Well, well, Megatron's back with more silly and far-fetched ideas that have little to no chance of working.  At least this time, we get introduced to a new character:  Skyfire.  While not nearly as dynamic a public speaker or insatiable a ladies man as Chip Chase, Skyfire is a really cool jet, so he's got that going for him.

The Decepticons have found a crystal which leads directly to the center of the Earth.  They use this crystal as a means of draining the Earth's heat energy to make energon cubes.  While performing this task at the North Pole, they discover a robot buried in the ice.  After digging him out and reviving him, Starscream explains that this robot is Skyfire, a scientist who crashed on Earth millions of years ago, well before the Autobots and Decepticons arrived.  Seeing his friend on the Decepticons, Skyfire joins them.  He inadvertently takes Spike and Sparkplug prisoner, and seeing their inhumane treatment, switches over to the Autobots.  He destroys the energy crystal and stops Megatron, but only at the cost of his own life.

"Here's a flurry in a hurry!" - Jazz, saying the first of what would become a disturbingly large amount of bad snow puns during the Autobot's snowball fight.

• How would draining the heat energy from the Earth's core cause the Earth to freeze?  Is there no more sunlight coming toward us?  And I guess that taking heat from the Earth's core would also somehow affect the weather, since all of a sudden it's snowing everywhere.
• Optimus Prime says early on that it may be dangerous that the Earth is freezing.  Gears then says that he bets Megatron is behind it.  Boy, there's a couple of real geniuses at work there, huh?  Freezing may be dangerous, and a global plot of evil may be Megatron's work?  How do they do it?
• After Optimus and Gears have their conference worthy of the Algonquin Round Table, we cut to the North Pole, where the Decepticons begin working on draining the Earth's core.  Huh?  The Earth started freezing before they started taking the heat?
• Starcream says that the Decepticons "located" this crystal.  While I'm no geologist, I'm almost positive that there's no huge, green crystal running from the North Pole to the center of the Earth.
• After recovering Skyfire, Starscream says they should charge him with 50,000 volts to reactivate him.  When this fails, he suddenly ups it to one million volts (nothing like a nice 2,000% increase).  Remarkably, though this would fry every circuit contained within Skyfire, he simply wakes and stretches, ready for a new day.
• After discovering what the Decepticons are up to, the Autobots drive to the North Pole (somehow) and when they arrive, they've brought Spike and Sparkplug.  As you would imagine, almost instantly, the Decepticons attack and Spike and Sparkplug are in mortal danger which then leads to their capture.  Why would the Autobots keep bringing them along on these missions?  They talk about protecting them, yet keeping putting them right up on the front lines, unarmed!
• As the Autobots search for the captured Spike and Sparkplug in some underground tunnels, suddenly, for no apparent reason Spike yells "Please, help!"  Yes, I know that his doing that helps the story move forward, but there's no reason for him to have yelled it in the first place.  In fact, the whole scene is pretty funny.
• So, the Decepticons capture some of the Autobots, have them surrounded, raise their weapons, and...and...take them outside.  Maybe it's just me, but it would seem that they'd be more effective in getting rid of them if they ever shot them.
• At the end, Skyfire dramatically rips off his Decepticon symbols and affixes an Autobot symbol.  Exactly where he got that symbol...no one knows.

CHANGED PREMISES

• Since when can energon cubes be made by heat?  I understand that heat is an energy as well, but it seemed like in the past they always needed to use some sort of power source to create them, not just heat.  It seems to me that they could refuel all of Cybertron just by starting a bonfire.
• Starscream's voice is a lot deeper in this episode.
• To make up for that, Ratchet's voice is a lot higher in this episode.  In fact, as memory serves, his voice changes just about every episode.

ANIMATION FLUBS

• At the beginning of the episode, the Autobots have a friendly little snowball fight.  During this sequence, Bumblebee hurls a snowball right into Spike's face (which is hilarious, by the way), knocking him over.  Suddenly, that flat ground they were all standing on becomes a rather steep hill which Spike rolls down, causing a snowballing effect.
• When Rumble gets buried in an avalanche after finding Skyfire, he pops out of the snow in a standing position, then is sitting when the camera cuts to a close up.
• In Starscream's flashback to his days as a scientist with Skyfire, he has his current Earth jet mode, not the goofy pyramid Cybertron jet mode he should have.
• After turning Spike and Sparkplug over to Megatron, Skyfire suddenly quadruples in size.  While before he stood about twice as tall as Megatron, he now can barely even fit his head into the cave where the other Decepticons comfortably stand.  In fact, his size changes almost with every shot.
• When the Autobots first head into the tunnels to search for Spike and Sparkplug, Optimus doesn't have his trailer.  Throughout the search, it sporadically appears and disappears.
• As Spike cheers on Skyfire at the end of the episode, Sparkplug mouths his words.

CORRECTIONS

• The character of Skyfire is based on the toy Jetfire.  For reasons not known to me (nor do I care, mind you), the creators decided to change his name and his overall appearance.  The only thing that remained was the fact that he's a jet and his color scheme.

- Danimal