The Transformers as robots

[Grand Moff Muffin]

How important is it to your interest in Transformers that they are supposed to be robots? Are you into them because they are robots and you like stories about robots, or is their robotic nature incidental to you, and you're content to think of them as colourful fighting characters who can turn into stuff (basically a race of shape-shifting super-beings at war)?

I've been going back over my Marvel TPBs. When I was following the comic on a weekly basis in the mid-1980s I wasn't very observant and didn't notice what I noticed later, namely that nearly all the stories that treated the Transformers as machines rather than superhero/villain types were by this Bob Budianksy fella. I decided to try to gather a list of interesting things we learnt about the nature of the TFs from Uncle Bob, either as editor or writer. I've tried to pick at least one new concept per issue. Here's what I've got so far:

#1 'The Transformers' (1) Deactivated Transformers can remain viable for millions of years and then be repaired and reactivated with their minds intact. (2) Non-machine life is an alien concept to them.

#2 'Power Play' (1) Some Transformers can shrink in size when they transform into disguise modes with few moving parts. (2) Petrol is incompatible with standard Cybertronian fuel systems.

#3 'Prisoner of War' A smashed Transformer can be reassembled and brought back to life.

#4 'The Last Stand' (1) A group of Transformers low on fuel can pool their remaining energy to fully fuel a select few, while the remainder shut down. (2) Transformers can be incapacitated by poisoning their fuel.

#5 'The New Order' (1) The Creation Matrix is the computer program that allows its possessor to construct new Transformer life. It is said that once every ten millennia a new Autobot leader is encoded with the Matrix. (2) A Transformer's head can remain alive and communicate after being separated from its body.

#6 'The Worse of Two Evils' (1) The Creation Matrix can be passed almost completely from the mind of a Transformer to the mind of a human. (2) A Transformer with open wounds can be short-circuited by contact with water. [Note that Shockwave understands the properties of water, suggesting that it does exist on Cybertron - as anyone with a basic knowledge of chemistry would expect it to. Contradicts the implausible contrary suggestion in the Scraplets story.]

#7 'Warrior School' (1) The Creation Matrix can levitate objects. (2) The Earth's radiation belts can interfere with a Transformer's guidance systems. [(1) was used in 'Revenge of the Fallen'. A similar concept to (2) was used in relation to Megatron in the first live-action movie, except there it was Earth's gravitational field which apparently made him crash.]

#8 'Repeat Performance' (1) It is possible to hack into the mind of a deactivated Transformer and play back its memories on a screen, and its past thoughts via audio. (2) In the long term a physically incapacitated Transformer is shut down by its survival override to conserve energy. It reactivates itself once no longer incapacitated.

#9 'Dis-integrated Circuits' A Transformer's brain module is small enough to rest on Shockwave's finger. It can receive life programming from the Creation Matrix even before its body has been constructed.

#10 'The Next Best Thing to Being There' (1) A brain module containing life programming can later be filled with data and encoded with the Transformer's functions, before placing it in a body. When activated for the first time, the robot already knows its mission. (2) Multiple Transformers can join together and form a single-minded larger robot.

#11 'Brainstorm' (1) Some Transformers like Rumble have very low resolution vision, but their memories can be accessed and enhanced by more sophisticated fellow Transformers. (2) The Creation Matrix can be used to control unliving machinery. It can give the possessor (even a human one) the ability to understand and repair machines with a single thought - or dismantle machines the size of Jetfire in a second.

#12 'Prime Time' At close range, a head separated from a Transformer's body can control its body via radio waves.

#13 'Shooting Star' Damage to a Transformer may disconnect certain circuits and lead to it losing its free will and obeying whatever verbal instructions it receives from others.

#14 'Rock and Roll Out' (1) Specialised materials not readily to hand are needed to replace the parts of damaged Transformers. [The Ark is short of such parts and materials. However, earlier issues suggest that Blackrock's aerospace plant was not. Perhaps Blackrock assists the Autobots later on when they come to build Omega Supreme and the Special Teams.] (2) Transformers' minds can be copied onto crystalline containment vessels, stored there indefinitely, and then be used to bring to life new unliving robot bodies (without using the Creation Matrix). The Transformers' memories remain intact. (3) The most convenient form of fuel for Transformers to transport and use is Energon. Energon cubes can be created from either petrochemicals or sonic energy.

#15 'I, Robot Master' When a Transformer runs out of fuel it stops moving but its mind and sensors continue to function, at least in the short term. When fuel is injected, it regains the ability to move.

#16 'Plight of the Bumblebee' A Transformer's autonomic functions can be controlled by implanting a device in its cerebral cortex. [Concept used later in the form of Bombshell's cerebro-shells.]

#17 'The Smelting Pool' Transformers can be killed. One way to do it is by smelting them down using extreme heat.

#18 'The Bridge to Nowhere' Another way to kill a Transformer is by bringing it into contact with interdimensional space.

#19 'Command Performances' (1) Transformers can assimilate technology by scanning it when it is utilised, but they apparently need to be fairly close and in direct line of sight. (2) Transformers can survive being completely blown to bits. (3) Defeated hostile Transformers can be imprisoned in cold storage. [(1) and (3) were used in the first live-action movie, but (2) was dropped.]

#20 'Showdown' (1) Severe damage to a Transformer's body can render it immobile but leave the brain and sensors operational. (2) Even when the voice is offline, the radio may still work. (3) Transformers can project holographic images of past events. (4) A damaged Transformer may dream or hallucinate. [(2) and (3) were used in the first live-action movie.]

Whew, that's enough to begin with. If there is sufficient interest I will continue my list of facts to cover later issues.

Martin

[grahamthomson]

I definitely like Transformers to be robots. I find their "biology" quite fascinating.

Equally fascinating is your article, Martin, so please continue!!

[legios]

Feb 10, 2010 10:19:06 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

How important is it to your interest in Transformers that they are supposed to be robots? Are you into them because they are robots and you like stories about robots, or is their robotic nature incidental to you, and you're content to think of them as colourful fighting characters who can turn into stuff (basically a race of shape-shifting super-beings at war)?

I think for me the initial selling point was their mechanical nature. It made them different from all the other folks with special abilities and funny costumes that were thumping each other. (Not that I didn't, and don't, have a great affection for superheroes). It represented one of two unique selling point and established that they were different to the other things competing for my young attention. (The fact that they could be anywhere, in semi-secret at the bottom of my street waiting for their war to erupt was the other. I had never seen anyone in a superhero costume, but combat aircraft, ambulances and VW Beetles were common sights).

As I've grown older I have I think come to appreciate more the little insights that the comic gives us into why they are different to us .

You have put together an interesting and impressive summary there Martin. I'd definitely be interested in seeing you continue this.

Karl

[panderson]

Yea - this notion does appeal to me. In fact its one of the ideas I would like taken into fic a little more. The alien-ness of it as it were - they are not just humans in metal skin and are different in more ways than just being able to change. Is that the point? The point about being taken apart and put back together was something that caught my eye in the TF movie and five faces TV show - both Magnus and Springer are reconstructed by Junkions with no visible problems. Although this did make me think there may invisible probs, and I did start a little fic about Magnus losing something in the process - a bit of his spark - and trying to tie this into the creation of a pet character I made a kitbash of - PM Ultra Magnus - bad idea.The Springer bit in the story would have contributed to his addictions later that I read in some of the fanfic put out by Hub members....this was a very long winded way of saying please continue...sorry

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Cool, let's look at a few more issues.

#21 'Aerialbots Over America' (1) Reinforcing the lesson about water learnt by Megatron in #5, Ratchet warns that moisture getting into Optimus Prime's open wound may start a rust infection. (2) Newly Matrixed Transformers can be sent into action prior to receiving full personality programming. They are fully alive but have incomplete personalities. (3) Transformers like Jetfire can identify Transformer fuel by smell. (4) Combined Transformer teams can freeze up if their component minds disagree.

#22 'Heavy Traffic' (1) Transformers like Skids can extend wire-like appendages from their fingers to perform intricate tasks such as removing money from a human's wallet. (2) Transformers shut down as a matter of routine to conserve fuel. Transformers like Skids even have off-switches on their dashboards!

#23 'Decepticon Graffiti' (1) A Transformer's brain is small enough to rest not only on Shockwave's but even on a human's fingertip. Stimulating certain chips triggers movement in the robot's body. Even human technology can extract images from a Transformer's brain. (2) Transformers have a written language. (3) Parts from several different dismantled Transformers can be cobbled together to make another robot, which can be remote-controlled and yet still retain the instincts of one or more of its component robots. The original robots can all be reconstituted and reactivated afterwards.

#24 'Afterdeath' (1) Transformer minds can function just as well in a virtual world as in the real world, and perceive it in the same way. (2) While a Transformer can be rebuilt after being smashed or blown up, a Transformer can be killed by explosives planted within its body. (3) A Transformer's mind can be copied onto a floppy disk. This suggests that the Creation Matrix has very advanced compression software!

#25 'Gone But Not Forgotten' (1) A Transformer can survive having its head crushed. (2) A Transformer can upload data by inserting a laser disk into its memory. This data can include major portions of another Transformer's personality, allowing that Transformer a certain level of control over the one who has the disk in his head.

#26 'Funeral for a Friend' A Transformer killed by an internal explosion cannot be revived even if its body is repaired.

#27 'King of the Hill' Transformers can be modified so that they can drink petrol.

#28 'Mechanical Difficulties' Transformers communicate with one another on radio frequencies that can be listened in to by humans. [Presumably provided the Transformers are in the habit of speaking English to each other.]

#29 'Crater Critters' A semi-intelligent variant of the Transformer species comes in minute form. Not only are their brains compact, but so are all their other functions, and they can self-replicate from other metal bodies.

#30 'The Cure' (1) Water (or something in Earth's water supply) is lethal to Scraplets - presumably by short-circuiting them. According to Ratbat, this cure is so rare on Cybertron that its existence is suspect. He is probably either lying or misinformed. (2) Millions of Scraplets can combine into a single giant robot, suggesting that there is no upper limit to the sizes of Transformer combining teams.

Martin

[panderson]

Prime on a floppy - just had visions of it being in a winzip file....

[panderson]

On ~30 I had an issue with water being a problem given the potential for it to exist in some form I think in many other parts of the universe, hence like the idea its something about Earth water which is different. the small bots of 29 and 30 together and the combiner teams just made me think of something - the complexity of the spark or programming gets in the way of the process of combiners in that smaller less intelligent bots can combine easier. Or rather the less rational? is this why 2 of the 3 G1 combiners I can think of which had in excess of 5 parts were animalistic in nature - again fanficing my mind here

[Grand Moff Muffin]

#31 'Buster Witwicky and the Carwash of Doom' Hmmm, we don't learn much about Transformers in this one. It's all about mass-hypnosis of humans - the Transformer element isn't essential to the plot.

#32 'Used Autobots' (1) Energon cubes can also be created from geothermal energy. This story slips in an important plot development - the Autobots becoming self-sufficient when it comes to energy, by tapping heat from beneath the volcano. (2) Autobots can be incapacitated by filling their tanks with fizzy pop.

Skipping #33-34, which reprinted the UK story 'Man of Iron'.

#35 'Child's Play' A Transformer can be incapacitated by attaching a 'mode lock' to it. With the mode lock attached the Transformer can speak but cannot transform or take independent action.

#36 'Spacehikers' (1) In the present day, Transformers have warp speed technology. Up until this point, we have not seen faster-than-light space flight. [When did they develop this technology?] (2) A Transformer can hijack and radio-control an Earthen satellite.

#37 'Toy Soldiers' A Transformer brain module can be installed in a battery-powered toy car.

HM #1 'Ring of Hate' (1) The Transformers have 'galactic telescopes' capable of showing details on the surfaces of planets in nearby star systems. (2) Transformers can remove their own heads at will and continue to speak and control their bodies when in close proximity to them. [Consistent with earlier stories.]

Hm #2 'Broken Glass' (1) Headless Transformer bodies can be radio-controlled by humans. (2) Humans can be bio-engineered to transform into replacement Transformer heads, which remain in radio contact with the original heads. The resultant hybrid is more skilful in battle than the original Transformer.

HM #3 'Love and Steel' A Transformer like Mindwipe can project a light beam that has a similar effect on a human as Ratbat's 'Carwash of Doom'.

HM #4 'Brothers in Armor' Humans can also be bio-engineered to transform into Cybertronian weapons. Apart from the political aspect in the story, the advantage conferred by this is unclear.

#38 'Trial by Fire' In the Headmaster pairing, the human appears to be the dominant controlling mind. He can control the robot body even when not in head form.

#39 'The Desert Island of Space' (1) A Headmaster human can trace a phone call by taking hold of the phone wire. (2) A Headmaster robot can experience severe pain (say, by being run through with a spear) but the human can then separate from it and suffers no apparent ill effects from the experience.

#40 'Pretender to the Throne' Ah! Now, this is more like it. Here we learn that a Transformer can live and move through the Internet quite happily, despite having no body of its own! The implication is that any Transformer can abandon its body at will and shift its consciousness into the Internet, and presumably another robot body if one is available. So, suppose a group of Transformers is surrounded and facing destruction, but has Internet access. Problem solved. Hop into the computer, blow up your bodies, then go and revenge hack your enemies. In the 1980s the Internet hadn't really taken off, but the Transformers must be well chuffed that the volcano erupted just when the humans were developing this wonderful thing. I imagine that there is an entire front in the Transformers war that no-one has ever written stories about. How many Transformers are in the Internet rather than their own bodies on average on any given day in 2010? The mind boggles.

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I've been thinking more about 'Pretender to the Throne'. Floppy Prime is in unusual circumstances - the character to focus on here is Scorponok. When Prime infiltrates the Decepticon computer system and Vorath discovers there is a 'bug' in the system, Scorponok automatically refers to it as 'he'. Scorponok also has no hesitation in commanding Vorath to input him into the system, as if it was the most simple and mundane procedure for a Transformer. It begs the question, when Scorponok is in the computer network, separated from his body, is this the original, pre-Zarak Scorponok? Humans cannot be copied into computers and then return to their bodies, because human minds are not computer programs. I would assume Zarak spends much of this story sitting on the sidelines, twiddling his thumbs.

I said in relation to #38 that the human dominates the Headmaster pairing - Galen and Spike are seen to pretty much control Fortress Maximus. The opposite seems to be the case for Scorponok, who keeps Zarak suppressed for much of the time. The situation must be more complex, and the balance must vary from pairing to pairing.

#41 'Totaled' (1) The opening scene of this story confirms what Ratchet keeps saying, that it requires more than just metal to build a viable Transformer body - it requires specialist resources and facilities. (2) The crowd scenes in this story confirm that no toy-based characters (with the possible exception of Prime, Megatron and Shockwave) have died yet in the comic's run. [This would be silly in a human-based war comic, but here it reinforces the rules of robotics that have been established in the US comics, that smashed or blown up robots can be gathered up and reassembled. Transformers can die - for instance by smelting them down, throwing them off Space Bridges, or planting explosives inside their bodies - but conventional battles do not cause irreparable damage. For better or worse depending on what you want from Transformers comics, Furman played by different rules, as did the creators of the animated movie, and allowed Transformers to die simply from being shot.]

#42 'People Power' (1) More fuel poisoning, as seen previously in 'The Last Stand'. (2) Through the Powermaster process, Transformers can utilise energy contained in the food eaten by their human partners. [The poisoned fuel could of course have been countered in the long term by other means - say, by Transformers who had the time and resources to build, like Shockwave or Wheeljack, a machine that could create Energon cubes from sound or geothermal energy.]

I'll skip #43 as that was 'The Big Broadcast of 2006'. Mind you, the influence of television signals on the Junkions is kind of instructive when it comes to the behaviour of Transformers that have a few circuits loose in their heads.

#44 'The Cosmic Carnival' Though it is original and imaginative in its own right, I struggle to find anything interesting said about Transformers in this issue.

#45 'Monstercon From Mars' A Pretender can radio control its outer shell, but a human can override the signal and wrest control from them. [This could lead to some interesting battle scenarios, with the two sides' boffins waging a second technological battle behind the scenes over control of each other's radio-controlled hardware.]

#46 'Cash and Car-Nage' Going even further than last issue's revelation, here we learn that living Transformers, even those with humans for heads, can be jammed and radio-controlled by external signals. Furthermore, Jammers can be countered by anti-jammers. [This is a far-reaching development that could transform the entire nature of the war. It was, sadly, dropped and not explored further. Why didn't the Decepticons develop this technology, since it was proven to be a success?]

#47 'Club Con' Although Transformers with open wounds are short-circuited by water, Transformers can in principle function under the sea. [This supports earlier assertions made by Bumblebee and Seaspray, and we have seen Transformers underwater before in the UK comic, in 'Decepticon Dambusters'.]

#48 'The Flames of Boltax' (1) Cybertronian historical records can take the form of complete multi-perspective simulations - presumably compiled from the memory records of multiple witnesses at the time. The video and audio portions of these combined multi-witness memories can be stored on separate devices and re-combined and viewed at a later date. (2) Transformers speak of data as if it is a form of energy, and the most prized form at that.

Martin

[Deleted]

When I was a kid I liked Transformers solely because they were two toys in one. I never actually appreciated them as mechanical alien beings or whatever back then. As I've got older though and I read through the original comics and also the recent IDW comics I appreciated them as living beings who had a right to live just as much as we did. Recently though in the comics the Transformers have been treated more like robots than shape-shifting beings and this has had the potential to bring out their true feelings amongst other things.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Feb 12, 2010 17:34:18 GMT @zudobug said:

Recently though in the comics the Transformers have been treated more like robots than shape-shifting beings and this has had the potential to bring out their true feelings amongst other things.

That's good to hear. I hadn't picked up on it from the few IDW issues I've read (the Nick Roche ones). Furman never really treated them as machines with sentient computer programming in his Marvel stuff.

#49 'Cold War' There exists a device (stolen or invented by Starscream?) that generates a powerful signal which the Autobots will pick up half a planet away, recognise as a "Priority Autobot Code One Alert" and respond to unquestioningly with a full-scale Autobot force. [Presumably this is gold-dust to a Decepticon, and not something easily knocked up - or else the Decepticons would be using it to ambush their enemies on a daily basis.]

#50 'Dark Star' The Underbase began as a collection of knowledge fashioned by Cybertronian scholars from facts found in every corner of the galaxy. [This implies there had been some interstellar exploration - despite non-mechanical life being unknown to those on the Ark.] Its gathered energies swelled beyond measure, to such a degree that its excess energy had to be burned off to keep it stable, and once launched into space it was capable of setting a world to boiling by grazing its atmosphere and causing a star to go nova. A Transformer, however, can bathe in its light and grow more powerful as a result (as a compatible technology capable of uploading its data). Such a Transformer can use the absorbed energy as a weapon to destroy other Transformers' bodies (but not kill them), provided they do not have organic components. Absorbing the Underbase in its entirety leads to madness and death.

#51 'The Man in the Machine' The Headmaster process joins the minds of a human and Transformer together for life.

#52 'Guess Who the Mecannibals are Having for Dinner?' The Autobots require half a billion high quality microchips to repair the few dozen Autobots destroyed by the power of the Underbase - reinforcing Ratchet's earlier complaints about resources.

#53 'Recipe for Disaster' Unexpected decapitation is an injury easily fixed. [Consistent with earlier Budiansky stories, but inconsistent with Furman's 'Dry Run'.]

#54 'King Con' (1) Transformers can down-size to smaller bodies to conserve energy. [In 'A Small War', the UK comic established that Micromasters were a new technological advancement, although this goes somewhat against what we've seen of size-changing technology and Scraplets.] (2) Energon cubes can be made from lightning storms.

#55 'The Interplanetary Wrestling Championship' I can't find any robotic revelations in this one.

And that's all he wrote. Apart from the Transformers Universe profiles, but I'm not going into them.

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

My top ten facts inferred from a survey of Bob Budiansky's Transformers stories:

1. ESSENCE: A Transformer as a person is, in essence, its computer program. This sentient program can leave its hardware completely and travel in the Internet. It is therefore not even bound to the circuitry in its original brain module.

2. LIFE: A Transformer life is created by using the Creation Matrix to program a collection of circuits with self-awareness.

3. PERSONALITY: After giving life programming to the brain circuits by using the Creation Matrix, the person creating the new Transformer can program its personality, functions and knowledge of the world. This can be done before (Constructicons) or after (Aerialbots) installing the brain in a robot body. Transformers (Aerialbots) can function prior to their personalies being fully programmed.

4. INJURIES: A Transformer can survive the destruction of its body, provided its intelligence remains intact - either through the brain module surviving, or through its mind being transferred to another medium. Destruction of the body in battle almost always leaves the brain module intact, and so is rarely fatal for a Transformer.

5. REPAIRS: A good Transformer body requires over a million high quality microchips to function, so when a body is destroyed as many pieces as possible should be salvaged for reassembly. Repairs can take a long time depending on the extent of chip damage, expertise of surgeon and availability of materials. On the other hand, in a pinch a Transformer brain can live and move around in a body as crude as a battery-powered toy car.

6. DEATH: Death can be brought about by smelting, by falling into interdimensional space, by inserting explosives inside the body with fatal intent, or by absorbing the whole of the Underbase. [If you go beyond the realm of Budiansky, even two of these four were shown to be non-fatal, in the cases of Straxus and Starscream.]

7. CONTROL: A Transformer body can be controlled remotely, by its own detached head (Optimus Prime), by a binary-bonded human partner (Spike Witwicky), by a captor (Circuit-Breaker) or even by an enemy in the field (Road-Jammers).

8. ENERGY: Transformers can run on a liquid fuel adapted from oil on Earth, but the most convenient form of energy is Energon cubes, which can be created from virtually any other form of energy (oil, sonic, geothermal, electrical). Since Transformers are composed largely of electronic circuits, electricity flows through their bodies, and they are therefore susceptible to electrical overloads or short-circuiting if water gets into their systems. They can also be incapacitated by poisoning their fuel supply. Fizzy pop will suffice.

9. IDENTITY: Transformers do not have fixed discrete identities like humans. They can merge minds with one another together with their bodies, to create a gestalt mind (examples ranging from Constructicons to Scraplets). Or a single Transformer can split its consciousness between multiple bodies (Optimus Prime). The number of Transformers on Earth is therefore not a fixed number even if no new brain modules are Matrixed and no-one dies, since they can combine or split as the situation necessitates. A Transformer can even link its mind to that of a human, by means of a helmet worn by the human that interfaces with the electrical impulses in its brain.

10. MEMORY: Transformers have photographic memories, which can be accessed and played back either voluntarily (Skids to Charlene, Grand Slam and Raindance to whomever found them) or involuntarily when deactivated (Slag to Ratchet, Skids to Circuit-Breaker).

All ten of these areas distinguish them from us, and therefore make them interesting to me as a semi-adult reader. I prefer Transformers to be written about in a way that bears these and similar precedents in mind. I don't like seeing Transformers die as easily as humans from their injuries, or reproduce like humans, or grow old like humans, or be confined to specific bodies like humans. They are circuits and software, and are as likely to be in your computer or your radio-controlled toy car as they are to be parked in your driveway.

Martin

[charlesrocketboy]

Well, if they're circuits and software, they're still going to get old. If the software gets corrupted or the brain module wears out before they can swap to a new one, you'd also get them going senile and dying of old age.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Feb 13, 2010 21:11:09 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

Well, if they're circuits and software, they're still going to get old. If the software gets corrupted or the brain module wears out before they can swap to a new one, you'd also get them going senile and dying of old age.

Whether digital data is corrupted or not isn't dependent on how old the data is, but how old the hardware is on which it is stored. If Kup is old but his mind is uncorrupted, he can copy it to fresh microchips and hey presto, he is as good as new, and has the same life expectancy ahead of him as the day he was Matrixed. That's what I mean when I say Transformers shouldn't age. They don't have to age, and they can reset their 'youth' at any time by moving to fresh hardware.

Martin

[charlesrocketboy]

Except why would they create new Transformers - outside of warfare to bump up their numbers - if they're effectively immortal? There'd be no need, since the population won't decrease, and you'd only ever get a net increase unless old people are willing to die. That, or their software has a built-in "off" switch to force death on them and prevent stagnation. (If the latter, what happens if one of the Decepticons finds a way to remotely trigger it.....)

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Feb 14, 2010 14:24:42 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

Except why would they create new Transformers - outside of warfare to bump up their numbers - if they're effectively immortal? There'd be no need, since the population won't decrease

Exactly. And that's why only one Autobot at a time has the ability to create new TF life, unlike species on Earth, where the ability is common to all. TFs don't get old, so they don't need the ability to reproduce. The Creation Matrix is there as a one-off leftover from the original populating of Cybertron, just in case.

Transformers will die from time to time by accident or through a planetary disaster of some kind (e.g. massive cosmic radiation surge wiping out data), but it will be rare.

The fact is, Transformers like the Triggerbots were around four million years ago ('The Flames of Boltax') and are still around today ('Cash and Car-nage'), and aren't judged to be particularly old. Nor are brand new characters like Hotspot and Jetfire considered young and inexperienced, as they were programmed with a whole load of knowledge. When Backstreet and First Aid meet, it's not a question of one being an old-timer and the other a young whippersnapper - they both have the same life expectancy from this point forward, and the new guy may be wiser than the older one if he's been programmed to be wiser.

Martin

[charlesrocketboy]

Except there's never any suggestion that any of the characters we meet have been around since the start of Cybertron - if they're immortal, at least one should be. What happened to all of those guys? (For that matter, the Scraplets and their cure wouldn't be "legend" from ancient times.)

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Well, presumably there have been various planetary disasters from time to time as suggested in my last post, which wiped or corrupted most or all of the data in Cybertronian circuits - ice ages, or radiation from supernovas, or planet-wide computer viruses, or suchlike, leading to race-wide death or at least memory loss.

If we go beyond Budiansky to include Furman, we have Primus, who we know has initiated race-wide memory loss deliberately, for example with regard to reproduction in the G2 comic.

We also have Primus himself, and Unicron, and the Last Autobot, and possibly the Keeper, the Liege Maximo, the Covenant from 'Reaching the Omega Point', etc., who are all apparently examples of Cybertronian life whose memory goes back to the planet's creation.

Edit: I've missed these kind of debates. There are still lots of them going on, I know, but understandably all focussed on the new continuities, alas.

Martin

[charlesrocketboy]

Feb 14, 2010 19:43:32 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

Well, presumably there have been various planetary disasters from time to time as suggested in my last post, which wiped or corrupted most or all of the data in Cybertronian circuits - ice ages, or radiation from supernovas, or planet-wide computer viruses, or suchlike, leading to race-wide death or at least memory loss.

But surely the Transformers would keep backup copies of themselves? We've already seen in Rock and Roll Out (and with Floppy Prime) that they can do so. A planet-wide backup programme - or, depending on resources, backing up specific elders at least - makes sense. And we know they do have elders, they turned up in #1 (and Furman later had Xaaron and Decepticon Elders) though we don't know how old that is.

We then get a few elderly Transformers like the Maximo, Last Autobot etc, but they're clearly shown to be different, more powerful entities to your regular TF. Being that old, based on them, is an exception for people who are different from construction. Which, again, implies regular Transformers will either naturally or have been programmed to, at some point, keel over.

(Bring in Primus and this makes more sense - he's a dodgy bugger who has willingly messed with Transformer coding. He might not want a race of immortals. They might be harder to direct and manipulate - they might not see him as this awesome diety, just a slightly older guy putting on airs.)


EDIT: I've just realised - as you say, Transformers shouldn't be tied to specific bodies. Yet in G1, for the most part they are... but in Beast Wars and the Unicron Trilogy, they switch all the time and it doesn't seem to bother anyone. (Between Energon and Cybertron, everyone changed just because!) So canon backs you up, just what you'd think is the wrong canon.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Feb 14, 2010 20:28:59 GMT charlesrocketboy said:

But surely the Transformers would keep backup copies of themselves?

Maybe they did, but the race-wide memory loss means they've forgotten they did so, and one day they'll turn up.

EDIT: I've just realised - as you say, Transformers shouldn't be tied to specific bodies. Yet in G1, for the most part they are... but in Beast Wars and the Unicron Trilogy, they switch all the time and it doesn't seem to bother anyone. (Between Energon and Cybertron, everyone changed just because!) So canon backs you up, just what you'd think is the wrong canon.

I don't know anything about the Unicron trilogy, but what annoyed me about Beast Wars was that it was always mysterious phenomena that changed them from one body to another, rather than them just deciding to re-engineer themselves or build new bodies.

In the Marvel comics, when they wanted to upgrade their bodies they did it themselves, and designed the new bodies for themselves: TFs building TFs in the first place, TFs giving themselves Earth modes when they travelled to Earth (Predacons, Throttlebots, etc.), TFs upgrading themselves (Fortress Maximus up-sizing by adding the Cerebros stage, Micromasters down-sizing to conserve fuel), Bumblebee to Goldbug to Bumblebee, etc., etc.

In Beast Wars and Beast Machines they tended to just have weird things happen to them, and then they would look in the mirror and see what they looked like. A bit like Grimlock with Nucleon, I suppose.

Anyway, what you say about ageing could be true, and indeed once we go beyond US #1-55 to include the animated movie, Kup's Story, Aspects of Evil, etc., we do have young TFs, old TFs, TFs with gender, TFs with religion, TFs' getting killed in battle, etc. My only point is that there is no evidence for any of these in US #1-55, and these issues (the Budiansky era) therefore have a certain purity when it comes to portraying the TFs as alien robots, different from humans. Go beyond #1-55, and the stories humanise them more and more, and turn them into guys like us - which I feel is a shame, and a waste of something special.

Martin

[legios]

Some interesting thoughts here. Combining the fact that Transformer brain modules can effectively exist without a body to contain them (something we are unable to replicate with a human brain), and the fact that they can transfer their conciousness wholesale to an external computer network - effectively disconnecting themselves from their body - suggests that the body indeed is not an irreducible part of their identity.

In effect the Transformer is not the body shell it happens to be walking about in. After all, the Throttlebots did not exhibit much physical or psychological distress when they were placed in the RC Cars, beyond the practicalities of finding the bodies lacked some of the amenities that they tended to take for granted. In essence the Transformer lifeform appears to be the code that is running in the brain module, and the body that it is occupying is simply a vessel in which it moves about the world.

From that point of view they probably skipped the entire Monist/Dualist philosophical debate that human philosophers have been having since time immemorial. After all, they have actual evidence that they can point to that indicates that their minds are separate things from their bodies. Indeed, the question might never have arisen at all. Imagine how surprised Autobot Scientists and philosphers must have been to discover that humans had spent all this time arguing and speculating about something Cybertronian's simply accepted as a given.

As to the issue of ageing, well the physical ageing thing probably wasn't much of a problem before the war. From the point of view of transfering the conciousness from one bodyshell to another the population may have been "immortal barring accidents" as the saying goes. There would still always be some who were killed due to accidents or acts of nature (high intensity solar storms might have held some of the same fear for Cybertronians as terrestrial natural disasters like storms or forest fires have for us), so there was probably a small replacement rate but not much more than that in terms of reproduction. (Makes one wonder how many of those Autobot Leaders lived out their terms as holders of the Matrix and passed it on to their successor when they stepped down without ever needing to use it.). In the late war-era, which is the period of the Marvel TF Universe that we have the most data for, this replacement of the physical vessel would become much more difficult. With the industrial infrastructure battered and ruined, and the remaining natural resources being consumed at a high rate it may not have been so easy to obtain appropriate spare parts and replacement body-shells.

Psychological ageing might be a different issue though. There may be a limit to the amount of experience, as opposed to raw data, that Cybertronian minds can hold before it begins to interfere with their ability to process it - and if their memory is what is refered to as Holographic then it might not be possible for them to delete, move or otherwise purge unwanted experience.

In effect, there may be a limit to how much they can experience before it begins to degrade their cognitive abilities - their minds filling up with what they have already experienced until it interferes with their ability to assimilate new experience. I'm just speculating randomly now though.

It is worth noting that we have never actually seen a Transformer age as such. We have seen Transformers who consider themselves to be old, and whom we would consider old, but we haven't really been able to observe exactly what ageing entails.

As to why they don't have backups, that may be a cultural thing. It is clearly technologically feasible but whether it happened much would depend on the prevailing attitude to it. It might be considered a disturbing idea, as it might call into question the singularity of a Transformers identity. After all, if a backup exists then there is nothing to stop it being initialised whilst you are still alive. And then there are two of you when there was only one before..... Although Transformers seem to be much less physical in their essential nature than human beings they still have clearly distinct identities. There could easily be a cultural taboo about creating "dim copies of the creators intent". If we throw G2 into the mix then this might actually be part of the same deliberately programmed blind-spot that prevents them from knowing about Biomorphic Replication. After all both would prevent them replicating too far beyond what was needed for their original purpose. (Whether you accept the Marvel Origin or the Reductionist hypothesis from Eugenesis).

Karl

[charlesrocketboy]

Back-ups having a cultural stigma would make sense - but Tracks, Grapple, Hoist, Skids, and Smokescreen don't seem that bothered that there's another them back on Cybertron (or dead on Cybertron!).

Feb 14, 2010 22:01:13 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

I don't know anything about the Unicron trilogy, but what annoyed me about Beast Wars was that it was always mysterious phenomena that changed them from one body to another, rather than them just deciding to re-engineer themselves or build new bodies.

Well, the only technology available was what could be scavenged from their wrecks (and later the Ark or Vok) - that doesn't give you much scope for deliberately engineering. Though Megatron does invent the Transmetal 2 upgrade.

these issues (the Budiansky era) therefore have a certain purity when it comes to portraying the TFs as alien robots, different from humans.

Well, to some extent. They still have the same emotions as humans, have some of the same types of hobbies (literally in Jazz's case!), have funerals, even have swearing ("By the divine weld!" is one), and are capable of very human pettiness. Going off the Universe profiles, Transformers also have schools and upper classes that go hunting, which is very human.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Some credit now for the much-maligned (by me) Simon Furman. Yes, he made the TFs much less machine-like and easier to kill, and with fewer humans in his stories the giant robots shrunk down to our level. And his stories were less dense, with fewer words per page and ideas per issue. BUT!

He did like his mind games.

'The Enemy Within' - Severe electric shocks can change a Transformer's personality, or revert them to their original one. Do all Transformers have suppressed personality subroutines like this beneath the surface waiting to be unlocked?

'Raiders of the Last Ark' - Here we see a Cybertronian mind (Auntie) operating with its memory banks off-line.

'The Icarus Theory' - Professor Morris controlling Swoop remotely. An early prototype of Road-Jammer technology, or of the Headmaster process? You decide!

'Dinobot Hunt' - With their higher programming malfunctioning, the Dinobots revert to more basic, primitive ('safe mode'?) operating systems.

'Second Generation' - Optimus Prime enters Buster Witwicky's dream world to join him in watching the messages left by the Creation Matrix program - and the Decepticons hack into and view the images using the technology Shockwave once used to hack the Matrix and create the Constructicons. Prime helps Buster navigate the dreams - though for some reason the Matrix won't speak to Prime directly.

'To a Power Unknown' (possibly not a Furman story) - Human military computer software intended to control enemy missiles _reverses_ the ethical codes of the Autobots and Decepticons. What does this mean? Do all Autobots have a suppressed Decepticon personality inside them (like Brawn), and vice versa? Is their 'normal' personality any more 'real' than the suppressed one?

'Target: 2006' - Galvatron reprograms Jazz to attack his comrades.

'Fallen Angel' - Swoop and Morris now work together rather than against each other to enhance their skill in battle - very much like a Headmaster.

'Resurrection' - Straxus tries and fails to overwrite Megatron's software with his own.

'Worlds Apart' - Some teething problems in the Highbrow-Gort mind partnership.

'Salvage'/'Mind Games'/'Two Megatrons' - Two or possibly three Transformer minds living in a single brain module - Straxus and Megatron (or a trooper who thinks he's Megatron).

'All in the Minds' - When Mindwipe hypnotises Highbrow, Gort is unaffected and able to bring Highbrow's mind back into control.

'Time Wars' - Galvatron is one very unhinged time-traveller.

'Race With the Devil' - The Underbase is on the verge of creating a new life in the body of Starscream, before being cut short by Hi-Test and Throttle.

'Back From the Dead' - Ratchet has nightmares. Blackjack controls deactivated Autobots to molest Ratchet.

'Matrix Quest' - The Triggerbots are hypnotised by a bunch of aliens. The Creation Matrix calls to and takes control of Thunderwing.

'The Void' - Primus overwrites Emirate Xaaron's software and inhabits his body.

'The Last Autobot' - Some good Headmaster stuff between Spike and Fortress Maximus (sequel to Bob's 'Man in the Machine').

'Perchance to Dream' - Galvatron's mind-bug allows him to monitor the dreams of deactivated Autobots.

'Generation 2' - Nasty visions of doom for Optimus Prime, plus we learn that Primus has memory-wiped the entire Transformer race with regard to the ability to spontaneously reproduce.

That's a selection, I'm sure I've missed plenty. Now Simon didn't usually present his mind-twisting stuff in terms of computer software (like 'Pretender to the Throne'), nor did he go in for stripping Transformers down to show their brain circuits functioning without their bodies. He tended to present things in terms of dreams and strength of willpower - Megatron beats Straxus through force of personality, rather than through having more potent offensive software and better firewalls. The stories were often written as they might be written in a comic about telepathic superheroes. However, those of us who like the robot angle can read between the lines and view it all in terms of software hacks, password-protected memories and over-writing of data, and what-not.

Martin

[charlesrocketboy]

Feb 16, 2010 7:52:55 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

'To a Power Unknown' (possibly not a Furman story)

That one was Ian Mennell & Wilf Prigmore.

'All in the Minds' - When Mindwipe hypnotises Highbrow, Gort is unaffected and able to bring Highbrow's mind back into control.

Yanking Scorponok's head off also traps Zarak in head form, as they didn't have the time to properly seperate. That might be the first time we'd seen a drawback to the process.

There's also Hi-Q turning into Optimus, presented as the natural endpoint for a Powermaster (who basically stays inside the TF and is given marching orders): Transformer programming is going to naturally overwrite an organic's brain. With Headmasters (who have an active partnership), it's more the other way round.

Megatron beats Straxus through force of personality, rather than through having more potent offensive software and better firewalls.

Well, willpower is more dramatic than "suck it, Straxus, I've got an up-to-date firewall", to be fair! (Straxus would be the one with better software and firewalls anyway: Megatron's been out of the loop for four million years, Straxus would've been around for cutting edge developments)