A new threat named Tornedron threatens all of existence, and it's up to an unlikely group of Transformers to stop it.
Tropes:
- Animation Bump: While the animation itself is mostly limited, the "bump" part comes with the artwork. Which is of much higher quality than the series' norm by this point, almost rivalling, and occasionally surpassing, the movie in some spots.
- Call-Back: It turns out that Primacron is the one who built Unicron, the Big Bad of Transformers: The Movie.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Despite being primitives themselves, neither Laserbeak nor Buzzsaw appear at any point in the episode. Slugfest and Overkill never appear again after their brief appearance either.
- Color Failure: Anyone whose life energy is sucked out by Tornedron turns white. When he is defeated, they return to normal.
- Continuity Snarl: The Japanese timeline retconned the Oracle into being Primus' first form but as the TFWiki puts it:"The fact that they also encounter Tornedron and Primacron while still on the same planet means that both of them had somehow likewise traveled back in time to specifically follow the Primitives to the distant past, and that Tornedron also somehow traveled back to the present when he undid all of his prior handiwork after Grimlock reversed his energy polarity, and that the Primitives and Primacron were all subsequently sent back to the present after the episode ends, and boy, that is a lot of assumptions to be made for the Primus retcon to work!"
- Destruction Equals Off-Switch: Apparently there's a switch to shut down Tornedron but Primacron can't remember what it is. Grimlock just decides to smash everything and stop it that way, which actually works.
- Dwindling Party: The army of Primitives get the life sucked out of them one by one until Grimlock is the only one left.
- Enemy Mine: The animal-based Transformers team-up to stop Tornedron, though it's not an easy alliance as they keep fighting with each other as often as they do against Tornedron.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Subverted. Grimlock destroying Primacron's lab sounds bad, but considering the latter is a Mad Scientist who nearly destroyed the Universe, so SMASHING GOOD!Grimlock: Me Grimlock think that is smartest thing I ever done!
- Omnicidal Maniac: Tornedron, like Unicron before him is a devourer of planets. Only instead of eating the planets themselves, he absorbs their energy instead.
- Remember the New Guy?: Never-before-seen Decepticon cassettes Overkill and Slugfest are called with the rest of the Primitives, only to promptly disappear (both from the episode and the entire series).
- Retcon: A 2007 timeline published in Kiss Players claims that the scenes on the Oracle's planet took place in the distant past so as to combine the Oracle with Primus (given that the Oracle claims that he created the Primitives and his essence reuses the model of the Matrix of Leadership). This is also due to the fact that Sky Lynx's line of "we are being called to a very ancient and sacred place" was changed to "called by voices from the past, I feel as if I am traveling to a secret world of the past." in the Japanese version of the epiosde.
- The Man Behind the Curtain: Primacron's full appearance is like that of a chimpanzee.
- Too Dumb to Live: After having his first creation Unicron rebel against him, Primacron's second attempt is exactly the same being, just made of energy which is just harder to control than a physical entity.
- Turned Against Their Masters: Much like his brother, Unicron, Tornedron betrays Primacron. The only reason the latter lives is thanks to Grimlock.
