SYNOPSIS

Scooter, Nick and AJ investigate gas escaping on some remote rocks, but the humans are soon overcome by it. They seem to suffer no harm, but won't wake up. Scooter takes them back to UNECOM's Japanese HQ, where Doctor Hiyashi is demonstrating her new cloning techniques to Leader-1, Turbo and Matt. She's used them to create dinosaurs. However, when a colleague named Doctor Tsuburaya comes up with a device that will enlarge and modify organic creatures, she suspends him for coming up with something so dangerous. He then quits UNECOM, swearing revenge. Later he sneaks back into the lab and uses his device on the cloned dinosaurs. As we all guessed when the two machines were introduced at exactly the same time, he thus creates massive dinosaurs. Nick and AJ are unfortunate enough to wake up at this point, and the Guardians head to the lab to find out what's going on. Tsuburaya's machine turns a brontosaurus into a monster called Jerigan, a pteranodon into Kaitudan and a tyrannosaurus into Ichida. However, he can't control them, and they escape from the lab. Leader-1 and Turbo are unable to stop them, but then the Renegades arrive and Astro-Beam in Zod to face Ichida. The beast is kept busy, allowing Cy-Kill to gain mental control over it. Tsuburaya is also captured before the Renegades Astro-Beam away. Tsuburaya is forced to duplicate his mutating ray, while the Renegades set out to find Jerigan and Kaitudan.

Matt comes up with the idea of using the sleeping gas picked up earlier against the monsters. Leader-1 and Turbo head to a mountain range where Kaitudan is attacking some scouts, while Scooter, Matt and the kids head towards a boat being attacked by Jerigan. Neither confrontation goes that well, as both are Astro-Beamed away by the Renegades. Meanwhile, Tsuburaya escapes from Roguestar. However, the Renegades release all three monsters to attack a Japanese city. The Guardians arrive, armed with the sleeping gas, and reinforced by Hans-Cuff, Blaster, Courageous and the Powersuits. Even this isn't enough, and even the Power Warrior is unable to stop the monsters. Tsuburaya arrives, snatches the gas from Matt and uses it to knock them out. The Power Warrior then drives off the Renegades, and Tsuburaya returns the monsters to their normal state.

NOTES

Turbo can release a smokescreen from his exhausts. The combined form of Courageous and the Power Suits is again referred to here as the Power Warrior.

As if the content wasn't enough of a give-away to this episode being a Godzilla rip-off, the name is obviously derived from 1968's Destroy All Monsters! (which is pretty much the best one, having most of Toei's big name monsters in it). Tsuburaya is named for Eiji Tsuburaya, special effects wizard for the Godzilla series between 1954 and 1968 (Destroy All Monsters! was his last Godzilla work before his death). Ichida is based on Godzilla, Kaitudan on Rodan and Jerigan on Baragon. There might be more to the names chosen, but I've no idea if I've even got the spelling right.

TRIVIA

Gobots Featured: Scooter, Leader-1, Turbo, Cy-Kill, Crasher, Cop-Tur, Geeper-Creeper, Tank, Hans-Cuff, Blaster.

Humans Featured: Nick, AJ, Doctor Hiyashi, Doctor Tsuburaya, Matt.

Others Featured: Zod, Courageous.

Particularly Glaring Errors: Wait, what? UNECOM are basically a mix of NASA, the army and the air force, boosted by Guardian tech, right? They have space stations, psychics and basically limitless resources. Yet they can't even equip the kids with environment suits when they know they're investigating a strange gas? And thanks to whoever organised that quick blast of clichéd Japanese music just to make sure we know the UNECOM HQ is in Japan. Hiyashi's dismissal of Tsuburaya is high-handed - it's a pretty arbitrary line to draw responsibility-wise between cloning dinosaurs and enlarging creatures (the super-sized dinosaurs are only possible because Hiyashi cloned normal-sized dinosaurs, otherwise Tsuburaya would be stuck enlarging horses and cats and stuff), and surely she has other options other than to humiliate and suspend him? And then they flip the other way at the end - it's implied Tsuburaya gets his job back at the end because he saw the error of his actions... Glut, you really are a stupid fucking hack.

Moments of Actual Quality: The Power Warrior versus Ichida, Kaitudan and Jerigan isn't bad.

Unintentional Hilarity: Not much, it's mainly just outright dull.

REVIEW:

Gobots-versus-ersatz-Toei-monsters should be pure win, and to be fair when this does happen the episode is as fun as it could be, especially when the excellent (if brief) Zod/Courageous match-ups come into play.

It's just such a shame that Glut isn't as devoted to script writing as he clearly is to Godzilla movies, as the story hinges on no less than three lazy plot devices (the gas, the cloned dinosaurs and mutating ray are all discovered at the same time!) and a lot of dull padding.