Money Is Everything (episode)
From Transformers Wiki
| This article is about the cartoon episode. For the mobile game event, see Money Is Everything (Legends). |
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 How come we never saw Spike and Carly do this? | |||||||||
| "Money Is Everything" | |||||||||
| Production code | 700-111 | ||||||||
| Season | 3 | ||||||||
| No. in season | 25 | ||||||||
| Production company | Sunbow Productions | ||||||||
| Airdate | November 17, 1986 | ||||||||
| Written by | Carla and Gerry Conway | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Toei, Studio Look | ||||||||
| Continuity | Generation 1 cartoon continuity | ||||||||
 Watch this episode on YouTube
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Marissa Faireborn and the Technobots are drawn into a Quintesson deal when they meet Dirk Manus.
Contents |
Synopsis
Out by the Moon, the trader ship Lazy Sue is under attack by Hun-Grr, who is very hungry. The ship's pilot, Dirk Manus, calls for help. The EDC sends Marissa Faireborn out to assist, with Scattershot and Strafe backing her up. Unfortunately, Strafe gets confused and shoots down the Lazy Sue, while Scattershot is grabbed by Hun-Grr (good choice of backup there, Marissa). Faireborn calls Autobot City, and Nosecone, Afterburner, and Lightspeed head out to help their comrades. The other three Technobots manage to drive off Hun-Grr.
Manus, unseen, buries something near his ship. He introduces himself, hitting on Faireborn, who is a little flustered. Manus claims that Hun-Grr may have attacked due to his discovery of a Quintesson base near Saturn. He offers a deal: pay his fee, he gives up the Quintessons. The Technobots form Computron, who concludes that they should repair the ship and pay the fee. However, Faireborn decides to keep Manus nearby, which Manus uses as an excuse to take Faireborn out dancing.
Later that night, Manus heads out to what he buried, and contacts his clients—the Quintessons. Apparently, the Quintessons sent Hun-Grr to ambush Manus, who now demands triple his original payment, or they don't get the Recreator. The Quintessons are concerned about the Technobots, but Manus decides to lead them into an ambush. Faireborn has overheard his duplicity, and points her blaster at Manus. Unfortunately, Manus has a microblaster of his own, which he uses to disarm her, then ties her up.
The next morning, Scattershot, Lightspeed, and Strafe fly off with Manus, who is calculating his profits. Heading towards Saturn, the Technobots are attacked by Abominus. The three Technobots are shot down by the Decepticon combiner, who then goes for the Lazy Sue. However, coming over the Quintesson base, Abominus separates into the Terrorcons. Rippersnapper and Cutthroat are upset by this; the Quintessons installed an automatic timer which forced them to separate. Manus shows the Recreator to the Quintessons, who decide to test it on Blot. The Recreator dematerializes Blot, then reforms him. Manus explains that the device also cured Blot of any injuries he may have received. Impressed, the Quintessons agree to pay Manus. However, Manus places a micro-size nuclear nullifier on the Recreator before leaving. As it turns out, that was a wise move, for the Quintessons gave him mimic dust instead of real gold. Manus activates the nullifier only to discover that the Quintessons have placed a bomb on his ship, which goes off... while the Quintessons flick Manus's mini-bomb away from the Recreator. A triple cross!
Manus survives the crash, only to discover that the Technobots did as well, and they're quite angry. As he protests his innocence, Manus shouts to look behind them. Lightspeed says that old trick won't work—and is the first to be shot by the Sharkticons. The Technobots bring a set of thorny vines down on the Sharkticons, but their escape is cut short when they reach the edge of a cliff. Fortunately, Nosecone and Afterburner arrive and drive off the Sharkticons. Marissa's ship arrives, and she jumps out, uppercutting Manus. Marissa advocates leaving him to rot, but Manus warns them about the Recreator. Even though their injuries prevent them from becoming Computron, the Technobots decide they have no choice but to trust him. After a little trudging through the forest, Marissa is grabbed by a vine. Manus jumps to her rescue, getting a reward when he steals a kiss—and her weapon. Now with a hostage, the Technobots are forced to surrender to Manus.
At the Quintesson base, Manus attempts to renegotiate his contract. Marissa is disgusted, then horrified when Manus uses the Recreator to vaporize the Technobots. Just as the Terrorcons decide that she'd make a good lunch, Manus reforms the Technobots, the Recreator having healed their injuries. They promptly transform into Computron. As Computron and Abominus duke it out, Manus reveals to Marissa that he brought the Technobots there so that they could be healed. He just didn't tell them because he wanted their reactions to be real. Computron detects the timer placed on Abominus, and fires a blast, causing Abominus to separate. Now facing a pissed Autobot combiner, the Terrorcons fly off, while the Quintessons retreat.
On Earth, the EDC decides to let Manus leave with the Lazy Sue, without any reward. Marissa is seeing Manus, but Lightspeed arrives, saying that the currency the EDC confiscated has been stolen. As Marissa assumes it's Manus, he takes another kiss, then takes off. Marissa, however, says they shouldn't bother pursuing him. On his ship, Manus discovers that the money he stole is mimic dust. But instead of being upset, he merely laughs, impressed that Marissa outsmarted him.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Humans | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"Sorry, Faireborn, if you weren't who you are, and if I weren't who I am, maybe we could have had something special. But—we'll never know, will we?"
- —Dirk Manus. What a gentleman.
"Saturn's rings...I can't believe I'm finally out here."
"Say something, Lightspeed?"
"Daydreaming, Strafe. Or maybe I should say 'stardreaming'."
"Uh-huh."
- —Lightspeed's hopes and dreams aren't very interesting to Strafe.
"Mmmbleah! Blot feel sick."
- —Blot doesn't take well to being germ-free.
"Slimy worm-fingered creep."
"Unlikeable dry-skinned biped."
- —Dirk Manus and the Quintesson to themselves after the Recreator transaction.
"A triple cross! While I was planting a bomb on the Recreator, they planted one on Lazy Sue! This stinks!"
- —Dirk Manus understates his situation.
"Hit 'em, Nosecone! Hit 'em high!"
"Actually, on consideration, a flanking movement might be more—"
"Hit 'em hard!!"
- —Afterburner seriously has no time for Nosecone and his "thinking" schtick.
[SMACK!!]
"What was that for?"
"Want a LIST?!"
- —Dirk Manus gets slugged by Marissa Faireborn.
"Hun-Grr hungry. Growr!"
"Growr?! Rip metal. Eat food!"
[scuffle ensues]
- —Hun-Grr and Sinnertwin, masters of witty riposte.
Notes
Continuity notes
- Scattershot mentions that they're "still new here". The Technobots were created just an episode or two earlier, a few weeks in the show's time frame.
- Both Sinnertwin and Hun-Grr walk around on their back legs throughout the episode, despite being four-legged beasts.
- Flying Autobots:
- All five Technobots are shown flying in robot mode, in defiance of the usual "Autobots can't fly" convention. Whether it's via the "invisible" rocket packs that Autobots sometimes use in Season 3 ("invisible" insofar as the animators never remembered to draw them), or the handiwork of their temporarily super-intelligent creator Grimlock (who can also fly in robot mode), is open for debate.
- Marissa Faireborn states that the Quintessons et al. are hiding out on Titan, which was previously shown in "The God Gambit" to be populated by an indigenous race of humanoids. The moon has since been terraformed.
- Given how effective he is in this episode, one wonders why the heck Lightspeed isn't the one leading the Technobots. His strategy successfully drives off Hun-Grr, and later he buys the Technobots time to escape from the Sharkticons. In fact, Scattershot hardly gives any orders to the group at all!
Real-world references
- Set around Saturn and its moon Titan, the episode's artwork clearly draws on imagery from the Voyager spacecraft that had passed the planet a few years prior. Titan's orange cloud cover is reasonably well portrayed as Dirk tries to leave; Saturn's yellowish hue and highly complex ring system are fairly well drawn as well. Less accurate is the brightly lit surface of Titan, which was more accurately portrayed as a near-twilight level of lighting back in "The God Gambit".
- Star Wars sound effects:
- Millennium Falcon engine burst as the Terrorcons flee.
Animation and technical errors
"So are we. Apparently."
- Characters with optic visors (or "shades") typically have them wrap partially around the side of their heads. This episode almost exclusively depicts them as flat panels that only face forward, as seen on Scattershot, Hun-Grr, Strafe, Lightspeed, etc.
- Lightspeed's Autobot symbol disappears in several shots throughout the episode (it's easy to tell when, as it's located on the white part of his chest).
- Improbable viewpoints:
- The EDC operator gets a shot of Marissa not from the console of her ship, but from outside the ship!
- Strafe's collision with Hun-Grr is mistimed visually - he flips upside-down before Hun-Grr actually hits him - and audibly - he cries out in reaction to the collision before it happens!
- When Marissa Faireborn calls Autobot City for backup, the establishing shot depicts the city transformed into its battle station mode for no apparent reason.
- When Hun-Grr approaches Strafe on the ground, Strafe fires on him with the Decepticon laser sound effect.
- Hun-Grr changes to beast mode to confront Lightspeed and company with the ascending-pitch transformation sound; usually robot-to-beast gets the descending-pitch version.
- Coloring errors:
- Afterburner's left cheekguard is white instead of orange as he aims at Hun-Grr.
- As Scattershot thanks Lightspeed for the save, all his brown bits - shoulders, upper arms, lower legs - are colored the same as his red bits, essentially giving him Lightspeed's color scheme.
- The side and bottom of Lightspeed's nose are red as he starts waxing about space.
- When Lightspeed gets shot by Abominus in space, his face is colored completely red.
- The top and back of Abominus's torso are colored purple instead of gray as he fires on Scattershot, and he's got a gray panel on his head that should be purple (it appears to be the "collar" he has in some other shots.) The same error repeats in a different shot a moment later, just before the timer breaks him apart.
- As the Technobots flee from the Sharkticons, both Strafe and Lightspeed's optic visors flash from white to blue and back, Strafe's head is red instead of white, and Lightspeed's white chest bits are colored red and dark gray.
- Afterburner's face is the same color as his helmet, rather than light gray, as the Technobots get zapped by the Recreator.
- As Sinnertwin drops Marissa in the circle of Terrorcons, Rippersnapper is colored like Blot.
- As the Terrorcons run to merge, the head of Cutthroat's bird mode is colored the same purple as his wings.
- "You tricked us!" - the Quintesson's lower teeth are blue instead of white.
- After the defeated Terrorcons crash to the ground, Sinnertwin is colored like Blot (purple and blue).
- After Dirk makes his getaway, Lightspeed's chest is gray instead of white. Also, his Autobot logo is drawn with "eyes" in the wrong place.
- Dirk and Marissa have tans in most shots, but a few (like when Dirk kisses Marissa) have their faces much lighter.
- Computron's mouth moves along with Marissa's partially off-screen description of the giant robot's computational power.
- When Computron is speaking to Faireborn and Manus after doing his calculations, his left arm (Strafe) is missing a section, making it look like his left underarm is floating in the air.
- The first shot of Dirk and Marissa on their "date" shows Dirk sitting with a blonde. Marissa is brunette!
- There's also four plates in that shot, but in the closeup their table is empty.
- When Dirk and Marissa dance, her necklace is missing, and their feet barely move. The sound effects crew didn't know what to do with this, and just dropped a few random footfall sound effects over the shot, finally giving up toward the end.
- The depiction of the crescent moon shows it with the "horns" coming about 2/3rds of the way around, rather than an astronomically-correct 1/2.
- When Dirk Manus is haggling with the Quintesson over video phone, he mouths the Quintesson's line of "Unacceptable."
- The Quintesson's mouth doesn't move as he asks about the Technobots.
- As the first three Technobots fly off into space, some matte lines can be seen moving with them.
- As Marissa and two Technobots leave Earth to chase after Dirk, the second half of Afterburner's dialogue is played over a shot of Dirk aboard his ship, and muffled as if in a radio conversation - making it seem like he's listening in (which maybe he could be, but it doesn't figure into the plot at all.)
- After Dirk delivers the Recreator, the shot of him returning to his ship has the Quintesson talking without his mouth moving.
- When Dirk discovers the mimic dust, the box it's in falls off his lap, sort of floats most of the way to the deck, and stays there, hovering at an angle.
- When Dirk tries to activate the nuclear nullifier, he reaches out to press a button on his command panel - but the panel is a blank dark rectangle.
- In the second shot after the second commercial break, the lasers from the charging Sharkticons lack their backlit glowing effect.
- The Sharkticons who get trapped in the vines transform into alt mode without the sound effect. When we see them turn back into robots, the sound effect is cut off a bit (as also happens when Afterburner transforms a few shots later).
- The Sharkticon's beast mode legs are extremely rotund, almost spherical.
- Lightspeed is drawn mouthing Dirk's lines about the Recreator's effects.
- When Marissa confesses her love for Dirk, she randomly holds her hand in the air, as if waiting to be grabbed by the killer vines (which happens in the next shot).
- When Dirk kisses Marissa, her facial expression doesn't change. He's kissing her teeth!
- In the last shot of Marissa on the Quintesson base, she's missing her lipstick.
- When Dirk escapes in his ship, the shot is missing Marissa and Lightspeed.
- The mimic dust Marissa left for Dirk doesn't actually turn into dust when he grabs it.
- The Recreator's colors and shape change throughout the episode. Early on it's white and small, later it's big and gray and sometimes has green sections on it.
Continuity errors
- When the Technobots first combine, Marissa notes that "when it comes to calculating odds, Computron rarely makes a mistake." As noted previously, the Technobots are "still new here," having only been around for a few weeks (and this is the start of their second episode, after being created at the end of their first). Given this, "rarely makes a mistake" is a very bold claim about the new guy.
- Strafe and Scattershot turn into spaceships, and yet they constantly fly around in robot mode. Wouldn't it make more sense to transform to their plane modes? The Decepticon jets, of course, do this all the time.
- The Technobots are shown glowing with energy (that looks like the glowing type of energon we've seen before) when they first form Computron. They didn't do that in their first appearance. It definitely saves the animators a lot of work, as nothing but their outlines is shown. When they combine again at the episode's end, they get a flash of light as each component snaps into place, but not the glowing effect.
- The Terrorcons were last seen under Galvatron's command in "Grimlock's New Brain". Does he rent them out?
- The extent of Dirk's scheming isn't really clear. As he's chatting by videophone with the Quintessons, he clearly notices Marissa behind him. He ends the call, cutting off the Quintesson's question about the Technobots - but then says "Just to show no hard feelings, I'll throw them in for free", seemingly just for Marissa's benefit. If his intent was to bring the Technobots down on the Quintesson base, he could have just... led them there, without all the double and triple crossery.
- Dirk throws Marissa into a cactus and it hardly fazes her. That EDC uniform is tough!
- With hundreds of Autobots on the roster, why would half the Technobots stay behind on Earth? Wouldn't it be tremendously inconvenient if they were attacked by Decepticons and couldn't unite? What, Tailgate and Wheelie weren't available to stay behind?
- After knocking Marissa out, Dirk just leaves. And yet when we next she her, Marissa has somehow gotten herself tied up?
- The Recreator doesn't seem to have any way to specify a target.
- After demanding six million credits in payment for the Recreator, why is Dirk ready to settle for a mere thousand credits, plus a ship? (or more accurately, why does he think this will be a convincing charade?)
Trivia
- Dirk plants the nuclear nullifier on the Recreator right in front of the Quintessons. No wonder they were able to disable it!
- The animation style randomly changes at a few scant points from standard animation to the more stylized type used on "Call of the Primitives", implying that some scenes may have had to be redone by a different studio or something similar. This is most immediately visible after the final commercial break, during the scene where Lightspeed yells, "Strafe! Shoot there!", and again during the battle between the two combiners.
- This is the only episode in Season Three where none of the major characters (Rodimus Prime, Springer, Galvatron, etc.) appear. Instead, the focus on the Technobot team lets every member get at least a line or two of characterization, generally well in line with their toy bios - Lightspeed is cool and competent but daydreamy; Afterburner is angry and impatient; Nosecone is slow and methodical; Strafe shoots without thinking...
Foreign localization
French
- Title (European French broadcast): ?
- Title (Canadian French broadcast and European French DVD release): "L'argent, c'est tout" ("Money is Everything")
- Original airdate: ?
- To date, and although there is probably one in existence, the European French dub of this episode is lost. The French DVD editions use the Canadian French dub instead.
- In that same Canadian dub, Dirk uses the word "Terracon" instead of "Terreurcon". The correct name is used for the rest of the episode.
German
- Title: "Das liebe Geld" ("The Beloved Money")
- Original airdate: ?
Italian
- Title (first dub): "Solo per denaro" ("Only for Money")
- Original airdate: ?
- Lightspeed's line: «Daydreaming, Strafe. Or maybe I should say stardreaming» becomes: «I was daydreaming. Or, better said, I was dreaming about being on a star» which... doesn't really make sense.
- While, in English, Dirk says that he's "a couple billion miles from the nearest starport", in Italian he says that he is "ten parsec" from it, making the line less ironic and more technical. Immediately after, Dirk says: «you took my money» instead of: «You've got my money».
- Instead of saying: «Rip metal, eat food», Sinnertwin sais: «Ripped metal, ripped», which sounds extremely out of context.
- Title (second dub): "Il denaro è tutto" ("Money is Everything")
- Original airdate: ?
Japanese
-
- A "Secret Files of Teletraan II" segment unique to Japan was attached to this episode. This segment focuses on the Aerialbots. It is different from the segment attached to "The Face of the Nijika", which also focuses on the Aerialbots. It replaces the US "Secret Files" segment for the episode which focused on the Mini-Cassettes. That segment was never shown in Japan.
Mandarin
- Title: "Jīnqián Wànnéng " (金钱万能, "Money Talks")
- Original airdate: ?
Brazilian Portuguese
- Title: "Dinheiro é Tudo" ("Money Is Everything")
- Original airdate: ?
- Due to a glitch in the only known surviving audio track of this dub, the only part of the title that is actually audible is "Tudo", but it's a safe bet that the full title is a direct translation from the original English.
- This is the last episode of the original series known to have been dubbed and aired in Brazil.
Toys inspired by this episode
- A figure composed entirely of reused and redecoed parts from other G.I. Joe figures that represents Marissa Faireborn, available exclusively through Fun Publications' Transformers and G.I. Joe Collectors Club online stores, including a redeco of the G.I. Joe Retaliation Wheel Blaster Bike that represents Afterburner (renamed "Afterbreaker" for trademark purposes) based on their team-up in "Money is Everything".
Home video releases
1999 — The Transformers: 2010 (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
- DVD
2001 — The Transformers: 2010 — DVD Box (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2004 — The Original Transformers — Season 3 Part 2 & Season 4 (Rhino Entertainment)
2004 — Transformers — Season 3 and Season 4 (Metrodome)
2004 — Transformers — Collection 5: Series 3.2 (Madman Entertainment)
2005 — Transformers — Volume 22 (Déclic Images) — Canadian French audio only.
2006 — Transformers — The Complete Generation One Collection (Metrodome)
2007 — The Transformers — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — Transformers — Season's Three & Four [sic] (Metrodome)
2009 — The Transformers — Complete Collection: Decepticon Edition (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers — The Complete Series: 25th Anniversary "Matrix of Leadership" Collection (Shout! Factory)
2010 — The Transformers — Seasons Three & Four: 25th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)
2011 — The Transformers — The Complete Original Series (Shout! Factory)
2014 — The Transformers — Seasons Three & Four: 30th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)
2014 — Transformers — The Classic Animated Series (Metrodome)
