“There’re two things I really hate Brawn…….fire and water……”
More Than Meets the Eye Part Two continues the introduction to the epic war between the Transformers. As we re-join the action, the Autobots and humans from the oil rig are floating in the water, some of them trapped as the oil rig burns. The Autobots set about rescuing each other and the humans, which gives us an opportunity to see some of their special talents, such as Trailbreaker’s ability to create force shields, and Jazz’s handy grappling hook type tool. The Autobots introduce themselves to the humans, two in particular-Spike Witwicky and his father Sparkplug. It is decided that it’s a good idea for Spike and Sparkplug to accompany the Autobots, as they can assist them with their knowledge of earth.
“I wonder who left this here……”
A great example of the “robots in disguise” theme is seen as Spike picks up what he thinks is an abandoned cassette player and takes it into the Autobot base. Spike enquires into why the Autobots transform and is shown examples of their special skills. Meanwhile the Decepticon spy Soundwave-the cassette player-and one of his cassette minions called Ravage use the Autobot’s computer (known as Teletraan one) to learn about earth’s resources. Ravage is captured, but Soundwave is able to escape and report back to Megatron, who formulates a plan to attack Sherman Dam to create a tidal wave which will allow the Decepticons to capture the released energy in energon cubes.
“Decepticons, to the power plant”
Another of Soundwave’s minions-Rumble uses his pile drivers to create the tidal wave and the rest of the Decepticons move to the power plant to collect the energy. The Autobots are alerted to this by Teletraan one and go to the dam to intervene. As it looks as though the tidal wave will overpower the dam and cause the power plant to blow, the Decepticons start to collect the energy while the Autobots attempt to stop them. Hound engages Rumble while Ironhide and Bumblebee divert the flow of water created from the tidal wave. A fight breaks out in the power plant, which leads to an epic scene where Megatron and Optimus Prime fight one on one with energy weapons at the top of the dam. This scene features some epic robot trash talk and weapons which would become must have accessories in Masterpiece toy releases. Distracted by Spike’s call for help (when he realises Rumble has gotten the better of Hound, trapping him under some large Rocks) Prime is knocked into the river by Megatron and has to be rescued by the other Autobots, which gives the Decepticons enough time to flee the scene with the energon cubes. Meanwhile, Spike helps Hound to escape from his rocky situation.
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“We must have courage Huffer, we can’t ignore the danger, we must conquer it.”
Prime delivers one of his awesome motivational speeches as the Decepticons work on their space cruiser and plan a trip to get the ruby crystals of Burma to complete their energy reserves. Starscream ineptly uses up some of their recently captured energy, and Soundwave informs Megatron that they should seek out some rocket fuel to make up the difference. Spike, Sparkplug and Trailbreaker hear this plan as they are nearby and eavesdropping on the Decepticons. As they try to get back to base to report back, they are attacked by two Decepticon jets. Trailbreaker struggles to flee, but his sleek colleagues Sideswipe and Sunstreaker help out and they manage to get away, despite some cosmetic damage to Sunstreaker.
“I’ll stick that bomb right under their nose-gear”
With the Decepticon raiding of the ruby crystals underway, the Autobots plan to stop them by blowing up the crystal mine. Sparkplug and Bumblebee volunteer to plant the bomb, but they are intercepted by Thundercracker and Skywarp as they are on their way out of the mine, trying to escape before the bomb goes off. Concerned, Optimus Prime heads to the mine to send his counterpart Roller in to see what’s going on. Roller heads in, but the bomb goes off, which sends the mine crashing down and the blast knocks prime down the rock face. We get a preview of the next episode, and the end credits roll.
Key Scenes, Plot Points and Characters:
- The mystique of the Transformers grows as we see start to see other abilities they have outside of their transformations. Mirage can make himself invisible, Hound can generate holograms and many bots can replace their hands with useful tools or weapons.
- We start to see the complexities of the relationship between Megatron and Starscream coming more to the surface, as when Starscream uses up valuable energy in a weapons test, an argument breaks out between the two and Starscream mutters some words which imply that he is willing to wait for his opportunity to come into power.
- Hound is featured a lot in this episode and helps to solidify the positive relationship between the Autobots and humans, Spike in particular.
The Verdict: There’s a lot of action, story and character development in this episode, but it flows really well and in no way does it ever feel rushed or crammed in. Despite only being the second episode, the viewer is really given the opportunity to get a feel for the characters, their personality traits and abilities to the level where you feel that you’ve known them a lot longer than you really have. On top of it all, it has an exciting cliff-hanger to finish on. I score this episode 10 energon cubes out of 10, this episode does a great job of making you want to continue watching the Transformers.
Afterthoughts: Like part one of this opening trilogy, I tried to watch it from the viewpoint of someone who hadn’t watched it before. Perhaps due to this being the middle part of the more than meets the eye story, I may have underestimated how good this episode really was in the past. It was only while writing about it that I truly appreciated how much goes on in this episode. In fact, so much happens in this episode that it wasn’t easy to summarise it, but that’s a massively positive thing. Even if you’ve seen this episode many times before, I encourage you to revisit it. It can be easy to focus on the beginning and the end of the story and it’s easy to lose focus in the middle. Watch this episode and really give it your full attention, you won’t regret it. To read my review of More Than Meets the Eye Part One, click on this link: https://www.autoassembly.org.uk/episode-review-transformers-s01-ep01-more-than-meets-the-eye-part-1/
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