Daniel's been having nightmares about Galvatron and other scary creatures, which the Quintessons use to their advantage by capturing him and somehow trapping the Autobots and Predacons within the boy's dreams. The Transformers are pitted against movie monsters and other unimaginables, with no way of effectively fighting them, and Springer and Razorclaw are captured by a dragon and taken to the castle of a beautiful princess. They manage to defeat the dragon after the princess helps them find a magic lance. After a giant Galvatron appears, Rodimus Prime realizes they're inside Danny's nightmares, and that Daniel himself is subconsciously helping them. Daniel even manages to summon a giant Rodimus Prime to fight the enormous apparition, as Rodimus had previously suggested. With help from the princess, the Autobots rescue Daniel and return home.
Trivia Questions:
- Which Transformer is mentioned in this episode but never seen?
- How many heads did the snake monster have?
Notes:
- To this day, I am not able to figure out whether or not this episode "really" happened. We know that the Autobots were inside Danny's dreams, but were they actually there, or was the entire Quintesson plot part of his dream, too? Consider that immediately after the Autobots save the day, Danny awakes with a start, suggesting that he dreamed the entire adventure. However, if that's the case, then Rodimus shouldn't know about the snake-monsters, since Danny never told Rodimus about them.
- This is the first episode of the third season to finally get some new music! ("The Killing Jar" did have one theme we'd never heard before, but I'm tempted to say that they'd already written that one and we'd just never heard it in the series.) Anyway, most of the new themes we hear in this episode were composed by Robert J. Walsh for G.I. Joe the Movie, which in turn were based on parts of the musical score for The Transformers: the Movie, some of which were also written by Walsh. The new music really helps the futuristic setting of the third season, and some of the new themes are among my favorite music in the entire series.
- I am amazed at how much the Quintessons managed to get away with in this episode. For starters, assuming they did indeed capture Daniel, they somehow managed to sneak past Cybertron's defenses unnoticed, and infiltrated Danny's bedroom. Not only that, but they must have set up operations on Cybertron itself, since that's where the Autobots and Predacons were when they got sucked into Danny's dreams. (If they were, say, on a cruiser in orbit around the planet, they probably wouldn't have been able to trigger the fog that enveloped the Autobots.) Furthermore, for this plan to work they either had to know about the Predacons' ambush in advance, or they were the ones who set it up themselves. The latter seems more likely, but I can't believe the Decepticons would fall for this trick so soon after "Dark Awakening."
- During the Predacon attack, Magnus shouts, "They're coming from everywhere! Can't tell how many there are!" Does Magnus really not know there are only five Predacons?
- When the princess is imploring Springer and Razorclaw to help defeat the dragon, Razorclaw's ears perk up at the mention of being rewarded with gold. Why would this interest him? Compare this to "The Golden Lagoon," when Warpath didn't give a hoot about the stuff.
- Divebomb is in eagle mode, standing on the ground, when the snake monster comes up and grabs him along with Ultra Magnus. Why didn't he just fly away? (Actually, you could probably make this argument for all the Predacons. They can all fly in robot mode.)
- There's something missing from this episode. Springer whispers some plan to Razorclaw about how they're going to find the magic lance. Cut to a scene of the Autobots fighting the snake monsters s'more. Then we're back to Springer and Razorclaw, who already have the lance!
- When Daniel first starts helping the Autobots and Ultra Magnus comments, "A bucket of water? But why?" it's actually Rodimus Prime's mouth that's moving.
- Later, Ultra Magnus says "Look!" after the canister of weed killer appears in his hands, and it's Rodimus Prime's mouth moving again.
- Somebody decided that Rampage didn't have enough dialogue in this episode, so they recycled one of his lines. When the funhouse mirror grabs him and he yells, "Get away from me!" it's the same line from earlier when he was grabbed by the snake monsters.
- The supersized Galvatron and Rodimus speak in a much deeper voice than the genuine articles (they also come with a bigger drink and order of fries). When the real Rodimus comments, "A giant version of me is battling the giant Galvatron. This is Danny's nightmare!" his voice is still being filtered, so it's much deeper than it's supposed to be.
- At the beginning, when Rodimus is comforting Danny about the dreams, he puts his hand on Danny's shoulder, and in the next scene, his hand is yellow instead of grey. (For those of you who prefer the orange fists that the toy has, well, here's the only scene in the series where he's toy-accurate. Heh.)
- As the Quintesson tentacle hovers over Danny, the animation cycle of him breathing is running about twice as fast as it was probably meant to. It makes it look like the kid is hyperventilating.
- The animators took some shortcuts with the Quintessons for this episode. For starters, they're all using the Face of Death exclusively. This is the only episode where they don't ever switch to any of their other faces. After a while, they don't even bother to color the rest of the faces accurately; they color the Face of Death correctly, but everything else is colored a pale grey.
- In the nightmare, when the witch is using her staff to cast spells, the animation jumps considerably. It looks to me like these are storyboard drawings, and that the in-between animators didn't bother to come up with, well, the in-between drawings that would help this scene to flow more smoothly. This also happens a couple of times later in the episode--when the giant Galvatron grabs the building to throw at Rodimus, and again when Springer hops onto his trusty steed, Razorclaw. How this unfinished animation got approved by the animation checkers is beyond me.
- When Rodimus and Rampage jump out of the range of the witch's attack, Rampage is colored like Razorclaw, and Rodimus has red eyes. This happens in a number of scenes in this episode, I guess because the giant Rodimus has red eyes, and the animators got confused.
- Does anyone else find it odd that the Quintessons' instruments are labeled with arabic numerals?
- At one point, when the Quintesson is boasting about how this experiment will enable the Quints to regain Cybertron, the sides of his head are flashing between light and dark grey.
- When Rampage is kicking at the snake's mouth, its teeth disappear and reappear again.
- As Springer prepares to tell Razorclaw about his plan to skip several pages ahead in the script, he's just got a red square on his chest instead of an Autobot symbol.
- At one point during the epic snake battle, Rodimus just sort of floats up into the air. Do I need to mention that Autobots can't fly?
- When those psychotic demon clowns show up, Rodimus is missing the spoiler on his back, and that piece of armor on Ultra Magnus' pelvis is blue when it should be white. (There's also a white splotch on the missile in Magnus' shoulder launcher. Looks like the cel was damaged or something.)
- When the giant Rodimus first appears, the giant Galvatron's arm cannon is entirely purple. It should be grey with an orange barrel.
- As the giant Galvatron rips off the top of that building to chuck at Rodimus, it looks like they either used the wrong background or forgot one of the cels, since the bottom of the building is completely absent.
- After the defeat of the giant Galvatron, the real Rodimus has several scenes where he's got red eyes. Also, it looks like someone forgot the background painting, since there's no scenery at all behind Rodimus.
- When we return to the Quintessons again, there's a scene where one of the Quints is just a face. No body. His face takes up a good amount of the screen, but you can tell because he's hovering back and forth slightly, and the background behind his head isn't moving along with him.
- When the Autobots emerge back in reality, Rodimus has a red neck instead of grey.
- As the Predacons retreat into space, Rampage is colored yellow and orange. No Predacon has this color scheme, so I have no idea where they got it from.
- When Danny awakens from what will be the last nightmare, Rodimus has an Autobot symbol on the front of his "collar" instead of the center of his chest. (This is actually a holdover from an early model sheet. Hot Rod had an Autobot symbol here when they animated him for the toy commercial that advertised the movie characters.)
- Do I really need to point out that the witch being destroyed with a bucket of water and shrieking, "I'm melting! I'm melting!" is straight out of The Wizard of Oz? Okay, I won't. I also won't mention that's where the yellow brick road comes from, either. And then of course there's that whole "Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman" bit from any given version of the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale, but I won't bring that up either.
- Wreck-Gar.
- 11.
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This Page Created 12/12/2002
Last Update: 1/1/2002
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