Decepticon Air

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So which one of them is John Malkovich?
"Decepticon Air"
Season	3
No. in season	10
Airdate	May 2, 2009
Written by	Michael Ryan
Directed by	Kalvin Lee Shigeharu Takahashi
Animation studio	Mook
Continuity	Animated cartoon continuity

The Decepticons aboard the Elite Guard ship decide to take down the Autobots that turned them in.

Synopsis

On Earth, Professor Sumdac and Bulkhead have completed a space bridge terminal in record time, for which Optimus congratulates them. However, the transwarp field sequencers still have to be recalibrated, and Sumdac and Bulkhead argue over whose fault that is. Sari insists she could have helped get it right, but both builders politely rebuff her as insufficiently knowledgeable. As they continue arguing about getting the resequencing done, she takes matters into her own hands—almost literally. Using her new abilities, she fixes the terminal's calibrations and gets it to activate, to the surprise of the others.

"Ravage has poked me on Facebook how many times?"

Meanwhile, out in space, Sentinel Prime fruitlessly attempts to interrogate his Decepticon prisoners for info on the military cells that have been attacking space bridge outposts. He returns to the bridge after Jazz tells him there's an incoming message from Cybertron. Perceptor, Alpha Trion and Cliffjumper indicate that the Autobot High Council has decided to make public the news of the assault on Ultra Magnus. Sentinel tries to pull rank on them, since he's now technically the pro tempore Magnus, and advises them to keep it quiet, but Alpha Trion makes it clear that they don't quite recognize his authority. Frustrated, Sentinel tries to pull rank on Jazz instead, commanding him to take the ship at full thrust through an energy cloud, despite any risks, as that heading will be the shortest route to Cybertron. Jazz complies despite objections, and of course, his worries prove justified: The energy strikes and flows through the ship, re-energizing Swindle and bringing him out of time-stasis. Swindle soon frees and re-arms the other Decepticons, even if they don't have payment up front for it, as they work for Megatron, his best customer. With the alarms muted by Swindle's Sonic Jammer 3000, the Decepticons strike at the ship's bridge just after the ship emerges from the energy cloud. Swindle quickly takes out Jetfire and Jetstorm with a demo of the SJ3K's other function, a stasis suspension ray. Sentinel and Jazz put up a fight, but to little avail, and finally, Sentinel sends a brief, encrypted call for help to his old buddy, Optimus Prime (as he's too embarrassed to call Cybertron). Shortly afterward, Lugnut strikes him down, but Swindle convinces the massive Decepticon to spare their prisoners' lives: Not only could selling off their Elite Guard parts earn a fortune, but they could be a bargaining chip in finding Megatron.

HUNGER GETS WHAT HUNGER WANTS.

On Earth, Optimus receives Sentinel's message, which decrypts to "Broken Lance", a coded call for help that Sentinel used with him back in their academy days. Bulkhead notes the space bridge terminal detects an unusual transwarp field aboard the Elite Guard's ship. With Sari's help, the terminal locks onto the field, providing stable coordinates for an arrival point. The space bridge is activated, and Optimus steps through... only to emerge from Swindle's chest, having arrived via the private storage dimension he uses for holding all his stock.

Rather than attack against overwhelming odds and attempt to free Sentinel and the others, Optimus takes off down the ship's corridors to better his situation. Most of the Decepticons give pursuit, with Lugnut ordering Swindle to watch the prisoners in the meantime. Taking an elevator to the ship's energon storage chamber, Optimus perforates a group of energon cubes with his axe, destabilizing them just enough. He then puts them in the elevator car and slices its cables, so it explodes near the bottom just as the Decepticons pry open the doors. Slightly charred from the backblast, Optimus enters one of the service ducts and works his way back to the brig area, grumbling as he does.

Meanwhile, Swindle's greed is still holding sway, and the arms dealer leaves his prisoners unguarded so he can raid the ship's stores. Prime arrives almost immediately afterward and frees his fellow Autobots, earning no gratitude from the power-tripping Sentinel. The Decepticons then return, so Optimus tells Jazz to rewire the decontamination unit on the bridge into a freezing chamber to trap them, his Autobot emblem blinking all the while. Optimus severs a steam duct, giving Jazz cover to escape, but then Lugnut punches a hole in the hull, sending everyone else in the brig out into space.

The Jet Twins prove far more capable in space combat than anticipated, giving the Decepticons a fair amount of trouble. Noting their predicament through a porthole in the storage depot, Swindle metaphorically shrugs and goes back to looting. Meanwhile, despite Sentinel's continued objections and struggling, Optimus uses him as a living spiked slingshot against Lugnut. Sentinel insists he be obeyed as leader, but this only prompts Blitzwing to freeze him and hold him hostage. Sentinel demands they don't surrender, but Optimus convinces the Jet Twins to follow his lead instead, and they capitulate.

Slip me some metal, O.P.!

On the bridge, Blitzwing, Sunstorm, and Ramjet put Sentinel, Optimus and the Jet Twins in the decontamination unit with Jazz. Blitzwing sneers that Optimus shouldn't have blabbed his plan where all could hear it, as now the Autobots will suffer freezing instead. However, when he activates the chamber, the freezing tubes reverse direction, icing all the Decepticons on the bridge and leaving the Autobots safe. Optimus explains to a surprised Sentinel that back in the brig, he'd used his blinking emblem to send a different message to Jazz in Cybertronian optical code. They all pause as they hear a roar of engines, courtesy of a loot-filled Swindle taking off in one of the ship's shuttles. As the Decepticons are imprisoned again, Sentinel offers Optimus the Elite Guard spot that will be opening when Sentinel becomes Magnus, but Prime demurs, as he's still got plenty to do on Earth.

At Sumdac Tower, Bulkhead frets as Swindle's transwarp signal moves too far away to warp Optimus back. Sari offers to help fix it, but her father points out it won't be necessary, as the Elite Guard ship has come to them. Optimus steps off the ship, and he and Sentinel trade salutes before it departs.

On Cybertron, Sentinel has a victory parade, displaying his prisoners to a cheering crowd. He vows to hunt down and offline Shockwave and any other Decepticon if the citizens of the planet accept him as the new Magnus. Perceptor and Alpha Trion exchange dubious glances but say nothing.

Ugh...I'll get the squeegee...

Out in space, Omega Supreme warps into place near a drifting Lugnut, who abruptly finds himself plastered on the front window—right in front of Megatron.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

Sentinel Prime: All due respect, Alpha Trion, the Council should concern itself with more important matters, like beefing up security for the Decepticon prisoners that...ahem...I captured.
Cliffjumper: I thought that was Prowl.

—Actually, they're both wrong.

"Those bureaucratobots couldn't find their own diodes with a bitmap and a homing beacon."

—Sentinel Prime talks behind the council's back.

Sunstorm: May I just say what an admirer I am of the noble arms dealing profession?
Hothead Blitzwing: Enough talk. Let's kick some Autobot skidplate!
Ramjet: Oh but I would never do that.

— The re-armed Decepticons prepare to seize control of the ship.

"You Autobots will pay! Pay with your sparks!"
"I also take all major credit downloads."

—Lugnut and Swindle are on two different pages.

"The Sonic Jammer 3000! Don't leave Cybertron without it! But wait—there's more! It also has a stasis suspension ray, handy for those tight spots. Picked this baby up on Quintessa. Nice folks, the Quintessons; give you a good deal and all the oil you can drink."

—Swindle, ready as ever with a sales pitch.

"Guard the prisoners, or... loot the ship? It's a no-processor...er."

"Maybe I should help them.... or maybe I should just help myself!"

"Nothing beats a shopping spree... especially when it's all free!"

—The Tao of Swindle.

"Maybe that energon was a little too unstable!"

—Optimus Prime realizes he may not have thought his plan through very well.

Notes

Transformers references

"Your conehead makes my ears look silly in comparison!"
"No it doesn't!"

• Swindle claims to have had business dealings on Quintessa, suggests they could make enough from Elite Guard parts to "retire to a beach island on Nebulos", and swears by "the fifth moon of Pz-Zazz".
• His reference to a "personal storage dimension" from which accessories can be pulled at a moments' notice hearkens back to the concept of subspace.
• To help tell the Starscream clones apart, Swindle gives Ramjet a conehead accessory and Sunstorm a boxy helmet resembling those of the Generation 1 Seekers. The new cone-head is topped with a drill.
• Sentinel's adoring public consists of a seriously crazy amount of cameos, a great many of which have not been seen before this episode. While many of them could be identified right away, it would take a further few episodes, and some more crowd scenes in "This Is Why I Hate Machines" and "Endgame, Part II", before some of the more obscure characters could all be named and shamed. The crowd includes Tap-Out, Carrera, Searchlight, Flareup, Furão, Freeway, Beachcomber, Red Alert, Huffer, Powerglide, Seaspray, Rattletrap, Hot Shot, Rosanna, Autotrooper (based on Autorooper), Mainframe, Warpath, Cosmos and Tracks. The widescreen-to-fullscreen crop also manages to cut off Lickety-Split (her forearm can be seen for a split-second poking into shot over Rosanna's head) who would reappear in "Endgame, Part II", and a mysterious skinny red-and-orange robot (behind Hot Shot). Recolored generic robots in the crowd include two Tracks-colored Mainframes, a Sky Garry-colored Warpath, and a Brawn-colored Cosmos, sans nacelles.
  • The widescreen-to-fullscreen conversion also excised larger appearances by Rattletrap and Flareup, got rid of most of Wheeljack, and entirely removed Bumper, Rodimus Prime, and the then-unnamed Lightbright.
• Sentinel and the Autobot Council are carried upon Grandus. Behind them, the Decepticon prisoners are carried by a Grandus lookalike with yellow detailing; Derrick Wyatt stated that this was supposed to represent Return of Convoy Grandus's Brave redeco, Dag Base.
• The "Lance" in "Broken Lance" refers to Sentinel's weapon of choice.

Real-world references

• The title is a play on Con Air, a Nicolas Cage movie where prisoners being transported by plane get free and do bad things.
• Sentinel's phrase "Broken Lance" is similar to the U.S. military term "Broken Arrow", which is used to describe a cock-up involving nuclear weapons. In this context, it is more likely to be a reference to the 1996 action film of the same name, in which John Travolta hijacks a stealth bomber (in order to sell the nuclear missiles on board).
• Speaking of action movies, Optimus taking on all the Decepticons by himself using hit & run tactics and then crawling through an air shaft while sarcastically complaining about how much fun he's having, is very similar to a famous sequence from Die Hard. The exploding elevator trick also appears in the film.
• When Optimus drops out of the air shaft suspended by a wire harness, it's similar to a famous sequence from the Tom Cruise version of Mission Impossible.
• Optimus claiming to have a small chamber that can trap his foes, only for them to double-cross him and force him inside it, only for him to triplecross them when the chamber is the only place safe from the real trap, is similar to a famous sequence from Superman II.
• Sari's fingers extending and separating when she types are a reference to Ghost in the Shell.
• When Sentinel uses his remote to unlock and re-lock Lugnut's mouth clamps, it makes the same noise as a car alarm remote.
• When Swindle first hears Megatron's name, his facial expression changes with the sound of a cash register.
• Swindle's personal storage dimension features old Hanna-Barbera stock sound effects, typically used to denote magic spells.
• Swindle's "Don't leave Cybertron without it!" is a variation of the American Express credit card slogan "Don't leave home without it." He immediately follows that up with "But wait, there's more!", one of TV huckster Ron Popeil's most famous catchphrases.
• When Swindle uses the stasis suspension ray, the sound effect is identical to that of the Zat Guns used in Stargate SG-1.

Animation or technical errors

• When Sentinel calls for Jetfire and Jetstorm, the prisoners do not have their facemasks.
• Character heights vary wildly throughout the episode, mostly with the non-Swindle Decepticons being various levels of undersized. The kneeling Decepticons still tower over Swindle as he first talks to them (which seems correct, as Swindle is small), but do not appear to gain any height on him once they're upright. The final scene in particular, Blitzwing and the two clones are downright tiny, looking to be about as big as the average Autobot.
• When Swindle is handing out weapons to the Decepticons, he gives Ramjet his guns, but when he goes to hand Sunstorm's weapons to him, he's still holding Ramjet's guns.
• While convincing Lugnut to let the elite guard live, Swindle's bolo tie suddenly disappears.
• When Swindle crosses over to Blitzwing, talking Lugnut into letting Sentinel, Jazz, and the Jet-twins live, the Triple-Changer's wings and cannons are gone.
• Right before Swindle gives helmets to Ramjet and Sunstorm, both clones are missing their null rays. They are back in the next shot.
• When Sunstorm and Ramjet trap the Autobots in the chamber, Sunstorm's chin seems like it's been cut down, and looks similar to the G1 Seekers' chin size.
• In the crowd scenes towards the end of this episode, characters change positions relative to each other every time the camera angle switches. Beachcomber, in particular, appears in literally four different places at once.
• When Lugnut crashes against Omega Supreme at the end of the episode, his Decepticon insignia is missing.
• How exactly did Jetfire/Jetstorm create a whirlwind in space?

Continuity errors

• Up until the part where Lugnut orders Swindle to guard the prisoners, all of the captive Autobots were confined within the prison cells. Later, when Swindle contemplates whether to stay to guard the prisoners or loot the ship, all of the captured Autobots are now outside of their cells. Jetfire and Jetstorm have also been removed from the spherical forcefield and placed in stasis cuffs, despite still being inside the forcefield while in the cell. Unless this was an oversight by the animators, why would Swindle let them out in the first place?
• Optimus transforms into his full firetruck vehicle mode to escape the Decepticons when he first arrives, yet is able to detach his trailer several seconds before he actually transforms into robot mode. The trailer slides down an adjacent hall as he reaches the elevator.
• A possible error occurs during Sentinel's interrogation of the prisoners. When Lugnut declares "Megatron is everywhere!", Sentinel offhandedly comments "You don't know how true that is." While it is conceivable that the Earth-bound Autobots informed Sentinel of Megatron's fate, in the next episode he expresses shock at the fact that Omega Supreme is still online, which would suggest that he was either never told or they, for some reason, left that part out.
• What were the chances of Lugnut just randomly bumping into Omega Supreme like that? Space is huge.

Trivia

• Sentinel Prime went through the space disturbance to gain some time, but in the end, agreed to go all the way back to Earth to drop off Optimus Prime. So the whole thing ended up being a rather pointless act. Lesson learned, Sentinel?
• Sentinel seems to have decided to keep his Earth alt mode this time.
• At the end of "SUV: Society of Ultimate Villainy", Captain Fanzone claimed that Swindle would be stripped down for parts. But other than his weapons (which would have been confiscated by the Elite Guard if the Detroit Police hadn't already taken them), nothing obvious seems to be missing from his person. Maybe Fanzone was just trying to freak him out?
• When he's giving the helmets to Sunstorm and Ramjet, Swindle mentions in a very casual manner that he "never could get the hang of cloning." Thinking back, no one was really shocked to see the army of clones that Starscream created. So maybe, cloning is something fairly common among Decepticons, or at least was at some point.
  • Later, he does get the hang of cloning.
• Ramjet and Sunstorm are pretty quiet throughout this episode, probably because their strange speech patterns make it nigh-impossible for them to have a normal conversation.
• Lugnut gets to tell his fellow Decepticons "Transform and rise up!" as glorious Megatron isn't there to say it.
• This episode marks the last appearance of Blitzwing, Sunstorm, Ramjet, and Swindle.

Foreign localization

Spanish (Latin America)

• Title: "Aire Decepticon" ("Decepticon Air")
• Original airdate: 8 December 2009

French

• Title: "Decepticon dans l'espace" ("Decepticon in Space")
• Original airdate: ???

Brazilian

• Title: "Decepticons Aéreos" ("Decepticon Air")
• Original airdate: ???

Japanese

• Title: "Uchūsen o Tsuisekiseyo" (宇宙船を追跡せよ, "Chase the Spaceship")
• Original airdate: 4 December 2010

• Blitzwing's turn at new stock footage and the viewing warning, starting with from tank to jet to robot mode. Hothead, Random, and Icy each take a turn in robot mode while delivering the line, respectively. Blitzwing also does the intro.

Home video releases

DVD

2011 — Transformers Animated — Vol. 10 (Paramount) — Japanese audio only.
2014 — Transformers Animated — Season Three (Shout! Factory)
2014 — Transformers Animated — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2014 — Transformers Animated — Season Three (Madman Entertainment)