Above and Beyond

Above and Beyond is the fifteenth episode of the second season of Ben 10: Alien Force, and the forty-first episode overall.
==Synopsis==
The Plumbers' Helpers are called upon by Grandpa Max to rescue him from an abandoned space station where he is being attacked by - Ben!
==Plot==
At their base of operations, the Plumbers' Helpers are waiting around on Max's orders. Manny, impatient as always, wants to head out for some action and he and Pierce briefly clash when Pierce asserts his leadership in Max's absence. Just when Alan gets involved, they receive an encrypted incoming message from Max, who is on board Plumbers' Research Satellite Delta where he tells them that he is under attack from Ben. The transmission breaks up, and when it comes back, Ben as Humungousaur tells the Plumbers' Helpers not to interfere, lest they face the destruction that will soon befall Max.
The Plumbers' Helpers fly to the station. Alan is nervous, but the others are determined to handle the situation, especially since Gwen and Kevin are on a mission halfway across the galaxy. They speculate as to whether or not Ben would willingly attack those closest to him and they make it their mission to find Max, believing he will know what to do. When they approach the space station, Pierce tells Alan that this station is for storing technology too dangerous to keep on Earth and arrive via the docking bay. Once inside, they see the corridors in ruins and Helen finds a remote access terminal that she uses to discover a message from Max. Max says that he is hiding in the cargo hold at the far end of the station and gives them direct orders that they need to stick together and work as a team. Helen pinpoints his location and runs off. 
She arrives and tries to call out for Max, but there is nothing but one creepy bump after another until the lights go out. Instead, Ben sinisterly emerges from the shadows. Ben transforms into Echo Echo and attacks her. Helen fights Echo Echo off pretty easily at first, but she is overwhelmed quickly. The clones scream at her from all directions, and she passes out. Ben transforms back and tells her to tell Max that he's looking for him. He disappears as the other Plumbers' Helpers arrive to her aid. Manny and Helen run off to hunt down Ben and send Pierce and Alan to look for Max, despite Pierce's objections. Alan gets the idea to track Max with his badge like Ben did the first time they met. Once they locate a signal, they head off. As they head through a corridor, Alan hears a whoosh behind him, but as Pierce continues on, they get separated by an unopenable door. Pierce tries to reach Alan to no avail and continues on alone. When he comes to a dark room, he finds that Ben has lured him into a trap with Max's badge. He tries to run, but Ben traps him and transforms into Goop.
Goop tricks Pierce into thinking that he is being controlled, and then springs for the attack. Goop has Pierce at his mercy inside him, but Pierce is able to use one of his arm quills to knock away Goop's Anti-Gravity Projector. Pierce escapes and climbs to higher ground, but Goop melts the structure Pierce is on to make it tip over. This provides Pierce with enough cover to escape, and Ben transforms back, declaring that there is nowhere on the station Pierce can hide from him. Manny and Helen keep looking for Ben and Helen accesses a command terminal. Whoever is jamming the Plumber's badges needs the terminals operational to work and to that end, she finds a promising human signal the opposite end of the satellite. They run to it and Manny and Helen end up separated and redirected. Manny ends up in an engine room with Ben and they do battle. Ben dodges all of his blasts and knocks away one before transforming into Rath. Rath and Manny fight and Manny appears to have the upper hand, but Rath turns the tables quick with multiple alien wrestling moves. The final attack sends Manny into multiple important-looking machines, and he passes out. Ben transforms back and walks away.
A gyroscopic machine ceases due to a block in its holding pattern caused by one of the dents sustained from Manny's crash. An electronic interface reveals that this machine is the station's gravity scope, a machine that keeps the station in its stable orbit, which has shut down from seizing up and the central core is damaged, announcing the initiation of the station's emergency procedure. The whole station starts shaking as Helen comes across Manny as he wakes up. When they hear somebody approaching, Helen is prepared to stand their ground together. It is revealed to be Pierce, who asks if they've seen Alan. Manny goes off to look for him, but Pierce insists that they stick together so Ben won't be able to hunt them down one by one again. Alan is in the station's greenroom which sustains its atmosphere when Ben appears and transforms into Big Chill. Alan and Big Chill fight, but it's a standoff. As Big Chill easily gains the upper hand, the others arrive and have him surrounded. Ben gives a sinister laugh and phases through the floor. Manny tries to stop him from getting away, but with everything that's happened, Pierce reveals Ben's retreat shows that as a team, they have him on the run. When Helen tells the others she can probably continue use with the terminals to find Max, the station quakes again. The Helpers go to the bridge, intending to locate Max and find out what keeps making that happen. When they arrive, they are beset by Ben who reveals himself in the command chair and he transforms into Humungousaur.
The Plumbers' Helpers initiate a choreographed onslaught on Humungousaur at full size. They don't land any critical blows and when Humungousaur makes a charge for Alan, he dodges and his crash unbalances the entire station. They attack together and keep Humungousaur on the run until finally reaching the docking bay. Thanks to Helen, Pierce is able to make a quick getaway and they seal the off the gateway. With Humungousaur trapped, Manny opens the airlock and sends him flying out into space with the team's ship along with him. Helen revels in their victory while Alan is in shock that they ejected Ben Tennyson into outer space. Pierce says that as Humungousaur, Ben can survive outside for a few minutes. Without their ship, Manny asks how they're going to retrieve Ben and Helen intends to do so by finding Max, activating the terminal. To her horror, she finds that Manny's battle with Ben as Rath caused catastrophic damage to the station's control systems. The tremors felt before were actually signs that the station is entering a decaying orbit with the gravity scope offline, sending the satellite on a collision course with the city of London. With no means of propulsion and no way to change course, Pierce declares that there's only one option remaining: Detonate the satellite before it crashes. 
The station starts to disintegrate as it hits the atmosphere and the Plumbers' Helpers reach the bridge. Helen says that three Plumber badges are needed to activate the auto-destruct and Manny tells the others to head back to their ship while he activates it. However, Helen reminds him they blew their ship out the airlock and they all realize that detonating the station would mean sacrificing themselves for the millions of people they're on a collision course with. They all decide it's for the greater good, which is exactly what being Plumbers is all about. They bid farewell to each other and activate the self-destruct, but when the countdown runs out, nothing happens. Helen tries to jury-rig the damaged computer systems, but Max and Ben enter the bridge. Ben transforms back, still shaken up from his friends ejecting him into space. Max uses the emergency thrusters to put the station back into a safe orbit and he and Ben reveal that this station was never a storage facility, but a training station the two of them sent them to for a test Ben and Max orchestrated for all of them. While they really did knock the station out of orbit and threatened to flatten London, they passed the test with flying colors with their willingness to sacrifice themselves to save millions. And with that, Ben declares that they are ready for official training at the Plumbers' Academy and the four of them revel in their victory as the sun shines upon the station.
==Noteworthy Events==
===Major Events===
*Alan, Helen, Manny and Pierce pass Max's test and are ready for real training at the Plumbers' Academy.
==Characters==
===Main Characters===
*Plumbers' Helpers
**Pierce Wheels
**Alan Albright
**Helen Wheels
**Manny Armstrong
===Supporting Characters===
*Max Tennyson
===Antagonists===
*Ben Tennyson
==Aliens Used==
*Humungousaur (x2; first time was on a video recording)
*Echo Echo
*Unidentified Alien (off-screen)
*Goop
*Rath
*Big Chill
==Quotes==
==Naming and Translations==
==Cast==
==Continuity==
*When the Plumbers' Helpers discuss Ben's odd behavior, Manny suggests that Ben needs to lay eggs again, referencing the events of Save the Last Dance.
*Alan mentions that Ben tracked him by his Plumber badge the first time they met, which occurred in Everybody Talks About the Weather.
==Errors==
*Echo Echo, Rath and Big Chill's holograms face away from Ben.
*When Pierce fights Ben as Goop, he breaks a single shoulder spike off and throws it, but in the next shot, two spikes are shown flying at Goop.
*When Goop makes the tower collapse, Pierce's eyebrow is white.
*When Manny fires his blasters at Ben and Ben kicks them away, only one blaster falls to the ground but both Manny's hands are empty. Also, Ben comments that Manny no longer has his blasters despite Manny still having two others in his lower arm holsters.
*Somehow, Helen knows Manny fought Rath, even though she wasn't around when the fight happened.
*When Humungousaur chases Pierce, he smashes the airlock ledge that Pierce leaps over which dents and cracks the ledge. However, in the next shot, the ledge is shown to be intact.
*Alan, Pierce and Helen give their badges for the self-destruct of the ship, but when Pierce places the last one, Alan's badge is still on his chest.
*The trajectory of the satellite shown on the monitor would not have it crash anywhere near London, but instead, Northern Wales.
AaB (100).png|Hologram error
AaB (195).png|One spike
AaB (196).png|Two spikes
AaB (228).png|White eyebrow
AaB (272).png|Only one blaster gets kicked
AaB (280).png|Hologram error
AaB (400).png|Hologram error
AaB (572).png|Smashed ledge
AaB (573).png|Intact ledge
AaB (606).png|Satellite trajectory
AaB (633).png|Plumber badge error
==Trivia==
*This is the first and only episode of Alien Force to not feature Gwen and Kevin.
**This is the first episode of the franchise to not feature Gwen.
*Rath either made up his wrestling moves himself or learned them from someone.
**The moves were named by Dwayne McDuffie.
*Cooper is the only member of the Plumbers' Helpers to not appear in the episode because his powers would've exposed the satellite's true nature and the reason why they were brought there.
*Eugene Son wrote Pierce in this episode thinking of how any competitive guy would react to being around Ben. In his words, "No one likes being number 2, but you either quit or you use it to motivate yourself to be better." He saw Pierce as that guy who didn't like being the second best Plumber and used it to motivate himself to become better.
*The scene leading up to Manny's battle with Rath was storyboarded by Leeahd Goldberg.
*This episode was first hinted at by Dwayne on April 21, 2009, when asked if there would be an episode with the Plumbers' Helpers.
==Notes==
==References==
===Crew Statements===
====T.J. Collins====
====Eugene Son====
====Dwayne McDuffie====
====Leeahd Goldberg====
===Cartoon Network===
es:En órbita y más allá
pl:Na satelicie
pt-br:Acima e Além
ro:Mai presus, mai departe
Category:Ben 10: Alien Force Episodes
Category:Ben 10: Alien Force Season 2 Episodes
Category:Episodes
Category:Episodes Written by Eugene Son
Category:Episodes Directed by Butch Lukic
Category:Episodes Aired Out of Production Order