Hope for the Future
| This article is about the Robots in Disguise episode. For the similarly-titled United EX text story, see Hope for the Next Generation. |
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 Behold... Galvatron! | ||||||
| "Hope for the Future" | ||||||
| Production company | TV Tokyo, NAS, Studio Gallop | |||||
| Airdate | October 26, 2001 | |||||
| Written by | Tom Wyner | |||||
| Director | Osamu Sekita | |||||
| Animation studio | Studio Gallop | |||||
Prime views past events
Viewer suffers stock footage
Saban laughs at you
Synopsis
Optimus Prime orders T-AI to call in the Autobots. The Autobot Brothers respond, although Side Burn would rather be at the beach. The Spychangers are at the beach—fighting the Predacons. After a battle suspiciously like the one from "Spychangers to the Rescue", the Predacons are defeated and the Spychangers head in to base. Team Bullet Train also respond, practicing their link-up manoeuvre on the way.
Back at base, they discuss the advantage that having Dr. Onishi gives the Predacons. Optimus repeats his promise that they'll get Koji's father back, replaying the events leading up to Dr. Onishi's capture on the monitor. Optimus decides that if they examine the Predacons' past actions, they may be able to find clues to the location of the Predacon base. Koji thinks that there may be more information recorded on the chip they recovered from the ruins, leading them to replay the events leading up to its discovery.
Optimus recalls the time when the Predacons went after a "device" hidden in a red sports car, and the time he fought Sky-Byte underwater. Koji suggests that the latter event may mean that the Predacon base is somewhere underwater. They switch to examining the Predacons' tactics and how they are able to use individual Autobots' weaknesses against them, such as when they used Side Burn's love for red sports cars to lure him into a trap. Optimus believes that Megatron's weakness is his ego making him believe he's infallible, such as the time he planted a bug on Mirage and believed the Autobot had turned against his comrades.
When Hot Shot is dismissive of the Predacons and their plans, Optimus points out that sometimes the Autobots only succeed through good luck, such as the time they were searching for Skid-Z and the Predacons almost took them out. T-AI wonders why Megatron is so persistent, but Side Burn insists that while they have Optimus on their side, Megatron doesn't stand a chance.
Finally, the Autobots remember their brilliant plan at the ruins, in which they chased away the Predacons and were able to recover the O-Part. Optimus says if Megatron is trying to find the O-Parts, then it's a race to find the rest of them before the Predacons do.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Predacons | Humans |
|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"Sky-Byte hasn't beaten us yet, but he's sneaky, clever and dangerous [yes, seriously] and he'll do just about anything to carry out a mission."
- —Railspike
"Yes, and when he went after the bomb device hidden in that red sports car, he almost succeeded."
- —Optimus Prime
Notes
Animation or technical errors
- When the episode is at 4 minutes, 49 seconds running time, during the footage from "Battle Protocol!", a voice can be heard in the crowd saying "Megatron's back!"... in response to Megatron's first attack. Potential Easter egg reference to previous shows?
Continuity Notes
- Every single bit of animation is recycled from the first 12 episodes. All of it. This means the Spychangers and Predacons have an exact replica of their first battle.
- This episode originally aired on Fox Kids well out of order from its intended episode placement, airing on the Friday before Episode 29, "Fortress Maximus", would make its Saturday morning debut the next day.
- As the O-Part found by the Autobots in Episode 12 was not referred to as such in the English dub of that episode, the dialog during the clips from that episode of the Autobots' finding the O-Part has been changed in this episode to specifically identify the O-Part by name. This was most likely done as an attempt to give the U.S. viewers some kind of formal introduction to the O-Parts after the fact, as the O-Parts' existence had (rather abruptly) been brought back into the story a couple weeks earlier in Episodes 24 and 25, and would soon have their story arc wrapped up in Episodes 31 and 32 just a few weeks later. As the story arc of the O-Parts was already sparsely touched upon in the show's original Japanese Car Robots version, the English Robots in Disguise dub ended up pushing the O-Parts' significance even further into the background, with the first episode refer to the O-Parts by name in the English dub, Episode 22, having been one of the three episodes banned from airing in the U.S. by post-9/11 censorship. Thus, it was left to this episode, in its original U.S. premiere, to formally introduce the O-Parts as a concept to the U.S. viewers shortly before their story arc was to be all wrapped up.
Continuity errors
- The "An Explosive Situation" footage and the Autobots' recollections of the episode now refers to a "device" instead of a bomb, presumably due to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
- Because the Spychangers' seafront battle with the Predacons is a wholesale recycling of the climax of "Spychangers to the Rescue", Gas Skunk can at one point be seen being blasted against the red-and-white Plutonium Energy Generator that formed the basis of that episode's plot. Its momentary presence here is, of course, unexplained.
- In addition to the aforementioned O-Part scene from Episode 12, several other moments in the recapped clips have also had their dialogue redubbed to have the characters say different lines from what they originally said in the episodes those clips were taken from, such as the scene from Episode 6 where the Autobot Brothers prepare to fire on Sky-Byte as tries to steal an ancient box from the ruins.
Transformers references
- The Autobots use "sky spies", a reference to the Autobot satellite controlled by Teletraan I in the original The Transformers cartoon.
Trivia
- Midnight Express states the Autobot sky-spies are searching for Dr. Onishi 24/7. (Not very effective, were they?)
- The Autobots work out that the Predacon base is located underwater, based on the events of "The Hunt for Black Pyramid".
- This clip show takes the place of the Car Robots episode "Gigatron's Ambitions Revealed!", a completely separate clip show focusing on different footage (see the note on "Lessons of the Past").
Home video releases
- DVD
2004 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Three-Disc Box Set: Part 1 of 2 (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Season One (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Ultimate Collection (Maximum Entertainment)
