[Plot Details][Opinions][Great Moments][Caption Weirdness][Rating]

Before the Storm In a Nutshell...
Megatron discovers another Golden Disk and, to celebrate, he...calls a truce?

All The Gruesome Details
Warning! Warning! Major spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk!
Don't want to read everything that happened in the episode? Well, fine then! Be that way! You can just darn well click here and skip to the next part, you spoilsport.

It’s night. It’s dark. It's creepy. A palm forest is practically trembling in anticipation of…something. What could it be…?

Well, Tigatron seems to be determined to find out. He’s prowling through the palm forest, green eyes glowing, illuminating the hushed, expectant dimness of the night. In the distance, he spies a snow-capped mountain…and the mountain is glowing with an eerie blue light and thrumming with an equally eerie vibration. Tigatron crouches, growls, cat instincts perhaps taking over for the moment…

Meanwhile, over at Pred Central, Megatron is napping. And he snores. Not in a loud, obnoxious way, at least, but snoring nonetheless. His dino-head arm is draped over the side of his chair, its red dinosaur eye peeking around and rolling…in boredom, perhaps. But Meg’s nap is interrupted by the computer who wakes him up with a “Code A.T.T Alert” (Heh. Wonder where they got that acronym from…? ;) ) for his audio circuits only. Megatron awakens, stretches, yawns fitfully, and orders the computer to display its report. While Megatron taps his fingers, the computer helpfully reports on the glowing mountain that Tigatron has already seen…and it adds the tidbit that the energy that’s making the mountain glow is of alien origin. Megatron proclaims that, “This could be it…”

Dum dum dum duuuuuummmmm…

So back to the mountain we go…which now is now trembling and reverberating with some loud pounding. The pounding causes the summit of the mountain to cave in and large chunks of rock and ice fall…into a pool in the interior of the mountain? Yup. And in that pool is a small island. On that small island stands a large stone monolith. Embeded within that monolith is…a Golden Disk. And, as it turns out, the cause of the pounding is Inferno, who’s apparently burrowed his way into the mountain with typical ant determination. He sees the Disk and proclaims that “the Royalty was correct.” (As if Inferno would have had any doubt of that...) With the same determination that compelled him to burrow through an entire mountain, he yanks the Disk out of the monolith’s grasp, despite the fact that he begins to suffer from energon surges. In the end, though, he succeeds in retrieving the Disk and flies out of the ruined summit of the mountain, yelling at the top of his lungs and trailing smoke from his Blender Butt.

Back at Pred Central, the Disk is safely suspended within a force field. Megatron proclaims that “it is as [he] has long suspected.” He tells Inferno to go repair himself because he has much to think on. Inferno salaams and retreats with a “Yes, my Queen.” Megatron watches him go and laments that he wishes that Inferno wouldn’t call him that… (Yeah, right. You love it, Megs. Admit it! :) )

Optimus Primal, meanwhile is out joy-flying. Apparently he’s out to investigate the glowing mountain, because he reports that he can’t find it now. But he’s flown over a gizmo with a glowing red thingy on it. It’s apparently some sort of spy device because Megatron, back at Pred Central is alerted to Optimus’ presence...and he presses a button that shoots...something...out of the spy device. It whooshes past Optimus, who gasps in alarm but follows with jets at maximum burn. Of course, down at the end of the canyon the gizmo halts abruptly and becomes a holographic representation of Megatron’s head. Optimus has to do some fast braking in order not to run into it… He recovers quickly, though, and fires off a sarcastic comment about how wonderful it is to see Megatron. Which Megatron uncharacteristically brushes off. He announces that he wants to meet Optimus in person…on neutral ground…alone. (Megatron: “You bring the handcuffs, Primal. I’ll bring the whipped cream.” Sorry, couldn’t help myself. :) ) Optimus scoffs that he’d have to be an idiot to take Megatron up on such a deal…until Megatron announces that the subject he wishes to discuss is…a truce.

That, of course, cranks the old Maximal hopeful sentimentality into overdrive. Optimus meets Megs atop a high plateau. (I mean, really high. Like above cloud level. One wonders how Megatron got up there…) Optimus arrives and gets right to the point, wanting to know “what’s this slag about a truce?” (Optimus! Using the word “slag!” Wash your mouth out with soap, young man!) But Megatron confirms that he’s serious, that something’s come up and he’s really sorry but he won’t be able to make it for the rest of the war. He turns to stomp away (One wonders to where, however…Look out, Megatron! That fifth or sixth step or so will be a doozy! :) ), and Optimus indignantly asks if Megatron takes him for a fool. To which Megatron chuckles and says, “No. I take you for a Maximal.” (Really? Optimus is a Maximal? Really? Like, wow, man… ;) )

Back at the Axalon, Rattrap thinks that Optimus has slipped off his rocker for buying into the whole truce thing. Dinobot, for once, agrees with Rattrap. Optimus rhetorically asks what else he was supposed to do other than accept the truce. He’s a Maximal, he has to give peace a chance (“All we are saaaaaying…Is give peace a chaaaaance…” Sorry, John Lennon moment. Won’t happen again, I promise. :) ) Rhinox makes the next leap of logic, wondering if Megatron’s sudden change of heart has something to do with the appearance of the anomaly. (No! What makes you think that, Rhinox?!) Optimus, being a bright boy, has already made that connection, He stalks over to a window and asserts that Megatron’s found something that’s got him so worried that he doesn’t want to think about the Maximals. Rattrap, for his part, is insulted. Cheetor announces that they have to find out what it is that's got Megs in a tizzy. Optimus turns away from the window and casts a silent, significant look at Rattrap, who then bemoans the fact the has to infiltrate the Pred base again. Rhinox points out that such a thing might be a truce violation. Cheetor helpfully points out that it won’t be if Rattrap’s unarmed for the occasion, an idea which Rattrap thoroughly loves... Dinobot, for once being a voice of reason, points out that Megatron will anticipate such a move on the Maximals’ part…and apparently Optimus is counting on that?

Just like Megatron is apparently counting on what’s happening over at Pred Central at just that moment…Which, of course, would be treachery from Tarantulas. He’s busting into a “transwarp module” and snitching a transwarp cell (He’s trying to get off the planet, remember?) The one that he snitches is only at 75% power, but he notes that it’ll have to do. Unfortunately for Waspinator, Waspinator happens across Tarantulas in mid-pilfer. Yes, unfortunately for Waspinator. Because he confronts Ranty, you see, who tosses a thing from his forehead at Waspy that erupts into a camouflaging purple haze. (“Purple haze, purple haze…” Sorry, Prince moment. :) ), which allows Ranty to escape, but not before locking Waspinator into the transwarp module…along with a wad of explosives…

Tarantulas, laughing maniacally, scuttles away right after the bomb explodes…while Megatron watches every move he’s making with…satisfaction. In order to further his apparent plan, Megatron sends Blackarachnia to check out the disturbance in the transwarp module. And then, quite pleased with himself, he leans back in his chair, crosses his legs, and announces that the next move is Optimus Primal’s…

And, right on cue, Airrazor, lugging Rattrap in her talons, is heading for the Pred base. They get a warm welcome from the autoguns in the perimeter defense system. Airazor drops Rattrap off behind a convenient boulder. He transforms, pats around his body in search of his gun, and then proclaims that he feels naked without it. Airazor, meanwhile, transforms and then contacts the Predacon base to complain to the management at her treatment. Megatron, busy brushing his dino-head’s teeth (Really!), apologizes profusely and shuts off the perimeter defenses with a flick of the toothbrush…but then, in the interests of continued peace, he asks that Airazor haul her hiney out of Predacon airspace. Airazor makes a show of being defeated and flies off, while Rattrap exults that they "did it." Until Megatron recontacts Airazor and tells her to take “that vermin” that’s on his screen with her, that is. They've failed.

Apparently.

Back at the Axalon, Rattrap and Airazor report to Optimus that they failed completely to infiltrate the Predacon base. Rattrap looks at Airazor. Airazor looks at Optimus. Optimus looks at the Round Table…where a little white dot representing Tigatron is unobtrusively popping itself into a hole in the side of the Predacon base… (Why, Optimus! You crafty little devil, you. I knew I loved you for some reason… ;) )

Tarantulas, meanwhile, is playing with his new transwarp toy, which is now “fully functional.” But his fiddling is interrupted by the arrival of…Waspinator’s burbling head? Yep. With Blackarachnia in tow, too. She transforms to taunt Ranty, who quickly moves a piece of equipment in order to hide the transwarp cell and tries to throw her off the trail. Megatron, meanwhile, is luxuriating in his hot tub, voyeuristically watching the two scheming spiders. Seeing that Tarantulas is suddenly distracted by the arrival of Blackarachnia--as Megatron planned, of course--he takes the opportunity to access the transwarp cell that Ranty stole and adds a little programming of his own...(Programming, I might add, that will become quite important over the next...oh...two episodes, so pay attention. :) ) Megatron laughs in truimph.

And his laughter is reverberating though the corridors of the Predacon base…through which Tigatron is currently stalking. He transforms, proclaims that the black Predacon ship is a bad place for the white Maximal cat, so he’ll have to make his spy mission a quick one…

Meanwhile, Cheetor’s bored. Head leaning against one hand, he’s using the other to idly flip through holograms of alien stuff on the Round Table. Idly, he asks Optimus if he thinks that Tigatron will be able to get the information they need. Optimus can only respond that he hopes so because Megs has apparently discovered something big…and they have to know what it is.

Well, keep yer pants on, big guy! Tigatron’s almost there. He finds an access panel. He connects himself to it via a little cable that’s helpfully part of his body. He works his way through this funky virtual reality security system…and finds just what he’s looking for: All of Megatron’s information about the other Golden Disk that he found... “By the Matrix!” Tigatron exclaims as he scans through the information.

But in very short order, he’s going to be interrupted by Terrorsaur, who stumbles across the spying tiger and proclaims that “curiosity just claimed another cat.”

But before that can happen, Megatron has to do a bit more gloating first. While Inferno watches in rapt attention Megatron claims that there is a storm approaching, a storm of unimaginable power. And, with the Disk’s help, he’s going to claim that power, because his ambitions no longer are limited simply to conquering Cybertron. Pausing, he takes a moment to laugh in triumph…a laugh that turns into…a coughing fit? But he gets control of himself and continues to gloat that the Disk has given him a glimpse of real power and that that power “shall be mine!” And then his rant is interrupted by the alarm going off.

And now Terrorsaur is holding his gun to Tigatron’s head. Tigatron points out to Terrorsaur that he can’t shoot because they have a truce, “remember?” Terrorsaur assures him that he remembers…but that his trigger finger just might forget. HAH! Not with my man around, Terrorsaur! Tigatron merely swats Terrorsaur’s gun away, transforms to tiger mode, and decks the Predacon...and then he runs off as quickly as his tiger legs can carry him. Megatron runs up, yanks Terrorsaur up off the floor, and tells him to get Tigatron, but without any shooting: “We are having a truce, remember?” Scorponok has the same idea. He and Terrorsaur have Tigatron trapped in the corridor. They run toward each other from opposite ends of that corridor. Tigatron, panicked, looks frantically around himself, notices that there’s a convenient hole in the wall. He leaps through it at the last possible second. Terrorsaur and Scorponok can’t stop in time and they slam into each other... Megatron moans, buries his face in his hand, and shakes his head wearily.

Outside, Rattrap’s scanning the horizon, so to speak, sees a flare, and announces that “Tigatron the Barbarian is doing a bail-out.” Now the fun begins. Rhinox and Cheetor are lugging around a piece of sheet metal and Optimus announces that “[They’re] on [their] way.” He transforms and takes to the air with Airazor. Tigatron, meanwhile, is hauling hiney, with Inferno, Terrorsaur, Tarantulas, and Blackarachnia in hot pursuit. Dinobot, watching, transforms in order to engage the enemy, an idea that Optimus pooh-poohs from over his comm. He insists that the Predacons be stopped…peacefully. (Though I’ve gotta say…What’s the difference whether they use a weapon or not, for pity’s sake! They're still fighting, after all. To deny it is just…semantics. Sophistry. All that good stuff. ) But Dinobot, grumbling, transforms back to beast mode.

He looks around...

He sees a precariously-perched boulder...

He knows that Tarantulas is heading his way...

You just know what’s going to happen, don’t you?

Before that can happen, though, the Maximal Air Patrol--that being Optimus and Airazor--first have to deal with Inferno. Easily done, as it turns out. Airazor hovers in mid-air, looking all pretty, as bait. Inferno, slavering madly, flies in to pound her, not noticing Optimus swooping around so that he can sneak up from behind…until Optimus taps on the top of his head, of course. Optimus waves jauntily, reaches down and yanks one little wire (*Nightwind remembers G1’s obsession with one little wire being the difference between a functional and a non-functional Autobot, and sighs exasperatedly*) out of Inferno’s back. With that, the Blender Butt sputters pitifully…and Inferno discovers that it’s a terribly long way down to the ground.

Meanwhile, Tigatron’s still running, with Terrorsaur still in hot pursuit. Tig leaps over a little trench. Rhinox and Cheetor, with their piece of sheet metal, pop up out of the trench. Terrorsaur flies head first into the sheet metal. (Yo! Excedrin for Terrorsaur! Stat!)

And now we get to the Tarantulas-smushing part… He and BA are slinking around when they come upon Dinobot, who apparently doesn’t notice them. But Tarantulas notices that there’s a suspicious-looking patch of palm fronds between them and the Maximal. Tentatively, he taps a foot against the fronds. Sure enough, they give way, seeming to indicate that there’s a pit below them. So Ranty and BA jump over the pit, landing "safely" on the other side. Trouble is, the vibration from their landing serves to pop (With an audible pop) the little teeny rock that is the only thing that is holding the aforementioned precariously-perched boulder in place. It rolls, the spiders go squish, and Dinobot gives us one of his all-too-rare chortles of glee.

Terrorsaur, meanwhile, manages to free his head from the sheet metal. He transforms, spits out a tooth or two, and finds himself staring at Rattrap, who’s holding a red cloth like a matador at the 2:00 bullfight. Enraged, Terrorsaur runs at him. Rattrap moves aside the cloth with a flourish, revealing…Rhinox’s large rhino butt. Again, Terrorsaur can’t stop in time and makes friends with Rhinox’s hindquarters. Rhinox, for his part, sits down, pinning the now-unconscious Terrosaur to the ground. Optimus and Dinobot look on. “Peaceful,” Dinobot comments. “Very peacful,” Optimus confirms. Rhinox, for his part, wiggles his butt around a bit, further squishing poor Terrorsaur.

Later, on the monitors, we see Blackarachnia hauling the bits of Inferno home on a travois and a badly-limping Tarantulas doing the same for Terrorsaur. A safe and sound Scorponok proclaims, “Darn! He got away!” Megatron, surprisingly, takes everything in stride. “Yes,” he says. “When serving bait, presentation is everything…”

Dum dum dum duuuuuuummmmmm…

A bit later, back at the Axalon, a storm has arrived. And as the Maximals regroup on the roof of the Axalon, Optimus asks Tigatron what he found out. Tigatron complies by revealing that Megatron “has found a strange Golden Disk of alien manufacture.” It had been recently activated, which was the cause of the energy anomaly that he’d detected. He further says that there are moving symbols on the disk and that Megatron has translated them. He pauses, Optimus prods him…and Tigatron finishes by revealing that the disk was designed to be a beacon and because it was activated, the aliens--the ones who seeded the planet with energon and built the stone circle from “Chain of Command” and the flying island from “The Trigger”--are coming...and Tigatron doesn’t think they’re gonna be very happy.

Optimus takes all of that in, looks toward one of the moons, and summarizes everything up rather nicely by saying, “Well. That’s…just…prime.”

Methinks Optimus has learned a thing or two from Rhinox in the understatement department…

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Nightwind's Unsolicited Opinions

It's kind of hard for me to really have an opinion about this episode. Why? Because it doesn't really stand alone very well. It serves merely to set up "Other Voices," the alien saga that follows directly after this episode. But I really like that alien saga, so I do find myself enjoying this one more than I would otherwise, had this one just been meant to be a stand-alone episode.

And perhaps the one thing that I enjoy the most about it is Megatron. Prior to this episode, I didn't find Megatron to be all that interesting. He was kind of your typical overbearing bad guy leader in many ways. And he never really got an episode that focused on him, specifically. But this episode is very much about Megatron, and it's the start of what is, to me, an entirely different Megatron than he was even in the episode directly prior to this one. It's a change that should probably bother me, because I'm not fond of characters who all of a sudden up and decide to be different than they were before. But in this case, it doesn't bother me too much because prior to this Megatron, to me, wasn't much of anything anyway.

But suddenly, in this episode, he's a schemer who's thinking ten steps ahead of everyone. From back in "Spider's Game," with Tarantulas' announcement that the planet is doomed, you'd think it would be Tarantulas who's ten steps ahead of everyone else, but as it turns out it's Megatron who's ahead of him. From the moment the computer awakens him from his nap, Megatron seems to know exactly what's going to happen, every step of the way, from here on out to the end of "The Agenda." In this episode by itself, Megatron knows what the energy anomaly is. He knows that Tarantulas is going to steal a transwarp cell. He does something to that cell while Tarantulas isn't looking in order to insure that...something...will happen somewhere down the line. He knows what the Maximals will do once offered a truce. He allows them, it's revealed at the end, to find out about the Disk...all because it will force them to further his plan, the full extent of which we, of course, learn by the end of "Other Voices."

All of this is in Megatron's head from the moment the second disk makes itself known. I don't know whether to be impressed or just to find the whole thing enirely unbelievable. (And not in a good way, I mean. :) ) But I tend to be more on the impressed side, probably because I want to be impressed more than anything else. I truly enjoy watching Megatron here at the very end of the first season and throughout the entire second scene. Before that, he doesn't interest me all that much and in the third season he quickly goes way over the top. But for the stretch from "Before the Storm" to the end of "The Agenda," I truly enjoy watching him. I wish that he had been like his is in that stretch of the series for the entire series.

So that's the good part about this episode. Unfortunately, there are two things that tend to bother me a about it, as well...

The first is the whole truce thing... What was the point? And I have to say that it's the strangest truce I've ever seen. You're perfectly allowed to bash the heck out of each other so long as no weapons are involved? Huh? The fact of the matter is that you don't need weapons to kill. So it would appear to me that the Transformers--at least those of the Beast Wars era--have quite an odd definition of the word "truce."

Besides that, though, what was the point of calling it in the first place? It's not like the Maximals--like the Autobots before them--ever actively attack the Predacons, anyway. If Megatron was so preoccupied with alien matters that he didn't have time to think about the Maximals, it wouldn't have made much difference, anyway, because the Maximals, in true standard hero style--would never attack him first. I guess, in the end, the whole idea was, indeed, to call attention to himself. I guess Megatron wanted the Maximals to wonder about what Megatron was up to so they would come and investigate. Which, as I said, was apparently part of Megatron's plan...

The other thing I'm not fond of in this episode is the incongrous cartoon-y nature of the final "fight" between the Maximals and the Predacons. Like Wile E. Coyote, Inferno hangs in the air for a bit and looks mournfully at the camera before falling to the hard ground far below. And that "pop" sound effect as the little rock holding up the big boulder jumps out of place jars me. And then terrorsaur flies into the piece of sheet metal, and there's the similar sort of cartoony sound effect as his body vibrates with the impact. It's not a major complaint, but this stuff just generally bothers me with the series as a whole. I get the impression that Beast Wars is an attempt at a more serious, more "grown-up" form of Transformers story-telling. So what's with the stuff straight out of Looney Toons? Not that I have anything against Looney Toons, of course, but I don't think that stuff really meshes well with Transformers... I mean, comic relief is nice, but it shouldn't be overdone, nor do I think it was entirely necessary in this episode...

Though I do admit I have a fondness for the part where Terrorsaur runs into Rhinox's butt, and Rhinox sits on him and does that cute little wiggle... ;)

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Great Moments

This episode has one of my favorite Optimus Primal lines of them all: "Well! Megatron! I'd say it was good to see you, but my truth circuits would overload."

The other thing I really like about the episode is actually...well...kind of weird. In this episode (and no other) Megatron's dinosaur head hand seems to have a life of its own. While Megs is sleeping it's kind of looking around, hanging out... Megatron even pets it at one point. And then, the bit with Megatron brushing its teeth! HAH! That's awesome. :) The whole thing seems kind of surreal because, like I said, this is the only episode where the dino head is anything other than just there, an inanimate attachment on Megatron's arm. And I like it. I wish that it had had this life of its own the whole time...

That virtual reality security thing that Tigatron goes through in the Predacon base has some pretty neat visuals, though it was rather easy to defeat, wasn't it?

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Closed Captioning Weirdness
(Or, sometimes what you think they say is not really what they say...)

1. Just one! As Inferno first sees the Golden Disk nestled in the monolith thing, he says, "Of all things correct" instead of "The royalty was correct."
   
   

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Totally Arbitrary Overall Rating, Just For the Heck of It

Ehhhhh...It's all right. As an episode by itself, it wouldn't be all that great, but as the start of a nifty little story arc, I have to like it better than some episodes. So let's give it a...a...5. Right smack in the middle. I neither love it nor hate it. It's just...there. ;)