Transformers: Robots in Disguise Episode Guide

Episode 20: Wedge's Short Fuse
Original U.S. air date: September 28, 2001
Written by: Richard Epcar

After locating the Predacons at a diamond mine in Antarctica, Optimus Prime dispatches the Autobot car brothers to the scene. On their way through the global space bridge, however, they reach a dead end and are met by the Autobot build team: the dump truck Heavy Load, Grimlock, an excavator, the crane Hightower, and their leader, the bulldozer Wedge. They agree to complete the tunnel to Antarctica on the condition that Optimus allows them to go into battle instead of always digging. Optimus reluctantly agrees, and the build team takes the car brothers' place en route to the Predacons.

At the diamond mine, the Predacons are working under Sky-Byte's supervision to lure the Autobots into a trap. They don't recognize the build team as Autobots at first, but soon attack and have the advantage. Heavy Load sees Wedge at Sky-Byte's mercy and offers to exchange a disk containing a map of the global space bridge for Wedge's safety. After Sky-Byte agrees, Scourge and the Decepticons appear and take the disk for themselves. Optimus arrives to help, but is eventually told that the data on the disk is actually a sewer map. The Predacons leave with the disk, landing in the sewers, the Decepticons follow, and Optimus seals the entrance behind them.

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Since when were there diamond mines in Antarctica? Or sewers? And how or why would the Autobots store large amounts of valuable data on 1.44-megabyte floppy disks instead of something more solid state? This episode has some major plot holes to reckon with, but at least it was a good and logical way to introduce the Build Team. It's possible that their inexperience is intended to negatively compensate for the Autobots' advantage in numbers, since in the end it's only the Predacons' and the Decepticons' constant infighting (and Heavy Load's quick thinking) that saves the day.

The nature of the Autobots' global space bridge is never really explored before now, but the fact that the Build Team is constantly working on tunnels for it makes it clear that it doesn't just use teleportation. Sometimes the space bridge opens a physical doorway, and other times a portal is created where none existed, but there's always a physical tunnel they have to travel through. Inconsistent, sure, but at least there's some consistency there.

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