The Web
From Transformers Wiki
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 Cheetor trains to be a traffic warden. | |||||||||
| "The Web" | |||||||||
| Season | 1 | ||||||||
| No. in season | 3 | ||||||||
| Production company | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Airdate | September 18, 1996 | ||||||||
| Written by | Larry DiTillio | ||||||||
| Directed by | C. Michael Easton | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Mainframe Entertainment | ||||||||
| Continuity | Beast Wars continuity | ||||||||
| Packaged with | Rhinox | ||||||||
 Watch this episode on YouTube
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While testing a new communications device, Cheetor runs into trouble.
Contents |
Synopsis
At the Maximal base, Cheetor enthusiastically volunteers to field test a new comlink Rhinox has developed to aid long range communication. Cheetor is instructed to take care of the device and not engage any Predacons. After Cheetor bolts out of the room, Rhinox expresses a bit of doubt, but Optimus is confident that he'll do fine.
Five microquads away, Cheetor hears an explosion, caused by Scorponok trying to recover a mega-cannon from one of the two ships. He radios a report to Optimus and heads off to investigate, openly defying his orders of avoiding any trouble. Primal leaves to recover Cheetor before something bad happens. Cheetor finds Scorponok and radios to Rhinox that he's going to take immediate action. He holds Scorponok at gunpoint, but Tarantulas surprises Cheetor, giving Scorponok the time he needs to take him out with a missile. By the time Optimus arrives, the two Predacons are gone and Cheetor is left heavily damaged. As he lies unconscious, he dreams...
- On Cybertron, Megatron, Waspinator, and Terrorsaur all open fire on Cheetor, who merely laughs at his attackers and blasts them away with ease. But from the darkness within an empty water tower, the glowing eyes of Tarantulas taunt Cheetor. He opens fire again, this time finding his accuracy sorely diminished. Suddenly Scorponok transforms and attacks, and out of the blue Rattrap appears for a split second. With his blaster exhausted, Cheetor is unable to do anything but watch as a missile from Scorponok closes in.
Cheetor reawakens on the Axalon, having been repaired by Rhinox. Cheetor tries to explain to the Maximals gathered around him that he had to take immediate action to stop Scorponok's recovery of the cannon, but Optimus and the others are still disappointed in him for losing both the communicator and the cannon because of his impulsive actions. Once Primal leaves, Rattrap gives Cheetor a hard time, causing the cat bot to snarl back and rush out of the room again. Rhinox makes Rattrap face up to what Cheetor is surely going to do, so Rattrap relents and agrees to go after him.
In Predacon territory, Terrorsaur and Scorponok install the newly recovered mega-cannon. Cheetor tries to sneak past them, but is so focused on waiting for the correct moment that he doesn't notice Tarantulas emerge from the ground behind him, and is quickly ensnared.
Cheetor awakens in a dark cavern, stuck to an energy web that restricts his movement. Tarantulas explains to him that the stasis web is draining his energy slowly, leaving the delicious body ripe for consumption. Tarantulas crawls over his captive's body and laughs with delight at the thought of his meal.
In the Axalon's control room, Optimus, Rhinox, and Dinobot look over a holo-map of the crashed Predacon ship. Primal prepares to send Rattrap on a scouting mission, but Rhinox covers for his friend and says that the rat is talking to Cheetor.
Unknown to Optimus, Rattrap is already in Predacon territory, following Cheetor's trail. Rattrap finds Tarantulas's lair, and engages his Predacon nemesis. While the two battle, Tarantulas increases the rate at which the web drains energy from Cheetor. Tarantulas hunts Rattrap through the cavern with a thermal scan, but Rattrap fools him with a "hot box" and blasts the unfortunate spider.
After destroying the energy web, Rattrap grabs Cheetor and gets ready to leave, but one last blast from Tarantulas forces Rattrap to make his exit by diving away from a large explosion... which causes the cavern to collapse upon Tarantulas.
Back at the base, Rattrap lies to Optimus and claims he and Cheetor were just hanging out together. The act spares Cheetor from Primal's anger. In private, Rattrap emphasizes to Cheetor that he was only lying to cover his own hide... but Cheetor is still grateful to his pal.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Maximals | Predacons |
|---|---|
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Quotes
"You know, that is why you mess up, kiddo. You don't have the sense to BE afraid."
"OH, YEAH? I'll show you what I have the sense to do, motorhead! You and Big Bot!"
- —Rattrap and Cheetor trade manly quips.
"This is a dumb plan, webface. I don't have any real blood, just mech fluid."
"Oh, my filters will adjust. It is the act I enjoy more than the nourishment."
- —Cheetor finds out Tarantulas is one sick puppy.
"I hate that rat."
- —Tarantulas
Notes
Script timeline
Finalised: 9th January 1996
Animation and technical errors
- As Cheetor informs Primal and Rhinox about the explosion, Primal's shoulder armor is clipping into Rhinox's stomach.
- Optimus' eyes, apart from his pupils, are black instead of red as he leaves base.
- As if to make up for this, Cheetor's normally green cheetah eyes turn red in the immediate following shot.
- Right after Scorponok transforms back into beast mode to pull the cannon out of the rocks, his scorpion mode's torso blinks out of existence for a couple of frames. He also snaps his arms forward and back unrealistically during transformation.
- Could be intentional, but Scorponok's claws seem to be "stuck" in a raised position for awkwardly long as he readies to pull the cannon out of the rocks. They then snap around the cannon from one frame to the next with no transition between the poses.
- Scorponok's claws have a much stronger purple color as he moves away from the cannon at Cheetor's urging.
- When Cheetor is knocked unconscious by Scorponok, his face lacks the additional texture pattern, making it look less feline.
- There also seems to be a great deal of confusion as to what color Scorponok's eyes are supposed to be, changing between red and yellow intermittently.
- During Cheetor's first dream, as Megatron rapid-fires his purple lasers, the laser's own animation for leaving the gun doesn't appear, making it seem as if the gun's jammed.
- In the closeup on Tarantulas crawling right up to Cheetor's face, the spider has a much brighter purple color than normal.
- Just before Tarantulas transforms in his cave, there's a black shape sticking though the bottom of his spider-mode chin, looking rather like a goatee.
- As Cheetor is held captive by Tarantulas, his energy readout clearly drops to dangerous levels, yet in the next few subsequent shots, the levels are at maximum.
- Compounding on this problem, in the shot directly after Tarantulas turns the energy web to full power, it's shown at half power again. Whoops.
- When Rattrap is tracking Cheetor outside, his paws almost seem to hover above the ground. Indeed, it looks as if he was animated separate to the background, rather than within it.
- When Rattrap glances from Cheetor to the energy-draining machine, the cheetah's eyes are again red.
- Tarantulas' gun and the gold-colored segments on most of his body are matte instead of shiny when he notices he's been duped.
- When Tarantulas gets blasted away by Rattrap, he's apparently missing a considerable chunk of his chest, because you can clearly see his exposed inner joints, and some weird distorted pieces around the them. It is as though his left breast turned inside out. Strangely, once he's done falling to the ground, his chest is normal again.
- Also in this shot, Tarantulas' gun clips through his left arm.
- When Rattrap begins to carry Cheetor away, the latter's head seems almost melted. His face is all scrunched up and not animated, his ears are flattened and his nose is stretched and hanging down from his snout. The heck? He stays like that when Tarantulas' missile speeds toward them, but then gets fixed by the next shot.
- Cheetor's eyes very briefly turn red yet again as he and Rattrap turn away from the others at the end of the episode.
Continuity notes
- Cheetor wakes up after having been repaired by Rhinox, when generally the characters just emerge from a CR chamber. Based on this and the Maximals talking about the need for internal repairs in the opening episode, it appears they haven't got the chambers working yet.
- The Maximals have been stranded for at least a month (the time it took Rhinox to make the comlink). Either way, it becomes somewhat of a moot point in later episodes as the Maximals manage to communicate through interfaces on their bodies (presumably, Rhinox upgraded them to compensate for the lost comlink).
- Optimus mentions that Rhinox doesn't have the parts to build another comlink. Even if it did work, he wouldn't have been able to make any more for the rest of the team.
- Tarantulas makes the first reference to the 'Inferno' (the Transformers version of Hell) in this episode. It's possible he was just talking about the subsequent Energy Web explosion, but unlikely. "Inferno" would get changed to "Pit" in later episodes to avoid confusion with a yet-to-be introduced character.
- Gadgets and powers:
- Cheetor's dream also contains a brief vision of Rattrap's rescue attempt before it actually happens. This is the first of several dreams, precognitive and otherwise, that Cheetor would have through the series.
- Optimus's eyes have a "scan mode" which he uses to track down Cheetor. He also appears to have a built in communication device which he activates by tapping his chest like he's wearing a Star Trek comm-badge. (It doesn't work, which he blames on energon interference. This is presumably what Rhinox was trying to work around with his external communication device.)
- Tarantulas can use a "thermo-scan" mode which he uses to try and find Rattrap's heat signature.
- Rattrap has portable devices that he carries in his forearms called "hot boxes". They generate a heat-field which fools Tarantulas's thermo-scan.
Transformers references
- In Cheetor's dream, you can see Starscream in his Earth vehicle mode flying over Cybertron for a few seconds: the Decepticon sigil on his wing is the first direct Beast Wars reference to either the Autobots or Decepticons.
Trivia
- Being an early episode, Cheetor and the other characters pretty distinctly pronounce his name as "Cheater".
- Also as an early episode, the Maximals and Predacons both also still use human time units here and there. Their own units of time would not become more firmly established until later.
- In a reverse of this, the Maximals use "microquads" as a unit of distance here. Later episodes will see them switch to human units of measurements (usually "klicks").
- The incredibly dangerous "mega-cannon" that is the focus of the early part of the episode is never mentioned again and the Maximals never seem to destroy it or even delay its installation.
- The Maximals spend a lot of time standing around on their ship in beast mode. While this is fine for Optimus, it does lead to Rhinox having to awkwardly put his front legs on the scanning table in order to see what's going on. As the series goes on, Maximals and Predacons being in beast mode on their respective ships becomes less and less common.
- Rattrap calls Tarantulas "eight eyes" even though his beast mode has nine.
- Scorponok's voice sounds less childish in this episode than in the preceding one. This is the first of many more 'mature' voice changes throughout the series, intentional or otherwise.
- Just prior to its debut in syndication, this episode was made available on DirecTV on a pay-per-view basis beginning on August 19, 1996.
- Dinobot's line of "No no no! Destroy them!" is recycled audio from the first episode, originally two different lines used in separate parts of that episode ("Their shields are down. Destroy them!" and "No no no! It's all wrong. This cannot be Earth.").
Foreign localization
French
- Title: "La Toile" ("The Web")
- Title: "La Toile" (Canada, "The Web")
German
Italian
- Title: "La ragnatela" ("The Spiderweb")
Japanese
- Title: "Cheetus no Kiki" (チータスの危機, "Cheetus's Crisis")
- Original airdate: 15 October 1997
Polish
- Title: "W sieci" ("The Web")
Portuguese
- Title: "A Teia" ("The Web")
Mandarin
- Title: "黄豹历险" ("Cheetor's Adventure")
Spanish
- Title: "La telaraña" ("The Spiderweb")
- Title: "La telaraña" (Latin America, "The Spiderweb")
Home video releases
- VHS
1997 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers — Cheetus' Crisis (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2001 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Beginning: Vol. 1 (Universal)
2002 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 1 (Rhinomation)
1998 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Maximal Edition (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
- DVD
2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers — DVD Box (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
2002 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 1 (Rhinomation)
2003 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete First Season (Rhinomation)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 1 (Shout! Factory)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2014 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Chain of Command (Shout! Factory)
2005 — Beast Wars — Classic Episodes — Where the Beasties Began! (Alliance Atlantis) — English and French audio.
2005 — Beast Wars — The Complete First Season (Alliance Atlantis) — English and French audio.
2006 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 1 (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers: Beast Wars — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
External links
Official uploads (Japanese)
- Beast Wars Again re-airings:
- "Cheetus's Crisis" on YouTube
- "Cheetus's Crisis" (Part 2) on YouTube
