Coming of the Fuzors (Part 1) - Transformers Wiki

Dinobot breaks into the Predacon base and steals the golden disks; meanwhile two oddly misshapen Transformers emerge from their stasis pods.

Synopsis

At the Predacon base, the ship's sensors detect two stasis pods that have landed in Delta Quadrant. Desperate for troops, Megatron and Inferno move out to secure them. Waspinator notices that there is only one moon now, and flies back into the base. Dinobot, looking from afar, also notices the planet's single satellite. Sneaking into the base, Dinobot corners Waspinator, who is looking at the Golden Disks. Grabbed by the thorax, Waspinator points out that there is only one moon now, and Dinobot explains the significance. They're on Earth, and the Disks can foretell the future. In a surprising show of ambition, Waspinator offers to join forces with Dinobot to steal the disks, but Dinobot uses Waspinator to deactivate the shield (by throwing him at it), then escapes and shoots the computers. Blackarachnia, hauling the deactivated body of Tarantulas to his lab, makes a half-hearted effort to stop Dinobot. Having been reduced to a crushed cube, Waspinator is forced to drag himself to the restoration chamber...again.

Meanwhile, the Maximals have found another stasis pod. Tigatron and Airazor are heading out for a more extensive survey to see what other effects the Planet Buster has had on the planet. Rattrap says that they should open up the pod, but there is no spark within, and the protoform is a blank. Rattrap asks what the use of that is, and Rhinox says there isn't a use—yet. Elsewhere, the two pods the Predacons are seeking activate their DNA scanners, but the scanners malfunction. Two Transformers emerge, one a wolf-eagle hybrid, the other a scorpion-cobra hybrid. Neither recognizes the other; the scorpion-cobra speculates that he could beat the wolf-eagle up, and attacks. The brawl is interrupted by Inferno, who viciously attacks both newcomers. Observing from afar, Megatron alters their command codes to become Predacons, before knocking Inferno out of the picture just before the latter can fry his foes. Introducing himself, the Predacon leader shows the hybrid robots that they are Transformers. As the scorpion-cobra names himself Quickstrike and the wolf-eagle names himself Silverbolt, Megatron welcomes them both to the Predacons.

Elsewhere, Dinobot considers the two disks. Do they hold the future, or just what might be the future? A quick look would confirm how he dies, but it could be used once, and Dinobot could not live unless he were master of his own fate. Destroying them would be a coward's act, so he resolves to know the truth, but later. Placing the original disk under a rock, he takes the alien disk back to the Axalon. At the Maximal base, Cheetor is sent to find Dinobot, while Rhinox hooks himself up to some equipment for an unnamed purpose. Cheetor spots the Preds, but is attacked and pursued. Cheetor calls in his predicament to Rattrap, who prepares to wake Rhinox for battle, only for the computer to inform him that any disturbance to Rhinox—or the base—will separate Rhinox's core consciousness from his body. Dinobot arrives (hiding the disk) and asks what's going on, noting that Sentinel is on full alert. As Rattrap explains the problems, Dinobot, carrying more armament than a small battleship, declares that they must take the fight away from the base.

At the Predacon base, Tarantulas's mind is restored to his body, but he has left a psychic link with Blackarachnia, in an attempt to control her. When Megatron contacts the base, a freshly-repaired Waspinator tries to report the earlier events, but Megatron orders them to link up with the others. As Rattrap and Dinobot meet up with Cheetor on a dusty plain, the Predacons, double the Maximal numbers, prepare to attack.

To be continued...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Oh, sure. Don't mind Waszzpinator. Waszzpinator just lie here and suffer. Drag himself to CR tank..." (continues grumbling to himself)

—Waspinator after being ignored by Blackarachnia/Tarantulas

"Fool! Pain is my friend! Allow me to introduce you to it!"

—Inferno to Quickstrike

"Teamwork and cooperation—those are the Predacon watchwords."
"How about backstabbin' and treachery?"
"Oh, we can be flexible..."

—Megatron and Quickstrike

"What're you looking at? Hey, get your shiny new butt skyward and see if you can find Chopper-Face before the Preds do."
"You mean fly?"
"Do I mean fly? No! I mean take a submarine. Of course I mean fly! Now get going."
"All right!"
sigh "Optimus, how did you do it?"

—Rattrap's problems ordering Cheetor around remind him of the last time that he was in charge.

"They're on my tail!"
"Oh, pussycat, you really know how to tickle my joystick."

—Cheetor's predicament provokes an unfortunate choice of words from Rattrap.

"To be or not to be; that is the question. These disks I hold, are they a record of what will be, or only what may? For if, the future is indeed immutably foretold, then my demise is but moments from the confirmation. For I, I could not live if not the master of my fate. But if the future can be changed, if these disks record merely one path of all the myriad ways the cosmos might conform, then their power is infinite, and yet, still limited. For they could be used but once, and in that change be rendered fiction, forevermore. I could destroy them! But no. T'would be a coward's answer. I will know the truth instead. Then, it will be either them, or me, that face oblivion. Till then!..."

—Dinobot, contemplating what to do with the disks.

Notes

Script timeline

• First draft: 10th June 1997
• Second draft: 24th June 1997
• Finalised: 26th June 1997
• Revised: 30th July 1997
• As Air: 21st October 1997

Animation and technical errors

• Rhinox's hands are miscolored for the majority of his appearance. His palms are brown like his rhino skin, as are random ball-joints in his fingers. This is especially noticeable since numerous shots focus on his hands.
• In the shot of Waspinator's bits being magnetized to the trap, the tendril of energy flashing in the foreground isn't glowing.
• While Dinobot is covered in dirt as part of his camoflauge, the muddied parts of his body are highly metallic.
• When Silverbolt's pod opens up, there's a black shape partially clipping through the hatch.
• In a number of shots when the bottom of Quickstrike's beast mode can be seen, much of the robot mode kibble (mostly his head) is missing or replaced by unidentifiable shapes – likely a deliberate animation choice to avoid revealing his robot head prematurely. However, the pieces do appear in other shots and do give a glimpse of his noggin. Notably, when he's on his back, he has no robot kibble and looks very flat as a result, but as he turns over, the pieces magically reappear between frames.
• As he complains to Rhinox, Rattrap's right hand at one point clips through his back kibble.
• When Megatron shoots Silverbolt, the former's head is missing a number of textures and looks incredibly dark.
• After blasting him, the smoke from Megatron's shoulder gun barrels stay the same shape and in place even as he is moving.
• Silverbolt's crotch-flap is pointing backward between his legs before he goes into beast mode at Megatron's order, but it's in front of his legs in the very next shot.
• Dinobot's reflection in the Golden Disks is missing both the shiny textures on his metal bits as well as his glowing pupils. Presumably, the show's software couldn't render these as reflections, because they are rendered just fine on his actual body.
• When Dinobot returns to base, his feet sink into the floor, and Rattrap's left elbow is twisted apart.
• When Rattrap is explaining the events of the episode to Dinobot, his left thumb is gold through the entire scene while the rest of his hand is silver.
• As the reanimated Tarantulas threatens Blackarachnia, the latter's spider leg kibble clip through her claws and gun, then through the monitor's console.
• Megatron's head randomly gets entirely smooth in certain shots (like in the closeup of him grinning at Silverbolt, then again at the Maximals at the end), lacking the textures that normally lend it a faint "ragged" look.

Continuity errors

• We see a scorpion moving around near the crash site, although we don't see any snakes, wolves, or eagles. Considering the barren, post-Planet Buster landscape in which they crashed, where did the DNA scanners find these life-forms?

Continuity notes

• After an entire season's worth of teasing, we finally get confirmation that the Beast Wars are not taking place on an alien world, but on prehistoric Earth.
• Earth is still recovering from the effects of the Planet Buster; the weather is perpetually overcast and wracked with storms.
• The stasis pods were last seen getting knocked out of orbit after the Vok's weapon came online.
• The remains of a third stasis pod can be seen near the two crashed pods. Shortly before Silverbolt and Quickstrike emerge, the remains of another robot can be seen, presumably the deceased occupant of the wrecked pod. Presumably, this was the same protoform whom we glimpsed at the end of last episode.
• As Rhinox explains about the blank protoform, the Cybertronix label on the stasis pod reads either as "dud" or "dod", depending how forgiving you want to be for flipped letters.

Transformers references

• Silverbolt's line "I think my name is...Silverbolt. Yes! Pure, strong, and...and fast." mirrors the first line of the original Silverbolt in "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 2".
• As he prepares to leave base, Cheetor's Maximal logo lights up and fills the screen to act as a scene-wiping transition, vaguely in the style of the Generation 1 cartoon.

Real-world references

• Dinobot makes his second Hamlet reference when contemplating the Golden Disks.
• The final scene of the episode is a big ol' homage to old Spaghetti Westerns, right down to the music cues, genre conventions, and, of course, the tumbleweed. The idea for this came from director Steve Sacks during the first drafting of the episode's script by Bob Forward, who was fond of spaghetti westerns and liked the idea so much that he rewrote the episode to incorporate it into the episode.^[1]

Trivia

• What happened to the majority of the stasis pods that Tigatron and Airazor were trying to find? We don't get a clear answer in this show, beyond the implication that most of them were destroyed. Years later, however, IDW Publishing's The Gathering would follow up on this narrative thread.
• Waspinator appears to possess some knowledge of astronomy, as he was able to identify Earth's moon from its markings.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "Nouveaux Arrivants - 1^re partie" ("New Arrivals - Part 1")

• Title: "Fuzors 1" (Canada)

Italian

• Title: "Lo sbarco - Parte 1" ("The Landing - Part 1")

• While the Maximal's "Maximize!" is literally translated as "Massimizza!" in this dub, the Predacon's "Terrorize!" is instead rendered as "Trasformazione!", which simply means "Transformation!". Because of this, it doesn't really make sense for Silverbolt to say that he dislikes that word (maybe he dislikes transforming?).

Japanese

• Title: "Shin Senshi Tōjō! Gitchonchon Desu!" (新戦士登場! ギッチョンチョンですっ!, "Enter the New Warriors! Snippety-snip, Sir!")
• Original airdate: October 13 1999

• The second half of the Japanese title combines the verbal tics given to the Japanese versions of Quickstrike and Silverbolt.
• Naviko is shown to be in control of the auto-gun at the beginning of the episode, trying to shoot Dinobot. As she fires, she makes threats ("Maximal, go away!") and while scanning has a lengthy conversation with herself about what food she wants to prepare "Mega-chan" for dinner (she suggests a hamburger).
• In an inconsistency of translation, the dub refers to Protoforms in this episode by their English name, when in the past, it had referred to them as "Prototypes".
• Like most characters, Silverbolt and Quickstrike are rather different in this dub to ratchet up the comedy. Silverbolt now speaks with extreme politeness, ending each sentence with "desu" and being terminally happy all the time. He also shouts English-language phrases. Quickstrike now has the verbal tic of chanting gichon gichon ("snip snip") after every sentence, while his otherwise volatile nature is left intact. More alarming is the fact that his cobra-tail speaks in a high-pitched hissing voice, punctuating sentences with it's own verbal tic: "Co!" and "Bra!"
• In the Japanese dub, rather than "Terrorize!", the transformation code for the Predacons is a more generic "Henshin!" ("Transform!"), which is also a shared term used by the Maximals, rather than having their own distinct term like "Maximize!". As such, Silverbolt's visible disgust at saying "Henshin!" doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
• When posing for the "Kodak moment" with Quickstrike and Silverbolt, Megatron actually tells them all to "look at the camera" and smile.
• In a prime example of "missing the point", the characters proceed to yammer through the Western homage at the episode's end, making bland statements ("Let's go", "Okay") or chanting verbal tics.

Malaysian

• Title: "Fuzor Baru 1" ("New Fuzors 1")

Portuguese

• Title: "A Chegada dos Fuzores Parte 1" ("The Coming of the Fuzors Part 1")

Spanish

• Title: "La Llegada de los Fuzors (Parte 1)" ("The Coming of the Fuzors (Part 1)")

• Title: "Los Recién Llegados Primera Parte" (America, "The Newcomers First Part")

Mandarin

• Title: "Rónghé Biàntǐ " (融合变体, "The Fuzors")

Home video releases

All releases listed are in English audio unless otherwise noted.

VHS

1998 — Pack in video with Airazor & Razorclaw
1998 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Series 2 / Volume 1 (Siren Entertainment)
1999 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers: Metals — We're Back! (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
1999 — Pack in video with Transmetal Spittor (Universal)
2001 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 5 (Universal)

DVD

2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers: Metals — DVD Box 1 (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
2004 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Second Season (Rhinomation)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Seasons 2 & 3 (Shout! Factory)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2006 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 2 (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers: Beast Wars — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)

References