I have a bit of dilemma that needs to be answered, and Tfwiki.net let me down, so who better to turn to than the Transformers Guru's on these forums. So my question is this: What exactly are Sparks? The reason I ask is because having now watched over Beast Wars, Beast Machines and currently watching Transformers G1 and Transformers Animated, I've found little things left unmentioned, and those are:Is a spark just a transformer's heart? Or a combination of a heart and brain? The reason I'm asking is the following; throughout Beast Wars it was shown that a spark could be extinguished and that the character would die with it, yet if the spark was resurrected Spoiler Such as Optimus Primal at the start of season 2 of Beast Wars the characters mind would be restored to normal, almost creating no gap in memory from between death or resurrection, so basically it was like they didn't die at all from their point of view. However in many series, we've seen transformers operate technically without a spark, with their minds still intact Spoiler such as Starscream in Transformers Animated who still had his memory and personality and yet he had no spark and we also had characters resurrected without sparks(well i assume without sparks) Spoiler Megatron in transformers Animated was resurrected by the Allspark energized key yet only his head was operational, his body was a complete wreck and his spark chamber was empty and their memory was still fine and intact. So can someone answer my question? I'm really stumped, and I was wondering if someone could give a slightly in depth answer to it, whether its fact or just your own theory. Thank you
I think most of us equate sparks with souls. Sparks are what makes an individual Transformer unique and gives them their personality, without one they'd just be a soulless automaton. They contain ambitions, drives, likes and dislikes, willpower, lifeforce, and more. They are the true essence of the Transformer in every sense except the purely physical. Both Rhinox in BW's "The Spark" and Megatron in Animated's "Megatron Rising Part II" both do a good job talking about them to lend evidence to come to such a conclusion. I think what's throwing you is that the Allspark is a bit of a special conditional, we really don't have a clue on what the relationship between a Transformers Spark to The Allspark is, other then a fragment of the Allspark can be lifegranting and Transformers think that the Allspark is either a source or the source of Cybertronian life. I don't think Megatron was brought to life via Sari's key, more like rebooted, repowered, and brought out of stasis lock. Later in the series we see Megatrons spark chamber, with a pulsing, normal healthy Spark in it; we never saw it empty at any point though we know the head and the body were physically seperated. However, that connection may not be necessary, as BW Waspinator could also evidence. Alternatively we did see Sari's key restore Primes spark after it had been extinguished so perhaps it also restored Megatrons spark the same way. Starscream could be a special conditional, he had a Spark, but then got an Allspark shard, which could be acting in place of his Spark by keeping him in what you could equate to a Zombie like state, his true uniqueness has been extinguished with the loss of his real original spark, and the shard is merely keeping the body and memories functional in the stead of the extinguished Spark and thus granting him what seems like immortality (at least for now). On a slight tangent, The Allspark does seem to have (at least in it's imbued and shard states) a limited lifespan. Sari's key no longer functions with it's power having been depleted and a shard that was powerful enough to open a spacebridge failed to have sufficient power a second time, which would indicate that after enough power has been taken from a shard, that it loses its powers. This implies that after enough time, all the Transformers brought to life via a shard will eventually die out as their shard loses power, as opposed to a Transformer with a Spark, who can live forever as long as their Spark isn't damaged.
Hey, Great answer cheers, that definitely gave me more insight into sparks, it's a great view on how Transformers can still function without a spark and be the same person. thanks
transformers movie: DEATHS!!! Some scenes in this movie, in the first 20 minutes are REALLY... well they ticked me off because THE KILLED SOME OF MY FAVOURITE G1 CHARACTERS. like wheeljack, ironhide, jazz(i think it was) they all got killed by a raid of decepticons. the thing im wondering is what exactly happened to them. they were dead, but shouldn't their sparks have beed alive so thet they can build new bodies?!
To my knowledge "sparks" weren't really around when the movie came out so that answers why but if you are looking for a more "in form" answer perhaps they were damaged so heavily it destroyed their spark as well.
Thinking about Sari's key, I thought it wasn't so much depleted, but the power was transferred to Sari herself, now that she's able to connect with it herself, or at least discovered that she could have. Hopefully though, this won't just change from her using the key to revive others to just having to touch them herself. The odd thing about the shards and Starscream is that he was able to embue life into all of his clones with tiny fragments of his original fragment, yet they got different parts of his personality from their shards. Was his personality imprinted on that shard so that each clone got a portion of it, or was that built into the clones before the shard was installed? Does that shard even imbue real life, or will they forever just be a simple facet of Starscream's original personality?
