The Killing Jar (episode)
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 When I hear that lonesome whistle, I hang my head and cry. | |||||||||
| "The Killing Jar" | |||||||||
| Production code | 700-91 | ||||||||
| Production company | Sunbow Productions | ||||||||
| Airdate | September 15, 1986 | ||||||||
| Written by | Michael Charles Hill Joey Kurihara Piedra | ||||||||
| Continuity | Generation 1 cartoon continuity | ||||||||
Ultra Magnus, Cyclonus, Marissa Faireborn, and Wreck-Gar are captured by a Quintesson scientist for experiments, but are sucked into a more dangerous problem—a black hole.
- Japanese title: 4人の捕虜 (4nin no Horyo, "Four Captives")
- German title: "Der Sog des schwarzen Loches" ("The Maelstrom of the Black Hole")
Synopsis
As Ultra Magnus stargazes, he's being spied on by a Quintesson scientist and his Allicon guard. Disguising their ship as Sky Lynx, the pair lure Magnus on board where he's attacked by a fake Rodimus Prime. The scientist correctly predicts Magnus's actions as the Autobot attempts to restrain his leader without harming him. With Magnus safely imprisoned, the scientist sets course for Chaar. Once there, the ship is again disguised, this time as Broadside, and Cyclonus lured on board. Again, the scientist predicts that Cyclonus will behave in a similar manner to Magnus when confronted with a hostile illusion of his leader. On Junkion , Wreck-Gar is enjoying Lippo the Clown's TV show when the clown himself turns up in a spacecraft and lures Wreck-Gar on board. Naturally it is soon revealed to be the Quintesson ship. The scientist predicts that placing a Junkion in a clean, uncluttered room will cause him to go catatonic. Instead Wreck-Gar proceeds to tear up the walls to make the chamber more like "home sweet home".
Disguised as a shuttle, the Quintesson ship docks with an EDC space station, and Marissa Faireborn is lured on board by an illusion of her father. Once the ship leaves the space station, Marissa is shocked when her father's face changes into the Quintesson "death" face. She strikes the illusion to the ground and it disappears — the Quintesson scientist observes that violence is always the human way. Finally the bars on Marissa's cell appear and all four captives are able to communicate.
The scientist visits the cell area, instructing his guard to activate a submission field, pinning Marissa to the floor. As the pair move in, Wreck-Gar fires his fist, deactivating the field and allowing Marissa to attack the Quintesson and attempt to free Ultra Magnus. Before she can free him, the room begins crackling with electrical energy — the ship has flown into an electron storm.
As the captives are assaulted by the energy, the Quintesson and his guard head for the control room and attempt to steer the ship through the storm. After a wrong move, the guard manages to guide the ship out of the storm. In the cell area, Magnus grabs hold of the electron bars, short-circuiting the bars on all four cells and freeing everyone. When the scientist and guard return to the cell area, they're jumped by Marissa and Wreck-Gar while Magnus and Cyclonus fight over what they're going to do with the ship. Marissa gets the better of the Quintesson and begins to plot a course back to Earth, but discovers that the ship has fallen into the gravity field of a black hole.
She interrupts the fighting to let everyone know they've got bigger problems, but while the Allicon guard activates a distress signal, the Quintesson slips away to the rear of the ship where the escape pods are located. The others follow him, only to find that most of the pods have been rendered useless by the electron storm and only one remains operational. Magnus yanks the scientist from the escape pod, but the launch sequence has already started. Though Cyclonus intends to use it himself, Wreck-Gar tackles him so that Magnus can help Marissa into the pod. While they're fighting, the pod launches with no one aboard and Magnus is pulled out as the whole room begins to depressurise.
To Magnus's surprise, Cyclonus saves him with a tractor beam. The scientist explodes angrily at them for allowing the escape pod to launch unmanned but during the ensuing discussion, they begin to receive a transmission and spy a ship coming up behind them. Although they believe rescue is imminent, it turns out merely to be a derelict ship, which is dragged into the black hole ahead of them. Finally the Quintesson ship's engines overload, and the ship follows the derelict into the black hole...
...only to emerge into a negative universe where the color spectrum is drastically altered. While the Quintesson works on a plan to return them to their own universe, the others set about repairing the overloaded engines. Once repairs are complete, the Quintesson slingshots the ship through the white hole, re-emerging from the black hole into the middle of a battle. Magnus radios for help from Sky Lynx, who docks with the ship. The group goes their separate ways, Ultra Magnus, Wreck-Gar and Marissa returning to Cybertron in Sky Lynx.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
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Quotes
"This Ultra Magnus is a soldier first and foremost."
"This Decepticon and the Autobot are two of a kind. One is good and one is evil, but to me that is no difference at all."
"As an Autobot, this Junkion should have reacted as I predicted. Remarkable."
"Humans are disgusting creatures, but worthy of study, if only to find a better way of destroying them."
"Violence is always the humans' way of solving problems."
- —Various observations made by the Quintesson scientist after capturing his test subjects.
"Galvatron! Why would you attack me, your most loyal soldier?"
- —Cyclonus asks an almost rhetorical question.
"We wouldn't be in this situation at all…"
"…If you had not captured us."
"Cyclonus, I can finish my own thoughts. I don't need you to do it for me."
"Maybe the thought was not yours to begin with, Ultra Magnus."
- —Ultra Magnus and Cyclonus
"Cyclonus, you saved me? But why?"
"Warriors such as you and I should meet their end in battle."
- —Ultra Magnus and Cyclonus
"Sky Lynx! Disengage and take a reverse heading!"
"Ultra Magnus, where are you?"
"Behind you! What do you think reverse means?!"
- —Ultra Magnus and Sky Lynx
Notes
- Although he was not named, Marissa's father has the same voice actor and sounds the same as G.I. Joe's Flint, all pointing out to the suspicion that Marissa is Flint's daughter. Also of note is that the file name presented on the pack of Flint's G.I. Joe toy packaging is "Dashiell R. Faireborn." This connection was later confirmed by Flint Dille, a Transformers writer and story editor.
Animation or technical glitches
- When the Quintesson announces they're going to test Ultra Magnus's reactions, his mouth doesn't move.
- In most shots, the fake Rodimus is missing his yellow wings and his Autobot insignia is in the wrong place. Also he's got Hot Rod's color scheme.
- The Triple Changer Broadside was the illusion that the Quintessons used to trick Cyclonus, which is really weird since Broadside is an Autobot. He even speaks in Broadside's correct voice.
- Wreck-Gar fired his hand like a rocket to free Marissa, but he is incorrectly shown with both hands for two scenes before we see him picking the lost hand up and re-attaching it.
- As the ship is buffeted by the electron storm, letters and numbers are visible in the clouds at the bottom of the screen.
- During the first shot of the Quintesson preparing to use the escape pod, the escape pod is missing from the launch tube.
- Cyclonus is seen mouthing the second half of a line the Quintesson scientist says although it's still in the voice of the Quintesson, "You all realize if the ship enters the white hole at the incorrect trajectory, we will all be crushed or torn to pieces."
- After they arrive in the negative universe and Magnus throws the scientist at the Allicon, the Allicon's right forearm goes missing. It reappears after this scene so that Marissa can remove it and use it to repair the engines, but appears and disappears again over the course of the rest of the episode.
Continuity errors
- Cyclonus requires an escape pod to escape from the Quintesson ship - even though he turns into a space ship.
- The Quintesson says he knows the Transformers' programming because he helped build them. However, how does he know Cyclonus' programming, since Cyclonus was built by Unicron?
Transformers references
- The Quintesson scientist refers to his guard's transformed mode as his alternate mode, the first use of that term in official fiction.
Real-world references
- A killing jar is an entomological tool for killing insect specimens, usually with gas.
Miscellaneous trivia
- The background music which plays during the "working together" montage in the final act is the first piece of new music composed for season three (besides the opening theme), and would appear to have been created specifically for the scene in question, as it is not re-used anywhere else in the series.
- At one point it appears that the Allicon's mouth is located at the bottom of his faceplace instead of the top.
- Ultra Magnus smashes the cockpit of the escape pod to get the Quintesson out - how does he expect Marissa to use it when she doesn't have a space suit?
- Cybertron seems unusually spiky in the epilogue.
