The Deathcount Quiz!

[grahamthomson]

In the Marvel-published Transformers comics, which characters have died at least (if not more) as many times as Optimus Prime did?

[Andy Turnbull]

I don't think anyone did. He holds the record with five confirmed deaths:

1 - The Ark crashing on Earth
2 - Afterdeath
3 - Unicron
4 - The Swarm
5 - The Movie Adaptation.

Andy

[grahamthomson]

Dammit! I didn't think this through enough.

For the purposes of this quiz, can we discount option 1 and option 5?

[Andy Turnbull]

I'll allow that!

Andy

[longtooth]

Bumble Bee?

Prowl?

[charlesrocketboy]

Bumblebee got:

1) Ark crash
2) Death by Death's Head
3) Death by GI Joe
4) Death by Underbase

So he's just one away from matching Prime.

Prowl got:

1) Ark crash
2) Underbase
3) Underbase again in Flashback

[Andy Turnbull]

Bumblebee has five technically - death (off camera) in issue 79/UK 329-330) but he only has four properly as the Joe/Death's Head fates don't exist in the same universe

Andy

[Grand Moff Muffin]

What defines a 'death'? Sometimes a TF is deactivated and nobody refers to it as death - his mates just put him in a pod and resign themselves to the fact that he'll be offline for a while.

On Optimus Prime, for example, the Ark crash wasn't a death, because (after a 4,000,000 year nap) Auntie took one look at him, deployed its repair units and revived him and everyone else. If Ratchet hadn't also been offline, he probably wouldn't have referred to Prime as dead, since he was easily reparable. He just needed someone to repair him.

On the other hand, following 'Afterdeath' Ratchet and the Ark assessed Prime's damage and declared him a write-off - dead - suitable for blasting into space.

None of Bumblebee's or Prowl's 'deaths' listed by Charles were deaths in my book, since none of them had Ratchet looking at the damage and declaring them beyond repair. Instead they were kept in his medical bay with a view to repairing them when sufficient time and resources became available. They were more like KOs than deaths.

Martin

[The Huff]

How about Starscream - he 'died' a few times.

Also Megatron did too - if you count his 'disappearances' as everyone assumed he was dead at the time.

Ratchet too.

Galvatron?

Unicron?

Actually, is there a TF that has just been there all the time and never been deactivated or lost/displaced to limbo? - Soundwave comes to mind but I may be wrong.

[The Doctor]

Remember, no-one dies in The Transformers. They just become terribly unwell.

-Ralph

[Nigel]

Sept 25, 2008 18:37:41 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

What defines a 'death'? Sometimes a TF is deactivated and nobody refers to it as death... On Optimus Prime, for example, the Ark crash wasn't a death...
Martin

I've never considered the original crash to be the death of the Transformers, simply a long deactivation. "Dormant" might be the best description.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Here's a metaphysical question for you. (Look what you've started, Graham!)

I assume most of us agree that by definition 'death' means 'end of life', so if you get better it wasn't death because your life continues. So unless you get alternate universe doppelgangers, no-one can really die more than once. but you could count the number of times medical experts have believed them dead. Or the number of times readers believed them dead. Or the number of times the writers tried to suggest they might be dead. Etc.

BUT MY QUESTION IS THIS:

If a TF is switched off and then on again, clearly that switching off - whether for a diagnostic, or to conserve energy, or whatever - shouldn't count as a death.

BUT! What if the TF is never switched on again, EVER? His life never continues, so it ended when he was switched off. So did he actually die when he was switched off? If his body is destroyed millions of years later, when did his life end - when it was switched off, i.e. when he had his last living thought, or when his body was destroyed so that it could never be switched on again (not that anyone was ever planning to). What if a switched-off TF floats lost in the vastness of space until all the stars and all life in the universe has died and grown cool, and all the universe's energy has gone - including any fuel for him to run on. But he is still intact. When does he die?

Ah, Philosophical Phridays...

Martin

[grahamthomson]

Argh! Too much to think about at the end of the week...

... Ah well. The answer I was thinking of was Inferno. He died three times in the Marvel comics. And they really were deaths.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Er... Legacy of Unicron, G2... struggling for a third. Don't think US #80 really counts, since the Last Autobot repaired him and he was well again by the last page.

How about Getaway? He died in US #80, and in 'Rhythms of Darkness', and in 'White Fire'. Three different timelines as far as Furman was concerned, and never shown repaired later on in any of them.

Martin

[grahamthomson]

Good point about Getaway. Did he appear at all in the G2 series?

[Nigel]

In answer to Martin's metaphysical question.... It never ends!

[The Doctor]

Martin's question reminds me of when people are put on life support for long periods where the patient is in a vegetative state from which they cannot recover and the body is kept alive by machines. Did the person die when they entered that state or when the machines are switched off and the body dies? I would say the former as for me the person 'dies' when the essence of who they were is gone.

So as per the question for robots, I would say they are dead at the point they lose awareness and the capacity to experience it.

-Ralph

[The Doctor]

Sept 25, 2008 12:23:44 GMT Andy Turnbull said:

I don't think anyone did. He holds the record with five confirmed deaths:

1 - The Ark crashing on Earth
2 - Afterdeath
3 - Unicron
4 - The Swarm
5 - The Movie Adaptation.

Andy

Arguably experiences a death on Nebulos when revived as the Powermaster version as this would have involved shutting off/converting/deleting his floppy disc incarnation who differed in character in believing he was a computer game character.

Megatron ripped a version of Prime in two that existed in his mind when he was doolally and being influence by Shocker's psycho-probe.

-Ralph

[Nigel]

If you count Megatron/Galvatron as one character, does he equal Prime?

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Sept 26, 2008 9:48:37 GMT The Doctor said:

So as per the question for robots, I would say they are dead at the point they lose awareness and the capacity to experience it.

In the case of a robot that is simply switched off, without deleting the contents of their mind, this means that the question of whether or not they are dead depends on knowledge of the future. If no-one is ever going to switch them on again, they died when they were switched off. If someone is at some point going to switch them on again, then they merely were merely knocked out. Simply examining the switched-off robot can't tell you if they're alive or dead. You also need knowledge of other people's future actions. Weird!

The human equivalent would be someone in a coma who might be brought out of it if someone gives them a certain stimulus, but who will never wake up if they are left alone. Are they alive or dead in their current state?

Back to the less heavy stuff, I don't think Getaway appeared in G2, though there was an Autobot who looked vaguely Getaway-ish in the background during Jhiaxus's attack on Autobase. If it is him, that would make his #80 death a non-death.

I think Optimus Prime only had two deaths - the death of the original Prime in 'Afterdeath', and the death of the HiQ-born Prime in the Movie adaptation. I don't think Unicron and the Swarm count, since he remains aware throughout, whether in the body of HiQ or the nanobots of the Swarm, and keeps his memories when reconstituted.

So either Getaway had the most deaths shown in the Marvel comics (three), or else nobody had more than two.

Oh no, hang on, what about Megatron/Galvatron...

Death 1 - 'Time Wars' - Galvatron ripped apart by space-time rift
Death 2 - 'The Last Autobot' - OK, Fort Max punshing Galvatron into a lake didn't look very convincing in death terms, but he never came out again
Death 3 - 'Another Time and Place' - Megatron ripped apart by Prime & Grimlock
Death 4 - 'Alignment' - Megatron blasted to atoms by Liege Maximo
Death 5 - 'Aspects of Evil: Unicron' - Galvatron shown dying

I don't count 'Two Megatron', since that life belonged to a trooper and Straxus. But still: five deaths, in the sense of ends of a life - more than twice as many as I reckon for Prime.

Continuity/sausage/penguin note: In this thread I ignore the TMUK view that 'Another Time & Place', G2 and the Movie all take place in the same timeline, since that turns more would-be deaths into non-deaths.

Martin

[legios]

I tend to look on death from the point of view of the cessation of identity. Basically I lean towards the view that once higher brain function ceases, and a person no longer processes information at all - being reduced to simply a set of survival processes. Then I would be inclined to consider that to be the point of death. There is no scientific basis, or carefully thought through basis for this I'm afraid. It's just where I feel I stand as an instinctive reaction.

I think what I am trying to get at is when the person ceases to be a collection of organised high-order information and becomes a just a bag of chemicals that is when I would consider them to be dead. (The question of how you reliably tell when that point has been reached from the outside is another matter entirely).

I'm not sure how this applies to Transformers - being as their identities are capable of being suspended indefinitely, something not possible for humans. The question of it one of them is dead if it is never revived even though this is possible.....I'm not sure. I'm not sure that, as a qualitatively different form of life, they don't need to be considered on a different basis entirely. Not superior, or inferior, just not the same.

I'd agree that neither Unicron nor the Swarm kill Prime as such - his identity remains intact and apparently aware in both cases. I'd contend that the original Optimus Prime dies only once - in "Afterdeath". The floppy-disk based Prime I feel is a separate individual - with considerable psychological similarities, and a considerable degree of shared experience, but nevertheless distinct. He may or may not be the same as the Powermaster version who then subsequently survives until post the end of G2/"Transformers the movie" (depending on your poison in terms of meta-story).

Given the ability of Transformers to put their identity "on hold" in extremis I'm not sure whether we can ever consider any of them to have died more than once. And short of wiping their main core or destroying it beyond hope of being read I'm not sure that they are particularly easy to definitely kill.

As Ralph says, it is more accurate to talk of them becoming very unwell rather than becoming dead.

Karl

[Deleted]

This is all getting a bit over my head but does the Prime seen exploding at the begining of US#41 also count as one of Prime's deaths?

[primenova]

What about checking character who where around during the big fights - but would they be injury to be repaired or killed & then back again.

Big fights being Target 2006, Moon fight, Time wars, Underbase, Unicron