Makeshift is/was Tracks. Calling it now.

 

Thanks guys, You spoiled the whole season for me and with only 3 episodes!

 

It's interesting how hung up you guys on the podcast are about the Eradicons being individual personalities. If you watch the animated Star Wars series, Clone Wars, those droids have TONS of personality, from the lowly infantry droids to the higher ranked commanders, and every episode you see them get shot, blown up, and sliced to pieces. There are even times when a droid's been thrown over a cliff and he's screaming "WHYYYYYYY?" as he falls. Prime's Eradicons don't even come close to the level of cruelty brought to the droids of Clone Wars.

Regarding Wheeljack and Cliffjumper's similarities: Wheeljack's was given a more typical "gritty, action hero with a smirk on his face" while Cliffjumper had something of a different feel with the Rock doing his voice. He was confident, but smooth in his line delivery. Honestly, I was a little disappointed with Wheeljack, because he sounded like any other kind of cool action character. Nothing about his personality or voice really stood out from other characters we've seen in other shows. Just kind of the same old thing we'd seen/heard before.

Just my thoughts on those topics.

 

Replace "hung up on" with "fascinated by" and you have a better point. I don't think anyone is hung up on them, we just want to know how they differ from the rest of the Cybertronians. That's it.

 

I know what you mean. I thought of the Battledroids too. But those come off purely as comic relief, while these Cons have a different type of reasoning and none of their writing comes off as comedic. Particularly with the one that reasoned that with Megatron, they still lost and wondered how they would fair any better with Megs not around.

I agree with what you guys said in the podcast. A Transmutate-styled episode focusing on one of the would be Prime... in the show Prime.

 

Sorry, that's more what I meant. "Hung up" was just what popped in my head while writing the post.

 

It's generally played for laughs on the show, and occasionally they demonstrate that the a.i. has it's flaws. But yeah, the droids are generally played as having personalities. Tactical droids tend to be arrogant, HK47 tend to be somewhat awesome and so on.

The diff is that in the TF universe, the giant alien robots are established as being actually alive. With the ability to feel pain and grieve and have man-crushes. Even the Scrapplets would be considered alive in the sense we consider rats as being alive.

A droid generally wouldn't have doubts about the current leadership (although CP30 is something of a known complainer) or need to be given pep talks by the new emperor of destruction or be vulnerable to being baited/angered by prisoners.

And if Makeshift turned out to be an Eradicon variant, that muddles things further. Heck, in retrospect, when Starscream called the Eradicons "drones", he might have meant "peons".

Simply because they all look virtually the same doesn't necessarily remove the possibility that they're alive either. The robot zombies had quite a few variants, but ultimately, they had repeated designs/shared parts as well. And those guys are considered former living Cybertronians.

All that said, I dunno. I want to say that until stated otherwise within the show, the Eradicons are probably just sparkless drones. On the other hand, aside from Starscream's throwaway line that they were drones (peons?), there's actually more argument that they ARE alive.

Personally, I want them alive, seeing as that means the Autobots have all got their hands dirty.

 

The robots absolutely have personalities in the show. They have the same voice actor throughout, of course, and act just about the same, but they still have their little character moments (usually right before they get sliced, shot, decapitated, or thrown over a cliff). Like updatedude said, the tactical droids have a real arrogance about them that sets them apart, with goals and desires that a regular human would want, spoken through a cold, robotic voice. It's pretty neat the extra effort they put into these things.

I'd recommend checking Clone Wars out. I've only watched the first two seasons, but it's a well-developed show. Characters actually have charisma and personality, and it focuses on ones we hardly hear about in the movies. One of the most interesting parts is how much attention they give the clones. You actually get to know some of them pretty well, and they have clone-centric storylines.

 

My current theory regarding the Eradicons is this:
Cybertronians all start out as drone-like members of a type (sorta like in WFC). As they exist they begin to develop more establish personalities and thus upgrade themselves to more unique and specialized bodies. In the Autobots this is highly encouraged, thus most Autobots look unique, where as in the Decepticons one has to truly stand out to have the priviledge of being a unique 'con, hence why they tend to be the higher classes ones such as Starscream and Soundwave and most are still drones, even as they are developing huigher grade sentience and personality.

 

that makes sense. also if you take into account that the Decepticons control the majority of Energon they can spend/use more of it to make new drones, whereas the limited number of Autobots require all the Energon they can get just to keep functioning

edit: the Decepticons are probably on a caste system with the higher bot getting a bigger ration of energon, while the Autobots share everything equally

 

it was great... hell most of the prime eps are great minus annoying miko. really why can't they just injury or kill off one of the kids make it more realistic? sometimes kids should listen to adults or thousand year old autobots. lol.

btw, wheeljack was awesome! when will the toys come out already?!

 

Why is it that when people talk about realism in a kids show murder is the first idea they toss out?

 

why does everyone hate Miko?

 

Damn right! There are no filler episodes in Prime! It is all of substance!  

 

Maybe b/c we are dealing with 10 story moving objects? Or possibly b/c in battle people die and the surrounding environment often gets destroyed? It stands to reason if one of those 10 story robots was fighting another one maybe just maybe there would be collateral damage? Having a kid killed or at the very least injured would drive one point home... the Autobots are at "war" and having kids around can pose a huge liability.