Episode Guides • G1 Production Bible • Sounds • Videos • Promos • Wallpapers • Other • Beast Wars

Season One, Episode 25: Other Voices, Part 1
Reviewed by Blackjack

Episode Review

Not as good as it should've been, honestly. The Aliens are a little too cryptical for my taste, although I suppose as higher beings they have a requirement to do that. The dome-shaped structure is seems to be done to pad out time, and the scene where Optimus Primal in gorilla mode gets attacked by tentacles are... unsettling. The episode's pacing is rather slow, with the Aliens' introdump and Airazor/Rattrap mucking around the site taking too much time.

Megatron shows more promise with his future plotting, while Rattrap get a lot of good lines in. Tarantulas and Blackarachnia are suitably running their own agenda, with Tarantulas seemingly knowing much more than he lets on. This two-parter is planned for the finale, when the show writers have no idea that there will be a Season Two, so this might be their last hurrah. For something that should've been more dramatic, this episode is a little let-down. Mostly, it's getting the characters to their places for the final showdown.

Notes

The mysterious aliens are finally revealed to be the Vok, a mysterious race who seeded the planet with energon as part of an experiment. They regard life as small, being more than ready to sterilize the entire planet just because the Beast Warriors intruded. Tarantulas is shown to have known about the Vok for a long time, which explains many of his suspicious actions in the previous episodes. The Vok claims to have a form that we simpler beings couldn't understand (namely, ethereal floating skulls) and that 'there is more danger than you know' if the Beast Warriors are not terminated. It's possible that they are referring to Megatron's master plan seen at the end of season two- never mind. I'm getting ahead of myself.

The second moon is not really a moon. It has a Death-Star-esque look to it, with weapon emplacements all over it.

All the Stasis Pods are on the planet as of this episode, but although there are a lot of those stasis pods, only five show up later in the show (Rampage, Quickstrike, Silverbolt, an unnamed Protoform who's killed by Quickstrike, and a blank Protoform used as basis for Dinobot II). This means that people writing BW fiction have something to work on, and indeed this is what 3H and IDW writers have done.

This is the first of the three two-parters with the title 'Other V', the others being 'Other Visits' and 'Other Victories'. All the 'Other V' two-parters deal with the Vok, and most usually some great weapon of doom that they send. 'The Trigger' was the only Vok-related two-parter without the title 'Other V'.

Rattrap kicks Waspinator in the privates, before beating him up hard. Waspinator's voice is also as if his balls have really been kicked. Other than being hilarious, this does raise some... interesting questions.

The Vok uses Unicron only as a visual reference, as something that Primal could relate to. They do not have any direct ties with Unicron, although that never did stop fanfic writers, yes?

The Vok's line, "That which does not become part of the one shall become void" might be a reference to Unicron's motto from the Transformers Univere profile books. Namely, "That which does not become a part of me shall become one with the great void".

Goofs

Why the hell does the Aliens seed the planet with energon in the first place? And what was the function of the floating island with traps in 'The Trigger'?

It seems rather odd for the Aliens to land, waiting for Airazor to scan those crystals and set off the events of this episode, instead of, you know, immediately activating the Death Star Moon. Why warn Optimus Primal and everybody?

Where does Blackarachnia get his forcefield-disabling gizmo from?

Sentinel seems to be... redundant if Inferno could simply burrow a tunnel under it.