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"Robots From The Sky Part 3" is the eightieth episode in the Sonic Boom television series. It first aired on 9 April 2017 in France and on 20 May 2017 in the United States.
Synopsis
Sonic and Tails discover that the city in the clouds has been taken over by evil robots, and it might all be Tails’ fault![3]
Appearances
Characters:
- Badniks
- Bee Bot (multiple)
- Beetle Bot (multiple)
- Crab Bot (multiple)
- Mantis Bot (multiple)
- Motobug (multiple)
- Scorpion Bot (multiple)
- Beaver Policeman
- Beth the Shrew
- Burnbot (Flashback)
- Child Monkey
- Comedy Chimp
- Cowbot
- Cubot
- Dr. Eggman
- Decimator Bot (Flashback)
- Fennec Garbage Man
- Fennec Male
- Gunther (Flashback)
- Hypnobot
- Lady Goat
- Lady Walrus
- Leroy the Turtle
- Lightning Bolt Society
- Mike the Ox
- Mrs. Vandersnout
- Obliterator Bot
- Og
- Old Monkey
- Orbot
- Rabbit Girl
- Robot Resistance (first appearance)
- Salty
- Soar the Eagle
- Stratford
- Team Sonic
- Walrus Male
- Warthog Male
- Wild Cat
- Wolf Policeman
- Wolf Sidekick
- Wolfie
- Zooey
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Misc.:
- Robot Battle Royale (Flashback)
Plot
The episode begins where the previous episode ended, with Sonic and Tails inspecting the ruined Morristown. After the two note how depressing the city looks, Sonic decides they should go for a stealthy approach, knowing the situation hinges on it. This plan is instantly ruined the minute Sonic trips an invisible laser, sounding an alarm that attracts robots to their location. Tails scans them and notices they are infected by the same malware as that of the other robots, believing them to be Morristown civilians and saying they should not be destroyed.
The two run further into Morristown as the robots give chase and blast at them with laser weapons, but they eventually come to a dead end. Fortunately, there is a chute at the end of the corridor from which a voice tells them to get in. They are grabbed by stretchy arms, at which point they slide down and end up in another room where they are suddenly surrounded by robots. However, Mighton, who is in the room as well along with Bolts, tells them to stand down, informing them that Sonic and Tails are allies.
Mighton and Bolts explain that Mighton was made leader of the Robot Resistance, and that a surface bot in the city sent out a signal for miles that hypnotized almost all robots, explaining the sudden uprising. They would like to solve the problem themselves, but if they leave the safety of the lead-lined bunker, they will instantly fall under the perpetrator's control; Sonic and Tails, being immune, offer to do the job for them and, after being told the perpetrator's location is in the city's Central Power Core, are handed a map to help them get there. Meanwhile, in the Village Center, the villagers are under siege from the malware-infected robots attacking Hedgehog Village, with the other three members of Team Sonic-- Knuckles, Amy, and Sticks—attempting to fight them off; even Og eventually arrives to lend a hand. Sticks cannot believe that a deadly robot that is attacking them such as FriendBot could have such a name, but Amy tries to assure her that he has got a great personality.
Back in Morristown, Tails is attempting to follow the map to the core, but everywhere in Morristown looks the same, and Sonic wishes for a simpler way to get there. Suddenly, an alarm blares and a group of robot guards arrive to capture them and take them to the core. Sonic and Tails exploit this, surrendering without a fight, and they are taken to the core, where the robots inform their leader of their capture. Said leader is revealed to be Hypnobot, now capable of speech; Tails is surprised at this, remembering he never programmed Hypnobot to be sentient, and Hypnobot begins to explain how it happened. He recalls his initial creation to participate in a robot-fighting tournament and his later defeat by a poodle robot; the explosion from the latter hurled him into space, where he drifted for weeks waiting for Tails to rescue him until a Morristown sentry found him and brought him to Morristown. There, he was repaired and enhanced, granting him sentience, and thusly, the ability to realize Tails betrayed him. As such, he hypnotized most of the population of Morristown (which he believes needs a better name) so the city would act as his stronghold, and then the rest of the world's robots to destroy organic life.
Tails attempts to apologize for not realizing Hypnobot needed him, only to have said apology harshly rejected; he then tells Hypnobot to leave everyone else out of this, knowing it is him he really has an issue with, and Sonic calls Hypnobot out on hypnotizing the people who repaired him. Hypnobot, after turning the latter statement into an insult to Tails, orders his robots to attack, and the two have trouble dealing with their numbers. Meanwhile, in the Village Center, Knuckles, Amy, and Sticks continue to battle the invading robots, also having trouble dealing with the sheer numbers by themselves. The villagers continue to watch as they struggle, but a speech from Knuckles about protecting their things inspires them to stand up and fight, assisting the three in the battle to save the Village.
Returning to Morristown, Sonic and Tails continue to fight off Hypnobot's guards, and Tails notices Hypnobot running away and gives chase, with Sonic following after breaking free of the guards. When the two are surrounded by more of Hypnobot's guards, Sonic proposes the only way to stop them is taking out Hypnobot before shoving his way through them, one of which drops his weapon; Tails picks it up, flies into the air, and takes aim at Hypnobot, but hesitates to fire, unable to bring himself to destroy one of his own creations. Hypnobot fires a bola from a gun which, while not hitting Tails directly, causes him to fumble the weapon and accidentally fire a shot that blows a hole in Morristown's protective glass dome. One of Hypnobot's guards kicks Sonic in the back of his left leg, injuring it, and Tails gets his tails tied up by another of Hypnobot's bolas and falls out of the hole, barely managing to grab the city's lip as Hypnobot laughs in triumph. Sonic, in spite of his injured leg, runs over, kicks Hypnobot off the edge of Morristown, and grabs Tails' hand just as he loses his grip; however, one of the robots stomps on said leg, injuring it further.
Hypnobot plummets into a frozen lake, breaking his hold over all robots and thus ending the invasion in the Village Center, with all of the robots abruptly retreating. Knuckles, Amy, Sticks, and the others celebrate their victory (though the villagers do not stay to clean up the mess). Back in Morristown, as Sonic struggles to pull Tails up, the formerly hypnotized guards also relent, and Mighton and Bolts meet back up with the two, with Bolts helping Tails back up. Meanwhile, in Eggman's lair, a cereal-eating Eggman mopes about his robots leaving him when suddenly, his radar shows the robots coming back and, to his surprise, one other signal.
In the lead-lined bunker within Morristown, Sonic is getting his injured leg braced sloppily with duct tape, and Tails expresses his guilt over the whole situation, knowing that his creating and inadvertent abandonment of Hypnobot caused the uprising and that Sonic would never have gotten his leg injured had he not hesitated to destroy him. Sonic, while noting Tails makes a good point, reminds him that at least the whole issue is over. Unbeknownst to them, Eggman is investigating the signal he received in the icy lake inside a water-protected Eggmobile, where he finds the now-frozen Hypnobot and plucks him from the ice using the Eggmobile's claw; he welcomes the robot to his team before laughing maniacally (with Knuckles once again growing impatient with the cliffhanger ending after the fade to black).
Continuity
- This episode's narrative continues from that of the previous two episodes; the narrative concludes in "Robots From The Sky Part 4".
- Amy recalls she and her friends befriended FriendBot in "FiendBot".
- Og returns to aid Team Sonic after he moved to Seaside Island and befriended the team in "Og Man Out".
- Hypnobot explains his reasoning for infecting all robots, referencing his debut in "Robot Battle Royale" and revealing how he survived his apparent destruction at the end of the episode.
Goofs
- In the first shot of Mighton and Bolts that is shown after Sonic kicked Hypnobot off of Morristown, their armors are a lot brighter than usual.
Production
The concept for the "Robots From The Sky" story arc (sentient robots coming from a floating island in the sky) was formulated by Bill Freiberger.[4] The story arc itself came out of a desire to tell a longer story and "get extra mileage out of production concerns like new characters and locations."[5]
When voicing Hypnobot for this episode, Travis Willingham tried to emulate Shere Khan's voice.[6] Also, Mighton's stint in "Guatamañana" was added as a callback to "Tails' Crush" (Guatamañana was the location Eggman's package got rerouted to in that episode).[7]
Originally, the scene where Bolts patches up Sonic with duct tape was written as the first scene of "Robots From The Sky Part 4" during production. However, it ended up as a part of this episode for unknown reasons.[8]
Title in other languages
| Language | Title | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| French | Les robots venus du ciel – partie 3 | Robots from the Sky – Part 3 |
| Italian | Piovono robot - parte 3 | Rain robots - Part 3 |
| Polish | Roboty z nieba, część trzecia | Robots from the sky, part three |
| Spanish (Latin America) | Robot del cielo, parte 3 | Robots from the sky, part 3 |
| Ukrainian | Роботи з неба, частина третя | Robots from the sky, part three |
Trivia
- Nine days before this episode aired on Boomerang, Bill Freiberger released the title card for this episode on Twitter as a teaser.[9]
- Sonic's talk about jughandles in this episode is a New Jersey-specific joke, where it is often illegal to turn left at intersections.[10]
- Sector 7-G in Morristown is a reference to the workplace of Homer Simpson on The Simpsons.[11]
- Knuckles' speech, specifically the last part, is a parody of Mel Gibson's speech in Braveheart.[12]
- Cubot's quote, "Cubot smash", is a reference to catchphrase of the Marvel Comics character, the Hulk.
- Hypnobot's role is foreshadowed in the beginning of the episode, where several robot guards enslaved by Hypnobot wear emblems and weapons fashioned in the image of Hypnobot's ray gun.
- This episode features the largest number of distinct characters to appear in a Sonic Boom television series episode yet.
- This is the third episode that Knuckles breaks the fourth wall at the end.
References
- ↑ Sonic Boom: Robots From The Sky. Zap2it.com. Retrieved on 28 April 2017.
- ↑ Tous les Programmes (French). Canal J. Archived from the original on 8 June 2017. Retrieved on 28 March 2017.
- ↑ Bill Freiberger on Twitter. Twitter (18 May 2017). Retrieved on 18 May 2017. "Bill Freiberger: 223: Sonic and Tails discover that the city in the clouds has been taken over by evil robots, and it might all be Tails’ fault!"
- ↑ Alan Denton on Twitter. Twitter (7 May 2017). Retrieved on 8 May 2017. "Alan Denton: The concept of this story arc, with sentient robots coming from a floating island in the sky? That was all Bill Freiberger. 4/"
- ↑ Alan Denton on Twitter. Twitter (27 May 2017). Retrieved on 30 May 2017. "Menno: what prompted you to do a 4-parter? Was it something that you guys already wanted in SonicBoom season 1? / Alan Denton: The desire to tell a longer story and also get extra mileage out of production concerns like new characters and locations."
- ↑ Alan Denton on Twitter. Twitter (21 May 2017). Retrieved on 22 May 2017. "Alan Denton: Good ol' Travis @WillingBlam did the voice of Hypnobot, channeling a bit of Shere Khan there. 4/"
- ↑ Alan Denton on Twitter. Twitter (21 May 2017). Retrieved on 22 May 2017. "Alan Denton: Mighton's stint in "Guatamañana" is a callback to S1 ep 'Tails' Crush'-- That's where Eggman's package was rerouted. (Did you catch it?) 7/"
- ↑ Alan Denton on Twitter. Twitter (27 May 2017). Retrieved on 31 May 2017. "Alan Denton: Fun fact: the scene where Bolts patches up Sonic w/ duct tape in part 3 was originally written as the 1st scene of part 4."
- ↑ Bill Freiberger on Twitter. Twitter (10 May 2017). Retrieved on 10 May 2017. "Bill Freiberger: A #sonicboom preview for next Saturday on Boomerang: 223 "Robots From The Sky' Part 3. Written by @AlanTheWriter, @ItsGregHahn, and me."
- ↑ Alan Denton on Twitter. Twitter (21 May 2017). Retrieved on 22 May 2017. "Alan Denton: When Sonic talks abt jughandles, it's a NJ-specific joke, where it's often illegal to turn left @ intersections."
- ↑ Alan Denton on Twitter. Twitter (20 May 2017). Retrieved on 21 May 2017. "Alan Denton: For those who watched the new Sonic Boom today: 5 points to the first person to identify the hidden Simpsons reference! / Stuart: Sector 7G / Alan Denton: YES! 5 points to you. Spend them wisely."
- ↑ Alan Denton on Twitter. Twitter (21 May 2017). Retrieved on 22 May 2017. "Alan Denton: Knuckles' "They may break our spirits, but they can never break our stuff" speech was inspired by Mel Gibson's speech in Braveheart. 6/"
