Trap
From Transformers Wiki
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| The glorious moment when a franchise's incarnation of Starscream finally became a serious threat. | |||||||||
| "Trap" (Kaibutsu-tachi no Fukkatsu) "Revival of the Monsters" | |||||||||
| Production company | TV Aichi, We've, Tōkyū Agency | ||||||||
| Airdate | June 18, 2005 (Japanese) October 19, 2005 (English) | ||||||||
| Writer | Kazuhiko Sōma | ||||||||
| Director | Atsuhi Nigorikawa | ||||||||
| Animation studio | GONZO, Ashi Productions | ||||||||
| Continuity | Unicron Trilogy cartoon continuity | ||||||||
As the quest for the third Cyber Planet Key begins, Starscream finally makes his move!
Contents |
Synopsis
In the forests of Alaska, the Autobot Crosswise has escaped his icy prison and is in the process of evading the humans searching for him. Transforming to vehicle mode and hiding amongst ordinary traffic, Crosswise reflects on his past as a "monster hunter," hunting down and sealing away mysterious creatures that threatened humankind thousands of years ago. Fearing for the security of the seal keeping the monsters trapped in their underground prison, Crosswise races against time to reach it.
In the fire dimension, Megatron rages at his troops over their three successive failures, having lost the Omega Lock and the Cyber Planet Keys from Velocitron and Jungle Planet. He is about to destroy the Planet Map in his fury when Starscream stops him. Taking the map into his own hands, Starscream gets it to offer up the supposed location of the third Cyber Planet Key, and Megatron immediately takes his troops into space to find it. When Sideways notices that Starscream does not depart through Megatron's dimension gate, he pauses, and watches as Starscream opens a gate of his own, to Earth. Suspecting that Starscream is at last about to make his long-foreshadowed move, Sideways decides to accompany him.
The Autobots, meanwhile, have returned to Earth, with Snarl in tow. The wolf-bot is ill at ease in the artificial enclosure that is the Autobots' base, but Jetfire and the kids offer to help him get acclimated by giving him a tour.
Elsewhere on Earth, the mysterious government agent that has long been observing the Transformers—at last identified as "Colonel Franklin"—is mobilizing the armed forces to capture the fugitive Crosswise. The Autobot soon comes across a roadblock intended to apprehend him, and uses his Cyber Key power to blast out the guard wall of the road, allowing him to escape by going off-road. The light from his Cyber Key attracts the attention of Starscream and Sideways, who track him until he arrives at the site of his still-intact seal. Crosswise remains on guard when Starscream approaches him, and asks him a question that makes Sideways start in surprise: Starscream believes that the third Cyber Planet Key is on Earth, and that Crosswise knows where it is! A two-on-one battle erupts, but Crosswise is wise enough to know when to cut-and-run, so Starscream has Sideways pursue him while he investigates the mysterious subterranean seal.
Back at the Autobot base, the team prepares to add Jungle Planet's Cyber Planet Key to the Omega Lock. Optimus Prime offers the task to Snarl, but he defers to Leobreaker, who he deems much worthier, and all the other Autobots support the choice. Leobreaker nervously carries out the task, at which point the Omega Lock explodes with a golden radiance that engulfs everyone present. No sooner has Vector Prime identified the glow as the light of Primus than the world fades away around the assembled Autobots and humans, and is replaced with a purplish, featureless void. Vector Prime speculates that they have been drawn into the consciousness of Primus himself, and his theory is soon borne out, as the Mini-Cons begin to glow golden. Primus's powerful, booming voice speaks through the tiny robots, who serve as mediums for the deity, and he tells his children to "protect the balance, until all are one." As the light fades and reality returns, the Autobots' alarm system begin blaring, once again alerting them to the presence of something in the North Pole.
Meanwhile, another of the Autobots' acquaintances is running afoul of Colonel Franklin's blockade: Lucy Suzuki is trying to get back to her lab to analyze the date she has gathered in her research. She is eager to know why Crosswise was hidden in ice, and, impatience getting the best of her, she gets out of her car to ask when the blockade will be lifted. It turns out Colonel Franklin himself is present to supervise, and he greets her with a warmth that leaves her quite surprised.
Not that far away, Optimus Prime, Jetfire, Leobreaker and Landmine arrive at the site of the signal, which turns out to be the site of Crosswise's seal. Unaware that the massive tunnel that lies gaping before them has been blasted open by Starscream, three of the Autobots venture into the huge tunnel while Jetfire waits up top. The tunnel leads them deep into the bowels of the Earth, where discover a massive chamber full of strange metallic "eggs", which Jolt remotely analyses and deduces are stasis pods containing creatures emitting Transformer-like life signals. Starscream suddenly appears and quickly takes down the three Autobots, before grandiloquently addressing the heavens and blasting the central column of the chamber, deactivating Crosswise's seal and opening all the stasis pods. As Bud and the others stare with wide eyes at the scene unfolding on the monitor before them, monstrous, shadowed creatures emerge from the pods, which Bud is able to identify as werewolves, vampires, Bigfoot and more. Starscream then reveals that these are not mythological beasts, but the ancient Decepticons who once lived on Earth millennia ago, and Bud puts two and two together, realising that all the legends of terrible creatures from Earth's past were really stories about Decepticons!
At Starscream's command, the ancient Decepticons stride forward, their true robotic natures revealing themselves, and converge on the three Autobots before them. Unable to fight against a horde of such numbers, the Autobots are forced back, at which point Starscream blasts open the roof of the cavern, allowing his new army to escape, and entombing Prime's team. Jetfire spots the escaping Decepticons and attempts to engage Starscream, but quickly breaks off when the Decepticon informs him of his leader's fate. Soon after, Starscream addresses his assembled army, promising to bring about a new world order for the Decepticons. In the process, he is reminded that he needs to check in on his other plan...
Somewhere in space, not too far from the Jungle Planet, Megatron and the other Decepticons have followed the map to the supposed location of the next Cyber Planet Key. Thundercracker observes that the map is doing something strange, and the other Decepticons lean in to look. Crumplezone is crowding Ransack, so the smaller 'bot shoves him back...which spares Crumplezone from what comes next! The Planet Map suddenly begins to glow, and when the light fades, all the Decepticons save for Crumplezone are encased within a massive metallic sphere! Starscream projects his image through the duplicate map, informing Megatron that he is in command now, and Megatron bellows Starscream's name deep into the cosmic night...
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"You made the map work, but I'll lead the way. You guard the rear."
- —Megatron to Starscream, pre-treachery
"It could use a few boulders and some moss to make it a bit more homey, if you ask me."
- —Snarl on the Autobots' base.
"Maintain the balance, until all are one."
- —Primus
"They've been sealed here for thousands of years, all because they scared a few humans! It's so unfair..."
- —Starscream goes for the sympathy vote
"Let's say I won't be guarding the rear anymore..."
- —Starscream to Megatron, post-treachery
"Hey, don't leave me out here all alone! Let me in, guys!"
- —Crumplezone wants to be a prisoner too, damn it!
Notes
Differences with Galaxy Force
- For some reason, the music that plays while Crosswise is introducing himself while speeding down the highway is different between Galaxy Force and Cybertron.
- When Crosswise retreats from Starscream and Sideways, Cybertron has him explain that this is a deliberate feint manoeuvre he is pulling, before spinning around and opening fire. In Galaxy Force, he is genuinely running away to inform Evac of the threat the pair pose.
- Cybertron inserts the customary reference to the Omega Frequency when the Cyber Planet Key is added to the Omega Lock.
- As the Autobots close on the location of the seal, the distance left to their journey is 3 kilometers in Galaxy Force, but three miles in Cybertron.
- In its quest to not make it immediately obvious that the monsters Crosswise has captured are Transformers, the show first renders the ancient Decepticons as swirling masses of purple energy that resemble the shapes of classical monsters. In Galaxy Force, once everyone understands what they really are... they just... stop being purple swirls, and are suddenly robots now, with no explanation for the drastic shift in appearance. Cybertron, in its usual attempt to try and be logical about the stuff Galaxy Force tends to handwave, adds some dialogue to explain that the swirly purple forms are just the sparks of these Decepticons, and that they are "assuming their true Decepti-forms" when they become robotic.
- The government agent, Colonel Franklin, threatens his subordinates with "KP duty" in Cybertron if they reveal any info about the Transformers, whereas in Galaxy Force, the punishment is court-marshalling. Harsh!
- In Galaxy Force, Crumplezone implores the trapped Megatron and crew to come OUT of the metallic sphere in which Starscream has trapped them, while in Cybertron, he begs to be let IN.
Animation or technical errors
- When this episode was first broadcast, Crosswise was referred to with the name "Smokescreen" in dialogue. This gaffe was corrected by the time the episode premiered in Canada, and the corrected version appears on the series' DVD collections.
- Optimus is extremely oversized when he holds onto the 3 kids in zero gravity.
Continuity notes
- In Galaxy Force, Megatron recalls the supposed destruction of the third Cyber Planet Key by the black hole, as seen in "Savage".
- After appearances in "Hidden", "Collapse", "Race" and the previous episode, "Trust", the mysterious government agent who has been observing the Transformers is at last named. He'll be playing a much bigger role in the series from here on in!
- Although the connection is never explicitly drawn, the giant cavity within the Earth seen in this episode is apparently intended to be a callback to Lucy Suzuki's talk of the Hollow Earth theory back in "Ice", revealing that it's not quite true, but not entirely wrong either.
- Just as in "Champion", the insertion of a Cyber Planet Key into the Omega Lock sends the Autobots to the North Pole.
- The plot thread of Starscream's duplicate Planet Map comes to a head this episode. The duplicate was created at some point before "Speed", but it wasn't clear until "Savage" that he had kept the original, and given Megatron a tampered copy.
Transformers references
- Starscream threatens to send Optimus Prime to "meet the Allspark", one of the Unicron Trilogy's sparing references to the concept.
- The idea of Autobots sealing away Decepticons during the time of early humans and becoming the basis for modern legends of monsters has been used before.
- In the Galaxy Force dialogue, Bud refers to the various Decepticon "monsters" as O-parts.
Real-world references
- Franklin threatens to put any disobedient soldiers on "KP duty".
- Images of legends, mysteries and monsters that swirl around Bud as he deduces the truth behind the ancient Decepticons include the Loch Ness Monster, a crystal skull, a disputed pre-Columbian artifact and a... guy in a top hat and cape. Jack the Ripper? Spring-Heeled Jack?
- Crosswise possibly references The Three Stooges when he calls Starscream a "wise bot, eh?"
Trivia
- Ironically, Crosswise is indirectly responsible for the release of the Ancient Decepticons. In his haste to check to see if his Decepticon prisoners are still sealed away, he attracts Starscream's attention, leading the treacherous jet to discover-and destroy-the seal. How's that for a backfire?
- None of the ancient Decepticons seem to be capable of properly vocalizing. Possibly due to their throwaway role as generics.
Home video releases
- DVD
2005 — Transformers: Galaxy Force — Vol. 06 (Victor Entertainment) — Japanese audio only.
2008 — Transformers: Cybertron — The Ultimate Collection (Paramount)
2014 — Transformers: Cybertron — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)