Episode List

Season One

More Than Meets the Eye
Transport to Oblivion
Roll For It
Divide and Conquer
Fire in the Sky
S.O.S. Dinobots
Fire on the Mountain
War of the Dinobots
The Ultimate Doom
Countdown to Extinction
A Plague of Insecticons
Heavy Metal War

Season Two

Autobot Spike
Changing Gears
City of Steel
Attack of the Autobots
Traitor
The Immobilizer
The Autobot Run
Atlantis, Arise!
Day of the Machines
Enter the Nightbird
A Prime Problem
The Core
The Insecticon Syndrome
Dinobot Island
The Master Builders
Auto Berserk
Microbots
Megatron's Master Plan
Desertion of the Dinobots
Blaster Blues
A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court
The Golden Lagoon
The God Gambit
Make Tracks
Child's Play
Quest for Survival
The Secret of Omega Supreme
The Gambler
Kremzeek!
Sea Change
Triple Takeover
Prime Target
Auto-Bop
The Search for Alpha Trion
The Girl Who Loved Powerglide
Hoist Goes Hollywood
The Key to Vector Sigma
Aerial Assault
War Dawn
Trans-Europe Express
Cosmic Rust
Starscream's Brigade
The Revenge of Bruticus
Masquerade
B.O.T

Season Three

Five Faces of Darkness
The Killing Jar
Chaos
Dark Awakening
Forever is a Long Time Coming
Starscream's Ghost
Thief in the Night
Surprise Party
Madman's Paradise
Nightmare Planet
Ghost in the Machine
Webworld
Carnage in C-Minor
The Big Broadcast of 2006
The Quintesson Journal
The Ultimate Weapon
Fight or Flee
The Dweller in the Depths
Only Human
Grimlock's New Brain
Call of the Primitives
Face of the Nijika
The Burden Hardest to Bear
The Return of Optimus Prime

Season Four

The Rebirth

Auto Berserk in a Nutshell...
Red Alert has a paranoid fit. So what else is new?

More Than...You Want to Know!

Warning! Warning! Major spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk!

Don't want to read everything that happened in this episode? Well, fine! Be that way! You can just darn well click here and go on to the next part, ya spoilsport!

Ah, here we are, nestled in an idyllic little cove somewhere. Blue water, green trees, brown rocks...some kind of little military-looking base? Just the place to test out the latest Wheeljack Gizmo™... And that would be something called a Negavator, which looks like a little tank with a turret that's been dipping into the steroids. And it appears to have a bad habit of making things disappear. (It's the David Copperfield of tanks! ) In the case of this particular test, what disappears is a...a...uh, well it looks like a tower of scaffolding, I guess. Doesn't matter, though, because it's gone in an eyeblink, once Optimus Prime activates the thing via remote control, from the safety of the bunker.

"Negavator works!" Ironhide marvels, and he sounds faintly surprised. (And who can blame him?! This is a Wheeljack Gizmo™, after all...) Wheeljack, of course, is quite proud of himself. Optimus, meanwhile, checks in with the Generic Military People ™ sitting in a helicopter outside, who are impressed as all get-out. One Military Guy reminds the other not to forget his tape recorder (Gee, I wonder who that might be...?) And, yup, there's Soundwave sitting in Walkman mode outside the chopper, spying away... (Pay no attention to that-there Decepticon symbol on that-there tape recorder, Military Guys!)

Meanwhile, back in the bunker, the Autobots present (Roll call! Optimus Prime! Here. Smokescreen! Here. Ironhide! Here. Grapple! Here. Red Alert! Here. Wheeljack! Well, duh, of course he's here...) gather around Wheeljack, giving him the old verbal high-five for his ingenuity in inventing the Negavator. Red Alert is concerned, though. (So what else is new?) He points out that the Autobots have had super-weapons before (Er...When? Hate to point this out to ya, Red, but it's usually the Decepticons who have the super-weapons...), but they haven't been able to whup Megs yet. And, with that, Red Alert's "ears" light up like a Christmas tree in Rockefeller Square. It's Red Alert's Early Trouble Warning Gizmo (ETWG, for short) on the job, sniffing out...well, trouble. Trouble with a capital "S," apparently, as Soundwave transforms to terrorize the Military Guys. Uh-oh...

Optimus orders Red Alert to stay and guard the bunker while he and the other guys go out to do hero stuff. All except for Inferno. (Hey! Where'd he come from? He wasn't there for roll call! Off to the principal's office with you, Inferno...) Red Alert makes him stay to guard the bunker, too. Which ticks Inferno off, of course, but he's an accommodating sort of guy...sort of...so he stays behind while the others go off to kick Soundwave & Co's keisters... As the Autobots head out of the bunker, they're "greeted" with laser fire courtesy of Rumble and Frenzy and a few missiles thrown in for good measure from Ravage and Laserbeak. (Yup, it's a veritable Cassette Homecoming. All we need is Buzzsaw...) Eventually, the cassettes cause the doorway into the bunker to collapse, pissing off Grapple (Great design there, buddy boy. Only one exit from the place? That breaks all the fire codes, you know.) and prompting Wheeljack to note that Soundwave can just waltz on over and grab the Negavator. Good thing they left Red Alert back in the bunker...

Red hops onto the remote control for the Negavator and proceeds to make Soundwave's life difficult, vaporizing the rocks behind which Soundwave is hiding. Inferno paces in the background, wanting to go fight with the other guys. (Uh, newsflash, Inferno. They're stuck! There ain't much fightin' goin' on!) Red Alert tells him to stay put, though.

Meanwhile, the trapped Autobots are working at clearing away the rubble. Grapple laments that he wants to build something that doesn't get trashed. (Better quit hanging around the 'Bots then, Grapple my boy!) They bust outta there just as Soundwave tells the cassettes to "Capture the Negavator." A fight ensues, of course. Optimus Prime, the big doofus, stands right in front of the Negavator so that Red Alert can't shoot it. (Hey Red! Do me a favor and shoot it anyway!) Inferno announces that he's going to go kick some keister. Red tells him to say put again...but this time Inferno doesn't listen.

Meanwhile, Frenzy (the red one! :) ) decks Optimus Prime, giving Rumble (the purple one! :) ) time to climb aboard the Negavator. The top of its turret is a little control bubble and he jumps into it and targets Optimus Prime, who's still grappling with Frenzy. Frenzy leaps out of the line of fire, alarmed, Optimus Prime gawks like a doofus, Rumble hits the fire button...and gets zapped because Inferno has done something, apparently, that causes it to short out or whatever. So, in the end, the Autobots manage to send Soundwave and Co packing. But as they leave, Rumble fires off a missile from his back as a "going-away present," which subsequently decides to take the scenic tour of the bunker. Weaving through the corridors, it heads unerringly for the command center, where Red Alert is, and goes BOOM! Pinned under the resulting rubble, his ETWG lights going wild, Red Alert calls weakly for Inferno to help him. He doesn't realize, after all, that Inferno split long ago.

Meanwhile, Hoist (who, like Inferno, appeared out of nowhere several scenes ago) is surveying the damage to the bunker. As he notes that Grapple's going to blow a fuse when he sees it, he hears Red Alert's call for help and takes off. Arriving in the command center, Hoist unpins Red Alert, who mutters, "Wait till I get my hands on Inferno!" as his ETWG still goes off like crazy...and now there's a faint red glow around his eyes, too. (He's possessed!) Meanwhile, Optimus and Inferno arrive on the scene, charging heroically into the room. Inferno proclaims that he was worried about Red Alert. (Yeah, you seemed that way when you left him all by his wittle wonesome...) Red Alert huffily informs Inferno that if he had stayed where he was he wouldn't have had to worry. And then he stomps off before Inferno can say anything. Hoist and Inferno gawk after him as Optimus Prime takes off after Red Alert.

Moments later, elsewhere in the bunker, Red Alert's pacing in circles. He proclaims to Optimus Prime that Inferno betrayed him by taking off to save everyone's bacon. Optimus points out that...well, Inferno saved everyone's bacon. And then, with his ETWG lights going off like a beacon for a Blue Light Special at K-Mart, Red really begins his plunge into paranoia, proclaiming that Inferno wants his job. Optimus responds by saying that Red should have Hoist check him out. (Actually, I think poor Red would be better off with a shrink at this point, Op...) Red, of course, refuses...and Optimus lets him off the hook, saying that they're heading back to Autobot HQ because it's too dangerous to stay where they are. Red, of course, takes that to mean that Optimus is trying to get rid of him, too. "It's a plot!" he exclaims. And then his lights really go off and he groans in pain, which is apparently bad enough to stagger him to one knee.

Later, outside the bunker, the Autobots and the Negavator are gathered, Red Alert antisocially off to the side, ready to roll out for Autobot HQ. Hoist climbs aboard the Negavator, and they're off. Of course, there's a steep-walled canyon between Autobot HQ and wherever the Autobots were. Ravage watches them from the lip of the canyon as they convoy through, relaying the scene back to Decepticon Headquarters, where Megatron is avidly watching. He berates Soundwave for not getting the job done. (And, I might point out, Soundwave being berated by Megatron is something you don't see every day!) Starscream arrives on the scene, proclaiming that he will succeed where others have failed. (Mmmm-hmmm. You go right on believing that, Screamer...)

The Autobots, meanwhile, are still traversing that steep-walled canyon, only this time there's a heckuva lot more Decepticons watching from the cliffs above. Rumble causes a few rocks to fall, which land right in front of the Autobot convoy, which then comes to a grinding halt. Optimus orders a scan from Red Alert. His dashboard sparking ominously, Red reports that he detects nothing. So the Autobots proceed on their merry way.

And the Decepticons, of course, attack. Rumble uses his pile driver arms to send a rockslide crashing down upon Optimus Prime and Ironhide, burying them. All six Seekers descend upon the rest of the Autobots. One of them nails Red Alert again, who ends up lying half-transformed and really sparking. Hoist hops out of the Negavator and goes off with Grapple to unbury Optimus Prime and Ironhide. This, of course, leaves the Negavator open for Megatron to grab and he's quick to seize the opportunity. Smokescreen dashes onto the scene and conceals the Negavator in a shroud of smoke. Megs and the Seekers fly into the resulting cloud of smoke. Megatron smashes face-first into the "barrel" of the Negavator with an "Oof!" while the Seekers head out the other side of the cloud with smoke clinging to them. Ramjet complains that he can't see. Starscream tells him to stop whining (Oh, that's rich, coming from Screamer!) and use his radar. Ah, but Smokescreen's got a remedy for that, too, though, and he fires his weapon at them which apparently shorts out their radar, among other things, including whatever it is that governs the syntax of their speech, resulting in this amusing exchange:
Ramjet: "Hey! My circuits electric blew just out!"
Skywarp: "Too mine! I'm blind flying!"
Starscream: "Away move, before collide we!"
(Sounds like a bad e.e. cummings poem... :) ) And then Ramjet and Skywarp blindly crash into the wall of the canyon. (Ouch!) The smoke begins to clear out for Starscream...just in time for him to crash into the wall of the canyon, too. He lands, half-transformed and groaning, on an outcropping not far down from the rim of the canyon. Ramjet, meanwhile, is still going down, vowing to take an Autobot with him...

Optimus and Ironhide, meanwhile, emerge from the rockslide...only to find themselves looking down the barrel of the Negavator with Megatron at the controls. But as he pushes the button ("Push the button, Frank." Sorry...Going through MST3K withdrawal, I guess...), Ramjet collides with the turret of the Negavator, knocking Megs out of the driver's seat, so to speak. This prompts Megatron to lament that he's "got morons on [his] team!" (Geez, took ya long enough to figure that out, Meggy...) And as the Autobots charge, weapons ablaze, Megs does what he does best: He calls for a retreat. As they depart, Ramjet, in a touching display of concern, asks, "What about Starscream?" And Megatron declares that they're going to leave him behind. (Bad move, Megs. Hell hath no fury like Starscream left behind...)

When they're gone, Hoist laments that it will take "days" to clear the rock pile barring their path. Optimus Prime, meanwhile, goes to pick on Red Alert, wanting to know why Red Alert didn't warn them of the Decepticons' presence. Red Alert, meanwhile, is sitting on the ground, holding his head with both hands as if he's afraid his brain is going to escape, and there are tendrils of smoke rising off of one shoulder. (Yeah, Op. Great time for a lecture!) Red gets hastily to his feet, backs away from Optimus and proclaims that Optimus wants to get rid of him, whereupon Optimus finally figures out that something's not right with their paranoid little friend. Red Alert, of course, insists that he's fine. Optimus counters with "Red Alert needs a complete overhaul." Red, of course, interprets that as "Red Alert needs to die." Inferno and Hoist, advancing on Red Alert, echo Optimus Prime's sentiments. And then Red Alert flips out. Shoving Inferno and Red Alert aside, he takes off through a patch of forest and heads toward a city that's off in the distance. The Autobots, of course, give chase. And Starscream, of course, is watching the proceedings from his outcropping. He vows that Megatron will regret abandoning him and then he transforms and takes off, heading for the same city that is apparently Red Alert's destination.

The Autobots comb the city looking for Red. They follow a car that looks like Red Alert to a fire. (And Optimus at one point displays an amazing turn radius for an 18-wheeler!) Ironhide even picks up the car, asking why Red Alert can't transform before the disgruntled fire chief yells at him and tells him to put his car down. (Yeah, like I'm sure there are so many fire companies out there who give sports cars to their fire chiefs as responder vehicles... :) ) Meanwhile, the real Red Alert's in an alley. He transforms...and takes a few moments to catch his breath? (That's a new one on me!) The red glow around his eyes is more prominent, and the tear in his shoulder is still smoking. It's just not been a good day for poor Red Alert. And then hears a voice...a voice that sounds suspiciously like Starscream's, though Red apparently doesn't recognize it. The voice prompts him to hide in the warehouse next to him. As Red Alert walks in, the door slams shut behind him just before the Autobots convoy past the warehouse. As Red Alert looks around, his ETWG flashes frantically as a blue hand comes to rest on his shoulder. "It's you!" he exclaims. (Well, of course it's Starscream, you doofus! Who else would have that voice?) Red Alert pulls his gun on Screamer, which Starscream pushes aside, noting that if he wanted to, he could have blasted Red Alert in the back (Screamer's good at doing that, don'tchaknow...). Screamer points out that he and Red need each other. Red Alert asserts that he'll never join the Decepticons. Starscream's response? "So? Who's asking you to?"

Meanwhile, outside somewhere, the Autobots are giving up the search. (Already?!) Optimus has decided that they have to get the Negavator back to the bunker, even though Hoist points out that Red Alert will explode without repairs. (Cool!) But, as Optimus points out, the Autobots are low on energy, too low to withstand another attack. So they're off, leaving Red Alert under Starscream's devious wing. They're inside the warehouse still, having a chat, commiserating about how everyone on their respective sides is jealous of their abilities and lofty superiority. Starscream eventually notes that if they had control of the Negavator, then both Optimus Prime and Megatron would have to sit up and take notice. Sounds like a plan...

Meanwhile, the Autobots are putting the Negavator to bed on the 9th level of the bunker with the gaping hole in the side of it. Apparently, it's as safe as it can possibly be there. (Which makes me wonder why they wanted to take it to Autobot Headquarters, then...) Of course, there's a big old hole in the wall of the little barred alcove where they stick the Negavator. The outlet of a ventilation shaft, apparently... and it's large enough that two intrepid collaborators could easily fit through...

And, speaking of intrepid collaborators, Red Alert and Starscream have found a secret entrance into the bunker complex in the hills near the base. Red Alert points out that, as security director, he knows all of the secret entrances and that Prime should have thought of that before he "betrayed" Red Alert. Starscream, of course, agrees. Neither of them, of course, notice Ravage lagging behind them (Pay no attention to that big robotic cat behind you!), who's transmitting all of what he's seeing back to Megatron at Decepticon Headquarters. Megs, of course, is none too pleased that Starscream is "engaged in some private enterprise with an Autobot." Thrust offers to go kick his keister but Megs has other ideas. He's gonna sit back and let Screamer do all the dirty work for him...

Meanwhile, Wheeljack and Smokescreen are heading out to look for Red Alert... Of course, they're going to look in the wrong place because Red Alert, with Starscream of course, is in the tunnels somewhere between that secret entrance and the 9th level of the bunker. Red Alert implores them to "hurry before the tunnel drone gets here." And, as they pause by a set of bars impeding their progress, Red Alert explains that the dreaded tunnel drone is unstoppable.

Well, guess what shows up to play? Yup, the tunnel drone. It's looks like a globe with a million tentacles sticking out of a hole in the middle of it. Starscream, yelling that he doesn't want to die, shoots the gate, setting off all kinds of alarms. The two collaborators charge through the remains of the gate and promptly fall through a hole in the floor just as the tunnel drone passes overhead. Guess where the tunnel they fell into leads? Yup, right into the Negavator's little alcove on the 9th level.

Meanwhile, down in the command center, the alarms are blaring. "Intruders on level 9? No way," Ironhide scoffs. Optimus, of course, insists on checking it out.

Meanwhile, Red Alert is fiddling with the controls in the Negavator's alcove, noting with outrage that the security codes have been changed. He's trying to open the bars so that they can get the Negavator out of the alcove. As Starscream proclaims that they'll never get the Negavator out, Red Alert hops into its turret and blasts the gate with it, making it disappear. They're outta there! Just in time to run into Optimus Prime and Ironhide!

Ironhide tells Red Alert to stand aside and declares that Starscream is dust. On the contrary, though, Red Alert points out that Starscream is his partner in purloinment. The Autobot's of course, react with shock, and Hoist offers to fix Red Alert. "I know just how you want to fix me!" Red Alert yells. As Starscream grabs a hold of the Negavator, Red Alert drives it across the bridge between its erstwhile alcove and the elevator. "We can't let you take the Negavator, Red Alert," Optimus says quite calmly as the thing trundles past. Starscream tells Red to blast the Autobot, so Red Alert blasts the bridge between them, stranding the Autobots on the other side. "That was a warning!" he yells, his voice wavering. "Stay away!" Optimus makes one last effort, walking toward the Negavator, saying that Red Alert won't fire at him.

Which may or may not be true. But it's definitely not true of Megatron, who suddenly appears on the scene, along with a horde of other Decepticons. Starscream's surprised, to say the least, though he quickly recovers by confirming that he was just stealing the Negavator for Megatron's use. That ticks off Red Alert, who turns the Negavator's turret on Starscream--who proceeds to dive through the turret, mangling it, and sending himself and Red Alert crashing to the floor, where they tussle. In mid-tussle, Starscream happens to notice that the lights on Red Alert's head are flashing like crazy, there's a terrible red glow around his eyes, and his head is smoking. Alarmed because he's currently pinned under an Autobot who's about to go BOOM, he uses his null ray on Red Alert, which temporarily stabilizes Red Alert's condition. He looks around in confusion, asks what's happening. Megatron informs him that he's going to test the Negavator on the Autobots and Red Alert dutifully climbs aboard the Weapon o' Mass Destruction. But instead of firing it at the Autobots, he announces that he's set it to self-destruct.

Megatron doesn't believe him...but the rest of the Decepticons are spooked. They're outta there, encouraged along by some heavy weapons-fire from the Autobots and the fact that Grapple--who'd heretofore gone unnoticed somehow (Pay no attention to that big yellow crane emblazoned with Autobot symbols and holding a load of rocks over your head!)--dumps his load of rocks on their heads. After the Decepticons retreat, the Autobots dash out of the bunker as well, but Red Alert is caught in the Negavator's explosion as he's running away from it. The other Autobots emerge coughing(!) from the smoking building and Optimus notices that Red Alert didn't come out with them. Ironhide makes a move to go in and rescue him. Optimus Prime stops him by saying that it's very dangerous therefore he must go. But Inferno overrides them all, by doing what he does best: Charging into burning buildings. He careens through the building as explosions boom around him and finds Red Alert just in time to save him from some falling debris.

Outside, a particularly violent explosion goes off near the hole in the side of the bunker. Thinking that Red Alert and Inferno are goners, Optimus laments that he should have been the one to go in...but just then Inferno rolls out of the building with Red Alert sprawled atop his cab. Inferno transforms, ends up carrying Red Alert. Red apologizes to Optimus for being a doofus, whereupon Optimus, in a fit of twisted logic, insists that everything that happened was all his fault (?) and praises both Inferno and Red Alert for bravery. Red Alert caps off the episode with a bit of mush. "With friends like these..." he says, "...real friends...it's easy to be brave." (*sniff* Kinda gives ya the warm fuzzies, don't it? ;) )

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Nightwind's Unsolicited Opinions

I love this episode. 'Twas bound to happen, you see... It's got all the stuff I like in an episode, like:

• Some really nice characterization! I mean, really nice! And it's not just about Red Alert, either, noooooo...

  Sure, we get the "All About Red Alert" treatment in this episode, but we also learn about his relationship to Inferno, an odd pair if there ever was one. There's Red Alert--who's utterly paranoid about being safe and secure--and then there's Inferno--who wants nothing more in life than to run into burning buildings and kick Decepticon keister, preferably at the same time. (Hmmmm, maybe there's more in common between BW Inferno and G1 Inferno than I thought...) Then again, the writers of G1 episodes seem to like picking two opposite-type Autobot characters, throwing them together into a situation, and seeing what happens. It's like a recipe, almost: "Take one Perceptor and one Brawn and pureé until they're both happy campers." (Or one Hound and one Cliffjumper. Or one Blaster and one Cosmos. Or one Mirage and one Cliffjumper. Or...Well, you get the idea.) In this case, Inferno and Red Alert aren't adversarial, as the other odd pairings often are--at least not until after Red Alert takes a dive into the deep end--but they are very different kind of guys...and they're buddies! I suppose they complement each other well. Or, at least, Red Alert's paranoia tends to keep Inferno in one piece...when Inferno chooses to listen to Red Alert...which is probably not very often, I'm afraid. Fun pair, those two. :)

  And then, of course, there's Screamer. It's not like we need to learn a whole lot more about Starscream by this point in the series, though this is probably the first time that Starscream gets a little more on the vindictive side. Sure, he usually tries to undermine Megatron however he can...but he never comes this close to succeeding prior to this episode, nor do his motives ever seem quite so...personal...at least not until "Starscream's Brigade." His "Megatron will regret abandoning me," line is telling, especially the tone in which he says it. His tone would seem to indicate that, in this one case, revenge is motivating him more so than plain old power-lust, which is his usual motive. It seems to me that Starscream does everything that he does in this episode--team up with a renegade Autobot and snitch a nifty Wheeljack-thingy-of-the-week which he obviously planned to used again Megs--just to get back at Megs for leaving him behind. It's more than just his normal "make a blind grab for power" tactic. This time, there's petty revenge in the mix, too. Ah, it's the giant two-year-old rearing his head again. It's amazing the lengths that Starscream will go to when he's got a bug up his butt about something. And it's always nice to see more facets of Starscream's twisted little mind. As I said, that's always guaranteed to make me happy. :)

• It's a very purty episode. Really, it is! It's very nicely animated with no obvious errors that I can spot and some very nice little bits that I'll save for the Great Moments section. Normally, overall animation quality doesn't affect me very much as far as whether or not I like an episode is concerned. When the animation is bad, I don't hold it against an episode because it has nothing to do with the story or the characters. But when the animation is good, it only makes a good episode even better or a poor episode a little more tolerable. So you won't often hear me moaning about bad animation in a G1 episode, but I do feel the need to give credit when it's warranted, so here it is! All the G1 Transfans yell about how purty "Call of the Primitives" is, way up there in Season 3. Me, I'd put the animation in "Auto Berserk" right up there! Really! Swear to Primus! :)

So them's the best things about the episode, in my opinion...and, really, as far as I'm concerned, "Auto Berserk" has no bad parts, which is why it's one of my favorite G1 episodes. There is, however, one thing that I would change about it, perhaps... And that would be the star character of the episode.

Now, it's not that I don't like Red Alert. I do, I suppose, if only because he did get an "All About Red Alert" episode. But to be honest, Red Alert's already paranoid. Some would say--including me, I suppose--that paranoia is all that Red Alert is. So to make him even more insanely paranoid because of an injury is, therefore, not as inherently interesting as it could have been. It's ironic in the extreme that Red Alert ends up collaborating with a guy that, if he was in his right mind, he'd never go near, but...

But it would have been far more interesting to do this treatment with the last Autobot character on Earth from whom you'd expect a little paranoid loopiness. That would have been far more interesting, from a dramatic point of view. There are quite a number of characters that the writer could have chosen that would fill this bill. Brawn. Jazz. Ironhide (especially because Ironhide and Starscream seem to have it in for one another in the same way that Brawn seems to have an obsession with whupping Soundwave.). But the character I would have chosen to use as the "star" in this story? Ah, now that would be Prowl...

Why Prowl? Well, for several reasons, actually...

One is that I like him. A lot. :) Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I just do!

Another is that Prowl never gets to do very much. Of all the Autobot characters who have been in the series since MTMTE, he's probably the one who gets to do the least. He gets a brief, shining moment (Well, sort of...Some would argue that "Remote Control Prowl" is not at all a "shining" moment...) in "Roll For It," and that's it. And this, I think, is a shame because Prowl has always struck me--Even before I read his "TF Universe" profile--as the calm, dependable, quiet, but really, really smart one. He may not be very charismatic in the cartoon (Jazz gets the lion's share of Autobot charisma, I'm afraid), but he gets the job done. Quietly. Without fanfare. Without the "Look at me, I'm so awesome" histrionics that we get from someone like Sideswipe, for instance.

Which, of course, is the main reason why I think it would have been cool to make Prowl, the Quiet, Dependable One™, into this suddenly freaky super-paranoid whack-o who prattles on about other people conspiring against him and then runs off after pitching a hissy fit to team up with a machinating Decepticon. It would have made an already excellent episode into a truly awesome episode. Prowl would have been acting very much against type. And sometimes we learn more about a character when they're acting against type...so long as they're acting against type for a solid, plausible reason, of course, as this would have been. And I, personally, would have liked to have learned a heckuva lot more about Prowl than we got to learn about him in the cartoon. We learn volumes about characters like Beachcomber (Not that I'm complaining because I love Beachcomber!), who were in--what?--three or four episodes, while guys like Prowl, who've been there since MTMTE, Part 1 get nada. There's just no justice in this universe, is there? :)

Anyway, all my blather about switching the "star" of the episode doesn't mean that I don't like the episode as it is because nothing could be further from the truth. And I know that these "All About X" episodes tended to focus upon Season 2 characters for the purpose of introducing them. I simply think that the episode would have had more emotional impact and would have been more dramatic if it had dealt with a mind-warping experience for a more well-known Season 1 character, that's all...

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Great Moments

You know, for all that I love this episode, there isn't really just one thing I can point to as "great." It's just all good, as far as I'm concerned. There are a few little standout bits that I should mention, though.

Like the bit of weird, e.e cummings-like dialogue that I mentioned in the summary. I don't know why this amuses me so much. But I do know that some of it has crept into my own vocabulary, that being Skywarp's "I'm blind flying" line. Whenever I'm doing something and I don't know what I'm doing or I'm driving somewhere and I don't know where I'm going, somehow I always end up saying that I'm "blind flying." The scary part is that no one looks at me strangely when I say it...I guess they're just used to strangeness frome me. :)

Like the fact that the whole episode is so darn pretty! There are no places where I feel like cringing because of glaring animation errors. In fact, the only glaring error I can think of--and it's not really glaring--is in the beginning, when Soundwave and Co are attacking the bunker. Soundwave orders Buzzsaw to eject...but it's only Laserbeak that we see flying around. But that's vastly overshadowed by some animation/drawing neatness otherwise. There are too many to list them, really, but here's a few nice ones I can think of off the top of my head:

So kudos to whoever drew/animated this sucker! As I said, everyone yells about how nicely-animated "Call of the Primitives" is--and it is!--but I think "Auto Berserk" is just as nicely done...if not even better! The whole episode qualifies as a Great Moment just 'cuz it's so darn pretty!

Back to the top!

Totally Arbitrary Overall Rating, Just For the Heck of It

Oooooh! Me Nightwind like...like...LIKE WHOLE BUNCH!!!!! ;)

Yes, friends, this one is in Nightwind's Top Five for the Generation One cartoon series and is, in fact, probably in my Top Five for all of the Transformers cartoons, though I haven't officially made that list yet. It's got all the stuff I like in a TF episode and none of the stuff I hate.

So this one earns...a 9.8. Yep, 'tis a keeper, friends! :)