Already, this episode was off to a good start with me.  But the first thing I have to mention is what's been right with the episode that was so wrong with the others to date:  Very dynamic movement and scenes, certainly a far cry from the pilot episodes.  The art quality never dropped once.  In fact, the quality was very spectacular throughout.  Characters didn't inexplicably deform no matter how much they moved or how quickly.  Background characters who weren't part of the action scene didn't look like they were drawn by my four year old cousin.  There was a lot of attention to detail, especially those robotic sentries.  The kids were actually in a very dangerous situation for once.  It was refreshing.  When Carlos starts sinking into the sand pit, Alexis actually looked scared.  It's like for the first time one of them realized that there is real mortal danger involved in all of it, and even though it was a fleeting moment, it was very noticeable and very much appreciated.

But, now on to what wasn't so great.

They mention this story about a tribeswoman who found a mysterious object in the desert, but it's never really visited upon again.  Rad gives some narration over images of what happened to the Mini-Con shortly after it was found, but that's it.  No one in the past actually had any line or did anything.  There was tremendous story potential lost here.  I would have been interested to see what these people had thought about this thing they had found, and what lead them to create this shrine for the Mini-Con that they did.  All of the needless exposition had been cut out (and the battle sequences shortened since not a lot happened), there would have been plenty of time for a couple of short scenes that would meet this end.  Unfortunately, this was not the case.

The other thing that's worth pointing out -- Ben Yee mentioned this in one of his reviews: each and every episode is like the hunt for the stasis pods in Beast Wars.  But in Beast Wars, this was actually a smaller part of the plot.  The Maximals spent a lot of time trying to stop Megatron directly rather than race about for Mini-Cons, er stasis pods, and fight impotently.  And, like Yee said, these races were done much better in Beast Wars.  I guess there's some excuse in this show because there's lots more Mini-Cons than there ever were stasis pods, but still.  Beast Wars took the time for character development, which was much appreciated.  You never see the Autobots interact in this show unless they're around the kids or taking shots at Decepticons and missing.

But regardless, this is the best episode that I've seen so far.  In fact, it's such a cut above the rest that if I were strangely to decide to watch some kind of Armada marathon once this series is complete, this is the episode I'd start with.  There's very little plot progression, and since the kids make a point of narrating EVERYTHING that's happened up until then at the beginning of each episode there's not really any reason to watch any of the ones that come before it.

I can certainly say that if the show keeps progressing like this (meaning that if it keeps making strides to get *better*, not simply maintain this level), that it will be quite enjoyable.  Just by watching the show itself it's not possible to see where the plot is going, but if you know what toys they are collecting, you know that the Autobots are on their way to getting the rest of the Air Defense team and the Decepticons just got the first member of the Land Military team.  Um... yeah.  Even if you know that, it's not clear where this is going.

Anyway, this episode is a 4.  This kind of goes against my policy of rating a show only compared to other episodes in the same series (which would afford this one a 5 instead), but it's hard to give a show a good rating when so far it just hasn't been good by any standard.  Until this episode, that is.
~TheOrange