The Key

« Beast Machines: Transformers ep 11 »
We thank thee o'Lord, for this fanwank we are about to receive...
"The Key"
Season	1
No. in season	11
Production company	Mainframe Entertainment
Airdate	December 4, 1999
Written by	Marv Wolfman
Directed by	Sean Osborne
Animation studio	Mainframe Entertainment
Continuity	Beast Wars continuity

Tankor discovers an ancient weapon within the Oracle: the Key to Vector Sigma!

Synopsis

...and no, Toei does not get a royalty.

Tankor has returned to the chamber of the Oracle, this time with the Diagnostic Drone in tow. He disables a holographic inferno, revealing "the Oracle". Tankor waxes expository on the ancient Autobot datatrax that tell of the spheroid computer, Vector Sigma, which he believes to be one and the same as the Oracle. More vital to Tankor's ambitions, however, is the legendary Key to Vector Sigma, said to hold the power to "turn organics into technomatter".

Proving his tank body to be surprisingly spry, Tankor leaps into the air to enter the Oracle—only to be summarily and violently rejected as lacking a "receptive spark". Still determined, Tankor gambles that where he failed, an entirely spark-less drone will succeed—and wins. The drone emerges safely from "beyond comprehension", bearing codes that materialize to form the Key to Vector Sigma. Tankor begins plotting a field test of its powers.

Deep underground in the fossil chamber, Nightscream's attempt at communing with the extinct is interrupted by the siren call of hard labor: drilling for water. Cheetor and Optimus Primal butt heads over the relative futility of well-digging versus a direct assault on an apparently complacent Megatron. Optimus proves to be justified, as the drill successfully penetrates an underground reservoir, not of water, but a mysterious green goop that begins flooding the nascent orchard. The freshly planted seeds sprout instantly into full-grown plants—Optimus reflects on the Oracle's prophecy that the planet's organic core would revive organic life on Cybertron. However, the arrival of an aggressive Tankor swiftly overshadows this newfound source of hope.

"Help me! I'm being redecoed!"

Tankor disillusions Optimus Primal regarding the mythical nature of the Key with a demonstration: the conversion of the entire orchard into cold blue technomatter. A second shot from the Key aimed for an unflinching Optimus strikes a heroically suicidal Nightscream instead, reverting him to beast mode. Nightscream shivers in pain as his technorganic body evidently fights the conversion process—which appears to be contagious. Gloating himself into a frenzy, Tankor prepares to fire a third shot from the Key, only to grow increasingly distressed as he instead overloads and collapses. A posse of Tank Drones led by the Diagnostic Drone barge into the cave to drag Tankor's body away to safety.

Nightscream's demeanor grows increasingly erratic, forcing Blackarachnia to confine him to a web cocoon, which itself becomes technomatter on contact. Noticing one of the plants has turned green again, Blackarachnia drops him into the pool of organic goop, which eases his pain, but proves too small in volume to be more than a temporary treatment for the disease. For a cure, they will require much, much more.

Optimus Primal orders Rattrap to track Tankor remotely, but Cheetor countermands that with a demand to repair the drill to excavate more goo. Both orders prove fruitless as both Tankor's energy signature and his spark are unreachable, and the drill is beyond repair. Cheetor suggests usurping one of Megatron's own Mole Drones to drill to the organic core.

Megatron queries the Diagnostic Drone on the events surrounding Tankor's untimely demise, and the drone begins analyzing the fallen general's head...

Optimus, Cheetor, and Rattrap track a Mole on the surface to its home warehouse, only to run afoul of a fleet of Cycle Drones which they dispatch with some strategic application of Running Away. Megatron observes all this from his headquarters, and shows off the upgraded buildings of Cybertropolis, now fully mobile, airborne, and firmly under Megatron's personal control.

Escaping the narrowing alleyways between skyscrapers, Optimus leaps through and shatters one of Megatron's massive display screens to land inside the Moles' warehouse; the others follow suit. Once again Rattrap finds himself in the middle of one of Cheetor and Optimus Primal's arguments-by-proxy: Cheetor advocates taking control of a single Mole for escape, and Optimus wants control of the entire flight-capable warehouse.

Back in the fossil cave, Blackarachnia offers a thermos of goo to an increasingly mentally unstable Nightscream, who flies into a rage and attacks her. Her attempts to capture him and evade his touch both fail, and she finds herself infected by technomatter.

The invisible hand.

The Drones' warehouse has lifted off the ground, and falling support beams strike Cheetor unconscious. While Optimus protects him from drones' artillery, Rattrap interfaces with an actively resisting Mole. Megatron begins tilting the warehouse on its side, letting Maximals, drones, and all fall hundreds of feet out of the sky. Rattrap's appropriated drone somehow provides ample protection from the sudden stop as they hit the ground, and begins drilling.

The two surviving Vehicon Generals offer to pursue the enemy underground, but Megatron already has an agent with the Maximals in its sights.

The three find Blackarachnia and Nightscream missing, but their plans to search for them are interrupted by the Mole opening fire. Nightscream takes this opportune moment to sweep into the cave, Blackarachnia riding him, both cackling insanely. Optimus bulldozes over Cheetor's knee-jerk objection and assaults the Mole while Rattrap finds himself cornered by the infected Blackarachnia. Cheetor is likewise trapped by a falling fossil as Nightscream menaces him, when an eruption of organic goop floods the orchard once again and showers all the Maximals, curing the technomatter affliction.

Escape from Monkey Island!

Optimus emerges from the green geyser only to be, once again, the verbal target of a passive-aggressive Cheetor. Rattrap, however, is fed up with being used like a ball in a game of ping-pong, and Cheetor finally spells out what's been on his mind. He demands respect, particularly after filling the team's leadership role during Optimus Primal's absence communing with the Oracle. Optimus points out that a team can't have two leaders, and Cheetor huffily concedes. Blackarachnia forebodes that the conflict is far from over, and "Some problems aren't that simple."

A sextet of Tank Drones bear the lifeless chassis of Tankor to a secret destination under the guidance of the Diagnostic Drone, who summarily dismisses them. The drone addresses someone approaching just off-screen... the true Tankor, online and well. His plan has apparently worked perfectly, both sides of the conflict now convinced of his destruction. Tankor grasps his fallen double's appendage, causing its illusory shell to flicker, revealing the green wireframes beneath. He saws through the arm and the whole body reverts to a green outline, vanishing completely when he removes the Key from the hologram's grip.

Tankor contemplates the power now firmly in his servos, and revels in holding sole possession of "the key to a new Cybertron..."

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Pity, it appears we're in need of a receptive spark."
"Or perhaps one who has no spark at all!"
"I see where this is going."

—Diagnostic Drone is tossed into Vector Sigma by Tankor.

"Paydirt! We struck, uh, goop?"

—Rattrap

"The Key to Vector Sigma is mine! I now have the power to transform organics into metallic perfection! Shall I begin with you, old friend?"

—Tankor

"You are a fool, Optimus Primal! You, the Maximals and even Megatron himself are destined to failure. All organics will fall before me!"

—Tankor

Cheetor: "Wait a nano... Remember those Mole Drones?"
Optimus Primal: "Not with Megatron controlling 'em."
Cheetor: "We could use one to drill down to Cybertron's organic core."
Blackarachnia: "I'll stay with Nightscream."
Rattrap: "I'm in."
Cheetor: "It's his only hope! Maybe the planet's only hope."

—Egad! It's like a precursor to Energon.

"Nice Mole! Uncle Rattrap just wants to interface!"

—Rattrap makes another disturbing choice of words.

"Cheer up, magnificence! We'll track down the livestock in no time."

—Jetstorm shows Thrust he's not afraid to suck up.

Notes

Animation and technical errors

• At multiple points during the episode, Tankor's model is missing the lights that are usually attached to his head in robot mode. You can even see this error in the preview picture on this page. Oddly enough, this error persists for quite a few episodes, particularly when Tankor is seen underground with the Diagnostic Drone. That said, the lights do reappear in random shots, only to vanish again.
• When Tankor approaches the Oracle, the lighting effect on the floor between his feet is glitching out.
• After Optimus walks over to Rattrap, the panels on his forearm guard clip through each other.
• When "Tankor" is overloading, Rattrap's right shoulder is really distorted.
• When Cheetor suggests using a Mole Drone to drill into the organic core, everyone's lines in the subsequent conversation (quoted above) seem like they were completely edited out of any logical order. Presumably, the conversation was supposed to have Cheetor's second line come right after his first, followed by Optimus's objection, then followed by Cheetor's third line, then Rattrap's line, and finally Blackarachnia's.
• As he struggles, Nightscream's wings keep clipping through other parts of his body.
• When the infected Nightscream lets go of the infected Blackarachnia, he simply clips through her.

Continuity notes

• Rhinox/Tankor mockingly calls Optimus "old friend". In Beast Wars, Optimus good-naturedly called Rhinox "old friend".
• As of the end of this episode, Tankor has established his own base of operations at the underground amphitheater that, up until last episode, the Maximals had used as their own base since "Fires of the Past".

Continuity errors

• The Oracle's security system is a bit lax for an ancient supercomputer - it can apparently detect sparks and repel invaders accordingly, but its vaunted security system is completely bypassed by a small, sparkless drone.

Transformers references

• The Oracle is revealed to be a shell program surrounding the original Vector Sigma supercomputer, a "character" that made several appearances in the original Generation 1 cartoon.
• Naturally, this means that the titular "key" is none other than... the Key to Vector Sigma, which was an important plot device during the Generation 1 cartoon, appearing in two episodes of the same name. Its properties aren't quite the same as they were in the original cartoon, however. In the original Generation 1 series the key's organic-to-technologic properties were described as being a "radically different effect" when the key was used on Earth. However, Beast Machines treats this property as normal behavior for the key, even on Cybertron.

Real-world references

• The way that the Mole Drone hanger spins as it falls is an homage to The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy's house is spinning in the tornado.

Trivia

• The decoy body that Tankor uses to fake his death is later revealed to be a hologram, which disappears when Tankor retrieves the key. Oddly enough, the decoy's shoulder cannon seems solid enough to be cut through by Tankor's saw, and also solid enough to physically hold the key. It's not clear why Tankor used a hologram instead of one of his nearly-identical tank drones. (In real-world terms, it was probably to make it clear to the viewer that the decoy wasn't real.)

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "Guerre Techno-Organique, Partie I" ("Techno-Organic War, Part I")

German

• Title: "Der Schlüssel" ("The Key")
• Original airdate: December 12, 2000

Italian

• Title: "Guerra techno organica (prima parte) - La chiave" ("Techno organic war (first part) - The key")

• Rattrap saying: «Oh, no!» when the tanks arrive is not dubbed, so he's seen moving his mouth without talking.

Japanese

• Title: "Tetsu no Seijaku" (鉄の静寂, "The Silence of Iron")
• Original airdate: December 11, 2004

Mandarin

• Title: "Yàoshí " (钥匙, "The Key")

Polish

• Title: "Klucz" ("The Key")

Brazilian Portuguese

• Title: "A Chave" ("The Key")

Spanish

• Title: "Guerra Tecno-Orgánica, Parte Uno: La Llave" ("Techno-Organic War, Part One: The Key")

Home video releases

DVD

2005 — Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Returns — Volume 3 (Geneon Entertainment) — Japanese audio only.
2006 — Beast Machines: Transformers — The Complete Series (Rhinomation)
2014 — Transformers: Beast Machines — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Season One: Volume Two (Sony)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Season One: Volume Two — Revelations (Sony)
2007 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Complete Season One (Sony)
2009 — Transformers: Beast Machines — Intégrale Saison 1 (Sony) — French audio only.