Feral Scream Part 2
From Transformers Wiki
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 Hi! I upgraded your cat. | |||||||||
| "Feral Scream Part 2" | |||||||||
| Season | 3 | ||||||||
| No. in season | 6 | ||||||||
| Production company | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Airdate | February 7, 1999 | ||||||||
| Written by | Jules Dennis | ||||||||
| Directed by | Steve Sacks | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars continuity | ||||||||
 Watch this episode on YouTube
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Cheetor is behaving oddly after the accident, and a new Transmetal 2 creature is stalking both camps.
Contents |
Synopsis
Optimus Primal checks on Cheetor, who is napping after he collapsed in front of the Maximals' current base, heavily damaged from the fight with the Predacons. After making sure Cheetor's okay, Primal has a discussion with Rattrap, mentioning that Cheetor has refused to use the CR chamber. Rattrap figures he wants to prove something, but Optimus is suspicious. He decides to discuss it with Cheetor in the morning, while Rattrap decides to take a little rat nap.
Cheetor doesn't sleep soundly, though. From the cat's chest, a strange appendage grows, and Cheetor has a nightmare of the other Maximals (sans Optimus Primal) wanting to see 'what makes him tick', and subsequently transforming him into an ugly, mutated monstrosity, to their disgust. Cheetor awakens, glad his dream was unreal, but finds himself caught in a green light expanding out of his spark.
Rattrap, awakened by the noise, heads to the lower level to see what's wrong. Before he reaches Cheetor's room, a large cat monster bursts out of it and knocks Rattrap over, then rushes away. Optimus Primal comes to help Rattrap, who (incorrectly) assumes that the big ugly monster has gotten Cheetor.
In the Predacon base, Megatron hears the roar of the roaming beast and checks the radar. He figures out that Cheetor has been upgraded, explaining who his nemesis from the most recent battle was. Waspinator is sent to capture the cat-bot.
Silverbolt returns to the Maximals' base, having failed to locate Cheetor (and jealous of Blackarachnia's concern for the feline). Having already surmised what is going on, Optimus Primal confronts Depth Charge, and forces an account of the relevant events out of him. Depth Charge explains that Cheetor removed some device from the Predacon machine, but was caught in the overload. Depth Charge also says that he destroyed the Transmetal driver.
Awakening in a cave, Cheetor finds himself back in his usual Transmetal form again, completely repaired, but with fragmented, disturbing memories of what happened the previous night. Later, Dinobot and Waspinator find the cave, and after shredding Waspinator, Dinobot proceeds to hunt the Maximal. But inside the cave, he finds Cheetor has already left.
Optimus orders the Maximals to search for Cheetor in Grid Alpha Two, but Cheetor shows up outside the Maximal base. He tries to explain that he's taken care of "the monster". Optimus Primal, being less gullible than Cheetor is clever, indicates he wants Cheetor to take him to the creature's remains. Away from the other Maximals, Primal and Cheetor talk, but before Cheetor can admit the truth, Primal's chest is fried by Dinobot.
The emotional stress of Cheetor's concern tears the cat back into his Transmetal 2 form, and he easily blasts away Waspinator away. Then Dinobot comes out and blasts the downed Primal again, and the two Transmetals 2 duel with each other, slashing away in their beast modes. When Rattrap and Silverbolt arrive, Dinobot is smart enough to retreat.
Optimus reaches out to the feral Cheetor, coaxing him back to his senses. Back at the Maximal base, Cheetor tries to keep his cool while he flirts with Blackarachnia. Cheetor misinterprets her affection as something personal, when really she's more interested in his technology—and how she can get some of it for herself.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Maximals | Predacons |
|---|---|
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Quotes
"That meddling feline destroyed my machinery and improved himself in the process!"
"Mmm, improved." [pointedly looks at Dinobot]
- —Megatron and Waspinator discuss Cheetor.
"Any sign of our tabby?"
"Oh, not so much as a whisker. Your...concern does you credit."
"I'm full of surprises." [winks]
- —Blackarachnia and Silverbolt also discuss Cheetor
"You listen, hardhead. Cheetor's gone, and I think you know something, so you will talk, or I will rip out your core processor and extract the information personally!"
- —Optimus Primal gets scary-mad at Depth Charge.
"Wait! Need plan! Waspinator in charge!"
"I am the plan."
- —Waspinator and Dinobot, shortly before the former is shredded by the latter.
Cheetor: (Noticing Silverbolt and Rattrap looking at his new form) You lookin' at somethin'?!
[Silverbolt and Rattrap look at each other]
Rattrap: Oh, joy...cyber-puberty.
- —
Rebellious teenTransmetal 2 Cheetor seems to have quite an attitude.
Notes
Script timeline
- First draft: 21st May 1998
- Second draft: 6th June 1998
- Finalised: 14th June 1998
- As Air: 7th December 1998
Animation and technical errors
- When Cheetor starts freaking out in the cavern, the screen momentarily clips into his head just before the shot cuts.
- Rattrap's right hand clips through the lower part of his back kibble when he maintains that the "freak-bot" has scrapped Cheetor.
- In the next shot, his body suddenly turns low-quality and blocky. Someone evidently forgot to turn on his "smoothness".
- When Blackarachnia inquires about Optimus' theory, her right claw clips through her spider-leg kibble.
- Optimal Optimus' beast mode face is modeled slightly differently than last episode. It no longer has a metallic "gleam" to it and the eyes are much smaller, making it look similar to Primal's previous Transmetal body's gorilla face. He later regains the larger eyes that he possessed last episode when he deploys them as some kind of magnifying sensors to detect Dinobot's presence.
- When Cheetor starts mutating before his fight with Dinobot, various claws and spikes start growing out of his arms. In the next shot, they're gone.
- During his fight with Cheetor, Dinobot's large plate that covers his beast mode crotch seems to be moving and stretching together with his right leg. There's also some crazy clipping going on between them, as they pass through each other several times.
- When Dinobot throws Cheetor off himself, sending him flying at the screen, Cheetor's legs are clipping through his body
- Then, as he jumps onto his feet, Dinobot's dinosaur crotch is all distorted and messed up.
Continuity errors
- While the Maximals already seem somewhat thick for not guessing that the mysterious cat-like creature is Cheetor, the scene where Rattrap walks down to Cheetor's quarters is particularly egregious. The "creature" has just emerged from a room with a closed door and no other entry points—a room that Rattrap saw Cheetor alone in previously—and has left behind no evidence that it "got" Cheetor, as Rattrap exclaims.
- Right after Optimus tells the others to get some rest, he then says "We'll resume the search in two cycles." Presumably he meant to say "two mega-cycles" (two hours) since a cycle is on the order of one minute.
- Waspinator was able to find Cheetor, while Silverbolt didn't. So Waspinator is a better tracker than Silverbolt? More likely, Megatron's scan of Cheetor's "moonlight stroll" narrowed the search zone, whereas the Maximals had no information about his trajectory.
- The scratches that Cheetor inflicted on Megatron's chest plate in the previous episode have switched from his right side to his left side.
Continuity notes
- The contents of Cheetor's room:
- A photo of himself and Primal from the first season.
- A big trophy with a Predacon insignia on the base.
- A model of a solar system with haphazardly-orbiting planets.
- What could possibly be a model of a Cybertronian city.
- A photo of Blackarachnia.
- A potted plant.
- Three spare tail-clubs.
- A miniature model of the Axalon.
- A clock with a kind of holographic display to indicate the stages of a Solar cycle.
- A model Douglas DC-3.
- Gadgets and powers:
- Cheetor's new beast mode has a jet engine on his back, allowing him to run at super-speeds.
- Cheetor experiences yet another prophetic dream, rather obviously foreshadowing his transformation into a Transmetal 2.
- Dinobot's eye-blaster can generate a single, destructive pulse of energy instead of a prolonged beam.
- Immediately after transforming, Cheetor uses spark crystal-generated telekinesis to grab his gun out of his back. This is the first hint that Transmetal 2s possess something equivalent to supernatural powers.
- Optimus manages to convince Cheetor to calm down by emanating the energy of his own spark through an outreached hand.
Transformers references
- Cheetor's animalistic behavior in this episode is probably a reference to the original packaging bios of the Transmetal 2s, which described them as constantly struggling with their violent tendencies. This trait largely disappears in later episodes.
Real-world references
- Cheetor's experiences continue the werewolf motif from the previous episode. Most notably, he wakes up in the jungle, unable to remember his midnight rampages as his feral alter-ego. His various mutations into his Transmetal 2 body deliberately evoke the unpredictable and disturbing metamorphoses from different werewolf films.
Trivia
- During Cheetor's nightmare, after Blackarachnia says "it's hideous", Rattrap makes motions as though he's going to puke.
- Megatron observes that Cheetor is moving at Mach 2. Yes, turning Transmetal 2 is portrayed as one heck of an upgrade and Cheetor has a rocket on his back, but a quadruped running at twice the speed of sound is still fairly ridiculous. He's basically as fast as a Concorde.
- Cybertronix
- The text under Rattrap's monitors is mirrored at first, but doesn't say anything particularly notable.
- Unsurprisingly, the text which flashes briefly on Megatron's monitor when he asks for magnification says "MAGNIFY".
- Waspinator has a sling when he tells Dinobot to "stand aside, Waspinator will take kitty-bot to Megatron". Apparently his arm was hurt just a little bit worse than the rest of him when Dinobot turned him into confetti.
- Optimal Optimus acts distinctively ape-like when he transforms to beast mode, scratching his armpit and showing interest in a bunch of bananas.
- Befitting the first appearance of his shiny new Transmetal 2 body, Cheetor is able to almost completely dominate Dinobot in their fight, despite Dinobot's ability to take down both Depth Charge and Optimus Primal with little effort.
- With his Transmetal 2 form, Cheetor regains the fully-formed hands he lost with his first Transmetal form, though he now has four fingers as opposed to five.
- A brief snippet of Transmutate's theme plays as Optimus talks Cheetor down.
Foreign localization
French
- Title: "Hurlement 2" (Canada, "Scream 2")
Italian
- Title: "Mille emozioni - Parte 2" ("Many Emotions - Part 2")
- "Beast mode" is translated as modulo combat instead of modulo Biocombat as usual.
Japanese
- Title: "Tatsunda! Cheetus" (たつんだ! チータス, "Arise! Cheetus")
- Original airdate: February 2 2000
Mandarin
- Title: "Huángbào Xīnshēng " (黄豹新生, "Cheetor New Born")
Portuguese
- Title: "Grito Animal Parte 2" ("Animal Scream Part 2")
Spanish
- Title: "La Llamada de la Naturaleza (Parte 2)" ("The Call of Nature (Part 2)")
- Title: "El Llamado de la Naturaleza Segunda Parte" (America, "The Call of Nature Second Part")
Home video releases
- VHS
2000 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers: Metals — Yeah, I'm Back! (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 2 (Universal)
- DVD
2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers: Metals — DVD Box 2 (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
2004 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Third Season (Rhinomation)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Seasons 2 & 3 (Shout! Factory)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2005 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Vol. 2 (Universal)
2006 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 3 (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers: Beast Wars — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
