The Making Of A Vehicon General

It’s a beast Transformer. It..sort of counts.

Sometime back I mentioned my old, defunct Transformers fansite, and I’ve brought up the usenet group alt.toys.transformers which is still in operation. Although I haven’t had time to really visit in years and I don’t know who’d remember me, I had a lot of fun posting to that group. Sometimes i would even write an essay or a fanfic. Below is one of those essays. Around the time of Beast Machines there were discussion about how Megatron could have turned this or that Maximal into one of his Vehicon commanders. After thinking about it a while I came up with a theory, which I’ve gone through and fixed to keep in line with my current abilities. Enjoy.

So you’re a maniacal despot who’s just taken over your home planet. Your enemies are getting the better of your mindless drones, which you can’t control all at once. You’re best bet is using some of your captured Sparks to create Generals who will do the work for you. Then you’re going to rip said Sparks back out. Now you’ve already decided to use some of the sparks of your old enemies, whether for irony or because your arch nemesis would never hurt his friends. Or maybe you’re just a dumbhead.

Either way, you’re faced with how to get them to do what you want. Now in Beast Machines: Transformers, Megatron has had a total of 5 generals by series end, and has chosen the “right” sparks for the job

• Tankor-Rhinox
• Jetstorm-Silverbolt
• Thrust-Waspinator
• Strika-Strika
• Obsidian-Obsidian
  (In the case of the last two, Megatron kept their original personas, while influencing them to be loyal to him. More on that later.)

So how do you convince them to join your side? Give them what they want! Let’s look at each individually……

See what one bad day can do?

RHINOX into TANKOR

To command your big tank army you choose Rhinox, because he’s used to being as big as a tank and almost as powerful. But he hates your guts! After all, how many times did you try to scrap him and his friends or try to rewrite all space and time to your warped viewpoint? So you must repress his persona, much like Earth spies do with “sleeper” agents. Now rather than Spark manipulation, I theorize that he affects his mind, perhaps at the datatrax level, but that’s for another time. [Not sure if I ever wrote that one-SWT Today] There’s still the problem of making sure Rhinox doesn’t fight back.

So let us look upon young Rhinox. Now he likes nature as much as he does machines and he hates you, depises you. If you needed a drink of water, he’d give you acid. (And I don’t mean drugs.) But wait, Rhinox doesn’t like being in charge!

Think back to Beast Wars episode “Dark Design“. Rhinox is a great strategist, but he doesn’t want to lead. Unless you reprogram him into the uber-Predacon. So if he just wants to follow orders, then let’s make him loyal and dumb as a brick. Plus he never seems comfortable as a secondary in Beast Wars. Now he doesn’t have to worry about it. Tankor is still a somewhat decent strategist, as we saw in “Revelations” and a few other stories, prior to his “awakening”, but now no one is asking him to make decisions or looking to him for guidance. He can just do his job. No questions asked.

Problem: The Maximals reawaken the “Rhinox” persona, but the “Tankor” persona remains. The result is both personas sort of merge, in his head if not his spark. The result is the return of the uber-Predacon, now the uber-Vehicon. (After three times, I hope I have the right prefix. 🙂 Tankor’s hatred of the organic merges with Rhinox’s strategy skills and hatred of Megatron. The result is worse than Predacon Rhinox could hope to be.

Now I can’t say if Rhinox was as deserving of his fate as he though he was in the Beast Machines episode “Fallout”, but that could have just been the Oracle’s way to reach Primal. (Check my response to Rob’s post for more on that.) [After this many years I don’t remember what post that was.-SWT] Now let’s look at another Vehicon

As horrifying as Silverbolt looks in the top picture, his toy is even worse.

SILVERBOLT into JETSTORM

At first they seem like mirror opposites. Outside of running their vocal circuits, Silverbolt is the model of virtue and honor, while Jetstorm will dance on your corpse–or would if he had feet. So how do you make this guy into this other guy? Silverbolt tells us himself. Allow me to paraphrase…

SILVERBOLT:”He made me break my code of honor, and I reveled in it!”

Remember when Rattrap told him “If you take that broomstick out of your tailpipe you might have some fun for a change!” back in Beast Wars? Well, what if he was right? To be the kind of hero he though he should be, what if Silverbolt repressed another part of himself?

Now I’m virgin, which is not encouraged by the media (and seemingly society at large) these days. That means I’m planning to save myself until marriage. (I’m not bragging or anything. There *is* a point!) However, I do still have urges. Hey, I’m a 27-year-old single male {at the time I wrote this} in the seemingly sex-obsessed era. It would take a miracle *not* to have them. I don’t follow those urges because I’m not prepared to face the alternative. I won’t go into all that here. So in a sense I have to repress my sex drive. And I apologize to all the youngsters here who really shouldn’t have read this paragraph, but there is a point. (Any use of dirty jokes will be your last!)

[And I wish I had stayed on that course. Turns out I was right about the reasons I was waiting. Hindsight is a big meanie.-SWT]

In Silverbolt’s case, there’s something else he represses. I’m not really sure how to describe it, but it makes him feel trapped. Perhaps this inner turmoil was reflected in Jetstorm. As with Rhinox, Megatron tapped his repressed side and released it. At last whatever Bolt’s keeping down is off and flying–repressed anger, hatred of not being in the air, jealousy of his friends who are a little more happy-go-lucky, his favorite sports team keeps losing; whatever it may be that he’s had to forget about because it conflicts with his code of honor, his view of what a heroic character is supposed to be.

While I admit my “weakness”, however, Silverbolt ignored it. He would never admit he has a “wild, primitive side”, as it were, and we never really saw it come through unless he was alone with Blackarachnia, or when he thought Tarrantulas had caused her death! All that pent-up emotion let loose. Many would like to let go of that, but know the consequences. It’s harder to deal with if you don’t acknowledge those feelings exist. Like an alcoholic who won’t admit to himself he has a problem suddenly let loose in a room full of booze. That’s what Jetstorm was for Silverbolt. Or something to that effect.

Problem: Blackarachnia wouldn’t rest until she restored Silverbolt, thus ending Jetstorm, but not the aftermath. It like the previously mentioned alcoholic who wakes from his/her drunken stupor to find he may have done things he’d regret, like cheat on a spouse or hurt/kill someone. Anywhat, Silverbolt reveled in shooting his own friends! In oppressing a few and serving one who was oppressing the entire planet! He violated every belief that he held dear–that made Silverbolt Silverbolt in his optics. That’s why he was so angsty. I think he hated himself more than Megatron. Still, he couldn’t be himself again until he confronted what he did and repaid his sins by stopping Megatron.

Still a better spoiler buster than when they turned Hank Hall Into Monarch.

WASPINATOR into THRUST

First off, why Waspinator?! Anyway, think about it. What has Waspinator always wanted? Respect! Kewlness! Leadership! Blackarachnia? Anyhow, up until Season 2, he had all that! He was the biggest bad@$$ on Cybertron. He had respect–well as much as a Vehicon could have. He even had a friend in Jetstorm. One could argue he hasn’t really had a traveling partner since Terrorsaur. He’s in command of his own army. And chicks really dig cool bikerbot. At least until they find out bikerbot doesn’t really have ex-boytoybot’s spark!

Problem: It’s Waspinator. Actually there wasn’t a problem until that revelation was made. Then suddenly Thrust was treated like Waspinator with an attitude, especially in late S2, where Primal and Megatron just brushed him aside like nothing. He did regain his bad@$$ quotient during the fight with Cheetor in the final story arc.

The biggest problem, though, was why Waspinator was used in the first place–a plot twist/device. Just a way to surprise you, especially since some dip decided to release spoilers all over the net, thus defusing Beast Machines‘s whole plan. Sure, some of you think you would have figured it out on your own, but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with a mystery? Is a Sherlock Holmes story or Scooby-Doo as interesting the more you see it? Sure, the second time you can go back and try to find the clues you missed and go “wow, so that’s how they solved it”, but then what? I hate it that the spoilers were released, and that I couldn’t avoid it because newsgroup posters kept bringing it up all the time. I kind of feel robbed of the experience. And yet Waspinator being in Thrust instead of Silverbolt fooled nearly everyone as I recall. Still, of the three he was the only one who the story could have left alone, since Waspy would have liked being Thrust, while Rhinox and Silverbolt would have been/were disgusted with themselves.

Power couple.

OBSIDIAN & STRIKA into…ummm…OBSIDIAN & STRIKA

OK, these two were pretty much the same Maximals they were before and the only ones who were brand new characters. They were dedicated servants of Cybertron and protected it in many wars. So how does Megatron convince them to serve a dead planetoid? All he has to do is “convince” them that serving him *is* serving Cybertron. Perhaps they wouldn’t care for a technorganic Cybertron, which would make them an extension of some of you out there. 🙂 Or since Megatron is currently in charge of Cybertron, then they have to follow his orders. Whichever method he chose, the result is still the same, and probably easier, since the change was minor. Unlike the other three who were practically “rewritten”, they were the more or less the same Transformer they were before, only now they serve the Vehicon cause.

“You said you burned that picture!”

MEGATRON into MEGATRON

We’re still trying to figure that one out. 🙂 Anyway, this maybe a theory in progress; and one that shall be debated for time to come.

It’s been about 13 years since I posted this and I still stand by my theories. Beast Machines is still looked down upon by the “Beast Era” fans but while it had many faults I still kind of enjoy it, at least for what they were trying to do and remembering that Hasbro had insisted they ignore the original series and possibly Beast Wars as well, plus Canada’s YTV wanting to release the entire show at once while Fox Kids kept it at the planned two seasons. (Season two was given the subtitle “Battle For The Spark”, and this is when Hasbro first added a subtitle to the second half of a line’s run.) I’m also one of those people who defend the infamous “Weak Component” episode but I’ll save that for a video review down the road, perhaps a crossover with someone who didn’t like it. It’s far from perfect…but it’s still better than the Unicron Trilogy!