Excluding Megatron, Skyquake and Dreadwing are probably the most warrior-like and best Decepticons in TFP. Each of them has proven to be a challenge to Optimus Prime, the only Autobot that has a chance against Megatron in combat. It was so hard to see them killing Skyquake the same episode they introduced him, bringing in a twin brother, Dreadwing was probably the closest to bringing Skyquake back they can do, yet they killied him! Worse, they made Megatron picking Starscream over Dreadwing.

Do the show writers have an interest in removing likable and respectable villains?

 

One of the let downs of the show for me has been the lack of Decepticon characters. We get a good deal of Starscream, Megatron has his moments of being a star, Knockout occasionally gets used, it seems like they forget about Soundwave, but then all the other other Decepticon characters get killed off, put in status, or get lost in space until season 3.

I don't know what series will come after Transformers Prime but I've got my fingers crossed that it has more Decepticons. Sometimes it feels like Hasbro forgets the fun that villains bring to something.

 

- If villains were not dysfunctional, if they actually worked together as a team, they'd win.
- Likable villains are killed because you wouldn't care if they killed unlikable ones.
- Killing a likable villain is far less tragic for younger viewers than killing a likable hero. See Transformers: The Movie (1986). And death brings a level a maturity and sophistication to stories.
- Strong, smart Decepticons are a threat to Megatron's dominance.
- It had been a while since Megatron had asserted his dominance. Every so often the troops, and the audience, need to be reminded who is in charge and why. And why he's the villain.

 

Writers didn't make Dreadwing a big deal: he was almost useless all that time.
Now, when he's gone, I don't feel any change, if we take the Decepticons at large.

I think that SkyQuake, who thought less was a better and more successful figher. I believe that he must have survived, he just needed to change his form to shake Bee-Bot off, then return to alt- mode. Might be, he needed more time after that long sleep.

 

With Dreadwing he was used a bit when he joined TF Prime then he had a period where you didn't see him at all then came back all of a sudden.

 

I disagree, all these silly deaths/hibernation/etc are making the show very unsophisticated if you ask me. Interesting plotlines cut short because of Voice Actor reasons or to be so called 'dramatic'.

Imagine: Dreadwing going to deadzone to see his twin?
Dreadwing rampaging aboard the Nemesis.
Dreadwing duelling to the death with Megatron
Dreadwing duelling with Wheeljack
Dreadwing becoming a vagrant akin to Wheeljack
And the one almost everyone thought would happen: Dreadwing joining Team Prime

All of these seem better to me than Bang! Dead. Very out of character moment for Megatron.

 

My old friend Seekerblackout once mentioned a theory to me; that the decent Decepticons, the ones who are generally nicer, more stable, less evil/cruel, are the ones that die.

I mean, Breakdown was a decent guy, and the F-35 Twins at least had some concept of honour and loyalty, and Hardshell at least respected his hive and disliked racism. And they're dead, while sadistic monsters like Airachnid and back-stabbing pricks like Starscream get off scot-free (granted, the former is in a pod, but still alive)

I wonder if the show was scared that the 'Cons were getting too nice, so they killed them to keep the nastiest ones in play  

 

To be fair, Dreadwing has been nothing but a failure. In his intro episode, he claimed he could kill Optimus, yet he was defeated and failed. He was sent to retrieve the Apex Armour, he failed. He needed to kill Smokescreen and Bulkhead, and underestimated them both and failed to kill them after setting up an entire forest to blow up. In every task he's been sent to do he's failed so he's not much of a loss in honesty. I never liked the character much.

Compared with Starscream, 'Scream has been far more successful and capable:
Killing Cliffjumper.
Almost killing Megatron with limited resources.
Retrieving all Omega Keys single-handedly with a small dose of Red Energon and a remote Groundbridge.

Megatron would've kept Dreadwing, had Dreadwing not betrayed him and disobeyed orders. He had no choice but to kill him.

 

The betrayal more than anything.. Megatron would hurt his cause far worse by showing anything goes, which is what would happen if megatron didn't kill him.

 

After Dreadwing gave the Autobots the hammer he was basically going to die, Soundwave basically nows everything happpening on the ship, and he was going to get found out.

 

I would have liked Dreadwing to stay alive. I thought he would have interesting character development. One of the disappoints for me with his death is that he barely did anything before they killed him off. It's like they just slapped him in the show just to cry about a character who appeared in one episode, give the Autobots relic #36, then die. He only actually did shit in 5 episodes, and 2 of those 5 didn't fully feature him. Every time else he was just standing in the background or having a very minor role. And as soon as he started to get interesting character growth, he's gone. His character as a whole ended up being pointless to me. It lines up with most of my disappoints of season 2 being they start what is seemingly a cool plot thread and it's practically gone as soon as it starts. It would be like if Animated revealed Sari was a robot only to kill her off an episode or two later.

And yes Dreadwing failed all his missions, but people seem to forget that if Dreadwing didn't exist, Megatron would be dead/unconscious twice over now, and he got out of a situation in which Megatron thought he wouldn't survive. He's not as totally useless as people seem to make him out to be.

 

Thought he did die a bit quickly in the episode, he could have done something else, before, he only lasted like 8 minutes in the episode before dying.

 

Man Seekerblackout had some great ideas.

 

What Dreadwing did or didn't do somehow mattered very little to me. I just wanted him to get screen time really. He's in the top three category of characters for me and granted it had more with how he looked than anything else. The design is just spectacular, I got the same feeling from the old G1 seekers seeing them for the first time as when Dreadwing was introduced. Skyquake was hard to notice but yes, I'm that shallow.  

 

Death is dramatic **ONLY** if it is used in a way where the emotional impact has any value in the story. Death, like many story telling techniques, should only be used where it has most meaning...a noble sacrifice, death of a character's beloved, death of a mentor, death of a villian/antagonist as a transition from one stage to another. Even in **GOOD** war stories, we see that death is used sparingly. Death is reserved for when it will have the most emotional or story telling impact. The death of a beloved sergeant who has promised to take everyone home, the death of an officer redeeming him/herself in the eyes of their subordinates, or the death of civilians close to a soldier or a group of soldiers.

If you just...kill off characters without impact, it cheapens the storytelling technique. If everyone just dies left and right, even in a war story it loses it's meaning and it becomes just blase. Death prevents meaningful character development, and when characters who had a lot of background and a lot of potential story hooks die, you lose a lot of potential story telling ability. It isn't to say that these characters shouldn't die..but their deaths need to mean something more than just letting them die. It needs to be pivotal in the story somehow.

So, please, take any story telling 101 or creative writing 101 before you start telling anyone that death is dramatic. It's only dramatic when used properly. Death in and of itself is NOT mature. It's how you deal with death that determines what is mature. Comics in the 90s tried to use death just by itself as a way to build maturity, and guess what? That era of comic books sucked and is considered childish and immature despite the "death" that went on. Barely any of those 90s characters still exist today, and almost none of those stories are still told. Death =/= Maturity.

It's our job as viewers to call out writers when they are bad or make bad decisions. How else will they improve? I've been saying this since season 1...Prime's writers suck, and I think it's funny that it took a second season for people to really start realizing that.

 

You do know that most of these writers have worked on series like the X-Men and Godzilla the series which both are well recieved and some of which are past writers in past TF shows like Marty Isenberg right? I don't see how they can end up suddenly being bad writers over the years. There's word actually that most of the writing problems are due to the fact of Hasbro butting it's noise into thier bussiness like with the Beast Hunters as well as Breakdown and MECH's arc being cut short as well as making both the original plans for Season 2 and 3 into the season 2 we have now. There's proof of this but there's no offical confirmation yet but so far it has backup. If Hasbro let the writers do thier things first it would've been different. There are some things the writers can't control and if that's the case we shouldn't be too hard on them because for all we know they feel the same way you do about how things turned out. So until there's proof I'd wait until there's proof before saying the writers are awful. And not everyone thinks the writers stink.

And what's the point of complaining to the writers if they aren't listening in the first place? You'd then just be complaining for no reason. Now this is far from the case due to them actually reading the complaints. And another thing yes we should voice our opinions and complaints but does that give us the right to give out orders and have the final say in everything? I mean Hasbro sadly has the ultimate say in everything and if we want to help them improve we should stop acting like slave drivers and insilting the writers and tell them in a more constructive yet fair manner otherwise we'd end up looking like insulitng aggresive crybabys.

 

I'm going to use this for everything now.

 

The only thing that irks me about Dreadwing's death is that his gun cleanly tears a hole right through him, but failed to tear clean holes through other targets.

I suppose you could argue it was a point-blank chest shot, but it seems kinda weird that only when used to kill its own owner does the gun display such power.

 

First time all series the gun actually landed a serious hit.