Transformers: Robots in Disguise Episode Guide
Episode 2: An Explosive Situation
Original U.S. air date: September 10, 2001
Written by: Tom Wyner
Megatron grumbles that their command center is in danger of discovery by the Autobots and needs to be moved constantly, but their energy reserves are too low at present. The Predacon Sky-Byte arrives and tells Megatron about his studies of human energy sources; he has found an explosive which they can capture and convert into useable energy. This explosive turns out to be a terrorist bomb planted in a red sports car.
This sports car draws the eye of Side Burn, who's being followed by Prowl. They are both on hand when Sky-Byte attacks the car for the explosive, but before they can stop him, the bomb is stolen by X-Brawn. He carries the bomb to the top of a radio tower, where Optimus Prime launches it and Sky-Byte into orbit. Damaged but intact, Sky-Byte returns to the Predacon headquarters.
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Sky-Byte wouldn't be of much use against land-based Autobots if he were stuck underwater, so the writers gave him the ability to "swim" through the air as well as water in shark mode. Here he's presented as brutal, aggressive, and devoted to Megatron; unfortunately, he's only somewhat more clever than the other Predacons and suffers from his own stupidity as often as not. He's a bit of a warrior-poet at heart, but not a very good one. Despite not being introduced in the first episode (mainly so that Megatron could get the spotlight instead), he plays a major role in the rest of the series. Most of the time he's working as Megatron's operative while Megatron himself watches from the safety of his command center.
This episode also explains the nature of T-AI, the Tactical Artificial Intelligence computer/hologram who provides the Autobots with their intelligence. Optimus casually mentions that she's a "descendant" of the original Teletran-1 computer, which served the Autobots as the computer that operated the Ark, the ship in which the Generation One Autobots crashed to Earth and made their headquarters.
This episode was shown just before the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001, and hasn't been re-broadcast in the United States since. The use of a terrorist bomb in an imported car was too close to reality after that date.