'84 Autobots Leadership options

I'd have probably gone with Ratchet as the unwilling leader, with Ironhide as a close secondary advisor. Both characters could do well, although seeing Hound take on a leadership role would be pretty interesting to see.

Yeah, Hound would be a very interesting leader.

What reception would you think Mirage would get if he'd offered himself as leader/ or if he was 'next in line' or whatever. Suspicions of him may come to the surface.

Ratchet would be an interesting choice from a storytelling point of view. His status as an honourary member of the High Command would, I'd guess, put him outside the "actual" chain of command - likely his was an unofficial/co-opted advisory role (being as he comes from outside the combat arms. The same would likely go for Wheeljack - he is a high-ranker but very much in the support arms not necessarily in line to command a combat unit.).

The idea of a medical corps officer having to take command of the Autobots on Earth, making hard decisions and trying to keep them alive in the face of Decepticon aggression would have definite story possibilities.

Actually I think assuming that Jazz and Prowl are both taken out then Mirage does starts to look like a credible candidate - especially given that espionage in the Transformers universe is a lot more like Action Spy fiction than anything approaching real-world intelligence work so he probably has a track record in combat situations. I'd agree that the Autobots would have any grounds to suspect him of working against their interests. The only time he tried to reach out to a Decepticon it wasn't to betray the Autobots, it was to persuade the Decepticon of the value of a ceasefire. (Not that you couldn't, if you were a Decepticon wanted to cast a bit of confusion in the Autobot ranks you couldn't twist that more than little - all you need is one paranoid Autobot to be Peter Wright to Mirage's Roger Hollis).

Karl

As CMO, Ratchet presumably has the authority to remove Optimus Prime (or any other commander) from his position.

Interesting discussion re Mirage. I don't think he would actually betray the Autobots, but I think his priorities may well be different to many other Autobots.

I wonder if the Autobots would split into camps, the Warriors following Ironhide, the techs following Ratchet, Mirage would be floating around there, and I can see Trailbreaker, the Autobot cheer-leader, trying to bring the group back together. There would certainly be alot of voices!

In the original line up, there are alot of 7 rankers, I wonder if, in the event of his command team and himself being taken out, Optimus planned for these 7 rankers to form a 'council' if you will, deciding and voting on decisions. So this group: Ironhide, Ratchet, Mirage, Wheeljack and Trailbreaker would decided between them what is best for the Autobots to do. I wouldn't want the casting vote if there was a disagreement! Interesting story possibilities. Who would side with who? Oh, and I forgot Bumblebee didn't I? He (somewhat surprisingly to me) had a rank 7. What would he bring to the leadership team?

Yes, the more I think about it the more I'm liking Trailbreaker as a leader.

From Optimus's point of view, after his obvious leadership team, I could see him going for Ironhide, sort of 'naming' him fourth in command simply for his experience. But because of his "defensive prowess" Optimus may put Trailbreaker ahead of the somewhat hot-headed Ratchet, the slightly disillusioned Mirage and brilliant but non-leader Wheeljack in the chain-of-command.

In the case of the Autobots I think that rather than an individual leader it would be more of a council affair made up of Trailbreaker, Ratchet, Mirage and Wheeljack.

What would be interesting is who would Megatron delegate command to in the absence of his trusted entourage?

Ratchet certainly became Megatron's nemesis didn't he!

Yes, hot-head is a bit strong, I think I was thinking about his partying and back-talk aspects, Optimus may not have seen those as leadership qualities, although Ratchet's resourcefulness certainly compensates for the partying in my book.

The cover text would scream "Surgical STRIKE!".

I don't think it'd be Ratchet or Wheeljack, to use an example that would be like having one of Dr McCoy or Scotty the captain of the Enterprise, they are both far too useful in their own roles. I can't really magine Ratchet leading the charge to attack Devastator or unleashing the Matrix on Unicron, nor can I imagine him putting his foot down and making command decisions, no matter how many times he went up against Megatron single handedly.
Also, are we assuming that all the remaining Autobots are getting together and voting, or is there already some kind of ranking system in place?
Personally I reckon it would be Ironhide. A large part of my reasoning of this is that when the Autobots _did_ have to replace Prime they didn't do it with Ratchet, they did it with Grimlock.

Okay, I'll add that to the list!

Andy

IIRC that was Garry Bodsworth who made that memorable post.

RE: Autobots: there would be no voting system for who would be leader if Prime was taken out. That would be utterly moronic and I'm sure a good editor would bounce that idea right out of the park. The Autobots would surely just go to the chain of command structure and whoever was next in line would take up the post whether they wanted to or not. For a long war of attrition, that would have been sorted out yonks ago for there would be a good chance of losses of command personnel.

-Ralph

Plus under Budiansky, the senior Autobots did vote in the new leader!

To the Bot-Polls!



And they ended up going with Grimlock, who is rank 9 and out-ranks everyone except Prime and Prowl on the tech-specs anyway.

Oh, except for Jetfire, who stupidly had rank 10. But let's ignore that.

Martin