Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2
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 Dessert of the Dinobots, tonight on Food Network. | |||||||||||||
| "Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2" | |||||||||||||
| Production code | #700-37 | ||||||||||||
| Season | 2 | ||||||||||||
| No. in season | 22 | ||||||||||||
| Production company | Sunbow Productions | ||||||||||||
| Airdate | October 22, 1985 | ||||||||||||
| Written by | Earl Kress | ||||||||||||
| Animation studio | Toei | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Generation 1 cartoon continuity | ||||||||||||
 Watch this episode on YouTube
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With the Dinobots having deserted the dying Autobots, Spike and Carly must find them and save the Autobots.
Contents |
Synopsis
The space bridge doors open, and Spike and Carly find themselves facing the business end of Shockwave's gun arm! He fires a ray that vaporizes Carly's car right out from under them. Fleeing through Decepticon Headquarters, the two humans manage to take refuge inside a small hole in a computer, a space where Shockwave won't fire after them for fear of damaging the equipment. Carly attempts to work the machine, but is hit by a surge of electricity and falls into a nearby pit, damaging the computer, but also twisting her ankle in the process. Megatron contacts Shockwave and orders him to send Cybertonium before the Decepticons die, but Carly's tinkering has left the Space Bridge non-functional.
Using Wheeljack's thumb radio, Spike makes contact with Sparkplug, who is pretty much the only person standing at Autobot Headquarters, as the Autobots are all shut down. Sparkplug uses Teletraan I to guide them out of the computer and toward Wheeljack's old lab. Carly gets them through the door, but before they can start looking for Wheeljack's stash of Cybertonium, someone or something starts pounding on the roof. Spike finds a rifle and blasts the intruder, who is revealed to be... Swoop!
The errant Dinobot explains that the Dinobots were captured by the Decepticons after a fight in Decepticon Headquarters, and taken to the Cybertonium Pit. The three are guided by Sparkplug to the Mass Transit System. Unfortunately, the tube carrying their car is damaged, and they can no longer communicate with Sparkplug. Deep underground, the three are nearly killed when they activate old defense systems. Swoop saves the day, but his wings are damaged.
Reaching the surface, they find an abandoned city, which has clearly seen better days. Carly discovers a records room, with a datatrack which explains the history of the terrible war between the Autobots and Decepticons. Swoop says that he never knew the war had gone on for so long, but they are soon captured by a Sentinel.
Taken to the Cybertonium Pit, they discover that Shockwave altered the Dinobots' memory circuits, making them think they're loyal to the Decepticons. Carly is able to repair their memory circuits, and the Dinobots thank Carly and Spike for rescuing them (except Slag, of course). Now that the Dinobots are themselves, Spike comes up with an escape plan. He and Grimlock start arguing, so the Sentinel decides to remove the humans. When the force field surrounding them comes down, the Dinobots destroy the drones. The Dinobots take the kids to an access tube, and Grimlock carries them up.
Meanwhile, Sparkplug sends a message to Cybertron, saying that he has managed to direct the space bridge to land outside the Autobot base. Shockwave contacts Megatron, saying that he has sufficient Cybertonium, and the Space Bridge is repaired, but that he has lost control of the destination site. Having overheard this, the Dinobots overwhelm Shockwave, and although Shockwave is able to hit Swoop, the Dinobots and humans manage to escape back to Earth with a shipment of Cybertonium.
At the Autobot base, Optimus Prime awards Spike and Carly with medals, making them "Honorary Autobots". Grimlock decides to follow the Autobot leader's orders, and the Dinobots rejoin the Autobots... until Grimlock no longer feels like following Prime's orders.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"That was my car, not an Autobot. Decepticreep!"
"I don't think he cares, Carly."
- —Carly and Spike after Shockwave destroys Carly's car
"The more I see of this planet, the more I like it."
"The more I see of it, the more tired I get."
- —Carly as she marvels at Cybertron while Spike despairs over the huge stairs
Spike/Carly: WHOA!
Swoop: Why you make that noise?
Spike: Because we just left our stomachs back up there. Hoh-oh!
Swoop: Me glad me not have stomach to leave.
- —Spike and Carly get a tiny bit of motion sickness sympathy from Swoop.
"Metal of good old days not so good!"
- —Swoop doesn't think much of the traps in the tunnels. He's going to think even less of the guys who built them.
"Almost forgot — me Swoop can transform!"
- —In standard Dinobot fashion, Swoop hits on a solution for getting around with a damaged Pterodactyl wing.
"Millions of years ago, Cybertron was a planet of peace...until the Decepticons, lusting for power, began a terrible war. Not designed for combat, the Autobots were overwhelmed and subjugated by their evil opponents. While many Autobots fled Cybertron, a few valiant survivors devised new tactics and launched a counter-offensive on their arch-foes. And thus began a terrible series of wars. Many times, both sides have claimed victory, but this has been short-lived, for the Autobots have overthrown Decepticon tyrants, and, likewise, Decepticon treachery has toppled many a peaceful Autobot ruler. And to this day, the war rages on."
- — A computer telling the history of the Autobot-Decepticon conflict
"No! Me hate you!"
"Well, I'm not nuts about you, either!"
"Me not do what you say!"
"You lunky bag of bolts, you can't do anything!"
- —Grimlock and Spike fake a fight within the Cybertonium Pit.
Slag: Even though Dinobots not like it...
Snarl: ...We take orders from you now...
Grimlock: ...Until next time me Grimlock no feel like it.
- —A warm fuzzy moment, Dinobot style.
Notes
Production information
- First draft script: 4 March 1985
- Script revised by Ron Friedman: 7 March 1985
Deleted scenes
Changed scenes
- Originally, the history video told a very different story of the Transformers’ origins. It states that during the first millennium of Cybertron, the planet was invaded by evil machines from another world. Able to fly and transform, they decimated the inhabitants and nearly won the First Galactic Machine War. The survivors rebuilt their bodies, naming themselves “Autobots” and also gaining the ability to transform. The video ends on the ominous note “But we had not heard the last from the robots known as…the Decepticons!”
Deleted scenes
- Once the two humans reach Wheeljack’s workshop, they spot a stack of storage bins labelled “Cybertonium”. Standing atop Spike’s shoulders, Carly peers in to find the bins empty. Realising the Decepticons stole the contents, the two are thrown off-balance and sent tumbling to the floor by the pounding coming from the roof.
- As Spike attempts to dig his commandeered laser weapon out from the rubble, the shadowy figure (Swoop) begins widening the hole made in the roof with its own laser. Following Sparkplug’s instructions via the thumb radio, Carly attempts to access the control panel for the entrance doors and erect a forcefield. Before she can press the button, a shot from the shadowy figure’s weapon destroys the control panel. Spike then fires his weapon again and sends the attacker falling into the workshop.
- In a callback to Part 1, Swoop leans over while Ratchet and Wheeljack are repairing him, telling Mirage. “You forget Cybertron, Mirage. Cybertron not nice anymore!”
Continuity notes
- Shockwave curses Spike and Carly as "miserable glitches".
- When Swoop escapes the Decepticon guards, he is shown flying over Iacon as the Autobots left it in "More than Meets the Eye, Part 1".
- The Cybertonium pits are located at "3-5-4 Zeta-Alpha-Mark 7".
- Shockwave refers to Swoop as a "foreign robot".
- Gadgets and powers:
- As mentioned above, Shockwave can vaporize things with a ray from his gun arm. What things? Cars, robots, machinery, just about anything, it would seem. How have the Decepticons not won the war with this guy on their side??
- Swoop can launch a couple of stubby little missiles out of his upper chest.
- The Dinobots' memory circuits can be bypassed via something or other in their chests. It sounds bizarre, but Bumblebee apparently had memory chips in his chest in "Transport to Oblivion", and Brainstorm later declares that he and his compatriots all have "auxiliary memory circuits" in their chests.
- Swoop and the humans wander into what appears to be an abandoned underground city on Cybertron. The notion of Cybertron cities being built one atop the next would be revisited in the Beast Machines cartoon, many years later.
- This episode gives us a rare glimpse into Cybertron's past via a sort of mini-documentary:
- The footage features a ton of totally made-up robot and vehicle designs.
- The ships used by fleeing Autobots in the datatracks are the same type as the Ark.
- The documentary suggests that the Autobots created the art of transforming, something that "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4" corroborates.
- This was the first episode where a Transformer that isn't a hologram or a clone is shown to be destroyed.
- For the most part, this is the last time the Dinobots would be shown as rebellious, intimidating warriors in the original animated continuity, as by their next appearance in The Transformers: The Movie they are happy to work with other Autobots, and by Season 3, are generally used as comedic foils.
- Since Cybertron clearly sucked up a bunch of Earth's atmosphere in "The Ultimate Doom, Part 1", we can forgive Carly and Spike's ability to breathe there. (Of course, Cybertron was human-inhabitable even before that incident, as demonstrated by Chip's visit in "Divide and Conquer".) Awful handy of it to have human-compatible gravity (which it would need anyway to actually hold on to that atmosphere.)
Real-world references
- Star Wars sound effects:
- Spike's laser shot hits Swoop with the sound of Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader cutting through some machinery on the Death Star.
- The same sound is used as part of the heat-seeking missiles' engines.
- Millennium Falcon engine rumble as Swoop starts his "fancy flying", then Falcon engine burst, then Death Star superlaser, then TIE Fighter engine as he finally crashes.
Animation and technical errors
- An establishing shot shows us a pile of nonfunctional Autobots. Among them is Jazz, now back in his complete robot mode after being stuck as a half-car, half-robot last episode.
- Coloring errors:
- In the pile-of-Autobots shot, Prowl's head crest is white instead of red, Jazz's tires are white, Bumblebee's groin is gray instead of yellow, and Brawn's gauntlets are yellow instead of gray.
- Would anybody recognize Slag if they colored his face right?
- The front of Slag's checkguard is white instead of red as Carly fixes him.
- His whole face is white as the energy fence deactivates, and again as he returns to robot mode and escapes from the pit.
- The "side panels" of his head are white as Optimus Prime starts to address the Dinobots (his eyes are also colored red, and next to him, Sludge has empty white voids instead of eyes.)
- White cheekguard-fronts again as Slag speaks his final line. His chest plate is also gray instead of white.
- After their escape, the Dinobots stop to figure out which way to go; in this shot, Grimlock's head is light gray, and Slag's dino head is light gray instead of yellow.
- During the final scene, Swoop can be seen being repaired (presumably having his blown-up wing replaced, since he only has one), but his intact wing is the same color as the bed he's lying on, and his beak is red. And Ratchet, standing at the foot of the bed, is red and gray.
- One of Teletraan I's displays labels Spike and Carly's location as "DECEPTKON COMPUTER BRAIN".
- Where's Spike been carrying that rather largish photon light he pulls out? It's way too big to fit in a pocket.
- Carly's "oop!" happens before she actually stumbles. She's calmly saying "Let me lean on your shoulder" while nearly pitching face-first into the ground.
- Predictably, the entrance to Wheeljack's lab looks completely different than when we saw it in "Divide and Conquer". So does the access panel for the door. Neither of those looked like the entrance seen in "The Ultimate Doom, Part 3", but that seems to have been a back door.
- As is common in the cartoon universe, the metal ceiling of Wheeljack's lab cracks and crumbles like rock.
- As Swoop explains what happened to the Dinobots, he's speaking his narration IN the flashback. Not necessarily a mistake, but a very odd stylistic choice if not.
- Swoop's wing damage is missing in the very next shot of him after it happens ("Must've triggered switch!"). And then it's back when he tries to avoid some heat-seeking missiles. ("Wing won't work!").
- After he's shot by the Decepticon guard, Swoop falls over with a very organic-sounding thump.
- The Dinobots are all busily loading, loading, loading while they declare that they don't want to leave the Cybertonium pits. But when Carly decides to check Snarl's circuits, he's just standing there doing nothing.
- During the "history of Cybertron" segment, there is a pink and a grey generic who is among the Decepticons that round up a group of Autobots. It is seen again shortly afterwards... among a group of (if the narration is something to go by) Autobots who show off their newly acquired transformation abilities.
- When Shockwave appears on the guard's communication screen his gun hand has been replaced by a normal hand.
Continuity errors
- Victor Caroli's voiceover recap incorrectly describes the Autobots as "energy depleted"; in actuality, they're suffering mechanical breakdowns.
- At the end of Part 1, Shockwave fires (with two guns!) into the opening Space Bridge elevator door, triggering a huge explosion (which the "in our last episode" recap is kind enough to replay for us at the episode's start.) At the opening of this episode, however, he's just standing there when the elevator doors open, aiming his gun arm; his hand-held pistol is gone. After a second, he fires a ray that vaporizes Carly's car out from under its two human passengers, but doesn't cause any human-eviscerating explosions. It's not the first time that The Transformers has solved an unsolvable problem by just ignoring it, but it's one of the most flagrant.
- An earlier draft of the scripts for the two episodes had the sequence make considerably more sense - the explosion isn't mentioned at all![1]
- Incidentally, the ability to vaporize an entire automobile's worth of mass would seem to be a pretty useful power for an evil robot whose opponents frequently transform into automobiles, but it's never seen outside of this episode's opening sequence.
- Also incidentally, Shockwave sure does stand there for an awfully long time, letting the clearly-still-alive humans run off into his headquarters.
- Improbable viewpoints:
- Most of the monitor imagery in this episode is simulated pictures constructed by Teletraan I to keep Sparkplug abreast of Spike and Carly's progress. All well and good, but it does seem to rule out any possibility that all those other unlikely camera views in all those other episodes were super-realistic computer simulations.
- Is Megatron collapsed against the video monitor console... or do the Decepticons have a camera on the floor?
- Spike and Carly happen upon a stack of energon cubes, and the script makes a point of having Spike wonder aloud where they came from, since Cybertron is supposed to be out of energy. Oddly, the episode does nothing to address this mystery—presumably they were sent up by the Decepticons Earth, though they haven't actually been shown to do that since "The Ultimate Doom", this two-parter being the first use of the space bridge since season one.
- Superhuman Spike and Carly:
- Spike and Carly manage to avoid all injury despite being in Carly's car when Shockwave disintegrated it.
- Spike manages to hold back an approximately 20+ foot tall metal door weighing several tons from crushing him and Carly.
- He also lifts a metal gun that's bigger than he is!
- Both he and Carly manage to hang on to Swoop's giant metal claws through a gut-wrenching series of aerial maneuvers. They're both fine when he drops them before crashing.
- When Carly and Spike reach Wheeljack's lab, Carly opens the door without ever knowing the pass code. It's not impossible that she got the code from Chip Chase, who systematically guessed the code in "Divide and Conquer", but it does seem a bit on the unlikely side. Wheeljack also has a Decepticon symbol on his doorway, presumably put there by the Decepticons who sealed the entrance... but it wasn't there either of the last two times we saw the lab.
- Carly's ankle somehow repairs itself. Or was she faking just to get Spike to carry her everywhere? Maybe she found something in Wheeljack's lab that could heal her ankle or function as a brace.
- It's a cartoon convention that a missile can't harm you unless it physically hits you, no matter how close it gets, so we can cut The Transformers a little slack in this regard. However, the absurdity of it is a bit flagrant as Swoop dodges missiles in the extremely tight confines of a hallway, where the missiles have several chances to explode basically right next to him.
- The Decepticon drones don't keep watch over the pit as Carly reprograms the (stationary) Dinobots.
- Sparkplug says he's altered the space bridge destination by tapping into the Decepticons' computers. He never mentions how he managed to build an entire space bridge receiver ring right outside Autobot Headquarters. There has also been some previous indication that the space bridge appears at random, uncontrolled locations, although given that that stopped being mentioned early on in the series it's possible that the Decepticons solved the problem between episodes. Perhaps the receiver ring is part of the deal?
Trivia
- Carly doesn't appear entirely thrilled with the whole "honorary Autobots" thing. Not surprising, considering everything that happened to her in this episode.
- "Photon Light" sounds redundant.
- This episode has a smaller number of Decepticons in it than any other in the Generation 1 series. Maybe Megatron wanted more screen time?
- This episode is the final onscreen appearance of the Dinobots until The Transformers: The Movie, which would establish Grimlock as a more regular character in the series starting with season 3. They would however be mentioned by Rumble in Hoist Goes Hollywood, after he mistakes an animatronic dinosaur for one of them.
Foreign localization
French
- Title (Canadian French broadcast and European French DVD release): "La désertion des Dinobots, partie 2" ("Desertion of the Dinobots, part 2")
- Title (European French broadcast): "Le Cybertronium" ("The Cybertronium")
- Original airdate: ?
- Spike misnames Cybertron as "Cyclotron".
- Shockwave laughs before telling Megatron that the humans managed to escape. It might be a misinterpretation of the sounds Corey Burton does to show the fear Shockwave feels before telling Megatron.
- To avoid pronouncing Swoop's name, Spike says "It's YOU?". Later in the episode, Carly says "Oh no!" instead of the Dinobot name when he gets hit.
- Another misinterpretation happens when Swoop says "No! Same missiles, heat-seeking missiles!". The dubbing team understood "No same missiles!", so Swoop (who talks like any other robot in the dub) says "No, careful! These are not the same missiles, these are heat-seeking missiles!".
- Henry Djanik briefly takes the place of Georges Atlas as Shockwave, just for one phrase, and tells the sentinel robot to put the humans with the Dinobots with a very sudden and weird Russian accent. He also keeps this Russian accent while dubbing Snarl's few lines at the end of the episode. Maybe he just went back from a trip?
Italian
- Title (dub 1): "I Dinorobots disertano - Parte 2" ("The Dinobots Desert - Part 2")
- Original airdate: ?
- While in the previous episode it looked like cybertronium is not the deteriorating element, but rather another element that should help changing un unnamed other element, in this episode is clear since the recap that cybertronium really is the deteriorating one.
- When Swoop starts telling what happened to him and the other Dinobots, he calls them "my Dinobots"... weird! Later Swoop makes it look like some Dinobots died fighting since «Other Dinobots taken to cybertronium pit» was changed to «The few survivors were taken to the mines».
- Swoop's line: «No! Same missiles, heat-seeking missiles!» was changed to: «No! They're heat-seeking missiles: they're not the same as before», saying pretty much the opposite of what he said in English. Possibly, "No, same missiles!" was misinterpreted as "No same missile!", meaning that they're not the same missiles.
- In the history of Cybertron war, Decepticons are once called "invaders", which make it look like they're not from Cybertron, while we all know this is not the case.
- While Grimlock is working in the mine, Spike once calls him by Swoop's name, and then Grimlock's next line is voiced by Swoop's actor.
- Title (dub 2): "La diserzione dei Dinobots - Seconda parte" ("The Desertion of the Dinobots - Second Part")
- Original airdate: ?
Japanese
- Title: "Dinobot no Tōbō PART II" (ダイノボットの逃亡 PART II, "Desertion of the Dinobots PART II")
- Original airdate: January 31, 1986
Mandarin
- Title: "Jīqì Kǒnglóng Kāi Xiǎochāi (Xià)" (机器恐龙开小差(下), "The Desertion of the Dinobots Part 2")
- Original airdate: ?
Brazilian Portuguese
- Title: "A Deserção dos Dinobots, Segunda Parte" ("The Desertion of the Dinobots, Second Part")
- Original airdate: ?
Home video releases
- VHS
1986 — The Transformers — Desertion of the Dinobots (A.M.T. Video Gems)
1986 — Transformers — Desertion of the Dinobots (Channel 5)
1988 — The Transformers — Desertion of the Dinobots (V.I.P. Video Gems)
1990 — Transformers — Desertion of the Dinobots 3-D (Channel 5)
1998 — The Transformers: Generation 2 — Desertion of the Dinobots (Behaviour)
1994 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers — Convoy Set (Takara) — Japanese audio only.
1998 — The Transformers — Autobot Edition (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
- DVD
2001 — The Transformers — DVD Box 1 (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2002 — The Original Transformers — Season 2 Part 1 (Rhino Entertainment)
2002 — The Original Transformers — Season 2 Part 1: Vol. 4 (Rhino Entertainment)
2003 — Transformers — Season 2 Part 1 (Metrodome)
2004 — Transformers — Collection 2: Series 2.1 (Madman Entertainment)
2005 — Transformers — Les Dinobots (UFG Junior) — European French audio only.
2006 — Transformers — The Complete Generation One Collection (Metrodome)
2007 — The Transformers — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
2008 — Transformers — Volume 04: Stagione Due Parte Seconda (Medianetwork Communication) — English and Italian audio.
2009 — Transformers — Season Two: Part One (Metrodome)
2009 — The Transformers — Complete Collection: Decepticon Edition (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers — Season Two, Volume One: 25th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)
2009 — The Transformers — The Complete Series: 25th Anniversary "Matrix of Leadership" Collection (Shout! Factory)
2011 — The Transformers — The Complete Original Series (Shout! Factory)
2014 — The Transformers — Season Two, Volume One: 30th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)
2014 — The Transformers — Roar of the Dinobots (Shout! Factory)
2014 — Transformers — The Classic Animated Series (Metrodome)
External links
References
- ↑ Scripts for the Transformers cartoon at the Sunbow Marvel Archive.
