Five Faces of Darkness, Part 3
Title card via TFWiki, fan-archive fair use
The Quintessons ally with the leaderless Decepticons, plotting to destroy the Autobots with their own technology.
Detonated by the Quintessons, the planet Quintessa explodes as the Autobots flee. They escape the planet's destruction, but their ship is smashed by a chunk of debris, sending the group hurtling through space. Eventually, Ultra Magnus calculates that they will soon impact an object, but isn't sure if it's a planet or a ship. Rodimus tells him to relax and enjoy the ride.
Meanwhile, Cyclonus briefs Galvatron on the recent developments, including the creation of a space platform to guard Earth. Intrigued, Galvatron alters course, deciding to punish the humans for assuming that they could build something to defend themselves against him. Some of the Sweeps are unnerved by Galvatron's behavior, but Scourge tells them to shut up.
Blurr and Wheelie, carrying Metroplex's transformation cog, arrive in Earth's solar system, and spot Galvatron. They warn Outpost One, but Galvatron destroys the station with ease, then turns his sights on the Autobots. Fleeing to the planet Jupiter, the Autobots are forced to abandon ship with Metroplex's cog and end up falling into the upper atmosphere. Galvatron uses his cannon to electrically charge a nearby storm cell, causing a violent and explosive reaction which disrupts the transformation cogs of both Blurr and Wheelie, and ejects them from the planet. The Decepticons then depart for Chaar. Blaster sends warning to Mars, where Marissa Faireborn of Earth Defense Command heads out on a rescue mission.
Meanwhile, the Quintessons are contemplating how best to celebrate the death of the Autobot leader, when they learn that Rodimus has survived. They conclude that they have no choice but to make an alliance with the one group who can help them: the Decepticons.
The Autobots crash land on a bizarre planetoid named Goo. They soon discover that they can walk in the planet's gum-like surface, but cannot get out. Kup points out that even though they're stranded, it could be worse. Predictably, a giant machine arrives and begins sucking up various garbage. Springer is caught and sliced up, and Rodimus is next. Despite Arcee and Kup's pleas, Rodimus stands his ground, letting the machine pull him up; he manages to clog the blades with some of the goo, causing it to crash. Deliberata is surprised, claiming that the Autobots weren't programmed for self-sacrifice.
On Chaar, the Quintessons approach the Decepticons with an offer of energon. The battered Decepticons are at first hesitant, but once Dead End samples some energon and lives, the others dogpile on it. The Quintessons make their proposal: in return for unlimited energon, the Decepticons will destroy the Autobots for them. The Decepticons are nervous, saying that they can't take Cybertron in their present condition, but the Quintessons tell them that Rodimus Prime is on Goo with only a small number of Autobots to guard him. Although it's an offer the Decepticons are eager to accept, Blitzwing is suspicious of the Quintessons, finding them familiar. Motormaster decides to have a vote. The yays have it, but Blitzwing decides to remain on Chaar. The Quintessons are pleased, saying that the Decepticons will soon be theirs... again?
From her ship, Faireborn detects metal fragments which were blown all the way to Jupiter's moon of Io. On the surface of the Jovian moon, Wheelie and Blurr wake up, not realizing that they aren't alone...
Arriving at Chaar, Galvatron is incensed when Blitzwing informs him that the Decepticons left following others, though he doesn't much care who. Galvatron vows to reclaim his rightful place as Decepticon leader.
—A Sweep is left to die by Galvatron
—Galvatron really needs to see a head doctor.
—Consistency is not Galvatron's strong suit.
—The Quintessons loved it. It was much better than Cats.
—Send the guy named "Swindle" to negotiate. Always a good idea.
- The sequence on Goo is the inspiration for the last portion of the Five Faces of Darkness custom title sequence, though in a clever spoiler-avoiding twist, Springer actually does get free from the goo in the title animation.
- The Quintessons' voices settle down after the confusion of last episode, with the script clearly identifying the main trio as Quintesson #1 (Regis Cordic), #2 (Roger C. Carmel) and #3 (Jack Angel), who will consistently perform them for the rest of the mini-series and season. The fourth Quintesson, Judge Deliberata, voiced last episode by Corey Burton, is now also voiced by Cordic, who performs him for the rest of the mini-series.
- In a outwardly bizarre sequence, when the Autobots land on Goo, Deliberata appears only as his Face of Death, which is plucked out of the goo and dropped back in by Kup, as if the face had somehow fallen off the Quintesson's body, before reappearing intact later in the episode. As with a few other beats in "Five Faces of Darkness", this doesn't appear to have been a totally random error, but rather, was likely based on the depiction of the Quintessons in an early draft of The Transformers: The Movie. That draft presented them as bipedal creatures with detachable heads, so this scene of a detached face appears to have been a futzed attempt to transfer that concept over the finalized Quintesson design.
- An early story outline for this episode included Shockwave in the cast before an internal Sunbow memo clarified that the character had been "dropped" and needed to be replaced "with either a continuing or new character from the binder". This outline later surfaced on the internet, revealing Shockwave's planned role in the episode: He was intended to be the one Decepticon who is skeptical of the Quintessons, as he was apparently an ancient Decepticon and has vague memories of the Quintessons, but can't recall the details because of too many uploads and downloads in the intervening time. Based on this, it seems clear that the character he was replaced with was Blitzwing, who fulfills the skeptic role for reasons not explained in this episode.
- In the original script for this episode, Flint Dille announced his intent to "elevate Blurr from a one-note character to a two-note character" by introducing the idea that when he was in combat or under extreme stress, he would suddenly become extremely calm, and his speech would slow to normal levels. This episode was evidently recorded and animated with this idea intact, but then the concept was dropped, and the dialogue re-recorded to remove it; Blurr's lip-flaps as he suggests to Wheelie that they try losing Galvatron around Jupiter are noticeably slower than his words, and Wheelie's dialogue (which was initially a surprised reaction to Blurr's new, slowed-down attitude) is not provided by Frank Welker, but by Moschitta himself (either because Welker wasn't available, or because they just needed it all done quickly).
- Another idea that didn't survive from the script to the finished episode is that the crash-landing on Io was to have rattled Wheelie's systems, leaving him talking not in rhyme, but in an overly verbose, technical manner, compared by Blurr to Perceptor. Again, the episode appears to have been recorded and animated with this idea intact, but re-recorded with new dialogue by Moschitta to restore the rhymes. This gag was to continue on into the start of the next episode, where it would have been paid off by Blurr giving Wheelie a good shake until something went "clunk" inside him, and his regular speech patterns returned, but this scene was deleted entirely.
Screencaps via TFWiki (Teletraan I), used under fan-archive fair use.