Ghost in the Machine (G1)
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 Screw you guys, I'm going home. | |||||||||||||
| "Ghost in the Machine" | |||||||||||||
| Production code | 700-100 | ||||||||||||
| Production company | Sunbow Productions | ||||||||||||
| Airdate | October 21, 1986 | ||||||||||||
| Written by | Joey Kurihara Piedra Michael Charles Hill | ||||||||||||
| Animation studio | AKOM | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Generation 1 cartoon continuity | ||||||||||||
Set on regaining a physical body, the ghost of Starscream possesses Scourge and makes a deal with the devil.
Synopsis
On Chaar, the Decepticons are following Galvatron, when Starscream's ghost appears and possesses Scourge. Despite his better efforts, Starscream forces Scourge to fire on Galvatron, then flees with Cyclonus in pursuit. Cyclonus follows as far as Cybertron, where he breaks off, assuming that Scourge has defected to the Autobots. But that is not Starscream's goal. He instead flies to the severed head of Unicron. Using Scourge to reactivate the Dark God, Starscream offers his services in exchange for a new body. Unicron agrees to restore him to life in exchange for three labors. The first labor is to bring Metroplex's eyes to Unicron. With nowhere else to go, Scourge agrees to serve Unicron.
On Earth, Kup arrives for an inspection of Autobot City, when Scourge and Starscream make their move. Destroying Metroplex's security system, the two Decepticons steal the eyes, but Bumblebee and Spike Witwicky cause Scourge to drop one, shattering it. Fleeing, Metroplex transforms, but cannot see, and begins firing on the Autobots. However, a photon bomb disables Metroplex, causing him to crash. Lacking one eye, the two head back for Chaar, where they dispatch the Battlechargers, outwit Starscream's former soldiers, and steal one of Trypticon's eyes. In addition, Starscream possesses Astrotrain to serve as their ride home, where Astrotrain is left to the mercy of the Autobots. Upon learning of what happened, Galvatron reacts in a rational, controlled manner... for Galvatron.
Pleased with his new eyes, Unicron informs Starscream and Scourge of their next labor: bring Trypticon to Unicron (should have told them that before they left). Starscream heads off to complete the task. Meanwhile, Rodimus Prime interrogates Astrotrain, who claims not to remember what happened, but Blurr reveals that Unicron has his eyes back! Ultra Magnus takes Sky Lynx, Hot Spot, and Springer to investigate, but Unicron drives them off. Scourge is becoming nervous, but Unicron warns his creation that he can take what he has given. On Chaar, Galvatron orders the Battlechargers and Coneheads to locate Starscream and Scourge, only for Trypticon to transform, under Starscream's control, and depart, with the Decepticons in pursuit.
As the Autobots prepare for the Decepticon assault, Unicron commands Starscream to remove Trypticon's transformation cog and place it in Unicron. The Decepticons arrive and attack, but Starscream uses Trypticon to disable their weapons. As the Decepticons flee, Unicron commands his minions to complete the third labor—connect Unicron's head to Cybertron, making it his new body. Scourge decides to book it, and Starscream is left to complete the task. Scourge tries to warn Galvatron, but he doesn't care. Scourge then heads to the Autobots, and warns them of Unicron's intentions.
Within Trypticon, the Battlecharges and the Coneheads disable Starscream's control over Trypticon, so Starscream demands his body to complete the labors. Unicron restores his body, but Starscream (surprise, surprise), tells Unicron to connect himself to Cybertron. However, the Autobots manage to plant some energon cubes on Unicron's head. They detonate the energon, causing Unicron's head to return to orbit and Starscream to go flying. Thrown past the Decepticons, Galvatron orders them to fire on Starscream. When their shots begin hitting him, Cyclonus wonders why Starscream's ghost has lost control.
On Cybertron, Rodimus agrees to allow Scourge and Astrotrain to leave, in exchange for their help. He then tells the Autobots of their new mission to retrieve Metroplex's eye, but then reveals that he was joking, saying that the eyes were probably destroyed in the explosion.
Unseen by the Autobots, Unicron's eye twinkles in the night...
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
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Quotes
"THERE IS NO REASONING WITH HIM! DESTROY HIM! HE'S LOST HIS MIND!"
- —Galvatron, calling the kettle black.
"Aerialbots! Wait for... umm... nevermind."
- —Warpath, getting left behind.
"Decepticon intruders IN MY BRAIN!"
- —Metroplex, on the perils of being city-sized.
"Where are my eyes?!"
- —Metroplex would look around for them if he could.
"First, you two let Scourge and Starscream steal one of Trypticon's eyes. And then you two allowed Astrotrain to be used as their escape vehicle. So Scourge is helping Starscream voluntarily, and you four were unable to stop them! Well, all I can say is...BWWWAAAAAAA!"
- —Galvatron, giving his outburst a rare preamble.
"Why did Galvatron have you attack Cybertron all by yourself? Are you stupid or just obedient?"
- —Rodimus Prime, getting sassy with Astrotrain
"I don't have to show you no stinking passes."
- —Starscream has picked up some Earth culture.
"Starscream! You are a dead mechanism!"
"Of course I'm dead, Galvatron! But not for much longer. And then are you going to be sorry!"
"I'm already sorry!"
- —Galvatron and Starscream, bickering like old times.
"Unicron! If you want the connection made, you'd better give me a new body now!"
"You shall have it."
(Unicron shoots lasers from his eyes, and Starscream's body is reformed)
"I live again!"
"Now, do my bidding. Complete the connection!"
"Ha! Do it yourself!"
- —Unicron bet on the wrong pony, and Starscream just loves being a prick.
"Wait a minute, since when do ghosts tumble out of control through space?"
- —Cyclonus, catching up with the plot.
Notes
Animation or technical glitches
- Headstrong's gun sounds like Galvatron's cannon.
- In this episode, Cyclonus's eyebrows are purple. His chin is still grey, though.
- Unicron's helmet was all gold the last time we saw it. Now it's blue with gold horns.
- After entering Unicron, Scourge/Starscream lands and walks forward. Look at the background—it turns dark and suddenly flashes back to the previous background again.
- As he says, "Only three?," Starscream's eyes are suddenly huge.
- When Bumblebee and Spike discover Scourge stealing Metroplex's eyes, Bumblebee has enormous wheels.
- Just before setting the charge inside Metroplex, Scourge's eyes are blue instead of red.
- After the bomb goes off, the next shot of the inside of Metroplex shows a star background on his monitor. A few shots later, it's the usual Earth sky.
- When Silverbolt says that he doesn't see any enemy, he and Skydive are both mouthing the words.
- As Scourge exits Astrotrain/Starscream to dig out Metroplex's eye, he's still carrying Trypticon's eye. It disappears in the next shot.
- As he re-enters Astrotrain/Starscream, Scourge just sort of clips into him through a solid wall.
- In a few scenes, Hot Spot has a mouth on his faceplate.
- The tops of Rodimus's shoulders are the same color as his arms in this episode. The last time we saw him, they were white.
- The inside of Ultra Magnus's mouth is red for most of the episode.
- In a layering error, the "Unidentified craft" warning message that flashes up on Blurr's screen overlays his head.
- Groove has a totally different voice for his one line ("Locked and loaded!"), sounding somewhat like Beachcomber. Usually, he sounds more like a higher-pitched Trailbreaker.
- When he accuses Astrotrain of stealing Metroplex's eyes, Magnus's whole face is blue.
- As Sky Lynx approaches him, Unicron's eyes are missing again.
- During Scourge's attack on him, Sky Lynx has a Decepticon symbol on his nose.
- Hot Spot says, "Look out, Scourge!" when he probably meant to say, "Look out, it's Scourge!"
- As he berates his troops, the tops of Galvatron's shoulders are missing their red squares.
- As Scourge is brought to Rodimus, an overhead shot shows Ultra Magnus with circular cogs on his shoulders instead of the usual white pillars.
- Magnus's line, "Let's plant the energon explosives and get out of here," is cut off in the middle.
- When Galvatron shoots at Starscream, his cannon sounds like a regular Decepticon laser.
- When Rodimus shakes Magnus's hand, Magnus has an Autobot symbol on his left shoulder. He should only have one on his right shoulder.
- As Rodimus jokes about recovering Metroplex's eyes from Unicron, a reaction shot shows Magnus's other (right) shoulder. This should have an Autobot symbol, but doesn't!
- As Rodimus jokes about recovering Metroplex's eyes from Unicron, one shot shows a solid wall behind him even though he's still standing in front of the display (showing space).
- After Rodimus jokes about recovering Metroplex's eyes from Unicron, Hot Spot is shown with Ultra Magnus's color scheme.
Continuity errors
- While Scourge makes a respectable attempt at fighting off Starscream's control of his body in this episode, he displayed no such strength of will when he was possessed by the latter at the end of "Starscream's Ghost". Of course, this time he could have been some what familiar with Starscream's forceful takeover techniques and able to mount a better resistance.
- Cyclonus won't go near Unicron's head because that would alert the Autobots, but they don't seem to notice Scourge approaching it.
- Putting one wire back together is enough to reactivate Unicron's mind! You'd think Rodimus would have done more to make it unrepairable.
- It's not unprecedented for Autobots to come back from being seriously injured, but Powerglide appears alive and well, even though he was blown up by the Quintessons the last time we saw him.
- Starscream enters Kup's body and somehow immediately causes an explosion in a random wall that blows out Metroplex's entire security system.
- Following that scene, Scourge is already in Metroplex. Nobody noticed him fly to Earth? What happened to the Earth Defense Command satellites?
- What is Trypticon doing on that random planet? And why doesn't he notice Scourge stealing his eye?
- Although undoubtedly big, Metroplex and Trypticon's eyes should be way too small for Unicron to use as like-for-like replacements.
- Ultra Magnus accuses Astrotrain of stealing Metroplex's eyes, but Scourge/Starscream only took one (the other one broke).
- Why don't the Autobots just blast Unicron's repaired circuits as soon as they enter his head?
- When Scourge approaches Galvatron he says, "Galvatron, don't shoot!" Galvatron states he couldn't even if he wanted to, because Trypticon neutralized their weapons (somehow). Yet, when Starscream's out of control body flies past him, he begins firing on him.
- It's odd that Unicron wants Starscream to bring Trypticon to him just to get his transformation cog. Why not just steal the cog as they did in "The Ultimate Weapon"?
- Why doesn't Rodimus just jump inside Unicron's head and open the Matrix again?
- After receiving his new body, Starscream completely blows Unicron off. Since Unicron was able to mentally torture Galvatron into compliance, he should have been able to be the same here.
- What happens to Trypticon (and the Decepticons inside him) when Unicron's head is blasted away?
- Why does Starscream "tumble through space" if he could just transform and fly away?
- Arcee appears in one shot of the episode, as the Autobots cheer when Unicron's head is blasted away.
- Warpath and Bumblebee appear (for one shot each) on the Autobots' base on Cybertron at the end of the episode. Is there some reason why they made the trip there from Earth?
- Rodimus jokes about recovering Metroplex's eyes from Unicron. One of the eyes is Trypticon's.
- So there is an obvious balatant connector point on the surface of Cybertron for Unicron to use. Question, who build that and why hasn't the Autobots even notice it? I mean, in the movie, Unicron gave the whole entire planet a huge "bitch slap". Surly someone could've discovered it during the reconstruction? Also, just who built the thing? how long have that connection point been in existance? And most importantly, why? These questions were never explained in the episode.
- To go with the above. Surely Unicron must have known about this connection all along. The fact that he suddenly just had a epiphany only in this episode is too far of a streach. If that is the case, why did he tried to "dismemberment" the planet in the movie? Surely, with a such an important spare, shouldn't he try and save it for a rainy day? Don't
- Why did the Autobots, or Rodimus waited until Scourge's warning to act? As soon as they found out Unicron eyes were back, he was under constant survillance. Rodimus and gang watched Trypticon and Galvatron and gang fought each other so surely they watched Trypticon pushing Unicron slowly to the surface. And in fact, they have ways to fight back, those anti aircraft laser cannons (used to shoot down Astrotrain). So why wait? With Unicron's head inching closer to the surface, surely anyone can figure out bad stuff is about to happen. Surely Rodimus should have ordered those AAA lasers open up on him right away to get something that dangerous away from the surface.
- Why would Unicron need to connect with anything anyways? As shown in the episode, "Starscream Brigade". In order for Transformers to transform and rebuild something, all they need is to have their "essence" (Personality in the cartoons or as we will know later, their "sparks") to be in contact with any vehicle of a correct size and in that particular episode, the Combaticon will automatically revamp, reconstitute the vehicle, no matter how damaged, rusted or bent out of shape and reformat them into something brand new and far deadlier. Obviously, Unicron is still very much "alive", meaning his spark or personality is still functioning. So, shouldn't he be asking Starscream to push down his head and make contact with the planet? Surely if the Combaticons can do it, he can too.
- Ok, fine, to play along with above. Let's say Unicron can't make the revamp unless the connection happens has to happen for some reason. Why would he need Starscream's help? Right there in the eipsode, he reconsituted Starscream's body just by looking at him. With a being that powerful. Shouldn't he be able to generate two tractor beams from his eyes and tractor the line to the connectors? It is clearly shown that those lines were infront of him when Starscream threw them back at Unicron.
- It's obvious that Unicron head is huge (see the eyes thing above), with a mass of hundreds upon thousands, if not a few hundred thousand tons. This is why Unicron tasked Starscream to get Trypticon to move him down into the surface. In that case, only a few energon explosives were enough not only to blast Unicron's head away from the surface, but completely out of Cybertron's orbit as well (see Grimlock's New Brain)?
- Ok, again, to play along. Let's say those few explosive are so powerful, they can indeed blast a few hundred thousand tons out of orbit. Should't something that powerful blow the head completely apart instead? Take a look, Magnus just placed those explosive haphazardly close to Unicron, that is it. Ok, fine. Let's pretend Magnus just so placed those explosives where the explosive force can be focused enough to act like a rocket engine. Then the powerful back blast should at minimum, give Cybertron surface burn and heat damage, if not outright blow a small crater. And as shown, there was indeed a rather powerful back blast. Yet, the planet did not suffer any sort of damage at all. All of this leads to another question. If the Autobots possess something THAT powerful, why did Hotrod/Rodmus needs the matrix? Shouldn't the Autobots place even more energon explosives inside Unicron's head and blow it to hell?
Transformers references
- Only appearance of Runabout.
- This episode is the second appearance of Starscream's ghost. His first appearance was in the G1 episode "Starscream's Ghost". His ghost makes a third appearance in the Beast Wars episode "Possession" in which he takes over Waspinator.
Real-world references
- The title's literal meaning obviously applies to the events of the episode, but the phrase has a history in philosophical discourse. It was coined as a pejorative against the mind-body split of Cartesian dualism, and by the time this episode was made, it had also been used as the title of a book and a rock album.
- Starscream delivers the line, "I don't have to show you no stinking passes"
Foreign localization
German
- Title: "Der Geist im Roboter" ("The Ghost inside the Robot")
- Title (Generation 2 dub): "Starscream kehrt zurück" ("Starscream Returns")
- Original airdate: ?
Japanese
Russian
- Title: "Prizrak v mashine" (Призрак в машине, "Ghost in the Machine")
- Original airdate: ?
Trivia
- Scourge demonstrates an extraordinary level of willpower in this episode. Of all the Transformers Starscream is seen possessing in both this episode and "Starscream's Ghost", Scourge is the only one who puts up a fight for control of his own body and retains his memories of what happened while "under the influence". (This is admittedly inconsistent with the ending of the prequel to this episode, however.)
- Unicron displays the ability to electrocute the Autobots inside his head and expel them through his neck.
- Starscream is last seen tumbling away through space in his new body, possibly damaged from Galvatron's attacks but still very much alive. This is sometimes seen as a point of conflict with his appearance as a ghost in the Beast Wars episode "Possession". Fans have reconciled this by speculating that he died again off-screen, or else traveled through time to the Beast Wars era (and back) before this episode took place chronologically. Alternatively, the Beast Wars cartoon does not follow strictly from any specific Generation 1 continuity, allowing the "error" to be dismissed entirely.
Home video releases
- VHS
1987 — Transformers — Starscream's Ghost / The Nightmare Planet / The Ghost in the Machine (St. Michael Video Library)
1989 — Transformers — A Ghost in the Machine / Heavy Metal Wars (Tempo Video)
1989 — Transformers — The Action Adventure Collection II (Tempo Video)
2000 — The Original Transformers — Volume 11: The Decepticon Possession (Rhino Entertainment)
- Laserdisc
1999 — The Transformers: 2010 (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
- DVD
2001 — The Transformers: 2010 — DVD Box (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2004 — The Original Transformers — Season 3 Part 2 & Season 4 (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)
2006 — The Best of The Transformers (Madman Entertainment)
2007 — Transformers — The Classic Episodes (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)
