More...Much More Than Meets The Eye!
It is a world transformed...where things are not as they seem...

Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1

Written by Flint Dille

Synopsis by Shwiggie

     First and formost, I apologize for the quality of the screen captures. They were taken from an off-air television recording from 1987. Please bear with it.

     This episode takes place immediately following the events chronicled in The Transformers: The Movie, specifically with the Autobot's ocular exit from the exploding titan, Unicron. The narrator tells that it is now the year 2005, that the Great Wars are over, with the Autobots as the victors living on Cybertron and the Decepticons habiting the planet Charr. At this time, the Decepticon armies, once feared throughout the known universe, are in tremendous disarray due to lack of fuel and leadership and are struggling to survive. The first scene spotlights their conundrum by showing a battle among the Decepticons (Astrotrain, Devestator, Menasor, and the Insecticons) for a paltry few energon cubes. However, their fight is quelled by the arriving Cyclonus, Scourge, and Sweeps, who are apparently the only Decepticons operating at full capacity at the time. Cyclonus shames the other Decepticons for carrying on in the way they have, in light of the loss of their leader, and begin to make plans on what to do next.

     Meanwhile, the Autobots are at a sort of intergalactic Olympic games as goodwill ambassadors and as well as spectators. Rodimus Prime is introdueced as the new leader of the Autobots and interstellar defender, but doesn't act excited over it. An event begins, with the Autobot Jazz competing. At this time, the scene shifts to a briefing by Percepter to Blurr and Wheelie, who is prepping them to travel to Earth in order to take a transformation cog, an important component for Autobot City that controls its ability to transform. Blurr, though, isn't happy about the mission, as he wishes he was in the event that just ended at the Games.

     As the Autobots cheer their comrade's victory, unknown aliens are plotting to disrupt the games. An agent sets off an incendiary device in the "Olympic Torch" that disrupts the Autobots' sensors. Then, strange, powerful creatures emerge from a shuttle capsule and begin a battle. After Springer puts out the torch, the Autobots discover that during this fight, Spike, Ultra Magnus, and Kup were mysteriously abducted by the attackers, who Rodimus Prime surmises to be Decepticons. Then, when a ship blasts off from the planet, Springer and Arcee leave in pursuit in order to question the occupants.

     As Blurr and Wheelie rocket toward Earth on their mission, they fly by the head of Unicron, which is still in orbit of the planet Cybertron. On Unicron's face stands Cyclonus and his comrades. Finding that Unicron's memory database is still intact, Cyclonus attempts to ascertain the location of the body of Galvatron (who was last seen in TF:TM being thrown out of Unicron by a newly born Rodimus Prime). Despite noticing that Unicron wasn't quite as dead as they thought him to be, they determined where Galvatron's visceral remains were and headed off in that direction. As they arrive they notice a hand sticking out of a pool of plasma: they found him!

     Back on Earth, Blaster and Outback are searching out the location of covert Decepticon agents in an effort to learn the whereabouts of their home base. Through some trickery on the part of Outback (his "trusty Decepticon Detector" ^_^), the Decepticon jets Dirge and Ramjet reveal themselves and attempt to get away, but are quickly knocked out of the sky by an explosive thrown by Outback. They then get the desired information about the location of Charr from them and relay it back to Rodimus. With this information, he attempts to figure out who/what it was that attacked them, but Perceptor is unable to figure that part out. Rodimus then decides that the only way of finding out if it was the Decepticons or not was to go to Charr and do some spying of his own. Perceptor convinces him to take along an exuberant Grimlock as company and bodyguard.

     At the same time, Springer and Arcee close in on the agent who ignited the torch at the games. However, after having docked with an asteroid-shaped ship, he catches the Autobot shuttle in the grip of a giant claw. Before it can destroy their shuttle, Arcee and Springer escape to the surface of the asteroid. Upon investigation, they discover that the asteroid is hollow and encounter the culprit. However, he misleads them into believing that the Decepticons were responsible for the attack before he escapes. The two Autobots take the asteroid-ship and head off to find the Decepticons. After making his escape, the guy reports to his true bosses, and it is shown that they have the captured Autobots and Spike Witwicky in their custody.

     On Charr, the Decepticons continue to wallow in misery when Cyclonus arrives with the news that they found Galvatron and a request for energon donations to re-energize him. Some of them, such as Astrotrain and Motormaster give what they can, despite their own need, while others continue to consider the issue. High above, Rodimus Prime and Grimlock watch the goings on down below, and Rodimus comes to the conclusion that the Decepticons couldn't have possibly had any hand in the attack on them earlier. However, Grimlock spoke too loudly and was noticed by Cyclonus; the Decepticon army moved to destroy the both of them!

     TO BE CONTINUED...

     There are several points to notice about this episode of the Transformers saga:

1. For those who remember the second season of Transformers on television and saw the movie, you'll notice that there is a rather huge chunk of the cast that was left out of the movie and picked back up with this episode. This is due to the fact that production of the movie began around the same time as season one, before the season two characters were introduced. The movie mainly had Transformers that had been around since the first season (with the exceptions of the new movie characters and a few season two cast members such as Perceptor and Blaster). We see with this episode that the others are just as battle worn as the movie participants. This irregularity (sadly common to this hobby) can be solved with a simple ret-con that says they were just not seen by the camera during the movie :).



2. The Transformer character who participated in the Games was Jazz, despite what the announcer said (it sounds like "monkey spankah!" LOL). To further add to the confusion, the Autobots called him by a still different name as well.



3. Unicron is not dead! In this sound clip, you can hear what the Decepticons experienced within Unicron's head. Combine that with the online status of his memory system, and you have "resurrection" written all over it. (This fact is taken advantage of in the episode "Grimlock's New Brain")



4. When Blaster and Outback (first introduced in this episode) search for Decepticons in a hostile Middle Eastern country, they announce that they are from the Earth Defense Command. This is the first mention of the organization, a military force that patrols the Sol star system and is mainly run by the United Nations of Earth with Autobot support.



5. Animation for this episode, as well as the next four, is decidedly subpar. I won't lie about it, it stinks big time. Not only that, but there are tons of art errors, so remember that seeing isn't necessarily believing. Here's an example :p.



6. The identities of the mystery antagonists are revealed in the following episode. If you haven't already guessed who they are, suffice it to say that they aren't exactly new characters...



7. I'll bet that no one ever thought of Cyclonus as being a TV preacher...check this out!