The Killing Jar (episode)
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 When I hear that whistle blowin' , 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 | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Toei | ||||||||
| 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 (Yonnin no Horyo, "Four Captives")
- German title: "Der Sog des schwarzen Loches" ("The Maelstrom of the Black Hole")
- Latin American title: El Agujero Negro ("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
"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 is not named, Marissa's father has the same voice actor and sounds the same as G.I. Joe's Flint, all indicating that Marissa is Flint's daughter. Additionally, the file name presented on the back of Flint's G.I. Joe toy packaging is "Dashiell R. Faireborn." This connection was later confirmed by Transformers writer and story editor Flint Dille.
- The Japanese version of the episode would appear to have missed the G.I. Joe reference. In the Japanese dub of the G.I. Joe cartoon, Flint was voiced by Transformers regular Hōchū Ōtsuka. However, in this episode, Marissa's father is voiced by another Transformers regular, Takurō Kitagawa. The reference would eventually be embraced by future Japanese Transformers authors, such as Hirofumi Ichikawa and Yūki Ōshima.
Animation or technical glitches
- All of the shots of Unicron's head have it entirely in gold other than his mouth, when his face should be gray as well. It was correct the last time we saw it in "The Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1."
- The first shot of Unicron's head shows it with black eye holes (in "The Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1" it had broken green eyes). A few shots later, it has intact purple eyes.
- When we first see Ultra Magnus on the Quintesson's screen, his left foot flashes from blue to white several times.
- Several times in the episode, the area on top of Ultra Magnus' back is colored grey instead of red.
- In most shots, the fake Rodimus is missing his yellow wings and his Autobot insignia is in the wrong place, appearing in fact more like his slightly different original character design that is seen in Hot Rod's commercial and The Transformers: The Movie promo. Also, he's got Hot Rod's color scheme.
- When Cyclonus first transforms to robot mode, he's missing the transformation sound effect.
- The illusion that the Quintessons used to trick Cyclonus is of the Triple Changer Broadside, which is really weird, since Broadside is an Autobot. He even speaks in Broadside's correct voice.
- The second time the fake Galvatron rushes Cyclonus, his Decepticon symbol is red rather than purple.
- Wreck-Gar fires his hand like a rocket to free Marissa, but he is incorrectly shown with both hands for two scenes before we see him picking up the lost hand and re-attaching it.
- Marissa is shown hitting the button on Magnus' door while standing straight, but later it's located way above where she could reach it.
- As the ship is buffeted by the electron storm, letters and numbers are visible in the clouds at the bottom of the screen.
- As Magnus and Cyclonus stand off, Magnus' face is colored entirely blue for a moment, and Cyclonus' wings start to flash in and out 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.
- Before entering the black hole, Ultra Magnus is shown to be shorter than Cyclonus. After coming back (during his transmission to Sky Lynx), he's clearly taller than Cyclonus.
- After entering the black hole, one shot shows the Quintesson ship in the usual (non-negative) colors.
- Cyclonus is seen mouthing the second half of the Quintesson scientist's line, "You all realize if the ship enters the white hole at the incorrect trajectory, we will all be crushed or torn to pieces," although the Quintesson's voice speaks the entire time.
- 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.
- When Kid Rhino went back to the original film elements of this episode, a couple of shots of the Quintesson talking do not feature mouth movements, including when he announces they're going to test Ultra Magnus's reactions. These shots were originally corrected for broadcast, and the Shout! Factory DVD includes the corrected shots spliced in from the broadcast master.
Continuity errors
- Cyclonus requires an escape pod to escape from the Quintesson ship, even though he turns into a spaceship. If there is a relevant difference between the pod's capabilities and his alt-mode's, it is never mentioned.
- The Quintesson says he knows the Transformers' programming because he helped build them. However, how does he know Cyclonus's 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.
- As usual, most of Wreck-Gar's lines are drawn from television, film and radio:
- When lured into the Quintesson ship, Wreck-Gar says, "No candid camera insta-clicks me!" This refers to the TV series Candid Camera, one of the earliest (if not THE earliest) prank/practical joke shows on television.
- When Marissa remarks she's in a zoo or a jail, Wreck-Gar responds with "Book me, Danno, I have the right to remain silent!" "Book 'em, Danno," is a catch phrase of Jack Lord's character from the '70s action-detective series Hawaii Five-O.
- As the ship gets struck by the electron storm, Wreck-Gar remarks, "What a revoltin' development!" This catchphrase originated on the 1940s radio show, The Life of Riley; in geek circles, it's probably better known as one of the trademark lines of the Thing, the powerful member of the superhero team the Fantastic Four.
- Shortly afterward, Wreck-Gar exclaims, "We've gotta get out of this place!", a likely reference to the song of the same name by The Animals.
- As Wreck-Gar takes the guard's arm, he mentions "Hugh is in good hands," referring to the slogan for Allstate Insurance.
- When Magnus dismisses the potential rescue ship as not being a "Decepticon junk", Wreck-Gar says, "Junk? Wreck-Gar phoned home!" This plays on the famous "E.T. phone home." quote from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
- When the Quintesson ship is about to go back through the white hole, Wreck-Gar says that they can "go back, Jack, and do it again," quoting the Steely Dan song "Do It Again".
Trivia
- While one would expect that the characters' colors while in the white hole would be the "negative" values of their originals, this is not the case. They appear to be pretty much random sets of colors.
- 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 only briefly used once more in "Fight or Flee" and "The Burden Hardest to Bear".
- At one point, it appears that the Allicon's mouth is located at the bottom of his faceplate 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.
Home video releases
- VHS
2000 — The Original Transformers — Volume 8: Evil Experiments (Rhino Entertainment)
- Laserdisc
1999 — The Transformers: 2010 (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
- DVD
2001 — The Transformers: 2010 — DVD Box (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2003 — The Original Transformers — Season 3 Part 1 (Rhino Entertainment)
2003 — The Original Transformers — Season 3 Part 1: Vol. 1 (Rhino Entertainment)
2004 — Transformers — Season 3 and Season 4 (Metrodome)
2004 — Transformers — Collection 4: Series 3.1 (Madman Entertainment)
2006 — Transformers — The Complete Generation One Collection (Metrodome)
2007 — The Transformers — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — Transformers — Season's Three & Four [sic] (Metrodome)
2009 — The Transformers — Complete Collection: Decepticon Edition (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers — The Complete Series: 25th Anniversary "Matrix of Leadership" Collection (Shout! Factory)
2010 — The Transformers — Seasons Three & Four: 25th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)
