Bee in the City

Two Transformers and a human are zapped to another dimension. Fourth-wall-breaking hijinks ensue!

Summary

Professor Sumdac tests a new space-warp teleportation device, the Bi-directional Unified Transit Terminal, in an attempt to transport the Autobots home. His BUTT malfunctions, sending Sari, Optimus and Bumblebee to the city of Axiom Nexus on an alternate version of Cybertron.

There, they are soon confronted by Officer Flareup, who notes that, by their very presence, they have violated the city's rules against no mechs named Prime or Megatron and no cosmic MacGuffins (in this case, Sari's key), rules established to preserve this Cybertron's utter lack of war. She takes them in for "processing", which turns out to be seventeen soul-crushingly boring hours of standing in line and filling out paperwork (or the digital equivalent).

As they finally leave, they encounter the morally ambiguous scientist Shockwave, a Subcommander Third Rank from the Menacing and Foreboding Sciences Division of the Axiom Nexus Military Intelligence Branch. Enforcing his will with a cadre of utterly silent soldiers, he takes Optimus Prime and Sari into custody as potential threats to planetary security, but ignores Bumblebee, reasoning the plucky, yellow, kid-friendly character will be essentially ineffective without a spunky human sidekick. Flareup is dismayed, noting to an indignant Bumblebee that she expected his group to receive no more than a fine and a deportation home, not a military arrest.

At Shockwave's lab, he prepares to experiment on Sari and Prime in some fashion to determine the extent of their potential threat. In particular, he is concerned about the potential effects of Sari's key being present. After confiscating it, he begins examining Rescue Roy—er, Optimus, starting with a routine Matrix check.

Elsewhere in the city, Bumblebee and Flareup meet Beast Wars universe Megatron (or a version of him, at least), who is going by the alias "Joe" to avoid arrest and/or deportation himself. Learning about Sari's key, Megatron is all too eager to gain this MacGuffin and utilize its power for his own nefarious plans. Once he determines that the other two have no idea who or what he is, he asserts that as a "heroic Predacon", he will help them retrieve their friends and the key.

Bumblebee comes up with an initial plan involving a trained chimp marching band, but it predictably fails. Megatron comes up with a plan that will actually work: pretending he and Bumblebee are illegal Primes (Bee-imus Prime and Joe Convoy) being transferred by Flareup.

Once they reach Shockwave's lab, Megatron has Flareup and 'Bee run a distraction so he can knock out the TransTech scientist. Once that is done, Megatron reveals his true name and ambitions. He snatches the key and uses it to bring to life a variety of Shockwave's lab equipment. However, Bumblebee and Sari introduce the new robots to the concept of bureaucracy. Less than thrilled with all the paperwork their new lives will entail just to be part of society, the new robot army turn on Megatron and drag him away. Shockwave provides Prime, Bumblebee and Sari a way home, expediting their paperwork, and he and Flareup agree never to speak of the incident again.

Back home, Sari and her Autobot friends likewise agree never to speak of the incident again. Still, Prime finds the thoughts of a Cybertron without war so inspiring that he feels like bursting into song. Thankfully, the others shout him down first.

Stats

• Written by: Greg Sepelak, Trent Troop
• Directed by: Uh...
• Original presentation: 9:45pm Saturday, April 26th, 2008.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons/Predacons	Humans/Others
Optimus Prime (4) Bumblebee (5) Flareup (6)	Shockwave (7) Megatron (8) TransTech Guard (10)	Narrator (1) Sari Sumdac (2) Isaac Sumdac (3) Drive-thru speaker (9) Newly-created robots (11)

Other notes

• The cast:
  • Tara Strong: Sari Sumdac
  • David Kaye: Optimus Prime, Megatron
  • Bumper Robinson: Bumblebee, Narrator
  • Marty Isenberg: Isaac Sumdac, Drive-Thru, TransTech guard
  • Anastasia Matejka: Flareup
  • Chris Ho: Shockwave
  • Pete Sinclair: Pete Sinclair

Anastasia and Chris were the winners of the BotCon Idol voice acting contest held that weekend. Everyone played the parts of the newly created lab-equipment bots, with Marty Isenberg having their only line in English.

Transformers references

• Bumblebee ordering fast food is a reference to a longstanding BotCon voice actor panel tradition, which involves the attending actors performing their characters ordering at a drive-in.

• Bumblebee is identified by Flareup as "a kid-appeal character", narrowed down to either "a Bumblebee or a Hot Shot", also referencing early Animated plans for Hot Shot to be the kid-appeal character of the crew. Various characters later "mistake" him for Wheelie, Side Burn, and Cheetor.

• While masquerading as a Prime, Megatron identifies himself as "Joe Convoy", playing on the Japanese name for Optimus and his ilk.

• In a sort of anti-reference, Prime and Bumblebee's "let us never speak of it again" conclusion provides an in-story reason for why none of this extra-dimensional silliness will ever be mentioned on the actual Animated cartoon.

Real-world references

• Professor Sumdac refers to Sari as "the joy and the laughter," a reference to actress Tara Strong's role as Bubbles in The Powerpuff Girls. Bubbles is proclaimed to be "the joy and the laughter" in that show's closing theme tune.

• When Sari snatches Bumblebee's meal, Bumblebee laments "My manwich!", a line used by another of voice actor Bumper Robinson's characters, Dwight Conrad of Futurama.

• Bumblebee tries to get the maniacally laughing (and coughing) Megatron's attention with a "Yo, Joe?" This is, of course, a reference to the battle cry of G.I. Joe from the eponymous '80s cartoon series.

• With the key in hand, Megatron claims he has "a big boost of confidence," a tag line from commercials Kaye narrated touting Enzyte, a non-prescription drug for...er, male performance enhancement.

• During the epilogue, Prime adds to the list of Bumblebee's misnomers by calling him "T-Bob", the robot sidekick from the '80s cartoon series/toy line M.A.S.K..

• Prime refers to waiting in line for 17 hours "took longer then an InuYasha story arc". In which actor David Kaye played a recurring role as InuYasha's brother, Sesshomaru.

Miscellaneous trivia

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