The "science" behind the Transformers comics

[grahamthomson]

Attention all scientists, pundits and grown men who play with robot toys!

How about we all pull together our combined (and mighty) brainpower to come up with some scientific explanations for much of the phenomena that appeared in the Transformers comics.

Some examples;

How is it that certain Transformers can change size when transforming (such as Megatron, Broadside, Cloudburst, Soundwave)?

How could Pretender Shells repair otherwise deactivated Transformers? (Sidenote: providing the technology wasn't all completely destroyed would it have been possible to revive the likes of Mirage, Bluestreak, Trailbreaker, Cliffjumper and the others that "died" during Starscream's Underbase-fueled rampage?)

How does Binary Bonding really work?

How does the Creation Matrix program generate life and give each Transformer a unique personality?

[Andy Turnbull]

An interesting idea. Karl, Gavin and I did this once and pretty much almost explained away everything except Nucleon. We had to go all scifi on that.

Andy

[longtooth]

magic - trust me, I should know all about this.

[primenova]

Sept 25, 2008 11:57:11 GMT @grahamthomson said:

How does Binary Bonding really work?

I would not want to be a powermaster. having your legs up at the side of your head.

[primenova]

The mass changing thing does seem to get covered a bit. Anyone seen how small cabs are, but with Optimus having the rear section [assume bed area] that allows for his arms. But if he was just a normal cab you see driving around UK road he would have slim arms & head.

But with the likes of Megatron arent we going with the mass displacement. That the extra metal is off in a sub space type place [with Meg's drawing his energy for fusion cannon via such a means too.]

[Grand Moff Muffin]

It's all explained by nanobots.

Martin

[legios]

Sept 25, 2008 18:28:32 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

It's all explained by nanobots.

Martin

But surely if you invoke a nano-scale robot as the solution to the problem then all you do is move the question down a notch to how do the nano-scale robots manage to function, overcoming friction and the like.......... :-)

Karl

[grahamthomson]

Sept 25, 2008 14:06:43 GMT primenova said:

I would not want to be a powermaster. having your legs up at the side of your head.

Go out to any large British town on a Saturday night and you'll be sure to see many, many "Powermasters" outside bars and on the streets.

[Nigel]

I was never satisfied with the subspace idea for changing size. My preferred explanation was that such Transformers were composed of many micro-hinged parts, allowing them to fold up extremely small. As a simple illustration, take a piece of paper and fold it in half. It is the same volume and mass, but only half the size.

Unfortunately, it was not until later rather than at the time that I came up with the premise, that I realised this would mean that the likes of Blaster and Megatron would be too heavy to be picked up by humans and/or their armour/skin would be too thin to be of any real use. (Although these could respectively be explained by gravity-negation and super-strong Cybertronian alloys.)

As I recall, Dreamwave would come to use this explanation in Broadside's MTMTE profile.

[Deleted]

I'm still going with the Subspace idea for the changing size of the Transformers. Okay, so it was originally a fanboy idea to explain away why Prime's trailer kept on disappearing when he transformed - an idea that Dreamwave later copied politely borrowed but it seems like the only logical solution.

As for Binary Bonding that's a bit f a grey area in the comics. It was originally conceived as a neat idea but when Galen died and passed on the reigns of Fort Max to Spike all he did was give him his helmet. Spike puts it on and voila he's already binary bonded to Fort Max!

[legios]

Gavin and I were not entirely enamoured of the idea of subspace. So as I recall we and Andy ended up batting around the idea that it was a matter of directional matter-energy conversion. Given that energy and matter are the same thing, and as long as the total amount of both remains constant within the universe, there is no reason you can't convert one into the other. So, when folk like Blaster and Soundwave transform they convert a portion of their mass into energy which is dissipated into the broader universe. When they transform back into their humanoid form they tap the vaccum energy and convert this into mass. (At least, that is as I recall it - it was a while ago now, so if I am wrong I am sure that wiser heads who were there will correct me).

Karl

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I always favoured that theory, but in order to explain _how_ they triggered the change from matter to energy, I said they carried around quantities of antimatter inside them which their nanotech systems annihilated with their excess matter when shrinking, to make energy. How they stored that energy I never got to thinking about.

Neither subspace nor matter annihilation is really satisfactory, though, because if they could do those things, why do they need to transform at all? Why can't Soundwave just be a giant robot with a little cassette player inside him which is all that remains when he shunts the giant robot to subspace/energy? Why bother with the folding up of legs bit?

If Prime can shunt his trailer to subspace, why can't he just have two bodies, a lorry and a robot, one of which he keeps in subspace/energy while the other is out? Why bother have a retracting head, fold-up arms, etc.?

I think size-changing was a bad judgement call by the writers and we must learn to ignore it. Except with the Masterforce Pretenders, where it felt right.

Strange how Budiansky was happy to let Megatron and Soundwave change size, but felt the need to keep Cloudburst and Landmine as giants.

Martin

[The Doctor]

I always thought that size-changing was done via magic.

-Ralph

[Deleted]

Or women taking their clothes off!

[karla]

if they want to shrink when they transform, let them. Thats the only reason, because they want to