Lessons of the Past
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 Today's lesson: clip shows are fun! | ||||||
| "Lessons of the Past" | ||||||
| Production company | TV Tokyo, NAS, Studio Gallop | |||||
| Airdate | December 14, 2001 | |||||
| Written by | Tom Wyner | |||||
| Director | Osamu Sekita | |||||
| Animation studio | Studio Gallop | |||||
We are forced to watch
Optimus view old footage
Seen it all before!
Synopsis
Optimus, on the way to a rendezvous with the Build Team, is interrupted by the Decepticons. They form Ruination as Scourge demands Optimus turn over the O-Parts. When he refuses they attack—and we pull back to find that Optimus, T-AI and Koji Onishi are watching footage of the fight. As Koji comments, it's a shame that they didn't find the protoforms in the crashed Autobot spaceship. Although Optimus regrets they were unable to stop Megatron, T-AI points out that by the time they caught up with the Predacon leader, he'd already gotten the protoforms to an army base to scan new forms. T-AI replays footage of the action at the army base to remind him.
Optimus says that they must try to predict what the Decepticons will do by examining their past actions, and they decide to review the time when Scourge sabotaged the space bridge, beginning with the ambush of X-Brawn. After they've reviewed footage of the entire incident, T-AI declares that the space bridge has been fixed and orders all Autobots to test it. After a short but successful test, Optimus declares it (and the Autobots) fit for duty.
Featured characters
(Characters in italic text appear only in pre-recorded footage.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Predacons | Humans |
|---|---|---|
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Notes
Continuity notes
- This episode originally aired out of its proper chronological order, between "Peril from the Past" and "Maximus Emerges". It was also the last new episode to air in 2001 before the series resumed airing new episodes in February 2002 after a two-month hiatus.
- The past events the Autobots observe on their monitors are from "Sky-Byte Saves the Day", "The Decepticons", and, most especially, "Landfill", whose recap clips comprise a good twelve minutes of this episode's 21-minute runtime. This, presumably, is because "Landfill" was one of three episodes banned from airing in the United States, and this allowed viewers to see a good-sized chunk of what they were missing from the debut episode of, well, Landfill.
- When the series was released on DVD in the United Kingdom, this episode was officially placed as Episode 26, between "Ultra Magnus: Forced Fusion!" and "The Two Faces of Ultra Magnus", the same place as the second clip show from Car Robots that this episode replaces (see "Trivia" below). However, like the episode's original broadcast airing, this official placement seems to still place the episode out of chronological order with the rest of the series: The episode ends with the Autobots giving some final system tests to the Global Space Bridge as though the events of "Landfill" had happened very recently, making it more likely that this episode takes place a short time after that episode. However, some of the events from "Sky-Byte Saves the Day" are also recapped in this episode, meaning the episode can't come any earlier than right after that episode.
- Plus, the Space Bridge still needing some repairs in "Sky-Byte Saves the Day" would explain why Optimus drove to the CGA Tower in that episode instead of using the Space Bridge to get there immediately. And the only ones who used the Space Bridge in that episode were the Build Team, which makes sense since they're the ones who maintain it and would thus be authorized to use it even when it's still undergoing maintenance.
Trivia
- This episode replaces the original Car Robots clip show, "Assemble! New Troops", in the Robots in Disguise line-up. Like the other two clip shows in the series, "Hope for the Future" and "Mystery of the Ultra Magnus", it is completely different from its Japanese counterpart—whereas "Assemble! New Troops" featured clips covering the Decepticons, the Build Team, Ultra Magnus and Omega Prime, "Lessons of the Past" only covers the Decepticons and the Build Team.
Foreign localization
Portuguese
- Title: "Lições do Passado" ("Lessons of the Past")
Home video releases
- DVD
2005 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Three-Disc Box Set: Part 2 of 2 (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Season Two (Maximum Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers: Robots in Disguise — Ultimate Collection (Maximum Entertainment)
