[6.6/10] This episode has three things going for it from where I sit.
There is something cool about getting a glimpse of what’s going on back in Cybertron, with the knowledge that our heroes’ allies are trying to look for them. It’s something out of the ordinary for the show, and expands its reach beyond one “muddball” as Rattrap puts it.
I appreciate that we get to explore the internal conflict for Dinobot over the prospect of a rescue. It’s not as easy for him to consider what it’ll be like when reinforcements arrive, and he has to grapple with whether he’ll be treated like a Maximal by Optimus’s associates or if he even would want that. Dinobot continues to be the most interesting character on the show given hsi uneasy adjustment to life in the Maxima camp, and I like that the series hasn’t forgotten that. (Similarly, I appreciate Tigertron enjoying the “sweet air” of this mysterious planet and wondering what it’ll be like on Cybertron.
I like the fact that for once, our heroes firmly and fairly lose. Given that the show must go on, it was pretty obvious that Rhinox’s array to contact the Cybertrn probe wasn’t going to work, or at least not in a way that could immediately help our heroes. But the fact that this felt like a normal episode in many ways, up until the point where despite getting their butts kicked, the Predcacons squarely thwart the good guys from their chosen target, with the stakes of a rescue at play, shows a bit of chutzpah on the part of the writers. You can feel the Maxials’ disappointment over this loss, and you can understand why Megatron will do everything in his power to prevent recon from the Maximals on Cybertron.
That said, so much of this episode is so generic and, well, kind of boring apart from that. There’s some juice to the idea of Tarantulas having built a device that can trop opponents in Beast Mode, but nothing really comes of it. Tigatron and Cheetor getting trapped in the Predacon ship is a faint excuse for them to have a Big Damn Heroes moment later in the episode, and the skirmishes over building the array are nothing we haven’t seen several times before. THere’s the faint hint of a throughline with Rhinox doing everything in his power to reach the probe, but really, this is an exciting idea done with replacement level execution. Little of it is outright bad, but it feels like the episode squanders a lot of the cool potential for this type of chapter in the Beast Wars story.
Overall, the ideas and interesting wrinkles keep this one from rating worse, but it’s a pretty generic episode for such a unique and otherwise momentous occurrence in the story.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-06-02T22:35:34Z
[6.6/10] This episode has three things going for it from where I sit.
There is something cool about getting a glimpse of what’s going on back in Cybertron, with the knowledge that our heroes’ allies are trying to look for them. It’s something out of the ordinary for the show, and expands its reach beyond one “muddball” as Rattrap puts it.
I appreciate that we get to explore the internal conflict for Dinobot over the prospect of a rescue. It’s not as easy for him to consider what it’ll be like when reinforcements arrive, and he has to grapple with whether he’ll be treated like a Maximal by Optimus’s associates or if he even would want that. Dinobot continues to be the most interesting character on the show given hsi uneasy adjustment to life in the Maxima camp, and I like that the series hasn’t forgotten that. (Similarly, I appreciate Tigertron enjoying the “sweet air” of this mysterious planet and wondering what it’ll be like on Cybertron.
I like the fact that for once, our heroes firmly and fairly lose. Given that the show must go on, it was pretty obvious that Rhinox’s array to contact the Cybertrn probe wasn’t going to work, or at least not in a way that could immediately help our heroes. But the fact that this felt like a normal episode in many ways, up until the point where despite getting their butts kicked, the Predcacons squarely thwart the good guys from their chosen target, with the stakes of a rescue at play, shows a bit of chutzpah on the part of the writers. You can feel the Maxials’ disappointment over this loss, and you can understand why Megatron will do everything in his power to prevent recon from the Maximals on Cybertron.
That said, so much of this episode is so generic and, well, kind of boring apart from that. There’s some juice to the idea of Tarantulas having built a device that can trop opponents in Beast Mode, but nothing really comes of it. Tigatron and Cheetor getting trapped in the Predacon ship is a faint excuse for them to have a Big Damn Heroes moment later in the episode, and the skirmishes over building the array are nothing we haven’t seen several times before. THere’s the faint hint of a throughline with Rhinox doing everything in his power to reach the probe, but really, this is an exciting idea done with replacement level execution. Little of it is outright bad, but it feels like the episode squanders a lot of the cool potential for this type of chapter in the Beast Wars story.
Overall, the ideas and interesting wrinkles keep this one from rating worse, but it’s a pretty generic episode for such a unique and otherwise momentous occurrence in the story.