The Final Conflict

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Challenge of the GoBots ep 5
(Broadcast Order)
Challenge of the GoBots ep 5
(Story Order)
TheFinalConflict zod armada.jpg
Zod's in his heaven
"The Final Conflict"
Production code 0142-8405
Production company Hanna-Barbera
Airdate November 2, 1984
Written by Alan Burnett, Jeff Segal and Tom Ruegger
Directed by Oscar Dufau and Carl Urbano
Animation studio Hanna-Barbera

The reunited Guardians must break Cy-Kill's hold over Earth in order to save GoBotron from a mass-produced fleet of Zods.

Synopsis[edit | edit source]

Nearer my Zod to thee.

The wounded Leader-1 limps away from Zod, but the monster gives chase through the junkyard, intent on "playing with his food" before dining. The sight is of great amusement to Cy-Kill, watching from above in the Command Center, but when a communication from Doctor Braxis comes through informing him that the mass-produced Zod armada is ready for deployment, the Renegade leader finds he must leave Leader-1 to his fate. Scooter, still in hiding aboard the Command Center with A.J. and Nick, quietly contacts Turbo to alert him to Leader-1's plight, and the rough-and-tumble Guardian is soon speeding to his commander's aid. Thanks to Turbo's distraction, Leader-1 is able to activate the junkyard's car-crusher and, using himself as bait, lures Zod into sticking his head inside it. Though his cranial unit is mangled, Zod is still kicking—until Leader-1 hurls a metal bar at the monster's weak spot, a nerve cluster on his belly, finally knocking him out. Victorious, Leader-1 succumbs to his injuries and collapses, on the brink of death. Luckily, Matt and Anya—the latter back on the side of good thanks to one of Scooter's neutralizers—have arrived with Turbo, and Anya puts her scientific expertise to use tapping the unconscious Zod's power supply to give Leader-1 the boost needed to heal him.

TheFinalConflict scooter as cykill.jpg

Meanwhile, Cy-Kill returns to Cheyenne Mountain, pausing a moment to chew out Cop-Tur for his failure to eliminate Turbo and Scooter and to place control of the base's security in Braxis's hands, before heading off to initiate the Zod fleet launch. With the Command Center left unattended, Scooter, Nick, and A.J. sneak out, whereupon they are contacted by Leader-1 and let him know of their location. Leader-1 charges them with opening the base's security doors so he the others can enter the base, so Scooter activates his holographic Cy-Kill disguise to start moving around the base freely.

Back on GoBotron, the Renegade Fortress has fallen to the Guardians and Fitor and the other Renegades have been captured. Via interrogation, Path Finder learns of the impending Zod attack, and gravely reports the news to the Guardian Council. There is nothing anyone on GoBotron can do... the fate of the planet rests with Leader-1's team!

TheFinalConflict ready for battle.jpg

Using his Cy-Kill disguise, Scooter enters the security control room and orders all the staff out. Braxis's confusion only grows when "Cy-Kill" claims he has postponed the invasion of GoBotron, and when Scooter makes the mistake of laughing at the idea that Braxis will inherit control of Earth, the scientist gets mad and grabs a gun. Before he can fire on Scooter, Nick and A.J. disarm him, and he scampers off to alert Cy-Kill to their presence. Only moments after receiving Braxis's news, the Renegades detect Leader-1's approach on radar—but the heroes are too late to stop the launch countdown, and the Zod armada blasts off into space.

While Nick and A.J. defend against a hail of laser fire from the complex guards, Scooter cracks the code to open the security doors, granting Leader-1 and Turbo access. The pair split up, with Leader-1 taking Matt and Anya to search for Cy-Kill, while Turbo goes looking for Scooter and the kids. Turbo's search is a short one, but as the reunited team head to help Leader-1, they find their way barred by Crasher and Cop-Tur. Turbo and Crasher trade blasts while Scooter dodges Cop-Tur's attacks, until Nick and A.J. are able to get to some of the base's tanks, which they use to blast the two Renegades into submission. Even retreat is not an option for the villains: the kids shoot him out of the air when he tries to fly off, while Turbo intercepts a fleeing Crasher and takes her out.

TheFinalConflict cykill overloaded.jpg

Cy-Kill leaves the control room to join the fight himself but is immediately confronted by Leader-1 and an armed Matt and Anya. Together, they blast him off a catwalk onto a power cell below, which overloads him and knocks him out. In exhilaration, Matt and Anya kiss—but the romance of the moment is lost when the still-mind-controlled General Lindley and his troops appear and open fire. Leader-1 fends them off, but in that moment, Cy-Kill recovers and sneaks off without anyone noticing until it is too late. Returning to the control room, he informs Braxis that he is leaving, and cedes control of Earth to the human... for about two seconds! In one last act of spite, Cy-Kill blasts the pulsar generator, deactivating the mind-control effect and destabilizing the sorium, which threatens to explode and to not just wipe Cheyenne Mountain off the map, but to split the Earth in half!

Zod is Dead.

Cy-Kill Astrobeams himself to Thruster moments before Leader-1 storms into the room, and launches into space, leaving Crasher and Cop-Tur behind to die in the impending blast. In his escape, however, Cy-Kill provides Earth's salvation, as Leader-1 hits upon the idea to use the Astrobeam to teleport the sorium off-Earth, into the path of the Zod armada! The resultant explosion destroys the entire fleet, and even Cy-Kill's Thruster is caught in the shockwave and sent spinning off through space.

A short time later, as the Guardians prepare to return home with Crasher and Cop-Tur as their prisoners, Braxis is carted off to jail, already threatening to plead "temporary insanity." Turbo invites Nick and A.J. to come with them and help track down Cy-Kill, and if their minds weren't already made up, the decision becomes easy when General Lindley informs them all that NASA has "a few thousand questions" for them! As Lindley impotently bellows after them, Matt, Anya, Nick, and A.J. all race aboard the Command Center with their GoBot friends and blast off for GoBotron!

Featured characters[edit | edit source]

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes[edit | edit source]

TheFinalConflict cykill escapes.jpg


"No! Wait! What about me?!"
"Frankly Braxis, leaving you behind makes my day."

Braxis and Cy-Kill



"I thought Cy-Kill came here for the good of mankind! Who would have ever thought--!"

Braxis tries to get off the hook


Notes[edit | edit source]

Continuity notes[edit | edit source]

TheFinalConflict blaster and dozer.jpg
TheFinalConflict matt anya kiss.jpg
TheFinalConflict council disappears.jpg
TheFinalConflict crasher coptur captured.jpg
TheFinalConflict blastoff.jpg
  • Gadgets and Powers:
    • The GoBots' self-repair circuitry is demonstrated for the first time. Just an influx of power causes massive internal and external damage to Leader-1's system to reverse itself.
    • Scooter pulls his holographic disguise as Cy-Kill again, and can unlock computer encryptions using eye-beams.
    • Cop-Tur uses his rotor as a throwing weapon, and it apparently returns to his hand on command.
  • Blaster makes his sole appearance in the pilot mini-series in this episode as a member of the Guardian Council hearing Path Finder's report (right). He appears in an early character model based closely on his original, yellow-orange 1983 toy; when he reappears in the series proper, he is heavily redesigned with a green-and-orange color scheme based on the 1985 redeco of his toy, and a new, more humanized head design.
  • Matt and Anya had a bit of a Moonlighting thing going on for the half-an-episode they spent while not under mind-control, but any romance between the two would never go beyond this one kiss, never being mentioned again.

Story Order[edit | edit source]

  • The mini-series ends with Crasher, Cop-Tur, Fitor, Tank, Geeper-Creeper, BuggyMan and, by implication, anyone else from the Renegade Fortress such as Crain Brain and Screw Head, in Guardian custody. While it's not a clean fit (notably as Cy-Kill is still at large) the GoBots Wiki's story order suggests the most logical continuation of this situation is The GoBotron Saga mini-series, beginning with "Cy-Kill's Escape".

Real-world references[edit | edit source]

  • Informed that her government wants her back in Siberia, Anya snorts "Ishkabibble!", a mock-Yiddish expression meaning "Why should I care?" that was most famously used as the stage name of 1940s comedian Merwyn Bogue.

Continuity and plotting errors[edit | edit source]

  • So Cy-Kill Astrobeams himself to Thruster... but won't he be teleported right back to (what he expects to be) the ruins of Earth when the effect wears off? And given that the Earth is saved, can't the Guardians literally just wait right there in Cheyenne Mountain for him to be zapped back?

Animation and technical errors[edit | edit source]

  • Leader-1 is obviously supposed to have rolled off the conveyor belt that leads into the car compactor, which is why he doesn't emerge on the other side when Zod goes looking. But when Zod peers inside and spots him, the animation cels have been layered incorrectly, making it look like Leader-1 is still on top of the conveyor but somehow not moving with it.
  • When Leader-1 contacts Scooter inside the Command Center in Cheyenne Mountain, Scooter has first yellow, then orange bags under his eyes.
  • Loco and Tank are depicted among the Guardian Council after the Renegades are defeated.
  • On the DVD release of this episode, when Zeemon stands to ask Path Finder what can be done about the Zod attack, the other members of the council on his left and right suddenly disappear (see right). Zeemon gestures and moves his head as if he is speaking, but Path Finder's voice is heard replying to him, and her dialogue carries on into the next shot of her sagging in defeat. It is unknown if this error was present in the original broadcast version of the episode, but it is not present in the "movie" version of the mini-series released on VHS in 1985. There, the scene cuts back to Path Finder before the other council members disappear, and Zeemon's extra movements are not seen. This version is very much the "correct" edit, and not just because there no visible animation error—both Path Finder's dialogue and the background music are timed to the shorter version of the scene, resulting in about three seconds of silence as the animation runs longer than the audio on the DVD. This delay only affects this scene; everything's back in sync right away afterward.
  • As Braxis reports on Scooter's deception, Cy-Kill is missing his "stubble."
  • When Turbo counters Crasher's shockwave with a blast of his own, the wrong background is used, and the zig-zag beam of her attack appears over a corridor wall, rather than a floor. As the beam is blasted out of existence, the shot is supposed to change, but the same background is used (because it's supposed to be for this shot), making it look like Crasher and Cop-Tur suddenly pop in out of nowhere.
  • When Cop-Tur hurls his rotor at Scooter, the little Guardian ducks, and the shot pans as if to follow the rotor as it skims overhead. Problem is, the rotor freezes in place as the pan begins then jumps back into shot once it's finished.
  • As Cy-Kill leaves the control room to "personally blow the Guardians into scrap metal," his mouth doesn't move as he speaks.
  • When Leader-1 contacts Scooter and Turbo to tell them it's time to leave, Scooter's eyeballs are yellow.

Trivia[edit | edit source]

  • The way in which Leader-1 defeats Zod was a play feature on the Zod action figure. The battery-operated toy would repeatedly lunge forward in a herky-jerky motion, and the only way to stop its advance would be to hit the red button on the toy's stomach that was revealed when it reared up. Leader-1 uses a hunk of rebar, but the toy came with a "Mighty Lazer Lance" kids could poke it with.
  • As the pilot mini-series draws to a close, several more characters from the 1983 toyline (Blaster, Dozer, and Spay-C) make quick, silent debuts just so they can be said to be in the show. The only characters from the '83 line who didn't make it into the mini-series are Dumper, Pumper, Road Ranger, Royal-T, and Spoiler; all would manage some token appearances in the series proper with the exception of Pumper, who never appeared at all. An animation model for Pumper was created for the mini-series, though, indicating they wanted to put him in there, but it just didn't happen.
  • In the interim between the mini-series and the series proper, formal contact between GoBotron and Earth will be established and the planets will become officially allied. The Guardians operate in conjunction with the (newly formed?) world defense agency, UNECOM, the United Earth Command, for which Matt, Nick, A.J., and General Newcastle all work. Anya does not make the jump to series regular, but returns for several guest appearances, as does Doctor Braxis, who escapes prison in "Nova Beam." How the Renegades escape the incarceration they find themselves in at the end of the mini-series is explained in "Cy-Kill's Escape," which would not air until several months after the series began its broadcast; that episode also began with Cy-Kill in Guardian custody, his capture having taken place at some point off-screen after the mini-series.

Other versions[edit | edit source]

  • A storybook of this episode, packed with a record featuring the soundtrack with additional linking narration, was released by K-tel in 1984.

Home video releases[edit | edit source]

VHS

1985GoBots: The Original Full-Length Story! (Karl-Lorimar/Kideo Video, UK & US)

DVD

2011Challenge of the GoBots — The Original Miniseries (Warner Archive Collection, US)