Five Faces of Darkness, Part 3
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 Intimidating, but they can't hit a single 'Bot. | |||||||||
| "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 3" | |||||||||
| Production code | #700-88 | ||||||||
| Production company | Sunbow Productions | ||||||||
| Airdate | September 3, 1986 | ||||||||
| Written by | Flint Dille | ||||||||
| Animation studio | AKOM | ||||||||
| Continuity | Generation 1 cartoon continuity | ||||||||
Desperate to destroy the Autobots, the Quintessons make a deal with the Decepticons.
- Japanese title: 惑星ゴーの罠 (Wakusei Goo no Wana, "The Trap on Planet Goo")
- German title: "Die fünf Gesichter der Finsternis, Teil 3" ("The five Faces of Darkness, Part 3")
Synopsis
Detonated by the Quintessons, the planet Quintessa explodes as the Autobots flee. They escape the planet's destruction, but their ship is smashed by a chunk of debris, sending the group hurtling through space. Eventually, Ultra Magnus calculates that they will soon impact an object, but isn't sure if it's a planet or a ship. Rodimus tells him to relax and enjoy the ride.
Meanwhile, Cyclonus briefs Galvatron on the recent developments, including the creation of a space platform to guard Earth. Intrigued, Galvatron alters course, deciding to punish the humans for assuming that they could build something to defend themselves against him. Some of the Sweeps are unnerved by Galvatron's behavior, but Scourge tells them to shut up.
Blurr and Wheelie, carrying Metroplex's transformation cog, arrive in Earth's solar system, and spot Galvatron. They warn Outpost One, but Galvatron destroys the station with ease, then turns his sights on the Autobots. Fleeing to the planet Jupiter, the Autobots are forced to abandon ship with Metroplex's cog and end up falling into the upper atmosphere. Galvatron uses his cannon to electrically charge a nearby storm cell, causing a violent and explosive reaction which disrupts the transformation cogs of both Blurr and Wheelie, and ejects them from the planet. The Decepticons then depart for Chaar. Blaster sends warning to Mars, where Marissa Faireborn of Earth Defense Command heads out on a rescue mission.
Meanwhile, the Quintessons are contemplating how best to celebrate the death of the Autobot leader, when they learn that Rodimus has survived. They conclude that they have no choice but to make an alliance with the one group who can help them: the Decepticons.
The Autobots crash land on a bizarre planetoid named Goo. They soon discover that they can walk in the planet's gum-like surface, but cannot get out. Kup points out that even though they're stranded, it could be worse. Predictably, a giant machine arrives and begins sucking up various garbage. Springer is caught and sliced up, and Rodimus is next. Despite Arcee and Kup's pleas, Rodimus stands his ground, letting the machine pull him up; he manages to clog the blades with some of the goo, causing it to crash. Deliberata is surprised, claiming that the Autobots weren't programmed for self-sacrifice.
On Chaar, the Quintessons approach the Decepticons with an offer of energon. The battered Decepticons are at first hesitant, but once Dead End samples some energon and lives, the others dogpile on it. The Quintessons make their proposal: in return for unlimited energon, the Decepticons will destroy the Autobots for them. The Decepticons are nervous, saying that they can't take Cybertron in their present condition, but the Quintessons tell them that Rodimus Prime is on Goo with only a small number of Autobots to guard him. Although it's an offer the Decepticons are eager to accept, Blitzwing is suspicious of the Quintessons, finding them familiar. Motormaster decides to have a vote. The yays have it, but Blitzwing decides to remain on Chaar. The Quintessons are pleased, saying that the Decepticons will soon be theirs... again?
From her ship, Faireborn detects metal fragments which were blown all the way to Jupiter's moon of Io. On the surface of the Jovian moon, Wheelie and Blurr wake up, not realizing that they aren't alone...
Arriving at Chaar, Galvatron is incensed when Blitzwing informs him that the Decepticons left following others, though he doesn't much care who. Galvatron vows to reclaim his rightful place as Decepticon leader.
On Goo, the Autobots are searching for a way to shut off whatever equipment is keeping the goo warm and soft, allowing them to smash their way out. Suddenly, the Quintesson ship arrives, and a fleet of Decepticons emerges, firing at the trapped Autobots.
Featured Characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
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Quotes
"My guidance system is hit! Galvatron, save meeeEEE!"
"Please meet your end with dignity! I despise whiners!"
- —A Sweep is left to die by Galvatron
Sweep 1: This is blowing out my audio sensors.
Sweep 2: It's torture!
Galvatron: Hahah, no, no! It's music. The symphony of destruction, and the anthem of agony!
- —Galvatron really needs to see a head doctor.
Cyclonus: Bravo, Galvatron. The Autobots' destruction is assured.
Galvatron: Assured is not enough. I told you I want their heads, Cyclonus!
[moments later]
Cyclonus: Mighty Galvatron... where are the Autobots' heads?!
Galvatron: [whacks him] What does it matter? Their destruction is assured!
- —Consistency is not Galvatron's strong suit.
"How pleasant the feeling, to know the Autobots and their Matrix of Leadership have been destroyed."
"I could watch it over and over again."
"It is a day so long in coming that I am uncertain how to celebrate it."
"Perhaps... a quiet chuckle."
"Very well then. Let us... chuckle."
- —The Quintessons loved it. It was much better than Cats.
Quintesson: We have not come to kill you. We have come to offer you a proposition.
Dead End: Uh—Swindle! I think this is your department.
Swindle: First, see if we can trust 'em. Taste one of the energon cubes.
- —Send the guy named "Swindle" to negotiate. Always a good idea.
"Forget everything I told you about heroism, RUN!"
- —Kup decides to change his tune when Rodimus Prime nearly faces death by alien garbage truck.
"Well?! Where are they?"
"You, uh... pose an interesting question, my lord."
- —Galvatron and Cyclonus wonder where the Decepticon army went.
"Mark this moment well. For when the Decepticons eliminate the Autobots, they take the first step to their own destruction as well."
- —A Quintesson
Notes
Animation or technical glitches
- The inside of Magnus's mouth is red as he announces the Autobots' trajectory.
- As Galvatron exits the warp gate, the gate's energy is shown streaming out of it. The previous scene showed the energy precisely confined within the gate's boundaries; later portrayals of warp gates would remain consistent with this. It looks like the animators might have conflated a view of Galvatron's passage within the warp gate with a view of space outside it.
- As Blurr decides to try and lose Galvatron around Jupiter, his lip flap is far slower than his rate of speech. In the same scene, Wheelie's voice starts getting higher. Just wait, it'll get worse.
- The first shot of this sequence has Blurr and Wheelie standing around and staring at a blank wall for no apparent reason; there were probably supposed to be controls and view screens there.
- The establishing shot of Autobot City shows some waterfalls that aren't moving at all. (That makes up for the frozen waterfall that spontaneously unfroze last season.)
- The EDC base on Mars totally changes shape and size between its two establishing shots. Maybe it transformed...?
- When Galvatron transforms to destroy the Autobot shuttle, his arm-mounted cannon flies off of his arm and off-screen... and a new one emerges from his body to replace it in his cannon mode.
- Wheelie takes the transformation cog with him when he ejects from the shuttle, but as he and Blurr fall through the tornado, it's not in either of his hands.
- When Wheelie shoots Galvatron, his Autobot symbol is missing (there's only a red square in its place).
- Improbable viewpoints:
- The Quintessons get a tracking pan view of Rodimus and company floating through space. (Four of the five Aerialbots are missing; only Air Raid is shown.)
- The mouth of the Quintesson reporting the Autobots' trajectory turns gray instead of black for several frames.
- All five of the Aerialbots are supposed to be with Rodimus & company, but only Silverbolt and Air Raid are actually shown.
- It's an AKOM episode, so watch for Grimlock's outdated head design.
- When the Autobots land on Goo, only the skull face of Deliberata is shown arriving. A second later, Kup picks up the same skull face before dropping it back into the goo. Did that one face just fall off?
- Rodimus has his early-casting voice when he says "I don't think it's the welcome wagon". In the same scene, the inside of Magnus's mouth is blue.
- Silverbolt doesn't move his mouth when he says "I'll fly over and see."
- The idea is that the erupting storm blasts Wheelie and Blurr out of Jupiter's atmosphere, but the animation makes it look like they just randomly start flying that way.
- Wheelie says he can't control his transformations, but he doesn't actually transform.
- After having a gray gun last episode, Rodimus is back to the red gun he had in Part 1.
- Rodimus's lower legs are orange instead of red in the second shot of him and the others firing at the garbage scow.
- Springer's mouth isn't moving when he says, "Maybe I can lift us out of here."
- Springer says "No go!" about his failure to escape from the goo before he's even activated his rotor blades.
- Springer returns to robot mode with no transformation noise.
- As Springer is pulled into the garbage scow, Arcee's helmet is pink on the sides when it should be all white.
- Rodimus's spoiler ridge is yellow instead of orange:
- As he leads the others to try and help Springer.
- During the whole sequence of him bringing down the garbage scow.
- When Rodimus reacts to Springer's destruction, his eyes are black instead of blue.
- Not nearly enough Springer parts come out of the machine to make up the complete Springer.
- "They wanna make a deal with us" is spoken in Swindle's voice, but Blitzwing is shown speaking.
- Astrotrain is missing some details on his back as he dives on the energon cube pile.
- Magnus has a red mouth interior again as he reacts to Rodimus stopping the garbage scow; the underside rim of his helmet is also huge. And gray instead of blue.
- During the same shots, Arcee's backpack is shown in front of her arms (and again, the sides of her helmet are pink).
- The Quintesson Deliberata finally pops up again when he's needed to speak a line, after being absent for the entire preceding sequence. His skull face is properly attached, so, we may never know what was up with the skull face that Kup dropped into the goo.
- As Rodimus asks, "How are we gonna get out of this mess?," Magnus's eyes are only half drawn in.
- The establishing shot of Chaar is pretty clearly Goo, which we just left in the previous scene.
- As Swindle denounces the Quintessons' offer, the top of his torso is purple instead of yellow, and Drag Strip's head is yellow instead of brown.
- The entire next sequence is an infamous continuity and animation FUBAR, as the Decepticons seem to teleport all over the place between shots:
- When the Decepticons react to "Destroy the Autobots", Motormaster is shown with Swindle and Drag Strip. The previous shot ("That means it probably is.") had Wildrider in that spot.
- Onslaught very clearly walks up to protest the Quintessons' proposal of attacking Cybertron. The next shot is a reaction shot of the Combaticons, with Onslaught down on his knees, and reacting in protest to his own statement! Swindle is also on his knees behind him, even though he was shown with some Stunticons just a shot before. AKOM cheats some "expressive" motion from the Combaticons by just sliding static drawings of them around on the background. Best of all, Bruticus—the combined form of the five Combaticons—is standing right behind them! His legs are switched around, and he's the same size as his components.
- In the next shot of the Decepticons, Onslaught is now sitting next to Soundwave and Astrotrain, and Swindle is now behind Dead End.
- Rumble is the size of Octane and Soundwave.
- The first shot of Blitzwing ("They lie!") shows him behind Rumble and Octane, but when we switch to a view from behind him, he's alone.
- In the wide shot as Dead End agrees with the plan, the Autobot Fireflight is shown sitting with the Decepticons. Same shot: Drag Strip's head is yellow again. Amazingly, this shot actually consistently keeps Blitzwing behind Octane and Rumble. Dead End, Soundwave and Onslaught are also still together, but Astrotrain has vanished from between them, and Rumble is in the space behind Dead End where Swindle should be.
- Yeah. It's bad, even for AKOM.
- When the Quintessons say they must act quickly, one Quintesson is missing the lower half of his face and another is missing altogether, with just a telltale beam of energy where he should be.
- Only three Sweeps arrive on Chaar. The number following Galvatron up to now has been five to six. The Sweep in the rear has gray legs and gray back details, even though his siblings on either side are colored correctly. Subsequent shots show several additional Sweeps.
- Shots of Galvatron and his men flying over Chaar have Sweeps colored quite creatively:
- "We have fallen upon hard times": a Dirge-colored Sweep
- Panning shot: Swindle, Soundwave, and Dirge-colored Sweeps
- "Soon I shall raise the Deceptions": Bombshell, Grimlock, and maybe others.
- The ordering of the reused backgrounds during Galvatron's "soon I shall raise the Decepticons" line makes it appear that they are flying backwards.
- The top of Blitzwing's head is purple instead of yellow as he struggles to remember the Quintessons' name.
- Cyclonus's jet windows aren't colored in as Galvatron says "Who cares?"
- Wheelie and Blurr have switched positions from where they crashed; Wheelie was on Blurr's left, but now he's on Blurr's right.
- As he and Blurr awake on Io, Wheelie doesn't have his usual voice. The strained, high-pitched, whiny substitute used instead makes his usual voice sound like sweet music.
- The animation of the lipoles seems to portray them as giant walking beasts (and definitely portrays them as glowing and dripping acid from their fangs), with deep-throated snarls and growls. Nothing wrong so far, but next episode they'll be a swarm of tiny, non-glowing, non-acid-dripping, flying, high-pitched-squeaking creatures. Whether the animators misinterpreted the writer's directions in this episode, or the writer himself changed his mind between installments, remains unclear.
- Wheelie's final lines lack the usual processing (which was already not up to snuff in this episode.)
- Right in the middle of the discussion about how to shut off the inescapable goo... Rodimus just walks right out of it!
- Only Air Raid is shown during the final sequence on Goo; the other four Aerialbots are missing (again!)
- Rodimus says "What was that?" in reaction to laser fire that hasn't happened yet.
- Another infamous cluster follows as the Decepticons pour out of the Quintesson ship and fire on the Autobots:
- The first shot features a light gray Seeker with a Blurr-like head bobber (maybe someone at AKOM was reading "Decepticon Patrol"?) and Shockwave colored like Long Haul.
- The second shot features a clearer shot of Shock Haul, as well as Shrapnel, who was reformatted into a Sweep during the Movie. Behind them, Dirge is missing his wings.
- If that doesn't seem so bad, wait until the same sequence continues next time!
- Although both the Kid Rhino and Shout! Factory versions of this episode contain the correct unique opening titles for the story (one of only two parts of "Five Faces of Darkness" on DVD that do), the Shout! version incorrectly uses the soundtrack to the standard season three opening as now found on the broadcast masters to all five parts.
Continuity errors
- The Autobot ship which looks exactly like Broadside is destroyed in the explosion of Quintessa. Broadside himself shows up alive and well later in the series, so... apparently that wasn't Broadside.
- The Aerialbots are clearly capable of at least limited space flight, as seen both in the previous episode, and the later episode "Fight or Flee". It therefore seems a bit silly for them to be tumbling helplessly through space.
- Spike is in his civilian clothes when he boards the Autobot ship. When it's destroyed a few seconds later, he's got on a space suit. Even if that was the first thing he did the instant he set foot on the ship, it sure doesn't look like he'd have time to change into it.
- The animation shows Marissa pushing a button and saying "On my way!" The next shot shows her ship rocketing off of its launching rail. The net effect is that she seems to have just been sitting there in this angled ship, waiting around for a mission.
- Rodimus is shown standing outside the garbage scow after he brings it down. Considering it came down right on top of him, he should really be inside it. (Or under it.)
- Kup says to Rodimus, "I've seen a lotta brave Autobots do a lotta brave things in my time, but nothing like that." With all Kup's experience, it's a little hard to swallow that that's the bravest thing he has ever witnessed.
ERRORS. OF. SCIENCE!
- Cyclonus's first line is muffled as if he were communicating by radio to Galvatron. Technically, that's actually correct, since they're in the soundless vacuum of space and should be communicating by radio. But it's inconsistent with every other portrayal of Transformers communicating in space, including the rest of this very scene. Anyway, wouldn't super-advanced space robots have hi-fi communicators that wouldn't sound like walkie-talkies?
- Trooper Sullivan is shown radioing Earth Defense Command with a hand-held radio as he's floating through space. The "mouth plate" of his helmet even moves as he does so. Unlike the super-advanced space robots, he does not get a "really talking by radio" pass for this.
- Jupiter's ring appears to be composed of scrap metal (instead of ice.) The planet itself is shown as a dusky orange instead of the banded red, white, brown and tan of the actual planet.
- The Autobot shuttle loops around a gray, homogeneous moon of Jupiter. It's not clear that this has to be Io, but if it is, it's all wrong. The real moon is orange and red, with black and white splotches, and looks like a pizza. Later, when Wheelie and Blurr are ejected from Jupiter's atmosphere, a distant Io (for sure this time!) is shown looking a lot like post-Movie Cybertron, silvery with spikey buildings poking out into space.
- During the establishing zoom-in toward Earth, two planet-like objects are in the foreground, in close proximity to the other. The smaller one is the Moon, but there's no real-world body that could be the other one. The reddish color may mean it's supposed to be Mars (which comes into play in the following scene), but it's waaaaay too close to the Moon for that.
- Wow. Who knew that storms on Jupiter were so... flammable?
- There probably isn't life on Io.
Continuity Notes
- Rodimus refers to Springer with the nickname "Springo". It recurs only once, in the next episode.
- Spike mentions that the gooey substance on Goo reminds him of stuff he put under his chair in school. Although this is disgusting, it does raise a valid question: when did Spike ever have time to go to school during the first two seasons?
- Blitzwing singles himself out as the only Decepticon who recognizes the Quintessons. This tantalizing plot thread was never developed further in the cartoon. Decades later, however, e-HOBBY would use this statement, together with the army of tank-mode Blitzwings seen in the Season 3 opening credits, as the inspiration for Overcharge.
Trivia
- The sequence on Goo is the inspiration for the last portion of the Five Faces of Darkness custom title sequence, though in a clever spoiler-avoiding twist, Springer actually does get free from the goo in the title animation.
Home video releases
- VHS
1990 — The Transformers — Five Faces of Darkness (Family Home Entertainment)
- Laserdisc
1990 — The Transformers — Five Faces of Darkness (Family Home Entertainment)
1999 — The Transformers: 2010 (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
- DVD
2001 — The Transformers: 2010 — DVD Box (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2002 — Transformers — Five Faces of Darkness: Parts 1-5 (Sony Wonder)
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)
