The Vault Of The Primes

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"The Vault Of The Primes"
Production code	218
Season	2
No. in season	18
Production company	Allspark Animation
Airdate	May 2, 2020
Writers	Ciarán Morrison and Mick O'Hara
Director	Pete Slattery
Animation studio	Boulder Media Studio
Watch this episode on YouTube

Ratchet invites the Recruits to help open an ancient Cybertronian Vault. However, the vault won't give up its secrets that easily and challenges the recruits to complete an ancient Sim Mission to prove that they are worthy of its treasures.

Synopsis

Ratchet shows the recruits the vault he managed to extract from the Cybertronian ship Hoist and Grimlock recovered. The recruits speculate on what will be inside, however when Ratchet turns the crank, it snaps off and the box closes a shield. While Ratchet heads off to the library to see if he can research a way to open it, the recruits give it a try themselves without much luck. Ratchet returns to find them still struggling and reveals he didn't find anything useful either. Medix finds a hand-print shape on the vault, but when Ratchet places his hand on it, it freezes their teacher in place. Five more hand-prints light up—one for each recruit—and with little other choice, the recruits touch them and freeze in place.

The five recruits find themselves on ancient Cybertron not far from a massive Cybertronian temple. They spy Ratchet at the very top, and he says they're in a sim and that the recruits need to rescue him to open the vault. Whirl's idea to fly up is shot down when a door opens and the others think they should stick to the intended rescue. They head inside into a hall where holograms of ancient warriors activate and eventually find a lift that takes them upwards to a long corridor. A timer appears, and Medix races along the corridor only to find it's a dead end. As the recruits push on the wall, a boulder hurtles towards them, and they have to use Hot Shot's jet mode thrusters to stop it before it crushes them. A door behind them opens to a massive bottomless chasm which Hot Shot almost falls into. Whirl and Hot Shot fly the other recruits over to the other side of the chasm, and they proceed to find the final section of tower, which extends huge whirling blades over the door. Wedge manages to speed through the blades and strike the tower, shattering it and freeing Ratchet.

Everyone wakes up back in the real world where the vault opens and reveals four boxes made of Rarified Energon. Hot Shot recognizes them as Mul-T-Cogs. Ratchet's found something even bigger: an ancient artifact which he says could be the greatest discovery in history.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots
Hoist (1) Hot Shot (2) Ratchet (3) Medix (4) Whirl (5) Wedge (6)

Quotes

"Why do you all love bad ideas??"

—Wedge

"Oh no! It's the Corridor of Ultimate Fear!"

—Hot Shot

"Uh oh, boulder!"
"Great! We could use his help!"
"Not Boulder, boulder!"

—Hot Shot and Whirl

"The Windmill of Impenetrable Ferocity."
"Hey, names are my thing."
"No, it says right here in ancient text."

—Medix and Hot Shot

Notes

Continuity notes

• Hoist and Grimlock found the Cybertronian ship back in "Mission Dinobot".
• Ratchet discovers a recipe for Scraplet repellent that involves covering yourself with karknoid gunk, presumably obtained from a Karknoid beetle as seen in "Tune Out".
• Wedge is still afraid of heights, as established back in "Flying Hunk-A-Junk".

Transformers references

• Several of the faces seen on the walls of the temple resemble Bumblebee, Drift, and Strongarm from Robots in Disguise.
• Rarified Energon originates in the Transformers Collectors' Club fiction, first being mentioned in "Crossing Over: Part 6".

Real-world references

• Hot Shot invokes classic fairy tale tropes by referring to Ratchet as a princess and asking if he needs to be rescued.

Continuity errors

• Hot Shot is able to transform into both his ATV and jet modes, when he's supposed to only have access to one of his three alternate modes per day. While it occurs during a mental simulation, no one draws any attention to it, as though it's something he can just do normally. He would not gain the ability to use all of his altmodes in the same day until "Mul-T-Change of Pace".

Animation and technical errors

• TBA

Trivia

• The vault has the word "CYBERTRON" in Autobot text at the top of each side. The "ancient text" Medix points to later in the episode is not in an identifiable alphabet, however.
• Autobot insignia appear in the architecture on the ancient Cybertronian temple, suggesting that the insignia predates the Autobot movement.
• Whirl suggests the holoportraits in the entrance hall of the temple are ancient Cybertronian warriors.

Foreign localization

• TBA