‘COMING OF THE FUZORS’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
This is the first two-part story in Season 2 of the ‘Beast Wars’ TV series. And this is hot on the heels of the Season 1 two-part finale ‘Other Voices’ as well as the Season 2 opening episode ‘Aftermath’. New characters are introduced in this two-parter as well as a returnee.
I saw ‘Part 1’ of ‘Coming of the Fuzors’ on Easter Monday in April 1999, straight after seeing ‘Aftermath’. I saw ‘Part 2’ of the story on Early Bank Holiday Monday in May 1999. I had to wait for about four weeks to watch ‘Part 2’ in May after checking out ‘Part 1’ in April.
In ‘Part 1’, two stasis pods crash-land to Earth close to Predacon territory. Yeah, just to clarify, the mysterious planet that the Beast Wars have been fought on happens to be prehistoric Earth. I’m sure many of you knew this already, but it gets confirmed in this story.
Apparently, many stasis pods have crashed to Earth since the aliens incident in ‘Other Voices’. With the two pods that crashed close to Predacon territory, two new characters are introduced. They’re a new breed of Transformers known as the Fuzors in ‘Beast Wars’.
They’re robots who can transform into two animals mixed together in their beast forms. The two new characters include Quickstrike, who can transform from a scorpion-cobra into a robot and vice versa, and is voiced by Colin Murdock. And he sounds like a cowboy. 😀
There’s also Silverbolt, who can transform from a wolf-eagle into a robot and vice versa. He’s voiced by Scott McNeil, who also voices Rattrap, Dinobot and Waspinator in ‘Beast Wars’. Silverbolt is more noble than Quickstrike and doesn’t have the Predacon persona.
Nevertheless, Megatron recruits both Quickstrike and Silverbolt for the Predacon cause. This builds up to the epic battle set up at the end of ‘Part 1’ leading into ‘Part 2’ where Megatron and his Predacon army are about to fight against Dinobot, Cheetor and Rattrap.
Incidentally, we say goodbye to Tigatron and Airazor for a while in the series, as they go off to search for other stasis pods that have crash-landed on Earth. Tarantulas also recovers when his mind is put into his new Transmetal body, but he can still control Blackarachnia.
In ‘Part 2’ of this story, the Maximals find themselves outnumbered by the Predacons when they’re defending their base. In the Maximals’ base, Rhinox is on a journey to search through a transwarp window in space, caused by the explosion of the alien superweapon.
This was interesting to witness, as I didn’t quite get what was going on when I saw ‘Part 2’ for the first time. It turns out Rhinox is searching for a lost soul in the Transformers’ version of the Matrix so that it can be placed inside a protoform without a spark in a stasis pod. 🙂
Meanwhile, Silverbolt continues to struggle when being on the side of the Predacons. He ends up chasing Cheetor, only to be shot down by the Maximal base’s autoguns. Silverbolt is willing to be destroyed by Dinobot, but Cheetor and Rattrap prevent it happening.
I did check up on Silverbolt’s toy in Toys ‘R’ Us once to check whether he was a Maximal or a Predacon or not, and it turns out he’s a Maximal after all. So, him joining the Maximals by the end of this story wasn’t a surprise at all. It was still reassuring to know about this.
What did surprise me about the second episode in this two-parter is that a returning hero came to save the day once the Maximals were about to be obliterated. That returning hero turned out to be…Optimus Primal! And he came back as a Transmetal! Yay!
I should have taken more heed of Mum’s words when she told me Optimus Primal would be back once she saw his Transmetal form on the back of the toy packaging for Transmetal Cheetor, I believe. But I didn’t expect him to be brought back to life. I was so happy to see that.
Optimus Primal goes out in action mode fighting against the Predacons, including transforming into his beast mode with the vehicular ability to fly on a surfboard. A blue metal gorilla on a surfboard might be something to laugh at, but I found it very exciting. 🙂
‘Coming of the Fuzors’ is a good conclusion to the story arc of Optimus Primal getting killed off in ‘Other Voices’ to have him restored to life by Rhinox and as a Transmetal in this story. I had to wait a month for that to happen on TV in the UK in 1999, but it was worthwhile.
‘Coming of the Fuzors’ rating – 9/10
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