G1 Episode 71: The Killing Jar

A human woman and 3 giant robots walk into a spaceship under false pretenses.

Check out our Tumblr for episode notes and links: ⁠⁠⁠⁠afterspark-podcast.tumblr.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music: "Proof of Concept" and "Local Cluster" by Wintergatan

These tracks can be downloaded for free at ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.wintergatan.net

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Hello and welcome to the ActressSparks Podcast in episode by
episode recap of the Generation One Transformers cartoon.
I'm Alice. And I'm specs.
And today we're going to be talking about episode 71, The
Killing Jar. Let's talk about giant robots
today, shall we? Yeah, it's not ominous at all.
I'm just imagining, you know, a fucking.
Jar with. Insects in it now.

(00:38):
Nope, Nope, Nope. Not going there.
No, I know. Unfortunately, that's where my
brain went. So we open with ultra Magnus,
admiring the peacefulness of thefaraway stars and lamenting that
they're much more trouble up close.
I mean, that's accurate. It is.
Speaking of clothes, we're way too close suddenly to a

(01:00):
quintessent who admires Ultra Magnus as quite the spasm.
Where do they hide the camera sowe can get this view of Ultra
Magnus? Who knows?
After a brief interlude next to Unicron's disembodied head, the
Quintessent and his stooge disguised their spaceship as the

(01:20):
Magnificent Skylings. Ooh wouldn't impersonate him.
They impersonate Skylinx's verbosity quite well too,
pulling Ultramagnus and deporting by his own free will.
Ultramagnus Having now trapped Ultramagnus, the Quintessens
activate a hologram of Veronymous Prime, who promptly
begins trying to beat him up. Yay, hard light holograms.

(01:43):
Ultramagnus defends himself justas the Quintessen expected.
The ship jets off to Char to gather their next specimen.
Said specimen being cyclonists who they lure with broadside.
Now if you're wondering who the hell broadside is at this point,
much like my freaking self, apparently he was the Aerial

(02:05):
Bond Ship. One that exploded.
Good times, guys. Good times.
We did not realize he was people.
Yeah, I mean, normally they'd tell us when there's new people,
but I guess they just decided tosneak him in there, cuz they
couldn't figure out a good time to do that intro.
Which doesn't even begin to explain why Cyclone is just hops
on in when this is apparently anAutobot Triple Changer.

(02:28):
Maybe they'd just done the design beforehand and they
hadn't decided what side it was gonna.
Be on I don't know. Cyclone is just assumes this is
a new guy. I guess if I mean Cyclops is
very young, I mean really for a cybertronium?
And I'm so confused because thisjust should have been Astro
trained. Like why wasn't this Astro
train? They had to work in the new

(02:48):
people somehow. Hey, kids, come by this guy we
didn't even name. Surely you will be intrigued by
this. Start of a plane I don't.
Know that you recognize on some sort of packaging at the toy
store. Once on board, the Quintessence
put cyclonists through his paces, having a hologram of
Galvatron attacking cyclonists. So it's this Tuesday night.

(03:11):
Got it? Cyclonists reacts much the same
as Ultra Magnus attacking Galvatron and Self Preservation.
The Quintessent arrives in Junkie on Next, Luring Wrecker
on board with a cartoon clown that they have apparently been
broadcasting to his TV Don't Ask.
We wish you could get, we wish we could give you a better
explanation, but we really can't.

(03:32):
We wish there was a better one that we had.
The Quintessent then throws Red Gar into an empty room,
theorizing that Red Gar will be frozen without any of the
clutter found in his normal environment.
Red Gar just starts dismantling the room.
Making myself more at home, pulling up a chair and the floor
to have some fun. Retcar is an adaptable guy.

(03:55):
The quintessent is confused because he wasn't able to
predict Retcar's reaction. And Next up on the Quintessent
shopping list, Marissa. Fairbore, where he disguises the
ship as an Earth ship with her father on board and arrives at
like. Wherever her group's
headquarters is, which is somewhere in space, nourish to

(04:16):
Earth, but not Earth. That's the really the only part
that's important here. Yep, Marissa is pretty quick on
the uptake, realizing that something is very wrong and
beating up the simulacrum of herfather.
The contestant comments that violence is always the human's
answer, To which I say, excuse me Sir, we will make friends
with almost anything, actually. Fuck you.

(04:37):
To be fair. None of us would react very well
to someone that looks like a loved one but does not act like
that. Yes.
So the four specimens are all introduced to each other, though
still in individual cells. The Quintessent and his lackey
enter so the Quintessent can gloat about how disposable they
all are. Marissa's like, excuse me, I am

(05:00):
the space police that these are crimes.
This is kidnapping, Kidnapping. And just gonna pause and mention
that this Quintessen, much like all the other Quintessens,
doesn't really have a name. It is just credited as the
Quintessen scientist. Yeah, his lackey is an Alicon,
so I think Sharkticon, but more alligator shaped and green.

(05:23):
I still hold that he should havebeen called a Crocticon.
The Quintessent elects to examine Marissa first,
activating some kind of suppression device to that end,
which causes Marissa to collapse.
Brett Gar is able to disable thesuppression device, allowing
Marissa to get out and whack. I'm assuming the control panel.

(05:44):
Like she, I don't know if she watched the ship, the control
panel or something, but she was like something that that is ship
related, yeah. So this confuses poor Marissa
because an electron storm rips through the ship at the exact
same time, tormenting everyone on board.
The Alicon attempts to navigate the ship out of the storm as
Marissa ineffectively tries to free Ultra Magnus.

(06:05):
Ultra Magnus grabs onto the bars, shorting them out with
salt, which also shorts out Recgar and Cyclonus as bars too,
for reasons. Because we're in space and
scifi. And of course the bars aren't
made out of metal. They're made of like lasers.
And it's a. Cartoon, Yes.
When the scientist and the Alicon returned to the holding

(06:25):
area, the Alicon is attacked by Recgar and Marissa bodily
tackles the Quintessence. Meanwhile, Ultramagnus and
cyclonists go at it. Yay.
Marissa attempts to plot a course back home, but finds that
the ship is currently getting sucked into a black.
Hole. Marissa would like her day to be
normal every once in a while notgetting sucked into a black hole

(06:46):
after getting kidnapped by a creepy alien scientist.
The Quintessent heads to the back of the ship and intends to
make an escape on the only remaining undamaged escape pod.
How convenient. Plot plot, plot pot, but
Ultramagnus grabs him out and the pod launches by itself,
sucking Ultramagnus out into. Space Cyclones uses some kind of

(07:09):
grappling beam to grab Ultramagnus back into the ship,
saying Warriors deserve to die in battle.
He has some sort of morals. He does.
I don't know where he got him because Calvatron sure as hell
doesn't have them. Yeah, or what even precisely
they are, aside from warriors dying in battle.
Yeah, it's like he was like a warrior's honor, kind of, I
guess. Proto Dinobot.

(07:31):
Kind of. That might be why I actually do
kind of like him, although I do still stand by that.
Sadly. I don't feel like the
Decepticons are nearly as interesting in season three as
they were and like seasons one and two.
So, like, most of my favorite characters in this season
actually tend to be Autobots, which is weird for me.
Yeah, well Decepticons here don't get a whole lot of screen
time. You get all Galvatron doing

(07:54):
whatever the Galvatron going insane show.
Yeah, pretty much like and it, you know, I I think Cyclonist is
really interesting, especially in comparison to Starscreen.
But like he doesn't, he's not nearly as interesting as
Starscreen, if that makes sense.Yeah, like, whereas Megatron
had. Plotty stuff going on that he
would dispatch individual peopleor groups out for.

(08:16):
Yeah, Galvatron doesn't do any of that.
Show if anybody's doing it. It's usually cyclonist, yeah.
Okay, let's get back Yeah to. Tangents.
Yeah, sorry about that. The group discusses their
inevitable fate of being sucked into the black hole.
And of course immediately after saying that.
No worries, they can maintain this position as long as the

(08:38):
engines hold out. An engine just immediately
blows. Up.
Well, you just changed yourself,Magnus.
And the group is sucked into a black hole.
So in being sucked into a black hole, they are sucked into a
negative universe where everyonegets negative color schemes or
reversed color schemes or something.
So say, welcome to a very purpleMarissa.

(09:01):
A sunshiny yellow cyclonus, surprisingly pastel Recgar and
an utterly unflattering maroon Magnus.
Ultra Magnus then gets handsy with the Quintessent, telling
him to come up with the theory to get them out of this
universe. So all six of them work together
to modify the ship to try and make an escape.

(09:21):
They arrive back into their normal universe, where they are
met by Skylinx, who is able to escort them back to Cybertron.
Cyclonus and Magnus. Basically call a truce and that
they go their separate ways, at least until they meet in on the
battlefield again. The episode ends with Magnus
waxing poetic about arriving home, but still being so very
far apart. Also, I just have to comment

(09:43):
that throughout this episode they are all so mean to this
Alicon. Which like just various things
of either hitting him or, you know, whatever.
But they have made a point of stating that he really can't
fight his quintessence programming, so being mean to
him just seems needlessly cruel.They're all more criminals else
and they all black. They all have issues with

(10:07):
empathizing with other species, I guess.
I don't know. True.
So join us next time, perhaps 72Chaos Cups war stories come back
to haunt him. Or Gridlock gets a starring role
in one of them, you could say. All right, so today ALS will be

(10:29):
going over our fanfic recommendations for today.
So First off is colleagues by Eve de Walrus continuities.
IDW it's rated G it is Slash. Pairings are Minima, Sambus and
Megatron. Our characters are Minimis,
Ambus, Megatron, Ratamus, Summary, Minimis, Ambus, and
Megatron are married professors at a university, though none of

(10:51):
their students know their relationship with each other.
This Vic is 50% college studentsbeing confused about the weird
professors and 50% domestic bluff because of course it is.
This is a mini Mags Vic character theme right here is
Ultra Magnus kind of. I know, like.
Spirit. In spirit, since the Minimis
ambus is ultra mags in the IDW comics, it is multi chapter

(11:16):
completed. It is Human formers, which is
not something I tend to recommend a ton of.
And then we have time ages in a hurry by SDKLRI think I do.
Skuller. God occupied now.
Continuities. IDW it is G it is slash.
Our pairing is Cyclonist and Tailgate, Our characters are

(11:37):
World, Tailgate and Cyclonist. And in summary a small post lost
light domestic tableau charactertheme rack is cyclonist because
I actually do have some cyclonist fix saved and I was
like sure sure throw it at this.It is a one shot.
These are mostly just kind of cute softer things so you know
how happy. Well, I mean, there wasn't a
whole lot of combat in this episode there.

(11:59):
Was an Apple branching match. There was a whole lot of we've
got to work together. Weirdly enough, yes.
All right. And then our fan fan art rack
for today is Shark Rocket, whichis a great username.
Kudos 10 out of 10 of Rocket. Good name, good name.
Yes, we have their Twitter, Tumblr, Society 6, and T Public.

(12:22):
It will say a lot of their shopsdon't sit 10, tend to have a
bunch of like Transformer stuff on it right now.
So just FYI as far as kind of their arts, they've got some
really great comics for IDW characters.
We've linked a few of our favorites for specs pick.
We have a swab, first aid, wooing, ambulon, and.
Then clapping. Yes, she she wants this one.

(12:44):
It is. It is a pretty great image let's
be honest. And then we have a Dithosaurus
in Tarn comic, which honestly I don't think I recommended very
much in any Tarn art. So here you go it's you know
Tarn trying to lure him after some miscommunications.

(13:07):
Let's just leave it at that and.I feel like.
Desaurus is really. Not understanding the.
Text here no. And then we have anime girls
Starscream. And the reason I say that is
because he's doing the 90s animegirl lab and it is perfect.
But let's face it with. Sparkles on the face.
Yes, yes, this is definitely a thing.

(13:30):
Especially do you want Starscream would do?
And I stand by that statement. Yes, we're all excellent and
that just about wraps it up for us today.
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(13:51):
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Till next time I'm Specs Doodles.

(14:15):
Frontier Cowboys with psychic vampires.
That's. How I want to go, I want you to
Genesis my body into the sun.