Carnage in C-Minor

Hey what is that awful noise? Okay let me straighten him out!

Several Autobots and Decepticons find themselves battling over a planet whose civilization completely revolves around music, and whose inhabitants are capable of using sound as a powerful weapon.

Japanese title: "The Challenge to the Planet of Music"

Detailed synopsis

Don we now our gay apparel...

Eurhythma, a planet whose culture is based entirely on music, is threatened by a comet. Zebop Skandana joins fellow Eurythmans Allegra and Basso Profundo to use their combined harmonic weapon to destroy the comet, inadvertently shooting down a number of Autobots and Decepticons.

After Galvatron and Soundwave collapse a bridge on Ultra Magnus, Blaster and Broadside, Zebop joins a number of other citizens to revive the Autobots. He then leads them to Allegra's retreat, where they find that Galvatron has beaten them there and swayed Allegra to their side. When Soundwave uses Allegra's third of the harmony against them, Zebop counters with his own third, which Soundwave then records and combines with Allegra's, plunging Zebop and the Autobots into a chasm. As the Autobots pull themselves up, Galvatron turns on Allegra, prompting Zebop to run onto the battlefield to save her. While he is successful, he is accidentally crushed by Blaster and Soundwave in the process, but is harmonically revived by a tearful Allegra soon after.

Returning to the capital city, the Autobots discover the fallen forms of Perceptor and the Protectobots, who Zebop, Allegra, and Basso heal. The three returned to Earth with the Autobots, where Galvatron and Soundwave were overwhelming Metroplex with the stolen harmony. The trio of aliens countered it with anti-sound, giving Blaster enough time to erase the harmony from Soundwave's tapes (by manually pushing his crotch buttons). With the battle concluded, Zebop returns to his world with the others, vowing to live in harmony.

Stats

Written by: Buzz Dixon

Quotes

You! Because of you, I got blasted out of space. DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THAT DID TO MY PAINT JOB?!

--Broadside, right before he sucker punches Galvatron

"I don't wanna see your ugly face, just the button that says ERASE!"
"My tapes! You've erased my tapes!"

-- Blaster destroys Soundwave's tapes

"From now on, you'll have to learn to live in "harmony".

-- 'Ultra Magnus to the Eurythmians. Hypocritical, as his race has been fighting for the last nine million years.

Other notes

• Amusingly, Broadside transforms into his boat form to smash several of the Decepticons at the beginning of the episode. Makes you wonder if Hasbro was getting really desperate here.

Animation and/or technical glitches

Carnage in C-Minor is infamous among the fandom for the sheer number of animation errors in this episode. Among the more promient include the following:

• Throughout the entire episode, Broadside is drawn with a previously discarded character model.
• Devastator is the exact same size as Soundwave during the start of the first battle.
• While the Autobots are shooting at the meteor, they are so badly drawn that they appear to have only one leg, a left arm starting from the elbow and enormous heads...and Superion is tiny.
• Blaster, Ultra Magnus and Zebop are shown to hang onto Broadside while he flies around. Sometimes, the shots makes them sometimes tiny or not hanging onto Broadside at all. (Even more odd is why Zebop simply can't sit in his cockpit.)
• Soundwave points out that Zebop is standing in the distance, while Galvatron says that "he probably is with the Autobots". Yet, Ultra Magnus is standing right next to him. Lesson: Ultra Magnus can't take cover and Galvatron's optics are terrible.
• When Blaster is explaining that they use the harmony even for healing, Ultra Magnus is the one mouthing those words.
• When the Protectobots are combined as Defensor, Hotspot (the main body) is fighting alongside his combined self! This could be one of those infamous "decoy" Transformers...but probably not.
• In one scene, a cel-layering error causes Blaster to appear very tiny compared to Soundwave.
• On the music-based world of Eurhythma, Ultra Magnus dispatches Hook and Scrapper—by picking them each up in one hand and bashing them together. Magnus is supposed to be big, but not that big.
• And there are more than meets the eyes. This is what you get when you combine a season's worth of bloopers into 1 episode. Seriously, how much time do you have?

• 
  "Hail Ceasar!"
  "Hail Thethar."
• 
  We'll take revenge by merging into Devastator.
• 
  Hey! Part of me, get back in me!
• 
  For some reason, I feel less evil then two seconds ago.
• 
  It's his little shoulder-angel.

Continuity errors

Maybe it's not Bonecrusher, but a rare cameo by Load Hauler?

• In one infamous scene, Brawn and Huffer (who should also be dead) show up alive and well. And it seems Bonecrusher has switched sides, as he's helping them shoot at the giant Decepticon rocket engine he'd just helped build!

• To add insult to injury, Devastator is shooting at the Autobots, before the Constructicons form Devastator.

• Soundwave travels with Galvatron to find the source of the harmony. However, when the scene returns to the battle outside the city, Soundwave is with the other Decepticons at the same time.

Transformers references

• References

Real-world references

• The Eurythman characters' names are all music-related puns.
• Eurythma was possibly named after the popular 80s band The Eurythmics.

Miscellaneous trivia

• "Carnage in C-Minor" is widely regarded by fans as the worst episode of all Transformers series, but this is seemingly due to the sheer volume of animation errors, and the glaringly obvious nature of many of the individual errors. However, the actual plot is certainly not the weakest to grace the cartoon series, and its "continuity errors" have little to nothing to do with the script itself... certainly not to the level of, say, "B.O.T.".

• That said, there is plenty of inanity to be found in the story too. For instance: Despite the aliens' dialog being in perfectly understandable English (or Galactic Standard or whatever), because they say everything in a sing-song rhythm, apparently none of the Transformers except Blaster and Soundwave can understand them, and the two tape decks spend a large (and annoying) amount of time translating Eurythman to "non-sing-song" for everyone else.

• Apparently, a single blast from Perceptor's lightning cannon can cause Devastator to disassemble. And Grimlock believes that intellectuals are weak.

• This was one of several episodes subjected to the MSTF treatment at BotCon 1999.

Keywords

(separate by commas and link each one so a page can be created for it if it does not already exist)

Music

External links

• IMDb's page for this episode

From Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki, a Wikia wiki.