Did You See What I Thaw?

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Can I reap this guy now?
"Did You See What I Thaw?"
Season	3
No. in season	11
Production company	Hasbro Studios
Airdate	February 28, 2015
Writer	Dean Stefan
Director	Kevin Altieri
Animation studio	DHX Media Top Draw Animation
Watch this episode on YouTube

The Bots discover a caveman preserved in ice and attempt to help him adjust to modern life.

Synopsis

He's 23.99 thousand years past his expiration date!

On Wayward Island, the team is hunting for an energon trace Optimus Prime has detected. Blades really hopes if they find it, Bumblebee will come to pick it up. They follow the signal into an ice cave, where Graham spots some ancient cave paintings. Cody stumbles on something interesting, which turns out to be a chunk of ice containing a perfectly-preserved caveman. They take the chunk of ice back to Griffin Rock where Doc Greene inspects it. When both Cody and Dani notice the caveman is twitching, Doc Greene discovers their specimen is alive, and speculates that the energon shard the caveman is wearing as a necklace is responsible. They quickly defrost the caveman, who panics at the sight of the modern world, but is surprisingly mellow when the Rescue Bots walk in.

Cody: You okay Ira?
Ira: I don't need your pathetic sympathy!

Though confused by his behavior towards the Bots, the team takes the caveman back to the firehouse and discover that he also has atrocious table manners. Once they put him in some of Kade's clothing, he's a little more respectable, and they end up dubbing him Ira. They attempt to find out from him where the energon he's wearing came from, but there's an insurmountable language barrier — Cody first tries drawing pictures, and then Boulder tries filling him in on such modern concepts as banjos and shadow puppets. Blades has the idea of using television, however a show featuring a meteor falling on Earth sends Ira into a panic and he flees the firehouse. Elsewhere Mayor Luskey is showing wealthy investor Mrs. Dumont around town when Ira jumps on their car, causing Luskey to crash. The car is soon surrounded by flame, but luckily the rescue team arrives in time to save them both. While Dani, Blades, Graham and Boulder continue to search, Ira finds himself at the Griffin Rock natural history museum, which is having a prehistory exhibit. Chief Burns tries to cover things with the mayor by claiming it was probably a bear or moose, and Luskey tells him that Mrs. Dumont is planning to donate a large amount of money to the town so they have to keep her happy.

I expect to be married! And I expect 2.5 kids, and a two-story house on the west side; and you're going to have to find yourself a well-paying job because I know you don't expect me to work!

In the museum, the rest of the team finds Ira sadly looking at the caveman display. Boulder, who also seems to be feeling somewhat homesick, manages to talk Ira into coming with him. Back at the lab, Doc Greene notes that Ira seems stressed and suggests they avoid exposing him to too much of the modern world. With getting more information from Ira unlikely, Heatwave and Blades decide to go energon hunting on their own. While Doc Greene tries to tell the remainder of the team about Ira's need for rest, they're interrupted by a surprise visit from Mayor Luskey and Mrs. Dumont. The kids stuff Ira in a cupboard, however he promptly breaks out just as Doc Greene is showing a Bunsen burner off to Mrs. Dumont. They attempt to cover by claiming Ira is another scientist from a far off land. Dumont is charmed by him, especially when he shows off the edible pencil, and says he must come to the fund-raising dinner that night. Mayor Luskey insists. Meanwhile, Heatwave and Blades are looking around the ice cave, but when Heatwave takes a closer look at the cave painting, they realize that it depicts Autobots.

He seems to be catching onto our modern ways pretty quickly.

The pair arrive back to find the rest of the team dressing Ira up for dinner. From the images of the paintings and Ira's gestures, they figure that the Autobots back then saved Ira's tribe from meteors. Unfortunately there's no time for further questioning, as Chief and Chase have to get Ira to the fund-raising dinner. The dinner starts, though Ira's table manners have not improved. Despite Doc Greene trying to drop him some hints, he stuffs a whole lobster in his mouth. Luskey invites everyone outside for a surprise, which unfortunately turns out to be fireworks. The explosions panic Ira who dashes off and starts scaling the radio tower. The tower comes loose, resulting in Ira falling, but Boulder manages to catch him and they return to the ground. The team soon realizes that Ira is not going to fit into the modern world, so they take him back to Wayward Island. Chief reports that Mrs. Dumont was so charmed by "Doctor Ira", that she doubled her contribution to the museum, so at least the mayor is happy. Boulder makes another attempt to ask Ira about the source of energon on the island, and Ira draws a mountain and some trees. The Bots speculate that maybe there isn't more energon, though Graham suggests if the ice cave melts more, they may get a stronger signal. Deep within the cave, a Cybertronian spacecraft is slowly being uncovered by the melting ice.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Oh, a beta-based macrowave, in combination with nanospectrality diffusion!"
"Yep, that's how I'd do it."

—Graham and Kade

"I always suspected Kade was part caveman!"

—Dani

"Looks like you're feeling a little homesick too."
"Maybe, but even though I can't go back to where I came from, as long as I have my friends and my team, this is home."

—Dani and Boulder

Notes

Continuity notes

They're so chubby! I wonder what they eat?

• Huxley Prescott's TV report is on Crawfish Week.
• The idea of the Transformers previously visiting Earth and interacting with pre-modern humans has surfaced several times in the Prime cartoon, such as in the episode "Deus ex Machina".

Transformers references

• (tbd)

Real-world references

• Mrs. Dumont is a homage to Marx Brothers actress Margaret Dumont.^[1]
• Cody tells Mrs. Dumont that Ira comes from Freedonia, a fictional country originating from the Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup.
• When Ira escapes from the fire house, Heatwave says, "we have a runner". This is possibly a reference to the 1976 film Logan's Run

Animation and technical errors

• As Chase gestures at Ira's drawing, the circle next to the pointing man in said drawing is missing.
• The establishing shot of the dinner shows everyone, including Ira, with empty plates in front of them. In subsequent shots, Ira's plate disappears until one of the catering staff places a plate with a lobster on it in front of him, at which point everyone else suddenly has lobster too. Maybe the catering staff are ninjas?

Trivia

• The episode turned up on Amazon's Instant Video service in early January, over a month before its airing on Discovery Family.
• Though no doubt a coincidence, the short story "Fire in the Dark" also featured the discovery of cave paintings depicting Transformers visiting Earth in prehistoric times.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "L'homme des cavernes" ("The Caveman")
• Original airdate: ?

Hungarian

• Title: "Ősi lelet" ("Ancient Find")
• Original airdate: 23 September 2016

Italian

• Title: "Avete visto cos'ho scongelato?" ("Have you seen what I unfroze?")
• Original airdate: 15 August 2017

Portuguese

• Title: "Vida Moderna" ("Modern Life")
• Original airdate: 1 June 2016 (Netflix)

Home video releases

2015 — Rescue Bots — "Dinobots!" (Shout! Factory)

References