Double Jeopardy In a Nutshell...
Blackarachnia arrives on the scene...but if you blink, you'll miss her. Meanwhile, Rattrap takes a walk on the Predacon side...sort of.

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.

Out in space, a stasis pod is taking the plunge (Yes, again!) You know what that means, I hope...

Meanwhile, that intrepid pair, Dinobot and Optimus Primal, are walking in a winter wonderland, in search of the stasis pod. (Two stasis pods in a row landing in a cold place...) They're approaching what looks like the leading edge of a glacier or a frozen waterfall. And it's apparently been a while that they've been searching for the pod, too, because Dinobot reports that his "servofluids" are starting to freeze (Sounds like a personal problem there, Dinobot... :) ) Optimus agrees wordlessly and calls the base, wondering where the heck the pod is supposed to be. Rattrap answers that it's close enough to bite them, that they're within a few feet of it. (Excuse me? Did he just say "feet?" As in the hideously archaic unit of measurement to which only Americans steadfastly cling even though the metric system is five thousand times more logical and ten thousand times easier to use? Yeah, that's what I thought he said... :) ) And, indeed, it is very close, once Optimus looks up...way up... It's stuck in a ledge of ice above their heads. The scale of the scene is difficult to determine, but it's a good distance up there...

And uh-oh! That's when Terrorsaur and Waspinator show up, hovering above the pod. Terrorsaur taunts the two "intrepid explorers" (Hey! He stole my word! :) ) Dinobot announces that they were "betrayed," which is most puzzling, and the battle is on. Scorponok shows up from nowhere--as usual--to pound the Maximals from the ground while Waspinator and Terrorsaur harass them from the air. Eventually, a missile from Scorponok sets off a mild avalanche that buries the Maximals in snow and ice, leaving Terrorsaur...er, make that Waspinator...to abscond with the stasis pod. Optimus Primal bursts out of the snow as Waspinator takes off with the pod, royally ticked, while Dinobot emerges from the snow and blasts Scorponok with his eye lasers. Just as Optimus has Waspinator in his sights, ready to blast him out of the sky, Terrorsaur shoots him in the back, right in the jets, sending the poor boy down in flames. He ricochets off of the glacier/waterfall/whatever and then smashes into the ground. (Oooooooh, that's gotta hurt) As the Predacons take off with the pod, Optimus Primal, his jets still in flames and the rest of his body seriously beat up, pushes himself to his hands and knees and gives his token statement of irony: "Well, that's just Prime."

Some time later (At least, I think it's sometime later because Optimus is all better now), Optimus and the others are gathered around the Round Table. Optimus indignantly declares that "This makes three straight operations ambushed!" Rhinox declares it "mighty suspicious" and Cheetor speculates that "some rat's slippin' info." Rattrap, of course, takes exception to that...which apparently gives Dinobot an idea. He notes that it was Rattrap who led them to the canyon "and nearly to termination." Rhinox and Cheetor scoff at the idea that Rattrap would betray them...but Optimus kinda concurs with Dinobot. As Rhinox and Cheetor react with disbelief, Optimus tells Rattrap that he wants to have a chat with him...in private. (One can almost hear Dinobot snickering in the background... :) )

Meanwhile, over at Pred Central, a scanner thingy pops up above the base and scans around. (A purple scan, of course...What is it with Transformers and the color purple? If you're Jerry Falwell, please don't answer that... :) ) It's searching for DNA to use in the transformation of the protoform in the pod that the Preds stole, a process that Tarantulas is apparently overseeing. So guess what beast form the new Predacon gets...? :) We see two spiders duking it out. (Which I presume are supposed to be a male and female black widow, but if so, then the male is much too big in relation to the female) The female widow wins the battle just as the DNA scanner beam passes over her.

Back inside the base, Tarantulas seems quite pleased with himself and his creation and announces that the new Predacon is everything he...er, they...could desire. He introduces her as Blackarachnia. She's a big ol' black widow spider and when she transforms into her robot form after uttering her activation code (Her first line of the episode)...well, let's just say that she'd give pre-implant-removal Pamela Anderson a run for her money...(Why, Tarantulas! You horny old dog, you! :) ) "Oh, be still my spinnerets!" Tarantulas burbles. (Good thing he doesn't have a tongue, or it'd be on the floor...) Megatron suspects an ulterior motive behind Tarantulas' beast mode selection for BA, (Ahem, um..Hello?! How 'bout an ulterior motive behind her robot form, Megs, hmmmm?), but he's quite certain that "Miss Arachnia" (Hee hee... :) ) will make an excellent addition to the Predacons, yeeees. He graciously thanks the Maximals for the "protoform gift." (Call Meggy what you will, but you can't say he's impolite... :) )

Meanwhile, back at the Maximal base, the Maximals are still aghast over the idea that Rattrap could be a traitor. Optimus eventually orders Rattrap, alone, to go patrol for energon in Sector 12...which is not only environmentally inhospitable, but it's also a stone's throw from the Predacon base. Cheetor argues that it's a "death sentence" but Optimus is resolute and he's sounding very cranky. He won't listen to reason and considers it a test of loyalty. Rattrap, with a surly, "thanks for nothing" heads out for Sector 12. Afterwards, Rhinox takes Optimus to task. He knows Optimus is pissed about losing the pod, but he still can't believe that Optimus would think that Rattrap would betray them. Optimus asserts that with this mission, they'll learn one way or the other. (Me, I'd have to ask why. If Sector 12 really is a "death sentence" and Rattrap's innocent, then he dies for nothing. If he's guilty, he'll probably die anyway, unless the Preds take pity on him...and they probably wouldn't. And Optimus doesn't have a lot of troops to play with, not enough that he can sacrifice any of them so blithely...Seems like a bad plan to me. But... far be if from me to argue with anyone with the word "Optimus" in their name... :) )

Out in Sector 12, which is every bit as scenic as Cheetor had given us to believe--barren, rocky, and with lava all over the place--Rattrap reports in. With extreme sarcasm he says, "My 'recon mission' indicates nothing here but melting rock. Ya happy?" Optimus, with Rhinox and a pensive Dinobot looking over his shoulder, orders him to make one more sweep of the area and then head in...But the Predacons, it turns out, are eavesdropping on the conversation! Megs, Terrorsaur, and Waspinator are gathered around a computer panel, listening in on the exchange between Rattrap and Optimus. "Ah, the simple pleasures of code-breaking, yeeees," Megs comments, (So that's their secret!) and he orders Terrorsaur off to "pay our Maximal friend a visit."

While Rattrap's reporting to Optimus that there's nothing going on where he is, Terrorsaur is zooming in to attack. He decks Rattrap, who reports to the base that he's under attack...and he leaves his communicator on. Rattrap and Terrorsaur tussle for a bit, Rattrap narrowly avoids the Falling Giant Boulder™, but Terrorsaur pins him with one foot, and aims his gun right between Rattrap's eyes. "Prepare to terminate, Maximal!" Terrorsaur exults. But Rattrap grovels, he begs for mercy, he even offers to change sides--all while the Maximals listen!--in order to save his life. Terrorsaur agrees...with conditions, of course. Rattrap says he'll do whatever Terrorsaur wants.

The Maximals, who are still listening in, react with disbelief. All except for Dinobot, of course. He taunts Rhinox, naming Rattrap a traitor. Rhinox shoots back, "You're a fine one to talk!" (And he's right!), and is still insistent that "Rattrap wouldn't...uh..." Well, given the evidence at hand, even Rhinox is losing faith... Meanwhile, Rattrap changes his Maximal symbol to a Predacon one, and Terrorsaur takes Rattrap off to Pred Central. (Oh, I can just see it now... Terrorsaur: "But...but Megatron! He followed me home! Can I keep him? Huh? Huh? Can I? Can I?" :) )

Inside the Pred base, Terrorsaur announces that he's taking over, giving a long-winded and self-aggrandizing speech about how wonderful he is because he brought in Blackarachnia and Rattrap--who is apparently going to be Terrorsaur's lieutenant, even though he's in a cage. Rattrap, meanwhile, makes amusing gestures behind Terrorsaur's back. Megatron, who's being suspiciously good-natured about being usurped, calls Terrorsaur a "snivelling toady" for believing that Rattrap is on their side...whereupon Rattrap, who'd slipped out of his cage during Megs' speech, zaps him with a doohickey that "scraps" his servo-circuits, immobilizing him. Terrorsaur announces that Megatron is obsolete and that all Predacons will swear fealty to himself. (Fealty? Fealty??? Since when did Predacon society go all feudal...?:) ) Scorponok, predictably, refuses. Blackarachnia, in her second line of the episode, calls Scorpy an even bigger fool than he looks. And Tarantulas argues that they shouldn't discuss the issue with "the Maximal" around. (Hey, makes sense to me! ) So Terrorsaur has Meg and Rattrap removed to the "lower chamber."

Back at the Maximal base, the Good Guy Gang is still debating what to do about Rattrap. Someone's apparently suggested going after Rattrap. Cheetor, that starry-eyed optimist, responds cheerily with, "You mean rescue him?" Rhinox, sounding as fatalistic and depressed as Eeyore on a bad day, says, "Why bother?" Optimus says he's too dangerous a weapon to fall into Predacon hands. (Then why'd ya send him off by himself to either escape or be captured, ya big hairy dope? ) Dinobot agrees with obvious relish, asserting that Rattrap should be "neutralized." (Well, at least he didn't say "neutered"... :) ) in order to answer for his treachery and face justice. (Oh yeah! Justice from Dinobot! I'd be chafing at the bit to face that! :) )

Meanwhile, in the lower chamber of the Predacon base, two cages are lowered from the ceiling above a floor of nothin' but lava. One contains Megatron, the other Rattrap. Megatron comments that they're quite the unlikely pair. But he, unlike Rattrap, has a way out. He addresses the computer, orders it to open the cage and summon one of the omnipresent floaty platform thingies and, after noting that the "wise tyrant always ensures that his prisons are designed for his personal escape," he zooms off to do who-knows-what. Rattrap, meanwhile, notes that the "wise Maximal traitor always makes sure he's carrying a handy infiltration kit." He uses said kit to unlock his cage...and then he has to figure out where to go. He doesn't have a "handy" floaty platform thingy and all that's below him is a bunch of very hot lava. He looks over to the walls and--glory be!--there's what looks like the outlet of a corridor there! What luck! :)

Meanwhile, the Predacons are still arguing about Terrorsaur's takeover. Terrorsaur yells at them, assuring them that with BA and Rattrap, they can "destroy the Maximals once and for all!" The Preds don't seem overly impressed...

Back with Rattrap, he's sizing up the jump he'll have to make to reach the corridor that he spotted. He's climbed up on the top of the cage and, gathering his resolve, he makes a mighty leap...and just manages to grab onto one of the bars across the end of the corridor. He dangles there for the length of a commercial break and then manages to haul his hiney up, climbs into the corridor, pulls his gun, cocks and checks it, and heads off. He comes to an intersection and is startled when he hears Scorponok's voice. Scorpy's arguing with Terrorsaur about his leadership. The voices are coming from above, and Rattrap looks up to see that the ceiling above his head is actually made up of individual bars, so that he can see the two Predacons above him and they, if they look down, can see him... Rattrap's not sure which way to go, but then a fellow rat ambles by, so Rattrap, with a shrug, decides to follow it. With an unnoticed, jaunty wave up at the Predacons above him, Rattrap follows the rat, who is inexplicably leading the way. (Must be one of those super-smart Rats of NIMH :) )

Outside the Predacon base, inexplicably unnoticed by the Predacons, the Maximals have gathered. Cheetor's all gung-ho to attack and get Rattrap outta there. Dinobot is, too, but for an entirely different reason... :) Optimus, still in "grumpy mode," snarls, "We attack on my command. So there!" (OK, so he doesn't say, "So there," but I know he thought about it... :) )

Inside the base, Rattrap's still prowling, but at least the rat is gone. He comes upon Waspinator below him, who's messing with a computer console. "Scanning for Maximal frequencies...none detected," the Pred computer reports. And then Waspinator flies off. Rattrap, figuring out what's going on, hops down from his perch and rips apart the panel that Waspinator had been using. Inside, he finds a computer chip emblazoned with a Maximal symbol. "A Maximal chip!" Rattrap exclaims (Noooo! Really? ). "No wonder!" he adds. (Indeed...Took ya long enough to figure it out! ) He stows the chip in one of his forearm compartments, and he's off again.

Meanwhile, Tarantulas has spotted the helpful rat while Rattrap prowls. He inadvertently walks through a laser and one of Tarantulas' energy webs pops up, snaring him. Tarantulas, about to eat the helpful rat, hears the computer's alert that his trap has caught someone, and he tosses aside the rat and goes racing off to the location of the trap. We see a series of cuts between Rattrap freeing himself from the web and Tarantulas racing through the corridors on the ceiling, spider-like. Tarantulas finally catches up with Rattrap just as Rattrap's climbing back into his cage. "Soooo, the juicy rat has been running his maze, heh heh heh heh heh heh heh...But not for long...," Tarantulas says. And he gets halfway through his activation code when Rattrap shoots him, incapacitating him. Rattrap, nonchalantly blowing smoke from the barrel of his gun, finishes climbing into his cage and--hey, he contacts Optimus Primal, telling him to "join the party, big ape." (Well gee, I wonder why he does that...?)

Outside, Optimus gets the signal from Rattrap (Well, whaddaya know...? :) ), and calls for the attack to begin. Inside, Waspinator reports that the Maximals are attacking. Terrorsaur, sitting up in Megs' chair, asks why they weren't warned by the codebreaker. Waspinator reports that the codebreaker is deactivated and that the shields are damaged. As Terrorsaur yells in frustration, Megatron appears out of nowhere (So there he is! ). Terrorsaur gives a startled, stifled shriek but Megatron mildly--albeit with extreme sarcasm--asks how they're going to respond to the attack. Terrorsaur, shocked, says, "You...will allow me to lead?" Megatron chuckles smugly and says, "The wise tyrant always allows a fool to take the lead in a crisis." (I dunno, that doesn't sound very "wise" to me, Megs. Why is that both leaders in this episode are acting seriously weird...not to mention seriously dumb???) Terrorsaur orders Rattrap's release and a counterattack. They all race outside, including Megs.

A battle ensues, as usual. Optimus takes to the air and Terrorsaur tells Rattrap that it's time for him to prove his loyalty in battle. He orders him to shoot down Optimus. And he does! As Optimus crashes to the ground, Cheetor races to aid Optimus--and gets the crap beat out of him by BA for his trouble. After Cheetor's down, she says her third and final line of the episode ("Another time!") and races off to who-knows-where, stomping on Cheetor's face as she goes.

Meanwhile, Dinobot dispatches Terrorsaur with a Klingon-style forehead-smash, and grabs Rattrap by the throat, exulting, "I have awaited this meeting, traitor! Prepare to terminate!" (Geez, for a traitor himself, he's awfully hard on his fellow traitors... :) ) But before he can follow through with his threat, Megatron grabs his head in his dino-hand and holds him aloft by it. Rattrap's final test is going to be killing Dinobot. He deliberates for a moment...and then he shoots Terrorsaur's head off (Literally!) instead. The jig is up! Dinobot escapes from Megs' grasp by twisting around, punching him, and then kneeing him in the face. Megs spits out a tooth, moans, and collapses. Optimus sends in Rhinox to get Rattrap out, which he does, transforming into rhino mode and charging ahead. He plows Waspinator and Scorponok and knocks the prostrate Megs aside. Rattrap leaps onto his back, Dinobot flees with them, and Optimus calls a general retreat, their mission accomplished.

After they're gone, the Predacons gather around Terrorsaur, whose body is frantically searching for his head. Tarantulas is inexplicably there, still blackened from Rattrap's blast, but BA's nowhere to be seen. Picking up Terrorsaur's head, Megs asks the gathered Preds which of the "glorious victors would still follow this fool's lead?" Wisely, they're all silent. "Yeees," Megatron burbles as Terrorsaur puts himself together, "So I calculated." He goes on to enumerate the accomplishments of Terrorsaur's brief reign, his voice rising in anger as he goes: a lost battle (Yep), a missing Blackarachnia (Huh? Why? Where'd she go and why can't they find her?), and "who knows what damage inflicted by the Maximal spy!" (Lots! :) ) At the last, Terrorsaur's head falls off again. "Oh, my aching head!" his head moans...

A quick cut to the Maximal base and we see Dinobot, sword and shield at the ready to deliver Rattrap's punishment. He advances on the cringing Rattrap, announcing that he will terminate the traitor himself...only to be rudely interrupted by Optimus, who insists that he's gonna...congratulate him instead, whereupon it's (finally) revealed that Rattrap's "defection" was arranged in order to get the decoder back. (Noooooo! Really? I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years...) Rhinox wants to know why Optimus didn't let them all in on the plan, and he responds by saying that he wanted everyone to believe that Rattrap's defection and the battle were real (Hmmmm....Didn't Megatron give Starscream this same lecture back in G1...?)...but he admonishes while rubbing at the shoulder that Rattrap had hit that Rattrap didn't have to make it that believable. Rattrap asserts that he was trying to miss...Optimus doesn't look convinced. Rattrap responds with a "HAH!" and all is right with the universe once again...

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Nightwind's Unsolicited Opinions

This episode leaves me colder than Dinobot's servofluids at the beginning of the episode. It's not that it's bad, per se. It's just that it's nothing that we haven't seen in other shows ten thousand times before. It's the old "make everyone believe that a good guy has gone bad so that he can infiltrate the bad guys" trick. It's a plot that's been done on every freakin' good guy-vs-bad guy television series I've ever watched, from Star Trek to Hawaii-Five-O". Did they really have to do it on Beast Wars, too? I mean, even G1 didn't do this story! :) Wasn't there any other story the writer could have used here?

Of course there was! There were many other stories that could have been written! To find one, all the writer had to do was...well, look at his own story! I mean, does it bother anyone else that this is Blackarachnia's introductory episode and she says a whole fourteen words ("Blackarachnia, terrorize!" "Then you are an even bigger fool than you look!" and "Another time!") in the entire episode? I said it once, I'll say it again: Character intro shows should primarily be about the new character. We should at least learn something about Blackarachnia in this episode...Do we? Well, we learn that she can beat the crap out of Cheetor. That's about it. Wow. Big, fat, hairy deal, as Garfield might say.

I hate that about this episode! I hate that about all of the character intro episodes, except "Bad Spark" and, to a much lesser extent, "Deep Metal." But "Double Jeopardy," followed closely by "The Spark," is the worst offender of the bunch. At the very least, if the creators of the series had had their hearts set on doing the Rattrap story that's in "Double Jeopardy," then they could have at least made it into a separate episode and done something with Blackarachnia in her intro episode, something involving more than three lines of dialogue, two of which are generic and tell us nothing about Blackarachnia. Is that too much to ask? I mean, I'm not the world's biggest Blackarachnia fan (in fact, I generally dislike her 'cept when she's being all gooshy with Silverbolt), but even she doesn't deserve such short shrift in her own intro episode! Bad, bad move on the writer's part, in my opinion...

Storywise...Well, as I said, we've seen this plot a billion times before elsewhere, so one word pretty much sums up the thing: "Predictable." (That's a nasty word in Television Land. No one likes to hear the word "predictable" being bandied about after someone reads their script because it generally means that said script is going to end up in the "round filing cabinet.") And we've got a clear case of major predictability here, folks! We know that Rattrap's not a traitor. We know that by the end of the episode, Rattrap will be back where he belongs, and everything will be right with the universe. We know that somehow the Predacons are learning what the Maximals are going to do before they do it -- and if you have half of a brain, you can even figure out how they're doing it, as well. Of course, it doesn't help when, less than halfway through the episode, it's revealed how the Preds are learning the Maximals' plans...

And I'm afraid that once that's done, any last shred of tension is gone from the plot. The viewer knows exactly what's going to happen from there on. Even the fact that Rattrap shoots Optimus Primal to "prove" that he's loyal to the Predacons is predictable. So is the fact he has to face Dinobot in the way that he does. (Which is a scene that is weirdly mirrored in Season 2's "Maximal No More," although that is a far superior episode to this one.) All in all, you know what's going to happen, so why watch the episode? Why, indeed, I ask myself, every time I watch it...There isn't even any good closed captioning weirdness to hold my interest...

Now, if this episode had been about a bad guy pretending to be good in order to infiltrate the good guys, that might have been more interesting...But the writer chose to go the traditional (read: "Boring") route...Shame. This series deserves better.

There is one thing that's intriguing to me, however. That's Terrorsaur. Oh, it's not that he's particularly intriguing in this episode, really. I'm afraid that nothing and no one is intriguing in this episode, as far as I'm concerned. But Terrorsaur can sometimes be an interesting guy to watch. Sometimes, I get the distinct impression that there are two Terrorsaurs running around the Predacon base...

One of them is competent, reasonably intelligent, and even likeable in a bad-guy sort of way. This is the Terrorsaur that we see in episodes like "Fallen Comrades," "The Trigger," "Dark Voyage," and even -- dare I say it? -- "Double Dinobot." *shudder* This is the Terrorsaur who can get the job done, who follows orders without being a "kiss-butt," and who can get through an entire episode without uttering a single line that sounds like something coming from a second-rate Starscream.

Then, unfortunately, there's the other Terrorsaur. He's the one who is incompetent, who is scheming when he has no business scheming, and who is so short-sighted and silly that I just have to laugh. This is the Terrorsaur who rules this episode and episodes like "Dark Designs" or "Power Surge." This is the Terrorsaur who tries to be Starscream, which just sets my teeth on edge, I'm afraid... :)

In any event, I just don't get it! I can't figure out if this weirdness is just inconsistent characterization or a case of multiple personality disorder on Terrorsaur's part... :) The jury's still out on that issue, I'm afraid...

But it's not out on this episode, though. Me Nightwind no like!

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Great Moments

Great moments? In this episode? Ye gods, it's episodes like this that make me wish I hadn't put this category in the guide... :)

Well, there is one thing I find amusing in the episode, though, so it's not a totally lost cause... And that would be Rattrap's amusing gestures behind Terrorsaur's back while Terrorsaur's giving his "I'm so awesome now bow down and worship me" speech. I especially like the salute. :)

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Closed Captioning Weirdness
(Or, Sometimes What You Think They Say Is Not Really What They Say...)

You know it's bad when even the Closed Captioning Weirdness is pretty boring in an episode...But here they are, anyway:

See? I told you they were boring... :)

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Totally Arbitrary Overall Rating, Just For the Heck of It

On a scale of 1 to 10...Well, I'll be generous and give it a 1.25... :) The writer gets fifty lashings with a wet noodle for being so terribly and stereotypically traditional... :)