The GoBot Who Cried Renegade
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| "The GoBot Who Cried Renegade" | |||||||||
| Production code | 0142-8523 | ||||||||
| Production company | Hanna-Barbera | ||||||||
| Airdate | November 5, 1985 | ||||||||
| Story by | Eric Lewald, Jeff Segal, and Kelly Ward | ||||||||
| Teleplay by | Eric Lewald | ||||||||
| Animation studio | Wang Film Productions | ||||||||
Scooter creates a new Renegade detector, but its effectiveness is called into question.
Synopsis[edit | edit source]
The Guardians and their human friends are spending their downtime cruising around space, with everyone except Turbo enjoying the peace and quiet. Turbo soon gets his wish for excitement, however, when a distress call comes in from Rest-Q, requesting aid at a Guardian industrial outpost that has been struck by the Renegades—the latest in a series of successful attacks the villains have been able to perpetrate thanks to their stealth device. The Guardians speed to the rescue, and while Leader-1 and Turbo take the fight to the Renegades, Scooter goes to the aid of Rest-Q, who has been injured by Crasher while trying to help the wounded Heat Seeker. Unfortunately, Crasher is still hanging around when Scooter arrives; she tosses the little GoBot into a nearby lake, and blasts a cluster of live electrical wires down around him. Leader-1 and Turbo break off their battle to come to help Scooter, blasting the wires away before they can hit the water, and the Renegades escape.
A frustrated Zeemon demands the Guardians find a solution to the spate of Renegade attacks. Reasoning that the Renegades cannot use their stealth device while their weapons are operational, Leader-1's best solution is to have Scooter amplify the Guardians' detection equipment so they can at least detect the Renegades as they attack, rather than after. Scooter contacts a human scientist friend of his named Billy for some help on the project, and Billy transmits through the specs for a new experimental system he is working on. Unfortunately, the Renegades are monitoring the transmission and get a hold of the specs too; once Scooter has completed his detector, they are able to feed it false information, making the Guardians think they are about to launch an attack on GoBotron's Spa Moon. Leader-1 alerts the moon's overseer Spay-C and calls for a full evacuation... but when no Renegade threat materializes, Zeemon is less than pleased to have had his visit to the moon spoiled and warns against trusting Scooter's untested device so blindly. Scooter is depressed that his new device has apparently failed, only to then be tricked by another phony alert warning of an attack on the Moon of Knowledge. Assured by Scooter that the alert has been triple-checked, Leader-1 again sends a warning to the moon, throwing it into a panic. But of course, no attack comes, and a furious Zeemon demotes Leader-1's team to cargo hauling duty for a month.
The dejected Scooter contacts Billy for advice, but while he is on the line with him, the Renegades, seeking to tie up loose ends, attack Billy's lab and take him hostage. Scooter tries to tell the other Guardians, but after two false alarms, they don't believe him, so he takes a shuttle and heads for Earth on his own. Disguising his craft with a hologram of a cloud, Scooter tails the Renegades' Thruster to their secret underground base, where Billy is strapped into the mind-reading Brainstormer so the Renegades can pillage his mind of all his scientific knowledge. Fortunately, the thoughts at the forefront of Billy's teenage mind—like girls, chores, and pimple cream—stymie the machine long enough for Scooter navigate the tunnels that lead into the base. Scooter blasts Billy free of the Brainstormer, and the pair flee into the tunnels, with Cy-Kill and Crasher hot on their heels. The two Renegades think they have their quarry cornered in a dead end, but soon find that they have once again been tricked by Scooter's trustworthy holograms as the genuine articles zoom past them while they are distracted. Billy taunts Cy-Kill into firing after them, and the Renegade leader's blast triggers a cave-in that buries him and Crasher while Scooter and his pal beat retreat.
Meanwhile, Leader-1 discovers Scooter's absence and deduces that he has gone to Billy's lab. The Command Center makes its way to Earth, where the Guardians and human learn about the Renegade attack and discover that Scooter was telling the truth. Convinced by this to use his detector again, the heroes are able to locate the Renegades base and arrive just after Cy-Kill and Crasher have dug themselves out. Nick and A.J. stay with the Command Center while Leader-1, Turbo, and Matt head into the tunnels. Though surprised by their appearance, Cy-Kill isn't one to let an opportunity pass him by, and pulls a switch that drops them into a pit surrounded by an electromagnetic field that neutralizes their blasters and jets. Worse yet, a deadly energy grid begins to close in around them!
Elsewhere in the tunnels, Scooter and Billy have gotten thoroughly lost. Through the rock, they hear the sound of their friends' voices, and manage to chip a hole through the wall, into the pit, big enough for Billy to fit through. Scooter removes a circuit board from his body and Billy takes it through the hole to Leader-1, who follows Scooter's directions to combine it with his own propulsion systems to generate enough energy to counteract the electromagnetic pulse. The gamble works, and the Guardians blast their way out of the energy grid. The Renegades start to flee in Thruster, but the Guardians trick them by pursuing without the Command Center. Thinking the Guardians have been caught without their ship, Cy-Kill turns Thruster to open fire on them, only to then be blindsided when Nick and A.J. bring the Command Center into action. The Renegades quickly trigger their stealth device and make a hasty escape, while the Guardians celebrate their victory and apologize to Scooter for not trusting him.
Featured characters[edit | edit source]
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Guardians | Renegades | Humans | Others |
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Quotes[edit | edit source]
"I love a moving target!"
- —Crasher
"Crasher, I believe the Brainstormer will work just as well on a disconnected brain as on one that is still in use!"
"Nyaha-haha-ha-ha-haaaaaa! Let's try!"
- —Cy-Kill and Crasher threaten Scooter and Billy
Notes[edit | edit source]
Continuity notes[edit | edit source]
- This episode continues to introduce GoBotron's copious themed moons; Spa Moon and the Moon of Knowledge join the Moon of Shadows from "Doppelganger" and the Moon of Fire from "Tarnished Image."
- Spay-C makes her debut in the series proper this episode as the overseer of Spa Moon, following a silent appearance of the back of her head in the final episode of the pilot mini-series.
- Much is made this episode of GoBotron's alliance with other worlds, with Zeemon concerned that the Guardian will be seen as unable to defend against the Renegade threat, and numerous aliens—including humans—are seen perusing the libraries of the Moon of Knowledge (pictured at right). GoBotron formally allied with numerous other planets against the Renegades back in "Lost on GoBotron."
- Gadgets and Powers:
- Rest Q can levitate his patients onto his roof in vehicle mode, using beams from his headlights.
- Scooter uses a hologram to disguise his shuttle as a cloud. A fast moving cloud.
Real-world references[edit | edit source]
- This episode takes its title from the Aesop fable, "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."
Continuity and plotting errors[edit | edit source]
- It doesn't really make any sense for the Guardians to not believe Scooter. The false alarms were considered the result of equipment failure, but Scooter actually saw the Renegades attack Billy with his own eyes.
- Prior to the first commercial break, Crasher is in Billy's lab with Cy-Kill, looming over the boy. After the break, she's suddenly outside tearing the joint up with Cop-Tur while Cy-Kill menaces Billy alone.
- While in vehicle mode, Scooter blasts Billy free of the Brainstormer... but, uh, Scooter doesn't have blasters.
- Nick credits Scooter's detection device with leading the Guardians to Billy's lab, but in fact, it was Leader-1 who deduced that that's where they should go. This would already be a logical presumption based on what Scooter had been trying to tell them before leaving, but the episode implicitly shows Leader-1 coming to this conclusion because he sees Billy's wrecked lab on the monitor at Scooter's workstation... but that was just the communication feed from Billy's lab Scooter saw him over earlier, not the detection device (because the detector is explicitly stated to not provide visuals). But even that doesn't really make any sense, because the feed cut out while Scooter was watching!
- As Leader-1 blasts the energy grid into nothingness, he cries "Watch out, Scoot!" - but Scooter's not in the room, or anywhere in sight, or in any obvious danger from the grid. Something deleted here?
Animation and technical errors[edit | edit source]
- In the full-body shot of Rest-Q transforming, his visor is miscolored grey like the rest of his helmet, and a strip on the front of what's supposed to be his mouthplate is coloured like the visor instead, giving him the appearance of having a really tiny face.
- When Scooter videocalls Billy for the first time, the background painting of Billy's lab is already visible on Scooter's screen, over which Billy himself then fades in. The same thing happens again when Zeemon calls in from Spa Moon, and again, in reverse, when Billy's second call with Scooter comes to an end.
- Zeemon's call is depicted as coming in through the screen of Scooter's detection device, rather than the Command Center's communications console. Then, when the alert for the Moon of Knowledge is received, it comes in through the Command Center console, rather than the detector!
- On his second call, Zeemon appears on the viewscreen, but the background is that of open space from the Command Center's cockpit behind the viewer.
- Leader-1's mouth blinks out for a frame when he tells Scooter to get some rest.
- When Cy-Kill orders Fitor to repair the Brainstormer, Fitor's nose is miscolored black.
- Both Cy-Kill and Crasher are animated as laughing at Cy-Kill's "disconnected brain" line, when only Crasher's actress does so, making it look at one point like her laughter is coming out of Cy-Kill's mouth.
- Cy-Kill is "clean shaven" when he drops the energy bands on Leader-1 and the others in the pit.
Trivia[edit | edit source]
- Scooter's detection device conspicuously recycles the design of the Astrobeam protector.
- Scooter's shuttle is a slightly off-model rendering of the NASA shuttle Intrepid from the pilot episode.
Home video releases[edit | edit source]
- DVD
2015 — Challenge of the GoBots — The Series, Volume Two (Warner Archive Collection)
