that's been discredited as canon years ago

 

Who and what are you responding to?

 

Xeneology is my headcanon

the Natural gears thing. sorry. i posted before refreshinh.

 

If he's talking about the Quintessons as creators and judging by the rest of this thread, he's clearly talking about Sunbow G1.

 

Seems that we are both headed to the same location on different routes, your overall point was mine as well

Obviously, but I'm not getting your point here the topic has been covering more than one origin myth

 

Actually, I'd really like to see a new origin which has the Transformers have been made either by -- or from -- humans.

 

Being created by humans would be an interesting twist and give a reason for the Earth connection (that doesn't need Unicron or some other super Transformer to be the planet itself). However, it sort of risks the story (the origin of the Transformers, anyway) looking like a rogue AI story that we already have in the Quintesson origin.

Being made from humans, though, adds a bit of a Transhumanism story, but I think that's kind of like the origin of the Gobots. Is it?

 

Yeah, kinda. But I could (and do) imagine scenarios where they're not the same. Planetary computer, human minds stored in VR, downloaded and disassembled and remixed to make new minds which are loaded into TF bodies... something like that.

 

I think having a human or post-human origin would be about the most interesting way to shake up the franchise at this point, ironically.

I've had an origin story kicking around in my head for a while now that cribs heavily from Xenogears, involving a higher-dimensional Allspark and its discovery by human scientists who use its 3D shadows to power machines. Shadows turn out to be quasi-sentient, artificial intelligence interacts weirdly with them, shenanigans ensue and boom, Transformers.

At least, that's the very abbreviated version. In a longer version, it turns out the Quintessons were far-future humans all along and there's time travel nonsense to explain all the loopholes. But hey, that's fanfiction for you.

 

Are you me??? I think along those lines too.

 

That would be where I stop liking Transformers... I'm okay with humans trying to replicate the Transformers... but making them altogether would be the end

 

Whatever you do, then, don't watch Masterforce.

 

Thanks for the heads up

 

I had a similarly-tinged idea which borrows from Beast Wars and Star Trek: TMP, involving one of the Voyager probes carrying the Golden Record...basically, one of those "we-created-them-and-they-created-us" paradoxes minus all that Ancient-Space-MacGuffin-Of-The-Week repetitiveness.

 

I like to think that the Transformers had a non-Quint origin and the Quints simply invaded and enslaved the Cybertronian race during their early history before be driven off Cybertron. I never liked the continuities where they Cybertronians were just products created by some other species.

 

The Quints were featured in the cartoon more than any other alien race and they're seen with Transformers in the movie. Mainly the Sharkticons. How is it at all random that they were chosen and how did you not catch the rather obvious in retrospect hint that they were the creators?

The random one is that they introduced Primacron as Unicron creator which seems random because some weird little monkey looking dude who we've never seen in any other episode before or after turns out to be the creator of the largest Transformer ever created? Why isn't he tied to the Quints as well instead of this stupid monkey?

I don't really remember any other alien races... well organic looking ones anyway. Trying to make another race of robots the creators begs the question of who created them. Like the Junk ions technically aren't Cybertronians but the technology in them is very similar. Like the Quints tried to do the same thing on other planets that they did on Cybertron.

Another kind of random thing... considering they created Tiger hawk why didn't they just introduce the Quints in Beast Wars instead of the Vok... The Vok are kind of interesting but never really understood exactly how is they worked or what their long term goals were had the Beast Wars not contamidated their experiments what would have happened?

 

It is rather disappointing that the Vok storyline was dropped so abruptly in Beast Wars, yeah. Supposedly there were a whole bunch of possible explanations for what they were and why they were experimenting with Earth, and none of them made it into the show.

Interesting thing about the "introduce the Quints in Beast Wars" bit, though. While it was never stated, I like to think that the race that Tarantulas and the Tripredacus Council were descended from were in fact the Quintessons, attempting to regain control of Cybertron and usurp the Maximals and Predacons by any means necessary. Yeah, sure, some comics ended up taking Megatron's insult toward Tarantulas as "Unicron's spawn" literally, but still. Heck, the way the camera rotates around to each member of the Council is even reminiscent of the Quintesson's rotating faces.

Actually, that's probably why they created the Vok instead. The Quintessons are blatantly malicious, it wouldn't make much sense for them to be tinkering with Earth in ways that were seemingly positive (going by creator intent).

 

Very interesting (on the former). Can you elaborate/synopsize?

 

I think the Vok were unmistakably supposed to resemble "the thing" inside the Matrix, so I'd say some kind of connection is intentional. What that connection is, I have no idea.

The simplest (and least interesting) answer would be that the Transformers were made for humanoid consumers. Humans are clearly not the only civilized organic life using that body plan.

That has a lot of potential as an interesting storyline, but the word-of-god stated intention is that Tarantulas was referring to Jhiaxus' Cybertronian Empire. Since they left Cybertron to do their own thing while the Ark was dormant and were away during the revived war, they'd be relatively unaffected by the demise of Optimus Prime, the Ark, or the Nemesis.

 

I thought this discussion was interesting enough to warrant it's own thread. So please head over to the Vok discussion thread I just made. I'd love to hear more about these abandoned plot threads you mentioned.

Also regarding this topic, I don't think that Tarantulus or the Tripredacus council could be related to the Quints. The main reason being that Quintessons were an organic race, with some armor/technological enhancements while Tarantulus and Tripredacus are transforming robots. I think taking the Spawn of Unicron comment literally is the only explanation that makes any sense. Unicron has different origins than other Transformers being the only character who we know isn't a creation of the Quintessons.