Go with the Flow

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You just know this won't end well.
"Go with the Flow"
Season	3
No. in season	8
Production company	Mainframe Entertainment
Airdate	February 18, 1999
Written by	Bob Forward
Directed by	Cal Shumiatcher
Animation studio	Mainframe Entertainment
Continuity	Beast Wars continuity
Watch this episode on YouTube

The Predacons build a cannon that could destroy the Maximals, but require an organic life-form to finish the construction.

Synopsis

Phineas J. Whoopee, you're a genius!

Quietly, Cheetor sneaks through the forest. He whispers his activation code to switch into his robot mode, and is ambushed by Chak, the anthropoid. Cheetor laughs at his company, and the two are joined by Una, putting Cheetor in a hammer-lock. Rattrap arrives and makes fun of Cheetor's attempts to teach the primitives self-defense. Cheetor moves on to trying to instruct the kids in basic engineering principles, language, and comedy through self-abuse. On a mountaintop, Megatron's army works to assemble a new, powerful weapon capable of destroying the Maximals, but because the "bi-polar energon source" to the device is installed before the shielding, the Predacons can't get near the machine they have erected. In order to complete the weapon, Tarantulas suggests recruiting the two educated anthropoids on whom he happens to have been spying.

This is one of two operations Una had to do.

Waspinator and Inferno attack the two Maximals. Waspinator captures Una and brings her back to Megatron. Depth Charge arrives to aid his two allies against Inferno, but with one of the humans captured already, Inferno retreats. The danger gone, Cheetor radios back to the Maximal base to report on the attack. Optimus calls Cheetor home and sends Depth Charge and Rattrap on a mission to retrieve the abducted child.

En route to the Predacon development, Una recalls Cheetor's self-defense lesson, and with her primitive spear, she removes several of Waspinator's wasp mode limbs. Megatron is entirely unconcerned with the well-being of his underling, but hopes the girl is still in functional condition when she arrives. Once she is dropped off—just in time before Waspinator summarily falls apart—Megatron orders the disruptor cannon fired on just low enough a setting to knock Rattrap and Depth Charge out of the sky. But even at a low setting, the unfinished weapon causes harm to the Predacons, forcing Megatron to order it shut down.

Depth Charge and Rattrap crash-land in a forest, lucky to be alive, but Depth Charge is no longer flight-capable. Rattrap leaves the manta and races off on his own to finish rescuing the damsel. Megatron begins his plot and instructs Una on how to install the shielding that the energy weapon needs in order to function. Una experiments in using the shielding plates as both fashion accessories and cuisine, but doesn't entirely comprehend the meaning of each of his precise instructions. After a fancy screen transition to show the passing of time, Una has completed the shielding installation in an adorably haphazard manner. As a final step, she installs the stabilizer crystal.

This is the second one.

Rattrap arrives to save the girl and stop Megatron, but Dinobot prepares to devour the intruder. Tarantulas approaches Una to kill her, too. She squashes the spider by knocking over a huge piece of machinery, but then falls off her platform. Rattrap drives through Dinobot's legs and transforms in time to catch the girl. Together, the two drive out of the Predacons' territory.

At the site where Depth Charge crashed, Una helps Rattrap unearth Depth Charge by recommending that he use a lever. With teamwork, they slide Depth Charge into a lake and then use the giant Maximal as a raft to ride away from the attacking Predacons. They escape from their pursuers by falling down a waterfall, tossing mud in Waspinator's face so he flies blindly into Inferno. The combined airborne mess of Predacons then lands on the Dinobot clone.

I can't believe we've gone this far without making a "monkey throws poop" joke!

Megatron prepares to fire the disruptor cannon and destroy his enemies. As the massive gun charges, the Maximals prepare for the worst. But the machine malfunctions, and instead of destroying the Maximals, it explodes in place—because Una stole the stabilizer crystal. With the Predacons slagged, Una and the two Maximals float into the sunset.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Sit down and keep quiet."
"Yeah, yeah, story of my life."

—Cheetor and Rattrap

"Peh, educational stuff. I'd rather watch things explode."

—Rattrap speaks for the intended audience.

"Waspinator sees helpless target! Oh, happy day!"

—Waspinator is overjoyed.

"Waspinator to Megatron! Waspinator has female fleshy-bot... but there is problem!"
"She'd better not be injured."
"No! She injuring Waspinator!"
"Ah, situation normal, then. Yes. Well, make sure she arrives safely. Megatron out."
"Oh, Waspinator want to renegotiate contract..."

—Waspinator to Megatron, and Megatron has picked up the running gag.

[chuckles] "I ain't dead."
"This day's just full of disappointments."

—Rattrap and Depth Charge after the crash.

"What are you lookin' at?"

—Depth Charge to a butterfly that lands on him.

"Triumph is before me!"
"And da rat is behind ya!"

—Megatron and Rattrap

Notes

Script timeline

• First draft: 25th August 1998
• Second draft: 4th September 1998
• Final: 16th September 1998
• As Air: 16th December 1998

Animation and technical errors

• Shortly after the Predacons are first shocked by the bipolar energon source, Megatron moves his chair to a screen. When the camera is behind him, he is missing his neck, and his left shoulder piece is severely shrunk.
• As Cheetor shoots at the Predacons, a copy of his gun can be seen on his back.
• When Waspinator first finds Una hiding behind a branch, the gold on his shoulders are first shown as octagons and the rest of his body is also of a low resolution. Immediately after, the camera zooms to his face, where his shoulders are clearly circular. This happens often in the series.
• Depth Charge's wings go from damaged to normal as he falls through the sky.
• When Rattrap says, "...and die horrible, agonizing deaths!" before they crash into the forest, Depth Charge is also mouthing the words.
• More odd than anything, but as Rattrap happily notes that he's not dead, his right "heel spur" slowly starts rotating upwards.
• As Tarantulas approaches Una, there's a barely noticeable animation oddity going on between the connection points of the last two legs on the right-side of his back kibble.
• After Inferno tumbles over Waspinator, the latter's abdomen clips into the floor.
• When Depthcharge instructs Rattrap to push him into the river, the inner yellow part of his face starts clipping through the outer blue "cheeks".
• As they tumble down the waterfall, Depthcharge's animation model turns blocky.
• When Depth Charge hits the rocks at the base of the waterfall (immediately before Dinobot II says "Target immobilized!"), his right flipper very briefly clips through another nearby rock.
• When Megatron alerts Dinobot II, Waspinator, and Inferno to clear the area, Dinobot II tries to get up, but his left shoulder does not move with him. It may have dislodged itself as a result from colliding into Waspinator and Inferno, but its hard to believe that those two have all their pieces intact, and a powerful Transmetal II loses his.
• There is also tons of clipping as the three Predacons disentangle themselves, like Dinobot's left arm passing through Waspinator's leg, the latter's knee clipping through Dinobot's waist and left leg, or the feet of Inferno and Waspinator phasing through each other. Further, the insect-leg kibble on Inferno's left leg is at first bent and pointing outwards, then disappears only to appear again in its normal position.
• As Optimus says "Battle-stations!", there's a piece of grey CGI floating beside his mouth.
• When the gang comes ashore, Depthcharge's manta ray head is clipping through the ground.
• While Rhinox is looking through the periscope at the mountain, the image is displayed on almost all of the screens at the Maximals' base.

Continuity errors

• Why didn't Inferno just wait until Waspinator had finished installing the shielding plate before plugging in the main power source?
• Dinobot slices Rattrap's tail, but later it seems to be full-length as Rattrap uses it to paddle Depth Charge.
• When Cheetor's spark is shown in this episode it is the same blue as any normal spark when it was clearly shown to be green when he first became a Transmetal 2. Whether this is an error during this episode or the green spark was a result of his feral nature in that episode was never revealed.
• When Cheetor's spark chamber opens, it is the entire panel of his thigh that pops up. Previously it was shown to be a small hatch that opens and slides into his leg.

Continuity notes

• Chak and Una first appeared in "Cutting Edge"; this is the first episode where they receive names. They seem to recognize Cheetor, even though he was last seen hanging out with them prior to his Transmetal 2 mutation in "Feral Scream Part 2".
• Rattrap's interaction with Depth Charge is reminiscent of his old rivalry with the deceased Dinobot. In this case, Rattrap's role as passenger rather than vehicle has been reversed.
• Megatron appears to be aware of Tarantulas' eating habits, since he leaves Una to him as opposed to the favored Inferno or Dinobot.

Transformers references

• Megatron mentions Teletraan I as a component of the Ark's security system.

Real-world references

• Chak waves a club around while yelling "BAMM! BAMM!"
• Rattrap mockingly calls Depth Charge "Charlie Tuna".
• Beast Wars story editors Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio worked various references to the online Transformers fandom into the series. Dinobot detecting his quarry in Grid Joona is a reference to Finnish fan Joona I. Palaste.

Trivia

• Both times the Predacons are shocked by the Disruptor Ray, Tarantulas somehow manages NOT to be affected, even though Megatron clearly states that it affects all Cybertronians.
• Cybertronix:
  • On Cheetor's blackboard: Seemingly random letters and numbers
  • On Megatron's first piece of graphics showing the firing of the cannon: "SCREAMIN ROCKS", "A BIG GUN IN A MOUNTAIN", "FIRE".
  • And again, shortly before the fatal firing: "DEREK", "NIKKI DAWN", "HOT STUFF".
• Shortly after Depth Charge crashes, a puff of smoke appears to emit from Rattrap's, er, tailpipe.
• In a moment of apparent premonition, Cheetor's spark chamber pops open just before the alarms start sounding.
• This episode was used in place of the planned episode "Dark Glass".
• When Rattrap rescues Una from falling, Silverbolt's 'rescue' theme plays.
• Richard Newman is not credited for playing Rhinox in this episode. Presumably because his one line of a calm and earnest "Oh no." is something Rhinox has said before and is quite probably just lifted from that earlier episode.
• The moral of the episode is, effectively, "It's good to steal."
• Did anyone notice that they pried Depth Charge loose by moving the lever towards his crotch?
• This is the only episode where Depth Charge says 'beast mode' or appears without Rampage.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "La Tendance" (Canada, "The Trend")

Italian

• Title: "Il raggio distruttore" ("The Destroyer Beam")

• Rattrap's line: «Ah, educational stuff... me, I’d rather watch things explode!» is changed to: «Yes, yes, excellent educational example. This would never have happened to me, word of mouse!», and later, the line: «Yeah, like a floating flounder's any better!» becomes: «What? I'm the greatest sailor mouse in history!» so, again, Rattrap calls himself a mouse instead of a rat.

Japanese

• Title: "Biribirī! Shibire Babire Bū" (びりびりー! しびればびれぶー, "Zzzap! Tingly Tongly Too!")
• Original airdate: February 16 2000

• The title is a pun on shibireru, which means "to be numb/make tingly as from an electric shock", combining it with the nonsense spell "Bibbity bobbity boo" from Disney's Cinderella. The dub had actually done this gag already, twice in the episode "Tangled Web". Why they thought it was so freakin' funny it needed to be done again, as an episode title, is anybody's guess.

Portuguese

• Title: "Seguindo a Correnteza" ("Following the Flow")

Spanish

• Title: "Sigue la Corriente" (America, "Go with the Flow")

Mandarin

• Title: "Chū Qí Zhì Shèng" (出奇制胜, "Win by Surprise Move")

Home video releases

VHS

2000 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers: Metals — Love Typhoon (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 3 (Universal)

DVD

2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers: Metals — DVD Box 2 (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
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)