Law of the Jungle

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Tigatron finds out that he got Jeph Loeb's Hulk in the mail instead of The Incredible Hercules.
"Law of the Jungle"
Season	1
No. in season	23
Production company	Mainframe Entertainment
Airdate	February 17, 1997
Written by	Mark Leiren-Young
Directed by	John Pozer
Animation studio	Mainframe Entertainment
Continuity	Beast Wars continuity
Watch this episode on YouTube

After an innocent is killed, Tigatron questions his commitment to the Maximal cause.

Synopsis

Frogs eat bugs, snakes kill frogs, birds kill snakes. Things are mercilessly killing each other, as Nature intended. But Nature didn't intend for a giant crazed robotic fire ant to attack Cheetor and Dinobot. As the maniacal Inferno gleefully assaults the two, Terrorsaur brings out some heavy explosives from a mountaintop weapons cache to take out Dinobot, though he ends up knocking Inferno aside as well; Waspinator just hangs back, waiting for the signal that Terrorsaur never bothered to give. After getting blasted a good distance, Terrorsaur signals for Waspinator to attack. Cheetor radios for back-up.

Don't look!

Waspinator plans an attack on Cheetor using another heavy explosive, but overestimates his own strength and can't keep himself aloft when he's holding the weapon. While trying to keep airborne, Waspinator sees a tiger, which he naturally mistakes for Tigatron—who is actually a few feet higher on the mountain, ready to pounce on the Predacon. Tigatron holds on and guides the bug to a crash.

Inferno switches his weapon to a flamethrower to cook the cats. Tigatron transforms and blasts Inferno away, but a stray shot from his own gun passes Inferno and heads towards the mountain where both Snowstalker and the Predacon's weaponry cache are located. The entire supply of explosives detonates in a single blast, and Tigatron's animal friend is caught in the rockslide. Concerned for his companion, Tigatron hurries to unbury the wild tiger, but it's too late.

Tigatron attempts to invent LEGO.

Later, as the sky darkens, Tigatron finishes constructing a marker for Snowstalker's resting place. Surveying the damage to the landscape from the fight, Tigatron resolves to quit being a participant in the Beast Wars. Dinobot argues that destruction is part of the nature of war, but Tigatron remains with his decision to stay out of the Maximal/Predacon conflict. After Tigatron leaves, Dinobot follows him, making it clear he has a sort of plan. Cheetor is relieved when Primal arrives to make sense of the situation.

The three Predacons meet to plan their next move.

Tigatron has awesome nightvision.

In the dark of night, in thick foliage, Dinobot shows Tigatron an example of Nature in action: a tiger killing some gazelles. Slaughter for survival, just like the Maximals battle the Predacons for the survival of peace on Cybertron. Dinobot explains that if Megatron wins, he will spread war to other worlds, ultimately destroying Cybertron in the process. Thus, the Maximals must stop him. It is the legacy of the Autobots and the Decepticons: they will always oppose each other. Tigatron still disagrees, and Dinobot gets aggressive. Luckily, before Dinobot gets carried away, Primal arrives to take his turn at reasoning. Disgusted, Dinobot takes his leave. After he leaves, Primal tells Tigatron that he hates the Beast Wars just as much as him, but that as long as they are on this planet, they have a duty to protect it from the Predacons.

Tigatron does the "windmill" move.

The three Predacons attack Dinobot, overpowering the lone Maximal despite his inhumanly flexible neck. Primal arrives soon after, and the Predacons hope for another victory. Optimus puts up a better fight, knocking away both Terrorsaur and Waspinator with one shot, but Inferno hits Optimus from behind with a strong blast. The two Maximals are too damaged to fight against the killer fire ant, when to their rescue comes Tigatron, who can't sit passively while his friends are close to death.

Inferno's flamethrower ignites a bush, adding to Tigatron's fury. The cat blasts Inferno into the distance, ending the Predacon's campaign. Tigatron extinguishes the fire and is welcomed back to the Beast Wars. Although he still hates the collateral damage, Tigatron now understands he can do more good as a warrior than a bystander.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Maximals	Predacons	Others
Dinobot (1) Cheetor (2) Optimus Primal (6) Tigatron (8)	Inferno (3) Waspinator (4) Terrorsaur (5)	Snowstalker (7)

Quotes

"FIIIIIIIIIIIRE! For the Royalty!"

—Inferno, completely destroying the element of surprise.

"Inferno not wait for your signal!"
"So much for surprise! You take the cat; I'll support Inferno!"
[Waspinator giggles as Terrorsaur flies over to a mountain and picks up another missile]
"Oooh...Waszzpinator waits for signal!"

—Waspinator and Terrorsaur attempt to salvage the situation after Inferno ruins the ambush.

"DO SOMETHING!"
"Terrorsaur has not given signal~!"
"ATTACK, YOU IMBECILE!"
[Waspinator turns to viewer]
"Waszzpinator will engage enemy."

—Terrorsaur and Waspinator discuss strategy.

"The Royalty commands your wreckage, destroyer of my colony!"
"Give my regards to the Pit, Predacon."

—Inferno and Tigatron exchange trash talk.

"Goodbye, Snowstalker. Let your hunting ground shelter you now."

—Tigatron at Snowstalker's grave

"In my lust for battle, I caused the death of an innocent."
"Hrah! There are no innocents. This is war! And this...well, this is simply a battlefield."
"We made it so! And every time we do, this world suffers. But I will have no more of it. From this moment on, I am no longer part of the Beast Wars."

—Tigatron tells Dinobot that he's out of the war.

"That is the law of the jungle! The hunters and the hunted. Scrap or be scrapped."
"Animals hunt to survive!"
"And what do you think war is about?"

—Dinobot tells Tigatron there's no getting out.

"Hrah! Sentiment. The more time I spend with you Maximals, the more I wonder how you survived so long."

—Dinobot protests too much.

"You. Will. Leave. The wild. ALONE!"

—Tigatron, blasting Inferno with every word

Notes

Script timeline

• First draft: 27th September 1996
• Second draft: 2nd October 1996
• Finalised: 16th October 1996
• As Air: 25th March 1997

Animation or technical errors

• The tree the snake in the beginning tries to slither up on is really a stump, or more accurately an only partial model. As the view moves up, it's revealed that its branch and trunk simply cut off, leading to no leaves or further branches. The nearby plants were likely meant to hide this, but this little technical shortcut is still visible for a few frames.
• The motion blur effect on Inferno's spinning abdomen blades appears and disappears rather inconsistently over the course of the episode.
• When Cheetor pulls his gun out, it clips through his head.
• Cheetor's gun is shifted to the side as he fires at Inferno from the cover of a rock. The grip is about an inch away from his fist, making it appear like the gun is simply stuck to the back of his hand.
• Dinobot's eye beams are awfully misaligned when he tries to shoot Inferno in the back. Only one laser beam shows up in most of the shot, but freeze-framing reveals the other is pointing way off to the side. They should be parallel to each other.
• In the same shot, one beam clearly hits Inferno's head, but caused no harm.
• Inferno's feet are twisted backward with his heels pointing up as he lands to confront Dinobot. Then as he flails his gun around, at one point it clips through his knee. It clips through his forearms as well as he spins it around in his hand.
• Both of Dinobot's feet are facing the wrong way when he paces toward Inferno, with the right one also jerking around frantically.
• The motion blur effect of Dinobot's shield also turns on and off in different shots during the sequence.
• When the spinning weapon carrying the miniature charges "lands", it very blatantly sinks and disappears into solid rock.
• At the same time, Inferno's insect abdomen is shrunken to the point that it's barely noticeable.
• Still in the same shot, Inferno's blasts are animated pretty awkwardly. They fly toward Dinobot super slowly while expanding and getting blurrier as they go, then suddenly turn small and crisp as Dinobot's shield repels them away. And instead of dispersing or dissolving, they simply disappear between frames.
• The ensuing explosion sends Dinobot flying with immense speed. Inferno, meanwhile, first gets jerked toward the explosion, then begins flying backwards.
• When Terrorsaur gives Waspinator the signal while being stuck to the cliff face, his fingers remain stuck in the same position for the remainder of the shot despite moving his wings around quite a bit.
• Waspinator isn't moving his mandibles when he finishes his "Waspinator sees good target" line.
• When Inferno begins spewing fire at the cat-bots, the flames on his thrusters are misplaced, coming from around the middle of the apparatus rather than from its tip.
• During the Predacons' talk on the mountain top, a couple of grey segments on Inferno's left upper arm are placed incorrectly, sticking out of the front of his shoulder almost at a 90° angle instead of resting flush against his upper arm on either side.
• Waspinator's stinger remains in a bent position after he, uh, waggles his abdomen around like a puppy-tail.
• At the end of the sequence, the tips of Inferno's jets are poking through their outer shell before he opens them.
• The wild tiger that Dinobot and Tigatron observe looks rather strange: it is mostly black and orange, with very little of the white that should be on its flanks, legs, or face. What faint hints of white it does have are almost fully hidden by the scene's dim lighting.
• The tiger's face also clearly clips through the grass before it lunges.
• When the Predacons transform to attack Dinobot, Terrorsaur's shoulder-cannons end up floating behind his back. Additionally, the tips of Waspinator's insect-mode feet, along with an unidentifiable "blob", are still visibly poking through his robot mode chest.
• Dinobot's sword is in his hand when Optimus helps him up, but when the shot cuts, it's gone.
• Just before Dinobot turns back into beast mode, a tan colored shape that may be part of his foot very briefly pops in and out of view on the bottom of the screen behind him.
• When Tigatron blasts Inferno away, the latter's jet flames are missing.

Continuity errors

• Dinobot says that the Great War began three centuries ago. What he meant to say was that it ended three centuries ago.

Continuity notes

• At the beginning of the episode, Cheetor and Dinobot are searching for more alien sites.
• Snowstalker had previously been seen in the episode "Fallen Comrades". Who's the fallen comrade NOW?
• Inferno calls Tigatron "destroyer of my colony!", a reference to how the tiger-bot ticked him off in his debut episode. Seemingly, Inferno doesn't yet think of the Predacon base as his colony.
  • Earlier in the episode though, he calls other Maximals "food for the Colony"... so does he?
  • Inferno is also just insane.
• Tigatron makes the first reference to The Pit, the equivalent of Cybertronian Hell or Predacon Heaven, depending on who you ask. Fittingly, he makes the comment to Inferno, whose name required earlier references to "The Inferno" to be dropped in favor of "The Pit".
• Gadgets and powers:
  • Inferno wields a strange rotating missile launcher during his initial attack on the Maximals.
  • Inferno possesses some kind of thermal vision system.
  • Tigatron can shoot fire-retardant foam from his gut gun.

Transformers references

• Dinobot name-drops the original Great War, and the Autobots and Decepticons.

Trivia

• According to a 1997 interview with Bob Forward, though credited to Mark Leiren-Young, this episode was almost completely rewritten by Larry DiTillio.
• While Tigatron stands up to Inferno, Dinobot and Optimus Primal appear behind him in their beast modes, mimicking his finger-waggle with a sassy "nuh-uh" head-bob.
• The recording session for this episode was briefly shown in the Beast Wars Transformers "Making Of" Special.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "La Loi de la Jungle" ("The Law of the Jungle")

• Title: "Loi de la Jungle" ("Law of the Jungle")

German

• Title: "Das Gesetz des Dschungels" ("The Law of the Jungle")
• Original airdate: 5 September 1998

• Snowstalker is said to be a male in the dub.

Italian

• Title: "La legge della natura" ("The Law of Nature")

• Snowstalker's name is never pronounced, and she's always referred to as a male.
• Both Inferno and Tigatron are once called by their English names instead of the Italian ones, although Tigatron's is mispronounced.

Japanese

• Title: "Sarabadegozaru Tigatron" (さらばでござるタイガトロン, "Fare Thee Well, Tigatron")
• Original airdate: 4 March 1998

• As a prime example of this dub's relentless pursuit of humor, even in the most inappropriate of circumstances, Snowstalker's death is played for laughs. As Tigatron breaks down crying once he finds his friend's dead body, Dinobot remarks, "Wait... what's he talking about?" Cheetor then comically hushes him.
• Snowstalker is renamed in this episode as "Torajirō" (トラジロー), which also changes her gender to male.
• Dinobot's mentioning the Great War having been started by the Autobots and Decepticons is changed to imply that the current conflict between the Maximals and Predacons is the very same conflict that that has been going on between the Autobots and Decepticons since time immemorial. This is because the distinction between the Autobots/Decepticons and the Maximals/Predacons is less prevalent in the Japanese version, with the Maximals and Autobots both being called "Cybertrons" and the Decepticons and Predacons both called "Destrons". The Great War is also not referred to by name nor as an ancient conflict that has long ended, in order to further treat the two present-day factions as being the same factions as the two ancestral ones.
• After Dinobot leaves Primal and Tigatron behind, as he trudges through the jungle, he sings the same melody he sang to himself in "Victory", using only his verbal tic for lyrics (Daaa daaa danananananaaaa).
• After he shoots Primal out of the sky, Terrorsaur sings a childish song with lyrics that translate to, "Optimus Primal is a gorilla! Optimus Primal falls down!"

Portuguese

• Title: "A Lei da Selva" ("The Law of the Jungle")

Spanish

• Title: "La Ley de la Selva" ("The Law of the Jungle")

Mandarin

• Title: "Zìrán Fǎzé " (自然法则, "The Law of Nature")

Home video releases

All releases listed are in English audio unless otherwise noted.

VHS

1998 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers — Farewell Tigatron (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2001 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Beginning: Vol. 4 (Universal)

Laserdisc

1998 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Predacon Edition (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.

DVD

2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers — DVD Box (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
2003 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete First Season (Rhinomation)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 1 (Shout! Factory)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2005 — Beast Wars — Classic Episodes: Volume 4 — The Predacons Advance! (Alliance Atlantis) — English and French audio.
2005 — Beast Wars — The Complete First Season (Alliance Atlantis) — English and French audio.
2006 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 1 (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers: Beast Wars — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)

External links

Official uploads (Japanese)

• Beast Wars Again re-airings:
  • "Fare Thee Well, Tigatron" on YouTube
  • "Fare Thee Well, Tigatron (Part 2)" on YouTube