Maximal, No More

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This place never belonged to the Maximals, anyway.

With the contents of the Golden Disks weighing heavily on his mind, Dinobot must decide which side of the conflict he truly belongs to.

Maximal, No More is the fifth episode of second season of Beast Wars: Transformers, is the thirty-first episode of the Beast Wars: Transformers series and is overall the thirty-first episode of the Beast Era of the Transformers series. It is overall the one hundredth-twenty-ninth episode of the G1 Era of Transformers.

Summary

Within the Maximal base, Dinobot compares Predacon installation locations with the symbols on the Golden Disk, and observes that Megatron's "plan proceeds, even without the disk." He ponders his fate should Megatron succeed, and wonders if he is willing to betray his Predacon heritage. Optimus contacts him for a survey mission, and Dinobot puts his research aside for the moment.

Later, he rides vehicle-mode Rattrap into Predacon territory, musing as he does that "there is always battle here". Rattrap ain't buyin' it, until Inferno bursts out of the ground and attacks. Inferno and Dinobot square off, while Rattrap gets the drop on Quickstrike. Silverbolt moves to assist Dinobot, but Waspinator shoots him down, causing him to crash into Dinobot, deactivating them both.

Inferno carries Dinobot off to the Predacon base, but Rattrap, (imitating Quickstrike), takes out Waspinator before he can carry Silverbolt away.

At the Predacon base, Megatron is eager to chat with his former comrade-in-arms. Dinobot breaks free and reaches Megatron, sword in hand, but the guns of the other Predacons prevent him from doing any damage. Before the fight can continue, however, Dinobot offers to change sides, stating that his original reason for defecting has been proven incorrect now that it has been confirmed that Megatron brought them to Earth as promised. Unconvinced, the Predacons finally settle on a "Predacon challenge" to test Dinobot's loyalty. Quickstrike is selected as an opponent, an invitation he readily accepts.

Rattrap goes hunting for Dinobot, sending Silverbolt back to call in Optimus.

After a brutal fight, Dinobot triumphs over Quickstrike. Megatron orders Dinobot to finish him, but Dinobot refuses, saying Quickstrike is an able fighter and can be trained to be even better under his tutelage. Megatron accepts this, then demands that Dinobot return the golden disks. The alien disk is in Rhinox's hands, but the other is hidden from both sides. Megatron orders it returned immediately.

Rattrap observes Megatron and Dinobot flying past, and follows. At the mountaintop grotto, Dinobot uncovers the Golden Disk, and, with some trepidation, returns it to Megatron, wondering as he does if he's dooming his race. Megatron is about to run him through when Rattrap arrives, blasting Megatron aside- but Dinobot in turn blasts Rattrap.

Megatron orders Dinobot to finish off Rattrap as a final test of loyalty. After a long moment of hesitation... Dinobot turns his sword on Megatron instead, telling him that his ambitions are insane and will destroy Maximal and Predacon alike. With Optimus and Silverbolt incoming, Megatron retreats.

Dinobot confesses his betrayal to Optimus. Having foolishly believed he wanted to share in Megatron's imminent victory, he now wishes to fight with the Maximals till they win or are destroyed. Optimus accepts this, but leaves the final call up to Rattrap, who finally relents after some obligatory insults.

Dinobot tells Primal he has a matter of great importance to discuss... back at base. Dinobot's final punishment is having to hitch a ride on Rattrap back to base.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Maximals	Predacons
Dinobot Optimus Primal Rattrap Silverbolt	Inferno Quickstrike Waspinator

Quotes

Megatron: "Inferno, aid Quickstrike."
Inferno: "Yes, my Queen."
Dinobot: "I was not aware you had given yourself a new title."
Megatron: [quickly] "The ant has faulty programming, but his loyalty is without question."

Notes

• Lots of hint-dropping about Megatron's grand schemes in this episode. On the surface, it seems that Dinobot is dreading Megatron's plan to alter history by attacking their stasis-locked Autobot ancestors—"it will destroy Maximal and Predacon alike, and all who came before".
• However, the matching locations of Predacon installations (presumably the same jamming towers seen in the previous episode) seems more related to the alien arrival which happens in the next episode, "Other Visits", as the jamming towers result in Tigatron and Airazor's abduction, and otherwise play little or no part in the history-altering scheme.
• The consequences of this episode will haunt Dinobot until the day he dies.
• Rattrap gets over Dinobot's betrayal with uncharacteristic ease, and is rather jocular towards him at the end of the episode "Maximal taxi! On the way home!" Strangely, he's way more angereded about it in episodes later, quite a while after the fact.
  • Though, this is likely more in fact due to Tigatron and Airazor being lost because of Dinobot's betrayal- which happens in the next couple episodes- that re-surges his ire towards Dinobot.
• Megatron has shown an odd willingness to let Quickstrike be destriyed. He urged Dinobot to kill him in this fight for reasons passing understanding, and later was going to execute Quickstrike for being duped into betraying him by Tarantulas - despite letting Tarantulas, Terrorsaur and Blackarachnia get away with countless acts of betrayal themselves (Although the fact that Quickstrike came closest to succeeding may have contributed to this decision). Finally he succeeds in killing him (albeit inadvertently) in the last episode. What did Quickstrike do to the big guy?
• Megatron testing Dinobot's loyalty by having him destroy Rattrap is ironic since both characters were in this same predicament previously, only then it was Rattrap having to destroy Dinobot (he was pretending to be a traitor at the time). Another irony is that it took Rattrap MUCH longer to "make up his mind" than it took Dinobot.

Technical/Animation Glitches

• Waspinator can be spotted without his stripes.

Continuity errors

• So, you can prove you're loyal to Megatron by... killing one of his troops? At least it works for the Sith.

Transformers references

• Rattrap accuses Dinobot of trying to start "Great War 3".
• Dinobot references "those who came before" as potential victims of Megatron's scheme, a thinly veiled reference to the Autobots and Decepticons.

Real-world references

• Dinobot begins the episode by looking at a comparison of Megatron's outposts and the Golden Disk on a computer screen. Just after this, some Cybertronix text appears on the left. Translated to English, it reads "they killed kenny those bastards".
• When the view through Rattrap's scanner is shown, a small wedge of cheese can be seen in the bottom right corner.

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