Hoist Goes Hollywood
Title card via TFWiki, fan-archive fair use
The Autobots become movie stunt performers, until the Decepticons crash the production for real.
Carly and Spike are on a drive through the countryside inside Hoist when they are overtaken by two speeding vehicles. They pursue and see one of the cars make an improbable crash off a cliff and land on top of the other. Before they can investigate, a man on the top of the cliff yells at them for ruining the shot. It turns out they've driven into the middle of a movie set. Hoist saves the imperiled drivers of the crashed cars, and the director is so impressed, he hires Hoist on the spot for his next movie. The director invites Spike and Carly along to visit the movie studio.
In the skies, Dirge is having trouble transporting a mysterious, heavy load. He crashes into the swamp set on the lot of Major Pictures. Megatron orders him to shut down, yells at Starscream for no good reason, then sends Astrotrain, Ramjet and Thrust to go after Dirge and retrieve the mysterious cargo.
Hoist arrives at Major Pictures for his big-screen debut, but gets the brush-off from the director. Before filming begins, Tracks, Warpath, Sunstreaker and Powerglide hone in on the set and ham it up for the director's attention. Strangely, the director is impressed by their hi-jinks and decides to hire them all for the action picture.
Movie work doesn't prove to be as glamorous as they had hoped. The bots wind up crashing into buildings and playing second fiddle to the human actors, Karen Fishook and Harold Edsel, while Hoist pulls them out of the smoldering wreckage after each take.
Disgruntled at their bit parts, the Autobots ask Hoist to lobby the director for better roles, but the director tells Hoist to get a bagel and sit tight. The Autobots take off just as Astrotrain and the other Coneheads show up to pull Dirge and the cargo out of the swamp set, all as the cameras roll.
Back at Decepticon headquarters, Megatron looks over the strange device. He isn't sure what it does; he only knows that Wheeljack built it, but he's sure that it is some kind of potent, deadly weapon. (He doesn't know Wheeljack very well, does he?) When switched on by Thrust, the device sparks and smokes, but does nothing else. Enraged, Megatron bashes Starscream. Astrotrain then reveals that he and the others were filmed by the humans when they retrieved the device. Megatron orders everyone to the studio to steal or destroy the footage so the device remains a secret.
At the studio, the director is viewing the robot footage and decides to revamp the script into a science fiction epic blockbuster called Attack of the Alien Robots, to the dismay of the human cast. He calls the Autobots to return with the promise of better parts. Once back, the director has the Autobots don googly-eyed, buck-toothed alien masks and stomp around after the female lead. For some reason, the Autobots still don't like their parts as monsters from space.
Making their rounds, Spike and Carly find the room where the film negatives are stored and discover that someone has stolen scenes from the movie. That someone was Starscream, but Soundwave reports to Megatron that the original negative still exists. Megatron pounds on Starscream again, this time ripping wires out of his chest! He then orders the others to get the negative.
—Hoist gets the brush-off from the Major Pictures director.
—Sunstreaker, humble as ever
—Spike and Carly
—Spike Witwicky, movie critic
—Tracks and Sunstreaker aren't enjoying their movie careers.
- This is one of four pre-movie episodes that doesn't feature Optimus Prime.
- Due to the writer's tendency to use Starscream as a Waspinator-ish comedy relief, Megatron is incredibly abusive toward Starscream in this episode...well, more than usual. He blames him for Dirge's screw-ups, punches him, throws him around, pulls wires from his chest, and pretty much does everything short of killing him. Notably, every other Decepticon in the room, who usually hate Starscream's guts, are visibly horrified at this. Incidentally, Starscream is absent from the next few episodes; Megatron must have done some real damage.
- When the Autobots are role-playing the aliens chasing the actress, Sunstreaker looks like he's imitating the walk of Frankenstein's monster from early horror movies.
- When the Autobots are sitting in director's chairs with their names written on the backs, Tracks's chair is spelled "Trucks". This could be an extension of the gag where the director constantly gets Hoist's name wrong - although on Hoist's chair, his name is spelled correctly! Considering how common mangled English lettering is in the cartoon's backgrounds, it may be an outright error (presumably stemming from a misunderstanding on the part of Japanese animators, as the English short "a" and short "u" sounds are identical to the Japanese ear). The world may never know.
- This was one of twelve episodes of the original cartoon released as audio adventures by the German company Karussell Musik und Video.
- We never do find out what Wheeljack's device is supposed to do.
Screencaps via TFWiki (Teletraan I), used under fan-archive fair use.