The Big Broadcast of 2006

by Galvatron

On the planet of Junk, Wreck-Gar and the other  are enjoying a spot of TV, but the show they are watching ends so they head off to find something else to do. But a Quintesson cruiser is monitoring them and the Quintessons inside it discuss that the primitive TV signal from Earth are what defines the entire Junkion race's culture, and that they see their world as a territory that they will defend. This causes a problem for the Quintessons as they want to recover their journal, which crashes onto this planet when Quintessa blew up.
 

The Quintessons lock onto the area where the journal should be and send down a few Sharkticons to go and collect it. They all start to rummage through the piles of junk around, and one of them finds the thing, so the Quintessons tell them to return to their ship immediately, but before they can Wreck-Gar and a team of Junkions arrive to open fire.
 

Hopelessly outnumbered, the Sharkticons do not even bother to fight back and the one holding the journal drops it when Wreck-Gar slices both of his hands off. The journal is lost once again and the Sharkticon group flees back to the Quintessons ship, which Wreck-Gar waves goodbye too. The Quintessons then retreat and move away from the planet of Junk.
 

Nearby, Astrotrain sees Sky Lynx and has a dogfight with him, but ends up taking a hit. Both of them transform and are about to get into a proper fight when a sudden laser barrage interrupts them and they seem to see that the fire came from Junkion, where Wreck-Gar and the others are firing on the both of them. They both retreat as the Junkions get another victory for the day.
 

At Cybertron, Ultra Magnus is busy boring Rodimus Prime by telling him about a new power generator they are building which will restore power to a sector of the planet, although Rodimus just isn't that interested. Sky Lynx then flies in and tells the two Autobots about how he was attacked by the Junkions, which they all find rather odd, so Rodimus dispatches the Aerialbots to investigate.
 

Astrotrain returns to Chaar but doesn't have much luck telling Galvatron about what happened, as he is knocked down by the Decepticon leader and called a fool. Cyclonus still tries to say that if the Junkions have turned against the Autobots, it could give them an advantage, but Galvatron still says he doesn't care and orders both of them to leave.
 

Back at Junkion, the Quintessons are the ones who are causing the planet's population to go haywire as they are putting subliminal messages into the TV signals that the Junkions receive, and are telling them to distrust all other lifeforms. As they continue to monitor them, they see that they've already recovered the journal, which will make it harder to get as since they now distrust everyone, so they start to move their ship in and use camouflage by covering their ship with smoke.
 

The Aerialbots soon arrive at the planet of Junk but are attacked by the Quintessons, and when Wreck-Gar sees the noise going on above him he and the other Junkions start firing too. The Aerialbots fly around aimlessly for a bit as they can't even work out what is attacking them until Silverbolt tells everyone to unite and they transform into Superion, who then sees the Quintesson ship in the could and smashes into it. The Quintessons activate a forcefield which Superion shoots through, but the resulting explosion blows him away.
 

Cyclonus just happens to have seen this event having flown the Junkion along with Scourge and the Sweeps, and thinks that something very peculiar is going on here, so he decides to get a closer look. A little time later the Junkions are all watching TV again when they hear a noise and see several Decepticons heading straight towards them, and after a brief battle Cyclonus says that he has learnt what he wants to know and tells the others to follow him back to Charr.
 

Sky Lynx brings back Superion to Cybertron where First Aid checks him over and says that he'll be OK. Superion then says about how he saw a Quintesson starship in a cloud, and Rodimus and Ultra Magnus can only wonder what the Quintessons could be doing over the planet of Junk, and they head off to find out for themselves.
 

The Quintessons are back to monitoring the Junkions after their ship was damaged, and they see that the subliminal messages they are sending have gone wrong -they are now sending something that says "to care is to share, to share is to care" over and over again, and they realises that the system which handles this was damaged in the battle. Meanwhile the Junkions are getting more and more berserk, sending out a signal of their own to the rest of the universe, believing that they must share with everyone else, despite that they think everyone else is their enemies.
 

As the Quintessons see this, they realise that the signal is going across the entire galaxy and that because their ship is still damaged, they can't stop it. They see what is does to one planet which is populated by cats and dogs, and the car people are watching an episode of "Space-Age Jack" when suddenly a Quintesson pops up saying that "all other life forms are your ENEMIES!". The cat people then start to say this and rush off to their fighter jets and attack the dog people.
 

They then monitor a similar situation on a planet called Antar, where two races of bees have also been watching Space-Age Jack but have also listened to the Quintesson message, and are now at war with each other. And then on yet another planet, the Quintessons see that a group of robots are attacking the Earth embassy there. The Quintessons then think that they may be witnessing the start of an interstellar dark age, which they could use to their advantage by supplying any side with weapons for money, but they then say that for now their journal is much more important and they must get it back.
 

Meanwhile Cyclonus has gone back to Chaar and tells Galvatron how he is convinced that the Junkions have been re-programmed somehow, and believes that they could get them to attack the Autobots. But Galvatron still doesn't care about this and tells Cyclonus not to bother him again. Since he won't change his mind, Cyclonus tells Scourge to gather the Sweeps and they set off back to Junkion, as Cyclonus still believes that this opportunity is too good to miss.
 

Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magus, Kup and Blaster are getting a ride to the planet of Junk in Omega Supreme, but they still have two sectors to cross before they get there, and suddenly Omega begins to shake around and says that they are under attack by the Decepticons. After taking several hits Omega dives down towards an asteroid and crashes.
 

Rodimus leads everyone outside as they prepare to fight back but the situation doesn't look that good because their are more Decepticons than Autobots, and with Omega down, they don't have much of a chance. Ultra Magnus starts to repair Omega and says that he should be able to get him operational again, but fire from the Sweeps is stopping his progress. Rodimus tells the others to split up and draw their enemies away from Omega Supreme.
 

Kup transforms and zooms off and gets two Sweeps to chase after him, and he soon gets blasted as the ones who gave chase surround him. Blaster also gets surrounded by Scourge and another Sweep, whilst Cyclonus goes after Rodimus but gets shot in the leg, but another two Sweeps arrive to help him. Meanwhile another Sweep* is taking pot shots at Ultra Magnus, who is still desperately trying to fix Omega Supreme.
 

After fiddling around with some circuits, Ultra Magnus closes the panel he was working on and the mighty Omega Supreme comes back to life and proceeds to help out all of the other Autobots who were in trouble, and then pops up before Cyclonus. Cyclonus and the other Decepticons beat a hasty retreat as the Autobots head on to Junkion.
 

As Cyclonus heads away from the Autobots, he runs into Galvatron and Blast Off, and asks the Decepticon leader where he is going, only to get a rather odd response and is then knocked out of the way yet again. Scourge then says that what Galvatron just said was something that he heard Wreck-Gar say when they attacked the planet of Junk, and Cyclonus says that that is where Galvatron must be going.
 

Armies from different planets across the galaxy have now all arrived at Junkion and are fighting each other in a huge battle, and the Junkions themselves start to shoot at everyone. The Quintessons decide that they can use this battle as a cover whilst they attempt to get the journal, and send a ship of their own down to retrieve what they are after. Meanwhile the Autobots finally arrive at Junkion and see the war going on, but also see Galvatron and the Decepticons, so they land on the planet. It's showdown time!
 

Galvatron kicks things off by saying how this place is indeed the promised land, and then transforms and takes down Omega Supreme with one shot. He then transforms back to robot mode and tells Rodimus how this planet of junk is an appropriate place for him to meet his end, and gets into a fight with him as the Quintessons find their journal and use a tractor beam to retrieve it. Back at the fight Galvatron throws Rodimus and fires a shot to kill him for good...
 

...but at the last second Rodimus grabs a large piece of metal and deflects Galvatron's shot, which goes upward and instead hits the smaller Quintesson ship, breaking it's tractor beam and sending the journal out into space. Meanwhile Ultra Magnus and Blaster are wondering what they can do to stop this war and Blaster says that the Junkion satellite dish is the source of the problem, but he needs Omega Supreme's help to put a stop to it.
 

Omega takes Ultra Magnus and a transformed Blaster up into the sky, and they start to broadcast a signal of their own, which makes every side stop fighting against one another, and even the Junkions cease fire. Galvatron snaps out of it and says that it was that television set that tricked him, so he destroys it. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't hate Rodimus Prime still.
 

Galvatron and the other Decepticons are about to attack the Autobots again, but now that the Junkions are back to normal (or as normal as they can be) they see the Decepticons and surround them. Galvatron says he doesn't fear them and transforms to his cannon mode to start shooting, but with so many Autobots and Junkions around he can't fight them all and retreats.
 

With the battle over, Omega Supreme lands and drops off Blaster and Ultra Magnus. Rodimus then asks Wreck-Gar about what has been happening, but he doesn't seem to know anything about it. Ultra Magnus then asks if they will ever know who it was that broadcast this mysterious signal, but Rodimus says that doesn't matter, as long as they are off the air for good.
 

The Quintessons see that the armies have departed and the battle is over, but then the two Quintessons who were sent to get their journal arrive back, who tell them that they failed their mission and that they are prepared to pay the penalty -death. Another Quintesson says that he'll be happy to oblige them, but before that can happen they must get back their journal before the information in it turns the whole galaxy against them.

This episode marks the return of Omega Supreme, with this being his only proper appearance in season three, although in "Grimlock's New Brain" he is mentioned at one point by name only. I think the problem for him now was that his alt mode was kind of useless because the Autobots now had these snazzy shuttles to take them around, or they could use Sky Lynx, who was a newer character.

*When Cyclonus heads off to Junkion, he takes Scourge and five Sweeps with him. But when they fight the Autobots on the asteroid, something's up. Two Sweeps go after Kup, Scourge and other Sweep surround Blaster, another two Sweeps help Cyclonus, whilst another Sweep shoots at Ultra Magnus. That's seven. It gets stranger though because when Omega Supreme comes back to life, three Sweeps are with Blaster, meaning another one has appeared out of nowhere. Stranger yet is when the Decepticons retreat from Junkion, because there are only three Sweeps around, but there are suddenly three Cyclonuses.

Marissa Faireborn appears briefly in this episode at one point, when the robots attack the Earth embassy. She sounds completely different than usual though.

There's a new female Junkion in this episode who appears a couple of times. She's never named but several Japanese guide books refer to her as "Nancy" and she uses a Lithion (those robots from the start of the Transformers movie) character model. However, the actual script for this episode calls her "Junkion Lady".

This is also one of the few episodes to have a fight between Rodimus Prime and Galvatron in it.

For whatever reason, the journal is gold in The Quintesson Journal, but is grey and brown here.

"Space-Age Jack" is an obvious parody of another Hasbro series/toy line, G.I. Joe. The characters in the short clip of Space Age-Jack even yell out "Yoooo Jack!" at one point.