Velocity (episode)
Investigating a mysterious race car, Bumblebee gets involved with an illegal underground street racing circuit, which also captures the attention of the Decepticons.
Summary
Stats
- Written by: Len Uhley
- Directed by: Irineo Maramba, Christopher Berkeley, & Kenji Itoso
- Original airdate: May 10, 2008
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans |
|---|---|---|
|
|
Quotes
Prowl: Think calm thoughts.
Ratchet: And DON'T MOVE!
[Metallic "ka-shink" as Prowl extends one of his blades]
- —Prowl and Ratchet scare the heck out of a female racer. Note how Ratchet yells at her after Prowl tells her to be calm. Guess he still has to work on his interpersonal skills.
Fanzone: I've been after these guys for weeks. They're part of an underground racing circuit.
Bulkhead: You mean they race in tunnels?
Fanzone: Underground as in illegal. As in they race in the streets and don't care who gets hurt.
Bulkhead: That's not what Sari told me.
Optimus: What purpose does this street race serve?
Fanzone: Eh, what else? They get a couple a' million pay-per-view customers for their pirate broadcasts, then it's "cha-ching cha-ching", big bucks.
- —Captain Fanzone introduces the Autobots to the seedy world of underground racing.
Bumblebee: Lighten up, Bulkhead. We're supposed to be the fun bots.
Bulkhead: Yeah, but we still gotta set a good example. She looks up to us.
Bumblebee: Hello, she looks up to everybody.
Sari: HEY!
- —Bumblebee should be more sensitive about size issues.
"HA! I will crush all that stands in my way!"
- —Hothead Blitzwing, right before he is buried under the rubble of a bridge.
Random Blitzwing: Oh, isn't zat cute? They're twins!
Icy Blitzwing: Readings indicate that one of them is carrying the AllSpark fragment.
Hothead Blitzwing: I will destroy them both!
- —Whenever in doubt, Blitzwing's personalities can agree on one thing—destroy everything.
"Hey...you know that's comin' out of my paycheck."
- —Captain Fanzone manages to see the down side of being saved before Blitzwing destroyed his car.
[referring to Bumblebee's vehicle mode]
"How come your interior's so much cleaner than mine?"
"Hmm, maybe because it's not on fire?"
- —Sari zings Captain Fanzone.
Hothead Blitzwing: What is happening?! Why can't I control myself?!
Random Blitzwing: Not zat I ever could! AHAHAHA!
Sari: See? This is how Master Disaster fixed his races. By making the blue racer do whatever he wanted.
Random Blitzwing: Oh, dizzy. Not liking the dizzy.
- —As Sari takes control, Hothead Blitzwing wants it back, while Random Blitzwing has accepted his insanity.
"Well, that's the trouble with bending the rules—cough—they usually snap right back in your face."
- —Lessons in life from Captain Fanzone
Hothead Blitzwing: Never give up!
Icy Blitzwing: Never surrender!
Random Blitzwing: NEVER MIND!!
[Blitzwing swerves off into a nearby building]
- —Blitzwing and the mysterious racer play a game of Chicken.
Other notes
Continuity errors
- Hothead Blitzwing demonstrates the ability to function in jet mode, instead of automatically switching to tank mode as he did in "Megatron Rising - Part 2". His ice missiles are replaced with conventional explosive ones. Maybe he learned his lesson?
Transformers references
- Bumblebee's turbo boosters were first seen in "Nanosec".
Real-world references
- Wondering where Bumblebee came from, Master Disaster invokes the name of Detroit auto mogul Henry Ford (and also calls Bumblebee a "clown car").
- This episode borrows several plot and thematic elements from the popular street racing film The Fast and the Furious.
- Blitzwing's "Never give up! Never surrender! NEVER MIND!" quote refers to the catchphrase from the Dreamworks film, Galaxy Quest.
- Blitzwing haphazardly fires off multiple missiles in all directions in a style reminiscent of the Veritech Fighters from Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
- In this episode, Blitzwing's cannons make the familiar "high tension cable twang" normally associated with laser cannons in the 'Star Wars films.
- The first car that passes Bumblebee at the beginning of the episode resembles the 1999 Nissan Skyline From 2003's 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Miscellaneous trivia
- Fanzone's car explodes. Again. At least we know where he gets the replacements.
- The mysterious blue race car under Master Disaster's control matches the vehicle mode of Animated Blurr, as shown in an "upcoming products" presentation at BotCon 2008. Presumably it is Blurr . . . but as of this episode, its exact nature is unknown. It could be merely an AllSpark-enhanced unliving machine (like those in "The Elite Guard"), from which Blurr will someday take his Earth-mode (as Bumblebee did with Fanzone's car). (If it is Blurr, then he either is or will be a member of the Elite Guard, according to the presentation mentioned above.)
- Fanzone is/was married, with the backhanded remark about his mother in law.
