Transformers: Robots in Disguise Episode Guide
Episode 6: The Secret of the Ruins
Original U.S. air date: October 11, 2001
Written by: Tom Wyner
In Metro City, Megatron is leading the Predacons Gas Skunk, Slapper and Dark Scream in random attacks to try and force the Autobots out of hiding. In response, Optimus Prime sends team bullet train to stop them. However, Optimus and T-AI correctly recognize this as a meaningless diversion, especially since Sky-Byte is unaccounted for.
Meanwhile, Prowl and X-Brawn are out looking for Side Burn, who is taking a trip to an abandoned Piuma cave which Koji and his father, Dr. Onishi, used to visit every summer. Megatron has succeeded in using his "psycho-probe" to read data from the mind of Dr. Onishi, and has recently been able to obtain images as well. One image was of this cave, and Sky-Byte's mission is to find what is hidden there. After firing on Side Burn and believing him destroyed, Sky-Byte enters the cave and locates the sarcophagus from Dr. Onishi's images atop a large stepped pyamid. However, Side Burn has escaped safely and contacted Optimus, who arrives with the remaining Autobot car brothers to stop Sky-Byte. The sarcophagus is returned and found to contain a photo of Koji and his father, but the frame contains a microchip which Koji has never seen before.
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The microchip found in this frame is referred to in later episodes, making it all the more annoying that this episode was originally shown out of order. (A passing reference to terrorism caused this episode to be suspended completely following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and in this first showing the offending line was edited out.) This chip is just the first of several clues which Dr. Onishi has hidden around the world and for which Megatron is constantly searching; it's not until after "The Ultimate Robot Warrior" that this search really begins to pick up.
It's never stated that the pyramid where Sky-Byte finds the sarcophagus is the "black pyramid" Megatron was searching for in the previous episode, although the fact that there's no weapon or source of energy actually in the sarcophagus suggests it's not. See "Peril From the Past" for more underground pyramids and the likely end of that search.
Viewers of the original Transformers cartoon may be a little surprised that Sky-Byte's repeated ambition is to be the second-most powerful Predacon, instead of trying to take over leadership from Megatron the way Starscream always did. Sky-Byte is shown again and again to be a sycophant of the most annoying sort, constantly lying and cheating even his own teammates in order to try and curry favor with Megatron. Of course, it almost always backfires on him.