powers:
- Depth Charge has his scanners attuned to Rampage's spark, and can display a sonar grid on his eyes.
- Dinobot houses his spark in a chamber from which he can torture Rampage like Megatron used to. It's not clear if he's immune to the pain that he's causing or if he's just some kind of sadomasochist.
- Dinobot's laser-eye can also function as a searchlight.
- Rampage likewise possesses a flashlight on the barrel of his gun.
- Optimus Primal searches for Cheetor with a pair of binoculars scaled to his massive hands.
Transformers references
Real-world references
- Megatron's creation of the Dinobot clone is clearly based on the creation of the monster from Frankenstein, complete with Waspinator as Igor. (As Double Dinobot showed, Megatron is seemingly incapable of cloning Dinobot on sunny days with lots of butterflies.)
- After grabbing the Transmetal driver, Cheetor yells for Depth Charge to "go deep", a reference to American football.
- Quickstrike's scuffle with the mysterious monster is reminiscent of classic cartoon fights, with the cowboy-bot occasionally flying into the air and Megatron wincing at the (offscreen) carnage.
- After getting swatted by the cyber-beast, Megatron spins around and around, similar to the Tasmanian Devil of Looney Tunes. His plunge off a cliff shortly afterwards is lifted straight out of every Wile E. Coyote cartoon ever.
- As Megatron orders a retreat after falling off the cliff, Taps can be heard.
- Beast Wars story editors Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio worked various references to the online Transformers fandom into the series. Optimus mentions grids Darcerin and sector Tallories, screen names of then-contemporary fans.
- Much in the same way that "Bad Spark" homaged various slasher movies, this episode toys with some of the clichés surrounding werewolves. The shadowy shots of the monster lurking around corners and slinking off in silhouette are lifted out of movies such as An American Werewolf in London and The Howling, and the beast's snarling in the night is a cat-themed variation of the traditional lycanthropic "howling at the moon".
Trivia
- This episode (alongside part 2) has one of the precious few scenes with Primal in his Optimal body's beast mode.
- Where the hell did Cheetor pull that gun from? It's almost as big as he is!
- Depth Charge apparently knew who the original Dinobot was at some point because he acknowledges that Dinobot II is some kind of clone. Or he listened to Megatron's monologue. Or someone told him about Dinobot. Who knows?
- This is the second and last episode of the series to feature Optimal Optimus's armored transport mode. (It is seen briefly, as Cheetor is left alone and says to himself that he doesn't need any back-up.)
- Cybertronix
- The Transmetal driver has Predacon-flavor Cybertronix embossed on the ridges. What this indicates about its origin is unclear.
- Shortly before Depth Charge emerges from the CR chamber, we get a closeup of a readout flashing "FF*CK" in green (the F characters are stacked vertically), followed by "YOU" in red. This text is upside down, probably intentionally to lessen the chances it would be noticed before the episode aired.
- Even levers do not like Waspinator.
Foreign localization
French
- Title: "Hurlement 1" (Canada, "Scream 1")
Italian
- Title: "Mille emozioni - Parte 1" ("Many Emotions - Part 1")
- The term "transmetal II" is not used in Italian.
- Dinobot II is never called simply "Dinobot", but always by the full Italian name "Two-Dinobot".
- Megatron's "Yesss!" is literally translated as "Sììì!" instead of the usual "Sicuro!" ("Sure!").
- Megatron says that Dinobot II is Rampage's "siamese brother" instead of his half-brother (possibly referencing the fact that they somehow share a part of their body, the spark in this case).
- After Megatron orders Dinobot to get the transmetal driver, while in English Rampage simply growls in pain, in Italian he says: «I hope for you that he manages to succed in this mission».
- In the line "Subgrid Zarak, tracking", "tracking" is weirdly left in English, making it look like the subgrid's name is "Zarak Tracking".
Japanese
- Title: "Fukkatsu Dā" (ふっかつダー, "I Am Resurrected, Dā")
- Original airdate: January 26 2000
- The protracted emphatic "da" is the verbal tic given to Dinobot in the Japanese dub of Beast Wars, signifying he's the one speaking the title.
Portuguese
- Title: "Grito Animal Parte 1" ("Animal Scream Part 1")
Spanish
- Title: "La Llamada de la Naturaleza (Parte 1)" ("The Call of Nature (Part 1)")
- Title: "El Llamado de la Naturaleza Primera Parte" (America, "The Call of Nature First Part")
Mandarin
- Title: "Huángbào zhī Mí " (黄豹之谜, "The Mystery of Cheetor")
Home video releases
- VHS
2000 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers: Metals — Yeah, I'm Back! (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 2 (Universal)
- DVD
2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers: Metals — DVD Box 2 (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
2005 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Vol. 2 (Universal)
2004 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Third Season (Rhinomation)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Seasons 2 & 3 (Shout! Factory)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2006 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 3 (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers: Beast Wars — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
