Coming of the Fuzors (Part 2)

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Let the battle begin!
"Coming of the Fuzors" (Part 2)
Season	2
No. in season	3
Production company	Mainframe Entertainment
Airdate	November 9, 1997
Written by	Bob Forward
Directed by	Cal Shumiatcher
Animation studio	Mainframe Entertainment
Continuity	Beast Wars continuity
Watch this episode on YouTube

The outnumbered Maximals must defend their base from a Predacon assault while Rhinox takes a dangerous journey.

Synopsis

Powerlinxing gone horribly wrong

Dinobot, Rattrap, and Cheetor attempt to hold off six Predacons some distance from their base, to allow Rhinox to complete his mission to travel through the Matrix. When Megatron orders them to take no survivors, Silverbolt protests, saying they should let the Maximals surrender, only to be struck by the irate Predacon commander. When Silverbolt is perplexed by their resistance, Megatron realizes that they are keeping them from their base. He orders Waspinator and Silverbolt to head to the Axalon. Cheetor takes to the air, and Rattrap converts to vehicle mode, ordering Dinobot to hop on and provide cover fire (disgusting the former Predacon).

Tarantulas, however, is using the psychic link to force Blackarachnia to search for information on the Golden Disks. While she searches through the files, she discovers something of importance, but refuses to show Tarantulas. When Tarantulas is rendered unconscious by a boulder, Blackarachnia downloads the information, then destroys the computer, claiming that it was boobytrapped.

No organic lifeforms were harmed in the making of this episode. Several Cybertronian lifeforms were.

Reaching the Axalon, Silverbolt is shot down by the autoguns, and captured by the Maximals. Dinobot prepares to destroy him, but Rattrap and Cheetor prevent him, instead taking him in to repair him. Rhinox, who has finished, tells the Maximals they must hold the Predacons off for a little while longer. Inside the Axalon, a charge hits the device Rhinox was connected to, heading to a stasis pod with a blank protoform. Outside, the shields fail under the fire, and the Maximals engage—to discover that they are out of ammo. The Predacons seriously injure the Maximals.

"Check out my new pec-implants. I only had to sell my old body to get 'em."

Having waited a long time for their victory, the Predacons approach, prepared to deliver the killing blow. Before they can finish the Maximals off, there is an explosion in the hull of the Axalon. When the smoke clears, the Maximals and Predacons alike are shocked to see the cause of the explosion—Optimus Primal. The Predacons attempt to destroy him, but Primal, now with his own Transmetal body, causes the Predacons to scatter. Primal takes to the air, dispatching the rest of the Predacons. Megatron attempts to kill Primal, but Silverbolt knocks Megatron off a cliff, defecting to the Maximals.

After the battle and some repairs, Primal inquires as to how the new bodies do with absorbing energon. Rhinox remarks that all the energon within the area either detonated or was converted to Energon cubes, so it isn't really a problem right now. They'll have to wait for Tigatron and Airazor's report on the rest of the planet. In the meantime, Primal remarks that he has to put his house in order, such as get to know the new additions, and remove Rattrap's personal effects from his quarters.

She's got a twinkle in her eye.

At the Predacon base, Blackarachnia tells Megatron that Dinobot stole the Disks and destroyed the computers. Megatron and Tarantulas ask if anything from the back ups can be recovered, and when Blackarachnia reveals that it was totally destroyed, Megatron smashes Tarantulas into the wall in rage. Megatron then declares that the Beast Wars have entered a new phase, while, unseen, binary code flashes across Blackarachnia's eyes.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Maximals	Predacons
Cheetor (4) Dinobot (5) Rattrap (6) Silverbolt (8) Rhinox (10) Optimus Primal (12)	Tarantulas (1) Megatron (2) Inferno (3) Quickstrike (7) Waspinator (9) Blackarachnia (11)

Quotes

"Prepare for a full attack!"
"What? We outnumber them more than two to one."
"Yes..."
"We have twice their firepower."
"Yes..."
"We should give them a chance to surrender!"
"Mmm...no." [bashes him aside]

—Megatron and Silverbolt have a tactical disagreement.

"Uhm, does it have to be quick? Cause after we cripple 'em, I'd kinda like to enjoy their sufferin' for a while.
"I like how you think Quickstrike, but business before pleasure."

—Quickstrike and Megatron being on the same page.

"To think, that a warrior must become a... a rat patrol."

—Dinobot on having to ride Rattrap.

"Eh, we would've been here sooner if Dinobutt wasn't such a porker."
"The vilest ride of my life!"

—Rattrap and Dinobot

"Bahhh! Maximal sentiment! Oh, I must've been defective to defect."

—Dinobot

"Am I back?"
"Well, the machine said so. Oh, but you had me worried for a second. Where'd ya go, anyway?"
"Where all are one."
"Oh, where all are– what?!"

—Rhinox and Rattrap

"Comes... the dawn."
"And...[Dinobot's arm falls off]...our doom."

—Rhinox and Dinobot

"Move out, Predacons; we've waited a long time for this. Yeeeess...let us be close enough to enjoy it."

—Megatron prepares to finish the Maximals in the most overly dramatic way possible: point-blank execution.

"Well, that's just prime!"

—First line of the new Transmetal Optimus Primal.

(Silverbolt knocks Megatron off a cliff)
"Consider that my resignation from the Predacons, Megatron! (to Primal) I know now that my place was always with the Maximals. May I join you?"
"Well...I like your résumé."

—Silverbolt and Optimus Primal

Notes

Script timeline

• First draft: 1st July 1997
• Second draft: 10th July 1997
• Finalised: 5th August 1997
• As Air: 5th November 1997

Animation and technical errors

• The error with Rhinox's hands being mostly brown instead of green and black from the previous episode is still evident here, though it gets fixed by the end.
• The crack in Inferno's chest disappears in the episode's second half.
• Dinobot's ammunition belt often clips into various parts of his body.
• Could have been done on purpose, but Inferno spends the entire episode with his spinning abdomen blades open even when he's on the ground.
• When Megatron opens fire on the Maximals the second time in this episode, his middle, ring, and pinky "fingers" are shown clipping through his cannon.
• In the same shot, Inferno appears rather small compared to his "Queen", and when Megatron points his weapon straight forward, it still appears behind Inferno. Most likely a layering error, with Inferno having been meant to be placed farther back.
• When Waspinator arrives and transforms, his insect-mode legs are sticking out of his torso.
• Immediately after this, just as Silverbolt stops the Preds from opening fire, they're all standing in a neat row despite being spread apart just a second before.
• Waspinator is missing the mandibles from his robot head right after Silverbolt exclaims "These Maximals are fools!"
• While swooping over the Maximal trio for the second time, both Waspinator and Silverbolt lack textures almost entirely, having only flat colors with no details, stripes, fur and feather details or even pupils. Waspinator's wings do have their textures at least.
• In the following shot, there is a strange, static, transparent reddish outline around Rattrap that matches his shape exactly for a single frame as he points at Cheetor.
• As Rattrap kicks Cheetor into the air, the wheel/rat-leg kibble near his waist is not attached to him, just floating in place.
• After Cheetor slams into Waspinator, there is already a shape, perhaps an impact crater, visible on the ground right where Waspinator crash-lands long before he actually falls down there.
• For a couple frames, a gap between Dinobot's head and neck is visible as he jerks around while riding on Rattrap's back.
• While in pursuit of Rattrap and Dinobot, Megatron transforms from his beast mode in mid-flight and continues to attack from the air, yet his VTOL engines are inactive on his back rather than deployed. In the same scene, his tail cannon is on the wrong arm.
• Could be a stylistic choice, but the normally red colored motion blur textures of Inferno's spinning abdomen blades turn grey-white in this episode, to match the grey color of their inside rather than the red outer shell.
• When Megatron and Inferno collide midair, Megatron's cannon first clips through Inferno, then the insect leg kibble of the latter clips through the blades on his abdomen. Also, while they're comically suspended in the air, the motion blur effects are still plainly evident on Inferno's spinning blades despite the contraption not moving.
• As Tarantulas expresses his frustration after hearing from Blackarachnia that Megatron's datatrax on the Golden Disks were destroyed, the eyes on his chest and the spots on the front of his shoulders are colored black instead of green.
• As Rattrap is hanging off the device he pulls Rhinox out of, his left pectoral is all messed up. The com-link is missing and it appears almost inside out. The error lasts for the full shot too.
• While Rattrap and Rhinox react to the impending attack, the latter's shoulder is clipping into the former's chest. As well, Rattrap's rat head kibble on his left shoulder is clipping into his upper arm.
• As the Preds press their attack against the Axalon's shield, Waspinator's weapon blasts don't entirely line up with the motion of his hand.
• Before the Maximals begin getting hammered by the Preds, Rhinox is on top of Rattrap, with him either clipping through Rattrap's rear wheel, or the wheel has no interior.
• When the Preds move closer for the kill, Rhinox's fingers are clipping into the ground in the beginning of the shot. There's also a weird bright line floating in the air between him and Dinobot.
• Waspinator's right forearm is twisted around when he reacts to Optimus' appearance (note the position of the insect leg kibble).
• Inferno is partially sunken into the ground as he flees from Primal.
• As he gets up after ducking from Inferno's blast, some piston segments on Optimus' shoulders are jutting outward.
• When Rhinox checks himself upon emerging from the CR chamber, his hands clip into his chest.
• Optimus' right arm clips into his right knee as Rhinox explains the Energon situation.
• The motorcycle wheel on Tarantulas' abdomen is situated slightly left of its normal position as he crawls along the wall in the last scene.
• Tarantulas' mouth movements don't line up to his "Yes. Nothing at all?" line.
• Blackarachnia cuts off a remaining piece of junked machinery from its wires. Then her spider leg kibble go behind the wires, revealing them to be attached to nothing, merely floating in the air.

Continuity errors

• Tarantulas and Waspinator arrive again mid-battle, despite having already arrived at the end of the previous episode.
  • Tarantulas and Waspinator are also seen at the very beginning when the Predacons first open fire, despite only arriving (again) later. Megatron's line "Excellent! Reinforcements have arrived" only makes the continuity error all the more glaring.
• Silverbolt claims that the Predacons outnumber the Maximals "more than two to one". As there are only six Predacons present, the odds are exactly two to one.
• Megatron calls Silverbolt a "Fuzor" without any prior indication that the term was even a thing, or that Megatron even knew of it beforehand.
• Waspinator and Silverbolt take off for the Maximal base twice, clearly going over the Maximals' heads a second time after the commercial break; the Maximals then reassert the danger of the situation in different phrasing than before. Presumably such a flagrant "error" is a sly stylistic reference to older cartoons which would often repeat actions between acts and episodes, sometimes in contradictory ways.
• Funny things happen with ammunition:
  • Dinobot says his weapon is depleted, despite clearly having ammunition bandoleers crisscrossed over his torso. The weapon gets fired more times before the episode ends, anyway.
  • The Predacons have a seemingly limitless amount of ammunition, while the Maximals exhaust their supply in a questionably short period. Rhinox in particular should have fully loaded weapons when he enters the fight. This was almost certainly an intentional choice by the writers, to fit the episode's thematic homage to spaghetti western serials.
• An earlier script revision called for the elevator into the Maximal base to be destroyed during the fight, giving Primal a more practical reason to blow a hole in the side of his own base. Oh well, maybe the big guy was in a hurry.
• Also, how can Cheetor's laser weapon even run out of ammo? (Unless he was just out of energy.)

Continuity notes

• Rattrap has filled Optimus's quarters with his things, despite the latter's warning not to do so in "Other Voices".
• Rhinox reports that all the unstable Energon in the area was either destroyed or converted to stable Energon cubes by the quantum surge, negating the threat of energon buildup. The Maximals are waiting for a report from Tigatron and Airazor regarding the status of the rest of the planet regarding unstable Energon. Tigatron and Airazor would be abducted by aliens in "Other Visits (Part 1)" before being able to file that report.
• Gadgets and powers:
  • Because the Transmetal toys didn't come with separate guns, the animators had to come up with creative solutions. This episode sees most of the Transmetallized characters use their "weapons" in one way or another.
  • Cheetor's hands can combine to form his beast mode head, with the blasts emanating from its mouth.
  • Optimus Primal's back armor can detach and flip around to form a kind of machine-gun harness.

Transformers references

How many Starscreams are there on this planet, anyway?

• While Blackarachnia is searching through Megatron's stuff, a gray model of Starscream's head is in the pile. (It's too small to be the real thing, given that Beast Warriors are shown later in the series to be much smaller than Generation 1 characters.)
• Other items in the pile include a model Supermarine Spitfire, a model helicopter, a number of books, the Holy Grail, three identical spiky planets, a model rocket, a pocket-watch, and a rubber ducky.
• During one of Rhinox's trips through the Matrix, near the end of the episode, the Autobot Matrix of Leadership is seen floating.
• When Rattrap asks where Rhinox went, he describes the Matrix as "where all are one".

Real-world references

• The Rat Patrol was a 1960s TV show about a group of Allied soldiers fighting Rommel's Afrika Corps on the North African front during World War II.
• This episode continues the Spaghetti Western film references, especially when Optimus fights Inferno.
• After Rattrap throws a rock in the air as an example of what would happen if they moved away from the cover of the boulder, it's blasted into a tiny pebble and hits the ground. All three Maximals' "eyes" then pop out of their heads towards the rock in the fashion of the eyeball gag in classic Tex Avery cartoons.

Trivia

• The original title for this episode was "Recycled Steel", but was changed to avoid giving away any hint of Optimus's return.
• Blackarachnia's theft of the Golden Disk data would have consequences carrying through the remainder of the series.
• Though neither admits it, it seems likely that both Tarantulas and Megatron see through Blackarachnia's sleight-of-hand with the backup data tracks. Blackarachnia tells Megatron that the computer was destroyed by Dinobot... after telling Tarantulas that it was destroyed because it was booby trapped. Tarantulas says nothing to contradict this lie to Megatron, and later interrogates her when the chance presents itself in "Bad Spark". Megatron likewise guesses the truth and attempts to strong-arm the data from her in "The Agenda (Part III)".
• There were plans to have Inferno be a reborn version of Megatron, but those plans obviously never came to be. This abandoned plot was hinted when the two flyers crash into one another, and recover only to find their heads on the wrong bodies.
• As of the end of this episode, four of the eight members of Primal's team have spent time as Predacons, one way or another. Dinobot was originally a Predacon, but left in the first episode, Rattrap briefly defected in "Double Jeopardy" as part of an infiltration, Rhinox was forcibly converted (and subsequently restored) in "Dark Designs", and Silverbolt was duped into joining Megatron's side in the previous episode.
• In the Canadian broadcasts of this episode Tarantulas calls Blackarachnia "Widow" rather than "Witch".
• After the Maximals run out of ammo and the Predacons launch a full gunfire barrage, Dinobot stands up roaring at them, only to get shot in the crotch by Waspinator (You can hear his weapon go off right beforehand), bending over slightly and groaning from the pain.
• At the episode's end, Megatron activates his beast mode's roller skates while in robot mode, delivering his final monologue while skating around the Darksyde, before transforming into his beast mode and backwards skating into the darkness. It's rather goofy, to say the least.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "Nouveaux Arrivants - 2^e partie" ("New Arrivals - 2nd Part")

• Title: "Fuzors 2"

Italian

• Title: "Lo sbarco - Parte 2" ("The Landing - Part 2")

• The word "record" is weirdly left in English instead of being translated.
• When the Predacons appear during sunrise (aka: look at the image at the beginning of this page), in English all the characters are silent, while in Italian Rattrap says: «Look! They look like the Magnificent Five!», making a reference to the western movie The Magnificent Seven.

Japanese

• Title: "Yomigaere Convoy" (よみがえれコンボイ, "Revive, Convoy")
• Original airdate: October 20 1999

• The opening firefight is hilarious, as a running gag in the Japanese dub sees all characters shout meaningless noises whenever they fire their weapons. With all the rapid cuts, it's just a bunch of characters manically screaming gibberish at each other.
• Likewise hilarious, Silverbolt's habit of screaming English language phrases comes into play when Primal is resurrected and goes lumbering through the Axalon. When Silverbolt awakens and sees Primal, he screams a ridiculous-sounding "WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?"
• In a genuinely funny bit of adlibbing, as Silverbolt kicks Megatron off the cliff, Megatron screams, "What is thiiiis!?" Silverbolt then calls down to him, "I don't want to be a Predacon anymore!" Megatron courteously replies as he plummets, "Oh, I seeeeeee!" Then, after Silverbolt tells Primal that he wants to join the Maximals, Megatron screams, "How long have I been falliiiiiiiing?"

Mandarin

• Title: "Xīngxīng Chóngshēng " (猩猩重生, "Gorilla Reborn")

Malaysian

• Title: "Fuzor Baru 2" (New Fuzors Part 2)

Portuguese

• Title: "A Chegada dos Fuzores Parte 2" ("The Coming of the Fuzors Part 2")

Spanish

• Title: "La Llegada de los Fuzors (Parte 2)" ("The Coming of the Fuzors (Part 2)")

• Title: "Los Recién Llegados Segunda Parte" ("The Newcomers Second Part")

Home video releases

All releases listed are in English audio unless otherwise noted.

VHS

1998 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Series 2 / Volume 1 (Siren Entertainment)
1998 — Beast Wars — Optimus Lives! (Alliance Atlantis)
1998 — Robots-Bêtes — L'Empreinte D'Optimus (Alliance Atlantis) — French audio only.
1999 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers: Metals — Convoy Reborn (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2001 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 5 (Universal)

DVD

2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers: Metals — DVD Box 1 (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
2004 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Second Season (Rhinomation)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Seasons 2 & 3 (Shout! Factory)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2006 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 2 (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers: Beast Wars — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)