Desertion of the Dinobots, part 2

by Ragey

Totally contrasting the cliffhanger of the previous episode where Shockwave totally explodified the space bridge chamber, here he's just waiting patiently and merely vaporises Carly's car, prompting the two to make themselves scarce. Their attempts at hiding behind things, even Decepticon drones proves futile with Shockwave's endless desire to obliterate them, before they eventually roll inside a hole, getting themselves into the innards of the master computer.

Spike chooses this opportunity to contact Sparkplug, who gets Teletraan-1 to make a simulated image of the area and informs him that the suspicious, humongous, glowing orb is the computer's power source, which gives Carly an idea of fiddling about with wires in an atttempt to control it and be able to take command of the space bridge. However, a jolt of energy from said wires knocks her down into the power source's pit, though she stops herself before she assumedly gets obliterated by making contact with the orb, and her fiddling about ultimately causes the power to go out inside.
 

Carly twisted her ankle from this mishap, so Spike slides down to check on her, only to realise that he can't just climb back up again. Way to go, knucklehead! Sparkplug informs them that the bottom of the room has a way out, along with a conveniently human-sized ladder, and find themselves exiting in a room with energon cubes; something they thought Cybertron was completely dry of.

Shockwave contacts Megatron to inform him of his latest screw-up, letting the humans escape and allowing them to botch up the computer and prevent him from dispatching the cybertonium to Earth, though he does try to make up for this by sending a Sentinel droid to catch the pests. Sure enough, the two encounter the ghastly tread-bearing menace, but they manage to not only escape it, but also destroy it by closing a door on it's head. A door that is strong enough to crush a robot's skull, but one that Spike can keep open with only minimal hassle. BOGGLING
 

Sparkplug enlightens them on the fact that Wheeljack's laboratory is nearby with a sufficient supply of cybertonium inside, and gives them directions there. Carly sees a shadow following them as they make their progress, but they arrive at their destination safe and sound... only to hear knocking and banging on the roof!

Spike quickly arms himself with a gun that he clearly should be able to hold and fires it once the roof has been broken, only to knock down Swoop! The Dinobots explains that although they kicked Shockwave's ass pretty easily, they couldn't quite handle the sheer numbers of his guards and were eventually captured and taken to the cybertonium pits, but since he can fly he got himself out of that sticky situation.

Sparkplug gets them directions there while Swoop leads the way, taking them on a Cybertronian travel pod of some kind, which happens to go all over the place more than your modern bus. However, their journey is stopped when they find the tunnel busted further along, and with Spike's thumb communicator no longer able to reach Sparkplug with them being so deep inside the planet, they're left with Swoop as their guide.

As they make their way along, they happen into a chamber full of deactivated robots that Carly assumes to be the primitive ancestors of the Transformer race, soon followed up by a boring path that, all of a sudden, swings an axe down and straight through Swoop's wing. Carly yet again assumes this to be ancient booby traps of some kind, but just as they discuss how they avoid activating them, they activate another one: The dreaded enclosing walls!

But being ancient and primitive and rather unimaginative, Swoop just punches his way through the walls to safety. The next trap? Heat-seeking missiles! All we need is quicksand and just about every played-to-death trap cliché will be taken advantage of. Swoop takes to the sky with Spike and Carly in tow, but his wing injury eventually forces him to crash-land, forcing him to resort to firing missiles from his chest, something even he admits he should've done earlier.
 

The group find themselves in a desolate, abandoned land that, once more conveniently, has a viewing room with a fully functional viewer that proceeds to tell them the history of Cybertron. It was once pretty peaceful, but the Decepticons started an uprising and began kicking ass, prompting a lot of the Autobots to flee the planet and those that remained to develop the skill of transformation, and the wars have been going on ever since.

It's not anything we didn't know, really. See the Five Faces of Darkness for more detailed information!
 

Movie time is interrupted by three of Shockwave's guards bursting in, disabling Swoop, capturing the humans and taking them to the cybertonium pits, rather unintentionally kindly. They're thrown in a barrier-surrounded ring with the other Dinobots, who've had their ability to transform disabled and brainwashed to work for the Decepticons. Of course, Carly being a super genius, she's able to compare their circuits to those of still-working-fine Swoop and bring them back to normal. Of course, they're still trapped in the pit, so they need a plan to get out, and Spike has one to share.

Grimlock refuses to play along and Spike sets about insulting him, but it's just a ploy to get the guards to remove the humans from the pit, but as the barrier is lowered the Dinobots transform and make scrap metal of everyone in sight, chewing or melting every last guard in the room. They make an easy escape and get out via another tube tunnel thingy. Meanwhile, Sparkplug has hacked into the Decepticon space bridge to deliver stuff to Autobot HQ, so all they need is cybertonium and all will be well!

And good ol' Shockwave has sorted out that part, having already loaded the cybertonium into the chamber, so all it takes is to knock him to the floor and pile into it, though he does manage to blast Swoop's wing off before they leave, which is about the only good he does in the whole series.

The group return safely, Spike and Carly being greeted with a big ol' hug with Sparkplug, and they've got enough cybertonium to sort the Autobots out; and they got back the Dinobots! Huzzah!

Optimus Prime, in a rare moment of just being kind of stupid, owes the humans their lives and decides to commemorate that fact by making them honorary Autobots. And he does this not by giving them badass transforming power suits or anything, but with medals. He even thanks the Dinobots for a job well done, who respond by saying they'll be happy to take orders from him until Grimlock can't be bothered to do that anymore. Those pranksters.

To say the pacing of this episode is off would just be a little understating it. It spends about seven million years getting the point across that Cybertron be crazy!! and thus rushes the conclusion into about six minutes.

Gotta love how the plot elements that are introduced, only to get solved without adding terribly much or just going nowhere. The energon cubes, Carly's ankle, the ancient Transformers. Definitely one of those episodes that tried to make too much of a fairly bog-standard plot.