Forbidden Fruit

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"Forbidden Fruit"
Season	1
No. in season	5
Production company	Mainframe Entertainment
Airdate	October 16, 1999
Written by	Steven Melching
Directed by	Trenton Carlson
Animation studio	Mainframe Entertainment
Continuity	Beast Wars continuity

A mysterious bat offers a strange new energy supply, but is it a blessing or a curse?

Synopsis

In the depths of Cybertron, Blackarachnia and Cheetor spar in their beast modes. They are being mentored by Optimus Primal, who is trying to train them to find their still point in the heat of battle. Cheetor objects to this new, "mystical" Optimus and proclaims that he trusts his instincts. All this unfolds while they are watched by an unfamiliar set of eyes. But while Cheetor and Blackarachnia have moved on to the next level of training, Rattrap is still struggling with the basics of his technorganic body, unsuccessfully trying to transform. Optimus Primal tells Rattrap to have patience and just let it happen. Frustrated and disheartened, Rattrap mouths off to Primal about their inability to find the missing Rhinox and Silverbolt.

Charlton Heston in a role that will surprise you!

Hurt, Optimus Primal leaves Rattrap, while the other two scold him for his remarks. Primal notices something up above and investigates. It's a bat, and Primal is shocked at the presence of organic life on Cybertron. Before he can examine it further, he is hit with a sonic pulse, and the creature flaps away. The Maximals pursue the bat through an abandoned city before Cheetor transforms and catches the creature. As Cheetor holds the bat down, it speaks! Not only that, he claims to be a Maximal.

Does this come Energon-flavored?

But before the Maximals can ask any more questions, Jetstorm and his Aero Drones appear and attack the Maximals. Optimus Primal, Cheetor, and Blackarachnia transform into combat modes, while Rattrap, still unable to transform, hides. After a short clash, the Maximals run away, followed by the Vehicons. Jetstorm fires a homing mine after the Maximals, but the bat sends it off-course with a sonic blast. While the Maximals take cover, the mine takes out the drones, and the disoriented survivors turn on each other. Jetstorm retreats, but vows to return.

The creature leads the Maximals back to his hideout as Optimus Primal recounts the events that led to their reformatting at the hands of the Oracle. The bat tells them that he was an ordinary Maximal until a transformation virus attacked Cybertropolis, with the survivors dispatched by legions of Vehicons. While outrunning a Tank Drone, he fell down a deep pit and awoke as a bat. When the Maximals reach their destination, Primal is amazed at the bat's temporary home... an organic tree, far below the surface of Cybertron!

I'm not really digging this new remake of King Kong.

The creature explains that he has been eating from the tree since his transformation and offers its fruit to the others. While three of them accept, Cheetor is suspicious of the creature. Optimus Primal tries the fruit, claiming that it may help their organic components, but Cheetor retorts that he only processes energon. While the others chow down, Cheetor interrogates the bat and demands answers, demanding to know if the newcomer's an agent for Megatron. The bat denies the claims, snapping that Megatron took everything he loved away from him. As they return to the others, the three Maximals are unresponsive, behaving like animals.

Amidst the chaos, Jetstorm reappears and attacks. Cheetor attempts to snap the others out of their beast mentality and get them to transform. They ignore him, and he and the bat attempt to take the food away from the increasingly feral Maximals. Out of desperation, Cheetor transforms and destroys the tree despite the bat's protests. The affected Maximals return to their old selves, and they transform and fight... but they're not quick enough to prevent the bat from taking a blast to the chest from Jetstorm. Optimus realizes that the only way to save him is to reformat the Maximal, and although Cheetor protests that he's not strong enough, Optimus insists that he won't lose yet another Maximal.

And the fandom reception went from bad to worse.

A white glow engulfs the injured Maximal, and a technorganic bat emerges. Transforming into his new robot mode, he takes out the Aero Drones with a sonic blast, then drain's Jetstorm's energy until the general crashes. The Maximals are triumphant, but Optimus is left severely weakened. Even so, he's proud of Cheetor: he was right to destroy the tree, as its purely organic nature had imbalanced their technorganic bodies. While he recuperates, he appoints Cheetor as the temporary leader of the Maximals. With Optimus Primal on a web-stretcher, the Maximals prepare to move out. They're joined by the bat, who's decided to travel with them, and finally introduces himself as Nightscream.

But as they leave, a fruit from the organic tree puts down roots into what appears to be organic soil!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Maximals	Vehicons
Blackarachnia (1) Cheetor (2) Optimus Primal (3) Nightscream (4) Rattrap (5)	Jetstorm (6) Aero Drones (7)

Quotes

"How do you expect to master your new body if you keep turning your back on the Matrix, the source of our very sparks."
"I hate to disappoint you, Big Bot, but, (grunts) in the heat of the battle, I have to follow my instincts, not blind faith."

—Optimus preaches it, but Cheetor opposes it.

"But that's impossible. How can it live down here?"
"Eh, even with wings, a rat's a rat. And we're survivors."

—Blackarachnia and Rattrap spot a bat.

"Well, well, well. Looks like what we have here is an unlawful assembly. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you boys downtown—in pieces!"

—Jetstorm

"That's it! I'm through working with a bunch of empty-headed tin-plated-" [is interrupted by Maximals] "Ganging up on me? Let's see how tough you are when I bring a whole battalion back!"

—Jetstorm suffers from ADD.

"I was trying to remember how to transform. I thought I could learn by watching him. Like that would ever happen."
"Like that would ever happen."

—Nightscream doesn't have a high opinion of Rattrap (or anyone else, actually).

"Sit! Eat! Get strong!"

—Optimus Primal, nutritional specialist on fruit

Cheetor: (roars)
Nightscream: Whoa, easy! I'm worried about your buddies too. I didn't know the fruit was gonna affect them like that.
Cheetor: (scoffs) Like I'm supposed to believe that. This whole thing stinks of Megatron.
Nightscream: Watch it! Megatron destroyed everything and everyone I ever cared about! Don't you EVER accuse me of--
Cheetor: Shh!

—Cheetor and Nightscream have an argument

Notes

Animation and technical errors

• When the Maximals escape into the underground and knock out a large metal cover blocking the tunnel, one of the bolts fallen on the ground clips through the thick metal plate as it drops down on top of it.
• Due to a layering error, Optimus overlaps Rattrap as the Maximals walk toward Nightscream's chamber, even though Optimus is farther away from view.
• When Cheetor shows his concerned face to Optimus, his entire body is blocky and of lower resolution.
• Optimus' right gorilla arm painfully twists around when he sits down to eat.
• In some shots, when Cheetor turns his head to the side in beast mode, his neck clips through the "collar" around it.
• When Nightscream first transforms, his beast mode noticeably separates from him, shrinks, and disappears into the space between his legs. Granted, all of the show's transformations are cheaty and unfeasible, but at least they normally make it look like the characters remain in one piece.
  • When he's done transforming, a bright blue spark of sorts remains floating between his legs.
• The destruction of the tree is... really weird. The entire tree just disappears, like a holographic illusion. This might be a storytelling conceit in order to further accentuate its mysterious nature, or it might have just been easier to animate.

Continuity errors

• Although Optimus is teaching the Maximals to transform while in combat, they've been doing it in the past without too much trouble.
• While all the Maximals were affected by the same transformation virus, Nightscream doesn't show any of the same symptoms that the four Maximals displayed in "The Reformatting". Optimus Primal and company were shown to be in clear physical pain as a result of the virus, sparking and glitching, while Nightscream is just unable to transform. It may be that the fruit was somehow responsible for staving off the nastier effects, but nothing is made clear.
• Nightscream manages to transform into his new robot mode seconds after his reformatting, which throws a wrench into Primal's assertion that learning to transform is a gradual process. (This development is lampshaded by Rattrap, who mumbles "you've gotta be kiddin' me!" as he watches.) That said, Nightscream has been spying on Optimus Primal's training sessions for a while, so maybe he's been teaching himself? Later Maximals will also transform without much difficulty, so maybe the original four Maximals are just really stupid when it comes to transforming.

Continuity notes

• Optimus makes a point of reminding Rattrap that "there are no shortcuts" when it comes to mastering technorganic transformation, regarding his use of a transformation enhancer in "Mercenary Pursuits".
• Rattrap brings up Rhinox and Silverbolt, who are still MIA.
• Optimus describes the fruit as "de-evolving" their technorganic bodies, providing some foreshadowing about the Oracle's ultimate mission.
• It is at the end of this episode that the Aero Drones are first referred to by name.
• Gadgets and powers:
  • Jetstorm can deploy a homing mine from underneath his vehicle mode cockpit.
  • Rattrap's toolkit includes a tail-mounted flashlight.
  • He later stores one of the fruits in said toolkit without much trouble.

Transformers references

Mainframe's compensation for Soundwave's survival in the movie.

• Optimus Primal describes the Oracle as an interface with the Matrix itself.
• During his flashback, Nightscream is seen hiding behind a Transformer that resembles Soundwave.

Real-world references

• The episode's title, is of course, a reference to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve.
• As the Maximals hold down Nightscream, he looks at Optimus and cries, "Get your stinking paws off me, you big, dirty ape!", semi-quoting the famous line from the Charlton Heston film Planet of the Apes.
• Jetstorm refers to Nightscream as "Bat Boy", a fictional "character" from the infamous Weekly World News.
• As he returns, Jetstorm triumphantly gloats "Seek, and ye shall find", a line from the Bible.

Trivia

• This episode was riffed on in MSTF fashion at BotCon 2000. It is one of two Beast Machines episodes to get the MSTF treatment, the other being "A Wolf in the Fold".
• The real message of this episode is that fruit is bad for you. Next time you get a craving, why not try a nice healthy sausage instead?

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "Le Fruit Défendu" ("The Forbidden Fruit")

German

• Title: "Nachtgestalten" ("Creatures of the Night")
• Original airdate: December 6, 2000

Italian

• Title: "Albero della vita" ("Tree of life")

• Cheetor says that they "fuel up on energy" instead of energon.
• Cheetor's line: «Someone around here has to be responsible» becomes: «There must be a culprit around here». This is possibly caused by the fact that the Italian word for "responsible" ("responsabile") can also mean "culprit" in some instances.

Japanese

• Title: "Kindan no Kajitsu" (禁断の果実, "The Forbidden Fruit")
• Original airdate: November 20, 2004

Mandarin

• Title: "Jìn'guǒ " (禁果, "Forbidden Fruit")

Polish

• Title: "Zakazany Owoc" ("Forbidden Fruit")

Brazilian Portuguese

• Title: "Fruto Proibido" ("Forbidden Fruit")

Spanish

• Title: "El Fruto Prohibido" ("The Forbidden Fruit")

Home video releases

All releases listed are in English audio unless otherwise noted.

DVD

2004 — Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Returns — Volume 2 (Geneon Entertainment) — Japanese audio only.
2006 — Beast Machines: Transformers — The Complete Series (Rhinomation)
2014 — Transformers: Beast Machines — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Season One: Volume One (Sony)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Season One: Volume One — Reformatting (Sony)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Complete Season One (Sony)
2009 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Intégrale Saison 1 (Sony) — French audio only.