I respectfully disagree.

Going all the way back to the G1 episode "Sea Change" it has been established that Cybertronians are more than machines. And that's before "sparks" and stuff entered the picture.

 

Yeah, Apologists ahoy.

 

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Well, I don't remember a lot from G1, so I could be wrong about a few things.

But no matter how complicated, advanced and sentient the Transformers are, they are still robots, therefore machines.

Technically, all life-forms are organic machines in one way or the other. Just no artificial design involved.

 

War

Jeffery Dahmer

 

Okay, then I use "war" as an excuse to get a T-Cog back.

 

Well that explains everything. But if you only watch it for the action, why are you analyzing the "robots". They obviously don't behave like robots, considering they don't do logical choices (ie not taking a t-cog from a vehicon).

Changing the character of a key character in a show is a recipe for disaster. Eat your greens OP of the 80s can be altered slightly to accommodate the times, but change him to the OP you envision, an exile willing to do anything, whether it be fair or not, and I bet Hasbro will lose a massive amount of it's fans. You may like the action, but as raf (or whoever) said before, these are "robots" with emotion (emphasis on actual emotion, not ethic protocols), which is what I think has really helped the Transformers brand survive. Metal bashing with a heart.

 

Nope, still an ethical quandary.

With Prime's propensity for making shit up as it goes along, your personal drive to take organs from dead soldiers can be justified with a simple throwaway line by Ratchet: "All active soldiers are registered organ donors"

 

Then why did Hasbro not lose a massive amount of fans during the course of Animated? After all, it did have an Optimus Prime who wasn't grand commander, questioned his leadership, and was willing to send an overloaded, about-to-die Sari out to the Decepticons just to defeat them.

 

It'd be funny if that's one of the things a Vehicon has to fill out when joining the Decepticons.

 

You know what, me too. Let's just make this idea canon, then all the anger and sadness can just go away

 

Since it looks like the vehicons are mass-produced, perhaps they're with an alt-mode in mind. It makes sense considering it'd be foolish to mass produce an entire organism.

I dunno, and in case no one noticed, yes, I am hanging onto the idea that the vehicons are more drone than actual cybertronian.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: some folks are having a very hard time distinguishing aliens from robots/machines:/

  ...I think I need to buy a new keyboard :'(

Drone? Aren't drones controlled via remote? Clones? Maybe. They certainly have personalities of their own. They took a vote in the season finally, and one even talked about the joy he felt beating Orion down. They aren't mindless.

 

Wat. I've watched the entire show, and OP animated did not sound like anything you painted him to be. In fact, the impression I got was that OP animated was a budding commander, pretty sure if there was a fourth season OP would have been more like the commander most people remember.

 

"Maybe that is all I am, a bunch of transistors and bolts, but I don't believe it! My heart may look like an energon pump but that doesn't mean it can't feel."

—Seaspray

A quote from the episode. It's not all mushy lovey stuff though. A drone falls into the pool that gives the alien shapeshifters their abilities and is obliterated because it's just a machine. Seaspray jumps in saying he has to know if he's more than a drone and the pool works on him.

 

They'll probably say the vehicons are drones and a 'lesser' transformer, and hence parts aren't as complex or compatible.

 

I don't see how that hinder it working for other Cybertronians; its a T-cog, and its only purpose is to allow its user to transform. Why shouldn't it work all Cybertronians? I could understand it it were a massive Cybertronian's T-cog like Metroplex or someone else, but with someone of the relative same size, why shouldn't it work.

Even in today's episode it sounded like any willing Cybertronian could have donated their organ to Bumblebee--there was no discussion about compatibility, just a donor.

There's only one blood type on Cybertron and the blood type is Energon.

I think we've just witnessed the bad things that are going to happen to Starscream this season in this episode. With his T-cog gone, he's going to get one back. The question is: how is he going to put it back in? He's going to need someone's help. Will Airachnid be the one to help him or Breakdown or Knockout?

Regardless of whoever helps him or not, once he gets it, MECH is going to be in a world of hurt when he finds them. Silas better learn to sleep with his eyes open. Starscreams going to go all brigade on them 

 

Well, that's not always true. And certainly not in modern civilizations on Earth, where we even have war laws.

That said, you bring up a good point:

Having laws of war is a consequence of living in sates large enough to support them. That kinda goes out the window as soon as you're dealing with a small, armed group rebelling against a much larger army. In fact, what we're watching here is not actually war in the modern sense of two states with standing armies declaring themselves in conflict (with the implied adherence to the above-linked laws of war.) The Autobots have no home, and have nearly been obliterated by the Decepticon armies who are now moving in to conquer Earth. I'd say Optimus and pals are actually closer to an insurgency (or even a terrorist group!) using guerrilla tactics to fight an occupying army. They're the French Resistance, if you like, and you better believe those people did what was necessary to win. If our heroes really believe that stopping the Decepticons is the most important thing in the long term, then they need to consider that they can't always do the right thing in the short term.

So, yeah. It's stupid. But I can also understand why the show is ducking the issue; it's a kid's cartoon and this would be a nasty place to go if the writers followed their premise to its logical conclusion.

 

I agree with with Bountyan's description of animated Optimus Prime. In season 3, he was willing ot ask Ratchet to have Sari go battle Megatron in Omega Supreme's body. Also, animated Optimus Prime did have a lot of skeletons in the closet. After all he was a failed elite guard cadet, he thought he got Elita 1 killed, then he found out he got Elita 1 transformed into a spider. He also had a bit of animosity with Sentinel Prime.

Animated Optimus was also the one who tried to trick Sari into going to that burger restaurant, laughed at Sentinel Prime's disembodied head, had egg nog/oil nog with his teammates, was shocked at how human reproduction is done and marveled at the thought of being a hero like those in the history books. Animated Optimus had a lot of quirks that made him quite a unique Prime.

 

The Decepticons must be building those Vehicons somewhere. There's probably a whole warehouse of cogs just sitting about. Just go there and steal a cog before it's put into a Vehicon. No moral problem.

I would've said Megatron would recycle his drones. But if using the parts of dead soliders is supposedly too ghoulish even for him he must have one hell of a massive construction bill to keep churning out whole fresh Vehicons over and over each time a batch gets killed by the Autobots. Just seems stupid somehow. This cog story creates more problems than it solves.

 

You don't need permission. They are mindless drones. And your enemies! Kill your enemies.