Call of the Primitives
Title card via TFWiki, fan-archive fair use
The cosmic being Primacron's experiment goes wrong, summoning a planet-eating monster only the most primitive Transformers can stop.
In an ancient-looking laboratory, a sinister voice describes the process of creation as he brings an energy creature into being: first feeding off flame, then an energon cube, growing in size and power. "Tornedron" is more than his creator could have hoped; he flies forth into the universe, as his creator gloats that he will succeed where "the other" failed. Touching a comet, Tornedron leaves it dark and bereft of energy. Soon, it attacks Cybertron. The Autobots attack it, but it simply drains their energy from them. The creature's creator is pleased with him, saying he's done better than his predecessor, Unicron.
On Earth's Moon, Rodimus Prime is leading a rather badly outnumbered group of Autobots against the Decepticons. However, the Dinobots, Predacons, Terrorcons, Sky Lynx, Trypticon, and the animal-form Mini-Cassettes are all summoned by a mysterious voice. They stop fighting and board Trypticon, who—with Sky Lynx alongside him—rockets off into space, leaving behind a puzzled Rodimus and an infuriated Galvatron. As the Decepticons take off in pursuit, Tornedron arrives and drains the energy from the Moon—and the remaining Autobots along with it. Galvatron's Decepticons in space are next, followed by the entire planet Earth.
Aboard Trypticon, it doesn't take long for tempers to flare after Headstrong picks a fight with the Dinobots by insulting Grimlock. Sludge suggests they stomp him. The Preds stick with their teammate and fight the Dinobots, and the Terrorcons decide to fight everyone. At Sky Lynx's suggestion, Trypticon shakes his passengers up a bit to put an end to the squabbling. The group arrives on an ancient planet near the center of the galaxy. After touching down, Sky Lynx assumes command of the group, despite the objections of Razorclaw and Hun-Gurrr. Finding a cave, they encounter a strange entity. He explains that he summoned the Primitives, all animal-based Transformers, to come to fight Tornedron, the energy being who was created by Primacron. The entity, who was once Primacron's assistant, explains how Primacron created Unicron but was nearly destroyed by his creation. After Unicron's defeat, Primacron created Tornedron as a replacement. Primacron's assistant hopes that the Primitives' simple instincts will allow them to defeat Primacron's complex plans.
Suddenly, Tornedron arrives and drains Trypticon of his energy. Trypticon crashes, and Grimlock is believed destroyed. Sky Lynx attacks, only to have his energy drained as well. Slag leads the Dinobots in retreat, while the other Primitives split up, believing that Tornedron can't catch up to all of them if they go separate ways. Unfortunately, they prove to be wrong, as Tornedron separates into four parts to track them all down. He easily dispatches the Mini-Cassettes, chewing on Ratbat in the process. Headstrong declares that it would be better to fight and die, and the Predacons form Predaking, only to have their energy sucked away as well. The Terrorcons try to fight back, but are also drained. The Dinobots ambush Tornedron, but they too are dispatched. Declaring victory against the Primitives, Primacron orders Tornedron to return home back to his lab. Unknown to Tornedron and Primacron, however, Grimlock has survived his impact from Trypticon, and he secretly follows them.
At his base, Primacron is having trouble controlling Tornedron, ordering him to stop. Tornedron refuses to take any more orders and declares that he intends to feed on Primacron, and that all of Primacron's failsafes have failed, realizing that Tornedron is rebelling against him. Grimlock breaks into Primacron's lab to find that Primacron is a tiny little monkey-like alien... thing. Grimlock grabs Primacron and orders him to reverse his damage, but Primacron declares that he's tried everything. Grimlock fixes things easily: He throws the reverse switch, which reverses Tornedron's energy polarity, destroying Tornedron and restoring the life energy to the drained Transformers and planets of the galaxy. In celebration, Grimlock destroys Primacron's lab, declaring it the "smartest" thing he's ever done.
—Rodimus Prime and Springer
—Sky Lynx and Springer, as Sky Lynx arrives to save the day.
— With this crew, it doesn't take much to get a brawl going.
—Sky Lynx's sensible instructions to the rest of the Primitives.
—Sky Lynx's righteous fury at the deaths of Trypticon and Grimlock.
- The art style in this episode is very different from all others in the Generation 1 series, with highly stylized "anime-like" character models and proportions. Exactly which studio animated it has long been a subject of speculation by fans, with Tokyo Movie Shinsha and Ashi Productions both being suspects. At last, in 2020, the episode's director Eiji Suganuma explained that it had, in fact, been contracted to regular Transformers animation studio Toei, who then—as was common—sub-contracted the work (at least in part) to Studio Look. They, in turn, employed students from vocational school known as the International Animation Institute.
- In the past, it's been popularly claimed that the characters models seen in this episode were those designed by Studio OX and used in their TV Magazine work, but they're not; they're simply more stylized versions of the standard animation models, lacking the additional toyetic touches and copious mecha-greeblies found in the OX designs. However, the money shot of the combined Predaking was animated by Shin Matsuo, who was a member of Studio OX, and brought much of their artistic aesthetic to the standard animation models.
- We get our first official origin story for Unicron, painting him as the creation of an obsessive scientist guy. It's... a bit lackluster, especially considering the demi-god nature of the character depicted in the contemporaneous Marvel UK comics. That god-style origin would carry over into the Marvel US comics in 1989, and later media would use it almost exclusively, quietly ignoring poor Primacron.
- Primacron's assistant is an enigma. At the scripting stage, he was given the identifier of "Oracle," but this doesn't make it into the finished episode's dialogue. According to the episodes cast list he is "The "energy force" of a Transformer "Primitive."" Which just raises more questions... In his flashback, after his body is blown to bits by Unicron, the Matrix of Leadership is shown rising from his body and flying off into space, but the whole thing goes largely unremarked on in dialogue, with the assistant's narration speaking only of his "escape" to the dead world. Call of the Primitives is one of several Generation 1 episodes that we don't have access to the full original script for (only the dialogue script), so we sadly have no true information about what this scene was meant to imply. We don't even know if the idea of there being a connection between the assistant and the Matrix was an invention of the episode's writer, the story editors, or even something inserted by the animators, either on purpose or by mistake. It would, however, be given clear, in-universe meaning twenty years later as part of a large retcon carried out in Japanese media (see "Foreign localization" below for more).
- "Sweeps 6 and 7" identify themselves at the start of the moon battle, the only time any Sweeps had any sort of individual designation. Fun Publications would later produce toys of these characters.
- Laserbeak and Buzzsaw aren't among the Primitives in this episode, since their toys had been discontinued. Instead, Soundwave unleashes two new cassette Decepticons: Slugfest and Overkill, who aren't referred to by name, and are completely absent from the rest of the episode, suggesting they were a last-minute addition to the episode. In fact the episode's cast list doesn't even use their final names, instead calling them Crunchback and Gouge.
Screencaps via TFWiki (Teletraan I), used under fan-archive fair use.