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

Season One, Episode 6: Power Surge
Reviewed by Blackjack

Episode Review

Give it a seven. While you never believe for once while watching the episode that Terrorsaur would succeed past this episode, it is rather hilarious to see some of the scenes in the episode. While it's a quick recycling of the numerous Starscream plots from G1, Terrorsaur is at least better played compared to Starscream. At the very least, he tries to find a proper advantage before attempting to overthrow Megatron. Come to think of it, Screamer and Terrorsaur are very similar, aren't they? Both have red in their bodies, both have flying alternate modes, both have whiney voices, both have back-mounted wings in robot mode, both are treacherous...

This early in the series, again I must mention, each episode is standalone, with their own little G1-ish plots. But it works to net children and introduce them to transformers, before going to delve deeper into the plot of why Megatron came to the planet in the first place. But at least they learnt from their mistakes in G1 — Terrorsaur doesn't try to piss off Megatron every single episode, unlike Starscream. In fact, other than this episode and I think 'Double Jeopardy', I don't think Terrorsaur had attempted other coups. Which is a good thing... it gets old after some time. Overall, this is not a stellar episode, but it's good and funny.

Notes

Terrorsaur eating the bird in the intro of the episode is a reference to his bio, where it states that he "ingests entire flocks of birds by flying opened mouthed through their flight pattern." The bird, it seems, uses Airazor's beast mode character model.

Cheetor points at a location in a place similarly shaped North America to indicate where the floating mountain is, giving a little foreshadowing that the planet really is Earth.

When Optimus and Rattrap flies towards the mountain, Rattrap makes a reference to the bat Optimus Primal toy, by suggesting that he choose a bat as his alt mode.

This episode marks the first appearance of the Predacons' autoguns.

Terrorsaur quotes Megatron's trademark "Yeesssss" right after he declares "Megatron is scrap!" Ah, the irony.

Optimus Primal seems to quote G1 Whirl's motto when he says "Sometimes crazy works." However, it might be a simple coincidence.

Goofs

At one point, the 'energy surge' effect on Terrorsaur changes colour from red to blue randomly.

When Terrorsaur recharges for the second time, his body begans to flicker together with the energon.

The floating island is rotating, but Tarantulas, who's scurrying up a webline, doesn't revolve with it. In fact, the webline should've turned along with the island.

Dinobot is absent for the entire episode.