Ratchet

[Toph]

First, this contains some minor spoilers for the two most recent episodes of Prime. You've been warned.

Recently, Ultra Magnus got his hand smashed off, while Ratchet replaced it with some gimpy mangled three pronged oversized claw.

Is it just me, or is this version of Ratchet *the* worst medic in the TF franchise?
Seriously, compaired to Knockout who took Megatron's arm off, replaced it with the arm from a million+ year old cadaver, then replaced it again by reattaching the original... seems to have fixed up just about every decepticon back to perfect order... AND seems to have been able to bring Megatron back around out of his coma any time he wanted, were he not plotting with Starscream.
In compairison, Ratchet could barily restore Bulkhead's legs. He couldn't fix Bumblebee's voice box (More on that soon), and he couldn't even build a simple hand!

Up until recently, most of Ratchet's ineptitude has been explained through "You can't replace an organ easily." And that seems to hold true for Starscream's T-Cog.
It almost seems to break down that in this reality TF biology breaks down to Technology, which can be repaired and replaced as easily as replacing a pump on a car. And Organs, which are as difficult to deal with as a heart or a lung.

I don't really care for this logic, because it humanizes them too much, but alright. I can accept this explination. And reguarding Bumblebee, the excuse the fans use always seems to be that his voice box was indeed an organ.
However, in the most recent ep (Minus One), they did everything but outright SAY Bumblebee's voice box was just a piece of technology, and not an organ.

Even worse... HUMAN BEINGS IN THE REAL WORLD have the ability to build functioning mechanical hands! We just don't have the technology to attach them to ourselves, in any meaningful way.
So why is Ratchet confind to making some redonkulous mangled claw for Ultra Magnus? Why not just use human tech to build a functional hand? Or replace it with a weapon?

Megatron is perfectly willing to adapt Human tech. In fact, he sees this as a perfectly viable solution to problems.

So... is Ratchet just so incompitent that he's not even as good as human science, or is he too proud to use human technology, and would rather cripple his teammates, and risk losing the last hold the autobots have on the war?

Either way, it seems to me that Ratchet is a liability, and not even remotely close to an asset.

[dyrl]

I got the feeling Ratchet did not have access to the necessary Cybertronian tech, while Knockout did The Bots had to make due in a wharehouse. The Cons have a star ship. Advantage: Decepticons.

[Toph]

Except that doesn't work. The autobots have access to all the resources Unit:E brings them. And human tech isn't that deficient. Even Megatron has used it to his advantage.

As I said earlier, we have the ability to make a fully functional robotic hand. And with a cybertronian medic's knowledge of cybertronian anatomy, he shouldn't have any real problems using human resources to make one. Maybe it might not be able to transform into a gun, or all the fingers split apart into tiny ones (Which no TF in this continuity has been shown to do anyway), but there's no reason he couldn't make five fully functional fingers.

And I still say there's no reason human tech couldn't be used to create a new voice box for 'bee.

I don't buy the resource argument. It just doesn't float as technically they have more resources to access than Megatron. Just not as advanced as Megatron's. And saying human tech doesn't work is underestimating and demeening our own species ingenuity and capacity.

[dyrl]

Considering how little Prime I watched, you're probably right :-)

[Hero]

Perhaps the doc was pushed for time and the claw was a stop gap until a proper hand could be sorted.